Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 37.djvu/152

144 Mr. Commander and Comrades: 

It was my wish that this address should be made by Col. Rawley W. Martin, of Lynchburg, who led the Fifty-third Virginia in Pickett's charge, and fell by the side of Armistead on Cemetery Ridge. But this could not be, and so I come to take his place. For the task assigned me I feel myself but poorly equipped. Unlike Col. Martin, I followed our old Commander, as St. Peter followed the Master, "afar off." It is, I may say, with unfeigned diffidence that I venture to speak of war to the veteran soldiers who are here to-night.

On me, however, through your kindness, is this honor conferred, that I should present to the Camp the portrait of Lewis A. Armistead. I thank you for it with all my heart.

The Armistead family, coming direct from England, settled in Virginia in 1636, and became ere long a family of soldiers. Five brothers, three of them in the regular army, took part in the war of 1812. Col. George Armistead, the oldest of the five, defended Fort McHenry. The flag which waved over it during the bombardment, which Key immortalized as the "Star Spangled Banner," was long guarded as a sacred heir-loom by his descendants. It is now laid up in the National Museum. A second brother, Lewis Gustavus Adolphus, named for the Swedish hero, "The Lion of the North," fell at Fort Erie. Walker Keith Armistead, the father of our old chief, graduated at West Point in 1803, fought in Canada, closed the Seminole war, and was, when he died in 1845, second in command in the regular army. Miss Stanley, who became his wife, was a native of the old North State, and so it happened that Lewis A. Armistead was born at Newbern, N. C., in 1817.