Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 26.djvu/198

 188 Southern Historical Society Papers.

these two stood the chivalrous soldier, who as governor of our State then enjoyed the reward of a long life spent in her service.

These four were on the platform then. Now " they gaze into the face that makes glorious their own," amid throngs of angels. God rest them ; but we cannot keep back the cry

" Oh, for the touch of a vanished hand, And the sound of a voice that is still."

The monument is partly the gift of the State, and yet it had not risen here, to sentinel the memory of our dead, but for the love and sacrifice of woman, who dared all the danger and sorrow of the strife and shared none of its wild joys woman who never murmured, save when her warrior lost faith " woman, permitted to bruise the head of the serpent and sweetly infuse through the sorrow and sin of earth registered curse, the blessings which mitigate all born to nurse, to sooth, to solace, to help and heal."

Chiselled on the face of the monument, but more deeply graven on the soul of time, stand out " 1861-1865."

We have reared it as an appeal to the ages. We have placed it here as a defender of the patriotism and virtues of more than one hundred thousand soldiers. It is a tribute by a generation that is here, to a generation that has gone. It would not be in keeping with its great design, to put forth such a work with bated breath. When we ask the world to look upon the statues, we challenge judgment; and we cannot be silent.

Many a child has read that those whom these statues represent died "in rebellion," and sometimes sad to say has heard it from the lips of men sprung from the loins of the dead soldier, that the motives and sacrifices of the men of "1861-1865," were the mad folly of misguided fathers, who waved hostile battle-flags against the genius of liberty in the New World, and sought to overthrow the great principles for which the Forefathers battled in the Revolution.

Is this true ? Did the Confederate give his land to ruin and his children to slaughter because of his devotion to the institution of African slavery ? Did he cease to value the principles of union, or to take pride in the great republic which his forefathers did so much to create, and in after times, to cherish and defend ? Were the prin- ciples of the new government set up here in anywise hostile to the genius of the constitution and government, which Washington set up? Did the men of 1861-1865 " rebel ?"