deep letters cut away down into the stone body of the monument, which stands sentinel by day and by night at the west gate of your beautiful Capitol Square, the courage and daring of this command on that day. In a public building overlooking the same square, is a presentment of the youth who perished there. His name I am forbidden to utter to-day in these exercises, as thousands of others equally brave, equally deserving to be named here, might challenge the record as incomplete, since it spoke less than the whole truth. Bethel was the private soldiers' fight and victory. In the years of war which followed this splendid exhibition of bravery, the soldiers of North Carolina acquitted themselves in noble fashion and achieved imperishable renown.

Good tempered and calm, they were self-restrained-obedient to those in authority, not given to complaining, not exacting of those who were set over them. They fought well, meanwhile they were perfected in all the requirements of the service.

They attained precision of movement, rapidity in covering ground, capacity to endure fatigue and an excellence in sustaining long marches which was the admiration of the army.

The greatest accomplishment in soldiers next to courage, is a high power of locomotion.

When Alexander the Great complained of his illustrious master for having exposed philosophy to the knowledge of the vulgar, he uttered a sentiment common to antiquity, and in complete unison with the spirit of his age.

The murmuring multitude have during a hundred years invaded the domain of exclusive rights. Exclusion is doomed. The people have conquered. Education which in its complete analysis is the knowledge of the world's past, its storied past, the achievements and resources of its civilization, its advances and recessions, its toilsome climb is now as completely the birth-right of the citizen as is personal security, personal liberty and private property.

To the full and equal participation of the people of our State in all the rights and privileges which constitutions and statutes assure to the citizen is due in a measure the unanimous decision in 1861 to make common cause with the South, and the heroic determination with which that decision was upheld.

When the true and faithful account of the war is written, there will be accorded to the private soldier of North Carolina a full share

of every enduring virtue, great quality, persistent courage which has distinguished soldiers since history emerged from fable.

The limitations imposed upon us by the proprieties of this occasion will not be overstepped if we say these soldiers rose to their highest and most honorable estate perhaps in the campaign which began in the tangled forest near the Rapidan in the early days of May, 1864. The sweet breath of the wind came up from the deserted chambers of the South. The soldiers by their experience and sound sense penetrated through all disguise, all strategy-they knew the supreme moment had come-that supreme moment with all its agony and strain, and blood was drawn out full three months. Never was the peril of an army more constant, never marched nor fought nor slept nor hungered nor prayed men in arms to whom disaster might prove more irreparable. The private soldiers were conscious of all this while it was passing.

Never did the rank and file of an army hold a heavier share in the anxieties, the "fearful looking for" of their commanders.

There are occasions in the experience of regiments, brigades and armies, when they rise superior to themselves, when the enemy, astounded by their audacity, stand at attention and applaud the oncoming host.

In that epic campaign, Gideon, Sampson, Barak and David were outdone.

Once in the supreme crisis of a great battle, when the earth trembled like a heated oven, and the battalion hesitated, a private soldier of well earned renown, appealed to them to go forward and strike home for their cause. Persisting in his appeal, he said: “They that

love God go forward."

Every human virtue was repeated during that struggle.

The glimpse mercifully given us of the Chevalier Bayard constituting the rear guard of his army, done to death by a great stoneurging his squire to take care of his life for the morrow, receiving the last rites of our Holy Religion at the hands of his courier, was equalled and equalled again by ragged North Carolina privates.

The zeal which impelled the men of the Crusades in their mission to redeem the Holy Sepulchre, was not more fiery than the Divine intoxication which moved the spirits of our soldiery.

If in the midst of war these men wrought well, how shall we portray them since peace, troubled peace, came back to our distracted State.

66 In every peril, in every tumultuous assembly
They have demanded the regular order,
And striven to repair the ravages

Inflicted by the cruel surgery of war."

The Band of Patriots who made the first resistance to that construction of the Constitution of the United States, and the laws thereunder, which would exalt the powers of the general government and restrain the powers of the State, understood well what was involved in the issue. Upon this issue and upon the unseen foundation beneath it, the war was fought.

We lost. Philosophers do not repine over the inevitable. They are content after acting well their parts, to submit to the will of God. When the Governor of Mississippi was arrested in the executive office, on a warrant issued by a United States Commissioner, who held his appointment at the hands of a Federal Judge-the Revolution was complete.

Charles Dickens in one of those pathetic creations in the domain of romance, the delight of his contemporaries and the admiration of this age, represents the early Christians as escaping from their persecutors into the Catacombs of Rome. Their hiding place having been discovered, the cruel soldiery murder the fathers and mothers in the presence of their children, who in the transports of feeling, rush towards the murderers, crying aloud:

"We are Christians."

Those of us who in our very hearts believed in the justice of the cause for which our comrades less fortunate but more happy than ourselves perished, though abandoned by hope, are Confederates still.

The memory of those days grows more tender year upon year. My countrymen preserve the scraps. Gather up the fragments that nothing be lost.

Incidents of General T. J. Jackson.

309

[From the Richmond, Va., Times, January 23, 1898.]

GENERAL T. J. ("STONEWALL") JACKSON.

Incidents in the Remarkable Career of the Great Soldier.

BY GENERAL DABNEY H. MAURY.

He Made a Poor Impression When he First Arrived at West Point-A Second in a Duel-He Obeyed Orders at Great Cost.

Men will never cease to wonder at the character and history of General Thomas Jonathan Jackson. No other man in history can. be likened to him. He has oftener been compared with Oliver Cromwell than with any other great soldier. But Cromwell was a great statesman, who ruled his people with far-reaching wisdom. We have no evidence that Jackson can be likened to Cromwell in this, but would be inclined to pronounce Jackson a warrior, pure and simple, devoid of any great strategic capacity, as he seemed to be of good fellowship, humorous inclinations or any degree of tenderness. Four years of incarceration together at West Point and subsequent service together in the armies of the United States and Confederate States gave me as good opportunities of estimating the mind and the nature of Stonewall Jackson as any man has ever enjoyed. I believe Jackson was as fond of me as he ever was of any man of our times. It was for his wife to waken and nurture, and since his death to disclose to the world the deep tenderness of that wonderful character, a tenderness never before suspected by any human being to exist.

In the life and letters of Stonewall Jackson, published by her, are revelations of affectionate gentleness unknown to any but to her. The world owes her untold gratitude for this work, so beautifully accomplished that it will be a classic as long as the English language shall be known.

JACKSON AT WEST POINT.

I entered the Military Academy at West Point in June, 1842. A week afterwards a cadet sergeant passed, escorting a newly-arrived cadet to his quarters. The personal appearance of the stranger was so remarkable as to attract the attention of several of us, who were

standing near and chatting together. Burkett Fry, A. P. Hill, and George Pickett, all Virginians, and destined to be distinguished generals, made our group. The new cadet was clad in gray homespun, a waggoner's hat, and large, heavy brogans; weather-stained saddlebags were over his shoulders. His sturdy step, cold, bright gray eye, thin, firm lips, caused me say, "That fellow looks as if he had come to stay," and on the return of the sergeant I asked him who that cadet was. He replied: "Cadet Jackson, of Virginia.' Whereupon I at once ascended to his room to show him my interest in him, a fellow-countryman in a strange land. He received my courteous advances in a manner so chilling that it caused me to regret having made them, and I rejoined my companions with criticisms brief and emphatic as to his intellectual endowments. Days and weeks went by, with no change in the "snap-shot" estimate then imparted.

One evening, Fry and Hill and I were lolling upon our camp bedding, the evening police were going on, and "Cadet Jackson, from Virginia," was upon duty about our tent, when I, desirous again to be affable and playful with our countryman, lifted the tent wall, and addressed him with an air of authority, and mock sternness, ordering him to be more attentive to his duty, to remove those cigar stumps, and otherwise mind his business. His reply was a look so stern and angry as to let me know that he was doing that job. Whereupon, I let that tent wall drop and became intensely interested in my yellow-back novel. So soon as police was over I arose and girded my loins, saying I had made Cadet Jackson, of Virginia, angry, and must at once humble myself and explain that I was not really in command of that police detail. I found him at the guard tent, called him out, and said:

“Mr. Jackson, I find that I made a mistake just now in speaking to you in a playful manner-not justified by our slight acquaintance. I regret that I did so."

He replied, with his stony look, "That is perfectly satisfactory, sir." Whereupon I returned to my comrades, and informed them that, in my opinion, "Cadet Jackson, from Virginia, is a jackass,' which verdict was unanimously concurred in; and we all with one accord began to array ourselves for the next duty in order, and thenceforward nobody in that tent "projected" with that cadet until our four-years' course was ended, and we were emancipated from the military prison of West Point, for we all liked and respected him.