Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 14.djvu/36

 30 Southern Historical Society Pcqjers.

And splendid illustrations of the courage, the endurance and the patriotism of man have these infantry soldiers given on the historic battle-fields of Earth. A grand and glorious infantry was that which, massed in the Spartan and Athenian phalanx, made immortal the names of Marathon, Thermopylae and Plataea. Steady and firm as the seven hills on which the Eternal City rested were the infantry legions who bore the eagles of Imperial Rome to Universal Empire. Men will never cease to wonder at the discipline and valor of that magnificent infantry which the Great Frederick led to victory at Rossbach, Leuthen and Zorndorf, nor will they forget the heroic de- votion of the stern old Covenanters, who under Cromwell added such lustre to England's name, and taught the world how religious zeal could triumph over chivalric honor and ancestral pride. Superb in- deed was the courage, endurance and dash of that almost matchless infantry that crossed the bridge at Lodi under the First Napoleon, and stamped its victorious heel on two imperial thrones when the sun went down at Austerlitz ; and a noble guard was that of which the dauntless Cambronne said on that fateful day at Waterloo, that it had learned to die, but never to surrender !

And yet, my comrades, I venture the assertion, that when they who took part in the great contest which for four long years rent asunder the veil of our Union have passed away ; when the passions and pre- judices born of that war have been silenced, and History renders its impartial verdict, the highest place in the Temple of Fame will be given to that half-fed, half-armed, half-clad Confederate infantry, grand in victory, sublime in defeat, which from Big Bethel to Appo- mattox wrote the record of its deathless deeds in characters of living light on Glory's brightest page.

" They marched through long and stormy nights, They bore the brunt of an hundred fights

And their courage never failed ; Hunger and cold and the Summer's heat They felt on the march and the long retreat, Yet their brave hearts never quailed."

When but raw levies, who 'till then had never heard the cannon's angry roar, they stood like a stone wall, while midst whirring shot and bursting shell, Death held high carnival at First Manassas ; and the next year, like an eagle from its eyry swooping down on its prey, they burst through the mountain gaps, and crushing three armies in detail made the Valley Campaign at once the study and the wonder