The age-herald., 1898-12-16
SCENES ATTENDING
 I'll 3 UNWILLING

prehended that the contest of 1S61-65 was not an accident, but that the downfall of the southern confederacy was an accident, assuredly saw here today the infallib,e evil dence, for a season concealed from him.
 See 5000 people. men, women and chill dren, marching in solid cluster up Dexter avenue, bouyant, self-controlled, ardent and strong in all the clements of the most en- frightened society of the earth. I saw them act the same part in February, 1861, when they escorted. Jefferson Davis to the capitol to take the oath of president; I saw them in February. 1886. when they escorted the same man to the same hilltop to lay the corner stone of that beautiful and majestic pile, unveiled formally today. I saw them pursue the same ceremonies today and I looked into the eyes of the people possessed of the same changeless American spirit of patriotic conservation brighter and purer here than in many other places under the stars and stripes where the bonds to nativ- ity 10 American soil and American liberty are less Ancient than in these pure-bred descendants of the colonists of Virginia the Carolinas and Georgia.
 Around the foot of the lofty monument the great and devout throng encirc,ed it. self. Presently a man of m dale age, an earnest and noble man in his demeanor arose to speak. A thousand of the listeners who stood before him remembered, as with flash of revelation, that thirty-fve years ago this man was a stripling in the Army of Northern Virginia who having existed for days on the bursting buds and the roots of the forest trees along the line of march from Petersburg to Appomattox, as the only food of his comrades and himself, at the end of the march bore the pale and lank emblem of truce to the 120,000 wei fed enc mics who surrounded the 5000 starving and naked contestants for the rights of Ameri- can freemen. Following down the years of this mans career, we remember him as a peacemaker at home, lawmaker of fame a citizen of virtue and valor, a governor of this great state. How fearful the sin of the American who falsfies the history of his country, who asperses the genius of Amer ican liberty by naming Thomas Goode Jones a "rebell' May God in his beneh- ence continue to stock this land of the sun with men of minds so high. hearts to pure and spirits so brave as the rebels" whose history was celebrated today. Byron tells us words are things" Congress has been appealed to authoritatively and will be again and again appealed to to lift from the national records the name rebel" war of the rebellion,' etc, applied to the southern defenders and their cause repre- scented here today.
 Just where the monument now stands. in December, 1860, the Alabama Cadet Corps line to be inspected by the governor and legislature, uniformed in their shining gray The military feature had been first intro- duced the year before the avowed object of the innovation being to educate officers for the militia. It is customary, know, and not beyond the truth to give greatest honor fHa nriyafp O the southern the cadets from West Point, from the Vr- ginia Military Institute, from the two South Carolina military academies, from the Uni- versity of Alabama and from the military schools of other southern states supplied our army with many hundreds of thor oughly trained young officers, who were also gentlemen, sans peur ct sans reproche, and for whose possession General Washing ton would have given his right arm It will not do to say the privates did not fail to appreciate the training of the educated cadets. I think I am safe in saying that every cadet from the University of Ala bama, who would accept commission, was elected by the to company office. Among the corps as it mustered, in 1880, on the capitol grounds, were many who later on as officers of the southern army attained to distinction. I have not the roll before me, and to avoid discriminate mention only Cadet John c. c. Saunders of Eutaw. He was elected captain of Com pany A, Eleventh Alabama Infantry, Syd- enham Moore, Colonel. In regular promo tion he became colonel of his regiment by 1882. Then, perhaps, twenty years old He fell, in the battles of 1864 about Petersburg a brigadier-general, successor to Wilcox Rodes represented the Virginia Military h. stitute; Saunders, the University of Ala bama, and Pelham, West Point. No better soldiers of more faithful officers ever repre- sented great army.
 The Age-Herald has already published description of the monument and repro duced the authentic and patriotic inscrip- tions chiseled on that four sides of the base These inscriptions arc original compositions only sentence or two-of ladies who were prime movers in the work of erection No further mention of thees things is there fore attempted by one.
 It required many hundred years for Rome to produce Caesar and Cicero. The Confed- crate States of America produced Lee and Forrest Beauregard and Pelham Semmes and Yancey in four years. The constitution of civil government left behind it by this young republic actually contains in its articles and sections every reform in the Constitution of the United States which Grover Cleveland or Benjamin Harrison or other high authority now admonishcs this country to adopt.
 At last the monument is not to the mast alone but half to the present Those wno lived before today and who arc immor- talized in its stones, give their all for the Christlanlzeu dogmaS or civil liberty. The monument given to the country today is rhe solemn pledge of the people to cultivate in their hearts and demonstrate their deeds a fadeless love of these dogmas. It seemed. twelve years ago, rash thing in the mayor of Montgomery, Coolnel Warren Reese, to go to "Beauvoir" and literally unearth President Davis from his long retirement to come to the place where he entered upon otficeto lay the cornerstone to a monument to the glory of his cause. Yet public scn- timent, without consciousness of the truth. was ripe for the occurrence. As the flow of years pass truth will more and more accumulate around the central thought ex- posed to public judgment here today.
 J. w. D.