Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 16.djvu/119

 Address of Rev. 0. W. Beetle. 113

and our victories. The genius of our commanders and the daring of our men have given to Manassas, Richmond, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville and Gettysburg a prominence among the great battle- fields of the world, from which our struggling legions in their tattered garments of gray shall never fade from the admiring gaze of men.

The government at Washington, rejoicing in the returning har- mony of the once alienated and contending sections, is with liberal care placing in permanent form the official records of our battles, and in her archives, along with the reports of the Federal com- manders, is sacredly preserving those that tell of the movements, the numbers, the successes and the losses of the Confederate troops. My comrades, the embers of the old camp-fires were long ago ex- tinguished ; the rifle-pits, from which flew our death-dealing volleys, have been plowed over ; the forts and frowning earth-works that trembled beneath the fire of our heavy guns are fast levelling down, and our comrades are one by one passing rapidly away. Ere long the last of these grim relics and the last survivor of the war will be gone. But the valor and constancy of our soldiers on the field, their rapid marches, their fierce onslaughts in battle, their unflinching firmness in the face of immense odds, their unmurmuring endurance of hardships and suffering in a word, their splendid bearing under every circumstance that called for patriotic devotion and manly vir- tuewill live in the traditions and history of the nation as long as a heart survives to appreciate noble fortitude, or an eye to kindle at the recital of heroic courage.

Of the brave comrades who fell at our sides or were borne away from the field to die, it is happily true that, in most of the counties represented here to-day, their names have been sacredly gathered up and carved on granite or marble monuments, there to remain through coming years a touching illustration of fidelity to patriotic duty even unto death, and also of the loving commemoration of a grateful people. Fellow-survivors of the great struggle, on whose altar these fallen heroes poured out their blood, it behooves us to see that the name of no humble comrade, who went out from our counties and died for our cause, is left to dumb forgetfulness and cold oblivion. We owe it to their sacred and gallant memories that some permanent memorial shall, with mute impressiveness, tell their names and their patriotic services to those who are to come after us. Let these monumental shafts rear their graceful forms at every county seat, where fathers and sons shall gather in coming years and look upon them ; and may the showers fall gently upon them and the winds of