The Lexington dispatch. [volume] (Lexington, South Carolina) 1870-1917, 1903-06-10
AN ELOQUENT ADDRESS.
TContinued frem Page Six

tuS SIeau Aosoio
tioned-making the South from
materi.l standpoint many times rich
er than she was with her slave chat
tles and all other evidences Of wealth,
lost with the downfall of the Con-
federacy.
Aud so, Confederate Veterans, I
think that your success in the paths Of
peace is no less renown than you won
in war, and that your bearing and
your manhood and your truthfulness
and integrity in piping times of
peace have lent additional lustre to
the name crowning you upon thous-
and fields of carnage.
But what at last made you great in
war and greater still 10 peace?
It was your womer! The women
of the Confederac,! God bless them
and their names and their deeds
foreve1i
Unaided and unsupported in the
dark hours of defest, upchastened by
them in their holy ministration when
the heart grew sick with hope de-
ferred and the mantle of ditpair had
shut out from your stout hearts the
last lingering spark of trust and con-
fidence, when your bleeding hands
and gaping wounds spske responsive
to your torn and bleeding feet, when
patriotism itself had lost its power to
invest YOU longer with love of coun-
try, and lay supine and all but dead
in the agony of your surroundings,
who snatcbed your banner from the
dust, cheering you on once again to
do and die, and aided and supported
you and chastened you when she
came? Who was it that turned away
from the lighter things of earth, and
took up the burthens of the hospital
and camp, while the bright eyes OF
youth and beauty were yearning to
| toy with joys of love and pleasure!
| who soothed the wounded and dying,
red with the crimson current of bat
tie, and handled bloody wounds in
the effort to stop the ebbing tide OF
life? Who preached the Gospel of
Christ to you with the lips and heart,
while she was with her hands girding
you about with the weapons OF war,
thus teaching you how to live and
and how to die for dear native land?
The Greek mother told her son to
come back TO her with his shield OF
upon it. The Confederate mother
went forward to the scene of carnage
and placed her gallant dead upon his
shield. She followed, she was in the
wake of his army wherever he fought,
whether at Shiloh, or Missionary
Ridge, or Chicamaugs, or Spottsyl-
vsnis, or on the red lines OF Peters.
burg, she was there to take up her
brave Confederate soldier and place
him upon his shield.
All! be is psssiug away, passing
away! The bleriDg trumpet no more
rouses thousands and thousands of
those who came home. They do rest
from their It. bors with their comrades
of other days.
mo more amid the storm of battle
Shall their hearts exhalting swell y
And it is even so with the Confed-
crate women. They are passing
away, passing away. The places
which knew them will soor, too soon,
know them no more forever.
Our women have not forgotten
you, however, AID never will. 1t is
they who have kept alive the camp
fires of love and devotion to a cause
which tempted men to die for it be-
cause it was the incarnation of right
and justice and truth.
And thus the Confederate women
strives to perpetuate it, as you look
around you and see these emblems
of love snd devotion and veneration.
Who is it that comes in memorial
garb to lay with tender touch and
loving hearts these immortelles upon
tbo o,ovo ,f 6oathlasa palnr9 Who