Staunton spectator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1849-1896, 1894-05-30
sa H f-3. n : II
MEMORIAL EXERCISES.
FINE ADDRESS BY VIM. A. ANDERso

3 OF paying annual trlDute TO the memory VI III
! fallen heroes of the Southern army wit
, sacrificed their lives in the defense of Gbert.
and their homes, that sacred duty was per
:, formed on Saturday last in the soldiers sec
: ton of Thornrose cemetery. The civic ant
| military procession was formed on Main st.
; at II o'clock, and in the following order march
ed to the cemetery grounds
= Members of the Ssonewall Jackson Camp Of
f Confederate Veterans; the Stonewall Brigade
Band Cadets of Fishburnes Military Academy
). of Waynesboro; West Augusta Guards O
Staunton; Fire Department of Staunton cti-
zers, in carriages and in foot.
After arrival at their destination, they as
sembled around the pavilion where the ex
ercses were to take place. Among those pres
emf in the pavilion We're the wife and daugh
ter of Mr.. Chas. F. Crisp, of Ga, Speaker Of
the House of Representatives.
The assemblage was called to order by Capt
H. w. Henry, who introduced Rev. G. w
Finley, D. D., of Thinking Spring Church, who
opened the exercises with an appropriate
prayer.
Then hymn was played by the Band.
Then Capt. Tbos. D. Ransom, his college
mate and warm personal friend, in terms of
4 high but just praise, introduced VIM. A. An
1 derson, of Lexington, the orator of the occa-
sion, who then, after thanking his friend for
| what he termed his too fiattering introduction,
delivered, in quite deliberate and impressive
manner, an able, patriotic and eloquent adj
dress, as all will agree who heard it delivered
or will read the report OF it, with some omis-
sions, as published below.
We have made the report of tie exercises as
short as possible, that we might have room
! for W. A. Anderson's address, that those who
did not hear it may have an opportunity to
read it. During its delivery, unfortunately,
the rain began to fall, and as there was no
shelter, the audience began to disperse.
This prevented other exercises, and the
dress, of the greater portion of which the fol-
lowing is a literal report z.dT
| WILLIAM A. ANDERsoN's ADDRESS.
1Hy Comrades and Coantyynen: -'i'
To do honor to the memory of men who at
any place, and at any time have laid down
/ their lives in the heroic discharge of duty,
1 must always be pleasure to all men capable
of approaching the nobility of sacrifice and
martyrdom: but when those dead heroes are
| our comrades and countrymen, and the cause
| for which they gave their lives was our cause,
: it becomes holy and grateful duty, and
with us of the once Confederate South. duty
alike to the dead and to the living to the past,
| the present and the future. I5fa
The women and the men of this county and
city have not been regardless of the sacred OBJ
| legation, and they and the association which
| they have formed, have hOnOrably come up to
the measure of this duty; and in your annual
pilgrimage to this lovely spot and in your
/ simple and beautiful rites of loyalty to the
dead, and in this fitting monument which you
| have caused to be erected in cOmmemoratiOn
| of their virtues you have shown your WORTH
| ness to kinship with the brave men whose
proves and heroism have given to the land
| and the cause for which they fought an i'm
| perishable wealth of glory. Elf}
am not unmindful that l am speaking in
| the midst of the great Spartan county of Au-
| gusta. from whose lOins went forth full three
| thousand men to the army of the Confederacy;
and which enjoys the singular honor of hav-
! ing sent more soldiers to the Stonewall Bri-
gade than any other county: That around us
here are the graves of more of the dead of that
brigade than are to be found gathered together
| elsewhere; and that there are collected here
| to day in this large assembly of the beauty and
manhood of Augusta and her sister counties
| of this great Valley, more of the survivors of
that illustrious command and larger num-
Der of the children of its heroes than could be
so readily brought together upon any other
| spot on earth.
There were a hundred other gallant brigades
| in the armies of the South. There have been
hundreds of commands in other armies and
| other wars have been distinguished for their
valor and herosm; but there has been and
there will ever be but one "Stonewall Bri-
| gade.'
| 1t is not extravagant to claim for it that its
proves entities it to live in history while the
| human heart pays its tribute to human virtue,
along with the Macedonian Phalanx of Alex
ander, the Tenth Legion of Caesar the Iron
sides of Oliver Cromwell, and the Old Guard
| of Napoleon.
1t is priceless honor to be allied to- and
identified with that immortal band of patriots
and heroes, as are the people who now sur
| round me.
: =
AS we stand near the portals of new cen
| tury and look back upon the struggles and
| the achievements, the disasters and the sue
| cesses the trials and the triumphs of our race
| since its first settlement at jamestown nearly
| three hundred years ago, the four years from
| 1861 to 1865 loom up now, as they must ever
stand out from these centuries, as the heroic
era of our history.
| Not that there have not been other heroic
| ages in American Annals, but that there have
been none, certainly in the history of Virginia
and of her sister States of the South, in which
| there have been such and so many thousands
|
| a transcendent instance of a whole people so
animated by supreme purpose to battle and
\ if need be to die for their country, and to sac
rifice their all upon its altar.
Their armies and their cause went down in
disaster and defeat, but the dauntless courage,
the persistency, the untiring energy and the
| devotion to principle and duty which the wo-
men and the men of the South exhibited
| through out all of that arduous conflict, illu-
mine and will forever illumine its shadows,
and shed a perennial radiance upon the
American name and upon the human race.
There is little in the panorama of those four
years of hardship, struggle and trial which
I may not be reviewed with pride by the sur
vivors of the armies and the navy-the gori-
GUS little navy-of the Confederacy, and by
| their children and their children's children in
| all coming generations. shs -4tsr
| Why behold! 100000 men from first to last
| in all the armies of the Southland they gen
orally badly equipped, poorly fed and clothed,
and leaving behind them in unprotected homes
their women and children often, like them
selves, suffering for the bare necessares of life
l-confronted from first to last by two and one
| half millions of soldiers, generously supplied
| with every provision for armies in the field,
and with the most formidable armament
which down to that time the world had ever
| seen.
| The territory in which these $3.50, 900 men
were struggling surrounded on the land side
| by Gordon of steel and fire, and shut in upon
| the sea by the overwhelming and conquering
navy of the Union whose hundreds of cruisers,
men of-war and gunboats triumphantly rode
the seas and almost Theoretically sealed our
ports to all access with the outer world.
/ And yet, even with all of these potential ad-
vantages in their favor, the triumph of the
Union forces could never have been accom-
plished but for the adhesion of Southern men
to the Union cause.
1t was largely the South which conquered
the South.
The facts as to the part which men of South
ern birth bore in maintaining the ascendancy
of the Union arms in that struggle are some
what startling 1ef
The first and the ablest general commander
of the armies of the North--the originator and
organizer of their plan of war-was General
| Winfield Scott Southern mana Virginian.
Their greatest corps commander and one of
their ablest generals of armies, was George H.
Thomas a Southern mana Virginian.
The first admiral of their navy was the great
and gallant Farragut, Southern mana Vir-
ginian. afsia
Admirals Goldsborough of Maryland, and
Porter, of Washington, among the most bril-
liant and successful of their commanders on
the seas, were both men of the South.
| fbo raply nd 10 Of tbo v,bo Of