to love these simple objects? Animated by the principles, and aided by the institutions peculiar to that civilization that was at once her strength and her boast, the South, from the earliest period of her history, had dedicated to the Union the first fruits of her industry, her genius and her patriotism. In peace, with liberal and lavish hand, she poured her wealth into the treasury; in war, she bulwarked the borders of America with her body and her blood. She gave to the Union generals before whose irresistible onset the arrogant veterans of England stub bornly yielded the last foot of American soil. She furnished to the Union statesmen whose subtle craft and Godlike wisdom startled the wonder of all Europe, and extorted, even from the lips of enemies, the noblest panegyrics that ever gratified the vanity or crowned the worth of genius. She dedicated to the Union orators whose patriotic outbursts dazed even the eagle eyes of Webster, and the triumph of whose eloquent periods, thrilling still as some sweet strains furtively snatched from the symphonies of the angels, are sounding on down to eternity itself. And yet when, long-continued services ignored, benefits forgotten, glory envied and justice despised, those institutions were assailed with merciless fury, and those principles-cherished as the sweet loves of the fireside-denied! Their existence endangered! The storm bursting! Liberty languishing, and life itself imperiled! Merciful God! Was it, alas! rebellion that, "having exhausted the argument, we stood by our arms?"

Valor did not avail. Devotion met not its merited reward. Swiftly as the lightning leaps amid the roaring clouds, suddenly as the meteor falls in heaven, the splendid fabric of our civilization fell. But disaster brought no repining. Fortitude silently supplanted heroism.

1

I would add no bitterness to the tearful reflections this occasion invokes. I would speak "less in anger than in sorrow," standing here in the subdued Shekinah-light of the Master's presence. Peace, it is said, is unfolding her white wings over this distracted land. I pray that this may be true. New experiments of pacification, it is said, are being daily practiced to induce this bright angel to resume her dwelling-place in States from whose borders she has been insidiously and ruthlessly banished. I pray that they may at least be successful. Viewed from this monument, the stars and stripes may be seen floating gayly in the breeze, and, it is said, that wherever that flag is found, in whatever part of the earth the brilliant folds are flying, obedience is yielded to her authority, respect to her prowess, and veneration to her glory. God grant that it may always be so, and that injustice and oppression may never again deepen the blush of her crimson! I would say no word in opposition to that conservative spirit that seems to be the fashion of the hour. On the contrary, I would contribute whatever poor ability I possess to any efforts the administration may be pleased to make toward establishing cordial love and lasting reunion.

But I appeal to the shades of these departed heroes; I entreat these mute lips to declare, whether, in the hasty declarations of the ambitious, the shameful protestations of the venal, or the eager recantations of the infamous, there be any whose extravagant self-abasement has brought shame and disgrace upon these principles whose everlasting truth has been sealed with the blood of so many patriot-martyrs! If there be anywhere such a wretch, burnished by the beams of our Southern sun, let

him know that while the South is pacific, she loathes apostasy. That while today she is true, she scorns the imputation that yesterday she was false. That while in all her borders, the Union has no enemy, and treason no friend, the loyal South in her inner, deeper, holier life, when her spirit struggles and her tears fall, is unalterably attached to the principles and men of '61, and finds sweetest consolations to her sorrowing patriotism in strewing the first blossoms of spring over the mounds of the fallen ones who "wore the grey." Ah! Holy woman! Thy face sweetly flushing; thy white breast softly falling; thy pure body noiselessly gliding; grace nestling in thy fragile fingers; balmy incense breathing in thy parted lips; gentle love hiding in thy shining eyes, thine! Thine the office!-Judge Howard Van Epps.

[Extract from an address delivered in Atlanta on Memorial Day, April 26, 1877.]

THE CONFEDERATE SOLDIERS' HOME.

But, Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, one of the strongest reasons for accepting this home lies in the fact that it will reach a class of needy soldiers for whom no provision at all is now made. We pension those who lost a limb or were permanently disabled in the war. But, sir, what shall we say of that other soldier, who fought in the thickest of the battle; who braved every danger, but by a merciful Providence was protected from the missiles of destruction? Was he less heroic than his more unfortunate comrade who was smitten? Did he not serve his country as well?

And now that the fortune of the busy crowding world -more cruel to him than the fortune of war-has stricken him down, shall Georgia extend him no helping hand? Nay, more, shall she refuse to accept what other hearts and hands have built and now proffer her in fee simple, free of cost, conditioned only to maintain those needy few who may be driven to seek its shelter from the storms of life? Let us by our votes answer no, forever

no.

Georgia can give no service pension to the brave men who fought for her. She can not compensate them with an equivalent for their services. Not all the "wealth of Ormus and of Ind" would suffice for that. But Georgia can and should shelter the old and needy who served her in her day of extremity.

Yonder is the home, a magnificent property, an elegant building ready to welcome through its open doors the heroes for whose refuge it was built. It represents no millionaire's bounty. No tax-gatherer forced that money from unwilling hands. The rich, the poor, the high, the low, the old, the young, men, women and children, contributed of their means to that sacred fund. The magic pen of Grady touched the great heart of the people, and their limited treasures poured forth as freely as the waters flowed from the smitten rock of the desert.

Pericles says that the highest duty a nation owes to its heroic dead is to raise monuments to their memory. So well have the loving women of the South labored in that noble cause, that almost every city and town and village in our land boasts a marble shaft pointing from earth toward heaven in honor of their dead fathers and brothers and husbands and sons and lovers. Let us to-day announce

a kindred sentiment to that of this great Athenian statesman, and proclaim that the highest duty a nation owes to its living herbes, the comrades in arms, of its heroic dead, is to shelter, comfort and protect them in their declining years. "Age and want! Oh, ill-matched pair!" If there is one temporal blessing for which, above all others, I would pray to heaven, it is that I may be saved from a poverty-stricken old age. In youth, when hope is buoyant, we can smile at fortune's frowns. In the strength of manhood we can dare fortune to its worst. But when the infirmities of age come upon us. when the joints stiffen and the eyes grow dim, and the mind loses its firm grasp on thought, then indeed we are to be pitied, if in poverty and want and loneliness we walk on the "silent solemn shore of that vast ocean we must sail so soon."-Wm. H. Fleming.

[Extract from speech delivered in the Legislature of Georgia in support of the Soldiers' Home bill.]

JOHNSTON AND LEE.

Many have been the eulogies upon the Army of Northern Virginia. Poets have sung, and historians have written, and orators have spoken of its deeds of heroism and of valor, but the story of the other army can also furnish a theme for the poet, and the historian, and the orator. No grander epic in martial story can ever be anthemed than the march of the Army of Tennessee from Missionary Ridge to Atlanta. It is the story of many hard fought battles-Ringgold, Dalton, Calhoun, Resaca, Rome, New Hope Church, Marietta, Kennesaw; at which last