quickly grew up an instinctive order of knighthood amongst such men, in the face of danger, which broke down all these differences of rank and worldly condition, which elsewhere so often prevent the oneness of armies. If an officer was brave, impartial, and cared for his men, this soldier would follow him anywhere, and never complain of the strictness of his discipline. He was a fine judge of men. He elected his own officers, and if a mistake in them, soon found means to weed out the inefficient. He did better in his day by the election of officers, than in this day when they are appointed. Gordon and Rodes are examples of the men whom he selected to lead. He was a cleanly man, despite his rags. Most of them had sooner parted with a pair of shoes, than a good tooth brush. Who has forgotten the queer sight of the tooth brush sticking from the buttonholes of his jacket; or how, when the blockade exhausted the supply of these, he became an expert in making brushes from dogberry or sassafras? On the march he had no knapsack. If he had change of clothing, he put it within his blanket, rolled it up, tied it at the ends, put the loop over head and shoulders. A canteen, and sometime a frying pan and a jack knife, were all he carried, besides his arms and belt. His pantaloons were tied at the bottom, and thrust inside his shoe. His woolen hat was often his only tent. He was as cheerful as the Indian at the "Feast of corn," when his only rations were roasting ears. There was philosophy as well as humor, in the remark of the soldier whom his officer rebuked for breaking rank, and going after persimmons, that "he needed them to pucker up his mouth so as to fit his rations."

He was full of humor, jokes and jests. Woe be to the unhappy able-bodied civilian who passed his line-he ran the gauntlet of a fire of gibes more annoying than a nest of hornets.

He was always respectful to women, the minister, and the aged, and would march barefooted in the mud to give the road to a woman and child in a buggy, while he would back an able-bodied man into the fence corner, to get him out of the way.

He was modest withall, and seldom wrote to the papers of his achievements. When he felt injustice had been done his command, he was apt to believe time would right him, and to say as Jackson did, when his part at Manassas was misrepresented-" My brigade is not a brigade of newspaper correspondents."

There was something pathetic in his devotion to his battle-flag. There were seldom even covers for them, and in camp the colorbearer sometimes rolled them up for pillow-but in the battle, it was

as the cross to the Crusader, and he would follow wherever any would carry it.

He was not always up on salutes, and the finer points of tactics or guard duty, but in the essentials of marching, fighting and taking care of himself, he had no superior. He knew how to show respect for the officer he loved, and often he would not go forward until his leader went back, in time of danger. His battalion drill may have been somewhat ragged, but his alignment in the charge was magnificent, his fire by file unequaled, and his "rebel yell" the grandest music on earth.

Who that looked on him can ever forget his bright face, his tattered jacket, and battered hat, his jests, which tickled the very ribs of death-his weary marches in heat and cold and storm?—his pangs of hunger, his parching fever, and agony of wounds-his passing away in hospital or prison, when the weak body freed the dauntless soul-his bare feet tracing the rugged fields of Virginia, and Georgia and Tennessee, with stains like those which reddened the snow at Valley Forge-his soul clutching his colors, while suffering and unprotected wife and child cried for him at home-his faith and hope and patience to the end-his love of home, deference to woman and trust in God-his courage which sounded all the depths and shoals of misfortune, and for a time throttled fate-the ringing yell of his onset, his battle anthem for native lands rising heavenward above the roar of five hundred stormy fields?

While we speak of the Confederate soldier, there rises before us the image of his antagonist, whom none that fought him would ever depreciate. He came at the call of his State, the earthly tribunal before which it was our faith all men should bow.

He believed, and had been reared to believe, that the future of the Republic demanded but one flag between the seas. Not Pickett's charge at Gettysburg, nor Cleburne's at Franklin, outshone in vain but glorious valor, the lustre of the assault at Marye's Heights, and his mad charges at Spotsylvania and Cold Harbor. He had grander courage yet he did not mock us at Appomattox. Had these men the power to control the peace, the Southern soldier had been spared the hardest of the trials that came to him with the end of armed hostilities.

WE ARE CONTENT IN THE HOME OF OUR FATHERS.

The Past asks what of the Future? We can answer as fearlessly as the dead answered the call on them- -we are content in the home of our fathers. Neither fealty to the dead, fidelity to principle, nor any laws of honor or interest, impels us to a different answer. important, however, to inquire why this is so.

It is

It is a narrow and dishonoring view that this content comes from defeat and the parole at Appomattox. A new generation has risen since then. Paroles bind the generation which gives them; but neither future generations or great principles can be paroled. There must be surer and better foundation for this content, now, of millions

in a government from which, a third of century ago, they made so many sacrifices to separate, than the memory of parchment which recalls a disaster in arms.

We are Americans, proud of our country and its flag, because Alabama is lord of her own and vassal to none, and our highest hopes of happiness are bound up in the rule of one government of co-equal States under the Constitution, for the North American continent.

Why should it not be so?

When the Confederate furled his flag, no strange flag vexed him. The new banner that rose over his home was the old flag of his forefathers. Every battle-field and glory it recalls is bright with the valor and achievements of his ancestors. When we left, we did not claim the flag, and as it comes back to us now, it stands for no thought at war with our interest, our liberties or our honor, but lifts its folds proudly in the skies of every land, as our protector and defender. Why may we not love it now as the symbol of a reunited' land?

If, then, not the flag, is it the feeling between those who dwell under the flag, that should keep our hearts apart? Never was there better understanding and more good will between the sections.

Industry and economic conditions have so changed that Federal legislation rarely presents even a sectional aspect. Hostility and discord between the sections are weaker than ever before, since the sections are juster to each other than ever before. We have our share in glories of the Republic. We have thrilled at the thought of a loved Montgomerian, standing under the broad pennant of the Secretary of the Navy, in an American flag-ship, as it ploughed through the waters of the Chesapeake, and he received the salutes

of the navies of the earth. Alabama gave to the country the cavalry leader of the west to win glory at Santiago, at the head of a division of regulars. We have rejoiced at the fame of the Greensboro youth, Alabama's Pelham of the seas, who, rivaling and recalling the daring of that Alabamian who sank the Housatonic in Charleston harbor, sank the Merrimac in Santiago harbor, and then rose in sight. of the world. We have watched regiments of our own sons, and wafted prayers with them, as they marched off under the Stars and Stripes.

If slavery was the cause of the war, it has perished in the march of events. Who would bring it back, or war about it now? Its doom was inevitable, as it had served its day in the purpose of the great Creator. That it was fast becoming a very body of death to our advancement and prosperity, is not now denied. It made a wide and ever widening gulf between the man who owned and the man who did not own slaves. It promoted false ideas of the dignity and worth of labor by the white man, and the economic policies which it created, impoverished us, and shut us out from the world. It is far better for us, at least, that it is dead.

It is simple truth, that the institution, as it existed in 1861, was mildness itself compared with its history elsewhere. It was not the slavery of men of our own race, which in substance, though not in name, often haunts civilization elsewhere. The ancestor of the slave did not lose liberty when brought to his master here. The dominion was not based more on force than the ignorance and need for protection of the slave. It is an imperishable tribute to its kindness that throughout a terrible civil war, in which hostile armies traversed a country filled with slaves, they never once rose anywhere in insurrection against their masters. Whether those who, by force of circumstances, maintained it were not as noble as those who, by force of circumstances, opposed it, we may well leave to the calm judgment of posterity, and to the Providence which placed the institution in our midst, with the names of Washington and Jefferson, Madison and Monroe, Marshall and Calhoun, Clay and Crittenden, Davis and Lee, Maury and Manly, and Stonewall Jackson and Stephen Elliott.

But what of the great principles for which we fought? Have we abandoned them? The great substantial, animating principle for which the South struggled was the right of a State to control its own domestic affairs—the right to order its own altars and firesides without outside interference-the right of local sovereignty for which

brave people struggle everywhere, and without which there is no peace. Secession itself was a mere incident in the application of this principle. So great was the attachment to the principles of union, and so little was the right of secession cherished in itself, that its assertion was wrung from the South only by the conviction of some States that they could no longer live in the Union in peace and honor, and by the dread alternative presented others by the call from Washington for troops to draw the sword for or against their own flesh and blood.

If the defeated Confederate soldier did not immediately vindicate the right of a State to order its own domestic affairs, even at the expense of Union, neither did the victorious Northern soldier vindicate any principle of Union, without regard to the just rights of the States. I speak not now of that mere physical Union, like the chain which bands Ireland and England, but of that living, breathing soul of liberty, which binds co-equal States in unison of happiness around the common altar of the Constitution.

The Union of the fathers, like the rights of the States, was dead for twelve long years after the war. Neither came back until the heart of the North, better understanding itself and the South, abandoned the dream of force, and President Hayes-to whom I am glad to pay this tribute-speaking in the name of Union, declared that the bayonet could not rule, and "the flag should float over States, not Provinces." With that, Union came back inevitably, as night follows day, recognition of the great principle that the safety and happiness of the American people and the future of Constitutional liberty, depend not more on Union than on equality of the States, and the right to work out their own destiny around their own firesides; and that one is not complete without the other. This principle, which underlies all real liberty and happiness, stands to-day, thank God, upright and unchallenged in the hearts of the American people. Of a truth, then, we may declare that "the grand army of martyrs, which is still marching onward beyond the stars," which fought at last, not for secession or slavery, but for the right of a State to govern itself in all that pertains solely to itself, have not died in vain.

"Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee"-was written not alone of those whose name and blood we inherit, but as well of generations which have borne the heat and burden of days that are behind us. A people may neglect the command and forfeit the prom