Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 31.djvu/217

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Following is the text of the address made by Mrs. D. Giraud Wright, president of the Maryland Division, United Daughters of the Confederacy, at the State convention held in Baltimore, December 7, 1903:

"As we meet together to-day for our annual convention and I gather up the threads of the work done by the Maryland Division during the past year to make my report to you, one great fact stands out like a silhouette clearly denned against the background of all the achievements of the last twelve months. Whatever we have or have not done, one thing is sure, and I speak with no uncertain tongue, but glory exceedingly in making the assertion, that the Maryland Division of the Daughters of the Confederacy has erected the most beautiful and appropriate Confederate monument in the South, and I challenge the world to produce anything superior in beauty and conception, design and execution.

"When we met together this time last year we were busy with the discussion of plans for its unveiling; to-day we look in retrospect upon the successful completion of every detail of that ceremony from inception to finish, and if any reward were needed to repay us for the labor and anxiety concurrent with the raising of the fund and the choosing of the design and site, I think we have it when, our footsteps being drawn like the needle to the pole, we pause before the consummation of our dearest hopes and view with enraptured gaze this memorial, the magnificent result of years of indomitable work. And the sweetest thought to me, and I am sure to all of us, is this, that we did it all ourselves; it was our own unaided work of love. No help from city or State did we ask or receive; even the