The Columbus dispatch. (Columbus, Miss.) 19??-1922, 1921-10-09

full slaves worked as regularly as ever, knowing
that the results of their labor went to sustain the
army that was fighting against the army of the
abotionists.
But they were set free, and no one desires to
see them again enslaved. The negroes of slave
days are respected wherever they go but they
are rapidly passing away; and when they are
gone they will be missed; the negroes Of the
Ipresent lack great many of the finer elements
possessed by the black folks Of the ante-bellum
days.
The South was not successful in its war for
secession nor does ii now wish to secede but for
four years it maintained one of the most heroic
lstruggles the world ever witnessed Full credit
has never been given the South, and he who writes
an impartial history of the war will be praised by
| the descendants of the Confederate heroes The
Isolders fought with the determination of men
iwho, knowing their cause to be Just and right,
looked upon death as a trivial thing compared to
! the yielding of principle The surrender was
brought about not through inferior generalship
Or lack of courage on the part of the soldiers, but
by overwhelming numbers of men on the other
side, the federal government being in position
to hire the scum of Europes citizens to take up
arms against the Confederacy-not for principle
or patrotsm-but for $l3 month.
The Southern women played an important part
in that memorable struggle They had implicit
faith in the Confederate army, and they listened
to the din of battle with hopeful hearts never
doubling for moment that the followers Of Lee
would ultimately triumph. When their beloved
dead were brought home they consigned them to
soldiers grave, sacrificing everything for the Con-
federate cause, and amid their tears of grief, en-
couraged the survivors to fight on. They even
sold their long braids of hair, the proceeds going
to sustain the army in the field; and when at last
the crash came, and the Confederacy was broken
in pieces, and the brave soldiers returned, finding
their homes in ashes, and their fields in weeds
those noble women helped them to build up their
aud hnln IN hpaTs thp
reverses that they had suffered. The civil war
may be forgotten; revolutions may deluge the
whole earth in blood; but the sublime deeds OF
those heroic Southern women will never be eff
faced from the worlds history. 1t is story of
devotion and sacrifice unparalleled.
1t was quite a contrast, those two armies re-
turning home after the war was over One was
flushed with victory and was greeted with praise
and enthusiasm by their kinsmen as they swept
through the streets Of the National Capital on
parade. The other with broken batalons, re-
turning home by twos and threes wherever they
happened to be when their command surrendered /
their banner, which they had followed in many /
A we'll fought battle, had been traied in the dust
by a victorious foe. One army returned to homes !,
that were uninjured by the confict the other ,
inding the country laid waste by the horrors of
civil war and their fortunes gone But all this
they bore with that fortitude and cheerfulnesS I
that makes nations great. The wonderful adj ,
of the Southland in large measure T
the whole nation at the present time-is due to
those very men who went to their homes in the I
hour of defeat and allowed no obstacle to over
come them in their determination to repair their
lismantled estates.
More than fifty years have elapsed since that
day at AppomattoX where the Con- :
federacy ended. That day is one OF the most -
in our history, for there terminated
)ne of the bloodiest struggles that occurred
between armed men. AppomattoX said the Union {
would never be dissolved and sounded the death -
Ine of the social life of the Old South-that life !
which was the admiration of the world for so :
many years. There was to be an Old South no
onger; it was to be called the New South The
Did South had retired from the theater of action {
md the curtain rung down upon her forever. |
After the war there was an inpouring of peo-
Die and capital to develop the country laid waste
~ the struggle. It soon took the place of the old
system; new era was on. The history Of the
Did South is as a romance, and those idealiStic |
lines read like tale that is told, verifying the
statement that truth is stranger than fiction
The Old South was the bulwark of tie nation
She established the United States Government so
irmly that she herself cQul9 not tear il down
She Christianzed the negro race, and gave to it
he only civilization II possesses Other coun-
ries said she would not fight, that the Southern
RS led life Of luxury and could soon be over
ONE; but from the first shot at Fort Srmpter
Until the smoke Of the last charge rolled awav
he soldiers OF the South displayed courage. valor
uu loEtltuue OF IS very higheSt type. Their
'ames will go down in history with those of the
nen who fought with Leondas at Thermopylae
ever to be erased from the scroll of fame; and
s was the case with LeCnidas and his men, 'the
'reater glory is 10 the vanquished" The Con- |
ederate soldiers had no honors given them. save
he approval of their own c0nsciences and the
1ve of their countrymen They need no more:
hey ask no more; that is sufficient
Out Of fifteen men who held the office of pres
dent before the war. the Old South produced
fCoBtirpcj ,,, pare Fo,- S,l fl.., II