Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 17.djvu/105

 Annual Reunion of the Association of A. N. V. 97

It sweeps down the Atlantic shore and trembles among the leaves of the magnolia and the palm. It is borne on the breezes of the Mexi- can sea, bending the boughs of the cypress and the vine. It winds up the course of the great "father of waters" till it meets and mingles with the notes of the challenger. And now the Southern bands are marshalling to accept the gage of battle. The oft and vainly repeated questions — where is the arbiter ? and where the court of competent jurisdiction to adjust the federal relations of the States ? — receive their final answer. Sabre, cannon and rifle are the arbiters, and the field of battle the court of last resort. War, that "terrible litigation of nations/' rules the hour and the counsels of men, and for four fateful years of wounds and death, Eros is de- throned and Mars triumphant.

Pass in review the marshaled legions of history, about whose ban- ners song and story have en wreathed their richest garlands, and as they move by in stately procession, name the scenes of desperate battles, mark the instances of heroic courage and endurance even when hope had hid its face and turned its back, point examples of suffer- ing borne with God-like patience and fortitude, single out individual acts of knightly heroism and devotion, and for them all you shall find counterparts in the scenes of the Confederate revolutionary drama. A drama which had a continent for its stage, armed millions for its actors and the world for spectators.

THE ANGLO-SAXON SPIRIT.

In the light of subsequent events, it seems passing strange that so few of our political prophets, either North or South, foresaw the vast proportions the struggle would ultimately assume when they were indulging in dreams of a thirty, sixty, or at most ninety days* war. Stranger still that each of the parties to the contest should have so greatly undervalued its antagonist, as to cause the boast that a single Northern regiment could march triumphantly from the Potomac to the Gulf of Mexico, and the equally quixotic offer of certain zealous Confederates of saurian digestion, to eat one Yankee for breakfast, two for dinner, and sleep comfortably on a supper of three. The latter thought may have been father to the first. But this pre- sents only the humorous side of the picture, before the actual clash of arms had come, and before they had fully realized that both had inherited from the sturdiest race on earth, that dogged, tenacious,
 * never say die,** fight to the death spirit that has stamped the Anglo-