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 :Ji!s Southern

cuse for ill-will. Others have ably treated the Southern view of the controversy; their argument is submitted to impartial history. Suffice it to say, on this occasion, that the war has settled that se- cession is impracticable, and the amendments to the Constitution have adjusted all other differences. The Southern people have fully accepted the results they accept the present, and loyally commit themselves to the future. Neither shall I attempt to recount his life, for it is a part of history. The record is made up. If we protect it from falsification while we live, the verdict of history will not shame our posterity when we are dead To-day we meet, and the past and present join hands. Looking around me, viewing the faces of the fair women and brave men before me, I realize that the past is be- hind me that this is the living present. I feel the influence of the new hopes of the new generation to which you belong. Our task is to commit into your hands what our failing hands cannot much longer hold the sacred rights for which your fathers sacrificed their lives, their property, everything; these liberties and the land which was so dear to them we commit to you. I will only say you cannot excel your fathers. Reverence them, emulate them. May you be worthy of them !

It is hard to believe that the American people will always desire to have the epithets of traitor and rebel applied to names which are now, and unless human nature changes, always will be, dear and honored in the hearts of a large part of their number honored by men who made duty a passion, a religion; dear to the posterity of those, who were the foremost in sacrifices in the establishment of the republic, in the increasing of its area, and in the vindication of prin- ciples of government inherited from their forefathers, and accepted as correct for the first fifty years of the republic.

NO STAIN ON THEIR LIVES.

I cannot hold him wise who would willingly wound the patriotism of any citizen of the republic. To brand such men as Albert Syd- ney Johnston, Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee, or Jefferson Davis as traitors, is not to stain the whiteness of their lives, but rather to spoil the word for any useful purpose, to make the traitor a title, which Hampton or Washington might have borne as well, had the fortunes of war gone against them. As Fox said to Lord North : "The great asserters of liberty, the saviors of their country, the benefactors of mankind, in all ages, have been called rebels." We