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Title: The Dixie Book of Days
Author: Matthew Page Andrews
Release Date: November 24, 2012 [EBook #41474]
Language: English
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The Dixie Book of Days
[Illustration: FOUNDING THE FIRST PERMANENT ENGLISH COLONY IN AMERICA AT
JAMES TOWNE, VIRGINIA, 1607]
The Dixie Book of Days
MATTHEW PAGE ANDREWS
PHILADELPHIA AND LONDON
J. B. LIPPINCOTT CO.
1912
COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
PRINTED BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
AT THE WASHINGTON SQUARE PRESS
PHILADELPHIA, U. S. A.
Preface
In the preparation of this volume of quotations illustrative of the
history and literature of the South, the editor wishes to acknowledge the
kindness of publishers in granting permission to make selections. He
desires especially to express his appreciation of the courtesy of the
following firms: D. Appleton & Co.; Bobbs-Merrill Co.; The Century Co.;
Doubleday, Page & Co.; Harper & Brothers; Houghton, Mifflin & Co.; B. F.
Johnson Publishing Co.; P. J. Kenedy & Sons; J. B. Lippincott Co.;
Longmans, Green & Co.; Lothrop, Lee, and Shepard Co.; The Macmillan Co.;
Martin & Hoyt Co.; The Neale Publishing Co.; G. P. Putnam's Sons; Charles
Scribner's Sons; Southern Historical Publication Society; Alfred M.
Slocomb Co.; Small, Maynard & Co.; Stewart & Kidd Co.; F. A. Stokes Co.;
State Company; Stone & Barringer Co.; and the Whitehall Publishing Co.
M. P. A.
Baltimore, Md., April 30, 1912.
Introduction
This volume of brief selections from a wide range of Southern expression
in prose and verse leads into fields of American history and literature
which, perhaps, are not well known to the general public. The reader is
not offered stacks of straw to thresh over; on the contrary, it has been
the aim of the compiler, in a most congenial and delightful task, to
afford others easy access to grain that he has already garnered. Generally
speaking, the genius of literary production in the Old South did not
aspire to an outlet in the field of professional endeavor. There were,
however, many gifted writers who regarded production in prose and verse as
a pleasant recreation rather than an end, or as an accomplishment common
to cultured minds, to be called forth as occasion offered, or when some
emotion prompted expression.
By way of illustration, William Henry Timrod may be regarded as
potentially a greater poet than his better-known son. Yet he was one of
the occasional poets of the old régime. John Laurens composed a sonnet as
he lay dying of wounds and fever incurred in defence of his country; and
Stuart, in a later struggle, wrote verses while engaged in riding around
McClellan's army. These and many others like them never seriously
considered revising or publishing their work. They sang from time to time
because to them "singing itself is so sweet." This peculiar diffidence is
a relic of the past; and at the present time, one need but review the list
of leading American novelists to find that a remarkably large proportion
have come from the South and write on Southern themes.
Thus, while the very nature of the South lends itself to sentiment and
romance, her history is yet to be written. This little volume attempts,
therefore, with particular care, to treat of historical events as their
anniversaries bring them to mind. Comparatively few are the enduring works
of Southern historians; and yet from the beginning of colonization the
South has thrilled with the record of daring achievement. In the work of
her soldiers and statesmen, the South led in shaping the Republic out of
rebellion, revolution, and jarring elements. During and after the struggle
with the mother country, Jefferson, Henry, Clark, and Virginia gave to the
Nation the great States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and
Wisconsin. It was Jefferson who secured to the Republic peaceful
possession of the vast original tract of Louisiana; and it was he, with
Lewis and Clark, who made good the claim to the Oregon territory.
Furthermore, the mighty empire of Texas and the far Southwest was brought
in under the initiative of the South and the leadership of Polk and Tyler.
So did the South mightily assist in making a common government great and
strong; but she was likewise building up a power which later overwhelmed
her. In truth, she forged the fetters that for forty years chafed her
people under an increasingly oppressive legislation; since it was a son of
Carolina who first brought forward a tariff for protection, not for
Carolina, but for New England and the Nation; and it was Clay of Kentucky
who fostered the system until it involved the thirteen agricultural States
of the South in an indirect taxation more burdensome than any direct
impost ever proposed by Great Britain for the thirteen Colonies. In vain
the South protested. Opposing majorities grew against her. And when a
solidly sectional party became the dominant power, the Lower South
attempted to exercise the hitherto generally conceded right of
withdrawal, a right which had been particularly emphasized in New England
when that section felt its interests to be in peril. The Upper South
opposed coercion; and both prepared for the fight that followed. Such is
the principle for which the South contended. She failed not in valor or in
honor, but fell through exhaustion; yet glory stood beside her grief, and
she endowed the Nation with the stainless names of Lee and Jackson.
With the failure of the South to establish her independence, there fell
also, as an incident of the struggle, that which most made her a separate
section, politically, economically, and socially--the tutelage, in the
most beneficent form of servitude ever known, of a child-race. That race
was largely thrust upon her; and yet she raised its people from cannibal
savages to civilized beings, whose devotion and faithfulness became the
marvel of invading armies. Rather than interpret such a record to her
shame, as some would have us do, let it be proclaimed as an everlasting
tribute to the lofty character of Anglo-Saxon Christianity.
The South, after fifty years, is more intimately a part of the Union than
ever before. Her interests are national and her destiny great. In the
youthful Bagley she was the first to give her blood in the war with
Spain, therewith cementing the tie that now, without fetters, binds in a
steadily growing amity and understanding. To-day, a true Southerner has an
abiding love and loyalty for the section that has seen tears and grief, as
well as sunshine and flowers, beyond the measure of any country of modern
times; but he is also doubly true to, and proud of, the mighty progress of
a reunited Republic. Surely it is due to the South and due to the Nation
that the story of the South be told. And the highest aim of the compiler
of these selections is that he may contribute something to promote that
steadily expanding knowledge of historical truth which alone can fully
allay the spirit of sectional strife, and from which alone we may look for
perfect amity and understanding to ensue.
MATTHEW PAGE ANDREWS
January
TO TIME, THE OLD TRAVELER
They slander thee, Old Traveler,
Who say that thy delight
Is to scatter ruin, far and wide,
In thy wantonness of might:
For not a leaf that falleth
Before thy restless wings,
But in thy flight, thou changest it
To a thousand brighter things.
* * * *
'Tis true thy progress layeth
Full many a loved one low,
And for the brave and beautiful
Thou hast caused our tears to flow;
But always near the couch of death
Nor thou, nor we can stay;
_And the breath of thy departing wings
Dries all our tears away_!
WILLIAM HENRY TIMROD
January First
Some thunder on the heights of song, their race
Godlike in power, while others at their feet
Are breathing measures scarce less strong and sweet
Than those that peal from out that loftiest place;
Meantime, just midway on the mount, his face
Fairer than April heavens, when storms retreat,
And on their edges rain and sunshine meet,
Pipes the soft lyrist lays of tender grace,
But where the slopes of bright Parnassus sweep
Near to the common ground, a various throng
Chant lowlier measures--yet each tuneful strain
(The silvery minor of earth's perfect song)
Blends with that music of the topmost steep,
O'er whose vast realm the master minstrels reign!
PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE
O'er those who lost and those who won,
Death holds no parley which was right--
JEHOVAH judges Arlington.
JAMES RYDER RANDALL
_Paul Hamilton Hayne born, 1830_
_James Ryder Randall, Laureate of the War between the States, born, 1839_
January Second
... In a word,
Mars and Minerva both in him concurred
For arts, for arms, whose pen and sword alike,
As Cato's did, may admiration strike
Into his foes; while they confess withal
It was their guilt styled him a criminal....
_From Epitaph by "His Man"_
In this epitaph we have what is in all probability the single poem in any
true sense--the single product of sustained poetic art--that was written
in America for a hundred and fifty years after the settlement of
Jamestown.
WILLIAM P. TRENT
_Nathaniel Bacon, "The First American Rebel," born, 1647_
January Third
The only calendar
That marks my seasons,
Is that sweet face of hers,
Her moods and reasons,
Wherein no record is
Of winter seasons.
MADISON CAWEIN
_Alfred Mordecai born, 1804_
January Fourth
The strange and curious race madness of the American Republic will be a
study for centuries to come. That madness took a child-race out of a warm
cradle, threw it into the ocean of politics--the stormiest and most
treacherous we have known--and bade it swim for its own and the life of
the nation!
MYRTA LOCKETT AVARY
_The Social Equality Bill passed in Louisiana, 1869_
January Fifth
What the cloud doeth
The Lord knoweth,
The cloud knoweth not
What the artist doeth,
The Lord knoweth;
Knoweth the artist not?
SIDNEY LANIER
January Sixth
Few have equaled the old time negro at repartee, and a true Southerner
heartily relished a clever rejoinder to his good natured raillery. The
rejoinder was frequently overwhelming, always respectful, and generally
worth an immediate acknowledgment in cash or old clothes.
"Is that you, Peter?" called an old Confederate to his former body-servant
on the road.
Peter grinned broadly as he doffed his hat. "Yas, suh, dis yer me."
"Well, well!" laughed the other. "I see that all the old fools are not
dead yet."
"Dat's so, Mars' Tom." Peter pulled his grizzly forelock appreciatively.
"I's monsus glad to see dat you's in such good health, suh."
January Seventh
A WELL-KNOWN TYPE OF SOUTHERN MATRON BEFORE THE WAR
Full well she knew the seriousness of life. Over and over the cares and
responsibilities of her station as the mother of so many children, the
mistress of so many servants and the hostess of so many guests, had
utterly overwhelmed her. * * * * * Into how many negro cabins had she not
gone, when the night was far spent and the lamp of life flickered low in
the breast of the dying slave! How often she ministered to him with her
own hands! * * * * Nay, had she not knelt by his lowly bed and poured out
her heart to God as his soul winged its flight, and closed his glazed and
staring eyes as the day was dawning? Yet the morning meal found her at her
accustomed seat, tranquil and helpful, and no one but her husband the
wiser for her night's ministrations.
GEORGE W. BAGBY
_Fort Marion, Florida, seized by order of the Governor of Florida, 1861_
January Eighth
Jackson's line, extending about half a mile from the river to the swamp,
was defended by a water-filled ditch and by a parapet of varying height
and thickness. The idea that it was built of cotton bales is an absurd
fiction that brings back the inspiring picture in Peter Parley's old
history of our childhood days....
PIERCE BUTLER
"What stopped you?" General Pakenham asked of a regiment of Scotch
Highlanders. To which their colonel replied: "Bullets, mon! bullets! Auld
Julius Caesar himself wouldn't have charged those devils."
_The "Hunting Shirt Men" of the South versus Wellington's Peninsular
veterans in the Battle of New Orleans, 1815; General Pakenham,
brother-in-law of the Duke of Wellington killed_
_James Longstreet born, 1821_
January Ninth
Consider the lark! How he rises on wing,
And mounts to the sky through ethereal air!
He sings as he soars; 'tis his nature to sing,
To warble his notes though no listener be near.
I seek not for fortune, I sigh not for fame,
I follow my Muse into forest or street;
In sorrow, in gladness, I sing all the same,
I sing because singing itself is so sweet.
[These lines, typifying so much of the poetical expression of the old
South, were written by former Surgeon H. M. Clarkson, C. S. A., who,
on January 9, 1861, as a corporal of artillery, fired a single shot
from Fort Moultrie to challenge the _Star of the West_ in its attempt
to reinforce Fort Sumter. On the same occasion two other shots were
fired by the State cadets stationed on Morris Island, driving the
transport from the harbor. It is not improbable, therefore, that, as
the challenger of the hostile steamer, the writer of these verses
fired the first shot of the war between the States. Corporal Clarkson
was in charge of gun No. 13.--EDITOR]
_The United States transport "Star of the West" attempts to reinforce Fort
Sumter, 1861_
_General John B. Gordon dies, 1904_
_Mississippi secedes, 1861_
January Tenth
SECESSION: A SOUTHERN VIEW, 1861
A State, finding herself in the condition in which Mississippi has judged
she is--in which her safety requires that she should provide for the
maintenance of her rights out of the Union--surrenders all the benefits
(and they are known to be many), deprives herself of the advantages (and
they are known to be great), severs all the ties of affection (and they
are close and enduring), which have bound her to the Union; and thus
divesting herself of every benefit--taking upon herself every burden--she
claims to be exempt from any power to execute the laws of the United
States within her limits.
JEFFERSON DAVIS
(_Farewell Address in United States Senate_)
SECESSION: FROM THE NORTHERN STANDPOINT, 1814
Whenever it shall appear that these causes are radical and permanent, a
separation by equitable arrangement will be preferable to an alliance by
constraint, among nominal friends, but real enemies, inflamed by mutual
hatred and jealousy, and inviting, by intestine divisions, contempt and
aggression from abroad.--_Journal of the Hartford Convention_
_Florida secedes, 1861_
_The "Bonnie Blue Flag" first sung in public at Jackson Mississippi, 1861_
January Eleventh
The States of Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee were engaged in practical
movements for the gradual emancipation of their slaves. This movement
continued until it was arrested by the aggressions of the Abolitionists.
GEORGE LUNT
(Massachusetts)
And if the secrets of all hearts could have been revealed, our enemies
would have been astounded to see how many thousands and tens of thousands
in the Southern States felt the crushing burden and the awful
responsibility of the institution which we were supposed to be defending
with the melodramatic fury of pirate kings. We were born to this social
order, we had to do our duty in it according to our lights, and this duty
was made indefinitely more difficult by the interference of those who, as
we thought, could not understand the conditions of the problem, and who
did not have to bear the expense of the experiments they proposed.
BASIL L. GILDERSLEEVE
_Thomas Jefferson Randolph's resolutions on the abolition of slavery
introduced for extended debate in the Virginia Assembly, 1832_
_Alabama secedes, 1861_
January Twelfth
We are a band of brothers, and native to the soil,
Fighting for our liberty, with treasure, blood, and toil.
And when our rights were threatened, the cry rose near and far:
Hurrah for the Bonnie Blue Flag that bears a single star!
HARRY MCCARTHY
January Thirteenth
FIFTY YEARS AFTER--THE VIEW OF A FEDERAL OFFICER OF '61-'65
In case of direct and insoluble issue between Sovereign State and
Sovereign Nation, every man was not only free to decide, but had to decide
the question of ultimate allegiance for himself; and whichever way he
decided he was right.
CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS
(Massachusetts)
January Fourteenth
LAYING THE ATLANTIC CABLE
Maury furnished the brains, England gave the money, and I did the work.
CYRUS W. FIELD
(_At a banquet in New York_)
After a little while
The cross will glisten and the thistles wave
Above my grave;
And planets smile.
Sweet Lord, then pillowed on thy gentle breast,
I fain would rest,
After a little while.
JAMES RYDER RANDALL
_Matthew Fontaine Maury born, 1806_
_James Ryder Randall dies, 1908_
January Fifteenth
A Northerner, who had purchased an estate in Virginia, noticed that smoke
always emanated from the chimney of a cabin near his woods where an old
negro lived. One day, on meeting the old colored man, he asked: "Where do
you get your wood, Uncle?"
The latter eyed him with an expression of great reproach and replied: "My
pa was coachman at the Gret House, and he pa, and he pa; 'whar I git my
wood?' That ain't no question for one gen'l'man to ax an'er!"
_Fort Fisher, North Carolina, captured, 1865_
January Sixteenth
When wintry days are dark and drear
And all the forest ways grow still,
When gray snow-laden clouds appear
Along the bleak horizon hill,
When cattle all are snugly penned
And sheep go huddling close together,
When steady streams of smoke ascend
From farm-house chimneys--in such weather
Give me old Carolina's own,
A great log house, a great hearthstone,
A cheering pipe of cob or briar
And a red, leaping light'ood fire.
JOHN HENRY BONER
(_The Light'ood Fire_)
_Forcible resistance to British Stamp Act under Colonel Hugh Waddell, of
Wilmington, N. C., 1766_
January Seventeenth
VALLEY FORGE EXCEEDED
Starvation, literal starvation, was doing its deadly work. So depleted and
poisoned was the blood of many of Lee's men from insufficient and unsound
food that a slight wound which would probably not have been reported at
the beginning of the war would often cause blood-poison, gangrene, and
death. Yet the spirits of these brave men seemed to rise as their
condition grew more desperate.... It was a harrowing but not uncommon
sight to see those hungry men gather the wasted corn from under the feet
of half-fed horses, and wash and parch and eat it to satisfy in some
measure their craving for food.
GENERAL JOHN B. GORDON
_Tarleton routed at the battle of the Cowpens, S. C., 1781_
January Eighteenth
While the Confederate soldiers were in the trenches, the ingenuity of the
Southern women was taxed to the utmost to supply their household needs.
Medicine had been declared contraband of war by the Federal Government,
and salt works were made a special object for attack. Remedies were
improvised from herbs of all kinds; the dirt floor of the meat house was
boiled for the salt it contained; soap was made from china-berries and
lye; candles out of resin or waxed rope wound around a corncob; thorns
were used for pins; shoes were fashioned out of canvas, and supplied with
wooden soles; buttons were made from persimmon seed; tumblers out of glass
bottles; tea out of berry leaves; and coffee was made from sweet potatoes
and dandelion seed.
[Condensed from accounts of war times--Ed.]
January Nineteenth
ENGLISH TRIBUTES TO AMERICAN GENIUS
LEE--One of the greatest, if not the greatest, of all the generals who
have spoken the English tongue.
COL. G. F. R. HENDERSON, C.B.
POE--How can so strange and fine a genius and so sad a life be expressed
and compressed in one line?
LORD TENNYSON
(_From letter in Poe Memorial Vol., 1877_)
_Robert Edward Lee born, 1807_
_Edgar Allan Poe born, 1809_
_Georgia secedes, 1861_
January Twentieth
No truth is lost for which the true are weeping,
Nor dead for which they died.
FRANCIS O. TICKNOR
January Twenty-First
The following lines are remarkable in that they represent a boy's estimate
of Stonewall Jackson before the war between the States. They were written
by William Fitzhugh Lee when a cadet under Jackson at the Virginia
Military Institute:--
Like some rough brute that roams the forest wild,
So rude, uncouth, so purely Nature's child,
Is "Hickory," and yet methinks I see
The stamp of genius on his brow; and he,
With his mild glance and keen, but quiet eye,
Can draw forth from the secret recess where they lie
Those thoughts and feelings of the human heart
Most virtuous, good, and free from guilty art.
There's something in his very mode of life
So accurate, steady, void of care and strife,
That fills my heart with love for him who bears
His honors meekly and who wears
The laurels of a hero! This is a fact,
So here's a heart and hand for "Jack!"
_Stonewall Jackson born, 1824_
January Twenty-Second
Wherein, then, lay his strength, and what was the secret of his influence
over all this land? I answer in one word--character. And what is meant by
character? Courage? Yes; courage of his opinions, and physical courage as
well; for he had a Briton's faith in pluck. Pride of race? In a limited
sense, yes. Honesty? The question is almost an insult. Love of truth? Yes,
undying love of it.
GEORGE W. BAGBY
("_The Old Virginia Gentleman_")
January Twenty-Third
I reckon hit's well we wuz all set free,
I s'pose dat's de way folks wuz meant ter be,
But I kain't see w'y dey's no manners lef'
Jes' kase dey happens ter own deyse'f.
I dunno rightly how ol' I is,
Hit mought be eighty, I reckon 'tis,
Yit I nuver gone now'ers, I tells you true,
But I tucken my manners an' breedin', too.
ANNE VIRGINIA CULBERTSON
January Twenty-Fourth
Dem sassy young niggers, dey plum' disgrace
De res' uv de' 'spectable cullud race.
Dey got dey books, dey kin read an' write,
But dey dunno 'nough fer to be perlite.
I kain't see how dey gwine git erlong,
Hit seem lak sump'n have done gone wrong.
I gits wo' out wid'em, dat's de fac',
But I orter mek 'lowance fer how dey ac',
'Kase de times an' de doin's is changed a lot,
An' dey ain' had de raisin' dat I done got.
Dar's nuffin lef' me but lookin' on
Twel me an' de ol'-time ways is gone.
ANNE VIRGINIA CULBERTSON
January Twenty-Fifth
Ah, only from his golden throne,
Upon his golden lute,
He touched the magic note; then Poe was known,
And so was quelled dispute.
Open thy portal, Fame! Let soar
That sombre bird, whose song is heard forevermore.
DANIEL BEDINGER LUCAS
(_Referring to first publication of
Poe's Raven, 1845_)
_George E. Pickett born, 1825_
January Twenty-Sixth
THREE VIEWS OF SECESSION CONNECTED WITH LOUISIANA; 1803-1811-1861
Resolved, that the annexation of Louisiana to the Union transcends the
Constitutional power of the Government of the United States. It formed a
New Confederacy to which the States united by the former compact are not
bound to adhere.
MASSACHUSETTS LEGISLATURE
(_Upon Purchase of Louisiana Territory, 1803_)
_Louisiana secedes from the Union, 1861_
_Virginia readmitted to the Union, 1870_
January Twenty-Seventh
If this bill passes, it is my deliberate opinion that it is virtually a
dissolution of this Union, that it will free the States from their moral
obligations, and as it will be the right of all, so it will be the duty of
some, definitely to prepare for a separation, amicably if they can,
violently if they must.
JOSIAH QUINCY
(_Representative from Massachusetts in Congress, opposing statehood
for Louisiana Territory, 1811_)
_Richard Taylor born, 1826_
January Twenty-Eighth
The rights of Louisiana as a sovereign State are those of Virginia; no
more, no less. Let those who deny her right to resume delegated powers
successfully refute the claim of Virginia to the same right, in spite of
her expressed reservation made and notified to her sister States when she
consented to enter the Union.... For two-thirds of a century this right
has been known by many of the States to be, at all times, within their
power.
JUDAH P. BENJAMIN
(_Farewell Address in the United States Senate_)
January Twenty-Ninth
It was Lee who suggested the capture of Stony Point, and it was a band of
North Carolinians who formed Wayne's head of column in the assault upon
that fortress. Three hundred Virginians followed Lee in his successful
dash against Paulus Hook on the Jersey coast, August, 1779.
HENRY A. WHITE
_Henry Lee ("Light Horse Harry") born, 1756_
January Thirtieth
UNCLE REMUS AT THE TELEPHONE
"Yer 'tis, Miss Sally," said Uncle Remus after listening a moment.
"Dey's a mighty zooin' gwine on in dar, en I dunner whe'er Mars John
tryin' ter scramble out, er whe'er he des tryin' fer ter make hisself
comfertuble in dar."
"What did he say, Remus?"
"He up en low'd dat one un us wus a vilyun but dey wuz such a buzzin'
gwine on in dar dat I couldn't 'zactly ketch the rights un it."
JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS
January Thirty-first
I wish I was in the land of cotton,
Cinnamon seed and sandy bottom;
Look away, away, away down South in Dixie.
Her scenes shall fade from my memory never;
For Dixie's land hurrah forever!
Look away, away, away down South in Dixie.
Chorus:
I wish I was in Dixie;
Away, away;
In Dixie's land I'll take my stand,
And live and die in Dixie.
Away, away,
Away down South in Dixie.
Look away, away, away down South in Dixie.
MARIE LOUISE EVE
(_Version of "Dixie"_)
February
TAMPA ROBINS
The robin laughed in the orange-tree:
"Ho, windy North, a fig for thee:
While breasts are red and wings are bold
And green trees wave us globes of gold,
Time's scythe shall reap but bliss for me--
Sunlight, song, and the orange-tree....
"I'll south with the sun, and keep my clime;
My wing is king of the summer-time;
My breast to the sun his torch shall hold;
And I'll call down through the green and gold
_Time, take thy scythe, reap bliss for me,
Bestir thee under the orange-tree_."
SIDNEY LANIER
February First
The Emperor of France made him Commander of the Legion of Honor; The
Emperor of Russia, Knight of the Order of St. Ann; the King of Denmark,
Knight of the Dannebrog; the King of Portugal, Knight of the Tower and
Sword; the King of Belgium, Knight of the Order of St. Leopold;
simultaneously with Tennyson, he was awarded an LL.D. by the University of
Cambridge, England; he received honorary membership from a score of the
world's leading societies of science and scholarship; the Pope conferred
upon him a noteworthy testimonial; the Emperor of Mexico gave him a
decoration; and Prussia, Austria, Sweden, Holland, Sardinia, Bremen, and
France struck medals in his honor as the greatest scientist of the New
World, and the peer of any in the Old.
The government of his own country, says Professor Francis H. Smith, has
"carefully omitted his name in official records of the departments he
created"; nor is it even given a place among the many inscribed in the
mighty mosaic of our National Library.
_Matthew Fontaine Maury dies at Lexington, Va., 1873_
_Texas secedes, 1861_
February Second
MAURY'S LAST WISH
"Home--bear me home, at last," he said,
"And lay me where my dead are lying,
But not while skies are overspread,
And mournful wintry winds are sighing.
"When the sky, the air, the grass,
Sweet Nature all, is glad and tender,
Then bear me through 'The Goshen Pass'
Amid its flush of May-day splendor."
MARGARET J. PRESTON
February Third
Snow! Snow! Snow!
Do thy worst, Winter, but know, but know
That, when the Spring cometh, a blossom shall blow
From the heart of the Poet that sleeps below,
And his name to the ends of the earth shall go,
In spite of the snow!
JOHN B. TABB
(_In welcoming "The Forthcoming Volume" of the poems of his fellow
soldier, fellow patriot, and fellow artist_,
SIDNEY LANIER)
_Sidney Lanier born, 1842_
_Albert Sidney Johnston born, 1803_
February Fourth
What a beneficent provision of the Creator it was, to roll our little
planet but one side at a time next the sun, that while one half of the
world fretted and stormed and sinned, the other half might repent and
sleep.
WILLIAM ALEXANDER CARRUTHERS
February Fifth
MAURY
The stars had secrets for him; seas
Revealed the depths their waves were screening;
The winds gave up their mysteries;
The tidal flows confessed their meaning.
Of ocean paths, the tangled clew
He taught the nations to unravel;
And showed the track where safely through
The lightning-footed thought might travel.
MARGARET J. PRESTON
February Sixth
GENERAL JOHN B. GORDON
Patriot, soldier, statesman,
Prince of the race of men;
Cypress and rue for his passing,
Laurel for sword and pen.
Dust for the hand that wrought;
But for the lessons taught
Life without end.
IDA SLOCOMB MATTHEWS
_John B. Gordon born, 1832_
_John Pegram killed near Hatcher's Run, 1865_
February Seventh
And there's Joe--my bully Joe--wouldn't I walk ten miles of a rainy night
to see them hazel eyes, and feel the grip of his soldier hand? Didn't my
rooster always clap his wings and crow whenever he passed our quarters?
"Instinct told him that he was the true prince," and it would make anybody
brave to be nigh him.
MAJOR CHARLES H. SMITH
(_Bill Arp_)
_Joseph E. Johnston born, 1807_
February Eighth
Hath not the morning dawned with added light?
And shall not the evening call another star
Out of the infinite regions of the night,
To mark this day in Heaven? At last, we are
A nation among nations; and the world
Shall soon behold in many a distant port
Another flag unfurled!
HENRY TIMROD
(_Ethnogenesis_)
_Southern Confederacy begins to assume definite form in a league of seven
Southern States, 1861_
February Ninth
The great change wrought by the States in resuming their sovereignty, and
in forming the Confederate States Government, was attended by no anarchy,
no rebellion, no suspension of authority, no social disorders, no lawless
disturbances. Sovereignty was not, for one moment, in suspension.
Conservatism marked every proceeding and public act. The object was to do
what was necessary and no more; and to do that with the utmost temperance
and prudence.
J. L. M. CURRY
_William H. Harrison born, 1773_
February Tenth
You say we shall submit to your construction. We shall do it, if you can
make us; but not otherwise, or in any other manner. That is settled. You
may call it secession, or you may call it revolution; but there is a big
fact standing before you, ready to oppose you. That fact is freemen with
arms in their hands. The cry of the Union will not disperse them; we have
passed that point. They demand equal rights; you had better heed the
demand.
ROBERT TOOMBS
(_Farewell Address in the United States Senate_)
February Eleventh
Equality does not exist between blacks and whites. The one race is
inferior in many respects, physically and mentally, to the other. This
should be received as a fixed invincible fact in all dealings with the
subject.
ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS
(_Vice-President of the Confederacy_)
I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between
the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two
races living together on terms of social and political equality.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
(_President of the United States_)
_Alexander H. Stephens born in Georgia, 1812_
February Twelfth
Those who would shiver into fragments the Union of these States, tear to
tatters its now venerated constitution, and even burn the last copy of the
Bible, rather than slavery should continue a single hour, together with
all their more halting sympathizers, have received, and are receiving
their just execration; and the name and opinion and influence of Mr. Clay
are fully and, as I trust, effectually and enduringly arrayed against
them.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
(_Eulogy on Clay, 1852_)
The abolitionists were always the fiercest opponents of colonization. The
practical improvement of the negro, in his native country, did not suit
them so well as the impracticable idea of equalizing black men with white
in a strange land.
GEORGE LUNT
(Massachusetts)
_Abraham Lincoln born in Kentucky, 1809_
_Gradual emancipation of slaves discussed at Maysville, Ky., 1849_
February Thirteenth
SAINT VALENTINE'S EVE
Thou wouldst be loved? then let thy heart
From its present pathway part not;
Being everything which now thou art,
Be nothing which thou art not.
So with the world thy gentle ways,
Thy grace, thy more than beauty,
Shall be an endless theme of praise,
And love a simple duty.
EDGAR ALLAN POE
_Florida admitted to the Union, 1845_
February Fourteenth
A Northern Tribute to the College of Jefferson,
Monroe, Tyler, and Marshall
As a matter of comparison we have lately read that from William and Mary
College, Virginia, thirty-two out of thirty-five professors and
instructors abandoned the college work and joined the army in the field.
Harvard College sent one professor from its large corps of professors and
instructors.
GENERAL CHARLES A. WHITTIER
(Massachusetts)
_The charter of William and Mary College granted, 1693_
February Fifteenth
DETERMINING THE RESPONSIBILITY OF THE NEW BOARDER
"I will illustrate by an incident," said Mrs. Paynter.
"As I say, this young man spends his entire time in his room, where he is,
I believe, engaged in writing a book."
"Oh, me! Then he's penniless, depend upon it!"
HENRY SYDNOR HARRISON
(_Queed_)
_Cyrus Hall McCormick born, 1809_
February Sixteenth
A chicken that had done duty at a previous repast was set before the Rev.
Scervant Jones, the first Baptist preacher of Williamsburg, Virginia, at
the tavern of a Mr. Howl. Upon which the Reverend gentleman pronounced the
following blessing:
"Good Lord of love
Look down from above,
And bless the 'Owl
Who ate this fowl
And left these bones
For Scervant Jones."
_Fort Donelson surrenders, 1862_
February Seventeenth
A NORTHERN VIEW
* * * It was the most monstrous barbarity of the barbarous march. There is
no reason to think that General Sherman knew anything of the purpose to
burn the city, which had been freely talked about among the soldiers
through the afternoon. But there is reason to think that he knew well
enough who did it, that he never rebuked it, and made no effort to punish
it.
WHITELAW REID
(_Ohio_)
_Sherman burns Columbia, 1865_
February Eighteenth
We have changed the constituent parts, but not the system of our
government. The Constitution formed by our fathers is that of the
Confederate States, in their exposition of it; and, in the judicial
construction it has received, we have a light which reveals its true
meaning.
JEFFERSON DAVIS
(_Inaugural Address_)
_Jefferson Davis inaugurated, 1861_
_Federal forces enter Charleston, S. C., 1865_
February Nineteenth
Ye marshes, how candid and simple and nothing-withholding and free
Ye publish yourselves to the sky and offer yourselves to the sea!
Tolerant plains, that suffer the sea and the rains and the sun,
Ye spread and span like the catholic man who has mightily won
God out of knowledge and good out of infinite pain
And sight out of blindness and purity out of a stain.
SIDNEY LANIER
February Twentieth
After the passage of the Anti-Ku Klux Statute by the State of Tennessee,
several instances occurred of parties being arrested in Ku Klux disguises;
but in every case they proved to be either negroes or "radical" Brownlow
Republicans. This occurred so often that the statute was allowed by the
party in power to become a dead letter before its repeal. It bore too hard
on the "loyal" men when enforced.
J. C. LESTER and D. L. WILSON
As the young German patriots of 1812 organized their struggle for liberty
under the noses of the garrisons of Napoleon, so these daring men, girt by
thousands of bayonets, discussed and adopted under the cover of darkness
the ritual of "The Invisible Empire."
THOMAS DIXON, JR.
_Governor Brownlow of Tennessee calls out the militia to suppress the Ku
Klux Klan, 1869_
_Federal troops defeated at Olustee, Fla., 1864_
February Twenty-First
The Ku Klux Klan was a great Law and Order League of mounted night
cavalrymen called into action by the intolerable conditions of a reign of
terror.... It was the old answer of organized manhood to organized crime
masquerading under the forms of government.... Women and children had eyes
and saw not, ears and heard not. Over four hundred thousand disguises for
men and horses were made by the women of the South, and not one secret
ever passed their lips!
THOMAS DIXON, JR.
The View of a "Reconstructionist"
The Ku Klux Order was a daring conception for a conquered people. Only a
race of warlike instincts and regal pride could have conceived or executed
it. Men, women, and children must have, and be worthy of, implicit mutual
trust. They must be trusted with the secrets of life and death without
reserve and without fear.
JUDGE ALBION W. TOURGEE
(Ohio)
February Twenty-Second
First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen,
he was second to none in the humble and endearing scenes of private life;
pious, just, humane, temperate, and sincere; uniform, dignified, and
commanding, his example was as edifying to all around him, as were the
effects of that example lasting.
HENRY LEE
(_Father of Robert E. Lee_)
_George Washington born, 1732_
February Twenty-Third
Won in the Name of Virginia; Governor Patrick Henry to Colonel George
Rogers Clark:
"You are to retain the Command of the troops now at the several posts in
the county of Illinois and on the Wabash, which fall within the limits of
the County now erected and called Illinois County.... You are also to take
the Command of five other Companies, raised under the act of Assembly
which I send herewith, and which if completed, as I hope they will be
speedily, will have orders to join you without loss of time, and are
likewise to be under your command.... The honor and interest of the State
are deeply concerned in this."
_George Rogers Clark appears before Vincennes, 1779_
_Battle of Buena Vista; Col. Jefferson Davis wounded, 1847_
_Mississippi readmitted to the Union, 1870_
February Twenty-Fourth
The importance of this brilliant exploit was destined to be far greater
than even Clark foresaw, for when the treaty of peace was being negotiated
at Paris in 1782, our allies, France and Spain, were both more than
willing to sacrifice our interests in order to keep us out of the
Mississippi Valley, and the western boundary of the United States would
undoubtedly have been fixed at the Alleghanies instead of the Mississippi,
but for the fact that this western region was actually occupied by
Virginians.
S. C. MITCHELL
The vast Northwest had been thus won by a heroic band of volunteers, led
by one of the most dauntless warriors that ever risked life for country.
THOMAS E. WATSON
_George Rogers Clark stipulates to Governor Hamilton the terms of
surrender of the Northwestern territory, 1779_
February Twenty-Fifth
From Inscription on tablet in St. Michael's Church, Charleston, South
Carolina.
"As a Statesman
he bequeathed to his country the sentiment,
'Millions for defence
not a cent for tribute.'"
_Charles Cotesworth Pinckney born, 1746_
February Twenty-Sixth
IN THE PETERSBURG TRENCHES
Winter poured down its snows and its sleets upon Lee's shelterless men in
the trenches. Some of them burrowed into the earth. Most of them shivered
over the feeble fires, kept burning along the lines. Scanty and thin were
the garments of these heroes. Most of them were clad in mere rags. Gaunt
famine oppressed them every hour. One quarter of a pound of bacon and a
little meal was the daily portion assigned to each man by the rules of the
War Department. But even this allowance failed when the railroads broke
down and left the bacon and the flour piled up beside the tracks in
Georgia and the Carolinas. One sixth of this daily ration was the
allotment for a considerable time, and very often the supply of bacon
failed entirely....
HENRY A. WHITE
February Twenty-Seventh
We follow where the Swamp Fox guides,
We leave the swamp and cypress-tree,
Our spurs are in our coursers' sides,
And ready for the strife are we.
The Tory camp is now in sight,
And there he cowers within his den;
He hears our shouts, he dreads the fight,
He fears, and flies from Marion's men.
WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS
_Francis Marion dies, 1795_
_Battle of Moore's Creek Bridge, N. C., 1776_
February Twenty-Eighth
The war began, the war went on--this politicians' conspiracy, this
slaveholders' rebellion, as it was variously called by those who sought
its source, now in the disappointed ambition of the Southern leaders, now
in the desperate determination of a slaveholding oligarchy to perpetuate
their power, and to secure forever their proprietorship in their "human
chattels." On this theory the mass of the Southern people were but puppets
in the hands of political wirepullers, or blind followers of hectoring
"patricians." To those who know the Southern people nothing can be more
absurd; to those who know their personal independence, to those who know
the deep interest which they have always taken in politics, the keen
intelligence with which they have always followed the questions of the
day.
BASIL L. GILDERSLEEVE
February Twenty-Ninth
THE LAND WHERE WE WERE DREAMING
Fair were our nation's visions, and as grand
As ever floated out of fancy-land;
Children were we in simple faith,
But god-like children, whom nor death,
Nor threat of danger drove from honor's path--
In the land where we were dreaming!
* * * * *
A figure came among us as we slept--
At first he knelt, then slowly rose and wept;
Then gathering up a thousand spears,
He swept across the fields of Mars,
Then bowed farewell, and walked behind the stars,
From the land where we were dreaming!
* * * * *
As wakes the soldier when the alarum calls--
As wakes the mother when her infant falls--
As starts the traveler when around
His sleepy couch the fire-bells sound--
So woke our nation with a single bound--
In the land where we were dreaming!
DANIEL BEDINGER LUCAS
March
I hear the bluebird's quaint soliloquy,--
A hesitating note upon the breeze,
Blown faintly from the tops of distant trees,
As though he were not sure that Spring is nigh,
But fed his hopes with bursts of melody.
I would I had a spirit-harp to seize
The bolder tenor of his rhapsodies
When apple-blossoms swing against the sky.
On every dark or blust'ring wintry day
That airy harp the bluebird's lilt should play;
And as I held my sighs and paused to hear,
The wand'ring message, with its full-fed cheer
And ripe contentment, to my life should bring
The essence and fruition of the Spring.
DANSKE DANDRIDGE
March First
In the deep heart of every forest tree
The blood is all aglee,
And there's a look about the leafless bowers
As if they dreamed of flowers.
HENRY TIMROD
March Second
At a garden party in Washington not long ago a Justice of the Supreme
Court said in response to some question I put: "It would take the pen of a
Zola to describe reconstruction in Louisiana. It is so dark a chapter in
our national history. I do not like to think of it. A Zola might base a
great novel on that life and death struggle between politicians and races
in the land of cotton and sugar plantations, the swamps and bayous of the
mighty Mississippi, where the Carpet-Bag Government had a standing army,
of blacks, chiefly, and a navy of warships going up and down waterways."
MYRTA LOCKETT AVARY
_Reconstruction Act put into effect in Louisiana, 1866_
_Texas declares itself independent, 1836_
March Third
Women, the most refined, the noblest and best cultured in the land, left
their homes, took up their residences adjacent to hospitals and became
Florence Nightingales, daughters of the Red Cross, for all who needed care
or comfort. It is reproachfully said by alien writers that the Southern
women are more "unreconstructed rebels" than the men. It is certainly true
that they did as much as the men in winning the battles, and they are now
foremost in building monuments and preserving the records of immortal
deeds.
J. L. M. CURRY
_First general convention of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, at
Nashville, 1895_
March Fourth
Stephens' bodily infirmity did not sour his temper. On the contrary, it
developed his capacity for human sympathy and strengthened his desire to
help others to reach the happiness he seemed unable to secure for himself.
After prosperity came to him, his works of philanthropy were constant and
countless. He was lavish of hospitality and gave to all who asked such
pity and sympathy as only a tried and travailing spirit could feel.
LOUIS PENDLETON
_Alexander H. Stephens dies, 1883_
March Fifth
From childhood I have nursed a faith
In bluebirds' songs and winds of Spring;
They tell me after frost and death
There comes a time of blossoming;
And after snow and cutting sleet,
The cold, stern mood of Nature yields
To tender warmth, when bare pink feet
Of children press her greening fields.
JAMES MAURICE THOMPSON
March Sixth
It is the spirit of the Alamo that moved above the Texas soldiers as they
charged like demigods through a thousand battlefields, and it is the
spirit of the Alamo that whispers from their graves held in every State of
the Union, ennobling their dust, their soil, that was crimson with their
blood.
HENRY W. GRADY
_Fall of the Alamo, 1836_
March Seventh
The opening of the University of Virginia was an event of prime importance
for the higher education in the whole country, and really marks a new era.
In the South this university completely dominated the situation down to
the war and for some time afterwards, being the model for most that was
best in the colleges everywhere, setting the standards to which they
aspired, and being the source of constant stimulus and inspiration.
CHARLES F. SMITH
(_University of Wisconsin_)
_University of Virginia opened, 1825_
March Eighth
BROOKE'S "VIRGINIA," THE FIRST OF IRONCLADS; 10 GUNS VERSUS 268
... The _Virginia_, that iron diadem of the South, whose thunders in
Hampton Roads consumed the _Cumberland_, overcame the _Congress_, put to
flight the Federal Navy, and achieved a victory, the novelty and grandeur
of which convulsed the maritime nations of the world.
CHARLES COLCOCK JONES, JR.
Confederate Tribute to the Commander and Men of the _Cumberland_: "No ship
was ever better handled, or more bravely fought."
VIRGINIUS NEWTON, C. S. N.
On Boarding the _Congress_:
Confusion, death, and pitiable suffering reigned supreme; and the horrors
of war quenched the passion and enmity of months.
VIRGINIUS NEWTON, C. S. N.
Confederate Tribute to the Commanders of the _Minnesota_, _St. Lawrence_,
and _Roanoke_, which vessels ran aground in flight from the terrible
_Virginia_:
I take occasion to say that their character as officers of skill,
experience, and bravery was well established at the time, and suffered no
diminution then or thereafter.
VIRGINIUS NEWTON, C. S. N.
_Battle between the "Virginia" ("Merrimac") and Federal men-of-war, 1862_
March Ninth
BROOKE
The men who manned the _Monitor_ made a grand fight, and her commander
upheld the best traditions of the American navy; but history must bear
witness to the fact that, if not overmatched or defeated, she at least
withdrew to shallow water, where the _Virginia_ could not follow her; and
later, under the guns of Ft. Monroe, she declined the subsequent battle
challenges of the refitted _Virginia_.
All honor to Capt. Worden and the _Virginia-inspired_ invention of the
Swede; but "America's glory for Americans." Let all Americans honor the
name of JOHN MERCER BROOKE, the inventor and designer of the first armored
war vessel of the world.--Ed.
_Battle between the "Virginia" and the "Monitor," 1862_
March Tenth
AN AFTERTHOUGHT
"Say, Judge, ain't you the same man that told us before the war that we
could whip the Yankees with pop-guns?"
"Yes," replied the stump-orator, with great presence of mind, "and we
could, but, confound 'em, they wouldn't fight us that way."
March Eleventh
TWO VIEWS OF VIRGINIA
(The latter is taken from a witty parody on the original poem. Presented
to a Virginia girl, it was indignantly tossed into the wastebasket. Later,
however, she copied it and sent it around for the amusement of many--_in
the family_!)
I. The days are never quite so long
As in Virginia;
Nor quite so filled with happy song
As in Virginia;
And when my time has come to die
Just take me back and let me lie
Close where the James goes rolling by,
Down in Virginia.
II. Nowhere such storms obscure the sun
As in Virginia;
Nowhere so slow the railroads run,
As in Virginia;
And when my time has come to go
Just take me there, because, you know,
I'll longer live, I'll die so slow,
Down in Virginia.
March Twelfth
A HUMOROUS VIEW OF "THE HUB"
For the native Bostonian there are three paths to glory. If his name be
Quincy or Adams, nothing more is expected of him. His blue blood carries
him through life with glory, and straight to heaven when he dies. Failing
in the happy accident of birth, the candidate for Beacon Hill honors must
write a book. This is easy. The man who can breathe Boston air and not
write a book is either a fool or a phenomenon. One course remains to him
should he miss fame in these lines. He must be a reformer.
SHERWOOD BONNER
(_In Letters to Dixie_)
March Thirteenth
FIRST ENGLISH LITERATURE OF THE NEW WORLD
Your gracious acceptance of the first fruits of my travels ... hath
actuated both Will and Power to the finishing of this Peece: ... We had
hoped, ere many years had turned about, to have presented you with a rich
and wel-peopled Kingdom; from whence now, with my selfe, I onely bring
this Composure, ... bred in the New-World, of the rudeness whereof it
cannot but participate; especially having Warres and Tumults to bring it
to light in stead of the Muses....
Your Majesties most humble Servant
GEORGE SANDYS
From Dedication of Ovids's _Metamorphoses_, "English by George Sandys"
at Henrico College, Virginia, 1621-1625. "Imprinted at London, 1626."
_George Sandys born at Bishopsthorpe, England, 1577_
March Fourteenth
Content to miss the prize of fame,
If he some true heart's praise can claim,
He lives in his own world of rhyme,
The great world's ways forsaking;
Cares not Parnassian heights to climb,
But valley bypaths taking,
Where even the daises in the sod,
Like stars, show him the living God.
CHARLES W. HUBNER
(_The Minor Poet_)
_Thomas Hart Benton born, 1782_
March Fifteenth
Abhorrence of debt, public and private; dislike of banks, and love of hard
money--love of justice and love of country, were ruling passions with
Jackson; and of these he gave constant evidence in all the situations of
his life.
THOMAS HART BENTON
_Andrew Jackson born, 1767_
_Battle of Guilford Courthouse, 1871_
_Through Mr. Justice Campbell of the Supreme Court, Secretary Seward
promises the Confederate Commissioners that Fort Sumter would be speedily
evacuated, 1861_
March Sixteenth
The great mind of Madison was one of the first to entertain distinctly the
noble conception of two kinds of government, operating at one and the same
time, upon the same individuals, harmonious with each other, but each
supreme in its own sphere. Such is the fundamental conception of our
partly Federal, partly National Government, which appears throughout the
Virginia plan, as well as in the Constitution which grew out of it.
JOHN FISKE
(Massachusetts)
_James Madison born, 1751_
March Seventeenth
"THE GALLANT PELHAM"--ROBERT E. LEE
Just as the Spring came laughing through the strife,
With all its gorgeous cheer;
In the bright April of historic life,
Fell the great cannoneer....
We gazed and gazed upon that beauteous face,
While round the lips and eyes,
Couched in their marble slumber, flashed the grace
Of a divine surprise.
JAMES RYDER RANDALL
_Lieutenant-Colonel John Pelham killed at Kelly's Ford, Va., 1863_
_Roger Brooke Taney born, 1777_
March Eighteenth
John C. Calhoun, an honest man, the noblest work of God.
ANDREW JACKSON
He had the basis, the indispensable basis, of all high character, and that
was unspotted integrity--unimpeached honor and character. If he had
aspirations, they were high and honorable and noble. There was nothing
grovelling or low, or meanly selfish that came near the head or the heart
of Mr. Calhoun.
DANIEL WEBSTER
(Massachusetts)
_John Caldwell Calhoun born, 1782_
March Nineteenth
Into the woods my Master went,
Clean forspent, forspent.
Into the woods my Master came,
Forspent with love and shame.
But the olives they were not blind to Him,
The little gray leaves were kind to Him:
The thorn-tree had a mind to Him
When into the woods He came.
SIDNEY LANIER
(_A Ballad of Trees and the Master_)
March Twentieth
Out of the woods my Master went,
And He was well content.
Out of the woods my Master came,
Content with death and shame.
When Death and Shame would woo Him last,
From under the trees they drew Him last:
'Twas on a tree they slew Him--last,
When out of the woods He came.
SIDNEY LANIER
(_A Ballad of Trees and the Master_)
March Twenty-First
Those who dominated were intelligent, masterful, patriotic, loving home,
kindred, state and country, dispensing a prodigal hospitality, limited
only by the respectability and behavior of guests. Among girls,
refinement, culture, modesty, purity and a becoming behavior were the
characteristic traits; among boys, courtesy, courage, chivalry, respect to
age, devotion to the weaker sex, scorning meanness, regarding dishonor and
cowardice as ineffaceable stains.
J. L. M. CURRY
(_The Old South_)
_General Joseph E. Johnston dies, 1891_
March Twenty-Second
Father Tabb's discernment was clear and touched by the purest fragrance of
the muses. To Shelley, Coleridge, and Keats he was devoted. Poe he
regarded as without a peer in modern literature, and was his
uncompromising, inflexible champion.
HENRY E. SHEPHERD
_John Banister Tabb born, 1845_
March Twenty-Third
Come, Texas! send forth your brave Rangers,
The heroes of battles untold--
Accustomed to trials and dangers,
Come stand by your rights as of old;
The deeds of your chivalrous daring
Are writ on the Alamo's wall,
A record which ruin is sparing--
Come forth to your country's loud call!
V. E. W. VERNON
_Texas ratifies the Confederate Constitution, 1861_
March Twenty-Fourth
Adams, Giddings, and other Congressmen issued a public address, in March,
1843, declaring that the annexation of Texas would be "so injurious to the
interests of the Northern States as not only inevitably to result in a
dissolution of the Union, but fully to justify it."
HENRY A. WHITE
March Twenty-Fifth
Nor had Calvert planted English institutions in Maryland simply as he
found them. He went back to a better time for freedom of action, and
looked forward to a better time for freedom of thought. While as yet there
was no spot in Christendom where religious belief was free, and when even
the Commons of England had openly declared against toleration, he founded
a community wherein no man was to be molested for his faith.
WILLIAM HAND BROWNE
_Landing of the Maryland colonists, St. Clement's Island, 1634_
March Twenty-Sixth
Dear God! what segment of the earth
Can match the region of our birth!
Though ice-beleaguered, rill on rill,
Though scorched to deserts, hill on hill--
It is our native country still.
Our native country, what a sound
To make heart, brain, and blood rebound!
JAMES RYDER RANDALL
March Twenty-Seventh
Jamestown and St. Mary's are both within the segment of a circle of
comparatively small radius whose center is at the mouth of the Chesapeake.
In this strategic region, the Jamestown experiment succeeded, after
Raleigh's head had fallen on the block; the Revolution was fired by the
eloquence of Patrick Henry, and was consummated at Yorktown; the War of
1812 was settled by the victories of North Point and McHenry; the crisis
of the Civil War occurred; and seven Presidents of the United States were
born.
ALLEN S. WILL
_Calvert's Colony lands at St. Mary's, 1634_
March Twenty-Eighth
Nor less resplendent is the light
Of him, old South Carolina's star,
Whose fiery soul was made by God
To blaze amid the storms of war....
ORION T. DOZIER
_Wade Hampton born, 1818_
March Twenty-Ninth
A great event of this [Tyler's] administration was the Ashburton Treaty.
This settled our northeast boundary for 200 miles and warded off the long
impending war with England. In most histories the whole credit for this
treaty is given to Daniel Webster. Of course this great man should not be
robbed of any of his well-earned laurels; but the President is entitled to
a share of the honor. Webster himself said: "It proceeded from step to
step under the President's own immediate eye and correction." Moreover, it
may be added that at one stage in the proceedings Lord Ashburton was about
to give up and return to England; but President Tyler by his courtesy and
suavity, conciliated him and induced him to go on with the negotiation.
J. LESSLIE HALL
_John Tyler born, 1790_
March Thirtieth
In discussing the Kansas-Nebraska Bill, Senator Hale warned Senator Toombs
that the North would fight. The Georgian answered: "I believe nobody ever
doubted that any portion of the United States would fight on a proper
occasion.... There are courageous and honest men enough in both sections
to fight. There is no question of courage involved. The people of both
sections of the Union have illustrated their courage on too many
battlefields to be questioned. They have shown their fighting qualities
shoulder to shoulder whenever their country has called upon them; but that
they may never come in contact with each other in a fratricidal war should
be the ardent wish and earnest desire of every true man and honest
patriot."
PLEASANT A. STOVALL
_Texas readmitted to the Union, 1870_
March Thirty-First
CALHOUN'S NATIONALISM
At the peace of 1815 the Government was $120,000,000 in debt; its revenues
were small; its credit not great, and the effort to raise money by direct
taxation brought it in conflict with the States.... Mr. Calhoun came
forward and devised a tariff, which not only gave large revenues to the
Government, but gave great protection to manufacturers. Mr. Calhoun
received unmeasured abuse for his pains from the North, where the
interests were then navigation, and Daniel Webster was the great apostle
of free trade.... Under Mr. Calhoun's tariff the New England manufacturers
prospered rapidly.... Success stimulated cupidity, and the "black tariff"
of 1828 marked the growth of abuse.... It was then that Mr. Calhoun again
stepped forth. He stated that the South had cheerfully paid the enormous
burden of duties on imports when Northern manufactures were young and the
Government weak; the manufacturers had become rich, and the Government
strong--so strong that State rights were being merged into its
overshadowing power; he therefore demanded a recognition of State rights,
and an amelioration of those burdens that the South had so long borne.
THOMAS PRENTICE KETTELL
(New York)
_John C. Calhoun dies, 1850_
April
The birds that sing in the leafy Spring,
With the light of love on each glancing wing,
Have lessons to last you the whole year through;
For what is "Coo! coo! te weet tu whu!"
But, properly rendered, "The wit to woo!"
A wit that brings worship and wisdom too!
Coo! coo! te weet tu whu--
The wit to woo--te weet tu whu!
The verb "to love," in the tongue of the dove,
Heard noon and night in the cedar grove,
Is very soon taught where the heart is true:
For the wit to woo, and the wisdom too,
Lie in the one sweet syllable, "Coo!"
But echo me well, and you learn to woo--
Coo! coo! te weet tu whu--
The wit to woo--te weet tu whu!
WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS
April First
Hidden no longer
In moss-covered ledges,
Starring the wayside,
Under the hedges,
Violet, Pimpernel,
Flashing with dew,
Daisy and Asphodel
Blossom anew.
Down in the bosky dells
Everywhere,
Faintly their fairy bells
Chime in the air.
Thanks to the sunshine!
Thanks to the showers!
They come again, bloom again,
Beautiful flowers!
THEOPHILUS HUNTER HILL
(_Author of the first book published under
copyright of the Confederate Government_)
_Battle of Five Forks, Virginia, 1865_
April Second
At the critical moment A. P. Hill was always strongest. No wonder that
both Lee and Jackson, when in the delirium of their last moments on earth,
stood again to battle, and saw the fiery form of A. P. Hill leading his
columns on.
HENRY KYD DOUGLAS
_A. P. Hill killed in front of Petersburg, 1865_
_Albert Pike dies, 1891_
April Third
THE SOUTHERN MAGNOLIA
French blood stained with glory the Lilies,
While centuries marched to their grave;
And over bold Scot and gay Irish
The Thistle and Shamrock yet wave:
Ours, ours be the noble Magnolia,
That only on Southern soil grows,
The Symbol of life everlasting:--
Dear to us as to England the Rose.
ALBERT PIKE
("_Born in Boston; but an adopted and
devoted son of Dixie_")
April Fourth
We are His witnesses; out of the dim
Dark region of Death we have risen with Him.
Back from our sepulchre rolleth the stone,
And Spring, the bright Angel, sits smiling thereon.
JOHN B. TABB
("_Easter Flowers_")
April Fifth
We are His witnesses. See, where He lay
The snow that late bound us is folded away;
And April, fair Magdalen, weeping anon,
Stands flooded with light of the new-risen Sun!
JOHN B. TABB
("_Easter Flowers_")
April Sixth
His character was lofty and pure, his presence and demeanor dignified and
courteous, with the simplicity of a child; and he at once inspired the
respect and gained the confidence of cultivated gentlemen and rugged
frontiersmen.
GENERAL RICHARD TAYLOR
_Albert Sidney Johnston killed at Shiloh, 1862_
April Seventh
History tears down statues and monuments to attributes and deeds, unless
those attributes have been devoted to some noble end, and those deeds done
in a righteous cause.
COL. CHARLES MARSHALL
April Eighth
"GLORY STANDS BESIDE OUR GRIEF"
Because they fought in perfect faith, believing
The cause they fought for was the just, the true;
And had small hope of glittering gain receiving,
While following, with standard high in view,
Where led their single-hearted, dauntless chief:
Therefore doth Glory stand beside our grief!
VICTORIA ELIZABETH GITTINGS
_Louisiana admitted to the Union, 1812_
_Telegram from Secretary Seward confirming promise (March 15) as to
Sumter, 1861_
April Ninth
An angel's heart, an angel's mouth,
Not Homer's, could alone for me
Hymn forth the great Confederate South,
Virginia first, then Lee.
Oh, realm of tears! But let her bear
This blazon to the end of time:
No nation rose so white and fair,
None fell so pure of crime.
P. S. WORSLEY
(England)
[From lines written on the fly-leaf of a translation of the Iliad,
presented to General Lee by the Oxford scholar in 1866]
_Surrender of Lee at Appomattox, 1865_
April Tenth
Furl that Banner, for 'tis weary;
Round its staff 'tis drooping dreary;
Furl it, fold it, it is best;
For there's not a man to wave it,
And there's not a sword to save it,
And there's not one left to lave it
In the blood which heroes gave it;
And its foes now scorn and brave it;
Furl it, hide it, let it rest!
Furl that Banner! True, 'tis gory,
Yet 'tis wreathed around with glory,
And 'twill live in song and story,
Though its folds are in the dust:
For its fame on brightest pages,
Penned by poets and by sages,
Shall go sounding down the ages,--
Furl its folds though now we must.
ABRAHAM J. RYAN
(_The Conquered Banner_)
_Lee issues farewell address to his army, 1865_
_Leonidas Polk born, 1806_
April Eleventh
Man is so constituted--the immutable laws of our being are such--that to
stifle the sentiment and extinguish the hallowed memories of a people is
to destroy their manhood.
GENERAL JOHN B. GORDON
We had, I was satisfied, sacred principles to maintain and rights to
defend for which we were in duty bound to do our best, even if we perished
in the endeavor.
GENERAL ROBERT E. LEE
We must forevermore consecrate in our hearts our old battle flag of the
Southern Cross--not now as a political symbol, but as the consecrated
emblem of an heroic epoch. The people that forgets its heroic dead is
already dying at the heart, and we believe we shall be truer and better
citizens of the United States if we are true to our past.
RANDOLPH H. MCKIM
April Twelfth
From this time a clear-cut issue was formulated and presented to the
States and the people. The "firing upon the flag of the nation" was made
the immediate pretext for aggressive measures against the Lower South. _As
so heralded_, it served to inflame the hearts of thousands who, it seems,
had not noticed or who had forgotten, as it is forgotten to-day, that this
was not the first firing upon the Stars and Stripes. The flag had been
fired upon from the coast of South Carolina as early as January 9, 1861,
for the same reason as that which provoked attack upon it on April 12.
[From introduction to "The Battle of Baltimore," _The Sun_, April 9,
1911.]
_Fort Sumter fired on by Beauregard, 1861_
_North Carolina instructs her delegates to the Continental Congress to
declare for independence, 1776_
_Henry Clay born, 1777_
April Thirteenth
The history of the world presents no parallel to the manner in which he
wrote himself upon his own age, and subsequent ages, with his pen. He was
no teacher like Plato; he was not a professional litterateur like
Voltaire; he was not a mere maker of books like Carlyle; and yet he put
his stamp indelibly upon the minds and hearts of English-speaking people
during his own day and for all time to come.
THOMAS E. WATSON
_Thomas Jefferson born, 1743_
April Fourteenth
The fact is, the boys around here want watching, or they'll take
something. A few days ago I heard they surrounded two of our best citizens
because they were named Fort and Sumter. Most of them are so hot that they
fairly siz when you pour water on them, and that's the way they make up
their military companies here now--when a man applies to join the
volunteers they sprinkle him, and if he sizzes they take him, and if he
don't they don't!
MAJOR CHARLES H. SMITH
(_Bill Arp_)
April Fifteenth
There was but one exception to the general grief too remarkable to be
passed over in silence. Among the extreme Radicals in Congress, Mr.
Lincoln's determined clemency and liberality towards the Southern people
had made an impression so unfavorable that, though they were shocked at
his murder, they did not, among themselves, conceal gratification that he
was no longer in their way.
NICHOLAY AND HAY
(_Life of Lincoln_)
FORESHADOWING RECONSTRUCTION
The Union League of America was organized in Cleveland, Ohio, during the
war by friends of Thaddeus Stevens, the Radical leader of Congress. Its
prime object was the confiscation of the property of the South. The chief
obstacle to this program was Abraham Lincoln. Hence the first work of the
League was to form a conspiracy against Lincoln and prevent his
renomination for a second term.
E. W. R. EWING
_Abraham Lincoln dies, 1865_
_Federal Government issues a call for 75,000 volunteers, 1861_
April Sixteenth
I have only to say that the militia will not be furnished to the powers at
Washington for any such use or purpose as they have in view. Your object
is to subjugate the Southern States, and a requisition made upon me for
such an object--an object, in my judgment, not within the purview of the
constitution or the act of 1795--will not be complied with. You have
chosen to inaugurate civil war, and having done so, we will meet it in a
spirit as determined as the administration has exhibited towards the
South.
GOVERNOR LETCHER
(_Virginia_)
April Seventeenth
The scene [in the Virginia State Convention] is described as both solemn
and affecting. One delegate, while speaking against the ordinance, broke
down in incoherent sobs; another, who voted for it, wept like a child. The
sentiment of the people had run ahead of their leaders.
S. C. MITCHELL
It may be safely asserted that but for the adoption by the Federal
Government of the policy of coercion towards the Cotton States, Virginia
would not have seceded.... She simply in the hour of danger and sacrifice
held faithful to the principles which she had ofttimes declared and which
have ever found sturdy defenders in every part of the Republic.
BEVERLEY B. MUNFORD
_Virginia secedes, 1861_
April Eighteenth
Tennessee will not furnish a single man for coercion, but 50,000 if
necessary for the defense of our rights or those of our Southern brothers.
GOVERNOR HARRIS
(Tennessee)
I say emphatically that Kentucky will furnish no troops for the wicked
purpose of subduing her sister States.
GOVERNOR MAGOFFIN
(Kentucky)
April Nineteenth
Hark to an exiled son's appeal,
Maryland!
My mother State! to thee I kneel,
Maryland!
For life and death, for woe and weal,
Thy peerless chivalry reveal,
And gird thy beauteous limbs with steel,
Maryland! My Maryland!
Thou wilt not cower in the dust,
Maryland!
Thy beaming sword shall never rust,
Maryland!
Remember Carroll's sacred trust,
Remember Howard's warlike thrust,--
And all thy slumberers with the just,
Maryland! My Maryland!
JAMES RYDER RANDALL
_Citizens of Baltimore, objecting to coercion of the seceded States,
oppose the passing of the Sixth Massachusetts, their action resulting in
the first bloodshed of the War, 1861_
April Twentieth
The tempting prize offered Lee in the shape of supreme command of the Army
of the Union did not swerve him from his integrity for an instant. It was
currently reported at the time that Gen. Winfield Scott implored him, "For
God's sake, don't resign!" Every argument that power, luxury, limitless
resources, and the untrammeled control of the situation could devise was
brought to bear upon him.
HENRY E. SHEPHERD
_Robert E. Lee resigns his commission in the United States Army, 1861_
April Twenty-First
From the date of its settlement, Maryland became the Land of
Sanctuary--the only spot in the known world where the persecuted of all
lands were at liberty to worship God according to the dictates of their
own hearts. Freedom of conscience was offered by Lord Baltimore to the
oppressed of the Old World, thus carrying into effect the original motive
of Sir George Calvert's colonization scheme when seeking a charter from
King Charles I.
HESTER DORSEY RICHARDSON
_Passage of the "Act Concerning Religion" by the Maryland Assembly, 1649,
endorsing the principles of religious toleration promulgated by Cecilius
Calvert in 1634_
_Independence of Texas established at San Jacinto, 1836_
April Twenty-Second
The dusk of the South is tender
As the touch of a soft, soft hand;
It comes between splendor and splendor,
The sweetest of service to render,
And gathers the cares of the land.
Above it the soft sky blushes
And pales like an April rose;
Within it the South wind hushes,
And the Jessamine's heart outgushes,
And earth like an emerald glows.
JOHN P. SJOLANDER
_Capture of Plymouth, N. C., by Gen. R. D. Hoke, 1864_
April Twenty-Third
In seeds of laurel in the earth
The blossom of your fame is blown;
And somewhere, waiting for its birth,
The shaft is in the stone!
HENRY TIMROD
_Randall writes "My Maryland" at Pointe Coupee, La., 1861_
_Father Ryan dies, 1886_
April Twenty-Fourth
Apropos of this last, let me confess, Mr. President--before the praise of
New England has died on my lips--that I believe the best product of her
present life is the procession of 17,000 Vermont Democrats that for
twenty-two years, undiminished by death, unrecruited by birth or
conversion, have marched over their rugged hills, cast their Democratic
ballots, and gone back home to pray for their unregenerate neighbors, and
awoke to read the record of 26,000 Republican majority! May the God of the
helpless and heroic help them!
HENRY W. GRADY
_Henry W. Grady born, 1851_
April Twenty-Fifth
Her lot may be hard, her skies may darken;
To Dixie's voice we'll ever hearken;
Look away, away, away down South in Dixie.
The coward may shirk, the wretch go whining,
But we'll be true till the sun stops shining,
Look away, away, away down South in Dixie.
Chorus:
I wish I was in Dixie;
Away, away;
In Dixie's land I'll take my stand,
And live and die in Dixie.
Away, away,
Away down South in Dixie.
MARIE LOUISE EVE
April Twenty-Sixth
Homes without the means of support were no longer homes. With barns and
mills and implements for tilling the soil all gone, with cattle, sheep,
and every animal that furnished food to the helpless inmates carried off,
they were dismal abodes of hunger, of hopelessness, and of almost
measureless woe.
GENERAL JOHN B. GORDON
_Joseph E. Johnston surrenders at Greensboro, N. C., 1865_
April Twenty-Seventh
The twilight hours, like birds, flew by,
As lightly and as free;
Ten thousand stars were in the sky,
Ten thousand in the sea;
For every wave, with dimpled face,
That leaped into the air,
Had caught a star in its embrace
And held it trembling there.
AMELIA B. WELBY
April Twenty-Eighth
Too much roseate nonsense has been indulged about life on the plantation
or in the city in the ante-bellum days. Neither the planter nor the factor
nor the lawyer led a life of idle ease and pleasure; they were workers,
whose energy built up the State; they lived often rather in rude profusion
than in luxury.
PIERCE BUTLER
_James Monroe born, 1758_
April Twenty-Ninth
Error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
April Thirtieth
To Jefferson's initiative and farsightedness we owe it that we secured
without bloodshed, for a trifling sum of money, a territory which doubled
our republic, assured its expansion to the Gulf of Mexico and to the
Pacific, and thus lifted us, by a stroke of genius, into a world power of
the first class.
THOMAS E. WATSON
_Jefferson acquires the Louisiana territory from France, 1803_
_Washington inaugurated first President of the United States, 1789_
May
AT ARLINGTON
The dead had rest; the Dove of Peace
Brooded o'er both with equal wings;
To both had come that great surcease.
The last omnipotent release
From all the world's delirious stings.
To bugle deaf and signal-gun,
They slept, like heroes of old Greece,
Beneath the glebe at Arlington.
And in the Spring's benignant reign,
The sweet May woke her harp of pines;
Teaching her choir a thrilling strain
Of jubilee to land and main.
She danced in emerald down the lines;
Denying largesse bright to none,
She saw no difference in the signs
That told who slept at Arlington.
She gave her grasses and her showers
To all alike who dreamed in dust;
Her song-birds wove their dainty bowers
Amid the jasmine buds and flowers,
And piped with an impartial trust--
Waifs of the air and liberal sun,
Their guileless glees were kind and just
To friend and foe at Arlington.
JAMES RYDER RANDALL
May First
The linnet, the lark, and oriel
Were chanting the loves they chant so well;
It was blue all above, below all green,
With the radiant glow of noon between.
JOSEPH SALYARDS
(_Idothea_; Idyl III)
May Second
A strange fatality attended us! Jackson killed in the zenith of his
successful career; Longstreet wounded when in the act of striking a blow
that would have rivalled Jackson's at Chancellorsville in its results; and
in each case the fire was from our own men! A blunder! Call it so; the old
deacon would say that God willed it thus.
COL. WALTER H. TAYLOR
_Stonewall Jackson wounded at Chancellorsville, 1863_
_Emma Sanson directs Forrest in pursuit of Streight, 1863_
May Third
Chancellorsville, where 130,000 men were defeated by 60,000, is up to a
certain point as much the tactical masterpiece of the nineteenth century
as was Leuthen of the eighteenth.
LIEUT.-COL. G. F. R. HENDERSON, C.B.
General Pender, you must hold your ground, you must hold your ground.
JACKSON'S Last Command
May Fourth
The productions of nature soon became my playmates. I felt that an
intimacy with them not consisting of friendship merely, but bordering on
frenzy, must accompany my steps through life.
JOHN JAMES AUDUBON
_John James Audubon born, 1780_
May Fifth
Lord of Hosts, that beholds us in battle, defending
The homes of our sires 'gainst the hosts of the foe,
Send us help on the wings of thy angels descending,
And shield from his terrors and baffle his blow.
Warm the faith of our sons, till they flame as the iron,
Red glowing from the fire-forge, kindled by zeal;
Make them forward to grapple the hordes that environ,
In the storm-rush of battle, through forests of steel!
From the Charleston _Mercury_
_Battle of the Wilderness; Lee, with 60,000 men, attacks Grant with
140,000, 1864_
May Sixth
It depends on the State itself, to retain or abolish the principle of
representation, because it depends on itself whether it will continue a
member of the Union. To deny this right would be inconsistent with the
principle on which all our political systems are founded, which is, that
the people have, in all cases, a right to determine how they will be
governed.
(Rawle's text-book on the Constitution, taught at West Point before
the War between the States)
JUDAH P. BENJAMIN, AMERICAN DISRAELI
Who is the man, save this one, of whom it can be said that he held
conspicuous leadership at the bar of two countries?
SIR HENRY JAMES
(England)
_Tennessee and Arkansas secede, 1861_
_Judah P. Benjamin, Confederate Secretary of State, dies, 1884_
May Seventh
The slaves who ran away from their masters were set to work at once by
General Butler and made to keep at it, much to their annoyance. One of
these, having been put to it rather strong, said: "Golly, Massa Butler,
dis nigger nebber had to work so hard befo'; dis chile gwine secede once
moah."
Ohio _Statesman_, 1861
May Eighth
Having completed our repairs on May 8th, and while returning to our old
anchorage, we heard heavy firing, and, going down the harbor, found the
_Monitor_, with the iron-clads _Galena_, _Naugatuck_, and a number of
heavy ships, shelling our batteries at Sewell's Point. We stood directly
for the _Monitor_, but as we approached they all ceased firing and
retreated below the forts.
COL. JOHN TAYLOR WOOD
_The "Virginia" again challenges the "Monitor" to battle, 1862_
_Battle of Palo Alto, 1846_
May Ninth
MOTHERS' DAY
Because I feel that, in the Heavens above
The angels, whispering to one another,
Can find, among their burning terms of love,
None so devotional as that of "Mother."
EDGAR ALLAN POE
May Tenth
Fearless and strong, self-dependent and ambitious, he had within him the
making of a Napoleon, and yet his name is without spot or blemish.
LIEUT.-COL. G. F. R. HENDERSON, C.B.
... Ask the world--
The world has heard his story--
If all its annals can unfold
A prouder tale of glory?
If ever merely human life
Hath taught diviner moral--
If ever round a worthier brow
Was twined a purer laurel?
MARGARET J. PRESTON
_Stonewall Jackson dies, 1863_
May Eleventh
The Spanish legend tells us of the Cid,
That after death he rode erect, sedately
Along his lines, even as in life he did,
In presence yet more stately.
And thus our Stuart at this moment seems
To ride out of our dark and troubled story
Into the region of romance and dreams,
A realm of light and glory.
JOHN R. THOMPSON
_J. E. B. Stuart mortally wounded at Yellow Tavern, 1864_
May Twelfth
General Lee, you shall not lead my men in a charge!
GORDON
General Lee to the rear!--_His Soldiers._
I do wish somebody would tell me where my place is on the field of battle!
Wherever I go to look after the fight, I am told, "This is no place for
you; you must go away."
ROBERT E. LEE
_Lee, with 50,000 men, repulses Grant with 100,000, at Spottsylvania Court
House; Lee "ordered" to the rear, 1864_
May Thirteenth
Good is the Saxon speech! clear, short, and strong,
Its clean-cut words, fit both for prayer and song;
Good is this tongue for all the needs of life;
Good for sweet words with friend, or child, or wife.
* * * * *
'Tis good for laws; for vows of youth and maid;
Good for the preacher; or shrewd folk in trade;
Good for sea-calls when loud the rush of spray;
Good for war-cries where men meet hilt to hilt,
And man's best blood like new-trod wine is spilt,--
Good for all times, and good for what thou wilt!
JAMES BARRON HOPE
_Landing at Jamestown, 1607_
_Texas troops, C. S. A., defeat Federals in last battle of the War, at
Palmito Ranch, 1865, the victors learning from their prisoners that the
Confederacy had fallen (Chas. Wm. Ramsdell)_
May Fourteenth
[This exploration] was undertaken at the instance of President Jefferson,
and together with the voyage which Captain Gray of Boston had made to the
Columbia, in 1792, gave the United States a claim to all the territory
covered by the States of Washington, Oregon, and Idaho.
PHILIP ALEXANDER BRUCE
_Lewis and Clark start from St. Louis on northwestern expedition, 1804_
May Fifteenth
Throughout the events that led up to the Revolution, it seemed ordained
that Massachusetts was to suffer and Virginia to sympathize. Until the
outbreak of actual hostilities scarcely anything of moment occurred on the
soil of Virginia to incite her sons to champion the cause of freedom.
Indeed, from the beginning of the controversy between the colonies and the
mother country, the British Ministry seemed to have avoided any special
cause of irritation to the people of the Old Dominion. The part,
therefore, which Virginia took in the events of those days must be
attributed to her devotion to the principles of liberty, to her interest
in the common cause of the colonies, and particularly to her sympathy with
Massachusetts in the suffering which that province was called upon to
endure. If we lose sight of these motives as the springs of Virginia's
conduct in that struggle, we shall be unable to appreciate either the
nobility of her spirit or the wisdom and energy which marked her
initiative.
S. C. MITCHELL
_Virginia opposes Boston Port Bill, 1774_
May Sixteenth
I refuse to make any acknowledgments for what I have done. My blood will
be as seed sown in good ground, which will produce a hundred fold.
JAMES PUGH
(_Before execution under Gov. Tryon, North Carolina, 1771_)
_Battle of Alamance Creek, 1771_
May Seventeenth
He came into military and political life like some blazing meteor, with
exceeding brilliance and splendor speeding across the horizon of history.
His activities in politics and war covered only a brief span of seventeen
years, 1848 to 1865, and in so short a period but few men ever received
more, maintained their parts better, were the recipients of greater
honors, or bore themselves with nobler dignity, greater skill or more
superb courage either in victory or defeat.
BENNETT H. YOUNG
_John C. Breckinridge dies, 1875_
May Eighteenth
Hushed is the roll of the rebel drum,
The sabres are sheathed and the cannon are dumb;
And Fate, with pitiless hand, has furled
The flag that once challenged the gaze of the world.
JOHN R. THOMPSON
(_From "Lee to the Rear"_)
May Nineteenth
But the fame of the Wilderness fight abides,
And down into history grandly rides
Calm and unmoved as in battle he sat,
The gray-bearded man in the black slouch hat.
JOHN R. THOMPSON
(_From "Lee to the Rear"_)
May Twentieth
You can get no troops from North Carolina.
GOV. ELLIS
(_Reply to Washington administration, April 15, 1861_)
_North Carolina secedes from the Union, 1861_
May Twenty-First
The Dixie girls wear homespun cotton,
But their winning smiles I've not forgotten;
Look away, away, away down South in Dixie.
They've won my heart and naught surpasses
My love for the bright-eyed Dixie lasses;
Look away, away, away down South in Dixie.
Chorus:
I'll give my life for Dixie;
Away, away;
In Dixie's land I'll take my stand,
And live and die for Dixie.
Away, away,
Away down South in Dixie.
MARIE LOUISE EVE
May Twenty-Second
How brilliant is the morning star;
The evening star how tender;
The light of both is in her eyes,--
Their softness and their splendor;
But for the lash that shades their sight,
They were too dazzling for the light,
And when she shuts them all is night,--
The daughter of Mendoza.
MIRABEAU B. LAMAR
May Twenty-Third
Great Chieftain of our choice,
Albeit that people's voice
No comfort speaks in thy lone granite keep;
Through those harsh iron bars
There come back from the stars
Low echoes of the prayers they nightly weep.
WILLIAM MUNFORD
_Jefferson Davis puts in irons at Fort Monroe, 1865_
May Twenty-Fourth
Yet to all Americans it must be a regrettable chapter in our history when
it is remembered that this man was no common felon, but a prisoner of
state, a distinguished Indian fighter, a Mexican veteran, a man who had
held a seat in Congress, who had been Secretary of War of the United
States, and who for four years had stood at the head of the Confederate
States.
MYRTA LOCKETT AVARY
(_Davis in chains_)
May Twenty-Fifth
A rich and well-stored mind is the only true philosopher's stone,
extracting pure gold from all the base material around. It can create its
own beauty, wealth, power, happiness. It has no dreary solitudes. The past
ages are its possession, and the long line of the illustrious dead are all
its friends.
GEORGE DAVIS
May Twenty-Sixth
Cease firing! There are here no foes to fight!
Grim war is o'er and smiling peace now reigns;
Cease useless strife--no matter who was right--
True magnanimity from hate abstains.
Cease firing!
MAJOR WILLIAM MEADE PEGRAM
_The last Confederate army, under General Kirby Smith, surrenders at Baton
Rouge, 1865_
May Twenty-Seventh
Representing nothing on God's earth now,
And naught in the water below it,
As a pledge of a nation that's dead and gone,
Keep it, dear Captain, and show it.
Show it to those who will lend an ear
To the tale this paper can tell
Of liberty born, of the patriot's dream,
Of a storm-cradled nation that fell.
Too poor to possess the precious ores,
And too much of a stranger to borrow,
We issued to-day our promise to pay,
And hoped to repay on the morrow.
MAJOR S. A. JONAS
(_From "Lines on the back of a
Confederate note"_)
May Twenty-Eighth
Old time negroes intuitively knew who "belonged" to them and who did not.
The following incident is told of Senator Sumner's visit to friends at
Gallatin, Tennessee, some years before the war; the colloquy is between
the Senator and "Old Virginia Jeff:"
"Jeff, I hear you call all the white folks down here 'Marse'--'Marse
Henry,' 'Marse John' or what not, isn't that true?"
"Yas, sah."
"And you always call me 'Mister Sumner.' Now, Jeff, here's a quarter.
During the rest of my visit you call me Marse Charles, you hear?"
MAJOR JOHN C. WRENSHALL
_P. G. T. Beauregard born, 1818_
May Twenty-Ninth
If we wish to be free--if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable
privileges for which we have been so long contending--if we mean not
basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long
engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the
glorious object of our contest shall be obtained--we must fight! I repeat
it, sir, we must fight! An appeal to arms and to the God of Hosts is all
that is left us!
PATRICK HENRY
_Patrick Henry born, 1736_
May Thirtieth
Those who oppose slavery in Kansas do not base their opposition upon any
philanthropic principles, or any sympathy for the African race. For, in
their so-called Constitution, framed at Topeka, they deem that entire race
so inferior and degraded as to exclude them all forever from Kansas,
whether they be bond or free.
ROBERT J. WALKER
_Kansas given territorial rights by Congress, 1854_
May Thirty-First
SONG OF THE CHATTAHOOCHEE
... All down the hills of Habersham,
All through the valleys of Hall,
The rushes cried _Abide, abide_,
The wilful waterweeds held me thrall,
The laving laurel turned my tide,
The ferns and the fondling grass said _Stay_.
The dewberry dipped for to work delay,
And the little reeds sighed _Abide, abide_,
_Here in the hills of Habersham_,
_Here in the valleys of Hall_.
SIDNEY LANIER
_British Government declared suspended in North Carolina (Mecklenburg)
1775_
June
THE SLEEPER
At midnight, in the month of June,
I stand beneath the mystic moon.
An opiate vapor, dewy, dim,
Exhales from out her golden rim,
And, softly dripping, drop by drop,
Upon the quiet mountain top,
Steals drowsily and musically
Into the universal valley.
The rosemary nods upon the grave;
The lily lolls upon the wave;
Wrapping the fog above its breast,
The ruin moulders into rest;
Looking like Lethe, see! the lake
A conscious slumber seems to take,
And would not, for the world, awake.
EDGAR ALLAN POE
June First
... The year,
And all the gentle daughters in her train,
March in our ranks, and in our service wield
Long spears of golden grain!
A yellow blossom as her fairy shield,
June flings her azure banner to the wind,
While in the order of their birth
Her sisters pass, and many an ample field
Grows white beneath their steps, till now, behold,
Its endless sheets unfold
The snow of Southern summers!
HENRY TIMROD
(_Ethnogenesis_)
_Kentucky admitted to the Union, 1792_
_Tennessee admitted to the Union, 1796_
_John H. Morgan born, 1825_
June Second
In regard to African Slavery, which has played so important a part in our
political history, Randolph was an Emancipationist, as distinguished from
an Abolitionist. This distinction was a very broad one; as broad as that
between Algernon Sidney and Jack Cade; or between Charlemagne and Peter
the Hermit--in fact, it was the difference between Reason and Fanaticism.
On this subject Randolph and Clay concurred; both were Emancipationists,
and both denounced the Abolitionists; as did also Webster, and all the
best, wisest, and purest men of that day.
JUDGE DANIEL BEDINGER LUCAS
_John Randolph born, 1773_
June Third
Other leaders have had their triumphs. Conquerors have won crowns, and
honors have been piled on the victors of earth's great battles, but never,
sir, came man to more loving people.
HENRY W. GRADY
_Jefferson Davis born in Kentucky, 1808_
June Fourth
In the hallowed stillness of your bridal eve, ere the guests have all
assembled, lift up to yours the pale face, love's perfect image, and you
shall see that vision to which God our Father vouchsafes no equal this
side the jasper throne--you shall see the ineffable eyes of innocence
entrusting to you, unworthy, oh! so unworthy, her destiny through time and
eternity. Inhale the perfume of her breath and hair, that puts the violets
of the wood to shame; press your first kiss (for now she is all your own),
your first kiss upon the trembling petals of her lips, and you shall hear,
with ears you knew not that you had, the silver chiming of your wedding
bells far, far up in heaven.
GEORGE W. BAGBY
June Fifth
THE WOMEN OF THE SOUTH
Instead of superficial adornments and supine action, the intellectual
sympathies and interests of these women were large, and they undertook
with wise and just guidance, the management of households and farms and
servants, leaving the men free for war and civil government. These noble
and resolute women were the mothers of the Gracchi, of the men who built
up the greatness of the Union and accomplished the unexampled achievements
of the Confederacy.
J. L. M. CURRY
June Sixth
To the brave all homage render,
Weep ye skies of June!
With a radiance pure and tender,
Shine, oh saddened moon!
Dead upon the field of glory,
Hero fit for song and story,
Lies our bold dragoon.
JOHN R. THOMPSON
_Turner Ashby killed in Shenandoah Valley Campaign, 1862_
_Patrick Henry dies, 1799_
June Seventh
Peace to the dead! though peace is not
In the regal dome or the pauper cot;
Peace to the dead! there's peace, we trust,
With the pale dreamers in the dust.
JAMES RYDER RANDALL
_Monument created, 1910, to the memory of Confederate officers who
perished from starvation and exposure at Johnson's Island_
June Eighth
Aurora faints in the fulgent fire
Of the Monarch of Morning's bright embrace
And the summer day climbs higher and higher
Up the cerulean space;
The pearl-tints fade from the radiant grain,
And the sportive breeze of the ocean dies,
And soon in the noontide's soundless rain
The fields seem graced by a million eyes;
Each grain with a glance from its lidded fold
As bright as a gnome's in his mine of gold,
While the slumb'rous glamour of beam and heat
Glides over and under the windless wheat.
PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE
_Stonewall Jackson turns upon Fremont at Cross Keys, 1862_
June Ninth
He sleeps--what need to question now
If he were wrong or right?
He knows ere this whose cause was just
In God the Father's sight.
He wields no warlike weapons now,
Returns no foeman's thrust,--
Who but a coward would revile
An honest soldier's dust?
Roll, Shenandoah, proudly roll,
Adown thy rocky glen,
Above thee lies the grave of one
Of Stonewall Jackson's men.
MARY ASHLEY TOWNSEND
_Stonewall Jackson meets Shields at Port Republic, 1862_
June Tenth
The indomitable courage, the patient endurance of privations, the supreme
devotion of the Southern soldiers, will stand on the pages of history, as
engraven on a monument more enduring than brass.
MAJ. JAS. F. HUNTINGTON, U. S. A.
_United Confederate Veterans organized at New Orleans, 1889_
_Battle of Bethel, Va., the first regular engagement of the War between
the States, 1861_
June Eleventh
We believed that it was most desirable that the North should win; we
believed in the principle that the Union is indissoluble; but we equally
believed that those who stood against us held just as sacred convictions
that were the opposite of ours, and we respected them, as every man with a
heart must respect those who gave all for their belief.
JUSTICE O. W. HOLMES
(Massachusetts)
June Twelfth
The band preceding the coffin smote on their ears with poignant loud
lamenting, then carried its sorrow to die moaning on the night. As the
shadowy cortege filed by--men bearing lanterns on either side the
hearse--a horse, riderless, with boots empty in the stirrups, following--a
few soldiers carrying arms reversed--a single carriage with mourners--the
effect was infinitely sad. So common the spectacle during the Battle
Summer, it did not occur to them to even wonder which of our martyrs was
thus journeying to his last home.
MRS. BURTON HARRISON
June Thirteenth
A little bird there was once, with golden wings;
In the stars she would build her nest;
And so, with a twig in her beak, at eventide
When Hesperus sank to rest,
Away to the starry deep she flew;--for said she,
"In the Pleiades shall my nesting be!"
Ah, little bird! There are heights far, far too high
For the reach of those tiny wings!
Down here by this thicket of haw let us rest, you and I,
And list what the brooklet sings!
ALLEN KERR BOND
June Fourteenth
A flash from the edge of a hostile trench,
A puff of smoke, a roar
Whose echo shall roll from the Kenesaw Hills
To the farthermost Christian shore,
Proclaims to the world that the warrior priest
Will battle for right no more.
HENRY LYNDEN FLASH
_Gen. Leonidas Polk, the Warrior Bishop, killed at Kenesaw Mountain, 1864_
June Fifteenth
O, Art, high gift of Heaven! how oft defamed
When seeming praised! To most a craft that fits,
By dead, prescriptive Rule, the scattered bits
Of gathered knowledge; even so misnamed
By some who would invoke thee.
WASHINGTON ALLSTON
June Sixteenth
W'en banjer git ter talkin'
You better hol' yo' tongue,
Hit mek you think youse gre't an' gran'
An' rich an' strong an' young,
An' ev'rything whar scrumpshus
Right at yo' feet is flung.
Oh, my soul gits up an' humps hisse'f
An' goes outside an' walks,
W'en a picker gits ter pickin'
An' de
banjer
talks!
ANNE VIRGINIA CULBERTSON
_Winchester captured by Confederates, 1863_
June Seventeenth
GENEROUS TRIBUTE OF A BRAVE FOE AND DISTINGUISHED AMERICAN SOLDIER AND
CITIZEN
Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia never sustained defeat. Finally
succumbing to exhaustion, to the end they were not overthrown in fight.
CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS
(Massachusetts)
June Eighteenth
Now, Ham, de only nigger whut wuz runnin' on der packet,
Got lonesome in de barber-shop, an' c'u'dn't stan' de racket;
An' so, fur to amuse hese'f, he steamed some wood an' bent it,
An' soon he had a banjo made--de fust dat wuz invented.
De 'possum had as fine a tail as dis dat I's a-singin';
De ha'r's so long an' thick an' strong,--des fit fur banjo-stringin';
Dat nigger shaved 'em off as short as washday-dinner graces;
An' sorted ob' em by de size, f'om little E's to basses.
IRWIN RUSSELL
(_Origin of the Banjo on
Board the Ark_)
June Nineteenth
By Captain Winslow's account, the _Kearsarge_ was struck twenty-eight
times; but his ship being armored, my shot and shell fell harmless into
the sea. The _Alabama_ was not mortally wounded until after the
_Kearsarge_ had been firing at her _an hour and ten minutes_. In the
meantime, in spite of the armor of the _Kearsarge_, I lodged a rifled
percussion shell near her stern post--_where there were no chains_--which
failed to explode because of the defect of the cap. On so slight an
incident--the defect of a percussion-cap--did the battle hinge.
RAPHAEL SEMMES
_The "Alabama" sunk by the "Kearsarge" off Cherbourg, 1864_
June Twentieth
Jamestown and St. Mary's are both within the segment of a circle of
comparatively small radius whose centre is at the mouth of the Chesapeake.
In this strategic region, the key of America, Raleigh chose the base from
which he would colonize the new empire; here the Jamestown experiment
succeeded, after Raleigh's head had fallen on the block; the Revolution
was fired by the eloquence of Patrick Henry, and was consummated at
Yorktown; the War of 1812 was settled by the victories of North Point and
Fort McHenry; the crisis of the Civil War occurred; and seven Presidents
of the United States were born.
ALLEN S. WILL
_The first Lord Baltimore obtains from the Crown a grant of the territory
lying between the Potomac and the 40th parallel, 1632_
_Secession of West Virginia from Virginia sustained by the Federal
Government, 1863_
_"Virginia, who had given to all the States in common five great
commonwealths of the northwest and the county of Kentucky, was now bereft
of half of what remained to her"_
June Twenty-First
What care I if Cyrus McCormick was born in Rockbridge County? These
new-fangled "contraptions" are to the old system what the little, dirty,
black steam-tug is to the three-decker, with its cloud of snowy canvas
towering to the skies--the grandest and most beautiful sight in the world.
I wouldn't give Uncle Isham's picked man, "long Billy Carter," leading the
field, with one good drink of whisky in him--I wouldn't give one swing of
his cradle and one "ketch" of his straw for all the mowers and reapers in
creation.
GEORGE W. BAGBY
_Cyrus Hall McCormick of Virginia patents his reaping machine, 1831_
June Twenty-Second
If I could dwell
Where Israfel
Hath dwelt, and he where I,
He might not sing so wildly well
A mortal melody,
While a bolder note than this might swell
From my lyre within the sky.
EDGAR ALLAN POE
_Arkansas readmitted to the Union, 1868_
June Twenty-Third
THE BROOK
It is the mountain to the sea
That makes a messenger of me:
And, lest I loiter on the way
And lose what I am sent to say,
He sets his reverie to song
And bids me sing it all day long.
JOHN B. TABB
June Twenty-Fourth
AN AMUSING COMMENTARY ON THE MAKING OF SOME HISTORIES
I have here a small volume entitled, "John Randolph, by Henry Adams." It
is one of a series called "American Statesmen," and emanates from the thin
air of Boston. The series is edited by Mr. J. T. Morse, Jr. By what law of
selection he has been governed in allotting to particular authors the
preparation of respective biographies it is impossible to divine. It is
quite clear, however, that he has not followed any rule of qualification
or congeniality hitherto recognized by men or angels. For example, a
foreigner, Dr. Von Holtz, who, in an emphatically European and un-American
treatise on the Federal Constitution, had already denounced Calhoun as a
kind of Lucifer, is appointed his biographer; Henry Clay, the father of
Protection (as it is called), is assigned to Carl Schurz, who, I
understand, is an ardent advocate of Free Trade; while John Randolph is
turned over to the tender mercies of a descendant of the first
Vice-President, and the grandson of John Quincy Adams!
Had this unique law of selection prevailed hitherto, we might have had a
biography of Luther by Leo the Tenth; a life of St. Thomas Aquinas by
Thomas Payne; while Pontius Pilate, or more likely the devil himself,
would have been selected to chronicle the divine career of Jesus Christ.
DANIEL B. LUCAS
_John Randolph dies, 1833_
June Twenty-Fifth
But far away another line is stretching dark and long,
Another flag is floating free where armed legions throng;
Another war-cry's on the air, as wakes the martial drum,
And onward still, in serried ranks, the Southern soldiers come.
GEORGE HERBERT SASS
_Beginning of Seven Days' Battle around Richmond, 1862_
June Twenty-Sixth
A PROPHECY, 1869
The close of the Civil War found the conquering States so nearly equally
divided between the Radical and Conservative parties, that if the South
should be restored to her relative might in the Union, the balance would
be thrown at once in favor of the Conservatives. The problem therefore
assumed a mathematical form, and demanded that the South should not
reinforce the Conservatives of the North. This could be prevented only in
two ways, _viz._; either by keeping the South out of the Union entirely or
by placing the political power there in the hands of a minority. To adopt
one or the other of these expedients was a party necessity. This is the
whole key to Reconstruction; and fifty years hence no man living will be
found to deny it.
JUDGE J. FAIRFAX MCLAUGHLIN
(_In the "Southern Metropolis," June 26, 1869_)
June Twenty-Seventh
The duties exacted of us by civilization and Christianity are not less
obligatory in the country of our enemy than in our own.
ROBERT E. LEE
_Lee issues his famous Chambersburg order, 1863_
_"Winnie" Davis born, 1864_
June Twenty-Eighth
COL. WILLIAM MOULTRIE; SERGEANT JASPER; "PALMETTO DAY"
The battle holds a conspicuous place in the history of the Revolution. It
was our first clear victory over the British, and won over one of
England's most distinguished naval officers.
JOHN J. DARGAN
_Defence of Fort Sullivan, (Moultrie,) 1776_
_North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Alabama, and Louisiana
readmitted to the Union, 1868_
June Twenty-Ninth
His trumpet-tones re-echoed like
Evangels to the free,
Where Chimborazo views the world
Mosaic'd in the sea;
And his proud form shall stand erect
In that triumphal car
Which bears to the Valhalla gates
Heroic Bolivar!
JAMES RYDER RANDALL
_Henry Clay dies, 1852_
June Thirtieth
Yes, there's a charm about the name of Mary
Which haunts me like some old enchanter's spell,
Or rather like the voice of some sweet fairy,
Singing low love-songs in a lonely dell.
It hath a music that can never weary,
A strain that seems of love and grief to tell,
The echoes of an anthem from the shrine
Of peace, and bliss, and rest, and love divine.
WILLIAM WOODSON HENDREE
_Robert E. Lee marries Mary Page Custis, great-granddaughter of Martha
Washington, 1831_
July
A SUMMER SHOWER
Meanwhile, unreluctant,
Earth like Danae lies;
Listen! is it fancy,
That beneath us sighs,
As that warm lap receives the largesse of the skies?
Jove, it is, descendeth
In those crystal rills;
And this world-wide tremor
Is a pulse that thrills
To a god's life infused through veins of velvet hills.
Wait, thou jealous sunshine,
Break not on their bliss;
Earth will blush in roses
Many a day for this,
And bend a brighter brow beneath thy burning kiss.
HENRY TIMROD
July First
A SOUTHERN SOLDIER'S TRIBUTE
To the Union commander, General George Gordon Meade, history will accord
the honor of having handled his army at Gettysburg with unquestioned
ability. The record and the results of the battle entitle him to a high
place among Union leaders. To him and to his able subordinates and heroic
men is due the credit of having successfully met and repelled the Army of
Northern Virginia in the meridian of its hope and confidence and power.
GENERAL JOHN B. GORDON
_First day at Gettysburg, 1863_
July Second
General Lee distinctly ordered Longstreet to attack early the morning of
the second day, and if he had done so, two of the largest corps of Meade's
army would not have been in the fight; but Longstreet delayed the attack
until four o'clock in the afternoon, and thus lost his opportunity of
occupying Little Round Top, the key to the position, which he might have
done in the morning without firing a shot or losing a man.
GENERAL JOHN B. GORDON
_Second day at Gettysburg, 1863_
July Third
General Lee ordered Longstreet to attack at daybreak on the morning of the
third day.... He did not attack until two or three o'clock in the
afternoon, the artillery opening at one.... Nothing that occurred at
Gettysburg, nor anything that has been written since of that battle, has
lessened the conviction that, had Lee's orders been promptly and cordially
executed, Meade's centre on the third day would have been penetrated and
the Union Army overwhelmingly defeated.
GENERAL JOHN B. GORDON
_Third day at Gettysburg, 1863_
_Joel Chandler Harris dies, 1908_
July Fourth
General Lee, according to the testimony of Colonel Walter H. Taylor,
Colonel C. S. Venable, and General A. L. Long, who were present when the
order was given, ordered Longstreet to make the attack on the last day,
with the three divisions of his corps, and two divisions of A. P. Hill's
corps, and that instead of doing so he sent fourteen thousand men to
assail Meade's army in his strong position, and heavily intrenched.
GENERAL JOHN B. GORDON
_Lee awaits the attack of Meade at Gettysburg throughout the fourth day,
1863_
_Vicksburg surrenders, 1863_
_Thomas Jefferson dies, 1826_
July Fifth
Opinion, let me alone: I am not thine.
Prim creed, with categoric point, forbear
To feature me my Lord by rule and line.
Thou canst not measure Mistress Nature's hair,
Not one sweet inch: nay, if thy sight is sharp,
Wouldst count the strings upon an angel's harp?
Forbear, forbear.
SIDNEY LANIER
July Sixth
A golden pallor of voluptuous light
Filled the warm Southern night;
The moon, clear orbed, above the sylvan scene
Moved like a stately queen,
So rife with conscious beauty all the while,
What could she do but smile
At her perfect loveliness below,
Glassed in the tranquil flow
Of crystal fountains
And unruffled streams?
PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE
_Paul Hamilton Hayne dies, 1886_
_John Marshall dies, 1835_
July Seventh
Do orioles from verdant Chesapeake,
And crested cardinal,
With linnets from the Severn, come to seek,
Obedient to thy call,
If they can give thee one new music-thought,
Who ev'ry note from ev'ry land hast caught?
E. G. LEE
(_The Mocking Bird_)
July Eighth
Sweet bird! that from yon dancing spray
Dost warble forth thy varied lay,
From early morn to close of day
Melodious changes singing,
Sure thine must be the magic art
That bids my drowsy fancy start,
While from the furrows of my heart,
Hope's fairy flowers are springing.
CHARLES WILLIAM HUBNER
(_The Mocking Bird_)
July Ninth
And to defenders and besiegers it is alike unjust to say, even though it
has been said by the highest authority, that Port Hudson surrendered only
because Vicksburg had fallen. The simple truth is that Port Hudson
surrendered because its hour had come. The garrison was literally
starving. With less than 3000 famished men in line, powerful mines beneath
the salients, and a last assault about to be delivered at 10 places, what
else was left to do?
LIEUT.-COL. RICHARD B. IRWIN, U. S. V.
_Fall of Port Hudson, 1863_
_Defeat of Lew Wallace by Early at the Monocacy, Maryland, 1864_
_Alexander Doniphan, "the Xenophon of America," born 1808_
July Tenth
MAMMY'S FIRST EXPERIENCE AT THE 'PHONE
We heard Mammy say "Hello--H'llo!
(What meks you rattle de handle so?)
Is dat _you_, Miss?--wants Main twenty-free!
(I ain't gwine to have you foolin' wid me!)
I say, Main twenty----what's ailin' you?
'_Bizzy!_' I guess I'se bizzy, too!
You gim-me dat number twenty-free,
I'se bizzier 'n you ever dared ter be!"
MARY JOHNSON BLACKBURN
July Eleventh
The Old World had its Xantippe; but----the facts have not been fully
established in the New!
"Under This Marble Tomb Lies The Body
Of The HON. JOHN CUSTIS, Esq.,
Of The City Of Williamsburg,
And Parish of Bruton,
Formerly Of Hungar's Parish, On The
Eastern Shore
Of Virginia, And County Of Northampton,
Age 71 Years, And Yet Lived But Seven,
Which Was The Space Of Time He Kept
A Bachelor's Home At Arlington,
On The Eastern Shore Of Virginia."
"This Inscription put on His Tomb was by His Own Positive Orders."
July Twelfth
Jackson's genius for war, Lee's resistless magnetism, were not vouchsafed
to Hill; but in those characteristics in which he excelled: invincible
tenacity, absolute unconsciousness of fear, a courage never to submit or
yield, no one has risen above him, not even in the annals of the Army of
Northern Virginia. He was the very "Ironsides" of the South--Cromwell in
some of his essential characteristics coming again in the person and
genius of D. H. Hill.
HENRY E. SHEPHERD
_D. H. Hill born, 1821_
July Thirteenth
Though the Grey were outnumbered, he counted no odd,
But fought like a demon and struck like a god,
Disclaiming defeat on the blood-curdled sod,
As he pledged to the South that he loved.
VIRGINIA FRAZER BOYLE
_N. B. Forrest born, 1821_
July Fourteenth
Pleasant and wonderfully fair,
Like one that knows her own domain,
Magnolia-flowers in her hair,
And orange-blossoms rare,
Let her not knock in vain!
Lift up your equal heads to her,
Of all your courts contain, co-heir,
For lo! she claims her own again!
DANIEL B. LUCAS
(_The South Shall Claim Her Own Again_)
July Fifteenth
FACT OR FICTION?
For four years the Northern States fought to keep their Southern sisters
in the Federal family; then having soundly thrashed these sisters in order
to keep them at home, they suddenly shut the door and kicked them down the
steps! The "erring sisters" are now fully restored to the family circle;
but they had a longer and more painful struggle in the effort to get back
than in the attempt to get away. More briefly, for four years the Federal
government, led by Lincoln, maintained that all of the Southern States
were in the Union and could not get out; and then for five years, under
the rule of the Radicals, it argued that some of these States were out of
the Union and could not get in!
MATTHEW PAGE ANDREWS
_Reconstruction ended and the Union restored by the readmission of
Georgia, 1870_
July Sixteenth
I shall yet live to see it an English nation.
SIR WALTER RALEIGH
_Raleigh's first colony arrives at Roanoke Island, 1584_
July Seventeenth
KIN
A visitor in the Old Chapel Graveyard, in Clarke County, Virginia, asked
the aged negro sexton if he knew the whereabouts of a certain grave,
adding that the deceased was her relative.
"Ole Mis' Anne? Why ob cose I knows whar my ole mistis is! She your
gran'ma! Jus' to think now, if you hadn't spoke we never would have knowed
we was related!"
July Eighteenth
Uncle Remus was quite a fogy in his idea of negro education. One day a
number of negro children, on their way home from school, were impudent to
the old man, and he was giving them an untempered piece of his mind, when
a gentleman apologized for them by saying: "Oh well, they are school
children. You know how they are."
"Dat's what make I say what I duz," said Uncle Remus. "Dey better be at
home pickin' up chips. What a nigger gwineter learn outen books? I kin
take a bar'l stave and fling mo' sense inter a nigger in one minnit dan
all de school houses betwixt dis en de New Nited States en Midgigin. Don't
talk, honey! wid one bar'l stave I kin fairly lif de vail er ignunce."
(Quoted by) HENRY STILES BRADLEY
July Nineteenth
What was my offense? My husband was absent--an exile. He had never been a
politician or in any way engaged in the struggle now going on, his age
preventing. The house was built by my father, a Revolutionary soldier, who
served the whole seven years for your independence.... Was it for this
that you turned me, my young daughter and little son out upon the world
without a shelter? Or was it because my husband was the grandson of the
Revolutionary patriot and "rebel," Richard Henry Lee, and the near kinsman
of the noblest of Christian warriors, the greatest of generals, Robert E.
Lee?... _Your_ name will stand on history's page as the Hunter of weak
women and innocent children; the Hunter to destroy defenseless villages
and refined and beautiful homes--to torture afresh the agonized hearts of
widows; the Hunter of Africa's poor sons and daughters, to lure them on to
ruin and death of soul and body; the Hunter with the relentless heart of a
wild beast, the face of a fiend and the form of a man.
HENRIETTA B. LEE
[Extract from letter to General Hunter, often referred to as the best
example of excoriating rebuke in American literature. Mrs. Lee's home
was burned July 19, 1864]
July Twentieth
The muffled drum's sad roll has beat
The soldier's last tattoo;
No more on life's parade shall meet
The brave and fallen few.
On Fame's eternal camping-ground
Their silent tents are spread,
And Glory guards, with solemn round,
The bivouac of the dead.
THEODORE O'HARA
[It is remarkable that the memorial inscriptions of Federal cemeteries
are taken from stanzas written by a "rebel" soldier-poet. Grand Army
Posts have also made use of "anonymous" lines by Major Wm. M. Pegram,
C. S. A., (quoted May 26th), when decorating Confederate graves. Both
uses are unconscious but eloquent tributes to the genius of Southern
expression.--Editor]
_Burial in Frankfort of Kentuckians killed in the Mexican War, 1847_
July Twenty-First
We thought they slept!--the sons who kept
The names of noble sires,
And slumbered while the darkness crept
Around their vigil fires!
But, aye, the "Golden Horseshoe" knights
Their Old Dominion keep,
Whose foes have found enchanted ground,
But not a knight asleep.
FRANCIS O. TICKNOR
_First Battle of Manassas, 1861_
July Twenty-Second
In the darksome depths of the fathomless mine
My tireless arm doth play,
Where the rocks never saw the sun's decline,
Or the dawn of the glorious day.
* * * * *
I blow the bellows, I forge the steel,
In all the shops of trade;
I hammer the ore and turn the wheel
Where my arms of strength are made;
I manage the furnace, the mill, the mint,
I carry, I spin, I weave,
And all my doings I put in print
On every Saturday eve.
GEORGE W. CUTTER
(_The Song of Steam_)
July Twenty-Third
... The rush, the tumult, and the fear
Of this our modern age
Have only widened out the poet's sphere,
Have given him a broader stage
On which to act his part.
The spiritual world of godlike aspirations,
The kingdom of the sympathetic heart,
The fair domain of high imaginations,
Lie open to the poet as of old.
Wrong still is wrong, and right is right,
* * * * *
And to declare that poetry must go,
Is to do God a wrong.
WILLIAM P. TRENT
(_The Age and the Poet_)
July Twenty-Fourth
Ante-bellum Master: "Julius, you rascal, if this happens again we'll have
to part."
"La, Marse Phil, whar you gwine?"
July Twenty-Fifth
The nights are full of love;
The stars and moon take up the golden tale
Of the sunk sun, and passionate and pale,
Mixing their fires above,
Grow eloquent thereof.
MADISON CAWEIN
July Twenty-Sixth
THE PHILOSOPHY OF MAMMY PHYLLIS
"Hush, Mary Van," commanded Willis; "you can't crow, you've got to
cackle."
"I haven't neether; I can crow just as good as you. Can't I, Mammy
Phyllis?"
"Well," solemnly answered Phyllis, "it soun' mo' ladylike ter hear er hen
cackle dan ter crow, but dem wimmen fokes whut wants ter heah dersefs crow
is got de right ter do it," shaking her head in resignation but
disapproval, "but I allus notice dat de roosters keeps mo' comp'ny wid
hens whut cackles dan dem whut crows. G'long now an' cackle like er nice
lit'le hen."
SARAH JOHNSON COCKE
July Twenty-Seventh
'Tis night! calm, lovely, silent, cloudless night!
Unnumbered stars on Heaven's blue ocean-stream,
Ships of Eternity! shed silver light,
Pure as an infant's or an angel's dream;
And still exhaustless, glorious, ever-bright,
Such as Creation's dawn beheld them beam,
In changeless orbits hold their ceaseless race
For endless ages over boundless space!
RICHARD HENRY WILDE
July Twenty-Eighth
When he first set down he 'peared to keer mighty little 'bout playin', and
wished he hadn't come. He tweedle-leedled a little on the trible, and
twoodle-oodle-oodled some on the base--just foolin' and boxin' the thing's
jaws for bein' in his way. And I says to a man settin' next to me, s'I
"what sort of fool play'n is that?... He thinks he's a doing of it; but he
ain't got no idee, no plan of nuthin'. If he'd play me up a tune of some
kind or other, I'd----"
But my neighbor says, "Heish!" very impatient....
GEORGE W. BAGBY
(_How Rubenstein Played_)
July Twenty-Ninth
... He fetcht up his right wing, he fetcht up his left wing, he fetcht up
his centre, he fetcht up his reserves. He fired by file, he fired by
platoons, by company, by regiments and by brigades. He opened his cannon,
siege guns down thar, Napoleons here, twelve-pounders yonder, big guns,
little guns, middle-size guns, round shot, shell, shrapnel, grape,
canister, mortars, mines and magazines, every livin' battery and bomb
a'goin' at the same time. The house trembled, the lights danced, the walls
shuk, the floor came up, the ceilin' come down, the sky spilt, the ground
rockt--heavens and earth, creation, sweet potatoes, Moses, nine-pences,
glory, ten-penny nails, my Mary Ann, hallelujah, Samson in a 'simmon tree,
Jeroosal'm, Tump Tompson in a tumbler-cart, roodle--oodle--oodle--oodle--
ruddle--uddle--uddle--uddle--raddle--addle--addle--addle--addle--riddle--
iddle--iddle--iddle--reetle--eetle--eetle--eetle--eetle--p-r-r-r-r-r-land!
per lang! per lang! p-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-lang! Bang!... When I come to....
GEORGE W. BAGBY
(_How Rubenstein Played_)
July Thirtieth
Let me also recall the fact that on July 30, 1619, eighteen months before
the Pilgrims set foot on American soil, the vine of liberty had so deeply
taken root in the colony of Virginia that there was assembled in the
church at Jamestown a free representative body (the first on American
soil)--the House of Burgesses--to deliberate for the welfare of the
people.
RANDOLPH H. MCKIM
_First Legislative Assembly in America meets at Jamestown, 1619_
_Battle of the Crater, near Petersburg, 1864_
July Thirty-First
It was probably the most remarkable evidence on record of the
resourcefulness of the Anglo-Saxon race, and its ability and determination
to dominate. Driven to desperation by conditions that threatened to
destroy their civilization, the citizens of the South, through this
organization, turned upon their enemies, overwhelmed them, and became
again masters of their own soil ... and its proper use must be commended
by all good men everywhere, for by it was preserved the purest Anglo-Saxon
civilization of this nation.
CAREY A. FOLK
(_The Ku Klux Klan_)
August
SUMMER
A trembling haze hangs over all the fields--
The panting cattle in the river stand
Seeking the coolness which its wave scarce yields.
It seems a Sabbath thro' the drowsy land:
So hush'd is all beneath the Summer's spell,
I pause and listen for some faint church bell.
The leaves are motionless--the song-bird's mute--
The very air seems somnolent and sick:
The spreading branches with o'er-ripened fruit
Show in the sunshine all their clusters thick,
While now and then a mellow apple falls
With a dull sound within the orchard's walls.
The sky has but one solitary cloud,
Like a dark island in a sea of light;
The parching furrows 'twixt the corn-rows plough'd
Seem fairly dancing in my dazzled sight,
While over yonder road a dusty haze
Grows reddish purple in the sultry blaze.
JAMES BARRON HOPE
August First
The Southampton Insurrection, which occurred in August, 1831, was one of
those untoward incidents which so often marked the history of slavery.
Under the leadership of one Nat Turner, a negro preacher of some
education, who felt that he had been called of God to deliver his race
from bondage, the negroes attacked the whites at night, and before the
assault could be suppressed, fifty-seven whites, principally women and
children, had been killed. This deplorable event assumed an even more
portentous aspect when it was realized that the leader was a slave to whom
the privilege of education had been accorded, and that one of his
lieutenants was a free negro. In addition, there existed a wide-spread
belief among the whites that influences and instigations from without the
State were responsible for the insurrection.
BEVERLY B. MUNFORD
August Second
But in addition to the Southampton Massacre, and the failure of the
Legislature to enact any effective legislation, the contemporary rise of
the Abolitionists in the North came as an even more powerful factor to
embarrass the efforts of the Virginia emancipators. Unlike the
anti-slavery men of former years, this new school not only attacked the
institution of slavery, but the morality of the slaveholders and their
sympathizers. In their fierce arraignment, not only were the humane and
considerate linked in infamy with the cruel and intolerant, but the whole
population of the slave-holding States, their civilization and their
morals were the object of unrelenting and incessant assaults.
BEVERLY B. MUNFORD
August Third
Resolved, "That secession from the United States Government is the duty of
every Abolitionist, since no one can take office or deposit his vote under
the Constitution without violating his anti-slavery principles, and
rendering himself an abettor of the slave-holder in his sin."
From Resolutions of the American Anti-Slavery Society
August Forth
His last campaign alone, even ending as it did in defeat, would have
sufficed to fix him forever as a star of the first magnitude in the
constellation of great captains. Though he succumbed at last to the
"policy of attrition," pursued by his patient and able antagonist, it was
not until Grant had lost in the campaign over 124,000 men, better armed
and equipped--two men for every one that Lee had had in his army from the
beginning of the campaign.
THOMAS NELSON PAGE
_Lee elected President of Washington College, 1865_
August Fifth
By the recognized universal public law of all the earth, war dissolves all
political compacts. Our forefathers gave as one of their grounds for
asserting their independence that the King of Great Britain had "abdicated
government here by declaring us out of his protection and waging war upon
us." The people and the Government of the Northern States of the late
Union have acted in the same manner toward Missouri, and have dissolved,
by war, the connection heretofore existing between her and them.
GOV. C. F. JACKSON
_Governor Jackson declares Missouri out of the Union, 1861_
August Sixth
Very soon after, the Essex was seen approaching under full steam. Stevens,
as humane as he was true and brave, finding that he could not bring a
single gun to bear upon the coming foe, sent all his people over the bows
ashore, remaining alone to set fire to his vessel; this he did so
effectually that he had to jump from the stern into the river and save
himself by swimming; and with colors flying, the gallant _Arkansas_, whose
decks had never been pressed by the foot of an enemy, was blown into the
air.
CAPTAIN ISAAC N. BROWN
_The "Arkansas" destroyed, 1862_
_Judah P. Benjamin born, 1811_
August Seventh
Oh, de cabin at de quarter in de old plantation days,
Wid de garden patch behin' it an' de gode-vine by de do',
An' de do'-yard sot wid roses, whar de chillun runs and plays,
An' de streak o' sunshine, yaller lak, er-slantin' on de flo'!
But ole Mars' wuz killed at Shiloh, an' young Mars' at Wilderness;
Ole Mis' is in de graveyard, wid young Mis' by her side,
An' all er we-all's fambly is scattered eas' an' wes',
An' de gode-vine by de cabin do' an' de roses all has died!
MARY EVELYN MOORE DAVIS
August Eighth
Here Carolina comes, her brave cheeks warm
And wet with tears, to take in charge this dust,
And brings her daughters to receive in form
Virginia's sacred trust.
JAMES BARRON HOPE
_Monument erected to Anne Carter Lee, Warren County, N. C., said to be the
first monument erected by Southern women, 1866_
August Ninth
"All quiet along the Potomac," they say,
"Except now and then a stray picket
Is shot, as he walks on his beat, to and fro,
By a rifleman hid in the thicket.
'Tis nothing--a private or two, now and then,
Will not count in the news of the battle;
Not an officer lost--only one of the men,
Moaning out, all alone, the death-rattle."
_From "All Quiet Along the Potomac To-night"_
[This poem has been claimed by a Mississippian. It has also been
claimed on behalf of a New York writer; but it now seems probable that
the verses were originally written in camp by Thaddeus Oliver, of
Georgia, in August, 1861.--Editor]
_Francis Scott Key born, 1780_
August Tenth
To defend your birthright and mine, which is more precious than domestic
ease, or property, or life, I exchange, with proud satisfaction, a term of
six years in the Senate of the United States for the musket of a soldier.
JOHN C. BRECKINRIDGE
_General Lyon killed and his army defeated by General Ben. McCulloch at
Wilson Creek, Mo., 1861_
August Eleventh
Against the night, a champion bright,
The glow-worm, lifts a spear of light;
And, undismayed, the slenderest shade
Against the noonday bares a blade.
JOHN B. TABB
(_Heroes_)
August Twelfth
I will say that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about
in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races;
that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of
negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor inter-marry with white
people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical
difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever
forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political
equality. And, inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain
together, there must be the position of superior and inferior; and I, as
much as any other man, am in favor of having the superior position
assigned to the white race.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
_The Mississippi Constitutional Convention meets in Jackson, 1890,
principally for the purpose of restricting suffrage_
August Thirteenth
Virginia, mother of States and statesmen, as she used to be called, has
contributed many men of worth to the multitude that America can number.
All her sons have loved her well, while many have reflected great honor on
her. But of them all, none has known how to draw her portrait like that
one who years ago, under the mild voice and quiet exterior of State
Librarian and occasional contributor to the Periodical Press, hid the soul
of a man of letters and an artist.
THOMAS NELSON PAGE
_George W. Bagby born, 1828_
August Fourteenth
Look, out of line one tall corn-captain stands
Advanced beyond the foremost of his bands,
And waves his blades upon the very edge
And hottest thicket of the battling hedge.
Thou lustrous stalk, that ne'er may walk nor talk,
Still shalt thou type the poet-soul sublime
That leads the vanward of his timid time
And sings up cowards with commanding rhyme.
SIDNEY LANIER
(_Corn_)
August Fifteenth
In the hush of the valley of silence
I dream all the songs that I sing;
And the music floats down the dim Valley
Till each finds a word for a wing,
That to hearts, like the Dove of the Deluge,
A message of Peace they may bring.
ABRAM J. RYAN
_Abram J. Ryan born, 1839_
August Sixteenth
Freighted with fruits, aflush with flowers,--
Oblations to offended powers,--
What fairy-like flotillas gleam
At night on Brahma's sacred stream.
* * * * *
Around each consecrated bark
That sailed into the outer dark
What lambent light those lanterns gave!
What opalescent mazes played
Reduplicated on the wave,
While, to and fro, like censers swayed,
They made it luminous to glass
Their fleeting splendors ere they pass!
THEOPHILUS HUNTER HILL
(_A Ganges Dream_)
_Battle of Camden, S. C., 1780_
August Seventeenth
My judgments were never appealed from, and if they had been, they would
have stuck like wax, as I gave my decisions on the principles of common
justice and honesty between man and man, and relied not on law learning;
for I have never read a page in a law book in my life.
DAVID CROCKETT
_David Crockett born, 1786_
August Eighteenth
Like a mist of the sea at morn it comes,
Gliding among the fisher-homes--
The vision of a woman fair;
And every eye beholds her there
Above the topmost dune,
With fluttering robe and streaming hair,
Seaward gazing in dumb despair,
Like one who begs of the waves a boon.
BENJAMIN SLEDD
(_The Wraith of Roanoke_)
_Virginia Dare, the first child born in America of English parentage,
1587_
August Nineteenth
... Hast thou perchance repented, Saracen Sun?
Wilt warm the world with peace and love-desire?
Or wilt thou, ere this very day be done,
Blaze Saladin still, with unforgiving fire?
SIDNEY LANIER
(_A Sunrise Song_)
August Twentieth
"Well," says Uncle Remus, "de 'oman make 'umble 'pology ter de boy, but
howsomever he can't keep from rubbin' hisse'f in de naberhood er de coat
tails, whar she spank 'im. I bin livin' 'round here a mighty long time,
but I ain't never see no polergy what wuz poultice er plaster nuff to
swage er swellin' or kore a bruise. Now you jes keep dat in min' en git
sorry fo' you hurt anybody."
JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS
August Twenty-First
The radicals and negroes had, in the summer of 1867, refused to
"co-operate" with the representative white citizens in restoring political
and social order. The election of delegates to the constitutional
convention was held in October, 1867. About 94,000 negroes voted. The
radical majority included five foreign born, twenty-five negroes,
twenty-eight Northerners, and fourteen Virginians. Never before in the
history of the State had negroes sat in a law-making body. The former
political leaders were absent. The State had been revolutionized.
JOHN PRESTON MCCONNELL
(_Reconstruction in Virginia_)
August Twenty-Second
The moon has climbed her starry dome,
That taper gleams no more:
Delicious visions wait me home,
Delicious dreams of yore.
Old waves of thought voluptuous swell,
And rainbows spread amid the spell
Arcades of love and light.
Oh! what were slumber's drowsy kiss,
To golden visions such as this,
Through all the wakeful night?
JOSEPH SALYARDS
(_Idothea; Idyll III_)
August Twenty-Third
EVOLUTION
Out of the dark a shadow,
Then, a spark;
Out of the cloud a silence,
Then, a lark;
Out of the heart a rapture,
Then, a pain;
Out of the dead, cold ashes,
Life again.
JOHN B. TABB
August Twenty-Fourth
I have led the young men of the South in battle; I have seen many of them
fall under my standard. I shall devote my life now to training young men
to do their duty in life.
ROBERT E. LEE
_General Lee accepts the Presidency of Washington College, 1865_
August Twenty-Fifth
BALM
After the sun, the shade,
Beatitude of shadow,
Dim aisles for memory made,--
And Thought;
After the sun, the shade.
After the heat, the dew,
The tender touch of twilight;
The unfolding of the few
Calm Stars;
After the heat, the dew.
VIRGINIA WOODWARD CLOUD
August Twenty-Sixth
I have come to you from the West, where we have always seen the backs of
our enemies--from an army whose business it has been to seek the
adversary, and beat him when found, whose policy has been attack and not
defense. I presume that I have been called here to pursue the same
system.... It is my purpose to do so, and that speedily.... Meanwhile, I
desire you to dismiss from your minds certain phrases, which I am sorry to
find much in vogue amongst you. I hear constantly of taking strong
positions and holding them--of lines of retreat and of bases of supplies.
Let us discard such ideas.... Let us study the probable line of our
opponents, and leave our own to take care of themselves.
GEN. JOHN POPE, U. S. A.
(_Before Campaign in Virginia_)
August Twenty-Seventh
Although a youth of only twenty-six years, he achieved, by his consummate
tact and extraordinary abilities, what the powerful influence of Franklin
failed to effect.
ELKANAH WATSON
(New York)
I knew him well, and he had not a fault that I could discover, unless it
were an intrepidity bordering on rashness.
GEORGE WASHINGTON
_John Laurens dies, 1782_
August Twenty-Eighth
STONEWALL JACKSON'S MEN HELP THEMSELVES TO POPE'S SUPPLIES, 1862
Weak and haggard from their diet of green corn and apples, one can well
imagine with what surprise their eyes opened upon the contents of the
sutler's stores, containing an amount and variety of property such as they
had never conceived. Then came a storming charge of men rushing in a
tumultuous mob over each other's heads, under each other's feet, anywhere,
everywhere to satisfy a craving stronger than a yearning for fame. There
were no laggards in that charge.... Men ragged and famished clutched
tenaciously at whatever came in their way, and whether of clothing or
food, of luxury or necessity. A long yellow-haired, bare-footed son of the
South claimed as prizes a tooth-brush, a box of candles, a barrel of
coffee. From piles of new clothing the Southerners arrayed themselves in
the blue uniforms of the Federals. The naked were clad, the barefooted
were shod, and the sick provided with luxuries to which they had long been
strangers.
GEORGE H. GORDON, U. S. A.
August Twenty-Ninth
Doctor McGuire, fresh from the ghastly spectacle of the silent
battle-field said: "General, this day has been won by nothing but stark
and stern fighting."
"No," replied Jackson very quietly, "it has been won by nothing but the
blessing and protection of Providence."
LIEUT.-COL. G. F. R. HENDERSON, C.B.
August Thirtieth
In the rapidity with which the opportunity was seized, in the combination
of the three arms, and in the vigor of the blow, Manassas is in no way
inferior to Austerlitz or Salamanca. That the result was less decisive was
due to the greater difficulties of the battle-field, to the stubborn
resistance of the enemy, to the obstacles in the way of rapid and
connected movement, and to the inexperience of the troops.
LIEUT.-COL. G. F. R. HENDERSON, C.B.
_Second Battle of Manassas, 1862_
August Thirty-First
My deep wound burns, my pale lips quake in death,
I feel my fainting heart resign its strife,
And reaching now the limit of my life.
Lord, to thy will I yield my parting breath,
Yet many a dream hath charmed my youthful eye;
And must life's visions all depart?
Oh, surely no! for all that fired my heart
To rapture here shall live with me on high;
And that fair form that won my earliest vow,
That my young spirit prized all else above,
And now adored as Freedom, now as Love,
Stands in seraphic guise before me now;
And as my failing senses fade away
It beckons me on high, to realms of endless day.
[Sonnet composed by John Laurens as he lay dying of wounds and fever
incurred in a campaign against the British in South Carolina.--Editor]
September
AUTUMN SONG
My Life is but a leaf upon the tree--
A growth upon the stem that feedeth all.
A touch of frost--and suddenly I fall,
To follow where my sister-blossoms be.
The selfsame sun, the shadow, and the rain
That brought the budding verdure to the bough,
Shall strip the fading foliage as now,
And leave the limb in nakedness again.
My life is but a leaf upon the tree;
The winds of birth and death upon it blow;
But whence it came and whither it shall go,
Is mystery of mysteries to me.
JOHN B. TABB
September First
Around me blight, where all before was bloom!
And so much lost! alas! and nothing won;
Save this--that I can lean on wreck and tomb,
And weep--and weeping pray--Thy will be done.
ABRAM J. RYAN
(_The Prayer of the South_)
_General Hood evacuates Atlanta, 1864_
September Second
Sixty thousand of us witnessed the destruction of Atlanta, while our post
band and that of the Thirty-third Massachusetts played martial airs and
operatic selections.
CAPT. DANIEL OAKEY, U. S. A.
_Sherman enters Atlanta, 1864_
September Third
On this point, however, all parties in the South were agreed, and the vast
majority of the people of the North--before the war. The Abolitionist
proper was considered not so much a friend of the negro as the enemy of
society. As the war went on, and the Abolitionist saw the "glory of the
Lord" revealed in a way he had never hoped for, he saw at the same time,
or rather ought to have seen, that the order he had lived to destroy could
not have been a system of hellish wrong and fiendish cruelty; else the
prophetic vision of the liberators would have been fulfilled, and the
horrors of San Domingo would have polluted this fair land. For the negro
race does not deserve undivided praise for its conduct during the war. Let
some small part of the credit be given to the masters, not all to the
finer qualities of their "brothers in black." The school in which the
training was given is closed, and who wishes to open it? Its methods were
old-fashioned and were sadly behind the times, but the old schoolmasters
turned out scholars who, in certain branches of moral philosophy, were not
inferior to the graduates of the new university.
BASIL L. GILDERSLEEVE
(_On Slavery_)
September Fourth
TOAST OF MORGAN'S MEN
Unclaimed by the land that bore us,
Lost in the land we find,
The brave have gone before us,
Cowards are left behind!
Then stand to your glasses, steady,
Here's health to those we prize,
Here's a toast to the dead already,
And here's to the next who dies.
_General John H. Morgan killed, 1864_
September Fifth
If slavery were an unutterably evil institution, with no alleviating
features, how are we to account for the fact that when the Confederate
soldiers were at the front fighting, as they thought, for their
independence, the negroes on the plantations took care of the women and
children and old people, and nothing like an act of violence was ever
known among them?... Is it not perfectly evident that there was a great
rebellion, but that the rebels were the Northerners and that those who
defended the Constitution as it was were the Southerners; but they
defended State rights and slavery, which were distinctly intrenched within
the Constitution?
CHARLES E. STOWE
(_A Northern view in the light of fifty years of history_)
September Sixth
In regard to Barbara Frietchie a word may be said: An old woman by that
now immortal name did live in Frederick in those days, but she was 84
years of age and bed-ridden. She never saw General Jackson, and he never
saw her. I was with him every minute of the time he was in Frederick, and
nothing like the scene so graphically described by the poet ever happened.
HENRY KYD DOUGLAS
_Jackson enters Frederick, Md., 1862_
September Seventh
OF JAMES RUMSEY, INVENTOR OF THE FIRST STEAMBOAT
I have seen the model of Mr. Rumsey's boat, constructed to work against
the stream, examined the powers upon which it acts, been the eye witness
to an actual experiment in running water of some rapidity, and give it as
my opinion (although I had little faith before) that he has discovered the
art of working boats by mechanism and small manual assistance against
rapid currents; that the discovery is of vast importance; may be of the
greatest usefulness in our inland navigation, and if it succeeds (of which
I have no doubt) that the value of it is greatly enhanced by the
simplicity of the works; which, when seen and explained, may be executed
by the most common mechanic.
Given under my hand at the Town of Bath, County of Berkeley, in the State
of Virginia, this 7th day of September, 1784.
GEORGE WASHINGTON
_Sidney Lanier dies, 1881_
September Eighth
Ere Time's horizon-line was set,
Somewhere in space our spirits met,
Then o'er the starry parapet
Came wandering here.
And now, that thou art gone again
Beyond the verge, I haste amain
(Lost echo of a loftier strain)
To greet thee there.
JOHN B. TABB
(_Ave: Sidney Lanier_)
_Battle of Eutaw Springs, S. C., 1781_
September Ninth
Their conduct indeed was exemplary. They had been warned that pillage and
depredations would be severely dealt with, and all requisitions, even
fence-rails, were paid for on the spot.
LIEUT.-COL. G. F. R. HENDERSON, C.B.
_Lee and Jackson in occupation of Frederick, Md., 1862_
September Tenth
My life is like the autumn leaf
That trembles in the moon's pale ray;
Its hold is frail, its date is brief,
Restless, and soon to pass away!
Yet ere that leaf shall fall and fade,
The parent tree will mourn its shade,
The winds bewail the leafless tree;
But none shall breathe a sigh for me!
RICHARD HENRY WILDE
_Richard Henry Wilde dies, 1847_
_Joseph Wheeler born, 1836_
September Eleventh
Long and close association with the white race had its civilizing effect
upon the negroes, and it was not long before the two races became warmly
attached, both alike manifesting a keen interest in the other's welfare.
Thus as economic interests had fixed the system in the laws of the people,
the domestication of the race fixed it in their hearts. The abolitionist
was right in his position on the ethics of slavery, but more than
benighted in his conception of its condition in the South.
DUNBAR ROWLAND
September Twelfth
In conclusion, the Battle of North Point saved Baltimore from a
pre-determined fate; it encouraged the rest of the country; it, with
Plattsburg, caused the English Ministry to suggest that the Duke of
Wellington should take command in America, and it influenced the terms of
the treaty of Ghent in favor of the United States.
FREDERICK M. COLSTON
_Battle of North Point, Md., 1814_
September Thirteenth
LEE'S ORDER OF INVASION, 1862
That he did not reap the full fruits of this wonderful generalship was due
to one of those strange events which, so insignificant in itself, yet is
fateful to decide the issues of nations....
It will be seen that Lee had no doubt whatever of the success of his
undertaking. Both he and Jackson knew Harper's Ferry and the surrounding
country, and his plan, so simple and yet so complete, was laid out with a
precision as absolute as if formed on the ground instead of on the march
in a new country. It was this order showing the dispersion of his army
over twenty-odd miles of country, with a river flowing between its widely
scattered parts, that by a strange fate fell in McClellan's hands.
THOMAS NELSON PAGE
September Fourteenth
On the shore dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam,
In full glory reflected now shines on the stream;
'Tis the star-spangled banner; O long may it wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
FRANCIS SCOTT KEY
No more sacred spot in New Orleans, a city famous for its historic
memories, can be pointed out than Liberty Place, where these martyrs fell;
and no more memorable day can be found in the calendar of Louisiana's
history than Sept. 14, 1874.
HENRY EDWARD CHAMBERS
(_Referring to the rout of General Longstreet and the Carpet-bagger
police by citizens, eleven of whom were killed_)
_Francis Scott Key writes the "Star Spangled Banner," 1814_
_Battle of Boonsboro, 1862_
_Rule of the Carpet-bagger shaken, New Orleans, 1874_
September Fifteenth
General Jackson, after a brief dispatch to General Lee announcing the
capitulation, rode up to Bolivar and down into Harper's Ferry. The
curiosity of the Union Army to see him was so great that the soldiers
lined the sides of the road. Many of them uncovered as he passed, and he
invariably returned the salute. One man had an echo of response all about
him when he said aloud: "Boys, he's not much for looks, but if we'd had
him we wouldn't have been caught in this trap."
HENRY KYD DOUGLAS
_Capture of Harper's Ferry by Jackson, 1862_
September Sixteenth
Mr. Lincoln, sir, have you any late news from Mr. Harper's Ferry? I heard
that Stone W. Jackson kept the parole for a few days, and that about
fourteen thousand crossed over in twenty-four hours. He is a smart
ferryman, sure. Do your folks know how to make it pay? It is a bad
crossing, but I suppose it is a heap safer than Ball's Bluff or
Shepherdstown.
BILL ARP (Charles H. Smith)
(_Humorous "Letter to Lincoln"_)
September Seventeenth
The moon, rising above the mountains, revealed the long lines of men and
guns, stretching far across hill and valley, waiting for the dawn to shoot
each other down, and between the armies their dead lay in such numbers as
civilised war has seldom seen. So fearful had been the carnage, and
comprised within such narrow limits, that a Federal patrol, it is related,
passing into the corn-field, where the fighting had been fiercest,
believed that they had surprised a whole Confederate brigade. There, in
the shadow of the woods, lay the skirmishers, their muskets beside them;
and there, in regular ranks, lay the line of battle, sleeping, as it
seemed, the profound sleep of utter exhaustion. But the first man that was
touched was cold and lifeless, and the next, and the next; it was the
bivouac of the dead.
LIEUT.-COL. G. F. R. HENDERSON, C.B.
_Battle of Antietam, 1862_
September Eighteenth
He's in the saddle now. Fall in,
Steady the whole brigade!
Hill's at the ford, cut off; we'll win
His way out, ball and blade.
What matter if our shoes are worn?
What matter if our feet are torn?
Quick step! We're with him before morn--
That's Stonewall Jackson's way.
JOHN WILLIAMSON PALMER
[From lines written within the sound of Jackson's guns at Antietam,
1862. Although then a correspondent of the New York _Tribune_, Dr.
Palmer was a Southerner by birth and residence.--Editor]
_Lee awaits McClellan's attack at Sharpsburg, 1862_
September Nineteenth
As a deputation from New England was one day leaving the White House, a
delegate turned round and said: "Mr. President, I should much like to know
what you reckon to be the number the rebels have in arms against us?"
Without a moment's hesitation Mr. Lincoln replied: "Sir, I have the best
possible reason for knowing the number to be one million of men, for
whenever one of our generals engages a rebel army he reports that he has
encountered a force twice his strength. I know we have half a million
soldiers, so I am bound to believe that the rebels have twice that
number."
LIEUT.-COL. G. F. R. HENDERSON, C.B.
_Lee repulses attempted advance across the Potomac after Antietam, 1862_
_First day at Chickamauga, 1863_
September Twentieth
Judged by percentage in killed and wounded, Chickamauga nearly doubled the
sanguinary records of Marengo and Austerlitz; was two and a half times
heavier than that sustained by the Duke of Marlborough at Malplaquet; more
than double that suffered by the army under Henry of Navarre in the
terrific slaughter at Coutras; nearly three times as heavy as the
percentage of loss at Solferino and Magenta; five times greater than that
of Napoleon at Wagram, and about ten times as heavy as that of Marshall
Saxe at Bloody Raucoux.... Or, if we take the average percentage of loss
in a number of the world's great battles--Waterloo, Wagram, Valmy,
Magenta, Solferino, Zurich, and Lodi--we shall find by comparison that
Chickamauga's record of blood surpassed them nearly three for one.
GENERAL JOHN B. GORDON
_Second day at Chickamauga, 1863_
September Twenty-First
THE OLD TIME NEGRO
God bless the forlorn and ragged remnants of a race now passing away. God
bless the old black hand that rocked our infant cradles, smoothed the
pillow of our infant sleep, and fanned the fever from our cheeks. God
bless the old tongue that immortalized the nursery rhyme, the old eyes
that guided our truant feet, and the old heart that laughed at our
childish freaks.
PETER FRANCISCO SMITH
September Twenty-Second
If I could preserve the Union without freeing any slaves, I would do it;
if I could preserve the Union by freeing all the slaves, I would do it.
What I do about the colored race, I do because I think it helps to save
the Union.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
_President Lincoln issues an emancipation proclamation to take effect
January 1, 1863, unless the Confederate States should return to the Union
by that date_
September Twenty-Third
THE MOCKING-BIRD
The name thou wearest does thee grievous wrong.
No mimic thou! That voice is thine alone!
The poets sing but strains of Shakespeare's song;
The birds, but notes of thine imperial own!
HENRY JEROME STOCKARD
September Twenty-Fourth
No other man did half so much either to develop the Constitution by
expounding it, or to secure for the judiciary its rightful place in the
Government as the living voice of the Constitution.... The admiration and
respect which he and his colleagues won for the court remain its bulwark:
the traditions which were formed under him and them have continued in
general to guide the action and elevate the sentiments of their
successors.
JAMES BRYCE
(England)
_John Marshall born, 1755_
_Zachary Taylor born, 1784_
September Twenty-Fifth
We are gathered here a feeble few
Of those who wore the gray--
The larger and the better part
Have mingled with the clay:
Yet not so lost, but now and then
Through dimming mist we see
The deadly calm of Stonewall's face,
The lion-front of Lee.
HENRY LYNDEN FLASH
_Memoirs of the Blue and Gray read at Los Angeles, 1897_
September Twenty-Sixth
Summer is dead, ay me! Sweet summer's dead!
The sunset clouds have built his funeral pyre,
Through which, e'en now, runs subterranean fire:
While from the East, as from a garden-bed,
Mist-vined, the Dusk lifts her broad moon--like some
Great golden melon--saying, "Fall has come."
MADISON CAWEIN
September Twenty-Seventh
All America will soon treasure alike both Federal and Confederate
exploits, in the greatest of wars, as a priceless national heritage. Then
Semmes and the _Alabama_ will shine beside John Paul Jones and the
_Bonhomme Richard_, Decatur and the _Philadelphia_, Lawrence and the
_Chesapeake_, and be ever lauded with the victories of _Old Ironsides_,
the intrepid deed of Farragut sailing over the mines in the channel of
Mobile Bay, that of Dewey entering Manila Harbor, and of Hobson bringing
the _Merrimac_ under the fire of the forts at Santiago.
JOHN C. REED
_Raphael Semmes born, 1809_
September Twenty-Eighth
The _Alabama_ had been built in perfect good faith by the Lairds. When she
was contracted for no question had been raised as to the right of a
neutral to build and sell to a belligerent such a ship. The reader has
seen that the Federal Secretary of the Navy himself had endeavored not
only to build an _Alabama_, but ironclads in England.
RAPHAEL SEMMES
_John Laurens born, 1754_
September Twenty-Ninth
When summer flowers are dying,
August past,
When Autumn's breath is sighing
On the blast;
When the red leaves flutter down
To the sod,
Then the year kneels for its crown--
Goldenrod!
VIRGINIA LUCAS
September Thirtieth
Thistles send their missives white
To the sky;
Robins southward wing their flight,
(Sad goodbye!)
But where Summer, yellow-gowned,
Last has trod,
Thorn-torn fragments strew the ground--
Goldenrod!
VIRGINIA LUCAS
October
Thy glory flames in every blade and leaf
To blind the eyes of grief;
Thy vineyards and thine orchards bend with fruit
That sorrow may be mute;
A hectic splendor lights thy days to sleep,
Ere the gray dusk may creep
Sober and sad along thy dusty ways,
Like a lone nun, who prays;
High and faint-heard thy passing migrant calls;
Thy lazy lizard sprawls
On his gray stone, and many slow winds creep
About thy hedge, asleep;
The Sun swings farther toward his love, the South,
To kiss her glowing mouth;
And Death, who steals among thy purpling bowers,
Is deeply hid in flowers.
JOHN CHARLES MCNEILL
October First
Come on thy swaying feet,
Wild Spirit of the Fall!
With wind-blown skirts, loose hair of russet brown
Crowned with bright berries of the bitter sweet.
Trip a light measure with the hurrying leaf,
Straining thy few late roses to thy breast:
With laughter overgay, sweet eyes drooped down,
That none may guess thy grief:
Dare not to pause for rest
Lest the slow tears should gather to their fall.
DANSKE DANDRIDGE
October Second
In all our associations; in all our agreements let us never lose sight of
this fundamental maxim--that all power was originally lodged in, and
consequently derived from, the people. We should wear it as a breastplate,
and buckle it on as our armour.
GEORGE MASON
October Third
What a brave splendour
Is in the October air! How rich and clear--
How life-full, and all joyous! We must render
Love to the Spring-time, with its sproutings tender,
As to a child quite dear--
But autumn is a noon, prolonged, of glory--
A manhood not yet hoary.
PHILIP PENDLETON COOKE
October Fourth
At morn--at noon--at twilight dim--
Maria! thou hast heard my hymn!
In joy and woe--in good and ill--
Mother of God, be with me still!
When the Hours flew brightly by,
And not a cloud obscured the sky,
My soul, lest it should truant be,
Thy grace did guide to thine and thee!
Now, when storms of Fate o'ercast
Darkly my Present and my Past,
Let my future radiant shine
With sweet hopes of thee and thine!
EDGAR ALLAN POE
October Fifth
Tormented sorely by the chastening rod,
I muttered to myself: "There is no God!"
But faithful friend, I found your soul so true,
That God revealed Himself in giving you.
WALTER MALONE
October Sixth
Who said "false as dreams"? Not one who saw
Into the wild and wondrous world they sway;
No thinker who hath read their mystic law;
No Poet who hath weaved them in his lay.
HENRY TIMROD
_Henry Timrod dies, 1867_
_Nathaniel Bacon dies, 1676_
October Seventh
And the fever called "Living"
Is conquered at last.
EDGAR ALLAN POE
_Edgar Allan Poe dies, 1849_
_Battle of King's Mountain, N. C., 1780_
October Eighth
EDGAR ALLAN POE
It is no small achievement to have sung a few imperishable songs of
bereaved love and illusive beauty. It is no small achievement to have
produced individual and unexcelled strains of harmony which have since so
rung in the ears of brother poets that echoes of them may be detected even
in the work of such original and accomplished versemen as Rossetti and
Swinburne. It is no small achievement to have pursued one's ideal until
one's dying day, conscious the while that, great as one's impediments have
been from without, one's chief obstacle has been one's own self.
WILLIAM P. TRENT
All who possess the divine element of pity will unite in feeling that his
sufferings were his expiation.
LETITIA H. WRENSHALL
October Ninth
BATTLE OF KING'S MOUNTAIN: THE FIRST REBEL YELL
And they came, these mountaineers of the South. Congress has not ordered
them; it is a rally of volunteers.... They neither hesitate nor parley;
they hitch their horses to the trees; like a girdle of steel they clasp
the mountain; and up they go, at the enemy--rifles blazing as they
advance, and the Southern yell ringing through the woods.
THOMAS E. WATSON
It was the joyful annunciation of that turn of the tide of success which
terminated the Revolutionary War with the seal of our independence.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
October Tenth
Soldiers! You are about to engage in an enterprise which, to insure
success, imperatively demands at your hands coolness, decision, and
bravery; implicit obedience to orders without a question or cavil; and the
strictest order and sobriety on the march and in bivouac. The destination
and extent of this expedition had better be kept to myself than known to
you. Suffice it to say, that with the hearty cooperation of officers and
men I have not a doubt of its success,--a success which will reflect
credit in the highest degree upon your arms.
MAJ.-GEN. J. E. B. STUART
_J. E. B. Stuart, with 1,800 men, begins his second circle around the
Union Army, riding through Pennsylvania and Maryland, 1862_
October Eleventh
His firmness and perseverance yielded to nothing but impossibilities. A
rigid disciplinarian, yet tender as a father to those committed to his
charge; honest, disinterested, liberal, with a sound understanding and a
scrupulous fidelity to truth.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
_Meriwether Lewis dies, 1809_
October Twelfth
LEE
He was a foe without hate, a friend without treachery, a soldier without
cruelty, and a victim without murmuring. He was a public officer without
vices, a private citizen without wrong, a neighbor without reproach, a
Christian without hypocrisy, and a man without guile. He was Cæsar without
his ambition, Frederick without his tyranny, Napoleon without his
selfishness, and Washington without his reward. He was as obedient to
authority as a true king. He was as gentle as a woman in life, pure and
modest as a virgin in thought, watchful as a Roman vestal in duty,
submissive to law as Socrates, and grand in battle as Achilles.
BENJAMIN H. HILL
_Robert E. Lee dies, 1870_
_Chief Justice Roger B. Taney dies, 1864_
October Thirteenth
TANEY
It was the conviction of his life that the Government under which we live
was of limited powers, and that its constitution had been framed for war
as well as peace. Though he died, therefore, he could not surrender that
conviction at the call of the trumpet. He had plighted his troth to the
liberty of the citizen and the supremacy of the laws, and no man could put
them asunder.
SEVERN TEACKLE WALLIS
October Fourteenth
LEE
He sent to the suffering private in the hospitals the delicacies
contributed for his personal use from the meagre stores of those who were
anxious about his health. If a handful of real coffee came to him, it went
in the same direction, while he cheerfully drank from his tin cup the
wretched substitute made from parched corn or beans.
GEN. JOHN B. GORDON
October Fifteenth
THE CONFEDERATE VETERAN
Let the autumn hoarfrost gather,
Let the snows of winter drift,
For there blooms a fruit of valor that
The world may not forget.
Fold your faded gray coat closer, for
It was your country's gift,
And it brings her holiest message--
There is glory in it yet.
VIRGINIA FRAZER BOYLE
October Sixteenth
This button here upon my cuff is valueless, whether for use or for
ornament, but you shall not tear it from me and spit in my face besides;
no, not if it cost me my life. And if your time be passed in the attempt
to so take it, then my time and my every thought shall be spent in
preventing such outrage. Let alone, the Virginian would gladly have made
an end of slavery, but, strange hap, malevolence and meddling bound it up
with every interest that was dear to his heart.
GEORGE W. BAGBY
(_Slavery_)
_John Brown's raid at Harper's Ferry, West Virginia, 1859_
October Seventeenth
JOHN BROWN'S RAID
Of course a transaction so flagitious with its attendant circumstances ...
could but produce the profoundest impression upon the people of the South.
Here was open and armed "aggression"; whether clearly understood and
encouraged beforehand, certainly exulted in afterwards, by persons of a
very different standing from that of the chief actor in this bloody
incursion into a peaceful State.
GEORGE LUNT
(Massachusetts)
"Saint John the Just" was the verdict of the Concord philosophers
concerning John Brown. "The new Saint ... will make the gallows glorious
like the Cross" was the sentiment of Emerson that drew applause from a
vast assemblage in Boston.
HENRY A. WHITE
October Eighteenth
I address you on this occasion with a profound admiration for the great
consideration which caused you to honor me by your votes with a seat in
the Senate of Georgy. For two momentus and inspirin' weeks the Legislature
has been in solemn session, one of whom I am proud to be which. For
several days we were engaged as scouts, making a sorter reconysance to see
whether Georgy were a State or a Injin territory, whether we were in the
old Un-ion or out of it, whether me and my folks and you and your folks
were somebody or no body, and lastly, but by no means leastly, whether our
poor innocent children, born durin' the war, were all illegal and had to
be born over agin or not. This last pint are much unsettled, but our women
are advised to be calm and serene.
"BILL ARP"
(_To His Constituents_)
October Nineteenth
Float out, oh flag, from Freedom's burnished lance.
Float out, oh flag, in Red and White and Blue!
The Union's colors and the hues of France
Commingled on the view!
JAMES BARRON HOPE
_Cornwallis surrenders at Yorktown, 1781_
_Burning of the "Peggy Stewart" at Annapolis, 1774_
October Twentieth
Her right to it rested upon as firm a basis as the right of any other
Commonwealth to her own domain, and if there was any question of the
Virginia title by charter, she could assert her right by conquest. The
region had been wrested from the British by a Virginian commanding
Virginian troops; the people had taken "the oath of allegiance to the
Commonwealth of Virginia"; and her title to the entire territory was thus
indisputable....
These rights she now abandoned; and her action was the result of an
enlarged patriotism and devotion to the cause of union.
JOHN ESTEN COOKE
_Virginia cedes to the general government the territory north of the Ohio,
1783_
October Twenty-First
When social relations were resumed between the North and South--they
followed slowly the resumption of business relations--what we should call
the color-blindness of the other side often manifested itself in a
delicate reticence on the part of our Northern friends; and as the war had
by no means constituted their lives as it had constituted ours for four
long years, the success in avoiding the disagreeable topic would have been
considerable, if it had not been for awkward allusions on the part of the
Southerners, who, having been shut out for all that time from the study of
literature and art and other elegant and uncompromising subjects, could
hardly keep from speaking of this and that incident of the war. Whereupon
a discreet, or rather an embarrassed silence, as if a pardoned convict had
playfully referred to the arson or burglary, not to say worse, that had
been the cause of his seclusion.
BASIL L. GILDERSLEEVE
October Twenty-Second
Oh, the rolling, rolling prairies, and the grasses waving, waving
Like green billows 'neath the gulf breeze in the perfumed purple gloam!
Oh, my heart is heavy, heavy, and my eyes are craving, craving
For the fertile plains and forests of my far-off Texas home.
JUDD MORTIMER LEWIS
(_Longing for Texas_)
_Samuel Houston inaugurated President of Texas, 1836_
October Twenty-Third
BEARING THE NEWS FROM YORKTOWN TO PHILADELPHIA
All the night of the 22d he rode up the peninsula, not a sound disturbing
the silence of the darkness except the beat of his horse's hoofs. Every
three or four hours he would ride up to a lonely homestead, still and
quiet and dark in the first slumbers of the night, and thunder on the door
with his sword: "Cornwallis is taken: a fresh horse for the Congress!"
Like an electric shock the house would flash with an instant light and
echo with the pattering feet of women, and before a dozen greetings could
be exchanged, and but a word given of the fate of the loved ones at York,
Tilghman would vanish in the gloom, leaving a trail of glory and joy
behind him.
BRADLEY T. JOHNSON
_Col. Tench Tilghman's ride, 1781_
October Twenty-Fourth
IMMORTALITY
Battles nor songs can from Oblivion save,
But Fame upon a white deed loves to build;
From out that cup of water Sidney gave,
Not one drop has been spilled.
LIZETTE WOODWORTH REESE
October Twenty-Fifth
Supposing a disintegration of the Union, notwithstanding all efforts to
prevent it, to be forced upon us by the obstinacy and impracticability of
parties on each side--the case would still be far from hopeless. The
Border States, in that event, would form, in self-defence, a Confederacy
of their own, which would serve as a centre of reinforcement for the
reconstruction of the Union.
JOHN P. KENNEDY
(_In "The Border States--their Power and Duty in the Present
Disordered Condition of the Country"_)
_John P. Kennedy born, 1795_
October Twenty-Sixth
Give us back the ties of Yorktown!
Perish all the modern hates!
Let us stand together, brothers,
In defiance of the Fates;
For the safety of the Union
Is the safety of the States!
JAMES BARRON HOPE
(_Centennial Ode_)
October Twenty-Seventh
The attempt made to establish a separate and independent confederation has
failed, but the consciousness of having done your duty faithfully and to
the end will in some measure repay for the hardships you have undergone.
In bidding you farewell, rest assured that you carry with you my best
wishes for your future welfare and happiness.... I now cheerfully and
gratefully acknowledge my indebtedness to the officers and men of my
command, whose zeal, fidelity, and unflinching bravery have been the great
source of my past success in arms. I have never on the field of battle
sent you where I felt myself unwilling to pursue. You have been good
soldiers, you can be good citizens. Obey the laws, preserve your honor,
and the government to which you have surrendered can afford to be and will
be magnanimous.
N. B. FORREST
(_Farewell Address to His Soldiers_)
October Twenty-Eighth
Whether in the thickest of the battle, where hundreds or thousands were
rushing at each other in deadly combat, or on the lonely highway where he
came face to face with a single adversary, or in the reconnoissance by day
or night, when alone or attended by a single member of his staff he would
ride into the enemy's lines and even into their camps, he was with pistol
or sabre ever ready to assert his physical prowess. It is known that he
placed _hors de combat_ thirty Federal officers or soldiers fighting
hand-to-hand.
JOHN A. WYETH
October Twenty-Ninth
Swing, rustless blade, in the dauntless hand;
Ride, soul of a god, through the deathless band,
Through the low green mounds, or the breadth of the land,
Wherever your legions dwell!
VIRGINIA FRAZER BOYLE
_Gen. N. B. Forrest dies, 1877_
October Thirtieth
It will be difficult in all history to find a more varied career than his,
a man who, from the greatest poverty, without any learning, and by sheer
force of character alone became the great fighting leader of fighting men,
a man in whom an extraordinary military instinct and sound common-sense
supplied to a very large extent his unfortunate want of military
education. His military career teaches us that the genius which makes men
great soldiers is not art of war.
VISCOUNT WOLSELEY
(England)
October Thirty-First
Rising from the position of a private soldier to wear the wreath and stars
of a lieutenant-general, and that without education or influence to help
him, wounded four times and having twenty-nine horses shot under him,
capturing 31,000 prisoners, and cannon, flags, and stores of all kinds
beyond computation, Nathan Bedford Forrest was a born genius for war, and
his career is one of the most brilliant and romantic to be found in the
pages of history.
REV. J. WILLIAM JONES
November
FALL
Sad-hearted Spirit of the solitudes,
Who comest through the ruin-wedded woods!
Gray-gowned in fog, gold-girdled with the gloom
Of tawny sunsets; burdened with perfume
Of rain-wet uplands, chilly with the mist;
And all the beauty of the fire-kissed
Cold forests crimsoning thy indolent way,
Odorous of death and drowsy with decay.
I think of thee as seated 'mid the showers
Of languid leaves that cover up the flowers--
The little flower-sisterhoods, whom June
Once gave wild sweetness to, as to a tune
A singer gives her soul's wild melody--
Watching the squirrel store his granary.
Or, 'mid old orchards, I have pictured thee:
Thy hair's profusion blown about thy back;
One lovely shoulder bathed with gypsy black;
Upon thy palm one nestling cheek, and sweet
The rosy russets tumbled at thy feet.
Was it a voice lamenting for the flowers?
Or heart-sick bird that sang of happier hours?
A cricket dirging days that soon must die?
Or did the ghost of Summer wander by?
MADISON CAWEIN
November First
The white people owe a high duty to the negro. It was necessary to the
safety of the State to base suffrage on the capacity to exercise it
wisely. This results in excluding a great number of negroes from the
ballot, but their right to life, liberty, property, and justice must be
even more carefully safeguarded than ever. It is true that a superior race
cannot submit to the rule of a weaker race without injury; it is also true
in the long years of God that the strong cannot oppress the weak without
destruction.
CHARLES B. AYCOCK
_The New Constitution of Mississippi adopted, 1890_
November Second
It becomes the duty of all States, and especially of those whose
constitutions recognize the existence of domestic slavery, to look with
watchfulness to the attempts which have been recently made to disturb the
rights secured to them by the Constitution of the United States.
JAMES KNOX POLK
_James Knox Polk born, 1795_
November Third
FROM THE LAST-KNOWN DECLARATION OF THE NATURAL RIGHTS OF MAN! VIRGINIA,
1687
Man in marriage is said to repair his maimed side, and to regain his own
rib. And the woman is then and thereby reduced to her first place.... From
a rib to a helper was a happy change.
COL. JOHN PAGE
(_In "A Deed of Gift"_)
November Fourth
NOVEMBER
'Neath naked boughs, and sitting in the sun,
With idle hands, because her work is done,
I mark how smiles the lovely, fading year,
Crowned with chrysanthemums and berries bright,
And in her eyes the shimmer of a tear.
DANSKE DANDRIDGE
November Fifth
It came to pass that I was one of the few who witnessed the last
descending glory of this attempted Republic, projected by men who
considered that the only true and natural foundation of society was "the
wants and fears of individuals," but which was decided adversely to
_their_ interpretation of that natural law, by the God of battles.
CORNELIUS E. HUNT
(_Of "The Shenandoah"_)
[Learning Aug. 2, 1865, in the course of her cruising in the Pacific,
that the Confederate government no longer existed, and knowing that
they had been rated as "pirates" by Federal officials, the captain and
crew determined to surrender their flag and commission in a foreign
port, setting out forthwith for Liverpool, England.--Editor]
November Sixth
The First Lieutenant stood ... gazing at the flag under which he had so
long done battle, and then turned away with tears coursing down his
bronzed cheeks.
He was not alone in this exhibition of weakness, if such it was, for more
than one eye, unaccustomed to weep, turned aside to conceal the unwonted
drops, as at a silent signal, the quartermaster hauled down the Stars and
Bars, thereby surrendering the Shenandoah to the British authorities.
CORNELIUS E. HUNT
(_Of "The Shenandoah"_)
_The "Shenandoah" furls the last Confederate battle flag, 1865_
November Seventh
A very shy fellow was dusky Sam,
As slow of speech as the typical clam.
He couldn't make love to his Angeline
Though his love grew like the Great Gourd Vine;
So he brought the telephone to his aid
To assist in wooing the chosen maid:
"Miss Angeline? Dat you?" called he.
"Yas.--Dis Angeline--Dis me--"
"I--des wanter say--dat I does--love you--
Miss Angeline--does you love me, too--?"
"Why--yas--Of course I loves my beau--
Say what's de reason you wants to know?"
"Miss--hold de wire--Will you marry me? True--?"
"Yas. Course I will----Say. Who is you?"
MARTHA YOUNG
November Eighth
History will record the events attending this capture as a most
extraordinary lapse in the career of a civilized nation--an instance where
statesmen and _Jurisconsults_ betrayed their country to administer to the
passions of a mob. Edward Everett ... wrote for the newspapers,
vindicating on principles of public law, the act of Captain Wilkes.
JAMES M. MASON
_The English Royal Mail steamer "Trent" held up by the Federal war-ship
"San Jacinto" and the Confederate commissioners, Mason and Slidell,
arrested, 1861_
November Ninth
I also propose that these surgeons shall act as commissaries, with power
to receive and distribute such contributions of money, food, clothing, and
medicines as may be forwarded for the relief of prisoners. I further
propose that these surgeons be selected by their own Governments, and they
shall have full liberty at any and all times, through the agents of
exchange, to make reports, not only of their own acts, but of any matters
relating to the welfare of prisoners.
ROBERT OULD
(_Agent of Exchange_)
This letter was ignored by the Federal Government, as were others of
similar import, although receipt was acknowledged by the Agent of
Exchange.
_R. R. Stevenson's Account_
I need not state how much suffering would have been prevented if this
offer had been met in the spirit in which it was dictated. In addition,
the world would have had truthful accounts of the treatment of prisoners
on both sides, by officers of character, and thus much of that
misrepresentation which has flooded the country would never have been
poured forth.... The acceptance of the proposition made by me, on behalf
of the Confederate Government, would not only have furnished to the sick,
medicines and physicians, but to the well an abundance of food and
clothing from the ample stores of the United States.
R. R. STEVENSON
_A. P. Hill born, 1825_
November Tenth
The verdict has been found, said they, and no appeal will be permitted.
"Besides," said many, "why stir up these old matters? Let them be; they
will be forgotten within a generation." But there are some yet living, in
both the South and the North, who prefer truth to falsehood, even though
the attainment of the former costs some trouble.
R. R. STEVENSON
_Major Henry Wirz, Commandant of Andersonville prison, hanged, 1865_
_Robert Young Hayne born, 1791_
November Eleventh
"The report of Mr. Stanton, as Secretary of War, on the 19th of July,
1866, exhibits the fact that of the Federal prisoners in Confederate hands
during the war, 22,576 died; while of the Confederate prisoners in Federal
hands 26,436 died."
[Since Dr. Stevenson wrote the above (1876), the figures on either
side have been added to, but the proportion remains about the same.
_If nothing more_, these figures of comparative mortality should be
borne in mind in exoneration of Henry Wirz, and of those of greater
responsibility who were accused with him, but who were neither
executed nor even brought to trial. A number of gallant Federal
officers, once prisoners at Andersonville, have in later years come
forward to testify in book and monograph as to the true character of
Major Wirz.--Editor]
November Twelfth
When it was ascertained that exchanges could not be made, either on the
basis of the cartel, or officer for officer and man for man, I was
instructed by the Confederate authorities to offer the United States
Government their sick and wounded, _without requiring any equivalents_.
Accordingly, in the summer of 1864, I did offer to deliver from ten to
fifteen thousand of the sick and wounded at the mouth of the Savannah
River, without requiring any equivalents, assuring, at the same time, the
Agent of the United States, General Mulford, that if the number for which
he might send transportation could not readily be made up from sick and
wounded, I would supply the difference with well men. Although this offer
was made in the summer of 1864, transportation was not sent to the
Savannah River until about the middle or last of November.
R. R. STEVENSON
November Thirteenth
In the summer of 1864, in consequence of certain information communicated
to me by the Surgeon-general of the Confederate States as to the
deficiency of medicines, I offered to make purchases of medicines from the
United States authorities, to be used exclusively for the relief of
Federal prisoners. I offered to pay gold, cotton, or tobacco for them, and
even two or three prices, if required. At the same time I gave assurances
that the medicines would be used exclusively in the treatment of Federal
prisoners; and moreover agreed, on behalf of the Confederate States, if it
was insisted on, that such medicines might be brought into the Confederate
lines by the United States surgeons, and dispensed by them.
R. R. STEVENSON
_Texas declares her independence of Mexico, 1835_
November Fourteenth
Were I to enter the Hall, at this remote period, and meet my associates
who signed the instrument of our independence, I should know them all,
from Hancock down to Stephen Hopkins.
CHARLES CARROLL
(_Of Carrollton, at 90 years of age_)
_Charles Carroll of Carrollton, the last surviving signer of the
Declaration of Independence, dies, 1832_
November Fifteenth
In other words, a veteran of our civil strife, General Sherman advocated
in an enemy's country the sixteenth century practices of Tilly, described
by Schiller, and the later devastation of the Palatinate policy of Louis
XIV, commemorated by Goethe. In the twenty-first century, perhaps,
partisan feeling as regards the Civil War performances having by that time
ceased to exist, American investigators, no longer regardful of a victor's
self-complacency, may treat the episodes of our struggle with the same
even-handed and out-spoken impartiality with which Englishmen now treat
the revenges of the Restoration, or Frenchmen the dragonnades of the Grand
Monarque. But when that time comes, the page relating to what occurred in
1864 in the Valley of the Shenandoah, in Georgia, and in the Carolinas,--a
page which Mr. Rhodes somewhat lightly passes over--will probably be
rewritten in characters of far more decided import.
CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS
(Massachusetts)
_Sherman begins his march from Atlanta to the sea, 1864_
November Sixteenth
HENRY WIRZ, THE UNFORTUNATE SWISS-AMERICAN COMMANDANT AT ANDERSONVILLE
On the evening before the day of the execution of Major Wirz a man visited
me, on the part of a Cabinet officer, to inform me that Major Wirz would
be pardoned if he would implicate Jefferson Davis in the cruelties at
Andersonville....
When I visited Major Wirz the next morning he told me that the same
proposal had been made to him.
F. E. BOYLE
(_Priest in attendance upon Major Wirz_)
Some parties came to the confessor of Wirz, Rev. Father Boyle, and also to
me, one of them informing me that a high Cabinet officer wished to assure
Wirz, that if he would implicate Jefferson Davis with the atrocities
committed at Andersonville, his sentence would be commuted. He, the
messenger, or whoever he was, requested me to inform Wirz of this.
LEWIS SCHADE
(_German-American Attorney to Major Wirz_)
November Seventeenth
Sad spirit, swathed in brief mortality,
Of Fate and fervid fantasies the prey,
Till the remorseless demon of dismay
O'erwhelmed thee--lo! thy doleful destiny
Is chanted in the requiem of the sea
And shadowed in the crumbling ruins gray
That beetle o'er the tarn. Here all the day
The Raven broods on solitude and thee:
Here gloats the moon at midnight, while the Bells
Tremble, but speak not lest thy Ulalume
Should startle from her slumbers, or Lenore
Hearken the love-forbidden tone that tells
The shrouded legend of thine early doom
And blast the bliss of heaven forevermore.
JOHN B. TABB
_First American Monument erected to the memory of Edgar Allan Poe
dedicated in Baltimore, 1875_
November Eighteenth
POE--He is the nightingale of our Southern poets--singing at night,
singing on nocturnal themes, but with all the passionate tenderness and
infinite pathos of his own angel Israfel, "whose heart-strings are a
lute."
OLIVER HUCKEL
(Pennsylvania)
November Nineteenth
The election of 1873 was the culmination of the evil effects of
reconstruction. The rule of the alien and the negro was complete, with the
latter holding the lion's share of the offices. The lieutenant-governor,
secretary of state, superintendent of education, and commissioner of
immigration and agriculture, all were negroes; both houses of the
legislature had negro presiding officers; in the senate ten negroes held
seats; of the seventy-seven Republicans in the house, fifty-five were
negroes and fifteen were carpet-baggers; the majority of the county
offices were filled by negroes, 90 per cent. of whom could neither read
nor write.
DUNBAR ROWLAND
(_Mississippi in "Reconstruction"_)
November Twentieth
Fleet on the tempest blown,
Far from the mountain dell,
Rose in their cloudy cone,
Elfin and Spell;
Woo'd by the spirit tone,
Trembling and chill,
Wandered a maiden lone,
On the bleak hill:
Mau-in-waun-du-me-nung,
Trembling and chill.
JOSEPH SALYARDS
November Twenty-First
Low in the moory dale,
Green mossy waters flow,
Under the drowsy gale,
Moaning and slow;
There in her snowy veil,
Bleeding and bound,
Lay the sweet damsel pale,
On the cold ground,
Mau-in-waun-du-me-nung,
On the cold ground.
JOSEPH SALYARDS
November Twenty-Second
The history of that period, of the reconstruction period of the South, has
never been fully told. It is only beginning to be written.
THOMAS NELSON PAGE
_Convention in Louisiana disfranchising ex-Confederates, 1867_
November Twenty-Third
But talkin' the way I see it, a big feller and a little feller, SO-CALLED,
got into a fite, and they fout and fout a long time, and everybody all
round kep' hollerin' hands off, but kep' helpin' the big feller, until
finally the little feller caved in and hollered enuff. He made a bully
fite, I tell you, Selah. Well, what did the big feller do? Take him by the
hand and help him up and brush the dirt off his clothes? Nary time! No,
sur! But he kicked him arter he was down, and throwed mud on him, and drug
him about and rubbed sand in his eyes, and now he's gwine about hunting up
his poor little property. Wants to confiscate is, SO-CALLED. Blame my
jacket if it ain't enuff to make your head swim.
BILL ARP
(_To Artemus Ward_)
November Twenty-Fourth
PROTEST AGAINST THE TARIFF, SOUTH CAROLINA, 1832
The majority in Congress, in imposing protecting duties, which are utterly
destructive of the interests of South Carolina, not only impose no
burthens, but actually confer enriching bounties upon their constituents,
proportioned to the burthens they impose upon us. Under these
circumstances, the principle of representative responsibility is perverted
into a principle of representative despotism. It is this very tie, binding
the majority of Congress to execute the will of their constituents, which
makes them our inexorable oppressors. They dare not open their hearts to
the sentiments of human justice, or to the feelings of human sympathy.
They are tyrants by the very necessity of their position, however elevated
may be their principles in their individual capacities.
GEORGE MCDUFFIE
(_Address to the People of the United States_)
_Ordinance of Nullification passed by South Carolina, 1832_
_Battle of the Clouds, Lookout Mountain, 1863_
November Twenty-Fifth
PROTEST AGAINST THE WAR OF 1812, NEW ENGLAND
The call of the Secretary of War for the militia of the States met blunt
refusal from the Governors of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and
Connecticut. The Assembly of the latter State sustained its Executive in a
formal address which denounced the war and declared Connecticut to be a
free, sovereign, and independent State, and that the United States was not
a national but a confederated republic. President Madison was held up as
an invader of the State's authority over her militia.
HENRY A. WHITE
_Battle of Missionary Ridge, 1863_
November Twenty-Sixth
THE HOMESPUN DRESS
Oh, yes! I am a Southern girl,
And glory in the name,
And boast it with far greater pride
Than glittering wealth or fame.
I envy not the Northern girls
Their robes of beauty rare,
Though diamonds grace their snowy necks
And pearls bedeck their hair.
Hurrah, hurrah!
For the sunny South so dear.
Three cheers for the homespun dress
The Southern ladies wear.
November Twenty-Seventh
But know, 'twas mine the secret power
That waked thee at the midnight hour
In bleak November's reign:
'Twas I the spell around thee cast,
When thou didst hear the hollow blast
In murmurs tell of pleasures past,
That ne'er would come again.
WASHINGTON ALLSTON
November Twenty-Eighth
The cruel fire that singed her robe died out in rainbow flashes,
And bright her silvery sandals shone above the hissing ashes!
_Organization of Legislature in Carolina Hall after the election of
General Hampton as Governor of South Carolina, 1876_
November Twenty-Ninth
My fellow-people, let me, in conclusion, congratulate you on having a
Governor once more as is a Governor. Oh, there is life in the old land
yet, and by and by we'll transport them black Republicans into the African
desert, and put 'em to teaching Hottentots the right of suffrage. Winter
Davis could then find a field of labor sufficient for the miserable
remnant of his declining years. He is the winter of our discontent, and we
want to get rid of him.
BILL ARP
(_On Hampton's Election_)
November Thirtieth
Yon marble minstrel's voiceless stone
In deathless song shall tell,
When many a vanquished age hath flown,
The story how ye fell;
Nor wreck, nor change, nor winter's blight,
Nor Time's remorseless doom,
Shall dim one ray of glory's light
That gilds your deathless tomb.
THEODORE O'HARA
(_From "The Bivouac of the Dead"_)
_General Patrick R. Cleburne killed at Franklin, Tenn., 1864_
December
ICICLES AT THE SOUTH
The rain on the trees has ceased to freeze;
('Twas molded with quaint device)
The bent boughs lean, like cimeters keen,
In scabbards of shining ice.
'Neath frozen cloaks the pines and oaks
Are stooping like Druids old,--
And the cedars stand--an arctic band--
Held in the clutch of cold.
Through the outer gloom the japonicas bloom,
With the lustre of rubies bright--
Like blossoms blown from a tropic zone,--
A marvellous land of light!
WILLIAM HAMILTON HAYNE
December First
THE FIRST SNOW-FALL
The Fir-tree felt it with a thrill
And murmur of content;
The last dead Leaf its cable slipt
And from its moorings went;
The selfsame silent messenger,
To one that shibboleth
Of Life imparting, and to one,
The countersign of Death.
JOHN B. TABB
December Second
The avengers whose lives he had attempted, whose wives and children he had
devoted to the hideous brutality of insurgent Africans, spared him all
indignities, even moral torture.
PERCY GREG
(England)
_John Brown hanged, 1859_
December Third
The Black and Tan Convention met December 3, 1867, in our venerable and
historic capital to frame a new constitution for the Old Dominion. In this
body were members from New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Maine, Vermont,
Connecticut, Maryland, District of Columbia, Ireland, Scotland, Nova
Scotia, Canada, England; scalawags, or turn-coats, by Southerners most
hated of all; twenty-four negroes; and in the total of 105, thirty-five
white Virginians, from counties of excess white population, who might be
considered representative of the State's culture and intelligence.
MYRTA LOCKETT AVARY
_James Rumsey (1787) makes successful trial trip of the steamboat designed
after the model of 1784, then witnessed by George Washington and others_
December Fourth
A BIT OF RECONSTRUCTION ORATORY
"Mistah President, de real flatform, suh. I'll sw'ar tuh high Heaven. Yas,
I'll sw'ar higher dan dat. I'll go down an' de uth shall crumble intuh
dus' befor' dee shall amalgamise my rights. 'Bout dis question uh
cyarpet-bags. Ef you cyarpet-baggers does go back on us, woes be unto you!
You better take yo cyarpet-bags and quit, and de quicker you git up and
git de better. I do not abdicate de supperstition tuh dese strange friens,
lately so-called citizens uh Ferginny. Ef dee don' gimme my rights, I'll
suffer dis country tuh be lak Sarah. I'll suffer desterlation fus!"...
"I'se here tuh qualify my constituents. I'll sing tuh Rome an' tuh Englan'
an' tuh de uttermos' parts uh de uth." ("You must address yourself to the
chair," said that functionary, ready to faint.) "All right, suh, I'll not
'sire tuh maintain de House any longer."
HON. LEWIS LINDSAY
(_From Stenographic Report_)
December Fifth
Religion is as necessary to reason as reason is to religion. The one
cannot exist without the other. A reasoning being would lose his reason,
in attempting to account for the great phenomena of nature, had he not a
Supreme Being to refer to; and well has it been said that if there had
been no God mankind would have been obliged to imagine one.
GEORGE WASHINGTON
December Sixth
CLEMENCY OF JEFFERSON DAVIS
Honorable Jefferson Davis: My father, Harrison Self, is sentenced to hang
at four o'clock this evening on a charge of bridge-burning. As he remains
my earthly all, and all my hopes of happiness centre on him, I implore you
to pardon him.
ELIZABETH SELF
(_Telegram which secured pardon for her father_)
_Jefferson Davis dies, 1889_
_The county of Kentucky formed from Virginia, 1776_
_Duncan Nathaniel Ingraham, "Hero of the Koszta Rescue," born, 1802_
December Seventh
For years after the war, the Republican politicians in the South told the
negroes that if the Democrats were elected, they would be put back into
slavery. Consequently, after the first election of Cleveland, many of them
began to make their arrangements to readapt themselves to the old regime.
One old Virginia "aunty" living in Howard County, Maryland, announced that
she was ready to return to Richmond; but declared most positively: "Deed,
my ole Missus has got to send me my railroad ticket fust."
December Eighth
Our one sweet singer breaks no more
The silence sad and long,
The land is hushed from shore to shore
It brooks no feebler song.
CARL MCKINLEY
_Henry Timrod born, 1829_
_Joel Chandler Harris born, 1848_
December Ninth
JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS
It would be difficult to estimate the good done by a man like Harris, who
brings a sense of relaxation and a thrill of pleasure to countless readers
round the world. Such a man becomes a public benefactor. To-day men are
better citizens, life's tasks are easier, the roads are lighter, and
heaven is nearer to earth because of the cheerful, hopeful, mirthful
stories of Uncle Remus.
HENRY STILES BRADLEY
_Lord Dunmore defeated by Colonel Woodford at Battle of Great Bridge,
Virginia, 1775_
December Tenth
Mt. Vernon, 31 Jan. 1786
Sir:--If you have no cause to change your opinion respecting your
mechanical boat, and reasons unknown to me do not exist to delay the
exhibition of it, I would advise you to give it to the public as soon as
it can be prepared conveniently.... Should a mechanical genius hit upon
your plan, or something similar to it, I need not add that it would place
you in an awkward situation and perhaps disconcert all your prospects
concerning this useful discovery....
GEORGE WASHINGTON
(_Letter to James Rumsey_)
_Mississippi admitted to the Union, 1817_
December Eleventh
Mr. Rumsey's steamboat, with more than half her loading (which was upwards
of three ton) and a number of people on board, made a progress of four
miles in one hour against the current of Potomac River, by the force of
steam, without any external application whatsoever.
(_Virginian Gazette and Winchester Advertiser, Jan. 11, 1788_)
_Second trip of Rumsey's steamboat at Shepherdstown, Va., in boat designed
after model of 1784_
December Twelfth
I have taken the greatest pains to perfect another kind of boat, _upon the
principles I mentioned to you at Richmond_, in November last, and have the
pleasure to inform you that I have brought it to a great perfection ...
and I have quite convinced myself that boats of passage may be made to go
against the current of the _Mississippi_ or _Ohio_ rivers, or in the _Gulf
Stream_ (from the _Leeward_ to the _Windward_-Islands) from sixty to one
hundred miles per day. I know this will appear strange and improbable to
many persons, yet I am very certain it may be performed, besides, it is
simple (when understood) and is also strictly philosophical.
JAMES RUMSEY
(_In letter to George Washington after construction of steamboat model
seen in action by the latter in 1784_)
December Thirteenth
On part of the field the Union dead lay three deep. So fearful was the
slaughter that our men at certain points on the line cried out to the
advancing Federal forces, "Go back; we don't want to kill you all!" Still
they pressed forward in the face of despair, and they fell in the
unshrinking station where they fought. In six months Lee had effaced Pope,
checked McClellan, and crushed Burnside--June 25 to December 13, 1862.
HENRY E. SHEPHERD
_Burnside repulsed at Fredericksburg, 1862_
December Fourteenth
Washington stands alone and unapproachable, like a snow-peak rising above
its fellows into the clear air of morning, with a dignity, constancy and
purity which have made him the ideal type of civic virtue to succeeding
generations.
JAMES BRYCE
(England)
_George Washington dies, 1799_
December Fifteenth
Of late I have opened a pawnbroker's shop for my hard-pressed brethren in
feathers, lending at a fearful rate of interest; for every borrowing
Lazarus will have to pay me back in due time by monthly instalments of
singing. I shall have mine own again with usury. But were a man never so
usurious, would he not lend a winter seed for a summer song? Would he
refuse to invest his stale crumbs in an orchestra of divine instruments
and a choir of heavenly voices?
JAMES LANE ALLEN
December Sixteenth
I fill this cup to one made up
Of loveliness alone,
A woman, of her gentle sex
The seeming paragon;
To whom the better elements
And kindly stars have given
A form so fair, that, like the air,
'Tis less of earth than heaven.
EDWARD C. PINKNEY
("_A Health_")
December Seventeenth
Her every tone is music's own,
Like those of morning birds,
And something more than melody
Dwells ever in her words;
The coinage of her heart are they,
And from her lips each flows
As one may see the burdened bee
Forth issue from the rose.
EDWARD C. PINKNEY
("_A Health_")
December Eighteenth
... Nay, more! in death's despite
The crippled skeleton "learned to write."
"Dear mother," at first, of course; and then
"Dear Captain," inquiring about the men.
Captain's answer: "Of eighty-and-five,
Giffen and I are left alive."
FRANCIS O. TICKNOR
("_Little Giffen_")
_Francis O. Ticknor dies, 1874_
December Nineteenth
Word of gloom from the war, one day;
Johnston pressed at the front, they say.
Little Giffen was up and away;
A tear--his first--as he bade good-bye,
Dimmed the glint of his steel-blue eye.
"I'll write, if spared!" There was news of the fight;
But none of Giffen.--He did not write.
FRANCIS O. TICKNOR
_Crittenden's compromise opposed by dominant party in Congress, 1860_
Some of the manufacturing states think that a fight would be awful.
Without a little bloodletting this Union will not, in my estimation, be
worth a rush.
Z. CHANDLER
(_Senator from Michigan_)
December Twentieth
The Convention of 1787 was composed of members, a majority of whom were
elected to reject the Federal Constitution; and it was only after the
clause declaring that "the power granted under the Constitution being
derived from the people of the United States, may be resumed by them
whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury and oppression, and
that every power not granted thereby remains with them at their will," was
inserted in the ordinance of ratification, that six or more of the
majority opposed to the measure consented to vote for it. Even with this
accession of strength the Constitution was carried only by a vote of 89 to
79.
(_From Editorial Article in Charleston "Courier," 1861_)
_South Carolina secedes, 1860_
December Twenty-First
RESOLVED.... As the powers of legislation, granted in the Constitution of
the United States to Congress, do not embrace a case of the admission of a
foreign State or Territory, by legislation, into the Union, such an act of
admission would have no binding force whatever on the people of
Massachusetts.
(_Resolutions of Massachusetts Legislature, 1845. Nullification?_)
_President Tyler urges annexation of Texas, 1844_
December Twenty-Second
Bowing her head to the dust of the earth,
Smitten and stricken is she;
Light after light gone out from her hearth,
Son after son from her knee.
Bowing her head to the dust at her feet,
Weeping her beautiful slain;
Silence! keep silence for aye in the street--
See! they are coming again!
ALETHEA S. BURROUGHS
_Sherman enters Savannah, 1864_
_Reconstruction Act put in effect in Georgia, 1869_
December Twenty-Third
The glory of your virtues will not terminate with your military command;
it will continue to animate remote ages.
(_President of Congress, to General Washington_)
_Washington resigns his commission as Commander-in-Chief, Annapolis, 1783_
December Twenty-Fourth
CHRISTMAS EVE
The moon is in a tranquil mood;
The silent skies are bland:
Only the spirits of the good
Go musing up the land:
The sea is wrapped in mist and rest;
It is the night that God hath blest.
DANSKE DANDRIDGE
December Twenty-Fifth
To the cradle-bough of a naked tree,
Benumbed with ice and snow,
A Christmas dream brought suddenly
A birth of mistletoe.
The shepherd stars from their fleecy cloud
Strode out on the night to see;
The Herod north-wind blustered loud
To rend it from the tree.
But the old year took it for a sign,
And blessed it in his heart:
"With prophecy of peace divine,
Let now my soul depart."
JOHN B. TABB
(_Mistletoe_)
December Twenty-Sixth
Now praise to God that ere his grace
Was scorned and he reviled
He looked into his mother's face,
A little helpless child.
And praise to God that ere men strove
Above his tomb in war
One loved him with a mother's love,
Nor knew a creed therefor.
JOHN CHARLES MCNEILL
(_A Christmas Hymn_)
December Twenty-Seventh
Hear the sledges with the bells--
Silver bells!
What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
In the icy air of night!
While the stars, that oversprinkle
All the heavens, seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells--
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.
EDGAR ALLAN POE
December Twenty-Eighth
In the future some historian shall come forth both strong and wise,
With a love of the Republic, and the truth, before his eyes.
He will show the subtle causes of the war between the States,
He will go back in his studies far beyond our modern dates,
He will trace our hostile ideas as the miner does the lodes,
He will show the different habits born of different social codes,
He will show the Union riven, and the picture will deplore,
He will show it re-united and made stronger than before.
JAMES BARRON HOPE
December Twenty-Ninth
Slow and patient, fair and truthful must the coming teacher be
To show how the knife was sharpened that was ground to prune the tree.
He will hold the Scales of Justice, he will measure praise and blame,
And the South will stand the verdict, and will stand it without shame.
JAMES BARRON HOPE
_Texas admitted to the Union, 1845_
December Thirtieth
I changed my name when I got free
To "Mister" like the res',
But now dat I am going Home,
I likes de ol' name bes'.
Sweet voices callin' "Uncle Rome"
Seem ringin' in my ears;
An' swearin' sorter sociable,--
Ol' Master's voice I hears.
* * * *
He's passed Heaven's River now, an' soon
He'll call across its foam:
"You, Rome, you damn ol' nigger,
Loose your boat an' come on Home!"
HOWARD WEEDEN
December Thirty-First
'Tis midnight's holy hour--and silence now
Is brooding, like a gentle spirit, o'er
The still and pulseless world. Hark! on the winds,
The bells' deep notes are swelling. 'Tis the knell
Of the departed year. No funeral train
Is sweeping past; yet on the stream and wood,
With melancholy light, the moonbeams rest
Like a pale, spotless shroud; the air is stirred,
As by a mourner's sigh; and on yon cloud,
That floats so still and placidly through heaven,
The spirits of the seasons seem to stand--
Young Spring, bright Summer, Autumn's solemn form,
And Winter, with his aged locks--and breathe
In mournful cadences, that come abroad
Like the far wind harp's wild and touching wail,
A melancholy dirge o'er the dead Year,
Gone from the earth forever.
GEORGE DENISON PRENTICE
_Battle of Murfreesboro, Tenn., 1862_
Index
PAGE
_Alabama_, the, fight with the _Kearsarge_. June 19 140
Alamance Creek, Battle of. May 16 118
Alamo, the. Mch. 6 65
Antietam, Battle of. Sept. 17 212
_Arkansas_, the, destroyed. Aug. 6 180
Ashby, Gen. Turner. June 6 131
Assembly, first legislative in America. July 30 172
Atlanta, evacuation of. Sept. 1, 2 200
Audubon, John James. May 4 109
Bacon, Nathaniel, epitaph. Jan. 2 15
Bagby, George W. Aug. 13 185
Baltimore, in first bloodshed of the War. April 19 97
Benjamin, Judah P. May 6 111
_Bonnie Blue Flag_, the. Jan. 10, 12 21, 23
Boston, A Southern view. Mch. 12 69
Breckinridge, John C. May 17; Aug. 10 118, 183
Brooke, John Mercer, constructor of the first ironclad. Mch. 9 67
Brown, John, execution. Dec. 2 268
Raid at Harper's Ferry. Oct. 16, 17 230, 231
Calhoun, John C. Mch. 18 74
Nationalism of. Mch. 31 81
Carroll, Charles of Carrollton. Nov. 14 255
Charleston "Courier" on Secession. Dec. 20 280
Chickamauga, Battle of. Sept. 20 215
Clark, George Rogers. Feb. 23, 24 53, 54
Clark and Lewis, Northwestern expedition. May 14 116
Clay, Henry. June 29 148
Coercion, opposed by border States. Apr. 16, 17, 18;
May 20 94, 95, 96, 119
Confederacy, fall of. Apr. 8, 9, 10, 11 87, 88, 89, 90
Surrender of last army. May 26 122
Cornwallis, surrender of. Oct. 19 233
Crittenden, compromise of. Dec. 19 279
Crockett, Col. David. Aug. 17 188
Custis, Hon. John, epitaph. July 11 158
Davis, Jefferson. June 3; Dec. 6 129, 271
Imprisonment. May 23, 24 121
Democrats, negro view of. Dec. 7 272
Dixie, new version. Jan. 31; April 25; May 21 36, 102, 120
Easter, selections for. April 4, 5 86
Emancipation. Jan. 11; Feb. 12; Aug. 1, 2, 3;
Sept. 3 22, 45, 176, 177, 178, 201
Lincoln on. Sept. 22 216
Southern view of. Feb. 28; June 2; Oct. 16 58, 129, 230
Forrest, N. B. July 13 159
Address to soldiers. Oct. 27 239
Tributes to. Oct. 21, 26, 29, 30, 31 235, 238, 240, 241
Fort Sullivan, defence of. June 28 147
Fort Sumter, attempts to reinforce. Jan. 9 20
Capture of. April 14 92
Firing upon. April 12 91
Frederick, Md., occupied by Confederates. Sept. 9 206
Fredericksburg, Battle of. Dec. 13 276
Frietchie, Barbara, in reference to "Stonewall" Jackson. Sept. 6 204
Gettysburg, Battle of. July 1, 2, 3, 4 150, 151, 152, 153
Gordon, Gen. Geo. H., remarks on Jackson's soldiers. Aug. 28 195
Gordon, Gen. John B. Feb. 6 41
Grady, Henry W. April 24 101
Hampton, Gen. Wade. Mch. 28 79
Harris, Joel Chandler. Dec. 9 273
Hayne, Paul Hamilton. Jan. 1 14
Henry, Patrick. May 29 125
Hill, Gen. A. P. April 2 85
Hill, Gen. D. H. July 12 159
Houston, Samuel, inaugurated president of Texas. Oct. 22 236
Insurrection, the Southampton. Aug. 1, 2, 3 176, 177, 178
Jackson, Gov. C. F., declaration of secession. Aug. 5 179
Jackson, Andrew. Mch. 15 71
Jackson, "Stonewall." Jan. 21 30
Bill Arp's view of. Sept. 16 211
Capture of Harper's Ferry. Sept. 15 211
Death. May 10 113
Wounded. May 2 108
Jamestown, first legislative assembly met. July 30 172
Reference to. June 20 141
Settled. May 13 115
Jefferson, Thomas. April 13 92
On Louisiana Purchase. April 30 105
Johnston, General Albert Sidney. April 6 86
Johnston, General Jos. E. Feb. 7 41
Kansas, formed as territory. May 30 125
Kennedy, John P. Oct. 25 238
King's Mountain, Battle of. Oct. 9 226
Ku Klux Klan. Feb. 20, 21, July 31 50, 51, 173
Lanier, Sidney. Feb. 3 39
Tabb's tribute to. Sept. 8 206
Laurens, John. Aug. 27 194
Lee, Anne Carter, monument to. Aug. 8 182
Lee, Henrietta, letter to Gen. Hunter. July 19 164
Lee, Henry. Jan. 29 34
Lee, Robert E. Jan. 19 29
Accepts presidency of Washington College. Aug. 24 192
Elected president of Washington College. Aug. 4 178
First Northern invasion. Sept. 13 209
Hill's tribute to. Oct. 12 228
Issues Chambersburg order. June 27 147
Marries. June 30 148
Resigns commission in United States Army. April 20 98
Sent to the rear. May 12 114
Surrender at Appomattox. April 9 88
The unselfish leader. Oct. 14 229
Lent, selections for. Mch. 19, 20 74, 75
Lewis, Meriwether. Oct. 11 227
Lincoln, Abraham, death of. April 15 93
On abolition. Feb. 12 45
On negro suffrage. Feb. 11; Aug. 12 44, 184
Literature, first of the New World. Mch. 13 70
Louisiana Territory, acquired from France. Apr. 30 105
Manassas, first Battle of. July 21 166
Marshall, Chief Justice. Sept. 24 217
Meade, Gen. Geo. Gordon, Southern tribute to. July 1 150
Negro, status of. Sept. 11 208
New Orleans, Liberty Place Anniversary. Sept. 14 210
North Point, Battle of. Sept. 12 208
Nullification, Northern view of. Nov. 25; Dec. 21 263, 281
Southern view of. Nov. 24 262
O'Hara, Theodore. July 20 165
Old South, life in the. Sept. 11, 21 208, 216
Oliver, Thaddeus. Aug. 9 182
_Peggy Stewart_, burning of the. Oct. 19 233
Poe, Edgar Allan. Oct. 7, 8 224, 225
First monument erected to. Nov. 17 258
Pope, Gen. John, Address to the Army of Potomac. Aug. 26 193
Polk, James Knox. Nov. 2 244
Port Hudson, fall of. July 9 156
Prisoners, mortality of. Nov. 11 252
Of war, exchange of. Nov. 9, 10, 12, 13 250, 251, 253, 254
Raleigh, Sir Walter. July 16 162
Reconstruction. Jan. 4; Mch. 2; Aug. 21; Oct. 21;
Nov. 19, 22; Dec. 3, 4 16, 62, 190, 235, 259, 261, 269, 270
Bill Arp's view of. Oct. 18; Nov. 23, 29 232, 261, 265
End of. July 15 161
Foreshadowed. April 15 93
Negro oratory on. Dec. 4 270
A prophecy of 1869. June 26 146
Religious Freedom in Maryland. Mch. 25, 27; Apr. 21 77, 78, 99
Rumsey, James, letter to, from Geo. Washington. Sept. 7 205
Rumsey, trial of the steamboat. Dec. 10, 11, 12 274, 275
Ryan, Abram J. Aug. 15 186
Sandys, George, first author of the New World. Mch. 13 70
Secession. Jan. 9, 11; Apr. 17; Aug. 5 20, 22, 95, 179
From the Northern standpoint. Jan. 13, 26, 27;
Mch. 24; May 6, 11 23, 33, 77, 111
From the Southern standpoint. Jan. 10, 28;
Feb. 5, 8, 9, 10, 18; Mch. 30 21, 34, 40, 42, 43, 45, 48, 80
South Carolina. Dec. 20 280
Semmes, Admiral Raphael. Sept. 27, 28 219
Seven Days' Battle, beginning of. June 25 145
Sharpsburg, Attack at. Sept. 18 213
_Shenandoah_, surrenders last Confederate flag. Nov. 5, 6 246, 247
Slavery. Jan. 4; Feb. 9, 28; Aug. 1, 2, 3;
Sept. 3, 21 16, 42, 58, 176, 177, 178, 201, 216
Bagby's view of. Oct. 16 230
Northern view of. Jan. 13, 26, 27; Mch. 24;
May 6; Sept. 5 23, 33, 77, 111, 203
From the Southern standpoint. Jan. 10, 28;
Feb. 8, 9, 10, 18; Mch. 30 21, 34, 42, 43, 48, 80
_Star Spangled Banner_ Anniversary. Sept. 14 210
Stephens, Alex. H. Mch. 4 64
Stuart, Gen. J. E. B. May 11 114
Address to soldiers. Oct. 10 227
Suffrage, Negro. Nov. 1 244
Negro restriction of. Aug. 12 184
Tabb, John Banister. Mch. 22 76
Tariff, South Carolina's protest. Nov. 24 262
Taney, Chief Justice. Oct. 13 229
Texas. Mch. 23 76
Ticknor, Francis O. Dec. 18 278
Tilghman, Col. Tench, ride of. Oct. 23 237
Timrod, Henry. Oct. 6 224
Tribute to. Dec. 8 272
_Trent_, The, affair of. Nov. 8 249
Tyler, John. Mch. 29 79
Union, the, restored. July 15 161
Veteran, United Confederate, Northern tribute to. June 10 134
Virginia, conquering of Northwestern territory. Feb. 23, 24 53, 54
Opposition to Boston Port Bill. May 15 117
Cession of Northwestern territory. Oct. 20 234
Secession from, of West Virginia. June 20 141
Two views of. Mch. 11 68
University of. Mch. 7 65
_Virginia_, the, challenges _Monitor_. May 8 112
First iron-clad. Mch. 8, 9 66, 67
Washington, Geo. Feb. 22; Dec. 14 52, 276
Resigns commission. Dec. 23 282
War Times. Jan. 17, 18; April 26 27, 28, 103
Northern view of. Feb. 17, 26 48, 56
West Virginia, secession from Virginia sustained by
Federal Government. June 20 141
Wilde, Richard Henry. Sept. 10 207
Wilderness, Battle of. May 5 110
William and Mary College, Northern tribute to. Feb. 14 46
Wirz, Henry, execution of. Nov. 10 251
Women, the Southern. Mch. 3; June 5 63, 131
End of Project Gutenberg's The Dixie Book of Days, by Matthew Page Andrews
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