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 330 Southern Historical Society Papers.

valor and endurance during the conflict, they have since exhibited their patience and self-control under the most trying circumstances. Their dignity in the midst of poverty and reverses, their heroic resignation to what they could not avert, have shown that subjuga- tion itself could not conquer true greatness of soul. And by none have these virtues been illustrated more impressively than by the vete- rans of the long conflict, who laid down their arms at its close and mingled again with their fellow-citizens, distinguished from the rest only by their superior reverence for law, their patient industry, their avoidance of all that might cause needless irritation and provoke new humiliations, and their readiness to regard as friends in peace those whom they had so recently resisted as enemies in war.

The tree is known by its fruits. Your Excellency has reminded us that our civilization should be judged by the character of the men it has produced. If our recent revolution had been irradiated by the lustre of but the two names LEE and JACKSON it would still have illumined one of the brightest pages in history.

I have not spoken of the former to-day ; not because my heart was not full of him, but because the occasion required me to speak of another, and because the day is not distant when one more com- petent to do justice to his great theme than I have been to mine, will address another assembly of the men of the South, and North, and West, upon these Capitol grounds, when our new Pantheon will be completed by the erection of another monument, and the inaugura- tion of the statue of Lee, with his generals around him, amid the tears and gratulations of a countless multitude.

It was with matchless magnanimity that these two great chieftains delighted each to contribute to the glory of the other. Let us not dishonor ourselves by robbing either of one leaf in the chaplet which adorns their brows ; but, catching the inspiration of their lofty ex- ample, let us thank God that he gave us two such names lo shine as binary stars in the firmament above us.

It was in the noontide of Jackson's glory that he fell ; but what a pall of darkness suddenly shrouded all the land in that hour ! If any illustration were needed of the hold he had acquired on the hearts of our people, on the hearts of the good and brave and true throughout all the civilized world, it would be found in the universal lament which went up everywhere when it was announced that Jackson was dead from the little girl at the Chandler House, who "wished that God would let her die in his stead, because then only her mother would cry; but if Jackson died, all the people of the