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his fellow-soldiers to a Heavenly care, "to rest under the trees this day, thirty-two years ago—the question recurs: "Was he not in the right?"

When I picture the matchless dignity of Robert E. Lee, looking from his charger in grave serenity upon a field tumultuous with every form of effort of horse and man, and incarnadined with human gore; or recall him, as it was my fortune to see him, in the peace and quiet of his headquarters, and mark the signs on his countenance, of the God-given intellect, and regal dignity of spirit, that afterwards refused fortune and honor abroad to share poverty and labor with his own at home, I am forced to declare-if such immortal spirits were wrong, then let me be wrong with them!

In a memorial address twenty-six years ago, the brave and lamented Colonel Robert H. Cowan used this language, when our people were sitting amid the thickest gloom of their great calamity, and patriotic Wilmington was erecting a memorial to our dead. He declared:

"In the Pass of classic Thermopyla, there is a monumental pillar reared by the decree of the Amphictyonic Council, to the memory of Leonidas and his devoted three hundred. It bears an inscription, written by the poet of the time, in a style of true Lacedemonian simplicity, and yet it is so tender and touching in its tone, and so lofty in its sentiment, that it appears to me to be sublime:

"Oh stranger! tell it to the Lacedemonians,

That we lie here in obedience to their laws.'

"Let the stranger, whoever he may be, that visits this sacred spot, go and proclaim it to all the world that these brave men lie here in obedience to the laws of North Carolina."

The tongue that spoke these words has long been silent in the grave, but they are forever true. The mother State, conservative in all her history, pondered her steps long and well. What she ordered was done in the plain path of duty, when all other resource had departed. But that duty once ascertained, was performed with a tenacious determination almost without a parallel.

In this transitory life, the most precious things are the spiritual forces the invisible, but immortal, powers that mould men's lives. Look about you, in your beautiful Capital City, putting on anew the garniture of spring. Consider the swift passing away of the material objects about us. A century or two, and where are the

most pretentious of our structures? Where are our marts, our factories, and temples? Forms, fashions, institutions change--the rich and the poor exchange places-animated nature bows to decay and passes in turn to oblivion!

But the ashes of the noble dead remain in mother earth, and the memory of their deeds hallows the soil. Think you that the valor of George B. Anderson is lost, the gallantry of L. O'B. Branch, the calm and intrepid patriotism of the host of lesser rank that lie beside them in either of our cities of the dead-Burgwyn, and Turner, and Shotwell; the Haywoods, Manlys, Rogers, Engelhard; the knightly Smedes, the great-hearted William E. Anderson-ah! where shall I pause in the bead-roll of heroes; how dare we not include every private, who bore his musket well, in that great brigade that lie in eternal bivouac on our eastern slopes, awaiting the trump of the resurrection morn?

Tried by the standard of devotion to duty, and sublime self-sacrifice, the men whom your fair women delight to honor were worthy of the highest niche in the temple of military fame-the brightest crown, as patriot martyrs.

They lie on every battle-field of importance throughout the South. At Winchester, where the sacred ashes have been gathered from many bloody contests, they exceed in melancholy array those of any other State.

At Fredericksburg, the dead and wounded of North Carolina exceeded those of all other States of the South combined.

In the Seven Days' struggle around Richmond, one-half of the number of regiments in Lee's entire army were sons of your soil. Would you seek the most magnificent spectacle of undying courage? Behold the 5th North Carolina at Williamsburg; see it in the 4th North Carolina at Seven Pines; find it in the 3d at Sharpsburg; watch it in the 18th at Spotsylvania; behold it in the 20th at Frazer's Farm; see it in the 26th at Gettysburg, whose loss was the greatest recorded in history; glory in it in the 36th North Carolina, as it envelops Fort Fisher and the heroic Whiting with a halo of imperishable fame.

Yet how shall we separate a gallant few from all the brave sons of Carolina, in all her serried battalions? And how shall a single day's exhibition of God-like self-surrender and indomitable daring represent to us the daily struggle on the picket-line, the weary march, the long night watch, the agonizing wound, the dreary imprisonment, the slow starvation, the unceasing anxiety for distant wife and

child, the sorrow for a broken and desolated country, the unspeakable pain of final defeat?

Alas! for the unknown graves that hide the broken hearts of our comrades, worn by disease, whom we left behind at every camp, in the sand-hills by the sea, or dotting the grassy glades of mountain valleys.

Yet the very boys emblazoned immortal deeds upon the escutcheon of their State.

enteen.

At Chancellorsville, the death wound came to a lad of barely sevHis musket dropped; with Spartan fortitude he raised his hand to the gushing wound, and faltered forth to his commander, "Major, I am killed; tell my father that my feet were to the enemy!" So fell Wilson Kerr, of North Carolina.

At Petersburg, in the suburb of Pocahontas, lies the last man of the retreating army of Lee. The enemy were rapidly closing on the rear guard, and he volunteered to fire the bridge in the face of certain death. He reached its middle, applied the match, and then, though torn by a grape-shot, that boy of sixteen walked back to the bank and yielded his precious life.

The enemy, in admiration of his valor, gave him a soldier's burial on the very spot-wrapped in his old gray blanket that was slung about his shoulders, and the only shroud over his fair features from the enveloping clay, was the apron of a solitary woman, brave enough to venture there to weep over him.

So died Cummings Mebane, of North Carolina.

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Young men of North Carolina, you who are her hope and pride, and who will be her strong staff, when we shall have become but a memory, see to it, I beseech you, that such sublime virtue, which accepts certain death for the safety of the whole; and the good of the State, be commemorated in yonder capitol in glowing canvass or enduring marble.

Happy will be that people, who, in honoring virtue and commemorating sublimity of human character, stamp the image of the ancestor upon the mind and heart of the children!

All honor to the noble women of the Memorial Association of Raleigh, that they have taught their lesson, year by year, not only in the silent but eloquent eulogy of flowers; not only in recalling to mind the herioc self-sacrifice of the hosts in gray, in their voiceless camps of death; but also have decreed that heroes who have served their country in conspicuous station, shall be honored by the recital. of their services, and a record shall be forever kept in grateful remembrance.

It is the privilege of the speaker to recite briefly some of the many leaves of history, which cluster like chaplets of laurel around an illustrous soldier, who though not born upon your soil, loved with his whole heart your people and your State, and gave his life for them.

WILLIAM HENRY CHASE WHITING, the son of Levi and Mary A. Whiting, was born March 22, 1824, at Biloxi, Mississippi.

His father, originally from Massachusetts, spent his life as an officer of the U. S. Army, serving forty years, from 1812 to 1853, being at his death Lieutenant-Colonel of the 1st Artillery.

At twelve years of age he was ready for the Public High School of Boston, where he remained two years, taking the highest stand, particularly in Latin and Greek. Gifted with extraordinary quickness of perception, unyielding tenacity and fidelity of memory, and great will-power, the combination gave evidence of the rarest mental power. He saw at a glance, yet comprehended to the utmost depth. At fourteen, he entered Georgetown College, D. C., and completed with ease the four years' course in two years, besides receiving his diploma with high distinction at the head of his class. It was said of his knowledge of Latin, that he could converse in it with fluency. Yet an entirely different class of studies awaited him at West Point, where he entered the U. S. Military Academy, at seventeen. Always at the top, he took at once a high stand, maintained it throughout the course, and graduated after four years, July 1, 1845. at the head of the class of forty members, and with a higher stand than any officer of the army had ever taken up that period. Cadet Whiting is described briefly, but vividly, a letter from his room-mate, General Fitz John Porter, to the speaker:

"119 WEST 47TH STREET, NEW YORK,

CAPT. C. B. DENSON,

"My Dear Sir: *

"April 23, 1895.

I deeply regret that it is not in my

power to furnish you information which would aid you in writing a

memoir of my old friend, General W. H. C. Whiting. It would be a great pleasure to me to do it if I could. Though he and I were classmates and roommates at West Point, and necessarily very intimate, after graduating we met but a very few times, and then only for a few hours. * * * Our spheres of duty widely separated us, and we knew of each other only through an occasional letter. * * As a cadet, Whiting's career was most exemplary. Pure in all his acts; of the strictest integrity, ever kind and gentle and open-hearted to his comrades; free from deception; just in his duty to his service and Academy, and never but kind and just to his comrades, and the cadets under him. These qualities caused him to be loved by his companions and respected by his subordinates, and honored and trusted by his superiors..

"He was of first-rate ability, as shown in his studies and graduation at the head of his class. So long as he was in the army, he maintained that reputation, and there was great regret that he resigned to take to a different cause and field.

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It was no small honor to be first in a class that held General Chas. P. Stone (the organizer of the army of Egypt, after the Civil War), General Fitz John Porter, General Gordon Granger, Generals E. Kirby Smith, Barnard E. Bee, and the like. It has been generally conceded that no class contained so many men that afterwards rose to distinction in the great war.

Upon graduating, his position entitled him to the honor of an appointment to the engineer corps, the elite of the army. He served as second lieutenant until his promotion to first lieutenant, March 16, 1853, and captain, December 13, 1858. He tendered his resignation from the United States service February 20, 1861.

Shortly after graduation, he was ordered to the dangerous task of laying out a military road from San Antonio to El Paso. It will be remembered that Texas had just been annexed, and the country swarmed with the fierce Comanche Indians. This was accomplished with a small party, although with many hair-breadth escapes from the rifle and the scalping knife.

He was next at various stations on the gulf until 1852. While temporarily in command at Pensacola, he won high reputation among professional engineers, by successfully closing an opening

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