The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1903-04-28

except III IQTluIleS Inc greatest, al HO-
BILE figure as ever stood in the fore
front of nations life, Robert E. Lee.
Memories of 3S Years.
These and other scenes come troop
ing to your side. tonight on the
wings of memory; the eight and thirty
years which have come and gone are
rolled back on themselves, unspoken
regret fills the heart and tears suffuse
the eyes. But strong as these memo
ries are in your hearts tonight you
alone share them. Another generation
will take your place and still another;
with them sentiment will have run its
course and the llfeless page of history
will alone be your lvindication.
Lee and jackson will take their
places side by side. with Hampden and
Washington and like them, from the
facts as recorded, fin future years the
cold intelligence of the student will
argue whether they were loyal or rebel,
true to their allegiance or traitors to
their country. Moved by, considera-
lions of this character, 1 trust that
you will bear with me tonight If be-
come tedious for without effort at
rhetorical effect 1 desire to speak of
an old calumny against the Southern
people which has recently been re-
vived."
Mr.. Wright death with the question
of history and histories at some length.
On one occasion when Sir Robert Wal
pole was i'll his daughter attempted to
beguile his illness, and asked what she
should read to him, he made answer,
Anything but history. That 1 know
is lies"
Woodrow Wilson'S History.
81 have recently been reading a his
tory of the American people not a long
fiV1on frNr, I, H. - Yszr.
1t is written by a Southern man, the
president of Princeton University, and
has been heralded as the only complete,
fair and impartial history on the Sub
ject. In the volume treating of the
War Between the States, l find at
pages BOG and 307. the following Ian
guage which is in part an exact quo
tation of his words; One of the most
distressing evidences of the straits the
South had been brought to was the
state of the prisons in which she was
forced to keep the thousand of prison.
ers who fell into the hands of her
armies. Thirty thousand men died
in the Confederate prisons; as many
more in the prisons of the North; the
numbers almost exactly balance.
But the causes were different In the
Northern prisons the bitter chill of
winter claimbed as many lives as the
rigors and privations of prison disci-
pline. In the South there were not
prisons, there were not guards, there
was not food enough. Proper
sanitary precautions were in the cir
cumstances impossible. The armies
themselves lacked food and went with
out every comfort, and the prisoners
could fare no better-inevitable Jared
worse, because they were penned in a
narrow space and lacked the free air
of the camp. A subtle Decentralization
touched the government of the Con-
federacy itself as the war went its des-
perate course, and those who kept the
prisons felt that generalization with
the rest"
81 suppose it is conceivable
that a man would willingly nalign and
traduce his own people for commercial
ends, but this do not charge for on
the subject of the exchange of pris-
oners the historian states the case
fairly and impartially. / concede the
fact that it is the duty of the historian
to- record the truth, no matter how
painful or humiliating 1T may be, but
utterly deny the proposition that 1t is
either just or honest upon a question
so vital as this to give only one side
of the picture and utterly ignore the
other.
Upon what authority does the
historian charge that the keepers Of
the prisons in the South were demor-
allied, and, If demoralized, how so any
more than those who performed SIM
liar duty in the North? The impllca-
ton and inference from the language
have quoted is plain: and that u.s. that
in the Northern prison men died from
the rigors Of the climate, in the South
ern prisons from lack of food, from
a lack of proper sanitary precautions,
from bad treatment, aye, victims Of
that subtle Generalization which
touched the government of the Con-
federacy itself and those who
The Equality of Mortality.
lis it not little singular, according
to the historians own statement, that
although the mortality was equal in
the prisons. North and South among
substantially the same number of
prisoners, that a merciful Providence
should have allowed the baleful effect
of climatic influences to operate so
fatally in the North alone; that the
cold of winter should have had such
a deadly effect upon the men vino,
with bleeding feet and tattered gar
ments, marched and fought In the
SHOWS Of Virginia, while the heat and
languor Of Southern summer failed