The weekly democratic statesman. [volume] (Austin, Tex.) 1871-1883, 1882-11-23
THE LOST CAUSE.
A Beautiful Tribute TO the SOUTH
ern ConTederacY.
BY PERCY GREY.

ado you forget, then," rejoined
Cleveland, chow often the hand of
Providence has been manifestly
against the better cause? Do you
forget the Pagan saying that recon-
Giles so many readers of history to
the fall OF the noblest states and the
defeat OF the truest heroes, 'Victy'iG
cansa Deis placuit, Sed Uictd CatOni,'
or the cynical paradox OF the French
empire, that Heaven is on the side
of the bigger battaliOns? Do YOU
| forget, again, that in the American
struggle everything that was per-
sonally great and noble was
to be found almost exclu-
| sively on the southern side
The north produced no gentleman
aud chevalier worthy to be named
in the same day with him who led so
long the splendid chivalry of Vir-
ginia and the Carolinas, and before
whom, onevery occasion, the northern
cavalry Gotten the northern Infantry
were scattered like chaff before the
wind. The Unionists had no twenty
statesmen whose combined moral
and intellectual powers would have
reached the level of President
Davis; indeed, the comparative
quality of the two nations could
hardly be better illustrated than by
contrasting the Mississippian soldier
and gentleman chosen to rule the
rebels with the 'rail-splitter' repre-
sentative of the Legitimate democ-
racy, whose term, had he died
in his bed four or five years later,
would have been remembered only
as marking the nadir of American
political decline; the elimination of
the vulgarity, moral as well as for
NAL, of the unworthiness and igno-
bleness that had so long dishonOred
more and more deeply the chair of
Washington. LincOln's unclean-
ness of language and thought would
hardly have been tolerated in a
southern bar Or, again, take the
favorites of the north - the best
known names in the camp and cabi-
net Sheridan and Hunter, whose
ravages recall the devastation of the
Palalinate, political rowdies like But
Ter aud Banks, braggarts like Pope
and Hooker, or even professional
soldiers like Meade, Sigel, Sherman.
These are the household words of
the north, and any one southern
chief of the second rank-Ewell
Early, Fitzhugh Lee, Hardee, Polk,
| Hampton, Gilmer, Gordon-alone
outweigbs them all. Needless 10
remind you that among the twenty
millions-mostly fools was no man
WHOM even party spirit dared liken
to the stern, simple Virginian pro-
fessor, the Cavalier Puritan, whose
brigade of recruits stood like stone
WALL under the convergent fire OF
artillery and rifles that was closing
round them at Manassas; no A. p.
Hill, second only to Jackson among
the lieutenants of Lee; no strategist
comparable to him whose death
by simply self-neglect marred the
victory of Corinth, or his namesake,
who baff1ed so long the threefOld
force of Sherman in the Georgia
campaign. Rivers, railways and
brute numbers only enabled the
Federal power not to conquer, but to
exhaust, on fifty battle fields, nearly
all disastrous and disgraceful to the
Union, the flower of that 'incom-
parable southern infantry whose
superiority Is acknowledged in these
very words by one of the bitterest of
northern historians. Even did not
the stain of a cruel, causeless, cow
ardly assassination rest upon his
name. Washington himself could
not sustain as soldier, statesman, or
citizen comparison with the last
and greatest of the long list of Vir-
gilman heroes. Not all the military
| exploits of all former American
history thrown into one can count
with the defense of thirty miles of
slender earthworks by force never
from the first numbering more than
5000, and at last dwindling to 2S,-
900, against armies counting as po-
tentially or actually available a
quarter of million. Since the last
Athenian covered his face with his
mantle and muteiy died. the world
has seen no such example of abso-
lutte unconscious simplicity, utter
self-devotion, patriotism, yet more
signally exhibited in humiliating
disaster than in brilliant career of
victory, as that shown by Gen. Lee,
the first military chief of the age,
yet greater in the college
than even in the camp; the noblest
member of q splendid chivalry,
yet most noble amid the ruins
of his cause, his country, and his
fortunes; the one true knight sans
tdche, sans petr, ct sans reprOche, the
living embodiment of all that is
grandest in the ideals of the past as
of all that is simplest in the promis-
ed republican manhood of the fu-
ture ;ideal soldier, pattern Christian,
selfiess man, and stainless gentle
man. Little as man can know of
the ways of Providence, what indi-
cation, however clear. of the proba-
BILE purposes of heaven could for
moment .countervail to my con-
science or to yours the warranty
given for the righteousness of
cause by the names of Stuart, Stone