The leader., 1903-07-08

tens OF thousands OF his felloW-cltlZenS, met
no rejoicing multitudes on the way home,
has since been sustained by no pension in
his struggle with penury and want. 1 see
the long gray line melting back into private
citizenship when the sword of Lee was ten
dered. "As some dark thunder cloud low
ers upon the horizon. marshals its battal-
ions and threatens all the landscape with
ruin, yet is found on the succeeding morn
ing, In pearls of dew on flower and blade
and grass, refreshing and identifying Gods
EARTH" so the Confederate soldier after
achieving immortal fame and presenting the
most matchless front that ever bore back
invasion, became when peace spread it's
banner Ger the land, the noblest, the safest,
the purest citizenship that ever rescued
civilization from night.
Wearisomely l see him plod his way
homeward. Finally his eye rests upon the
homestead, property all gone, in many in
stances blackened chimneys to testify how
truly war is hell,'' mot a roe of the
wilderness left on its stalk to tell where
the garden had BEEN Does he murmur :?
Does he repine? Not So my countrymen.
He took up those burdens, he met those
difficulties, the proscriptive statutes, the
era of alien mastery and dominion. Re
pressing all tendency to lawlessness, re-
straining everything that passed the bounds
of reason and prudence, curbing all passion
in his onward march, he gradually but sure
ly brought back out of chaos order, out
of confusion law, and spread
From where Potomac's waters lave
The tomb of Washington,
To Rio Grande's distant wave
Beneath the setting sum-"
the reign of benefcent laws.
1 know that Mcdonald led no grander
charge at Wagram than did Pickett at Get
tysburg, and l know that the bodies Of
dead Mississippians were found higher up
that dread slope than those of any other
State. l know that the awful shock on
Chickamauga's field is not surpassed, If it
is equaled, in the annals of tremendous and
death-like stubbornness of fighting. But,
tell you, my countrymen, that the grandest
monument that the historian shall record
as rising in perpetuation of the name and
fame of the Confederate soldier is the rec
ord that he left through the days of re-
| construction, the blessing which he gives
us today of equal sisterhood in the union
of States, with the privileges and laws and
rights our fathers left us, intact and undi-
minished.
But l want to ask just here the ques-
| ton, How far would the Confederate soldier
have gotten in that magnificent effort il 1t
had not been that he had beside him the
| inspiration of the Southern women?
Women of the South, you gave into his
hands the banner of the free-you cheered
and upheld him ON 1.-The perilous edge of
battle;' and when wounded or dying on
the tented field, in the private home, in the
hospital, you ministered to his wants, bound
up his wounds, or closed the dying eyes no
| more to see wife or friend or sacred
home - you were performing the very min
stries of the angels themselves.
| ut is a little thing to give a cup of
water, but its draught of cool refreshment
when drained by fevered lips may give a
| shock of pleasure to the frame more ex-
| quisite than when nectarian juice renews
the life of joy in happiest hours. 1t is q
| little thing to speak word of common COM
fort, which, by daily use, has almost lost
| its sense, yet on the ear of him who thought
| to die unmourned twill fall like choicest
music"
There are those listening to me today who
| have ministered the comfort that should
bring back to them the sweetest Of mem
cries. And when the war was over and the
| Confederate soldier returned, he was met
not with reproaches, but with love, sus-
tanned by confidence, guided upheld. God
has so ordained that man may meet the
brunt of some sudden storm, may live
through and master some single great crisis,
but it is woman, alone, who can wear
| through supreme crises of individual or ma
tional life, by endurance, the fortitude and
| the patience which she alone possesses.
And so In the midst of the gloom the
woman of the South rose resplendant to
/ the occasion She remembered that grief
| sanctifed makes great. What though she
stood amid the wreck, of desolated and
| dismantled homes, with the bright rel
| les of princely fortunes strewn ruthlessly
about her ; the qualities of the eternal gran
| lite were integrated into her endurance.
| What though her household penates lay
| dashed to fragments on the hearthstone,
| her idols in the eternal silence, and the
power of the despot attempted to bury
| in the grave of the slain the hopes of her
country, set its seal upon the grave, rolled
the rock upon the sepulcher and placed
| its watch. Her sublime faith has lived
to see the resurrection angel of the South
| roll back the stone from the sepulcher,
| destroy the seal, break the letters of polit.
| ical disability, shatter the bonds of indus,
trial, agricultural and commercial subor-
1 dination and raise radiant from the grave
of the old the figure of the new South to
7 stand in TRANSPORTED beauty, fronting the
deepening glories Of the twentieth century,
| like the winged god breathing from his
fight"
| She remembered that whatever was sub
FINEST in the annals of Christianity, looms
DER the ocean of time, like the Northern
| lights, more resplendent for the surround
ing shadows of relentless persecution She
recalled that whatever is most glorious in
the achievements of military heroes has beer
the triumphs of men who were Graded in
storms and schooled by adversely. She re
membered that whatever in literature is tru
ly Immortal, unyarying history proves tht