r him, assured that no child can arise to be ashamed of his father or of the deeds he has wrought.
Another consequence ensues.
Such a conflict can only occur among a people both intelligent and brave; and so far from necessarily disrupting them, often consolidates them in a union more strong and lasting.
Ours is not the only country which has been torn by internal strife.
There is England, for example, in her long conflict between prerogative and privilege, so graphically described by Macaulay, yet more securely standing than ever before upon the principles of constitutional freedom.
So it must prove with ourselves.
The principles which are true will survive all conflicts, and while it has been determined that we remain together, all else is remanded as before to the council chamber and the halls of debate, until the mind of God shall be further disclosed in the future fortunes of our people.
The practical lesson taught us to-night has already been set before our eyes in th
528 men who died for it, lie buried beneath the sod of the South.
I honor a people who have thus honored those who died for them.
But while this is the case, the comrades and descendants of those who fell on the Confederate side of the War between the States, would be cravens if they forgot the tender memories of the dead and buried past.
Who can forget that?
The folded flag is stainless still, the broken sword is bright. No blot is on thy record found, no treason soils thy fame.
Macaulay, the historian, says: A people which takes no pride in the noble achievements of remote ancestry, will never achieve anything worthy to be remembered with pride by remote descendants.
My friends, it is a duty to preserve the record and honor of such sacrifices, such privations, such patriotism, such endurance of hardship.
This is why we raise monuments to our honored dead.
While we live, nothing is needed to keep alive the memories of our comrades who fell on the field of battle, but w
Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 26. (ed. Reverend J. William Jones), Fragments of war history relating to the coast defence of South Carolina, 1861-‘65, and the hasty preparations for the Battle of Honey Hill, November30, 1864. (search)
om the civilians, officers were advanced to high positions, and won great distinction in the war, rising from minor positions in battalions, squadrons and regiments to be general officers in highest commands, trusted leaders on large occasions.
In the civil war in England, two and a half centuries ago, among the same race of people, this fitness for command and leadership from civil life presented itself, and it is curious to read the great historian's comment on those far-off times.
Macaulay, in his eloquent tribute to Hampden, says: It is a remarkable circumstance, that the officers who had studied tactics, in what was considered the best schools, under Vere, in the Netherlands, and Gustavus Adolphus, in Germany, displayed less skill as commanders than those who had been bred to peaceful employments, and who never saw even a skirmish until the civil war broke out!
An unlearned person might be inclined to think that the military art is no very profound mystery; that its princi
orce engaged—in killed and wounded; the Federal losses are believed to have been three times as many.
But to return to my narrative of the Beaufort Artillery. Three years of active service on the coast, with and near the other commands brought together for the fight at Honey Hill, was the best introduction for Captain H. M. Stuart to the command of the artillery there.
He was everywhere regarded as a brave soldier and experienced, steady fighter, and might have been aptly described, as Macaulay alluded to some of the officers of the civil war in England, as having the essential military requisites of the quick eye, cool head and stout heart.
He and his efficient cannoneers, at the head of the Grahamville road, certainly made a splendid record on November 30, 1864, at Honey Hill.
As soon as the carpet-bag government of South Carolina ended, and Governor Hampton took charge of the Executive office, the Beaufort Volunteer Artillery reorganized, under Captain Stuart, and still conti
of the United States to show cause why the indictment should not be quashed.
On Thursday, the 3d day of December, 1868, the question arising under the rule were taken up in the Circuit Court of the United States, sitting at Richmond, with Judges Chase and Underwood on the bench, and the real and final trial of Mr. Davis began.
There was not as much pomp and ceremony, nor as much dramatic effect as at the trial of Warren Hastings, nor has any such master of the art of word-painting as Macaulay ever described it. In some respects, however, the scenes were alike, despite the differences in the character of the prisoners and in the style of the crimes with which charged.
In each case the prisoner at the bar was a man of high intelligence and strong will.
Each had ruled an empire.
Hastings had governed a vast territory with many millions of population, and had added a continent to the crown of England.
Davis had been the chosen leader of eleven commonwealths, combined under him i
of the United States to show cause why the indictment should not be quashed.
On Thursday, the 3d day of December, 1868, the question arising under the rule were taken up in the Circuit Court of the United States, sitting at Richmond, with Judges Chase and Underwood on the bench, and the real and final trial of Mr. Davis began.
There was not as much pomp and ceremony, nor as much dramatic effect as at the trial of Warren Hastings, nor has any such master of the art of word-painting as Macaulay ever described it. In some respects, however, the scenes were alike, despite the differences in the character of the prisoners and in the style of the crimes with which charged.
In each case the prisoner at the bar was a man of high intelligence and strong will.
Each had ruled an empire.
Hastings had governed a vast territory with many millions of population, and had added a continent to the crown of England.
Davis had been the chosen leader of eleven commonwealths, combined under him i
over rocks and trunks of fallen trees.
There had, so tradition said, once been a witch-meeting on its banks, of six little old women in short, sky-blue cloaks; and if a drunken teamster could be credited, a ghost was once seen bobbing for eels under Country Bridge.
It ground our corn and rye for us, at its two grist-mills; and we drove our sheep to it for their spring washing, an anniversary which was looked forward to with intense delight, for it was always rare fun for the youngsters.
Macaulay has sung,—
That year young lads in Umbro Shall plunge the struggling sheep; and his picture of the Roman sheep-washing recalled, when we read it, similar scenes in the Country Brook.
On its banks we could always find the earliest and the latest wild flowers, from the pale blue, three-lobed hepatica, and small, delicate wood-anemone, to the yellow bloom of the witch-hazel burning in the leafless October woods.
Yet, after all, I think the chief attraction of the Brook to my brother a
he theology of his Pilgrim than was altogether consistent with the Calvinism of the seventeenth century.
Religion, says Macaulay, has scarcely ever worn a form so calm and soothing as in Bunyan's allegory.
In composing it, he seems never to have alble for place and emolument.
English history presents no period so disgraceful as the Restoration.
To use the words of Macaulay, it was a day of servitude without loyalty and sensuality without love, of dwarfish talents and gigantic vices, the para be had done him.
The parish vicar of Siddington at this time was George Bull, afterwards Bishop of St. David's, whom Macaulay speaks of as the only rural parish priest who, during the latter part of the seventeenth century, was noted as a theolosome light on the condition and character of the rural clergy at this period, and goes far to confirm the statements of Macaulay, which many have supposed exaggerated.
Baxter's early religious teachers were more exceptionable than even the maudlin
oll, Danvers, 12th Month, 25, 1885.
Edwin Percy Whipple.
I have been pained to learn of the decease of my friend of many years, Edwin P. Whipple.
Death, however expected, is always something of a surprise, and in his case I was not prepared for it by knowing of any serious failure of his health.
With the possible exception of Lowell and Matthew Arnold, he was the ablest critical essayist of his time, and the place he has left will not be readily filled.
Scarcely inferior to Macaulay in brilliance of diction and graphic portraiture, he was freer from prejudice and passion, and more loyal to the truth of fact and history.
He was a thoroughly honest man. He wrote with conscience always at his elbow, and never sacrificed his real convictions for the sake of epigram and antithesis.
He instinctively took the right side of the questions that came before him for decision, even when by so doing he ranked himself with the unpopular minority.
He had the manliest hatred of hypo
ed the way for repentance.
England under James II.
A review of the first two volumes of Macaulay's History of England from the Accession of James II.
in accordance with the labor-saving spiis compelled to admit that, bad as things now are. they were far worse a few generations back.
Macaulay, in this elaborate and carefully prepared chapter, has done a good service to humanity in disabion, encouraged thereto by magistrates and clergy.
The temper of the time was hard and cruel.
Macaulay has two or three pages crowded with terrible facts touching this point.
The gospel of humanitythe average annual production.
Equally great has been the increase in coal mining.
Coal, says Macaulay, though very little used in any species of manufacture, was already the ordinary fuel in some dhonest writer, seldom substantially erroneous, though often inaccurate in points of detail; and Macaulay, who has quite too closely followed him in his history, defends him as at least quite as accura
