Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 16.djvu/252

 246 Southern Historical Society Papers.

Address of Colonel Edward McCrady, Jr.

Before Company A (Gregg's Regiment}, First S. C Volunteers, at the Reunion at Williston, Barnwcll county, S. C., 141/1 July, 1882.

It is with divided feelings, my comrades, that we meet upon this occasion. It is indeed doubtful which emotion is the stronger, that of pleasure in once more grasping the hands of those of us who survive, or of sadness in missing those who are not here to answer to our roll-call. And so it must be with us on all such reunions as this. Our bands are daily becoming smaller and smaller. No vol- unteers nor recruits can now be enrolled in our ranks ; nor any con- scripts sent, unwillingly, to join us. In a few short years the coming generation will look with curiosity, at least, if we may not bespeak reverence, upon any one who may live to say that he fought at Ma- nassas or Gettysburg, who can tell how he marched with Jackson to victory, and perchance how at last he laid down his arms with Lee at Appomattox. Is it not natural, then, that we should draw closer together while we live, and that we should sometimes meet, as we have done to-day, to recall the times when together we offered our lives and shed our blood for our State, and suffered cold and hunger and thirst and sickness for the faith in which we were reared, and for the cause which we still maintain to have been righteous even though lost?

For what, then, did we fight ? It is well, my comrades, that we who survive should take such occasions as this to tell to those who are growing up around us what were the great causes which impelled the young and the old of that time, the rich and the poor, the learned and ignorant, to take up arms and risk their lives in battle.

It has been said by a great historian that "a man who risked and lost his life for a cause he believed a just one, though he was mistaken in so believing, is not among those whose fate deserves the most com- passion, or whose career is least to be envied." But we were not mistaken in the cause for which we fought. We did not fight for slavery slavery, a burden imposed upon us by former generations of the world, a burden increased upon us by the falsely-pretended philanthropic legislation of Northern States, which legislation did not emancipate their slaves, but forced them to be sent to the South and sold here was not the cause of the war, but the incidents upon which the differences between the North and the South, and from