Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 20.djvu/204

 198 Southern Historical Society Papers.

within them and settling down into irretrievable despair, had they not been used to facing dangers in every form, overcoming seeming impossibilities for the four intervening years, and had they not been only "wearied and worn out with victories " on an hundred fields? To ask this question is to furnish its answer. But this desolation of their homes was not all, by any "manner of means." They had gone forth to defend proud and sovereign States, they came back to find them conquered provinces, and soon to swarm with the vilest vermin, in the shape of camp followers, "carpet-baggers," "scala- wags" et id omne genus, that ever infested and infuriated any people outside of regions of the infernal. Literally " chaos had come again," and there was no earthly power to bring " order out of this chaos" but the old ex-Confederate soldier. In Virginia we found in th,e place of the old mother, whose very name was a synonym of her character, and both so dear to her children, " District No. i," attempted to be overawed by General Ord, then terrified by General Terry, then stoned to death by General Stoneman. No wonder that one of our local poets should have sung in two languages, inter- mingling the dead and living so plaintively, words something like these :

" Terry leaves us, sumas weary

Jain nos taedet te videre

Si vis nos, with joy imp I ere

We can spare thee magne Terry

Freely very. * * * *

Terry in haec terra tarry

Diem narry."

Amid such scenes we might well exclaim with the old Greek, " Olympus was there, the ^Egean was there, the land where Homer sang and where Pericles spoke was there.

" But with such aspect on the shore 'Twas Greece, but living Greece no more."

Yes, my friends, we came to conquered provinces, and despite hindrances of almost every kind which confronted us, we have, by the help and guidance of our Great Father, with the help and amidst the smiles and the benedictions of the sweetest, the noblest, the purest and best women on earth, and with the moral and intel- lectual forces which were formed in us before, and which were only strengthened and invigorated by war and its calamities, we have