Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 37.djvu/174

166 has produced so high a percentage of self-sacrificing patriots in the hour of natural need. Since the close of the great Civil War the custom of erecting monuments to commemorate deeds of valor has grown rapidly, not only upon battlefield, but in towns and cities, and they are object lessons which will stand to create and keep alive loyalty and patriotism among the people. We commit this stone to the care of the Southern people, knowing that all will be well."

Colonel Alexander Bacon, of Brooklyn, also spoke. Then taps was sounded and benediction pronounced. The entire party, expressing its delight in Virginia hospitality, returned to Fredericksburg, and to-night left on a special train for Washington en route to Gettysburg to spend a day before returning home.

This double unveiling took place on the anniversary of one of

the most remarkable conflicts in all war annals. Forty-five years ago to-day General Hancock's corps was in line of battle at the Landram house, and half a mile away, at the crest of the rising ground on which is called the Bloody Angle battlefield, General Edward Johnson's division of the Confederate army lay entrenched awaiting an attack. General Grant's order to General Hancock was to move upon the Confederate works at 4 o'clock in the morning of that day. Under cover of darkness and fog, Hancock's men got within a hundred yards of the Confederate line before they were discovered, and then began one of the most sanguinary battles of the war. The Confederate line was broken and driven back by Hancock's columns which afterwards, being reinforced, came back upon the Union line, recapturing the position it had lost. For the length of time of the struggle and the number of men engaged the slaughter at the Bloody Angle of Spotsylvania surpassed anything on record. It was the culminating clash of contest by the bravest and most determined men on both sides.

The tablet on the Bloody Angle battlefield is made up of a carved granite shaft, nine feet high and four feet wide, mounted on a solid granite pedestal two and one-half feet high. On the