Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 32.djvu/151

 Presenting Portrait of Gen. Wade Hampton. 139

wealth of which no act of any one, or of all the others, singly or jointly, could ever legally deprive it.

It is also well known that without this solemn and binding stipu- lation South Carolina's representatives in that convention and her free and freedom -loving people at home would have refused promptly and emphatically to enter into (and there was no power then, as in our time to coerce), would have refused to enter into an alliance which afterward proved and the whole world is witness to the fact so false to those pledges, and so disastrous to the State, when the snake she had taken to her white bosom had been warmed back to its venomous life.

And now "those people," or, what amounts to the same thing, their descendants and responsible heirs would, forsooth, have the world believe and would teach their and even our children to believe that the South and not themselves inaugurated the war of i86i-'65. With all its horrors and distresses, its desolated homes, broken hearts and multitudinous graves, and that only to extend and per- petuate African slavery ! Credat Judaeus Appela !

It had been my thought, I repeat, to recount this supreme service of General Hampton at that crucial epoch of the Southland's his- tory the reconstruction period but since it boots not now, at this late day, to characterize in deserved terms the "bitter, burning wrongs" heaped upon the Southern people in those long, oh, so long years of hopeless desolation and fruitless effort to restore broken fortunes and build up the waste places, I turn from their re- cital with mingled feelings of anger and pity for "those people" who perpetrated them, and having first thanked you, Commander, Ladies and Gentlemen, for your courteous hearing, especially the fair and patriotic women, whose presence here is alike an inspiration and a benediction, I shall with but a few words more have finished speaking, already at greater length than I had intended.

Not long since the Legislature of South Carolina voted an appro- priation for an equestrian statue of her great son to be erected at her capital, Columbia. To-night Company A, of his famous legion, cherishing still, as in the bloom of manhood, their exalted admira- tion and deathless love for their old commander, tenderly and lov- ingly commit this portrait to the trustworthy hands of R. E. Lee Camp, No. i, in full assurance of its welcome to this, the camp's

t beautiful hall of fame, a worthy companion piece of the worthiest lere. Nor is there a doubt in the mind of any survivor of the old egion or of any Confederate veteran anywhere, that General Hamp-