The Union of the South.
One of the grandest instrumentalities of the wonderful success of the Confederate States in this war has been the great and unprecedented unanimity of their people. Unlike the war of the Revolution, the war of Southern Independence has never been paralyzed for an hour by the treason of Toryism, or by internal jealousies and dissensions among the champions of liberty. Identity of institutions and interests, and a cause which is not less the cause of constitutional liberty than of Southern independence, have made the South one great family, fighting around their hearthstones and their alters with the harmony and devotion of a gallant brotherhood, defending the honor of their ancestry, the homes of their childhood, the future of their children, and their own personal honor.It is to the continued unanimity of the South that we must look for the success in the future which it has achieved in the past, and for the preservation and permanency of our Government when its independence has been secured. We are fighting in a common cause, on a battle-ground which, whether in Virginia, Mississippi, Tennessee, or Carolina, is the common battle-ground of one and all. In this great straggle, no State can claim the pre-eminence in valor, virtue, and disinterested devotion. The swords of one and all have struck fire together in the front of the battle, and the laurels which thickly upon our victorious banners have been fertilized by kindred drops of blood and tears.
Let us go on as we have begun. State rights in political sentiments, let us be consolidationists in fraternal love and confidence. No man who is not the enemy of his country will ever sow the seeds of jealousy and district between the common sufferers and the common heroes of this cause. "Distinct as the billows" in State Sovereignty, but "one as the sea" in heart and affection, should be the sentiment of the Southern States and the Southern people. As Virginians, we feel that the men of the South who have breathed out their last breath in our State are as dear to us as those who have drawn their first breath in it, and never will we surrender the cause which is alike theirs and ours till the last Virginian is gathered to the land of his fathers. We are sure that the same sentiment actuates the people of other States towards Virginia.
