Back when the world was sane.
To-day commemorates the thirty-fifth anniversary of the inauguration of the last rebel President and the birthday of the first. It commemorates an epoch in the grandest struggle for liberty and right that has ever been made by man. It celebrates the baptism of a new nation born thirty-five years ago to-day. And this commemoration is in the capital city of the Old Dominion and of the Confederacy.
More than a generation after the utter failure of the attempt, it is by the statesmen of Virginia, by her public authorities, by the government of the city of Richmond, who honor themselves in honoring this occasion, and by the free sentiment of this great and noble people.
There is nothing like it in history. No Greek general, no Roman consul, was ever welcomed with a triumph after a defeat. Nowhere, at no time, has a defeated side ever been so honored or the unsuccessful apotheosized.
A success in A sense.
More @ The Abbeville Institute
That is a beautiful building.
ReplyDeleteNow controlled by the Scalawag Rawls, VMI graduate. A travesty.
DeleteWhenever I pass on, this will still be my all-time favorite quote:
ReplyDeleteMajor R. E. Wilson, formerly of the 1st North Carolina Battalion of Sharpshooters, spoke the southern mind when he said, “If I ever disown, repudiate, or apologize for the cause for which Lee fought and Jackson died, let the lightnings of Heaven rend me, and the scorn of all good men and true women be my portion. Sun, moon, stars, all fall on me when I cease to love the Confederacy. ‘Tis the cause, not the fate of the cause, that is glorious.”
From Southern By The Grace Of God, Michael Andrew Grissom, p. 164.
Yes and another.
Delete"There was no surrender at Appomattox, and no withdrawal from the field which committed our people and their children to a heritage of shame and dishonor. No cowardice on any battlefield could be as base and shameful as the silent acquiescence in the scheme which was teaching the children in their homes and schools that the commercial value of slavery was the cause of the war, that prisoners of war held in the South were starved and treated with a barbarous inhumanity, that Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee were traitors to their country and false to their oaths, that the young men who left everything to resist invasion, and climbed the slopes of Gettysburg and died willingly on a hundred fields were rebels against a righteous government."
The Rev. James Power Smith, last surviving member of Jackson's staff, 1907
Amen to both!
DeleteMembers of my family spent time on the battlefields of that war ( my GGGrandfather even managed to 'take the tour' at Rock Island ), most of them to come back home to the war that was being waged on their families. The shooting-war was war; the war waged/still being waged on the families and the land?....... no words in any spoken language can adequately be used to describe it to the fullest.
We will never forget this, nor let it be forgotten, till all possible restitution has been made.
Decency demands it.
( Decency: polite, moral, and honest behavior and attitudes that show respect for other people.---Merriam-Webster.com )
Central Alabamaian
Decency: Antonym = Yankee.
DeleteIn regard to your first communication touching the burning of Plymouth you seem to have forgotten two things. You forget, sir, that you are a Yankee and that Plymouth is a Southern town. It is no business of yours if we choose to burn one of our own towns. A meddling Yankee troubles himself about every body's matters except his own and repents of everybody's sins except his own. We are a different people. Should the Yankees burn a Union village in Connecticut or a cod-fish town in Massachusetts we would not meddle with them but rather bid them God-speed in their work of purifying the atmosphere.
http://namsouth.com/viewtopic.php?t=75&highlight=quotes
A message from this 120 year old speech to our Lincoln wannabee POTUS, and to me.
ReplyDelete"As every follower of the prophet at sunset turns his face to Mecca, and sends up a prayer for the dead and the living, so everywhere in this great South Land, which was the Confederacy, whenever the trumpet call of duty sounds, when the call to do right without regard to consequence rings over the woods and the meadows, the mountains and the valleys, the spirit of the Confederacy will rise, the dead of Hollywood and of Oakwood will stand in ranks, and their eternal memory will inspire their descendants to do right whatever it cost of life or fortune, of danger and disaster. Lee will ride his bronze horse, Hill (A. P.) will be by his side, Stonewall will be there, Stuart’s plume will float again, and the battle-line of the Confederacy will move forward to do duty, justice, and right. The memorial of the Confederacy is here, not built by hands—made by memory and devotion! What else could it be?"
Truly, the trumpet call of duty has sounded. And, henceforth, I, Horace 82 Winters Smith, shall pray daily toward Richmond, my adopted State capitol, and encourage my native Virginian children and their children to do "duty, justice, and right."
Yes, Sir.
DeleteA Federal surgeon at the battle of Sharpsburg:
"It is beyond all wonder how such men as the rebel (sic) troops can fight on as they do; that, filthy, sick, hungry, and miserable, they should prove such heroes in fight, is past explanation - one regiment stood up before the fire of two or three of our long- range batteries and of two regiments of infantry, and though the air around them was vocal with the whistle of bullets and scream of shells, there they stood, and delivered their fire in perfect order; and there they continued to stand......"