The article below was first published in Nashville, Tennessee, several years after the War for Southern Independence. It appeared in the "THE MIDLAND METHODIST,' an official journal of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, and was reprinted in the 1910 Book, HISTORIC SOUTHERN MONUMENTS: REPRESENTATIVE MEMORIALS OF THE HEROIC DEAD OF THE SOUTHERN CONFEDERACY, compiled by Mrs. B. A. C. Emerson.
Little, indeed, must be the soul that grows morbid with misgivings and with malice at the reunion of the grizzled veterans of the cause. Let these old battlescarred heroes have their times of revived associations and happy reminiscences. Let them march together on crutches and wooden legs, with empty sleeves dangling at their shoulders, and an occasional green patch over an eyeless socket. Let them talk of thrilling days gone by in bivouac and on battlefield. Let them compare notes of Bull Run and Chancellorsville and Chickamauga and Gettysburg. They suffered enough, and showed courage enough in those perilous days to entitle them to all of the consolation they can get now out of stirring memories.
Small the soul and mean the heart that charges these valiant men with treasonable principles. They represent the flower of the Southern manhood—as true and brave a type as breathes the air of American freedom. . . . The soldiers of the South are as loyal as any citizen of the land. Having startled the whole world with an intrepidity of spirit, a dauntlessness of daring, a brilliancy of execution, and an almost marvelous capacity of endurance in the face of overwhelming forces, they surrendered in honor, and have been living through these years in a loyal submissiveness not less heroic than their many successes which would have kindled a Napoleon's pride.
We of the South are proud of the records of those men who shouted about Lee and Jackson and Johnston and Gordon in those days gone by. We are proud of their silent comrades who sleep in unmarked graves and in unkept cities of the dead. Some of us who were entirely too little to know anything about those dreadful days of war, have read the story with patriotic pride, and we rejoice to know that honor to the memory of the brave soldiers of our sunny South does not mean dishonor to a reunited country.
—THE MIDLAND METHODIST
THE CONFEDERATES
Small the soul and mean the heart that charges these valiant men with treasonable principles. They represent the flower of the Southern manhood—as true and brave a type as breathes the air of American freedom. . . . The soldiers of the South are as loyal as any citizen of the land. Having startled the whole world with an intrepidity of spirit, a dauntlessness of daring, a brilliancy of execution, and an almost marvelous capacity of endurance in the face of overwhelming forces, they surrendered in honor, and have been living through these years in a loyal submissiveness not less heroic than their many successes which would have kindled a Napoleon's pride.
We of the South are proud of the records of those men who shouted about Lee and Jackson and Johnston and Gordon in those days gone by. We are proud of their silent comrades who sleep in unmarked graves and in unkept cities of the dead. Some of us who were entirely too little to know anything about those dreadful days of war, have read the story with patriotic pride, and we rejoice to know that honor to the memory of the brave soldiers of our sunny South does not mean dishonor to a reunited country.
—THE MIDLAND METHODIST
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