The comet. (Johnson City, Tenn.) 1884-1916, 1890-06-19
isssaiass=--4s----
VOL. VII.

llOlu w dsHlnSlOu W MS phpeII Vhe
Cincinnati Commercial Gazette, OF
conversation which took place in Rich.
moad during the recent Lee monu-
ment unveiling ceremonies. He says
that the failure of the Northern people
to build q monument to Gen. Grant
was under discussion, when one OF the
Southern gentlemen, an ex.Confed-
crate, declared his willingness to con-
tribute $4,000 as an individual fund
to a monument to be erected at cost
OF 100000 by ex-Coniederate soldiers
exclusively to the dead Federal chief
tain, So favorably was the proposition
received that within Il few min
utes $4,000 was raised by those pres
ent as a nucleus upon which to raise
the desired amount.
In the statement made by and upon
the authority of a Republican ex-
Union soldier, in partisan Republi-
can newspaper, there is much for the
consideration of the North and of the
world.
The Southern people came home
from the war absolutely destitute,
their homes burned or falling from
neglect, their cattle destroyed, their
fields unienced, no money, no mark
cts. confronted by foes from without
and oyerrun in the management of To-
Ca! affairs by horde of political vam-
pires more horrible than all the arm
les of Grant and Sheridan and Sher-
man. They came home and found the
future ms black as the present was ter
rible. They found that their children
were growing up in illiteracy, that
their States were debt.ridden and that
taxation was piled up mountain high
upon them. They found their slaves
made their political equals, and, in
cited by bad men, attempting social
equality. They found prejudice as
bitter as prejudice could be, and that
in all the land no comforting words or
helping hands were extended South
ward.
But with all this, what did the
Southern soldier do-he, who had
fought with Albert Sidney Johnson
at Shiloh, with Stonewall jackson at
Charlottesville, and with Robert E..
Lee at Gettysburg and through the
Wilderness and about Richmond? Did
he despair? History is ready now to
answer that he did not, and later his
tory will thunder a negative down the
ages.
This same ex-Confederate solder
faced the ordeals mentioned above,
and with a courage which no General
ever saw equaled in battle he fought
his way through the terrors OF long
and awful reconstruction and won the
victory. He patched up his old home,
he rebuilt his fences, he titled his soil
until, within very few months after
Appomattox, the smiling fields, the
new orchards and the white.wasbed
fences, proclaimed tha; the war was
indeed ended. He educated his chill
dren and supported his wife and de
pendent kin, whom the tragedies Of
the war had left as an additional bur-
den upon his hands. He paid off hi
own debts, redeemed hiy State from
infamous rule and afterwards met its
obligations. He gradually amassed
wealth and political power and his old
social status. And with all that, none
of which came by outside help, he
hemmed in old Confederate burial
grounds with neat, white fences, erect
ed white wooden slabs to mark the
places of individual burial and has
built to the grand dead heroes who led
the ConfeGeraoy monuments Of mar
BILE and of bronze. And now this same
Southern soldier is building railroads
and ooening coal aud iron and marble
beds and is building factories and
grand cities,
Yet all this while this same poor
old soldier has never ceased to revere
the cause for which he suffered all and
which he knows was lost, but never
for one moment did he sink his man
hood or compromise his independence
In the meanwhile the victorious
army is burdening the government tc
the extent of $l00000,000 every yeai
in the name Of pensions, while Grant
sleeps without monumentin the city
of New York.
The people Of the South will dc
what long since generous public or
the other side OF the fatal line should
have done. They estimate greatness
in foe as in friend, and they will built
to Grant such a monument as vii
properly perpetuate for his posterity
the grand qualities which will make
his name immortal. The poor, de
spised Southern soldier will put it sid'
by side with that erected to Lee anC
over both will blend the two opposing
flags, the stars and bars Of the Confed
eracy and the stars and stripes of thi
Union, the one dead forever, the othe
ours by virtue OF patriotic adherence
neither affected by the presence of th'
other, both gracefully expressive o
disappeared bitterness and regen
Grated nation,
Wen build your monuments.