Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 41.djvu/28

 16 What were those ideals consecrated at First Manassas, exalted at Chancellorsville, sealed and accepted at Appomattox? These ancient oaks whisper them; these gray coats attest them; these women who for fifty years have kept this sacred day bear witness to them; these children's faces unwittingly reflect them:

That government is the choice of the governed, a sacred right that only tyranny can overrule;

That it is for the governed to change their government when its powers are misused;

That those who give may take again and shape to better use the creature of their hands;

That in defense of freedom, self may not be reckoned or sacrifice be counted;

That duty to righteous principle is duty to God!

Stands there one to-day in the shadow of these monuments to say that these things were lost? Breathes one of Southern stock who thinks the maintenance of the ideals not worth the blood wherewith they were sustained? Rather do we not now realize the setting sun of Appomattox was the promise of a coming day and that when the broken remnants of our Southern hosts gave up their bloody banners they kept to give again in days of need the same ideals they cherished in the rags of disaster and the dust of defeat.

Thank God the passing years in bringing peace have not exacted as the price the sacrifice of those ideals! Can we not, in truth, lift up our hands to-day to heaven and swear with one accord that with the blood of our fathers and from the breasts of our mothers we have drunk in their ideals and have sought, God helping us, to preserve them in their purity. You men in gray have kept the faith; your sons would follow you.