Address given by
Rev. John L. Girardeau, D. D.
at the reinterment ceremony
Magnolia Cemetery in Charleston
of the South Carolina
Confederate Gettysburg dead
Confederate Memorial Day
10 May 1871
In introducing what may be said, I beg leave to make two requests:
First, that in any utterances which may have a political complexion I may not
be understood to assume to speak as a minister of the Gospel, and as delivering
a message from the LORD, but as any citizen might express his sentiments who
professes to fear God and to cherish the interests of his people;
Secondly, that as a special interest attaches to this occasion some indulgence
as to time may be granted for the remarks which may be offered. And wilt Thou,
Almighty Being, inspire what may be uttered with the spirit of wisdom, justice
and truth.
The circumstances which assemble us in the streets of this City of the Dead
are, in the last degree, solemn, tender and affecting. The bones of our
brethren have for nearly eight years been sleeping in the graves in which they
were laid on the bloody battle-field of Gettysburg. Their repose was unbroken
by the roar of subsequent conflicts, by the wild wail of grief which broke
forth at the fall of their beloved country, or by the triumphal honours paid to
the memories of those who battled against the cause for which they died, and
fell on the same field with them. The wounded who survived for a brief while
the carnage of that day turned amid their last thoughts on earth to the State
they had loved so well, even as dying children to a mother, and ere they
yielded up their gallant spirits breathed the fervent entreaty:
"Send our bodies to South Carolina to be buried there! "
Was it that in their latest moments of
consciousness they recoiled from the thought that they would be interred in an
enemy's soil, and that their graves would be designated as those of rebels and
traitors? They did not mistake. The remains of their opponents have very
naturally been carefully collected, and with distinguished funereal honours
been laid side by side in a place of sepulture decorated by the hand of
affection. They were left to sleep apart. We could not have wished it otherwise.
They had, as a peculiar people, contended for their rights, and, as a peculiar
people, occupied graves by themselves -- in death as in life adhering to a
noble and sacred, though despised and execrated, Cause.
They were entitled to strangers' accommodations and they received them. But
they will no longer sleep alone. They will now have a fellowship in death from
which they have hitherto been excommunicated. Their dying wish is fulfilled.
Their isolated repose has been interrupted by the gentle hands of their country
women who have tenderly removed them from alien graves, and brought them
hither for admission to the communion of kindred dead. They have come home at
last; and we, their brethren, their comrades, bone of their bone and flesh of
their flesh, are met with one accord to welcome them to their native soil. We
receive them not as conquerors, else would a whole people in funeral procession
and with military pageant have escorted them to their coveted repose; but none
the less honour on that account shall be awarded them. Not one chaplet, not one
laurel-wreath shall be withheld albeit twined with the willow and the cypress.
Not the roll of drums, the blast of bugles and the thunder of cannon, but the
throb of grief, the quick-flowing tear, the yearning of an unspeakable love,
all that boundless admiration, undying gratitude and unconquered principles can
give, -- these, Heroes of a defeated but glorious Cause, are the tribute we
offer you today.
Afflicted Carolina, rise in thy mourning weeds, and receive thy returning
children to thy maternal breast! Pillow them softly there, for there they
prayed to sleep their long and dreamless sleep! Here let men who never
surrendered except to death find a fitting resting place in a spot overlooking
the waters which were never parted by a hostile keel so long as an
artillery-man remained with his port fire behind the guns which guarded
them, and yonder battered and ragged fortress which though often assaulted was
never carried by storm. Here let them sleep with those who never looked upon a
conqueror's flag floating over the citadels of a sovereign State, but closed
their eyes upon a still free and defiant Commonwealth. Shoulder to shoulder
they stood; now let them lie side by side. Confederates in life, confederates
let them be in death.
Deep as is the grief which this occasion calls forth we are not here simply as
mourners for the dead. There are living issues which emerge from these graves
-- gigantic problems affecting our future, which starting up in the midst of
these solemnities demand our earnest attention. The question which thrills
every heart is, Did these men die in vain? Their death was but the logical
conclusion of the principles which led to our great struggle, and furnished
their highest and most significant illustration. It was the costliest sacrifice
which an injured people could make for the maintenance of their fundamental
liberties. Fathers and mothers gave up their children, wives their husbands,
sisters their brothers, sovereign States their sons, and these men themselves,
for the sake of a cause which involved every earthly interest and overshadowed
every earthly relation. What sacrifice could for a moment be put into
comparison with this? To have yielded up our fortunes, to have been ejected
from our burning homes, to have witnessed the sacking of our cities, and the
destruction of our harvests, - could all these have borne any analogy to the
loss of these lives? The questions, therefore, force themselves upon us, Was
this sacrifice a useless one? Was this precious blood spilt wholly in vain?
There are two senses in which it must be admitted that they lost their cause,
--they failed to establish a Confederacy as an independent country, and they
failed to preserve the relation of slavery. But there were fundamental
principles of government, of social order, of civil and religious liberty,
which underlay and pervaded that complex whole which we denominated our Cause.
And the question whether those who fell in its support died in vain, as to
those principles, must depend for its answer upon the course which will be
pursued by the people of the South. What then shall be the nature of our
answer? What the course which me shall adopt? There is but one reply which
deserves to be returned to these inquiries -- our brethren will not have died
in vain, if me cherish in our hearts, and as far as in us lies, practically
maintain, the principles for which they gave their lives.
Either these men were rebels against lawful authority, or they were not. If
they were, then the principles upon which they acted ought to be abandoned and
the cause for which they contended ought to be consigned to oblivion. Dear as
their memory is to us, we would have no warrant in being moved by personal
relations to them to perpetuate a grievous wrong. If they were not, then every
noble attribute of our nature, every sacred sentiment of justice, gratitude and
consistency should impel us to justify their course, and to perpetuate their
principles. And this is our position. In the face of the world we protest, that
so far from having been rebels against legitimate authority and traitors to
their country, they were lovers of liberty, combatants for constitutional
rights, and as exemplars of heroic virtue benefactors of their race. This is
not mere assertion dictated by sympathy or uttered in the spirit of bravado. It
is susceptible of proof.
There are three great elements in the social constitution of man, involving
corresponding necessities -- the Domestic, the Political and the Religious.
Answering to these fundamental features of our nature there are three Divinely
ordained institutes, independent of, but related to, each other -- the Family,
the State, and the Church. Taken together they constitute the trinity of human
relations. Each of them is indispensable to the wellbeing, if not the very
preservation, of the race. They are the pillars on which rests the stability of
society, as well as the prime motors in its catholic Progress -- its organic
nisus towards the great end for which it was originally ordained. To injure
either of them is to strike a blow at the root of human happiness; and so
intimate is the bond between them, so nice and delicate their action and
re-action upon each other, that to impair one of them is to imperil the
integrity of them all. Adverse to each and all of these beneficent ordinations,
and consequently antagonistic to the vital interests which they suppose, there
is a spirit abroad in the earth, almost universal in its operation, the
measures of which are characterized by a subtlety and unity betokening the
shaping influence of one master intelligence - that of the Arch-foe of God and
man. Need it be said that this is Radicalism? Conceived in revolt from the
sublime and harmonious order in which the different elements operate, it
purposes to upturn the very ground-forms of society. Nothing that is sustained
by the experience of the past, nothing that is venerable with age and
consecrated by immemorial associations, nothing that descending through the
ages has retained, in the midst of change and revolution, the fragrance of our
primeval estate, or even of patriarchal dignity and simplicity, nothing just,
true and pure, will be allowed to escape the sweep of this deluge. Montalbert
has said, in effect, that there is a force in Europe, set in motion, by radical
agitators, and penetrating and impelling the sea-like masses; which, if
unchecked, is destined erelong to obliterate every existing secular and
ecclesiastical organization.
This ruthless, leveling Spirit wages war against the Family, the State and the
Church. Hearth-stones, grave, altars, temples, -- all are borne down under its
tempestuous irruption. Nothing is safe from it. There is no sanctuary which it
will not invade, no just, holy, time-honored sanction which it will not
violate. Contemning the ordinances of man, it swaggers, in its Titanic
audacity, against the empire of the Eternal. A leader of Parisian Socialism is
reported recently to have exclaimed, that if he could reach the Almighty he
would poniard Him upon His throne! Breach after breach has it already opened
through the barriers which limit and restrain it, and in its onward rush,
should laws, constitutions and public sentiment fail to impede its course, can
only be arrested, aside from immediate Divine intervention, by the iron power
of imperial Absolutism. Plunged into the vortex of anarchy by this Genius of
Lawlessness, swimming for life in the vast gulf of the miseries induced by it,
men will in very despair turn for refuge to Autocratic Despotism. It has been
said by a great writer on Government, that there are two cardinal wants of
society -- protection and liberty; and that of these the first in order is
protection. Existence must be pre-supposed by happiness. In accordance with
this principle it is but natural to judge that, when men have tried the
desolating misrule of radical anarchy, they will recoil for protection under
the sceptre of Despotism. But a selfish desire for safety will not have
eradicated the prescriptive habits of democratic license, and the probable
resultant of these conflicting forces will be a mechanical union between the
imperial and popular element -- between Consolidated Despotism and Democratic
Absolutism. To this the indications in Europe and on this Continent seem to
point. Extremes will meet on a principle shared by both -- uncompromising
hostility to regulated government and constitutional liberty. Apparently as far
apart as the poles, they will be united by a common axis, on which the insane
attempt will be made to drive the revolutions of the political world. And if an
opinion might be ventured, suggested by a probable view of Inspired Prophecy,
the day may not be far distant when this consummation will be reached. The body
of iron will attached to feet of clay -- significant symbol of a great Imperial
Despotism resting on the uncertain masses of a fierce Democracy. When this
climax of crime and folly shall have been attained, there will be one of two
alternatives before a sickened and despairing world, -- on the one hand the
experience of a condition of things in which a social, political and religious
Chaos will reign, in which star after star of hope will be quenched, the
constellations of the great lights be blotted from the firmament, and the earth
saturated with blood shall go down into a seething abyss of destruction; or, on
the other hand, a supernatural interposition of God to rectify the otherwise
remediless disorders of the world, and the re-establishment of a theocratic
government no longer confining its sway to one favoured people, but assuming
the diadem of universal dominion, healing the schisms of the race, collecting
the struggling nations into one peaceful flock, and distributing with impartial
hand the blessings of equal rule, regulated liberty and wide-spread domestic
peace.
This somewhat extended portraiture of the spirit of Radicalism will not be
deemed out o place, when it is remembered that it powerfully contributed to
produce the evils under which we are now suffering. It was against its
aggressions, in the particular forms in which they were directed upon the
South, that these men whose memories we honour today and their compatriots
contended unto death. It was this fell spirit which, aiming at the destruction
of an institution peculiar to the South, overrode very moral and constitutional
obstacle which opposed its progress, drenched a once peaceful land in fraternal
blood, and has occasioned that disturbed condition of affairs which is now
likely to be confined to no section, but threatens to agitate the whole
country. It began by assuming the existence of a "higher law," growing out of
what were denominated the instincts of human nature, which it held to be
superior, in the sphere of morals, to Divine Revelation, and, in that of
politics, to the provisions of the Federal Constitution. Which such a theory
from which to derive its inspirations, it is not to be wondered at that it
regarded neither the laws of God nor of man which were conceived to lie in the
path to the attainment of its ends. Pushing out this baleful dogma to its
legitimate results, it boldly invaded the political order, and the fundamental
principles of that federative government, which we had inherited from our
fathers. Resting not until it had destroyed the attitude of strict neutrality
imparted to the Constitution by the wisdom of its framers, it perverted that
instrument into an organ, and the government into an agent of a section,
trampled under foot the rights of sovereign States, and utterly refused to the
people of the South all claim to think and act for themselves. It was a case
demanding resistance from freemen. It was in view of such subversions of their
constitutional rights and liberties that the Southern States in their organic
capacity, and by the solemn acts of conventions, determined to withdraw from a
confederation in which it was plain as day that their hopes of justice and
equal consideration were destroyed. This act of sovereignty they were refused
the liberty of performing; and no choice was left but unconditionally to submit
or meet force with force. They adopted the alternative of freemen. In the
struggle which ensued the Sons of the South, feeble in numbers and in the
apparatus of war, excluded from the fellowship of nations, cut off by a cordon
of fire from access to the ports of the world, and overwhelmed by vast hordes
representing almost every European nationality, failed to secure the
Independence they sought. They lost the power to exercise certain rights and
principles. But did they lose these rights and principles themselves? How
could they? except in the case of any which, acting in their organic capacity
since the close of the war, they may have deliberately relinquished. Lost
them? Yes, as a weak man, overpowered by the superior physical strength of
another, may be said to lose the right for which he has contended. He loses
the exercise of it, until he has the power to recover it. Are the religious
principles of the martyr destroyed because he is burnt for them? Does the
freeman lose his natural or political rights because tyranny represses their
exercise? The very struggle to maintain them, the blood that was shed for
them, the lives that were sacrificed in their defense render their rights and
principles all the dearer to men out of whom all love of liberty is not
completely crushed. Our principles were defeated, not necessarily lost. It
behooves us to cling to them as drowning men to the fragments of a wreck. They
furnish the only hope for our political future -- the only means of escape from
anarchy on the one hand, or from despotism on the other, which are left to a
once free and happy country. If the death of our brethren shall have the
effect of enhancing these principles in our regard it will not have been in
vain.
These men also contended for the existence and the purity of their social
relations, particularly in the domestic form. They fought for their firesides
as well as for their political rights. The same Radical spirit which
disregarded the limitations of the Constitution, contemns the
Divinely-instituted barriers which fence in the sanctities of the Family
relation. Its triumph bodes for us no good. The danger is imminent of the
introduction amongst us of novel social theories, born on another soil, and
coming in as filthy camp-followers of a conquering host. Their first
appearance may excite no alarm. They may even be derided; but they start
tendencies, and tendencies, especially when seconded by the depraved instincts
of nature, speedily become results if not arrested in their inception. It
becomes us with all our might to resist that corruption of manners which is
incompatible with the simplicity of free institutions, and the purity and
integrity of moral character. The overwhelming affliction through which we
have passed, the trials through which are still passing, and the memory of our
dead, should lead us to a corresponding gravity of deportment. Who of us is
there who does not sometimes weep over the glorious past? Is there one of us
across whose soul there does not sometimes sweep the storm of an irrepressible
grief? We are not yet done burying our dead. We are now standing by the open
graves of those who died for liberty, who died for us. We cannot put of the
signals of mourning yet. Shall we ever do it, while our liberties are
prostrated? It is to be greatly feared that a temper of levity is growing upon
us which ill befits the seriousness, the deep sadness of our condition. These
are homely counsels. Would that they were not suggested by obvious dangers.
O! my countrymen, if ever we are really, finally conquered, it will be by
ourselves. The process of dissolution will commence from within. The history
of the past indicates it to be an almost universal law. The most powerful
nations have succumbed under their own deterioration of moral sentiment, and
degeneracy of manners. As long as these causes of decay were inoperative no
external force or internal agitations availed to destroy them. Look at the
English people. While comparative simplicity and purity of manners prevailed,
revolution followed revolution but the country stood. The fundamental law was
perfected by fresh guarantees of freedom. Every conflict enhanced the vigour
of their institutions; every storm settled the roots of the tree of liberty
deeper and faster in the soil. It is said by observers the luxuriousness of
living has greatly increased among them. If so, the checks and balances of
their conservative government will be soon put to the strain; its noble
embankments will not long stand against the sea of Radicalism which is
beginning to dash in thunder against them.
We must resist the influence of Radicalism in its Socialistic aspects as we
would oppose the progress of a plague. Socialism and Communism are
developments of the same Radical spirit. They go hand in hand. When the
relations of life are subverted, the rights which spring from them are
destroyed. When the altars of the Family are overthrown, it is but a step to
tear down the pillars of the State. The stability of political principle and
the happiness of the people depend upon the preservation of the social system
from the inroads of corruption. To poison this is to poison the fountain. Let
us read in the fearful tragedy now enacting in Paris before the horrified gaze
of the world the bitter end to which we, too, shall inevitably come unless we
steadfastly maintain the principles which have been twice consecrated by
patriotic blood -- that of our ancestors in the first, and that of our brethren
and fathers in the second, revolutionary war.
We have seen that in the complex constitution of our nature the religious
element forms an integral part, and that provision is made for its exercise in
the Divinely appointed institute of the Church. In contending against those
influences which threaten to sap the foundations of every venerable
institution, our slain brethren fought for their altars, as well as for their
fire-sides and their political franchises. This is not an extravagant
statement. The spirit of the Christian Religion pervaded the armies of the
Confederacy. The vast majority of our soldiers were its nominal adherents, and
thousands of them were professors of the faith. Its influence was felt in
almost every regiment. In the quiet of camp, during the march and on the eve
of battle its sacred services imparted fortitude under hardship and heroic
courage for the day of conflict. From the Commander-in-chief to the humblest
private in the ranks a reverent respect was paid to its ministers and its
ordinances. We have seen Robert E. Lee, unattended by even a sergeant, go
afoot through the mire to the soldiers' gathering for worship, and sitting in
the midst of them devoutly listen with them to the preaching of God's Word, and
mingle his prayers and praises with theirs. Jackson was proverbially a man of
prayer. He led his fiery and resistless columns into the tempest of battle
with hand uplifted to heaven in token of dependence on God, and supplication
for His blessing. It deserves to be mentioned that that great soldier before
the breaking out of hostilities taught a humble Sabbath-School at Lexington,
the pupils of which when his remains were taken there for burial followed them
with every mark of affection to their last, quiet resting-place. I desire to
record it, amidst the affecting solemnities of this funereal occasion, that
during an extended experience as chaplain I never encountered a sick, wounded
or dying Southern soldier who rejected the Christian faith, or treated its
proffered consolations with contempt. Let us then accept from them as in some
sort martyrs for religion as well as for liberty the solemn obligation to
maintain the Christianity which sustained them amid the privations of a
soldier's life and the anguish of a soldier's death.
The relation between our people and the Gospel at once confers invaluable
benefits and creates imperishable responsibilities. We cannot impair it without
doing ourselves irreparable damage. Our civilization takes its dominant type
from Christianity. All its distinctive moral features are derived from it.
Ancient Pagan civilizations embodied the intellectual as well as our own. We
can boast of no capacity of thought, no mental culture superior to that which
distinguished the land of Homer and Aristotle, or the home of Virgil and
Cicero. But the incompleteness and self-destructiveness inherent in a
civilization merely intellectual are illustrated in the history of every great
power, save one, of ancient times. The stability of a State, and of the
institutions which it embraces and which go to make up its organic life, depend
on the degree in which the principle moral obligation obtains, and the rules of
virtue are practiced. But, as has been observed by a splendid writer on
American Democracy, there can be no true morality without religion. It is
incumbent on us, therefore, as possessing the only perfect religion which the
world has known, to appreciate the responsibilities which flow from such an
endowment. Apostasy from Christianity would be suicide. But may be asked, What
special danger is there of such an event growing out of present circumstances?
It may be said in reply that the danger is two-fold:
First, The critical changes through which we have passed expose us to the
invasion of theories and the pressure of influences which were excluded by the
settled condition of the past. The violence of the revolution in our
circumstances can scarcely be exaggerated. Not only has our political state
been so altered as to reverse relations formerly existing, but one element has
been torn by force, and torn suddenly out of the very fabric of our social
system. Our domestic life is passing through a most extraordinary transition.
We are therefore in a forming condition. Every month is settling precedents for
the future. Old institutions, customs and sentiments are breaking up as by the
upheaval of a deluge; and it is a question of the last importance, into what
order, what type of thought, opinion and practice we shall finally crystallize.
It is while we are passing through this transitional process that the peril is
immanent that ideas, theories and usages may be imbedded in the yielding mass
which, when it shall have consolidated, no power will avail to extract. Already
does this danger threaten us in the sphere of religion; and it becomes us to
watch against tendencies which carry in them the seeds of defection from a pure
religious faith.
Secondly, The prostration of our civil, forebodes injury to our religious,
liberties. Civil Liberty and Religious Liberty are twin sisters. They stand or
fall together. Here, however, a distinction is necessary. It is freely conceded
that the essential liberty of the soul cannot be formed by human power. There
are two prerogatives with which our Maker has endowed us which no tyranny can
affect. They lie beyond the jurisdiction of human courts and the coercion of
human executives. They are as free in the dungeon, at the stake and on the
gibbet, as in the assemblies of an unconquered people, or in the issues of an
unlicensed and unmuzzled press. They are the inalienable, indestructible powers
of thought and language -- the faculty by which we form our opinions, and that
by which we express them. They body may be manacled in irons, while the mind in
its limitless excursions mounts as on wings of fire above the stars. The
tongue, the glory of our corporeal frame, the harp from the strings of which is
evoked the spontaneous adoration of God, the trumpet which heralds forth to
mankind the noble conceptions of the human intelligence, the tongue -- the
obedient organ of free thought -- cannot be coerced. It may be cut out but
cannot be compelled to speak. When, therefore, physical liberty is restrained,
these essential, godlike prerogative of the soul are as untrammeled as ever.
But the freedom to express positively our convictions, to embody in outward
form our worship of the Diety, to maintain institutions significant of our
faith -- this freedom may be crushed by human power. The Church in its external
manifestations may be suppressed. In this point of view the difference between
civil and religious liberty becomes exceedingly thin. The one may to some
extent survive the other, especially if the ruin of that other be not total;
but the destruction of one originates the impulse to the subversion of the
other, and supplies the motive to it. What has been done may be done; and when
civil liberty has in fact been extinguished, the argument is a short one to the
extinction of religious. It is the argument of triumphant power. Farther than
this, the connection between these two complementary forms of liberty is so
close -- the fire on the one altar so readily communicates itself to the
smouldering ashes on the other -- that it is evident that as long as one is
enjoyed, the other cannot be completely quenched. Their principles are akin;
and the existence of one necessarily conduces to the maintenance of the other.
Consequently, that a people should be thoroughly subdued, neither can be left
intact. Both must be crushed. The people, therefore, which deliberately
consents to the destruction of one form of liberty vainly dreams when it hopes
that the other may escape. As surely as the law of contagion operates, so
surely will one not long survive the contact with the corpse of the other. To
this conclusion, then, must those come who abandon the last struggle for civil
liberty -- they must expect as a legitimate inference the loss of religious.
To sum up what has been said: Our brethren will not have died in vain if we
their survivors adhere to the great principles for which they contended unto
death; if we preserve an attitude of protest against those Radical influences
which threaten to sweep away every vestige of constitutional rights and
guarantees, to pollute the fountains of social life, and ultimately to whelm
our civil and religious liberties in one common ruin.
Can this attitude be maintained? I presume not to speak of special political
measures, but would earnestly urge the adoption of a course which will enable
us to retain our hold upon our principles, and keep a posture of preparation
for any relief which a gracious Providence may be pleased in answer to our
prayers to grant us from the evils which now oppress us:
Let us cling to our identity as a people! The danger is upon us of losing it --
of its being absorbed and swallowed up in that of a people which having
despoiled us of the rights of freemen assumes to do our thinking, our
legislating and our ruling for us. Influences are operating on us with every
last breath we draw which, if we be not vigilant, will sooner or later wipe out
every distinctive characteristic which has hitherto marked us. Are we prepared
for it? In that event, nothing of the past will be left to the South but a
history which will read like and elegiac poem, nothing for the present but a
place on the maps which our children study, nothing for the future but a single
element of existence -- a geographical one. -- But can we preserve our identity
in the face of the difficulties which oppose it?
We may do it, by continuing to wear the badges of mourning befitting a deeply
afflicted people; by consenting to undergo the trials which distinguish us from
a people inflated with material prosperity rather than abate one jot or tittle
of our adhesion to principle; and by transforming the sufferings endured for
freedom's sake into a discipline which may save our virtues from decay, and our
liberties from extinction. We may do it, by utterly refusing to participate in
any measures, of however great apparent utility, which require the slightest
compromise of our innermost convictions; by declining to acquiesce where only
to submit is demanded of us; and by preserving a dignified silence by which we
shall signify our resolution, if we may not act for truth, right and liberty,
not to act at all. We may do it, by instituting peculiar customs and
organizations which will discharge the office of monuments perpetuating the
past; by forming associations of a memorial character like that whose call
gathers us here today; by collecting and publishing materials for our own
history; and by appointing anniversaries by which if we may not celebrate the
attainment of independence we can at least commemorate the deeds of men who
died for our fundamental liberties and constitutional rights. We may do it, by
scrupulously adhering to the phraseology of the past -- by making it the
vehicle for transmitting to our posterity ideas which once true are true
forever, all opposition to them by brute force to the contrary notwithstanding.
We may do it, by the education we impart to the young; by making our nurseries,
schools and colleges channels for conveying from generation to generation our
own type of thought, sentiment and opinion; by stamping on the minds of our
children principles hallowed by the blood of patriots, and by leading them with
uncovered heads to gaze upon the grandest monuments the South can rear to
liberty -- the headstones which mark the last resting-place of Southern
Volunteers!
If we adopt not this course, what will be the consequences, which must ensue?
One of the results will be that the only remaining representatives on this
continent of free republican principles -- especially in their federative form
-- will have ceased to exist, and the faintest, the last hope of a return to
the noble, the glorious estate inherited from our patriotic ancestors will have
gone out in the blackness of darkness. And then it must in all probability
follow that the question of the possibility of republican institutions, or of
the maintenance of the principle of free representation will have been
negatived forever. The failure of the experiment on this continent instituted
under conditions so favourable, under auspices so happy will discourage any
similar attempt for the future in any country under heaven. It may without
extravagance be said that we occupy a moral Thermopylae in the struggle for
republican liberty, and if we go down it will buried in the same grave with us.
Another consequence of our refusal to take this course will be -- and it
deserves our solemn consideration -- that our deliberate acquiescence in the
criminal acts by which the liberties of the country are subverted will make us
partakers in the condign punishment which must some day be visited on their
perpetrators. It implies no ordinary crime to break the faith of compacts
between people and people, to despoil sovereign States of rights won by
sacrifice and independence purchased by blood, to disturb the balances of
equitable government, and to threaten with ruin as fair a fabric of
constitutional liberty as the sun ever shone upon. "The offense is rank and
smells to heaven;" and if nations are punished for their sins in this world,
the penalty of such acts must soon or late descend. It matters little that its
approach is delayed, or is noiselessly made. It was a saying of the ancients
that "the feet of the avenging Deity are shod with wool." The tread of the
pursuing Nemesis may not be heard, but it presses with inevitable and
tremendous certainty upon the track of national transgression. The demon of
Radicalism has been invoked. It knows no law; and may yet turn upon those who
have imagined it obedient to their will. And shall we elect to participate in
these retributions? No, my countrymen; let us prefer to suffer present
affliction for righteousness' sake rather than to incur the future punishments
of national guilt. Let us keep our skirts clear. We can only do this by
maintaining our identity as a people. And is this impossible? There is a race,
which, coming down through the centuries enveloped with antagonistic influences
and hostile nationalities, has stood out in perpetual protest against
amalgamation with other peoples, and today preserves its characteristics, as
the current of the great Western River flows into, without blending with, the
multitudinous waters of the Gulf. Even so must we hold to our identity, or, as
a people, we are undone. We may perish if we attempt it; perish we must, as a
Southern race, if we do not. It is now almost the only hope that is left us.
Conservation of our peculiar principles is our great, our paramount duty. We
owe it our forefathers; we owe it to these our dead brethren; we owe it to
ourselves; we owe it to our children; we owe it to the struggling, waning,
almost expiring sense of constitutional liberty in this land. If we yield in
the extremity, all is lost. If we tenaciously hold on to the fragments of a
noble past, cling to the planks of a ship-wrecked Constitution, the very
attitude we shall maintain may possibly inspire other lovers of liberty in this
land to rally to a last, mighty effort to regain lost ground, or at least to
arrest further strides to ruin, as the firm stand of a colour-bearer, in the
crisis of battle and danger of rout, sometimes recalls a discomfited and
retiring host. It is thought by some that there is a speck of hope -- a gleam
of light in the stormy horizon. The disregard of the limitations of the Federal
Constitution, the disposition to make fresh inroads upon the provisions of that
instrument, the seeming determination to be balked by no barriers of
fundamental law in its march to permanent triumph -- these features disclosed
by the dominant party are awakening thought and exciting apprehension. It may
please a merciful Providence by this means to restore to the people of this
land some measure of respect for the guarantees of liberty enjoyed in the past.
If so, it would be suicidal in us by any unfortunate concessions to relinquish
the conservative position we have held. Whether this be so, or not, we must
stand by our principles. When Stonewall Jackson had, on that fearful night at
Chancellorsville, received his fatal wound, and the ground was swept by a storm
of grapeshot, he was informed by an officer that it was thought necessary to
retire. Faint from the loss of blood, and suffering from excruciating pain, he
partly raised himself from his prostrate posture and in a tone of authority
said: "Hold your ground, Sir!" The bleeding form of Liberty rises from the
earth before us and utters the same command. We must, by God's help, hold our
ground, or consent to be traitors to our ancestry, our dead, our trusts for
posterity, to our fire-sides, our social order, and our civil and religious
liberties.
Barring a certain fearful looking for of a retribution, which would be the end
of such a policy, no doubt we might better our material condition by
accommodating our principles to the demands of circumstances. But shall we
come to that? Who of us holds Principle so cheap as to prefer to her his gold,
his houses and his lands? Who of us will put her into the market, and barter
her for so many pieces of silver? Who of us, gazing into these open graves and
upon these coffins, will measure her value by even life itself? These men loved
not their lives in comparison with her. They died for her. Who will cleave to
material goods an sensual ease at the sacrifice of principle? Were there one
here who would answer in the affirmative, every mouldering bone in these narrow
houses would find a tongue of rebuke for him! Better, far better would it be
to gain a bare subsistence with our principles retained than to revel in luxury
with the consciousness of treachery in our souls and the welcome collar of
servitude on our necks! Rather than surrender character, better would it be in
the last extremity to leave a soil on which it would be no longer possible for
freemen to live, to take with us all that would remain of a historic Carolina,
and to seek in some happier clime liberty to enjoy a few natural rights without
being menaced by those who were our equals for not acquiescing in the tyranny
of those who were our inferiors. That was the issue to which Carolina's great
Statesmen declared, in the Senate of the United States, it would come in case
force measures should succeed when employed against a Southern State. But,
whither could we go from the relentless, all-pervading Spirit of Radicalism?
Could we ascend into heaven, it would not be there; but should we make our beds
in hell, behold, it would be there. If we should take the wings of the morning
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there would not its hand
pursue us, and its right hand hold us? If we should say, surely the darkness
will cover us, would not the night be made light about us by its incendiary
conflagrations? Whither could we turn? Where on earth could the last asylum
of the oppressed be found? Merciful God, we lift our appeal to Thee! Thou
hast been our dwelling-place in all generations; cover us with Thy feathers,
and let our trust be in the shadow of Thy wings!
But enough! the mournful office which has summoned us hither waits to be
performed. Let us hasten to remove these relics of unconquered patriots from a
strange atmosphere less free than the air of the sepulchre. And if we have
abandoned the last hope of maintaining their principles, if we are prepared to
give up everything for which they died, let us discharge this office for them
with the feelings of those who are interring their principles with their bones
-- of those who are solemnizing the funeral-rites, and burying the corpse, of
Liberty. Let us place no emblem of hope above their heads, but having in the
silence of death struck the last stroke of the spade upon their graves, retire
from the scene as men withdraw from a field on which all has been lost.
But if it be our determination that we will cease to cherish the sacred
principles which these men consecrated with their blood only when we cease to
live, then let us, comrades, fellow-citizens, lovers of liberty, with reverent
mien and tender hands consign all that remains of our brethren to their coveted
resting-place in the bosom of their beloved Carolina. And as we cover them for
their last sleep let us bury with the every proposal to us to apostatize from
their principles, every tendency even to compromise them, every desire to
recover position, wealth or ease at the sacrifice of honour, virtue and truth.
Let us lay them down in hope; and as each modest stone rears its head above
them, inscribe upon it a Resurgam - - the token of our faith that their
principles now trodden into dust will rise again, the symbol of our invincible
resolution that these men shall not altogether have died in vain.
Heroes of Gettysburg! Champions of constitutional rights! Martyrs for regulated
liberty! Once again, farewell! Descend to your final sleep with a people's
benedictions upon your names! Rest ye here, Soldiers of a defeated -- God grant
it may not be a wholly lost -- Cause! We may not fire a soldier's salute over
your dust, but the pulses of our hearts beat like muffled drums, and every
deep-drawn sigh breathes a low and passionate requiem. Memory will keep her
guard of honour over your graves; Love will bedew them with her tears; Faith
will draw from them her inspiration for future sacrifices; and Hope, kindling
her torch at the fires which glow in your ashes, will, in its light, look
forward to a day when a people once more redeemed and enfranchised will confess
that your death was not in vain.
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