Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 26.djvu/143

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most pretentious of our structures? Where are our marts, our fac- tories, and temples? Forms, fashions, institutions change the rich and the poor exchange plans animated nature bows to decay and s in turn to oblivion!

Hut tiu- ashes of the noble dead remain in mother earth, and the memory of their deeds hallows the soil. Think you that the valor of George H. Anderson is lost, the gallantry of L. O'B. Branch, the calm and intrepid patriotism of the host of lesser rank that lie be- side them in either of our cities of the dead Burgwyn, and Turner, and Shotwell; the Haywoods, Manlys, Rogers, Engelhard; the knightly Smedes, the great-hearted William E. Anderson ah! where shall I pause in the bead-roll of heroes; how dare we not include every private, who bore his musket well, in that great bri- gade that lie in eternal bivouac on our eastern slopes, awaiting the trump of the resurrection morn ?

Tried by the standard of devotion to duty, and sublime self-sacri- fice, the men whom your fair women delight to honor were worthy of the highest niche in the temple of military fame the brightest crown, as patriot martyrs.

They lie on every battle-field of importance throughout the South. At Winchester, where the sacred ashes have been gathered from many bloody contests, they exceed in melancholy array those of any other State.

At Fredericksburg, the dead and wounded of North Carolina exceeded those of all other States of the South combined.

In the Seven Days' struggle around Richmond, one-half of the number of regiments in Lee's entire army were sons of your soil.

Would you seek the most magnificent spectacle of undying cou- rage? Behold the 5th North Carolina at Williamsburg; see it in the 4th North Carolina at Seven Pines; find it in the 3d at Sharpsburg; watch it in the i8th at Spotsylvania; behold it in the 2oth at Gra- zer's Farm; see it in the 26th at Gettysburg, whose loss was the greatest recorded in history; glory in it in the 36th North Carolina, as it envelops Fort Fisher and the heroic Whiting with a halo of imperishable fame.

Yet how shall we separate a gallant few from all the brave sons of

irolina, in all her serried battalions? And how shall a single day's exhibition of God-like self-surrender and indomitable daring repre- to us the daily struggle on the picket-line, the weary march, the long night watch, the agonizing wound, the dreary imprison- lent, the slow starvation, the unceasing anxiety for distant wife and