Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 19.djvu/343

 General Joseph E. Johnston.

337

South Carolina pays about fifty thousand dollars in pensions, but has no home.

Texas has a home established by subscription. It costs thirty-five hundred dollars a year, and State aid is expected shortly.

Tennessee has established a home at the old home of Andrew Jack- son, " The Hermitage," the State having given four hundred and seventy-five acres of land and ten thousand dollars for improvements in 1889. The Legislature, which recently adjourned, appropriated twenty-five thousand dollars for a building and five thousand dollars a year for its support, and in addition sixty thousand dollars, or as much thereof as may be necessary, for expenditure annually in pen- sions, which range from two dollars and a half to twenty-five dollars per month. It is thought that twenty-five thousand dollars per year will cover the pension list.

Of all the Southern States, Kentucky alone has made no pro- visions for her ex -Confederates.

GENERAL JOSEPH E. JOHNSTON.

An Address Delivered Before the Association of Ex-Confederate Soldiers and Sailors of Washington, D. C., by Leigh Robinson,

May i2th, 1891.

" Death makes the brave my friends," was the great word of the great Crusader; and though the outward empire of the chivalry he led has crumbled to dust, and "their swords are rust," the intrinsic nobleness thereof survives the first crusade and the last. Wherever nobleness has a house, there shall this gospel also be preached. Nor can it be said to be strictly bounded by the noble. The emula- tion of brave lives, and the preservation of their images, is the wise instinct of mankind. The path to immortality is fortitude. In every noble arena this is the crucial test. The corner-stone of every fortress of man's power and man's honor is man's fortitude. Our inmost shrines are altars to this tutelary god. Deep in the heart is the sense of that ineradicable royalty which makes the crown of thorns more than the crown of gold martyr more than victor. It is the true-fixed, the constant quality that hath no fellow in the firmament. Constancy is the pole on which the heavens turn. 22