Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 27.djvu/131

 OonfetUrut, />,,/ / /'/,;,/. 123

The Union!

O! Ion- may it stand ami every blast defy, 'Til Time's last whirlwind sweeps the vaulted sky.

I would have you, on occasions like the present, to remember th.it every monument erected to Confederate soldiers is a reminder of the skill and bravery of the Northern soldiers, who triumphed over courage and heroism unsurpassed.

And I would have you, on Memorial days and Decoration days to be actuated by the kind and tender feelings which must have inspired these touching lines:

" From the silence of sorrowful hours,

The desolate mourners go, Lovingly laden with flowers, Alike for the friend and the foe. Under the sod and the dew, Waiting the judgment day; Under the roses the Blue, Under the lilies the Gray.

No more shall the war-cry sever,

Or the winding rivers be red; They banish our anger forever,

When they laurel the graves of our dead; Under the sod and the dew, Waiting the judgment day; * Love and tears for the Blue, Tears and love for the Gray."

Fellow-citizens, we have this day abundant cause to rejoice. The presence in this city of a Lee, and with him a grandson of Grant, as a member of his military family; the thunderings of Dewey's guns in the far East, and of Sampson's and Schley's along Cuba's coast; the martyrdom of Bagley; the heroism of Hobson and the thousands of men from the North and the South, in the uniform of American soldiers, all, all, tell us that we are not a divided people, and that the Union has been, and is forever restored. And may we not, at this time, with hearts profoundly thankful, exclaim, "God bless our country ?"

Governor Bloxham, it is now my pleasing duty and exalted privi- lege, as the representative of Mr. Charles C. Hemming, a citizen of Texas, to present to Florida, the State of his birth, through you, its Chief Magistrate, the imposing monument before us, which has been