Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 21.djvu/206

 198 Southern Historical Society Papers.

tion, arms, and medical supplies. The Confederates had an army in front and rear, and an exhaustion of all supplies to contend with, and odds in proportion of 2,778,404 enlisted men as against our 600,000 enlisted men, as admitted by the record. No human mind can tell what additional supplement was given in favor of the odds against the Confederacy by the blockading of vessels along the coast from the Potomac to the Rio Grande, and the gunboat fleets in the rivers, running into the heart of the seceded States, for only a few vessels and gunboats (a drop in the bucket), could oppose the Union armament afloat.

A patriotism and heroism that could stand for years against such odds, that could stand cold and hunger, and was always ragged and shoeless, was hard to conquer. We dared the experiment of making a nation. Do you wonder that the Confederacy failed ? Read for yourselves the war records now being honestly and fairly published by our government. Read for yourselves the statistics of the pension bureau.

The " private soldier " needs no other monument than his record. The Confederate armies failed, but they accomplished incredible results. With such tremendous odds on land and water, they kept back for four long years the invading armies, and disputed, almost foot by foot, territory as it was yielded, fighting on over 2,000 battle- fields, and losing in the mighty struggle 325,000 men, over half of those they had enlisted against their opponents. They left ten per cent, actually engaged in battle slain on the field, as against five per cent, of the Federals, slain in battle opposing them ; and when the final collapse came, the Federals gave terms, " of men willing to quit," and conceding an admiration for valor, of which they, as brothers, were proud.

THE SOUTH'S HONOR UNTARNISHED.

We are here to day to unveil a monument erected by our lovely women of Vicksburg to those worthy of commemoration. It is a loyalty to our past that welds us together. A knowledge of having passed through a "fiery furnace," with honor untarnished, makes us uncover our heads with a reverence to a people who sacrificed so much to create a nation that perished in its infancy. How can the South forget, when her destruction and her ruins are ever before her eyes ? When on the hillsides rest the cemeteries filled with loved