Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 38.djvu/97

 the Park Commission. "During the Civil War a local Confederate patriot took a chisel and removed 'The Union Must Be Preserved,' " said Colonel Galloway, a member of the commission. "Now that the Civil War is long past and we are all so proud of the Union, it seems to me that it would be only proper to put this language back."

Appointment of Hon. Murphy J. Foster, United States Senate—to succeed Hon. Adolph Meyer—M. C. of Louisiana, deceased March 8, 1908, as representative from C. S. M. A. to United States Government.

April 11, 1908.

United States Senate, Washington, D. C.:

Dear Sir,—As on previous occasions I have received evidence of your friendly services, and knowing you to be an influential member of the United States Senate, and that you are on friendly relations with the Administration, I write to ask that you will exert your best efforts in support of a question in which the Southern people are interested.

In June, 1907, the Confederated Southern Memorial Association, of which I have the honor to be president, met in convention in Richmond, Va. At the convention a resolution was adopted, asking that means be taken to have the name of Jefferson Davis re-inscribed on "Cabin John Bridge," or, as it is known on the records, as the "Union Arch." Upon my return to New Orleans, a few weeks after the convention, I met our mutual friend, General Meyer, and enlisted his interest and services. He expressed himself as in hearty sympathy with the movement, and said that he considered it an outrage that the name should have been erased; that it was a piece of petty spite that he considered unworthy of an American citizen, and that such a blur should be removed from the American nation. When General Meyer returned to Washington, he placed the matter immediately before the Secretary of War, Hon. William H. Taft, and from what General Meyer told me, he was very confident of success, and believed that it would be done by the Secretary of War without bringing it before Congress.