Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 27.djvu/271

 The MOH a m,' i,t to Mosby's Men. 263

order or connivance of a major-general in the Union army. To-day their comrades in arms have assembled as patriotic citizens to unveil this shaft, which has been erected as a token of their love and respect lor the memory of those whose names it bears, forgetting as they once swore "vengeance shall be mine."

CONFEDERATE DAUGHTERS.

To-day representatives of the fair daughters of the South who followed the varying fortunes of the Confederacy with their blessings, their smiles and their sacrifices, are here to receive from your hands this testimony of your love for those "whose tents are spread on fame's eternal camping ground."

The good book says it is more blessed to give than to receive, but in this instance, at least, I am persuaded it is blessed both to give and receive. For while the splendid courage of the half-clad and half-fed Confederate soldier challenges the admiration of the world, the conduct of our brave women was fully as self-sacrificing and as heroic. Where is the instance when a Southern woman ever be- trayed the South ? In the midst of battle they were our Florence Nightingales. In the hospitals they were our ministering angels; ami when sweet peace returned to our land, it was these same con- stant, loyal, devoted women who gathered together the bones of those who had fallen in battle and gave them Christian burial.

Those of you who have erected this monument cannot feel a live- lier interest in all the hallowed associations and sentiments surround- ing it than those who have agreed to take it into their charge and keeping. The acceptance of this work of art on the part of these ladies carries with it a far higher duty than that care and attention which a hired servant might bestow. In what I shall say in this connection, it is not my purport to open afresh wounds long since healed. We have peace, we have union; and God grant both may abide with us for all time. But we cannot gaze upon that shaft without remembering that the cause of those whom it commemorates was as firm a conviction of right as these everlasting hills upon which it stands, and in their sight and in ours, as pure and as holy as that heaven to which its apex points. Were it otherwise, these cere- monies, indeed, a hollow mockery. It shall be the duty of those of us who remember the rise and fall of the Southern Confederacy to teach this truth to succeeding generations.