Staunton spectator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1849-1896, 1894-06-20
From the Rockbridge News, June 14th.l
Mr.. fuckers Address Oh Memorial Day.

The following is the synopsis OF the
address delivered in the chapel of
Washington and Lee University on
Memorial day by Hon. J. r. Tucker.
Mr.. Tucker said that the theme was
worthy of the greatest efforts of the
orator, but had he that power he would
not now attempt to make use of it. He
would simply undertake to teach some
thing to the young men before him.
He thought speech of little value that
did not teach something.
He would have them to understand
that the hero patriots upon whose
graves they would lay flowers were not
Rebels. From the day that John
Hampden took up arms against King
CnariSS; from the Declaration of In
take up aTS1s against constituted au-
peoples rights, has been recognized.
eminent under constitution, and
when the government violated that
constitution it was in itself the Rebel.
and the men who took arms to uphold
the constitution against the usurping
government were patriots, not rebels.
The Quilted States had been formed by
the secession of the thirteen colonies
from Great Britain. The right OF Sc
cession had been uninterruptedly
claimed from the time of the forma-
ton of the constitution. As late as
1851 Daniel Webster declared the CON
stitution to be ii compact between the
North and South and if the North did
not keepltle compact the South was not
bound by it. Willard Fillmore held the
same views. Virginia loved the Union.
In 1861 she elected to her constitution
al convention 1870 delegates in favor of
Union and only thirty against it. 1t
was not until in April, 1861, when
Abraham Lincoln called upon her to
furnish troops to cOerce the Southern
States back into the Union, that John
Letcher, her brave and patriotic gov
ernor, who up to that time had been
strongly Union and against secession,
made reply that if there must be war
as Mr.. Lincoln proposed, Virginia
would make war to defend her South
ern sisters and not to coerce them. 1t
was a dreadful dilemma presented, she
could not fight her friends and was
compelled to fight their foes. She was
slow in seeding, but when she seced-
ed she seeded all over. AS Lamar
had expressed it, Virginia had fought
on point of honor She patiently
bore the indignities put upon herself,
but having declared that the South
should not be coerced, when the at
tempt was made to do it she raised her
strong arm and barred her bosom and
caught the blow.
Again, those hero patriots did not
fight for slavery. They fought for
freedom. They never enslaved any
one. There were English slavers, there
were Yankee slavers, but no ship ever
set forth from Southern port to bring
free men from Africa and make them
slaves. What the Southern people
fought for was the right to manage
their own affairs. The Northern peo
pie undertook, as it were, to enter
their homes and say to thenr, you shall
do this and you shall not do that. The
Southern people, as every other liber-
ty-loving people would do, resented
this intrusion. Their fight was not for
slavery but to manage their own af-
fairs, slavery included, their own way,
without intermeddling by strangers.
AS a result of the war the North had
had its own way in the attempt to
manage the negro question and a pref
ty botch they had made of it.
which flowers were to be laid were not
those of men whose lives had been de
based by contact with slavery III
Imagination he would play dominoes
with a Northerner, and the latter
would say to him. put up your man.
His reply would be, Il put up George
Washington They could not match
him, nor would they try. AS his sec
on'i he would put up Thomas Jetfer
son and again his opponent must
Weld. AS his third he would put up
John Marshail-the three greatest
Americans The South had produced
the inatchless cavalier, Robert Z Lee;
the matciiless Scotch Wish type, otuie-
wall Jackson. These men we're born
among slaves, played with slaves in
childhood and represented the spirit
of Southern institutions. There was
not about them any of that debase-
ment which must follow contact with
barbarous institutions.
Illustrating the disadvantages unde,
which the South labored in the con
test, MIR. Tucker said chat at the open
ing of the war Joe Johnston was
blamed for not fighting Patterson at
Bunker Hill. His reply was that there
were not five rounds of caps in the
army, There was not d cap machine
in the South. He had served on a
board that had selected and sent North
through the lines, a mar to get Il ma
chine and bring it through the lines,
and at the same time called on a man
to invent a machine. That man was
John III. Brooke, now professor at the
Virginia Military Institute, the man
who invented the deep sea sounding
machine. In spite of IT, cir want of
mechanical knowledge and appliances
when the struggle began, the Confed-
efacy, directed by the genius of this
same John M. Brooke, had mace,
equipped and put into action the first
irOnclad that ever sunk a wooden ship,
and thus had revOlutionized naval war
fare in the world.
He called upon the younger genera
ton to remember that the Southern
hero patriots had not died in vain. In
the Providence of God, no great cause,
though lost, was ever fought in vain
The losses of the war were tremendous,
but had the fathers of the present gen
Grafton submitted tamely to the in
suits aud demands of the North, their
sons would have been debasei and
degenerate race. Their heroism will
live in the lives of their children.
More than that. the fight for the princi
pie they espoused did not end with
Through the days of
reconstruction, through the intarven-
ing twenty nine years, down to the
present year it had kept up until now
the fight was over. The right of the
Southern States to self government
had been accorded by the people of the
whole country and by the general gov,
eminent.
| have no words of bitterness to utter
about the Northern people. The pray
er OF your chaplain that no such words
be used will find an answer in what |
have said and shall say. In all the
great conflicts that the world has
known the two contestants represent
ideas and beneath the pas
sions. the fanaticisms and the follies
which brought on civil war, the two
ideas represented by the contestants
may be clearly defined. The North
fought for the union of the States; the
South fought to prevent that union
destroyed the right of self-government
of each of the commonwealth com
posing it. The idea of union is most
in American polity. Split in
to separate countries we would be liza
ble to intestine wars dame ndino stand