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THURSDAY AFTERNOON.
"LEST WE FORGET.”
Address Delivered by Lucian
Knight Before the Con
federate Veterans
in Atlanta.
Following is an address delivered
by Mr. Lucian Lamar Knight, be
fore a memorial meeting of the
Atlanta Camp of Confederate Vet
erans at the Second Baptist
church in Atlanta:
MR. knight’s ADDRESS.
Confederate Veterans: —Happy
am I tonight in being privileged
to address the survivors of a cause
which needs n >t the association of
a house of God to make it sacred ;
but which, sacred in itself consid
ered, is doubly hallowed to our
southern hearts by the sacrifice of
blood as rich as ever drenched the
field of battle and by the purity of
principles which, independent of
success or failure, were “true and
righteous altogether.”
You nave here assembled in this
place of worship with no feelings
of bitterness ranking in your bos
oms and with no desire to revive
the issues which have been forever
adjudicated in the court of Mars.
But rather are you here with sad
dened hearts and trembling lips to
lay affection’s tribute upon the
graves of comrades who, since last
you came together, have vanished
from your thin and broken ranks
to join the mute battalions of en
camped confederates whose snow
white tents are thickening in the
valleys and upon the hillsides, and
who are calmly waiting for the
bugle’s note to tell them that the
morning cometh.
On this occasion it is not uu
mete to unroll the panorama of
the past; to wauder agaiu in
thought over the disputed fields
which confedsrate valor has made
forever glorious and to hold com
munion with the spirits of our
martyred, dead who have made the
■tory of the conquered banner im
mortal upou history’s proudest
page; to contemplate again the
heroism of brave men and the for
titude of noble women who illus
trated our confederate struggle and
to emphasize anew the lessons of
fidelity to principles which the sac
rifices of the sixties teach us. In
honoring our confederate dead we
honor Americans who proved
themselves worthy sons of revolu
tionary sires; who,'entertaining
political convictions as deeply
rooted as life itself could not slav
ishly surrender them at the man
date of majorities; and who, rath
er than yield the heritage of free
dom which they received from the
republic’s fathers, preferred to im
molate themselves upou the altar
of the republic’s constitution.
Though born since the drama of
war was concluded at Appomattox
I rejoice in the crimsou tie of
kinship which links me with the
men who followed Lee, and if I
know my own convictions, I had
rather be the son of one of the
humblest heroes in the Army of
Northern Virginia than to trace
my lineage back unbroken to the
proudest captain that ever return-
ed to Rome in triumph through
the Appian Way shouting the hos
annahs of Caesar.
In Rudyard Kipling’s poetic
masterpiece each stanza ends with
the refrain: “Lest we forget 1
Lest we forget 1” Is it possible
that the admonition can apply to
us ? Have we become so sordid
and so selfish in our pursuit of gain
that we have ceased to listen with
emotion to the story of our con
federate struggle which, as long as
we breathe the air of heaven, ought
to make every drop of bicod iu our
veins tinge with enthusiasm ? No,
and God forbid that it should ever
bel Thirty-five years have passed
since our gallant boys in gray, re
turning home from Appomattox,
brought with them in their pallid
faces and in their eyes bedimmed
with tears the fate of Dixie’s for
lorn hope. Vast changes have oc
curred since then. Like the Phoe
nix we have risen from the ruins
of war and upon our battlefields
we have gathered unnumbered har
vests of waving grain and fleecy
cotton. Another conflict iu which
our former foes have been our
comrades has bequeathed to us
fresh glories, and throughout our
borderß the gentle ministers of re
conciliation have been silently at
work healing the breach which
once divided us until north and
south today, like the sisters of
Bethany, dwell together in love.
We cherish the tlag which ripples
above us in the breeze, we glory in
every stripe and we are proud of
every star. But we have not for
gotten the sacrifices and the tri
umphs, the privations and the
martyrdoms which our lost cause
brings to mind, and ever and anon
our thoughts fly backward to the
days when hope beat wildly in the
bosoms of our gallant, boys in gray
and over our brave battalions flut
tered the banner which now beau
tifies the air no more. We cherish
every relic which the war has left
us —every lock of hair, every faded
photograph, every letter dimmed
with age—nor shall we cease to
cherish them until yonder, “where
the war drums throb no longer,”
we shall fold the owners in our
loving arms and press them fond
ly to our hearts again.
We have not forgotten Lee. Our
hearts still shride the image of the
captain cf our hosts, and we ven
erate him still as the prince impe
rial of the sous of men. Without
fear and without reproach he led
us from victory unto victory, and
though at last the duress of supe
rior numbers compelled him to
partake of the bitter cup of failure,
he found himself in the hour of
surrender enriched with nobler
honors in the ashes of defeat than
any earthly conquerer ever found
in the laurels of success. Grand
in battle, grander still in peace, I
think of Gen. Lee as I think of
some rock-ribbed mountain pile
rising in colossal majeßty above
the plains to bathe its summit in
the purer ether of the skies. Na
ture made but oue such man and
broke the die in moulding Lee.
We have not forgotten Stone
wall Jackson. We cherish still the
memory of that priest of battle
whose martial enthusiasm yoked
with his saintliness of character
made him resemble some fearless
THE NEWS-HERALD.
knight of old, eager to plant the
banner of the crusade upon the
sepulcher of Christ. Our memories
of the past delight to brood upon
his exploits iu the valley of Vir
ginia, and our hopes of the here
after find sweet employment in
dreaming of him yonder’nenth the
vernal shade of the immortal
treesl
Johneton, Beauregard, Stuart,
Hood, Forrest, Longstreet, Early.
We have forgotten none of tnem,
and in fighting our battles o’er
aga.n we march behind them still 1
“We have not forgotten our tat
tered regiments of ill-starred cav
aliers. We recall with pride the
spectacle which they presented
when they sp:ang to arms at the
drum tap iu 1861, going forth to
battle not as mercenaries who are
hired to fight for pay, but as pa
triots who are constrained to si nig
gle and to die for principle. Un
rivaled in the chronicles of war is
the record which they made. Half
starved and half clad they fought
as only heroes can fight, winning
victory after victory from the en
emy, though outnumbered two to
one in almost every struggle: and
they yielded up the strife at Inßt,
but not until they had swelled
the federal pension rolls with the
names of nearly twice as many
pensioners as there Were soldiers
mustered in th confederate ranks.
Crushed by failure, but sustained
by love’s anticipated welcomes,
we see them stare upon the jour
ney homeward only to find ashes
piled on ashes where “home. Bweet
home’’ had been : loved ones scat
tered, slaves emancipated, mili
tary fore s in possession, every
thing save honor lo3t, but un
daunted by adversity we see them
pressing bravely forward with the
work of rehabilitation until beauty
once more takes the p ace of ashes
and the south, like the butterfly
emerging from the chrysalis,bursts
asunder the bonds of humiliation
and defeat and leaps into the ra
diant and triumphant Dixie of to
day.
We have not forgotten our
battle-scarred veterans whose pres
ence among us still links the pres
ent with the past. We honor
them for the lessons of patriotism
which they have taught us in
peace uo less than in war. Dear
to us are their empty sleeves and
their wooden legs and their locks
of white. We cannot enrich them
with gold, but we can crown them
with honor and we can keep on
loving them until our hearts, like
broken drums, have beat their
music out forever.
We have not forgotten our he
roic women. At the firesides of
home we see them through the
memories of this Sabbath night
enduring sterner hardships and
displaying nobler fortitude than
vs“ fi d in the experience of our
soldiers at the front of battle.
Encompassed by the dangers of
invasion they never flinched or
faltered once, but steadfastly la
bored and prayed and suffered
that Dixie’s cause might win. In
the quietude of home they knitted
sock \ and made clothes for the
regiments. In the hospitals they
nursed the wounded and the sick,
wooing them back to life with
(Continued on page six.)
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