Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 21.djvu/51

 Address of General ft. E. Colston. 43

overpowered by tenfold numbers, we fell ; but, like Leonidas and his Spartans of old, fell so heroically that our defeat was more glorious than victory.

Then from so sublime a theme teach our children a no less sublime lesson. Bid them honor the right, just because it is the right. Honor it when its defenders have gained the rich prize of success. Honor it still more when they are languishing in the dungeons of oppression, or lying in bloody graves, like the martyrs we celebrate to-day. And bid them remember that no triumph however brilliant can ever change the wrong into the right. Next to their duty to God, teach your offspring to love their native Southern land all the more ten- derly for its calamities, and to cherish the memories of their fathers all the more preciously becaue they battled for the right and went down in the unequal strife. And should their youthful hearts wonder at the triumph of force over justice, teach them that the ways of Providence are mysterious, and not like our ways. For a time the wicked may flourish like a green bay tree, but he shall not endure forever ; and far better is it to suffer with the righteous than to rejoice with the unjust. Sooner or later, in some mysterious way that we cannot now perceive in their own day, perhaps, if not in ours the truth of our principles will be recognized. Meanwhile, bid them scorn " to crook the pregnant hinges of the knee, that thrift may fol- follow fawning/' Let the satraps of tyranny ride in state like Haman; but let us and our descendants be the Mordecais at the gate, refusing to do reverence to those who represent nothing but the triumph of might over right. Yet, while clinging to our principles and vindi- cating the righteousness of our motives, let our children learn also the Christian lessons of forgiveness. God forbid that the bitterness of our times should be perpetuated from generation to generation ! God forbid, above all, that this land should ever be drenched again with the blood of contending armies, speaking the same language and springing from a kindred race. On the contrary, may He grant that the causes of strife, being at last all extinct, peace and harmony may prevail, and make this land in truth, and not merely in name, the asylum of human liberty !

It is in order that these noble lessons may be deeply engraved in the hearts of our people, that throughout the South the Memorial Associations of our generous-hearted ladies are calling us together this day from every town and village in the land to the cemeteries wherein their pious care has collected the precious remains of our fallen brothers. And it is peculiarly appropriate that this, the loth