Editorial Paragraphs.
Our present number will be found, we think, in variety, interest, and historic value, fully up to the high standard of excellence we have fixed for our Papers. And we do not mean to allow any deterioration. We have the material now on hand to keep up the interest in our Papers for years to come; we are constantly receiving fresh accessions to our material, and we only ask our friends to help us increase our circulation, that we may introduce many contemplated improvements.
[96] The banquet of the Confederate army and Navy Society of Maryland, at the Eutaw House, Baltimore, on the evening of the 22d of February, must have been, from the newspaper reports, a brilliant affair, and we deeply regretted that we were, at the last moment prevented, by an imperative engagement, from fulfilling our purpose of accepting a kind invitation to be present on the happy occasion.
It would have been indeed a sweet privilege to mingle with old comrades of the First Maryland regiment, and of other commands, and to have heard the speeches of General Wade Hampton, General W. H. F. Lee, General B. T. Johnson, General D. H. Maury, and others. We rejoice in all of these gatherings of old Confederates, in all of these efforts to keep alive the memories of the brave old days of 1861-65.
But we cannot emphasize too earnestly our conviction of the importance of utilizing these occasions in order to put into permanent form, for the use of the future historian, the history of the commands which these gallant gentlemen represent. The day is not distant when the seats of these heroic soldiers at the festive board will be vacant, and the true story of their glorious deeds lost to the world, unless those who made the history shall tell it as it was, and in such form as that it can be handed down to posterity. We have been gratified to learn that a full history of the Maryland troops in the Confederate service is now being prepared, and we trust that it will be pressed to completion. Let the Army Associations of other States see to it that their history is also written, and that it is put in permanent form--not simply published in some local newspaper — so that future generations may read it. And we would modestly suggest tnat we know of no more appropriate place for such publications than the Southern Historical Society Papers, and that no better way of vindicating the truth of our history can be devised than by giving these Papers a hearty support.
A “rebel” Major-General as commander of one of the “divisions” of the procession, at the approaching inauguration of President Garfield, has excited the ire of the “Union veterans” in Washington, who have resolved not to march in the procession unless the “outrage” is removed.
General W. T. Sherman, chief marshall, appointed the offending marshall (General C. W. Field), and insists upon retaining him, and it remains to be seen what the “veterans” will do.
For our part we hope the gallant Confederate will relieve the minds of the “veterans” [we should like to know how many of them were real “veterans” and not “bounty jumpers” or “boom proofs” ] by declining the honor of being marshall at all, and that “the boys in gray” will make themselves conspicuously absent from any such people so long as they are unable to realize that the war closed nearly sixteen years ago.
