Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 44.djvu/20

14 mediocrity. We inaugurate a government; we conduct a revolution. We must live forever in the memory of man, either for praise or for blame. If we prove equal to the crisis in which we are placed, we shall win imperishable honour. But if, on the contrary, we show ourselves incompetent to the discharge of our duty, we shall sink beneath the contempt of mankind. Truly our position is one of great import. Our gallant army now holds, as it deserves, the first place in the thoughts and affections of our people; but of scarcely less importance, in the estimation of all, is the legislative authority which initiates the civil policy of the Confederacy, and which sustains and upholds the army itself. And when the latter shall have accomplished its holy mission, by driving the invader from the soil which he desecrates and pollutes, and when the hearts of a grateful and free, more generous than a Roman Senate, shall, for that service decree to it one life-long ovation, if true to ourselves and competent to our duty, this Congress will be united in the triumphal honours. And if this Constitution be destined to go forward, as we hope and believe it will to a distant future, gaining new strength from trial; and winning new triumphs from time; giving protection and peace to successive generations of happy and enlightened people; as the gray-haired sires and venerated patriarchs of ages now remote, shall seek to inspire the courage and fire the hearts of the ingenuous youth of their day, by recounting the heroic deeds of the army which achieved our independence, let the lesson be extended and enlarged by enabling them to tell, also, of the self-sacrificing patriotism and enlarged statesmanship of the Congress which inaugurated the permanent Constitution of the Southern Confederacy. Again I thank you. (Applause.)

A message was read from the Senate, announcing to the House that that body had organized, by calling to the chair Hon. R. M. T. Hunter, of Virginia.

Mr. Curry, of Alabama, offered a resolution that a committee of five be appointed by the Speaker to report rules for the permanent government of this House and that such committee as may be appointed confer with a joint committee on the part of