Wilmington journal. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1844-1895, 1866-06-07

Our Richmond exchanges are filled with the tri-
butte paid by the citizens of that city the 31st
ult., under the auspices of the Ladies' Memorial
Association to the martyrs of the Lost Cause. The
business of the city was entirely suspended and
the people thronged to the Cemetery, and twenty
thousand hands were busy in decorating with
flowers half as many graves, the resting places OF
noble soldiers from every State of the late Con-
federacy.
! The Richmond Times says that the strange med
ley of professions was one of the most striking
features of the day. A company of bronzed and
noble looking men would file through the gates OF
the Cemetery, warrior heroes who followed Johns
ton Lee and Jackson when they drove back the
armies of Mcdowell, Butler, Mcclellan, Pope,
Burnside and Hooker, defeated, shattered and de-
moralized Close upon their heels would follow a
procession of little girls, looking as lovely with
their garlands, as if they had been sent from the
gates of Paradise to strew flowers upon the graves
of our noble dead. Then, with all the incompar-
able beauty, loneliness and grace of early woman
hood, would enter hundreds of those noble women
of Richmond, whose tender hands and kind hearts
for four long years we're never weary of minister
ing to the wants of those whose graves countless
thousands had assembled to honor. At every turn
were encountered familiar faces, from their con-
slant, sleepless and noble attention to the sick
and wounded of the Army of Northern Virginia
during the four long years of its transcendant
and Incompatible deeds of wonderful valor.
The old and young, the rich and the poor, formed
one great Republic of Sorrow amid the graves of
of the honored soldiers. And the assurance given
by the papers that, although, this tribute to the
noble dead was from the people of Virginia city,
the dead from all the Confederate States were the
recipients of precisely the same marks of venera-
ton and respect, is unnecessary, for there is
scarcely all humble and bereaved mother, daught-
en- or heart-broken maiden from the Rio Grande
to the Susquehanna, who has not among the tear
stained and treasured relics of the dead Confede-
rate soldier, some holnely yet graceful tribute
to the humanity and tender sympathies of the
women of Richmond. Virginia, it would SEEM
needed to be tried in the fiery crucible of terri
bic civil war, to show that he daughters are as
gentle, humane and angelic as her sons are brave
generous and chivalric.
The Wing thus speaks of the scene:
In surveying the graves all freshened, restored and
decorated not only with flowers but still with the
living forms of the young and beautiful who fitted from
grave to grave like minsterng angels ready to
exclaim-''O Grave! where is thy victory? o Death !
where is thy sting?"
Yesterday the living forgotten and the dead alone
remembered and honored. Standing in that ''eternal
camping ground" where kingly Death holds his pale
court and where thousands OF young and manly FORMS
liberated from the oppressors wrong" lie free among
the dead could but feel looked upon each sep
arate grave and thought of its tenant
"Death makes no conquest of this conqueror,
For now he lives in fame, though not in life