Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 18.djvu/307

 The Confederate Dead of Mississippi. 307

you find it in the Southern soldier's conduct after the time in the fateful year 1863, when reason, but for faith, had adjudged that the destiny of the Confederacy was decided and the Southern move- ment doomed. After the failure at Gettysburg and the fall of Vicksburg, the men who had stood with Lee at Sharpsburg less than forty thousand against more than eighty thousand bouyant with hope in 1862, stood steadily as then before Richmond in 1865, after all ground for hope was gone, against three times their number of veterans under Grant.

The immolation at Franklin, where eleven Southern generals and the flower of their followers fell fighting against fate, and the gal- lantry at Bentonville, following the disaster at Nashville, attest the unabated earnestness and fidelity of those who at Shiloh had per- formed prodigies of valor, inspired by the hope and prospect of Southern independence.

After these brief but suggestive recitals is it too much to say that in the war the Southern people waged to save the Constitution and themselves, there was something sustaining them which they knew not of who only fought to put these people down ? In this there is no implication of which the brave defenders of the Union will com- plain they fought for the government and we for home, its altars and its idols, and all that is nearest to the hearts of men. They did their duty, and did it well, and made the Union whole ; they have the glory of success and the laurel crown of victory, and they have the nation's gratitude and praise, its care and unrestricted bounty. We begrudge them none of these. They earned them all in the bloody strife which ended in the downfall of the cause in which our martyrs died.

We have the memories of these martyrs to cherish and revere, we have our "consecrated coronet of sorrow," and we have the image of the Confederate soldier which he has graven upon the tablets of history to tell our story for us, and we are content.

A soldier who yields to none in his devotion to the Union, nor in his recognition of the prowess and the skill of those who fought to save it, is in no danger of misrepresentation by the brave men whom he confronted on the field, if he eschew all affectation and hypocricy when he speaks of his own comrades whom he loves for the dangers they have seen together. If the time is coming when the portraits of Lee and Grant shall hang side by side in the houses of the people North and South, those who would hail its advent with delight can-