The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-06-08


 union in Birmingham June g. 10 and H., songs and music at intervals during each day of the reunion
 This is we'll. It is good, indeed, and just like our dear Daughters, for they are always doing something and study ing up new things to enliven our declin- ing days bring gladness to our old hearts and make us love them more and more. However, I saw In a St. Louis paper a few days ago that these dear Daughters of this choir intended at the Birmingham reunion to have the original words of Dixie discarded and new lines substi- tuted in lieu thereof. These new lines, from the gifted pen of one of our Daughters, it seems, was published by this St. Louis paper, with a statement from one lone Confederate Veteran in- dorsng the proposition. These lines were pretty. They had the very soul of poetry, perhaps, but the song was not Dixie. There is but one Dixie. There can be but one Dixie, and that is the Dixie that Confederate soldiers sang from 1861 to looos WHSU Oui NOlNcS were ltSOudHl anu full of melody, in the strength and vigor of our youth and young manhood; and 1t is the same Dixie we sing today, with tear-dimmed eyes and the memories of the dear dead days that are gone, still living In our hearts, albeit our limbs are trembling in age, and our voices are feeble and cracked like broken harp.
 Tt a. year of the war. A Confederate force was drawn up in line of battle in an edge of timber and beyond an open field, some half mile distant, in stretch of trees, was the enemy. Far to the ex- treme right of our line regiment was stationed to hold a strong strategic posi- ton. Far down the gray line, to the left from its extremest point. floating out upon the balmy summer afternoon air, sweet and inspiring music could be heard. every man on the line was singing Dixie, gun in hand waiting for the enemy-sing- ing Dixie. Directly in front of this reg iment, on the extreme right, in a point of the woods occupied by the enemy, a white puff of smoke was seen. shell came hurting across the field. It fell and exploded right in the ranks of this regiment. One man staggered forward. turned half around and fell. There was a dabbe of blood on the green grass. white face upturned to the blue sky, gasp and soul had gone out into the awful hush of eternity. The last trem- bling words that fell from the lips of that man was a line of Dixie, our Dixie. At that same hour. in far away Texas home. with hundreds of miles of forest and field and stream betwixt, a young mother sat crooning a song to the baby whose father lay dead. and the song she sang was Dixie. that same Dixie
 Is not this dear old song sacred to us? A thousand times a thousand hallowed memories cluster about it. and it is as much a part of the blessed memories of the past: memories that are our only heritage now, are the sufferings and sorrows we endured, the perils we faced. whatever of glory we achieved. Think of the unnumbered, unmarked graves from one end of our southland to the other, where are sleeping those heroes of f. the gray who died on the fields of honor, or In the hospitals, of wounds or disease. and remember that they sang Dixie. and that Dixie, the Dixie they. sang, Is theirs. You would not take from the sacred dead a single star of glory or wreath of honor that is theirs. Then why desire to take this poor, little old song they loved so well, pitiful fin its paucity of literary merit we grant you, yet richer in It's worth to us than ever poet dreamed or minstrel sang in all the ages?
 P Dear Daughters. you don't know. you cannot know, how you hurt us; how you i fill our old hearts with sadness, when you seek to take from us the Dixie we love, the Dixie that has been ours all these years the Dixie each one of us wants sung over our open grave when we are being put away forever. At the most, not one of us has many years to live now, and do not mar these few remaining days, in your mistaken zeal and kind- ness by taking from us this priceless legacy-Dixie-that mingled its melody and It's words with the roar of battle. | with the sighs of pain of the dying and the wounded, with the tears of the sur vivors as we filled the long trenches with the bodies of our comrades gone to return no more.
 When Moses died we read in scriptures he was buried in the mountains that overlook from distance the land of Judea, and no man to this day knows where his grave is. We can well think and believe that the angels of heaven buried him. When the last Confederate dies when not a comrade-not one-is left to shed a tear or drop flower on that last. foriorn grave. the angels of earth. our dear Daughters. will bury him. and let the anthem. as he Is tenderly and tearfully laid away be Dixie our Dixie.
 CHARLES l.. MARTIN.
 Dallas Tex June G. 190S