like a deer, never touching a rail or slacking his gait, and sped on with the swiftness of the wind until Moorefield was reached.

I glanced back to see what had become of my pursuers, but they never got over the fence. In a few minutes, on the southern side of the town, a number of our command had collected, determined to hold the Yankees in check; but they never came in any force farther than our camp. I lost my saddle and bridle, and a small ham of meat that I had kept as a reserve when nothing else could be had. This completes the story of the burning of Chambersburg, and is written entirely from personal recollection. Others may have seen it differently, but I have given the truth as I saw it. Nothing, so far as I know, has been written by a Confederate on the subject, and yet it was one of the most daring and reckless undertakings of the

war.

WANT NO NEW GRAVE-KEEPERS.

What can I say of these daring riders, and, in general, of the Confederate soldier? He stands alone! Scorning a pension, too proud to beg, too honorable to steal and perjure himself by swearing that his poverty came from being in the army! What a contrast to those who opposed him-963,000 of them living as government paupers, and $200,000,000 wrung out of the South to help pay these mendicants. And yet the Confederate is more loyal to the United States Government than these cormorants at the public crib. Νο doubt there are many deserving pensioners, who ought to be recog nized by the government in the shape of an annuity, who actually received wounds and had their health undermined by the war. The Confederate says, cheerfully, pay him.

This is a time of "gush," but you will never get a Confederate who stood on the "fiery fringe of battle" to say that he wants a pension. We are able and willing to work and make a living, and if we are not, the State and local authorities will see that we do not starve. As for our graves and cemeteries being attended to by others than ourselves, we demur. We have kept them green for forty years, why not forty years longer? They need no care, except such as can be rendered by our fair daughters. The memory of the dead will always be precious to us, for was there ever such an army that had such dauntless courage, such unwavering fidelity, and made so many heroic sacrifices?

Lexington, Va.

J. SCOTT Moore, 14th Va. Cavalry, C. S. A.

THE CONFEDERATE CAUSE AND ITS

DEFENDERS.

AN ADDRESS DELIVERED BY JUDGE GEORGE L. CHRISTIAN

Before the Grand Camp of Confederate Veterans at the Annual Meeting held at Culpeper C. H., Va., October 4th, 1898, and published by Special Request of the Grand Camp.

Great wars have been as landmarks in the progress of nations, measuring-points of growth or decay. As crucibles they test the characters of peoples. Whether or not there is fibre to bear the crush of battle, and the strain of long contest:-not only in this determined; but also another matter, of yet more serious import, and of deeper interest to the student of history and to a questioning posterity. The grave investigator of to-day, searches the past to know whether man is of such character, whether the causes for which he has fought are such, that the future is always to be dark with "wars and rumors of He asks what men have regarded as sufficient causes of war? He does not enquire whether "the flying Mede" at Marathon, or the Greek with "his pursuing spear," are types of their nations: he rather seeks to know how the apparently unimportant action of an insignificant city, provoked the great Persian invasion. His question is, not whether Athens or Sparta bred the better soldier, but he searches the records to find out the causes of the Peloponnesian

war.

war.

He does not consider whether Vercingetorix, standing a captive in the presence of Cæsar, was, after all, the nobler leader; nor whether Attila at Chalons was a greater general than Aetius, nor why the sword of Brennus turned the scale on that fateful day at Rome. He is more concerned to know why the Roman legions marched so far, and why the world threw off the imperial yoke. The causes of wars test yet more deeply than conduct in the field, the characters of peoples, indicate yet more surely what hopes of peace or fears of war lie in the future, to which we are advancing.

The foregoing considerations press on no people on earth more heavily than on those of the Southern States of this country. The question of the justice of the cause for which our Southern men fought and our Southern women suffered, in the great war which convulsed this country from '61 to '65, will always interest the philosophical histo

rian, who will seek to know the motive that prompted the tremendous efforts of those four years, and the character of the men who fought so hard. It must command the attention of Confederate soldiers and their descendants for all time to come.

During that contest, and for many years after its close, there was no doubt as to this question in all our Southern land, and this is the case with nearly all our mature and thinking people to-day. I fear, however, that some of our children, misled by the false teachings of certain histories used in some of our schools, may have some misgivings on this all-important subject.

As Carthage had no historian, the Roman accounts of the famous Punic wars had to be accepted. All the blame was, as a matter of course, thrown on Carthage, and thus "Punica Fides" became a sneering by-word to all posterity. And so it has been, until recently, with the South. For many years after the war, our people were so poor, and so busily engaged in "keeping the wolf from their doors," that they lost sight of everything else. The shrewd, calculating, and wealthy Northerners, on the other hand, realized the importance of trying to impress the rising generation with the justice of their cause; and to that end they soon flooded our schools with histories, containing their version of the contest, and in many of these all the blame" (as in the case of Carthage), is laid on the South.

In view of these facts, I have thought it not only not improper, but perhaps, a sacred duty, to call attention to some things which have impressed me very much, and some which so far as I know, have not heretofore been brought to the attention of our Southern people.

I shall not, in this address, discuss the Confederate Cause from the standpoint of a Southerner at all. Indeed, this has been done so thoroughly and ably by President Davis, Mr. Stephens, Dr. Bledsoe, and others, as to leave but little, if anything to be said from that point of view. I propose to set in order certain facts which will show: (1) What the people of the North said and did during the war to establish the justice of our Cause, and what they have said and done to the same end since its close; and (2) What distinguished foreigners have said about that cause, and the way the war was conducted on both sides. It seems to me that an answer to these enquiries is worthy of the gravest consideration, and ought to make its impression on any reflecting and unprejudiced mind.

I am profoundly thankful that in these latter days, our own people have become aroused to the importance of presenting the truth of this great struggle, and that the result has been to produce some

very good histories by Southern authors, giving the facts as to the causes which led to the war, and those as to its conduct by both parties. For these indispensable books, we are indebted almost solely to the influence of the Confederate Camps and kindred organizations which have sprung up all over the South.

Passing over the history up to the year 1864, we find the people of the North were then greatly agitated on the question of the propriety of the war, its further prosecution and the manner in which it was being conducted by the administration then in power. The op position to the war and Lincoln's administration was led by Vallandingham, of Ohio, with such boldness and ability as to cause his arrest and temporary imprisonment. In the Presidential contest of that year, Lincoln and Johnson were the candidates of the Republican, or war party, and McClellan and Pendleton were those of the Democratic, or peace party. The convention which nominated McClellan and Pendleton was one of the most representative bodies that ever assembled in this country. It met in the city of Chicago on the 29th of August, 1864, with Governor Horatio Seymour, of New York, as its chairman.

An idea of the temper of the convention may be gathered from an extract from one of the speeches 'delivered in it by Rev. C. Chauncey Burr, of New Jersey, which is as follows:

"We had no right to burn their wheat-fields, steal their pianos, spoons or jewelry. Mr. Lincoln had stolen a good many thousand negroes, but for every negro he had thus stolen, he had stolen ten thousand spoons. It had been said that, if the South would lay down their arms, they would be received back into the Union. South could not honorably lay down her arms, for she was fighting for her honor.”

The

Mr. Horace Greeley says that Governor Seymour, on assuming the chair, made an address showing the bitterest opposition to the war; "but his polished sentences seemed tame and moderate by comparison with the fiery utterances volunteered from hotel balconies, street corners, and wherever space could be found for the gathering of an impromptu audience; while the wildest, most intemperate utterances of virtual treason-those which would have caused Lee's army, had it been present, to forget its hunger and rags in an ecstacy of approval-were sure to evoke the longest and loudest plaudits."

This convention adopted a platform containing these, among other, remarkable declarations :

"That after four years of failure to restore the Union by the experiment of war, during which, under the pretence of a military necessity of a war power higher than the Constitution, the Constitution has been disregarded in every part. Justice, humanity, liberty, and the public welfare demand that immediate efforts be made for the cessation of hostilities, with the ultimate convention of all the States, that these may be restored on the basis of a federal union of all the States, that the direct interference of the military authorities in the recent elections was a shameful violation of the Constitution, and the repetition of such acts will be held as revolutionary, and resisted; that the aim and object of the Democratic party is to preserve the federal union and the rights of the States unimpaired, and that they consider the administrative usurpation of extraordinary and dangerous powers, not granted by the Constitution, as calculated to prevent a restoration of the Union; that the shameful disregard of the administration in its duty to our fellow-citizens-prisoners of war-deserves the severest reprobation," &c., &c.

It will thus be seen that this platform charged the party in power with the very offences which the people of the South complained of and which caused the Southern States to secede. It charged that the Constitution had been disregarded in every part"; it declared that "justice, humanity, liberty, and the public welfare demand that immediate efforts be made for a cessation of hostilities"; it charged the administration with the "usurpation of extraordinary and dangerous powers, not granted by the Constitution"; it charged it with direct interference in the elections, and with a shameful disregard of its duty to prisoners of war. The platform claimed that the object of the party adopting it was to preserve the Federal Union and the rights of the States unimpaired.

In a word, the grievances here set forth were those of which the South was then complaining, and the principles sought to be main tained those for which the South was contending. And in addition to these, the people of the South were then exercising the God-given right and duty of defending their homes and firesides against an invasion as ruthless as any that ever marked the track of so-called civilized warfare.

Mr. John Sherman tells us in his "Recollections of Forty Years