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CONFEDERATE MEMORIAE DAY.A Largo Turnout Tuesday Evening1 and an Eloquent Address by J.N. Liggett, Esq.Confederate Memorial Day was observed in Harrisonburg Tuesday evening under the auspices of the Ladies’ Memorial Association. The observance was of a purely local nature and no effort had been made to attract a crowd from elsewhere. The turnout of our own people was large, however, and they seemed thoroughly imbued with the spirit of reverence and affection for the dead.Capt. B. G. Patterson was marshal of the procession, which included the Harrisonburg Guards, members of the Me” morial Association, Daughters of the Confederacy, Confederate Veterans, and citizens and children bearing flowers— all led by the “Kid” Band.The exercises at the cemetery were opened with an eloquent prayer by Rev. Geo. E. Shuey, after which Mr. J. N. Liggett, the orator of the day, was introduced. His address was a model of literary excellence and abounded in evidences of scholarly culture, appealing alike to the finer intellectual perception and the emotions of his audience. We take pleasure in reproducing it in full.— He said:Ladies of the Memorial Association,Soldier8) Ladies and Gentlemen—Patriotism, just as religion, has its fanes, its sanctuaries, and its altars, and the same principle of sympathy which constrains the Christian pilgrim to traverse burning desert sands and climb rugged. mounttain passes to prostrate himself at the Mount of Crucifixion, to wander about Bethany and all the sacred spots hallowed by the footprints of our Savior, animates the surviving comrades, kinsmen and friends of the Confederate hero, to gather around his grave and consecrate a day to his memory. This emotional sentiment constitutes the poetry of man’s moral nature, vibrating through all the avenues of his .soul, filling his mind with the richest pictures of loveliness, and lifting his aspiration from the probations of earth to the beatific visions of immortality.This occasion suggests an epoch in the history of our country fraught with momentous events, wherein was enacted a most startling and picturesque tragedy. A continent the stage; three millions of combatants, with flashing swords, whizzing minnies and booming cannon, the actors; the catastrophe death and the fall of the most stately political edifices ever erected by the wisdom of man.— We are here to lay our offerings on the graves of our heroes in that strife, and in the contemplation of their lives of sacrifice and deaths of glory, study lessons of patriotic duty, and catch inspiration toMffie performance of the obligations which devolve on us as citizens of a Commonwealth which from the day when Washington took command of the continental army until Lee tendered hissword in defence of his native State, stood pre-eminent in sagacious statesmanship and military prowess among the colonies and States of the American Union. To maintain this prestige and preserve untarnished the principles of justice on which free institutions are based, as he understood them, the Confederate soldier engaged in the bloody strife, lasting from the capture of Fort Sumter to the surrender at Appomattox, which transformed the Southern States from smiling gardens of beauty into dreary wastes, blasted under the sirocco of war’s desolation.With the pseans of freedom rolling down a century of time, filling all our mountains, hills, and verdant slopes with their echo, it would be strange, indeed, if the people of this great Valley were not especiully affected by patriotic reminiscences. To yonder blue mountains in the troublous days of the first Revolution, in the darkest hour of his distress, the Father of his Country pointed as the last citadel where liberty should erect her standard and his army confront the foe. Before the drums beat to arms in the late fratricidal contest, John* Letcher, the great war Governor, was our Representative in thehalls of the Federal Congress. It was Governor James McDowell who preceded him, who made the great plea for peace and a perpetual Union, in the debate on the ocmpromise measures which well nigh silenced the bitterness of faction. Oft and again down these highways the Confederate legions tramped in “Stonewall Jackson’s way.” We can almost spy from here the spot where the chivalrous Ashby fell; an hour’s drive will carry us to the battle fields of Cross Keys and Port Republic, and at Lexington sleep all that is mortal of Jackson and Lee.If these mute soldiers’ slabs could speak, what a story of fierce wrestling, sorrowful heart-rending, and desolations, would they not rehearse!. And yet, with the war clouds rolling dun, her landscapes wreathed in flames, the corses of her soldiers strewing the ground, and sad-eyed women and startled children standing among the cinders of their homes, this great Valley still maintained an aesthetic power.Her very weeds were beautiful.Her waste more rich than other climes’ fertility ;Her wreck a glory, and her ruin graced With an immaculate charm that could not beeffaced. ?We are not here to discuss the mistakes or the blunders of political diplomacies and excited faction which precipitated the schism between governments whose destinies appeared blended by the most pathetic and patriotic trials and dangers, and whose common record from Dorchester Heights and the Declaration of Colonial Independence blazedwith a flame of glory. It is fitting just*to say that the action of the South in seceding from the Federal Union was the development of an intense protest against the absorption into Federal corporate power of rights appertaining to State sovereignty and independence under constitutional pact, and it is but fair here, too, to say that not until the clash of arms had occurred, and an army of coercion had been called for the invasion of the South, nor until she hadvainly endeavored to placate the difficulties, did Virginia cast her fortunes*with the seceding States. If in the philosophy of a self-serving diplomacy this was wrong, still the imperative moral t j sense of humanity must saction the act. But if the incipiency of the war was anomalous the renewal of peaceful relations after its conclusion was no less so, for except in the abolition of the peculiar institution which English and Northern cupidity had fastened on the South, the seceding States, after passingthrough the crucible of reconstruction, contracted new obligations with the Federal government, whereby a perfected afresh under an amended constitution, in the endeavor to achieve a destiny■commensurate to the demands of a free people.That our institutions should have suffered such earthquake shocks and still survive, can only be explained from the vigorous nature of their organism.— Here political, civil, and religious liberty was protected by the safeguards of written covenant, and not such a patchwork of declaration as was elaborated from Magna Charta, the petition of right, custom, and coerced judicial opinions, which constitute the boasted liberty of the Englishman, and which were but the deceitful concessions of kingly grace, never designed to be permanent, the reflection of his minions or the utterances of frenzied and irresponsible faction, and which, though they may have partially asserted great truths, wanted legitimacy in absence of endorsement and emanation from the electoral power of the people.In this contest between the States there was no disagreement as to the original rights of men, but only as to the modes through which they should be preserved. And above all the storm, confusion, and desolation of the furious strife, freedom in its grandest proportions stood erect, stainless and perfect, worshipped and bowed before by the boys who wore the blue and they who wore the gray, as the symbol of hope for all alike in happy homes, when the war-drums throbbed no longer, and the battle flags be furled under the genial rays of the star of peace.We may not dwell on this, but recognizing present amity and one flag, resume a reflection on the character of the men who against four-fold odds, under blazing suns and freezing snows, ragged, barefoot, and ofttimes starving, through pestilential prison houses and the fierce carnival of blood, rallied around the bannrr of the Southern cross.We institute no invidious comparison thus with the Federal soldier. Of that class native to American soil, he fought for an ideal of liberty, as it was taught him and blended its vitality with a perpetual union of the States. Chivalrously he obeyed orders, and we concede his gallantry. Of the foreign class, not to the manner born, who marched into service only for a price—they fought, perchance, too, and the laborer was worthy of his hire—and both for conquest.The Confederate soldier was of another grade and style. He took up arms in defense of his hearthstone and the loved ones in his home, happy and charming as people only can be in this beautiful land of the South. He estimated freedom could exist under a State government as perfectly as under a Federal Union.The men 8 sibi eon sail recti he carried with him under all the vicissitudes of tedious inarch, weary camp-life, and fiercest battle-crash. His defiance was to invasion, and he never had the desire to innovate the rights of others. His hope and effort was to win, yet the prospect of defeat did not intimidate him.— His intent was to do his duty, regardless of results. To him life was but the way of dying; death was but the gate of life.He knew that the earth itself was on probation, and that individuals, creeds, dynasties, and nations must undergo the ordeal of suffering—that there were many defeats cheequering the pathways, but yet in the vista of the future thestar of ultimate triumph shone with*effulgence above all the calamities and oppressions surrounding the travel-stained wanderer in his pilgrimage.. Whether he was to be a victim or a■*Kvictor in the cause of truth was a mystery, but that truth crushed to earth would rise again he knew; and he staked his life for the final triumph, whenever in the order of God’s providence that might come.In contrast with the military material of all the armies of all other nations, as a voluntary, intelligent actor, unaffected by pelf, undriven by force and stimulated only by moral principle, the Confederate soldier stands alone. No language is rich enough to speak his epitaph, no marbles pure enough to record his fame. As we remember his bold and gallant tread when he tore from the embraces of the loved ones under the old roof-tree, buoyant and brave, tender and true, we think of him now the exemplar of the noblest type of manhood; as we remember him shot down in the vanguard of danger, borne back to his country graveyard, or lying bleaching on the Bcarred battle ground, he is still to us a blessed martyr. The Federal soldier was brave, but the Confederate soldier was sublime.At this point the speaker digressed in a description of two Confederate soldiers, each in his own way exemplifying patriotism of the highest type. The one was an humble member of the Brock’s Gap Rifles shot down at his hearthstone by Sheridan’s men. He was so poor as not to possess the necessities of life and was politically a cypher. He had no stake by any possibility in the result of the war. Whichever side won, he was still poverty-stricken and a political nonentity. Yet Virginia was the land of his birth—the home of his associations— and he chose to be shot to death rather than desert the colours of his own people. The other instance cited of deep devotion to the Southern cause was Charles Broadway Rouss. More than any one man, or syndicate of men, he has manifested charities which clusteriabout a heart. He has dispensed thousands of dollars in gifts to the South and in memorials to the Confederatedead, and nearly a quarter of a million is now his pledge toward the erection of a Confederate Battle Abbey. With uncovered head I salute this blind Confederate soldier-philanthropist, for his poor eyes have long been closed to the colour of his old gray uniform and the tatters of his old battle-flag.But I forbear. Except for conformity to custom, indeed, silence with bowed head and prayerful hearts would more accord with the occasion than my inadequate utterances. I shall leave you to the more pleasant task of scattering your flowers, and then again this cemetery will be shrouded in solitude with the ladies of this Memorial Association on watch and ward. Their constant care in the past, their affectionate solicitude in the present, assign them precedence above all others in this ceremonial.of Men alleviai —a po gale, tl pitals,the SbA p angels pitals; ots wh deathl have t son, ai could tenderLaslsepulcfaith.wouncsolingceivinipoor, the ar to a p,Theme no memo the se the sa desigr the dtcypref cast tiaway when shall 1sweet“HWilAftdiers’ and tl round and 1 and kWiibaledtitiesfromAccago,bounlt;perso and *half t risonl farms other same It phom beyoi the c ginia ed tc tain.other the n West comj: nicat syste PortVa.,Va. two ] 100 n Du trout ite ] Dry Run sucecAs of M Sprii serio moniat M Ar siblypie a sens* sinki thatThe dows at o noise by r Somi to tb vibrc time telep felt : mom hous and'. outcto hiof tlany occu sectithe overReitingJ.for sThe greatest of English Laureates has evolved from his fancy a Dream ok Fair Women. Iphagenia, Jeptha’s Daughter, Cleopatra, Joan of Arc, the stately Eliz-, abeth, float through the chambers of his brain, personifying their distinctive traits of character. The pictures could nqt but be fascinating, embellished asthey are with the frame work of his ex-mg.Tbglari and ; take:suitgottetoba'we vrobbmayAteartlsonsstoretie.“ Tbeontlt;interearmW(furnithebattl like 1 the cThof thval o bene:Th Mill, to LiA mnKThfrominter ion, i clusr at retFron
Newspaper Details
Harrisonburg Rockingham Register
Harrisonburg, Virginia, US
Fri, Jun 04, 1897
Page 2
Full Page
Clipped by
Anonymous
VA, USA 23 Jan 2022
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