Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 34.djvu/165

 Shaft to Historic Old Portsmouth Artillery. 15T

poverty and deep humiliations possess our fair Southland. By pre- ponderance of arms they forced us to surrender our independence; but ours was not a " lost cause," because, as the Rev. Dr. McKim puts it: " If it is due the valor of the Northern army and navy that we have today an indissoluble Union, it is due to the valor of the Confederate soldiers and sailors, that that indissoluble Union is composed of indestructible States." Who can say that the Southern States will not come out like the British Kingdom of old, and be the heart of our great republic.

The manufactories of the South are marvelously growing year by year. Cotton is still king, and when the $380,000,000 worth of raw cotton now shipped to Europe and the Orient is manufactured at home, the South will take her place as one of the richest sections of the globe.

Peace shall give us victory outlasting the stings of war and enthrone the reign of charity for our happiness and pleasure.

I thank God, every day, that I have lived to see an era of love supplant the wrath of war.

Peace has grown upon us with imperceptible silence and sweet- ness, and has possessed us like a charm of mythical mystery.

It germinated in the hearts of firing line of soldiers and drew as the wind blows from all quarters.

Twenty-five years ago a brave captain of the Blue Line, when many at the North were still denouncing the South, said : "There was a time, during the war, when I was mad, too, but when our regiment, well to the close of the struggle, flanked a regiment of Johnnies out of their camp, and I saw and heard the prisoners, I felt like lifting my hat to them, and as I now recall them and their condition, it pretty nearly brings tears.

"The ground was frozen and every bst prisoner was barefooted, and they told us that not more than a quarter of the regiment had boots and shoes.

"For two weeks their rations consisted of one ear of hard corn, on the cob for each man a day, and some of the poor fellows were so hungry they ate it raw couldn't wait to parch it. And yet those men fought like tigers for what they thought was right."

Yes. What they knew was right. He wrote further to his comrades: "The way I look at it, boys, it was an honor, a great credit to us to fight and get the best of an army of such men and soldiers. I am glad as any of you that we won, but I could no more say mean things of those brave fellows, that some of our