Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 18.djvu/199

 General Joseph Eyyleston Johnston. 199

and other noble ones, leaving us this inheritance. Who shall say that the youth of this land in the generations that follow shall not emulate this splendid example of Christian manhood ?

HIS NAME WILL NOT DIE.

When the applause that greeted the glowing eulogy had died away the chairman introduced the Hon. T. B. Edgington'as a gal- lant Federal officer who would lay a garland of praise upon the tomb of a man whom he had fought against.

MAJOR EDGINGTON'S ADDRESS.

The address of Major Edgington is here printed from the manu- script kindly furnished by him to the editor of the Southern Histori- cal Society Papers.* It is as follows:

It has been said that it is from the calm level of the sea that all heights and depths are measured. No base line of measurement can be made on the crests of stormed-tossed waves. None can be made on the surface of the uplifted waters; when the seas lash their tides against the continents, along that never-ending skirmish line, where the sea gives its shells to the shingle, and where the earth gives its streams to the sea.

No measurment of the mountains can be made while their peaks are hidden out of sight above the black storm cloud.

So it is with General Joseph E. Johnston. No fair and just esti- mate could be made of him until the tumult of civil strife had ended, and the clamor of faction and rivalry had become stilled.

He was a trained soldier of great and varied experience.

He was educated at West Point; had served as lieutenant of topo- graphical engineers ; had served in the wars with the Indians ; served with distinction in the war with Mexico, where he was promoted to the rank of colonel for meritorious services. At the outbreak of the

An impressive address by Major Edgington "The Race Problem in the South Was the Fifteenth Amendment a mistake ?" delivered at the National Cemetery, Memphis, Tennessee, Memorial Day, 1889, was repub- lished in the Southern Historical Society Papers, Vol. XVII, pp. 22-23.