Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 23.djvu/374

 868 Southern Historical Society Papers.

Like the flash from Heaven her sword leaped from its scabbard, and her war cry, "Sic semper tyranm 's, " echoed round the world, and her sons circled the earth with the blaze of their enthusiasm as they marched to the call of the old mother. Student from Gottin- gen, trapper from the Rockies, soldier and sailor, army and navy, men and women, staked life and fortune to stand by the mother of us all. And Virginians stood in line to guard their homes from inva- sion, her altars from desecration, her institutions from destruction.

She resisted invasion. It cannot be too often repeated or too plainly stated.

ONLY RESISTED INVASION.

Virginia never seceded from the Union. She resisted invasion of rights, as her free ancestors for 800 years had done with arms and force. Before the ordinance of secession was voted on Virginia was at war with the Northern States, and all legal connection had been broken with them by their own act in the unlawful invasion of her soil. God bless her and hers forever and forever. She bared her breath and drew her sword to protect her sisters behind her, and took upon herself the hazard of the die. And I will presume to record my claim here for her kinsmen who flocked to her flag from beyond the Potomac, and who died for her on every battle-field from Shep- herdstown to Appomattox, that the survivors love her now with the devotion of children adopted in blood.

It is this constant and growing consciousness of the nobleness and justice and chivalry of the Confederate cause which constitutes the success and illuminates the triumph we commemorate to-day. Evil dies; good lives; and the time will come when all the world will realize that the failure of the Confederacy was a great misfortune to humanity, and will be the source of unnumbered woes to liberty. Washington might have failed; Kosciusko and Robert E. Lee did fail; but I believe history will award a higher place to them, unsuc- cessful, than to Suwarrow and to Grant, victorious. This great and noble cause, the principles of which I have attempted to formulate for you, was defended with a genius and a chivalry of men and women never equalled by any race. My heart melts now at the memory of those days.

WHAT OUR WOMEN STOOD.

Just realize it: There is not a hearth and home in Virginia that has not heard the sound of hostile cannon; there is not a family