Staunton spectator. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1849-1896, 1896-02-26
GEN. WALKERS ADDRESS.

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Yost's Weekly, of. the Goth, contains
the speech made by Gen/ Jas. A.
Walker in Boston, Mass, on Feb. 18th,
the anniversary of the birth of
Abraham Lincoln. Strange reading is
this speech to those who knew Gen.
Walker when he mustered the few
battered veterans of the Stonewall
Brigade before the great columns of
urant at Appomattox, and saw them
lay down the muskets they had SO
long borne through blood and battle
Strange, too. is this speech to those
who knew him after he returned to
civil nfe,the State which gave him
e9Efth about to be torn in shreds by
an enemy of the Anglo-Saxon people,
who had made her the fairest, the
noblest, the proudest commonwealth
In the GALAXY of States, when, with
tho fntrepidity which had character
lied him at Manassas and Seven Pines
and Gettysburg, he hurled his intel
lectual forces against that enemy, and
with the aid of his kindred and friends,
saw crushed, the unholy alliance of
Malone and his cohorts, before they
had brought utter disgrace and dis
honor to Virginia. Strange, too, is
this speech when we reflect that thirty
long years have passed since Lincoln
died; that during those thirty years
Gen. Walker was in the prime of his
intellectual manhood, capable of
studying and estimating that charac-
ter, and never had he heretofore been
known to love that memory, or drop
tear, or lay wreath upon the tomb of
the man, whom, in Boston, he praised
as the "Preserver of the Union"
But stranger than all these is the
fact that Gen. Walker should have
stood in Massachusetts, on the blood
stained field of Bunker Hill, over the
ashes of Warren and his compatriots,
and denounced the people of his
State, the white people of Virginia
his kith and kin-with all the venom
his tongue could utter, whilst with
the next breath he trucklingly and
fulsomely praised the virtues of man
he had omitted to praise for thirty
long years, and whose virtues would
still remain forgotten by him, had he
not become IAN apostate for the price
of his apostacy."
But stranger yet than this turning
upon his people and State is the fact
that Gen. Walkers lips could have
been soiled by the falsehood of this
speech. 1t contained no more his
sentiments than the Koran his re-
hglous views; and whilst we NAV all
admit the greatness of Lincoln, and
regret as deeply as any the manner
and time of his death, yet, when we
PROSTATE ourselves before that image
and go about singing the praises so
long unsung,zwe trust it will be for
some Better reason than because we
have been elevated to seat in a Re-
publican Congress. People are hard
to deceive. The Bostonians who heard
tnat eulogy were slngularly and pain
fully impressed, and their estimate of
Gen. Walker lowered, as nothing
else could have lowered it, From his
lips they would have cheered to the
echo story of Rebels and Rebellion, a
leaf from the history of that imperish-
able Brigade, praise for the valor of
Jackson or the greatness of Lee, but
the voice of the trucker had no music
for their ears, and whilst they, out of
pity, cheered his utterances, at heart
they felt the distrust we feel and
shared with him the shame which will
always cling to the memory of this
episode in the mind of the time-server
who belittled himself by delivering the
grafton,