Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 32.djvu/303

 Address of Major Graham Daves. 291

cause unlike their ancestors in only this that they failed in their undertaking. And shall we not hold the men of these later days, our own kindred and neighbors, in loving memory too, and forever preserve the record of their matchless deeds ? Let the mute elo- quence of many memorial shafts throughout the South make an- swer. The women of the South in their bereavement, sorrow and poverty did not forget gratitude, and everywhere have placed last- ing mementoes of the self-oblation of all Confederate dead grander than their prototypes the modest column at Moore's Creek, or the simple stone to Sumner at Guilford, or the humble tomb that in the churchyard of St. James at Wilmington marks the resting place of Cornelius Harnett, by as much as our strife was greater than theirs.

" Lament them not; no love can make immortal,

The span that we call life, And never heroes entered heaven's portal Thro' fields of grander strife."

GOVERNOR OF NORTH CAROLINA.

On the ;th of July, 1861, John W. Ellis, Governor of North Carolina, died at the Red Sulphur Springs in what is now West Virginia, of consumption of the lungs. He had been in delicate health for several months previously, and had gone to that resort but a few days before his death, hoping to obtain relief, but his overwhelming duties had undermined his feeble frame. He lived to see the victory at Bethel, in June, 1861, won principally by troops organized and equipped by his untiring efforts. His death was hastened by the arduous labors and heavy responsibilities of his high office, and he died as much a martyr to the cause in which his warmest sympathies and most earnest work were enlisted, as any soldier who fell on the field of battle. Peace to his ashes! He was succeeded in office by Hon. Henry F. Clark, of Edgecombe county, who, as speaker of the State Senate, as it was then constituted, be- came Governor ex officio for the remainder of the term.

Time will not admit of further recitation of the events that fol- lowed the passage of the Ordinance of Secession. In what has been said I have endeavored to comply with the request of the Me- morial Association to narrate briefly events that happened just pre- viously and subsequently to that ordinance, chiefly those that occurred in North Carolina. But little attempt has been made to argue the question upon its merits, as it was believed that a simple