Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 14.djvu/12

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Comrades of Pegram's Battalion:

On behalf of the mother of Colonel William Johnson Pegram I give into your keeping this flag—for two campaigns the battle-flag of his old battery, "the Purcell"—afterwards the head quarter battle-flag of the Battalion.

To those who do not look upon it with our eyes it is but a faded bit of bunting, rent and torn and grimy.

But to us the rents are the rents of shot and shell, each with its stirring story, and the grime is the noble grime of battle, and faded though it be by time, every shred of it is transfigured and glorified by memories which time cannot touch—memories of great deeds greatly done—of victory wrested time and again from desperate odds by skill and daring—of hardness endured as good soldiers in a good cause—of noble blood nobly shed for hearth, home, and country—and our blood taking fire at sight of it, even as David's blood took fire when he saw in the hands of Ahimelech the sword which recalled the unequal contest and glorious victory in the valley of Elah, we re-echo the cry of the warrior-king of Israel three thousand years ago: "There is none like this!" As I unfurl the tattered remnant, it seems but yesterday that we saw our boy-colonel riding along some crimson field followed by Morton bearing this flag), the sweet austerity of his grave face lit up with the joy of battle, as he was greeted by the hoarse cheering of his batteries and "the iron-throated plaudits of his guns'"—it seems but yesterday, men of "the Purcell," that in the dusk of that glorious August evening on Cedar Mountain, when you unlimbered within eighty yards of the masses of Pope swarming through the cornfields straight for the guns, "old Jackson" sat on his sorrel hard by this flag, sucking the inevitable lemon and nodding approval as your canister tore through the huge columns, while Captain Pegram cried out in great glee: "Pitch in men, General Jackson' s looking at you—it seems but yesterday that A. P. Hill paused near this flag amid "the fiery pang of shells" on the slopes of Gettysburg to shake hands with Major Pegram, who, with the fever still upon him, had ridden ninety miles in an ambulance to command his guns on those fateful three days—it seems but yesterday that we saw Lee and Gordon and A. P. Hill and Early grouped about this flag as it dal-