hide Matching Documents

Your search returned 813 results in 264 document sections:

1 2 3 4 5 6 ...
Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 1. (ed. Reverend J. William Jones), Origin of the late war. (search)
ce laws of the States and the towns? These are questions which posterity must answer. Will they have no other remedy against this despotism but to substitute for it the one-man power. They at least will be in no doubt as to the causes, and history will be equally clear as to what parties forced it upon us. There is no longer any room for hope. We must fight. I repeat it, Sir — we must fight. An appeal to arms and to the God of battles is all that is left us. So said and thought Patrick Henry, in reply to the British exactions upon the colonies. So thought, too, the people of the Confederate States, and they did fight. They waged a war for which history has no parallel against such odds in resources and numbers. Borne down by odds, against which it was almost vain to contend, we were bound to submit, and they have taken from us that which, in my opinion, it will be found Not enriches them, But leaves us poor indeed. Had the South permitted her property, her constitutio
Heros von Borcke, Memoirs of the Confederate War for Independence, Chapter 4: (search)
ntic trees over their heads. On the 21st July we received orders again to remove our encampment, and the spot chosen for it was in the immediate neighbourhood of the Court-house of the county of Hanover, which we reached the evening of that day. The Court-house building was erected in the year 1730, and any structure dating from this period is regarded in America as a very ancient and venerable edifice. Within its walls, in the palmy day of his imperial declamation, the great orator Patrick Henry, the forest-born Demosthenes, had pleaded the celebrated Parsons' cause in a speech the traditions of which yet live freshly in Virginia. It is a small building of red brick, pleasantly situated on a hill commanding a pretty view, several miles in extent, of fertile fields and dark-green woods, and a clear stream, which winds like a silvery thread through the distant valley. The Court-house and several offices belonging to it are surrounded by a shady enclosed grove of locust and plant
John Esten Cooke, Wearing of the Gray: Being Personal Portraits, Scenes, and Adventures of War., Stuart's ride around McClellan in June, 1862. (search)
th Colonel W. H. F. Lee to Hickory Hill, the residence of Colonel Williams Wickham-afterward General Wickham--who had been recently wounded and paroled. Here he went to sleep in his chair after talking with Colonel Wickham, narrowly escaped capture from the enemy rear, and returning before daylight, advanced with his column straight upon Hanover Court-House. Have you ever visited this picturesque spot, reader? We looked upon it on that day of June-upon its old brick court-house, where Patrick Henry made his famous speech against the parsons, its ancient tavern, its modest roofs, the whole surrounded by the fertile fields waving with golden grain-all this we looked at with unusual interest. For in this little bird's nest, lost as it were in a sea of rippling wheat and waving foliage, some Yankee cavalry had taken up their abode; their horses stood ready saddled in the street, and this dark mass we now gazed at furtively from behind a wooden knoll, in rear of which Stuart's column w
John Esten Cooke, Wearing of the Gray: Being Personal Portraits, Scenes, and Adventures of War., One of Stuart's escapes. (search)
ch he told me all the particulars, for I was not present. It was about the middle of August, 1862, and Jackson, after deciding the fate of the day at Cold Harbour, and defeating General Pope at Cedar Mountain, was about to make his great advance upon Manassas with the remainder of the army. In all such movements Stuart's cavalry took its place upon the flanks, and no sooner had the movement begun, than, leaving his headquarters in the grassy yard of the old Hanover Court-House where Patrick Henry made his famous speech against the parsons, Stuart hastened to put his column in motion for the lower waters of the Rapidan. Such was the situation of affairs when the little incident I propose to relate took place. Fitz Lee's brigade was ordered to move by way of Verdiersville to Raccoon Ford, and take position on Jackson's right; and General Stuart hastened forward, attended only by a portion of his staff, toward Verdiersville, where he expected to be speedily joined by General Fi
John Esten Cooke, Wearing of the Gray: Being Personal Portraits, Scenes, and Adventures of War., Corporal Shabrach. (search)
ere the name of the Father of his Country. In saying this about General Lee, I do not mean any empty compliment. It is very easy to talk about a second Washington without meaning much, but I mean what I say. I read Marshall's Life of the General some years since, and I remember taking notice of the fact that Washington appeared to be the tallest and strongest of all the great men around him. I did not see that he excelled each one of them in every particular. On the contrary, there was Patrick Henry; he could make a better speech. There was Jefferson; he could write a better State paper. And there was Alexander Hamilton, who was a much better hand at figures, and the hocus-pocus of currency and finance. (I wish we had him now, if we could make him a States' Rights man.) But Washington, to my thinking, was a much greater man than Henry, or Jefferson, or Hamilton. He was wiser. In the balance and harmony of his faculties he excelled them all, and when it came to his moral nature t
Thomas C. DeLeon, Four years in Rebel capitals: an inside view of life in the southern confederacy, from birth to death., Chapter 11: on to Richmond! (search)
breaking the monotony. Below, toward the river, lie the basins, docks and rows of warehouses: and further still is the landing, Rockett's, the head of river navigation, above which no vessels of any size can come. Just under the Capitol--to the East-stands the governor's house, a plain, substantial mansion of the olden time, embosomed in trees and flower-beds. Further off, in the same line, rise the red and ragged slopes of Church Hill. It takes its name from the old church in which Patrick Henry made his celebrated speech — a structure still in pretty good preservation. And still further away-opposite the vanishing point of the water view — are seen the green tops of Chimborazo Heights and Howard's Grove-hospital sites, whose names have been graven upon the hearts of all southern people by the mordant of sorrow! Just across the river, to the South, the white and scattered village of Manchester is prettily relieved against the green slopes on which it sits. There the bridg
Thomas C. DeLeon, Four years in Rebel capitals: an inside view of life in the southern confederacy, from birth to death., Chapter 22: waiting for the ordeal by combat. (search)
hem unavailing. Now at the last moment, every nerve was strained to block the river and to mount a few guns on Drewry's Bluff — a promontory eighty feet high, overhanging a narrow channel some nine miles below the city. On the 15th of May, the iron-clads approached the still unfinished obstructions. There was just time to sink the Jamestown --one of the wooden shells that had done such good work under the gallant Barney —— in the gap; to send her crew and those of the Virginia and Patrick Henry to man the three guns mounted on the hill above-when the iron-clads opened fire. Their cannonade was terrific. It cut through the trees and landed the missiles a mile inland. The roar of the heavy guns, pent and echoed between the high banks, was like continuous thunder, lit by lurid flashes as they belched out 13-inch Shrapnel and scattered ounce balls like hail among the steadfast gunners on the bluff. But the terrible plunging fire of Captain Farrand's sea-dogs damaged the p<
Fitzhugh Lee, General Lee, Chapter 1: ancestry. (search)
n this age from the touch of the button. The sword was substituted for the law book in the hands of Henry Lee, and we find him, at the age of nineteen, after the battle of Lexington, a captain of cavalry, being nominated for that position by Patrick Henry, the orator of American liberty. He rose rapidly in his new career. In the Northern Department at Brandywine, Germantown, Springfield, and in the operations in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York, his address, cool courage, great abilityeaded for its adoption. By his side, and voting with him on that important question, were such men as James Madison, John Marshall, afterward Chief Justice of the United States, and Edmund Randolph; while in the ranks of the opposition stood Patrick Henry with immense oratorical strength, George Mason, the wisest man, Mr. Jefferson said, he ever knew, Benjamin Harrison, William Grayson, and others, who thought the Constitution, as it came from the hands of its framers, conferred too much power
Fitzhugh Lee, General Lee, Chapter 4: War. (search)
free and independent States, and that all political connection between these States and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved. Nine States, a requisite number, had approved the Constitution before Virginia acted. The debates in her convention on this subject have no equal in intellectual vigor. Mental giants, full-armed with wisdom, fought on either side. In one rank-opposed to the adoption of the Constitution as it came from the hands of its framers — was Patrick Henry, George Mason, Richard Henry Lee, James Monroe, Benjamin Harrison, and William Grayson. In the other were James Madison, John Marshall, Edmund Randolph, Edmund Pendleton, and General Henry Lee, and behind them, as a powerful reserve, was the great influence of Washington. On the final vote friends of the measure secured a majority of only ten votes. The next State to adopt it after Virginia was New York, and she did so by only three votes. North Carolina did not join the Union immedi
J. B. Jones, A Rebel War Clerk's Diary, I. April, 1861 (search)
This day the Spontaneous People's Convention met and organized in Metropolitan Hall. The door-keeper stood with a drawn sword in his hand. But the scene was orderly. The assembly was full, nearly every county being represented, and the members were the representatives of the most ancient and respectable families in the State. David Chalmers, of Halifax County, I believe, was the President, and Willoughby Newton, a life-long Whig, among the Vice-Presidents. P. H. Aylett, a grandson of Patrick Henry, was the first speaker. And his eloquence indicated that the spirit of his ancestor survived in him. But he was for moderation and delay, still hoping that the other Convention would yield to the pressure of public sentiment, and place the State in the attitude now manifestly desired by an overwhelming majority of the people. He was answered by the gallant Capt. Wise, who thrilled every breast with his intrepid bearing and electric bursts of oratory. He advocated action, without refer
1 2 3 4 5 6 ...