Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 27.djvu/267

 The Monument to Mosby's Men.

tion of these our unfortunate comrades. It proved a most succes- ful protest. The order to execute Mosby's men was from that day a dead letter on the files of the war department.

It is not with pleasure we recall these terrible tragedies; it is only because justice to the memory of our fallen comrades demands that these events should be truthfully recorded. As we look back upon them through the dim vista of thirty-five years, they seem to us but the shadow of a frightful dream. The prominent actors in them have nearly all passed away. Colonel Lowell himself was killed the suc- ceeding October, gallantly charging a Confederate battery. General Custer, a witness of the tragedy, was himself massacred by Indians, though not until in his last rally he displayed a heroism of which every American is proud. And Grant, too, has passed away, but he lived long enough to know personally our gallant commander, who won his admiration and undying friendship. There is not to- day a surviving member of Mosby's command who would not gladly place a wreath upon the tomb of Grant.

PEACE REIGNS.

Let it not be supposed that we desire to re-kindle the passions of sectional strife. There is no longer any bitterness between the sol- diers of the North and the soldiers of the South. Whatever of prejudice may have been engendered between the two sections while the war lasted has ceased to exist. When the Confederate soldiers surrendered their arms and accepted their paroles, they became in good faith citizens of the United States. They turned their hands from the implements of war to the implements of peace. They de- voted their energies to the building of their country that had been laid waste by the contending armies. They cultivated their fields; they developed their country's resources; extended her railroads; erected factories; built up her educational and financial institutions, until the whole country is justly proud of our Southland. And in turn, the Southerner of to-day proudly unites with his brother of the North in proclaiming Webster's glorious words: " OUR COUNTRY, OUR WHOLE COUNTRY, AND NOTHING BUT OUR COUNTRY."

Our patriotism has long since refused to recognize any sectional lines. It is gratifying to know, by the statement emanating from the office of the Adjutant-General of the Army, that during the recent war with Spain, the South furnished more volunteers in pro- portion to its population than any other part of the country. And