Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 16.djvu/240

 234 Southern Historical Society Papers.

we should, in doing homage to these, cultivate a holy affection for those less striking virtues which found exhibition at home.

"The wife who girds her husband's sword,

'Mid little ones who weep or wonder, And bravely speaks the cheering word,

What though her heart be rent asunder; Doomed nightly, in her dreams, to hear,

The bolts of death around him rattle, Hath shed as sacred blood as e'er

Was poured upon the field of battle.

"The mother, who conceals her grief,

While to her breast her son she presses, Then breathes a few brave words and brief.

Kissing the patriot brow she blesses; With no one but her secret God

To know the pain that weighs upon her, Sheds holy blood as e'er the sod

Received on Freedom's field of honor! "

It i? well for us to recur to the principle underlying the Confederate movement. Never was a cause apparently less understood or more maligned. The history of the world furnishes many instances of revolutions, rebellions and wars for insufficient causes. The mainte- nance of the claims of an individual or family to supreme authority, trivial complaints, trifling affronts, desire for aggrandizement, pride and ambition, have been prolific causes of popular uprising or national contests. But none of these actuated our movement. It sprang from a spirit of independence, which is hereditary and part of our being ; a belief in the right and a sublime determination to maintain it. If successful, it would have been pronounced right, Failure dorit make it wrong.

The impelling cause was far greater and more justifiable than led to the American Revolution, and the different result can't change the dictates of justice and the decision of right reason. The spirit which has ever animated and will ever inspire the resisters of oppression, impelled the Southern people. To judge fairly and determine justly, their action must be estimated from their standpoint. This is the rule applied to individuals and is applicable to masses. We must transport ourselves to their situation, circumstances and surroundings, see as they saw, believe as they believed, feel as they felt, and con- sider the justice and reasonableness of their apprehensions from what they saw and felt. Doing this, it is discovered that the movement