Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 31.djvu/220

212 army. These names and a host of others are linked forever with the glory and the sacrifice of the 'cause that was lost.'

"And when the final blow was struck on the fateful field of Appomattox, what was the action of this State and her people toward the South? Her legislature voted $200,000 for the relief of the Southern widows and orphans, and the noble women of Baltimore sent $200,000 more to swell the fund. And more, far more than even this munificent gift, Maryland opened wide her doors and bade her suffering brethren of the South come in and share her plenty. As Captain McHenry Howard, another gallant Maryland Confederate soldier, so beautifully expressed it in his oration on our 'Monument Day:' She became a veritable 'Land of the Sanctuary' to the impoverished, broken and wounded Confederate. And thousands seeking escape from the horrors of the reconstruction period found Baltimore verily a city of refuge. And having offered them a haven, the Maryland people gave them of their best. Within her borders to-day, in every sphere of life, you find represented the natives of the Southern States. In the learned professions, in law, medicine and the church; in the marts of trade; in offices of trust and honor in the city and State, no discrimination has been made, and to-day in the Confederate Soldiers' Home, supported, to her honor be it said, by an appropriation from the State, I am told more of the inmates, cared for by her liberality, are natives of the Southern States than of Maryland—unselfish, generous Maryland! Her people are an honor to our race!

"And when I pay tribute to Maryland as a State, and to her people as unexampled in liberality and sacrifice of self—when I hold up to your admiration the gallant deeds of her generals and admirals in the army and navy of the Confederate States—what shall be said of the Maryland private in the ranks? Of him who went forth at the clarion call of Potomac to Chesapeake? Of him who had everything to lose and nothing to gain! 'Old Virginia needs assistance.' That, in the words of his old camp song, that was the cry that moved him to lay down the pen and the pruning hook and the quiet arts of peace and prosperity and rally to the aid of the old Mother State whose green hillsides were bristling with the spears of the foe, whose fair fields and valleys were to be plowed and harrowed with sorrow and drenched with the red blood of her martyr sons! The men of Maryland answered her call, and like the knights of old rushed into the conflict, their battle cry on their lips: 'A rescue! A rescue! Virginia and the South!' And there, 'wherever death's