ise as well as the child. Those were brave words of the statesman who said: "Society has a soul as well as a body. The traditions of a nation rea a part of its existence-its valor and discipline, its religious faith, its venerable laws, its science and erudition, its poetry, its art, its wise laws and its scholarship, are as much the blood of its life as its agriculture, its commerce and its engineering skill." Bursting granaries, wide orchards and fields, rushing locomotives, the whir of spindles, the smoke of furnaces and the white sails of commerce, alone, cannot make a people great. Without manhood and virtue, love of God and native land, no people can become really great or long remain free. These virtues wither and die in the land where the child forgets father, and is unmindful of the heritage of his noble example and sacrifices. We serve humanity and. country when we remind the children of the Confederate soldier of his life and achievements.

ALABAMA SHOULD WRITE HISTORY.

Some have There is but

Look in the

Our duty is not ended with the building of this monument. Where may an Alabamian find a roll of the men who made history, and yet left no name on its pages? Where can he find the names of the great throng who died, with no rank to attract the eyes of the country, and went down to death, uncheered save by the firm beating of their own dauntless hearts? Can he find his name among the archives of the State for which they gave their lives? They are not there. In historic publications of her heroic sons? She has written none. Will he find them on the graves of the dead? no headstones, and many are marked "unknown." one sacred spot on earth, where these names are kept. hearts of our noble women, and there you will find them all. But the gentle lips which said the prayers he could not say, and the white hands which shunned no toil for him, and the pure souls that rose above him with a courage grander than his own, are fast passing away. Almost alone, for thirty-three years, she has guarded the memory of the dead. Her lips have uttered no complaint. Yet one reads in her eyes the wistful thought that the comrades of the dead have not kept full faith with him, when the State for which he died, ruled by his comrades and their children, has not even traced the names of the dead in the chronicles of her history, and leaves the bodies of her dead sons, who perished in prison, far off by the lakes, indebted to the chance kindness of the stranger for the handful of earth and the enclosure that saves them from the beasts of the

fields and the birds of the air. Poverty and despair long pleaded to excuse us, but that excuse is not true now. Let the voice of the people throng in and become partakers of the councils of State,”’ until the peoples' representatives take away this reproach. It cannot be, as some have urged, that the State which could send over one hundred thousand men to battle and death, may not, under the Constitution for which they fought, rightly expend money for the roll of their names or history of their achievements. It cannot be that the State which can give a money reward to a civil officer for catching a malefactor, cannot give a sword as reward to a soldier for honoring her people in battle. This State were weak, indeed, if so poor in power and right. Long ago, the law was declared in Alabama that the "whole, unbounded power" of man over man, in matters temporal, resides in the government of the State, save as expressly or by necessary implication denied by the State and Federal Constitutions. There is no want of power.

THE PASSING OF THE CONFEDERACY.

That is a masterpiece-the touching Idyl of the "Passing of Arthur." The king, beaten in his last battle, and drawing near to death, commanded his knight to take the blade, "which would be known wherever he was sung in after time," and throw it in the lake. But the knight, believing the king's fame would be hid from the world in after times, if "so precious thing should be lost from earth forever," feigned obedience, and hid the sword among the waterflags. Then came from the king's pale lips the despairing cry: Woe is me, authority forgets a dying king, laid widowed of his power." Shamed to obedience, the knight threw the blade in the lake, and Arthur, when told of the arm that rose up from the mists and caught it, sure it would never again be seen by mortal eyes, passed to be king of the dead."

Our Arthur passed to the "island valley of Avilion" with no cry on his lips or thought in his heart that "authority forgets a king, laid widowed of his power; for here the love of a people touched away the scar of the fetters, and crowned him king again. As the monument, whose foundation he laid, crowned in its finished glory with the statues, is about to be committed to the State and Time, we are looking upon the passing of the Confederacy. No "arm clothed in white sasmite, mystic and wonderful," rises out of earth to bear away our treasures from the sight of men; but here, where the Confederacy was born, and in the presence of God and this multitude, we

reverently dedicate to the glory of a common country, and unfold for the benefaction of mankind, the priceless treasure of the life and character of the Confederate soldier.

COLONEL SANFORD'S ORATION.

To Colonel J. W. A. Sanford had been delegated the privilege of delivering the oration preliminary to the unveiling of the figure emblematic of the Confederate infantry. Upon being introduced by the chairman, Colonel Sanford said:

Mr. President, Ladies of the Memorial Association,

Confederate Veterans, Ladies and Fellow Countrymen:

I congratulate the State of Alabama, and I do especially congratulate the Ladies' Memorial Association, upon the early completion of this magnificent monument to perpetuate the memory of the Confederate soldiers and seaman of this grand Commonwealth. It forever memorizes a cordial appreciation of the superb qualities manifested by the Confederate warriors and people during the war between the States.

Its corner stone was laid by the immortal Jefferson Davis, and is a suitable memento of the dead Confederacy. It marks the close of an eventful era, not only in the career of the United States, but also in the history of the world. It defines the limit of a civilization peculiarly Southern, which, in all the attributes that bless and dignify humanity, is the crowning glory of the Christian centuries. The people who established it were characterized by brilliant social gifts and many laudable qualities; by a generous and unstinted hospitality; by pride of race; by a sense of honor which nothing could make them forget; by a conviction that courage was absolutely essential to all true manliness, and that integrity is the fundamental law of society; by a love of liberty and a spirit of independence that no oppression or injustice could destroy. They cherished an ardent devotion to the rights of the State, and an unfaltering allegiance to its authority. They possessed a chivalrous courtesy, and notable deference and delicacy in intercourse with women, who elicited the admiration of the world by their intelligence and purity and modesty and refinement, as by their capability of sacrifice and endurance of privation. It is true that some admirable peculiarities, originating with and inseparable from our condition and system of industry, have gone, like the clouds that Rachel watched by Laban's well, nevermore to be seen by men. This statue, representing the infantry, like the

entire structure, is an institution of education dedicated to heroism. It inculcates a love of the State, and shows the honor rendered to men who encounter hardships and dangers for the liberty, independence and power of their country, and commemorates the virtues of valor and patriotism. It will stimulate youths to admire and cultivate ennobling qualities, and to emulate, if they may not excel, the applauded virtues and glorious deeds of their ancestors. They thoroughly understood the limitations of our governments, both State and Federal. They cheerfully yielded to the Union all its constitutional rights and powers, but were intensely jealous of any encroachments by the general government upon the rights of the State. As the Union was first suggested by Southern statesmen, it was supported by their descendants as long as it accomplished the purposes of its formation; but when these were abandoned and the Constitution was disregarded and violated by many States, and was denounced by popular assemblies as a "Covenant with death and a league with hell;" when what was intended to promote peace and tranquillity became an instrument of unfriendly agitation and hostility, the Southern States seceded. The people preferred the Constitution without the Union to the Union without the Constitution. They knew that the Union, unrestrained by the organic law, would be a despotism of intolerable oppression. They knew, also, that the principles of the Constitution, wherever they obtained, secured the rights and freedom of States and of men. Therefore, to preserve them, the Southern States seceded from the Northern States. 'Secession was conservative of the Constitution, and was a pacific policy. But war ensued. President Lincoln's proclamation, calling for 75,000 men to enforce the Federal laws, was received with derision, and then from the mountains to the sea, from the Potomac to the Rio Grande, upon every wind that blew, rushed the Southern men to arms. Many of them formed a body of infantry, whose character and achievements have been rarely paralleled in the annals of time. No attribute of heroism, which is next to godliness, was wanting to them. They were intelligent, and fully comprehended the magnitude of the, conflict and the importance of the interests involved. They knew the necessity of organization, and notwithstanding their impatience of control and stubbornness of will, they readily submitted to the stern and harsh discipline of the army. Although imperfectly equipped and scantily clad, they bore, without complaint, cold and rain and sunshine and storm and sleet and hunger and the painful fatigue of long marches in wearisome campaigns, and the cruelty of barbarous

imprisonment and disease and wounds and death. Their patriotism was as broad as the Confederacy, and as unselfish as a mother's love. They had a conviction of the righteousness of their cause that no doubt ever disturbed; a faith in their own invincibility and a confidence in their officers that no disaster could diminish; a manly subordination to authority, and a faithfulness in the discharge of duty seldom equalled; a bravery calm as peace and reckless as fire; and a patience which willingly suffered frost and famine, whose fever gave intensity to their purpose and tireless vigils in long sieges, accompanied by the bursting of bombshells and the incessant rattle of musketry, daytime and night-time, through many tedious months. But it was in the forlorn hope, in the desperate assault upon the enemy's works, or in the steady movement upon his lines, or in the dashing charge upon his guns in the open field, their nature most appeared. Then qualities, which, like the Punic characters upon the sword of the Icelandic chieftan, were invisible in repose, like them, too, in battle and deadly peril, gleamed and glowed with a terrifying resplendence, and obtained, even in defeat, the applause our enemies won only by success. Neither victory nor disaster could materially affect the fame of this enrolled infantry. They did not change their virtues because fortune changed her face.

These were some of the traits of the men, whose lives were as thickly strewn with battles, as their graves are strewn with flowers in spring. They were displayed by this matchless infantry, when it starved in the trenches at Vicksburg; or besieged Cumberland Gap, climbed on the hills at Chickamauga or stormed the breastworks at Franklin; or assaulted the fortifications about Knoxville; or held the lines around Petersburg and Richmond; or stood immovably at Spotsylvania; or repelled the invaders a: Fredericksburg; or drove them to the music of the rebel yell, from the field at Chancellorsville, or charged the heights of Gettysburg. In every position and in all conditions they exhibited to the admiring gaze of the nations, the finest specimens of real, true, genuine manhood, Christian or pagan, the world has ever seen. Of this famous army, Alabama furnished 122,000 men, thirty-five thousand of whom returned no more to their homes. Some of them repose in graves marked unknown, in distant countries. The remains of others are scattered on every mountain height and plain; upon every hilltop and valley, from Gettysburg to where the Mississippi rolls his multitudinous waters to the sea, and around green boughs.

Their unremembered bones do waste away in rain, and dew, and