Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 38.djvu/71

Rh Just now this unreconciled element is occupied in an attempt to restore the name of Jefferson Davis as the chief martyr of the Confederacy. The bitterness felt in the North toward the president of the seceding States has in a measure died out, but the North will never place him on a pedestal alongside Abraham Lincoln, and any attempt to elevate him to such a position will only provoke controversy.

The wrong which the admirers of Mr. Davis now seek to have righted has to do with the aqueduct over Cabin John Creek, a stream which flows into the Potomac on the Maryland side, near Washington. This aqueduct was erected, while President Pierce was in office, as a part of the waterworks system of Washington. Jefferson Davis was Secretary of War at the time, and as the work was done by army engineers his name was inscribed on the keystone. The structure is conspicuous, and the name of Mr. Davis was a conspicuous object on the keystone.

After the war broke out and the name of Mr. Davis was being execrated throughout the loyal sections of the country, attention was attracted to the inscription on the keystone of the Cabin John aqueduct. It irritated somebody in authority, and by direction of Caleb B. Smith, Secretary of the Interior for three years under President Lincoln, who was then in charge of the waterworks, the name was chiseled out of the keystone and the keystone remains in that condition to-day.

It is probable that few people now living in the North ever heard of the matter, or ever would have heard of it had it not been for the activity of the Confederate Ladies' Memorial Association, which had photographs taken of the mutilated keystone and circulated at the recent Confederate Reunion at Richmond, for the purpose of arousing interest in the matter and securing signatures to a memorial to be sent to President Roosevelt, asking that the name of Mr. Davis be restored.

If the name had never been removed from the aqueduct it would be impossible to create any sentiment in the North today against its remaining there. Mr. Davis is dead, and the cause for which he stood is dead, and nobody desires to rekindle old animosities. But if restoring his name is to be regarded as