Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 23.djvu/342

 336 Southern Historical Society Papers.

THE SPIRIT OF '76 AND THE SPIRIT OF '61.

MR. R. A. BROCK,

Secretary of the Southern Historical Society,

Richmond, Va. :

DEAR SIR, The following incident was related to me last week by the Rev. William M. Dame, of Baltimore, who entered the ser- vice of the Confederacy at sixteen and served gallantly throughout the war in the Richmond Howitzers. With his permission I have prepared the paragraphs below for publication, my manuscript hav- ing since been examined and confirmed by him. Mr. Dame was one of the sixteen youths mentioned in the first sentence.

Truly yours,

L. M. BLACKFORD. Alexandria, Va., February if, 1896.

On the last Sunday in August, 1860, at "The Forks," in Cum- berland county, Virginia, was gathered a body of sixteen youths, with two exceptions, between the ages of fifteen and twenty. They were grandsons of the venerable Mrs. Lucy Page, daughter of Gen- eral Thomas Nelson, Jr., Governor of Virginia in 1781, and widow of Major Carter Page, of the Continental Line, who served through the whole Revolutionary War. According to the custom of the family, the boys had been on a vacation visit to their grandmother, and were to disperse in a few days to their several homes. The aged lady, full of the patriotic traditions of her historic line, was rallying them on the decay in their degenerate day of the spirit of chivalry and self-devotion which characterized their Revolutionary ancestors, and intimated her conviction unequivocally, if not in so many words, that they would never live again in them.

The following spring, at eighty-six, Mrs. Page died, living not quite long enough to see how completely she had been in error. The sixteen lads who left her in August, 1860, within eleven months of that leave-taking had, every one, entered the military service of the Confederate States. Two of them had already fallen in battle, and three had been wounded.