Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 38.djvu/77

 soil, and they believe that if he were living to-day he would stand with the people of Jefferson Davis in their resistance to the establishment of a centralized government at Washington in the place of the Union of the States, which he declared it to be his purpose to preserve.

When Mrs. Davis died President Roosevelt sent a bouquet of flowers to be placed upon her coffin. It was a queer thing for him to do in all the circumstances, but it has been forgiven him by many persons, on the ground that he tried in this blundering way to make some atonement for his brutal treatment of her husband and her prayer that he would do the square thing by cutting out of one of his histories a cruel misrepresentation of Mr. Davis. The President cannot do better now with the petition in the "Cabin John Bridge" matter than to let it alone.

["United Daughters of the Confederacy" should read "Confederated Southern Memorial Association."—Editor's note.]

The foregoing article, entitled "Some Truths of History," is from the Charleston News and Courier of July 20, 1907. I beg leave to differ from the Charleston News and Courier, and as a true and patriotic American and a loyal Southern woman, I am most anxious to have this "act of vandalism covered up, and all old-time animosities forgotten, for it is nearly half a century since the men of the North and the men of the South were arrayed against each other on many battlefields. When the closing scene of this great war was enacted at Appomattox, the war was over. We are now one people, one country, living under one flag. In the recent war with Spain the men of the South joined hands with those of the North, and together they stood in defense of this their common country. That sectional prejudice is fast dying out was proven by the return of the captured battle flags, and by the generous appropriation made for the proper care and perpetual maintenance of the graves of the Confederate dead now buried in Northern cemeteries. I am fully convinced that if the attention of the government officials is called to the absurd blunder made by Hon. Caleb B. Smith, in the heat of passion, that it will be regarded as a just request and that in due time the name of Jefferson Davis will be restored to its