The Grenada sentinel. [volume] (Grenada, Miss.) 1868-1955, 1909-06-18
S. D. lee MONUMENT
PRESENTED BY GEN. EVANS;
ACCEPTED By GEN. GRANT.
OccasionSDrew Together Thousands
Of People at vicksburg-Sev-
eral Patriotic Addresses.

Vicksburg, Miss.-The scene Of the
Confederate Veterans reunion was
transferred from Memphis to Vicksburg
Friday, and several thousand of the old
soldiers who followed Lee in the sixties
witnessed the unwilling of the heroic
statue to- Gen. Stephen Dill Lee. The
splendid monument stands in the Ma
tional Park, upon the exact spot from
which Gen. Lee directed the movements
! of his troops, during the siege of Vicks-
burg. It was. the ~favorite spot in the
hearSS0fs Gen. Lee, who. until his death,
was commandment of the park and presi-
dent of the park commission.
Vicksburg had been preparing for the
dedication for months. The town was
gaily deesrated switi flags and bunting,
the Stars and Bars and the Stars and
Stripes always entwined.
Maj. Gen. Frederick Dent Grant, com-
mandant of the department of the lakes,
United States army, accompanied by
Mrs. Grant and his staff, with Col. Hen
ry Watterson, of Louisville, arrived
Thursday night. Gen. Clement A. Ev-
ans and his staff reached here Friday
morning. The parade formed at 2 p. M.
and, headed by Gen. Grant and al es-
cert of United States cavalry, proceed
ed to the National Park.
The Warren Light Artillery fired a
generals salute, and then Col. Henry
Watterson called the assembly to order.
The aged editor was evidently suffering
from the intense heat, but his eyes
beamed and his voice rang out clearly,
as he briefly outlined the purpose of the
meeting. He took for his subject "The
Reunited Sections"
Upon taking the chair as presiding Of
ficer, Mr.. Watterson said:
Standing by the Father of Waters,
let me first give thanks to God that,
from the Falls of st. Anthony to the
Gulf of Mexico it flows through an I'M
broken succession of American states;
at once a chain and an emblem of per-
petual union between the North and the
South.
1t was to gain this outlet to the sea
that we acquired the Louisianas of
France. 1t was to keep it open that the
yeomen of the great Northwest took
the field. The purpose to close it proved
an error of far-reaching magnitude; but
if it be true, as Gibbon tells us, that
History is little more than the regis
ter of the crimes, follies and misfor-
tunes of mankind" what must not all
of US nave to answer for when reason
comes to the final disposition of the facts
of a conflict which even now battles
philosophy; because the South, fore
to defeat, risked all, and had
to lose; the wonder being,
and the glory, that against such odds
the self-confient but vanquished and van
ished Confederacy was able to hold out
so long.
Those of us who survive that dread
ordeal are old men now, and each an
nual roll call brings yet fewer of us to-
Presently there will remain
among the living not one who fought on
either side. Happy those who have been
spared to look upon a land never again
to be wet by fraternal blood, and a peo-
pie reunited forever in hand and heart.
The mystic chords of memory, stretch
ing from every battlefield and patriotic
grave to every living heart and hearth
touched long ago by "the angels
of our better nature" swell at last the
universal chorus of the Union; the mem
ory of deeds of kindness and of valor
done; of a common blood and race; for,
impossible as the line of fire seemed, we
were one people then, and we are ono |
people now, the wan of sections a mutual
and a blessed heritage.
After the unwilling of the statue, Mr..
as a prelude to the introduce
lion of Lieut.. Gen. Clement A. Evans,
who presented it, in the name of the
Veterans, and Maj. Gen.
Frederick D. Grant, who accepted it on
behalf of the government and the army,
md the Hon. George R. Peck, who de-
ivered the grafton, said:.
81 have declared that we are n peo-
Die. No air lines, nor water lines, nor
sothermal lines, separate us into geo.
fragments, all the good on this
side. all the bad on that. The war end
ID nearly fifty years ago. He who
kinks there are issues left outstanding
the days of secession and slavery
must have been dwelling in a rut of
distorted %fancies, nor have travelled much
1eyond the shadow of his W roof tree.
mississippi and Massachusetts, arc
convertible terms. Given the same con-
Iition, their people would be the same
and would do the same. During the
thirty years Immediately preceding the
war OF sections three at least of Missis-
'ippi's most popular and celebrated pub
lie men came here from the North-Rob-
srt j. Walker, born and reared in Penn
s~ylvania; John A. Quitman, born and
reared in New York, and Sergt. S. Prem
tiss, born and reared In the State OF
IT am about to present you in sue
session Lieut.. Gen. Clement Anselm Ev-
ans, commander-in-chief of Confederate
Veterans; Maj. Gen. Frederick Dent
Grant, of the army of the United States,