Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 17.djvu/198

 190 Among the leading officers who participated in the meeting were Generals Early, John B. Gordon, Edward Johnson, I. R. Trimble, W. B. Taliaferro, William Smith, W. N. Pendleton, Fitz. Lee, M. Ransom, William Terry, Benjamin Huger, Robert Ransom, L. L. Lomax, George H. Steuart, C. W. Field, W. S. Walker, B. T. Johnson, J. D. Imboden, R. L. Walker, Harry Heth, Samuel Jones, John S. Preston, Henry A. Wise, George E. Pickett, D. H. Maury, M. D. Corse, J. H. Lane, James L. Kemper, J. A. Walker, and others; Colonels Thomas H. Carter, Hilary P. Jones, Thomas L. Preston, Robert S. Preston, William Allan, William Preston Johnston, Charles S. Venable, Charles Marshall, Walter H. Taylon Henry E. Peyton, and Robert E. Withers; Commodore M. F. Maury, Captain R. D. Minor, of the Confederate States Navy, and scores of others of our leading officers, and hosts of the "ragged veterans"of the rank and file.

The meeting was called to order by General Bradley T. Johnson, General Jubal A. Early was appointed temporary chairman, and Captain Campbell Lawson and Sergeant George L. Christian, of Richmond, and Captain George Walker, of Westmoreland county, temporary secretaries.

Ex-President Jefferson Davis was made permanent chairman.

General Early, on taking the chair, delivered an eloquent and worthy address, concluding as follows:

"Monuments of marble or bronze can add nothing to the fame of General Lee, and to perpetuate it it is not necessary that such should be erected. But the student of history in future ages, who shall read of the deeds and virtues of our immortal hero, will be lost in amazement at the fact that such a man went down to his grave a disfranchised citizen by the edict of his contemporaries—which infamous edict, by the fiat of an inexorable despotism, has been forced to be recorded upon the statute book of his native State. We, my comrades, owe it to our own characters, at least, to vindicate our manhood and purge ourselves of the foul stain by erecting an enduring monument to him that will be a standing protest, for all time to come, against the judgment pronounced against him. The exact locality of that monument I do not now propose to suggest. When we are in a condition to erect it, it will, in my opinion, be the proper time to settle definitely the locality, and I merely say now that it should be where it will be accessible to all his boys and their descendants.

"Something has been suggested with regard to the resting-place