The Montgomery advertiser., 1902-11-13
ELOQUENT WORDS OF WELCOME .
 TO HEROES AND THEIR SONS
CAPT. SCREWS TO VETS
ELOQUENT ADDRESS AT OPEN
 ING OF CONVENTION.
Great Audience at the Auditorium Cheered Montgomery's Peerless Orator When He Paid
 Tribute to Soldiers.

In welcoming the Alabama Division, United Confederate Veterans to Mont gomery yesterday Captain Benjamin H. Screws made an eloquent address.
 The great audience which filled the big Auditorium cheered him time and again and the address made a happy impress sion.
 Captain Screws spoke as follows: Brother Commander in Chief and Con-
 federate Comrades,
 Heroes from along the fiery crests of an hundred battlefelds. extending from the Potomac to the Rio Grande, from the borders of Kentucky to the shores of the Gulf-war worn veterans of the Confed- eracy-on behalf of the loocal camps of Montgomery, bid you thrice welcome to the strong but gentle embrace of the fairest city that ever the sun shone on to this consecrated and ancient capital where, forty-two years ago, young lib- erty was cradled, and where, alas, four years later it expired, where the atmos- phere all the year round is redolent with the sad, proud memories of 1861
 .'The dew was not off the grass on the natal morn of the Confederacy here in Montgomery before this sunny land of ours was one vast martial camp. The causes, however, which led to that tre- mendous revolution, the Constitutional and inherent right of the Southern States, to absolve themselves from govern- ment already fanaIical and which threat ened despotism and tyranny we will rel egate on this occasion to the great mau- soleum of the buried past as being un- necessary here to discuss.
 Tt Is useless too. and impossible as we'll. to recount the dazzling and unri- vailed story of the gigantic but unequal conflict, resulting finally in the unhappy collapse of the Confederacy. Our Con- federacy sank in sorrow, but not in shame; dark and gloomy clouds in heavy folds closed round its setting, but they did not, they could not. blacken it. It lighted them into effulgence with its own resplendent glory, and as. Walter Scott sang of the daring deeds of Scottish he roes and Beranger of those of the grand army of Napoleon, so surely will future poets and future historians rise to tell in fitting verse and becoming language of the matchless vaior of Confederate pat riots. They will go down on the accumu- latins tide of glory to succeeding gener- ations, even until the last recorded syl- lable of time.
 "The Confederate veteran is immortal; he needs no eulogy; he can we'll afford to stand on dress parade before all the world, and abide the judgment of man. kind. Absolutely indifferent to earthly fame, conscious of the rectitude of his motives and of duty well performed, he only reserves, while living the proud and undisputed right to revere the we- men of the South. Dying. his last breath carries with 1t a benediction upon that Spartan band of Matrons and Misses, oya aSinU a Huhn endured those agonizing years of hope and despair when wars drowning visage darkened the land, and whose unwavering loyalty during that stormy period yields not in splendor, to the brightest chaplet that ever bloomed upon warriors brow.
 "In these latter years as time wears away when I look into the faces of old Confederate soldiers I can see shining in their eyes a reflection of other days, of days long gone by, or other scenes. of scenes far away, but days and scenes that aRe dear to us, and whose memory is holy.
 ''Today we can see again the blue ridge of Virginia and the valley beyond; we can see the piney woods of Georgia and the Carolinas; we can see the hills and dales of Tennessee sloping off towards the lowlands of Alabama and Mississip- pi and Louisiana, to fade away at last into a vision of enchantment beneath the Southern cross of Florida and the lone star of Texas; we can see Lee and John- ston, and Stuart and Forrest and Wheel er and Pat Cleburne and Lomax and Rodes and Clayton and Holtzclaw and Clanton and the rest; we can almost catch the drum beats of Dixie. and listen to the reverberating echo and re-echo of the famous rebel yell. But. alas, the old South, the dead Confederacy; mighty memories of the glorious post, of the camp, march, battle, blood, tears.
 "Ah; realm of tombs,
 But let us bear this blazon
 To the last of time:
 No Nation rose so white and fair.
 Or fell so pure of crime
 '"To the proud sons of Confederate vet erans it is scarcely necessary to say that Alahama's record during that war, the most stubborn, the most stupendous, the most chivalric conflict in all the tide of time the unrivalled deeds of her heroic sons. the deathless patriotism and sub- lime submission to privations and hard ships of her peerless daughters, consti- tute the brightest diadem in the crown of Alabama's wondrous glory. Into that vortex of carnage, of death and or fame eternal. there went forth from Alabama 127 GOO brave men of whom S2,OOO rendered m their lives in defense of their coun- try and its honor.
 .The world is fast learning the great truth that the Southern States withdrew from the Federal Union in obedience only to +he mandate of duty and of honor, and looking back in the hour of utter defeat or looking back even now, the Southern people might well exclaim as did Demosthenes at Athens: I say that had the result been known to the world beforehand, not even then should Athens have pursued any other course if she had any regard for her past for her glory in the ages to come
 ..The South, like Athens, lost all save honor. Then how inexpressibly dear to the son sof Confederate soldiers should be the history of the storm-cradled na- ton that fell. and distant, oh! far dist ant. be the time when they shall cease to cherish its sublime and sacred mem ories.
 Now, my venerable comrades, although our ranks are fearfully decimated, 1t is more than probable that all of us will not attend the reunion a year hence, here in beautiful Montgomery, or elsewhere. The admonshing twilight of evening has cast it's beckoning shadow over the very youngest Confederate Veteran: only a few more annual roll calls and the last one will have vanished. will have crossed over the r1ver
 Then, ere we part at this reunion. let us indulge the hope that when the in evitable evening of life comes. it may be our good fortune to sink to rest with the clouds which close in our departure gold-tipped with the effulgence of we'll spent lives, with the reassuring conscious ness of having been loyal to the cause we espoused and faithful always to the