Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 35.djvu/121

Rh age. This company, after the fall of Vicksburg, served under my command for a long time. Captain Montgomery had about thirty dare-devil boys who lived almost all the time inside of the lines of the enemy. They were invaluable as scouts. The only trouble with them was that they were always too anxious to fight and follow their dare-devil captain in a charge. They never counted the odds as a rule, but were as reckless as reckless boys could be. During the war I learned to trust boys as soldiers as reliantly as men in battle. In fact, there was scarcely a regiment or company in the Confederate Army towards the close of the war that did not have nearly a score of boys under eighteen years of age in their ranks. I glory in the boys of our Southland, for I learned this during the great war, and they stand only second to my love and veneration for the women of the South. Our splendid Southern women, Confederate women and their daughters, never tire in their patriotism. They are now all over the territory of the ex-Confederate States, placing monuments at every county seat to commemorate the valor, patriotism and sacrifice of the Confederate soldier. In overcoming almost insurmountable difficulties they have erected and have lately unveiled the splendid monument in Richmond to our beloved President Davis. It did my heart good when the veterans of Mississippi recently in reunion at Meridian passed a resolution to ask the Legislature of Mississippi to erect a monument to commemorate the unsurpassed patriotism of the Confederate women during the bloody Civil War.