Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 20.djvu/299

 Unvei'ing of the Howitzer Monument.

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battles which were images of spiritual growth and spiritual victory, wherein each in turn registered one more ascendancy of man's higher nature, wherein his ignobility was trampled by his nobility under foot, so that as rank by rank mortality was thinned the ranks of the immortals were recruited. For here soldiers presented them- selves like disciples as a living sacrifice on the altar of all they re- vered. On God's great altar their lives were laid. Their battles were the litanies of heroes. Their valor was consecrated not under fame, but under duty. Their welcome to the foe as day by day he gained on them in numbers, but not renown, stands out for me as the most illustrious portrait of man's spiritual wrestle, wherein he greets a world in arms against him as his appointed angel, the true arena to which his sponsors in baptism devoted him. They steadily ascended on their ladder of pain. It was like the struggle of a strong will in a weak body. As in Angelo's figure, the soul grew as the body wasted. When the only way in which the victorious cause could commend itself to the "consent of the governed" was to " wear out by attrition" all who failed to perceive its beauty; when such a warfare " did like pestilence maintain its hold and wasted down by glorious death that race of natural heroes."

OBEDIENT TO THEIR CAPTAIN.

Our little band shared with their brothers the desolating tempest until it was their glory to stand with the 7,000 of Appomattox. Obedient to their great captain to the last, at his word, and only at his word, did they surrender. They wept as they dismouted their guns. It was still the courage which is loth to yield. When all was lost save honor their roll remained the roll of honor. The surrender of themselves to their great captain and his cause had been their great surrender which swallowed up all other. Of such is the king- dom which is victorious over defeat. It is the panoply which no defeat can pierce. The great souls of sacrifice, wherein civilization hath its root and whereof is its true branch they truly have their symbol in that bush burning in the desert, ever self-consuming and ever unconsumed. Rightly we make the supreme effort of that war our measure. For if our mind was evil the blows we struck would have betrayed all its evil counsel; and as sheep know their shepherd, so do virtuous actions troop around a virtuous cause. If the heart of the South was the black and barbarous thing her enemies have painted a spear of fire should have discovered a shape so foul. That