Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 14.djvu/31

 Annual Reunion of Pegram Battalion Association. 25

But when we recall the fact, that the batteries of which it was com- posed, though principally raised in and near this city, yet represented not only different portions of this Commonwealth, but that within its organization sons of the Palmetto State vied with the sons of the Old Dominion in "glory's fearful chase" — all true sons of the South — that on almost every battlefield of the Army of Northern Virginia it made those costly sacrifices that duty exacts., that its guns were heard in the early days of our hope, and were scarcely silenced in the latest hour of our despair, we may judge what part it played in the mighty strife, we may begin to realize how many of its men are among " Our Dead."

Amongst those that earliest fell, you will recall one whose opening career of devoted service, full of rich promise, failed of complete fruition by reason only of his untimely death at the post of duty and of honor. Though brief his career, it was resplendent with the soldier's highest courage, and faithful hearts have enshrined in loving remem- brance the heroic firmness, the womanly tenderness, the pure life and the honored name of Charles Ellis Munford.

And, strangely unlike, amongst the last to lay down life, another who, entering the service as a private, by his superb courage and splendid ability rose to the command of the Battalion, who ever

"Set Honor in one eye and Death in th'other, And looked on both indifferently,"

who seemed to bear a charmed life, and fell not 'till the pillars of his cause were reeling, and fell then with his face to the front, the boom of his own guns his dying requiem. The glory of this Batta- lion, as his own, is linked forever with his name :

" Gallant Pegram, loved, deplored, A saintly life, a stainless sword ! The young Marcellus of the falling State, A Virgil's lay alone might fitly celebrate!"

With such a sacrifice at the opening and such a sacrifice at the close of the annals of this historic command, all the long intermedi- ate pages are fitly filled in characters of glory with the names of comrades who sealed their devotion to their country's cause with their hearts' best blood.

With these — officers and men, peers in martyrdom — responds this Battalion to the toast : " Our Dead." With these to swell the ranks of the dead, the grave that encloses their mortal remains is to us an holy sepulchre, one to which we may make pilgrimage, not as of •