Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 26.djvu/223

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and Kfiuicsau, or rnvjaged in the death grapple at Franklin, where the war-gods seemed to scorn to use Jove's counterfeit, and hurled the genuine bolts, need no lettered sculpture to remind them of that struggle of giants. Followers of Lee and Jackson, of Johnston and and Hood, of Stuart and Forrest and Pelham and Semple and Rodes and Lomax, Clanton, Holtzclaw and Clayton your memories need no refreshing. This monument, these figures, that mute sug- gestion of the dread artillery, of the grape whose iron clusters grew so luxuriantly along the ravines and mountain sides of Virginia and Georgia, of Tennessee and Kentucky, even from Gettysburg to the Rio Grande, and whose juice was the red blood of heroes, that sleep- ing cannon, recalling the matchless valor of the old South, of the young Confederacy, and reviving memories of the days and nights of un- yielding defiance, when towns and cities were awakened by the ter- rible music of the bursting bomb, when green fields were trampled by the hoofs of the invader, and made red with the blood of your countrymen, all this is but to remind those who come after us, even the generation yet to emerge from the stream of time, of the race from which they sprung.

Alabama's record during the great war between the States, the most stupendous, the most stubborn, and the most chivalric conflict in all the chronicles of time, the brilliant, dazzling, unrivalled deeds of her heroic sons, the deathless patriotism and sublime submission to privations and hardships of her peerless daughters, constitute the brightest diadem in the crown of Alabama's wondrous glory. It would require the master mind of him who portrayed the march of the rebel angels across the north plains of heaven, to tell, in fitting verse, of all they did and dared. Then how inexpressibly dear to us should be the memories of our Confederacy. It sank in sorrow, but not in shame, and far, O ! far distant, be the time when we shall cease to cherish these proud, though melancholy recollections.

The Ladies' Memorial Association of Montgomery, heaven bless them! For more than twelve years, with unabating zeal, with cease- less energy and perseverance, overcoming gigantic obstacles with apparent ease, have labored for the consummation of this holy pur- pose. Their work is finished, the monument is completed. And now, above all others the survivors of that period of courage, of chivalry and of carnage, wish them to be forever assured that their gentle and devoted remembrance of the dead Confederate soldier touches deeply and falls gratefully upon the hearts of the compara- tively few Confederate survivors, and we wish the passing stranger,