Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 21.djvu/50

 42 Southern Historical Society Papers.

the beginning and inclining the twig the way the tree should grow. You are now, or will be some day, the mothers of future generations. See that you transmit to them the traditions and memories of our cause, and of our glorious, if unsuccessful, struggle, that they may in their turn transmit them unchanged to those who succeed them. And let them learn from you that although the same inscrutable Providence that once permitted the Grecian cross to go down before the Moslem crescent has decreed that we should yield to Northern supremacy, and that we should fail in our endeavor, yet, for all that, we were right.

And this points to another great lesson to be instilled into their minds.

The worship of success, no matter how achieved, is but too univer- sal in the world. In the North it is the great idol of the day. Gen- erals whose luck it was to come upon the stage when they could op- pose to the exhausted remnants of the South the unlimited resources of the North, have been magnified into demi-gods, and receive the daily adorations of the multitude. So far does this idolatry blind the Northern people that they cannot understand our lack of admira- tion for the men whose ruthless course deluged our land with blood, and whose tracks were marked by the ashes of our desolate homes. Still less can they comprehend the love, veneration, and enthusiasm that we still continue to feel for our own unsuccessful leaders. The events of the last ten years have impressed upon the Northern mind that failure is ignominious, and that success, no matter how iniquitous, is the only criterion of right.

It is for you, Southern matrons, to guard your cherished ones against this foul idolatry, and to teach them a nobler and a higher moral. It is for you to bring the youth of our land to these conse- crated mounds, and to engrave in their candid souls the true story of our wrongs, our motives, and our deeds. Tell them in those tender and eloquent words that you know so well how to use ; tell them that those who lie here entombed were neither traitors nor rebels, and that those absurd epithets are but the ravings of malignant folly when applied to men who claimed nothing but their right under the Con- stitution of their fathers the right of self-government. Tell them how we exhausted every honorable means to avoid the terrible arbi- trament of war, asking only to be let alone, and tendering alliance, friendship, free navigation everything reasonable and magnanim- ous to obtain an amicable settlement. Tell them how, when driven to draw the sword, we fought the mercenaries of all the world until,