Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 17.djvu/116

 108 Southern Historical Society Papers,

tion' on the battle-field. Every old soldier's heart leaps and thrills when he recalls that gallant band of boy-soldiers as it comes, with steady tread and dauntless front, upon the field of Newmarket, as they take the fire like veterans, as they drive the enemy before them and sleep upon a victorious field which their heroism had helped to win.

These sacred memories, my young comrades of the Virginia Mili- tary Institute, are your inheritance, and you will never be unworthy of them. The same noble institution shelters and cherishes you. The same gallant officer who led your corps then, commands you now. The same southern sky that witnessed the deeds of your com- rades, stretches over you. The same sentinel mountains that guard the spot where they fought and fell, are around you, and you will be true to the glorious past. Fellow -soldiers of the '* young guard " of the Army of Northern Virginia, the soldiers of the **old guard" extend to you the right hand of fellowship and greet you as comrades.

AFTER THE W^AR.

When Lisbon was destroyed by the memorable earthquake of 1755, and the fair city lay in ruins, with thousands of its inhabitants crushed beneath the wreck of its homes and temples, the horrors of a great conflagration were added to a scene at which the heart sickens and which defies description. To this pathetic picture the condition of the South, at the close of the civil war, may justly be compared. To the ruin already wrought by the convulsions that had shaken her, and the storm that had swept over her, the fierce passions of recon- struction were added to complete one of the darkest scenes in the history of any civilized people. To those who passed through that terrible age, which was crowded into the ten years of reconstruction, it appears even now as some hideous nightmare, or the troubled dream of a disordered fancy. Future generations will never realize it. No other people could have stood the test and passed the ordeal successfully. But the law-abiding, courageous, determined spirit of the Anglo-Saxon triumphed at last. The people of the South, trained as men were never trained before, to lessons of danger, self-sacrifice, self-reliance, and patience, have met every difficulty that confronted them and solved all the perilous problems of their situation but one, and that one the future must trust to them, and to them alone, for ultimate solution.

The question may well be asked to-day :