The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-07-13

arms, and as birthright of their con quest, the city of Washington, and ev- cry public building within the shadow of it's capitol, every function of govern ment, and this imperishable union it. self is a fitting memorial for the men who wore the blue. But for the Con- federate soldier nothing survived to champion the valor that was spent and the cause that was lost. -
 Many years ago Gordon McCabe, speaking in the battle-crowned capitol of that ancient commonwealth, said of Virginia, that:
 "No Painted Porch is hers, like that of Athens, where, for half thousand years, the descendants of the men who had followed Miltiades to victory might trace the glories of their Marathon; no gleaming Chapelle des Invalides, with the light flaming through gorgeous win (lows on tattered flags of battle; no grand historic abbey, like that of Eng land, where hard by the last resting place of her princes and her kings sleep the great soldiers who have writ glo- rious names high upon their country's s roll with the point of their stainless swOrds.
 "Nay, none of this is hers.
 "Only the frosty stars tonight keep solemn watch and ward above the wind swept graves of those who, from PO- tomac to James, from Rapidan to Ap- pomattox, yielded up their lives that they might transmit to their children the heritage of their fathers"
 A Pre-Destined Monument
 And, inspired by these words, the greatest natural monument under south ern skies, Stone Mountain, the rock of the constitution, set by an all-know- ing God in a plain in the land of it's defenders, was dedicated to the memory of the bravest warriors in the sublimest conflict ever waged on Gods footstool. The great and noble work of carving the images of Lee and Jackson and their tattered regiments upon the face of the mountain is carrying on, not withstanding the mental and moral at titude of a people who appear to have turned their backs upon the principles of states rights and the covenants of the constitution.
 While this is a monument to the Spar tan heroism and fortitude of the south ern soldier, it is more than that. It is a monument to the cause for which he took up armS-a monument to the principles he fought to preserve. For, far greater than the record of how he fought-to preserve the inviolability of the home, the freedom of the individ- ual and the sovereignty of the state. These principles today are as vital to the north as they were to the south in the sixties, and they are as vital to the west as to the east; and, this. be- ing a monument to the men who defend- ed the true faith as embodied in the constitution, it is, therefore, fundamen- tally a monument to the constitution it. self, as it stood white and pure in all it's strength and virtue at the sound of Sumter's guns and before it had been mutilated, manhandled and outraged by time serving Opportunists, hypocrites and fanatics.
 It therefore behooves everl, lover of states rights and of the constitution to give of his hearts love many fold to the new coinage to be issued com memorative of this patriotic project, that we and each of us may have sil- yer threads in that memorial tapestry on the escarpment of the rock of the constitution.
 We come tonight reminding the peO- ple of the United States that we have never asked aught of them that when our fathers went home from Appo- mattax it was to a land more desolate and bereft than was ever swept by plague, famine, pestilence and war. Those heroes, returning half naked and penniless to the upbuilding of their southland, started life anew with but the infirm and old, the crippled and children.
 The flower, stalk and root of southern manhood were left on the bosom of old Virginia, whose sage grass waving in fratricidal strife taught the peoples how to grow in heroes blood on Fland- CTS Field. The men and women of the south were hungry; their beef cattle and work stock had been driven before the invader; the black, with his political equality as a burden and as an in- cubus, had been put upon them. While they hungered for bread, union bay onets were sent to them and venom filled books to the blacks; while our mothers boiled dirt from smokehouse floors for salt, misguided philanthropy built around my native city a cOrdon of negro universities with more en- dowment than all the white schools of the south combined. This is old Geor- gia, the home of the first state uni versity and of the first woman's col lege on earth. This to the land that gave them their presidents. And the greatest of Americans they were, even unto the last of them. the son of old Virginia, VOodrow Wilson. on whose