Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 14.djvu/189

 Reunion of Virginia Division, A. N. V. Association. 183

Major T. A. Brander, Sergeant John S. Ellett, and Major Lewis Ginter ; Treasurer, Sergeant Robert S. Bosher ; Secretary, Private Carlton McCarthy.

Colonel Archer Anderson presented a fit and touching tribute to Captain Walter K. Martin.

General Taliaferro, in a few eloquent words, appropriately intro- duced as orator of the evening his distinguished comrade, Colonel Edward McCrady, Jr., who had been a gallant soldier in the Army of Northern Virginia, and who now came from his stricken city of Charleston and his gallant State of South Carolina at the call of his comrades. General Taliaferro paid a warm tribute to South Caro- lina, which was loudly applauded.

When Colonel McCrady arose he was greeted with loud applause, which was frequently repeated as he proceeded to deliver his address.

ADDRESS OF COLONEL EDWARD MCCRADY, JR.

Comrades of the Army of Northern Virginia,

and Ladies and Gentlem,en :

In the article on the subject of " Army " m the Encyclopcsdia Brittanica, the author, the distinguished and accomplished British officer. General G. Pomeroy Colley, C. B., who soon after fell in that wretched little Boerer war in the Transvaal, after giving a brief sketch of the armies of the world, ancient and modern, of the rise and organization of each, and of all the great levies of history, clos- ing with an account of the American army, and its strange military history, says:

"The total number of men called under arms by the Government of the United States between April, 1861, and April, 1865, amounted to 2,759,049, of whom 2,656,053 were actually embodied in the armies. If to these we add the 1,100,000 men embodied by the Southern States during the same time,* the total armed forces reach the enormous amount of nearly four millions drawn from a population of only thirty-two millions — figures before which the celebrated uprising of the French Nation in 1793, or the recent efforts of France and Germany in the war of iSyo-'i sink into insignificance."

I have thought, my comrades, that instead of taking for the subject

rate armies, and I had intended in this address to discuss the question, and have sought and obtained some considerable material for doing so, but failing to obtain some returns to perfect a table I have had in preparation, I have deferred to some other occasion its consideration.
 * This is, I am satisfied, an overestimate of the strength of the Confede-