Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 14.djvu/449

 The Maryland Confederate Monument at Gettysburg. 443

every side. Here Reynolds fell, there Vincent bravely died, here Kane upheld his Pennsylvania's pride, there Hancock in his splendor fought with nerve of steel; here Farnsworth, there Weed and Haz- lett fell ; here Slocum held his vantage ground, there Gibbon met the fierce assault of IVimble and of Armistead. Splendid memories, well deserving a nation's pride. But in all this the story is but half told, and now the managing control has, with liberal and broad appreciation of its duties and obligations thrown wide the door to the survivors of the Confederate commands to complete the record, worthy in its entirety to be engraved ' with an iron pen, in lead, upon the rock forever.'

" The first to avail themselves of the privilege thus accorded is the regiment to which I had the honor of belonging, known then as the First and afterwards as the Second Maryland infantry, and we, the survivors, are here to mark the point gained within the opposing lines, at the close of the second day's engagement, and further to indicate the movement made on the following morning, of the nature of a forlorn hope, when the handful left were well-nigh destroyed.

" The history and character of that command are in some points peculiar, and it is not altogether inappropriate that to it should have been reserved the honor and the privilege of being the first Confed- erate organization to mark its place and indicate its deeds upon this field. Strictly a volunteer organization at the outstart, it retained that feature, soon in great degree peculiar to itself, till the close of its existence. Again, the men who, with the courage of their convictions, left their homes in Maryland to cast their fortunes with the South were no mere agitators or disorganizers. The his- toric names of the Goldsboroughs and the Johnsons, the Halls and Steuarts, the Tilghmans and the Howards, the Pacas, the Carrolls, and the Barneys, the Stones and Lloyds who filled our ranks give token of no churlish or ignoble blood, the descendants of the men who formed their State and who made the history of their colony, whether by sword or pen, to shine with peculiar lustre, even in the brilliant period of the revolutionary epoch, these men but put in practice the lessons they had learned from childhood when they staked their honor and their all and offered up their lives upon the altar oi devotion in the effort to maintain the principles of their political faith.

" The representatives in the Confederate service of this phase of Maryland sentiment were scattered far and wide, attached to various