Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 17.djvu/115

 Annual Reunion of the Association of A. N, V, 107

THE PRIVATE SOLDIER.

Nor even here is our duty ended. Let still another monument rise, simple, majestic, grand, sky-piercing. Let but one device be carved upon it, a soldier lying dead upon his shield. Let it bear but one inscription — that placed by the Greeks, as the old heroic legend tells, on the memorial stone erected at Thermopylae. And let its sumoiit be crowned by a figure in a faded and worn gray jacket, standing musket in hand at the post of duty.

A truer hero or more unselfish patriot never marched to battle than the Confederate private. He did not serve for pay, for he received a mere pittance for his service. He did not fight for glory, for history does not take care of him. He did not look for promotion, for he seldom rose above the ranks. He often left a starving family at home — he committed them to God and the charity of friends. He suffered cruelly from hunger and cold ; with his faithful friend, his musket, he was always ready to forget the one and to overcome the other in the heat of batrie. And when he fell and slept his last sleep in his soldier grave —

" No useless coffin enclosed his breast.

Nor in sheet, nor in shroud we wound him, But he lay like a warrior taking his rest With his tattered blanket around him."

THE V. M. I. CADETS.

In paying my unworthy tribute to the soldiers of the Confederacy, I should do injustice to them and to myself did I fail to give their due meed of honor to a band of young heroes, which may well claim me to-night a uniform which vividly recalls the early scenes of the war, when at Harper's Ferry, at Manassas, at all points where troops had been assembled, the Virginia cadet was ubiquitous in organizing, drilling, and instructing the men whom the State had called to the field. Later on, when they took their posts of duty in the army, and were joined by the yearly contingent sent to the field by their honored ** Alma Mater,*' they had their full share of the hardships, the dangers, the deaths, and the honors of the war. But the spring of 1864 witnessed their crowning achievement as a distinct organiza-
 * a place in the picture near the Hashing of the guns.** I see before