Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 40.djvu/187



THE CONFEDERATE STATES NAVY YARD AT CHARLOTTE, N. C., 1862-1865.

.—This article appeared in the Charlotte News, June 5, 1910—immediately after the unveiling of the Navy Yard Marker. Hon. Josephus Daniels, Secretary of the Navy, visited the site of the Charlotte Navy Yard in May, 1914—and this has aroused a new and wider interest in its history.

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The great development of historic activity in North Carolina during the last few years has been accompanied by the ripening of a taste for historical research and for the collection of matter bearing on county, as well as State and national history; and with this desire to preserve our county and State history has come the patriotic desire to mark historic places within our own borders, so that strangers and guests in each succeeding generation may know the patriotism, courage, bravery and true worth of North Carolina's sons and daughters, from the Colonial, Revolutionary and Confederate periods, even down to the present day.

Much of Mecklenburg's and Charlotte's splendid Colonial and Revolutionary history has been preserved and some of her historic places of those days have been marked, but her part in the Southern Confederacy, when our sons and daughters were one united people in their sacrifice, heroism, bravery and courage, has not received the recognition due her—so the Stonewall Jackson Chapter, U. D. C., through the interest of one of its members, Miss Violet G. Alexander, has turned its attention to the history of the Charlotte Navy Yard, and has marked with an appropriate iron marker the site of the Confederate Navy Yard, which was established in Charlotte in the spring of 1862