Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 40.djvu/240

 236 the tragedy, as great as the history, which had fallen upon Virginia. To the cause in which she believed she had given her all, even a part of herself, and the maimed soldier with scars which command the admiration of the world, finely typified his great State in her sorrows and her losses, as in her glories and her pride."

Confederate soldiers may well comfort themselves with the thought that each passing year sees the enmities of the past giving way for kinder feelings for them and more dispassionate judgments touching their great leaders in the War Between the States. This feeling has been voiced in Congress often during the past decade, notably in the Sixty-second Congress by two well-known representatives of great ability. The former Speaker of the House, Mr. Catnnon, speaking on the Lincoln Memorial, said in part: "There are certain great characters that will dwell in the history of the country: first, Washington; second, Lincoln; third, Lee, a great man, a great general, who did his duty from his patriotic standpoint; fourth, Jefferson Davis, a great man, performing a great service for a proposed new republic as he saw his duty."

A hundred years from now the ordinary reader will recast this period, and there will be in the mouths of the school children the names of Washington, Lincoln, Grant, Lee and Jefferson Davis, but you will have to search the Congressional Record and the encyclopedias to find out about the balance of us, who have been Speakers, ex-Speakers, members of Congress, etc. Take Mr. Cannon, for instance, they will say: "It does appear that there was a man from Illinois by the name of Cannon, but I don't know much about him. There was another member by the name of Cannon in Congress from Utah, and it was said that he had seven wives."

On the same subject, Mr. Mann, of Illinois, said: "Mr. Speaker: It is now nearly half a century since the Civil War closed and Abraham Lincoln passed beyond. There has been a lapse of time which ought to permit us to survey the situation with little bias, and little passion. I have put the Civil War behind me, a great conflict that was probably inevitable. There were patriots on both sides, gallant men in opposition.