ADDRESS DELIVERED BY R. M. HITCH AT MIDWAY CEMETERY, LIBERTY COUNTY, GA., APRIL 29th, 1904, ON OCCASION OF CERTAIN GRAVES OF CONFEDERATE SOLDIERS BEING MARKED WITH STONES ERECTED BY LIBERTY CHAPTER, DAUGHTERS OF THE CONFEDERACY. 
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: The occasion which brings us together suggests reflec 
tions at once elevating and inspiring. Through the labors of a devoted band of women, organized as Liberty Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, we are to mark with enduring stone the graves of eight Confederate soldiers. But for this patriotic society of noble women, these graves would probably have remained unnoticed, and in time would have become unknown. The fathers of these women made glorious history. It is meet that their daughters should pre serve it. 
The scene, too, and all the surroundings are most appro priate to the occasion. We are standing on historic ground. One hundred and fifty-two years ago, when Georgia was largely an unexplored wilderness, Benjamin Baker and Sam uel Bacon established here the beginnings of a most noted colony of people, from whom have sprung a brilliant array of distinguished men. For over one hundred years, yonder house of God has heard the prayers of the faithful. In this ancient burying ground, removed as it is from the centers of population and the highways of travel, there lies the dust of two generals of the Revolutionary army, for each of whom a county of Georgia takes its name, one United States Senator, one Governor, one commodore of the U. S. Navy, and a num ber of other men of note. Our Confederate heroes are in good ly company. 
Most men are largely the creatures of their environments. Their ways of life, habits of speech and dress, and political, religious and moral tendencies and belj 
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 ly governed by accident of birth, climate, associations and surroundings. The necessities of the case, so to speak, have great influence in moulding their lives and characters of us all. If Mohammed had been born inBoston, Mass., he would probably have been a Puritan. If Theodore Roosevelt had been reared in Edgefield County, South Carolina, he would most likely have been another Benjamin R. Tillman. 
While in the main the people who settled the thirteen American colonies were of the same blood and civilization, they came over here from the Old World having certain diferences in their political and religious beliefs. Their sur roundings in this country gradually accentuated and amplified these divergencies in sentiment and habits. Those who set tled in the North found that their soil lacked fertility, and that their climate afforded too much ice and too little sun shine. Agriculture, therefore, was unprofitable, and they turned their attention to mechanical and manufacturing pur suits, mining, fisheries and other similar industries. Those who settled in the South found their soil adapted to the grow ing of a great diversity of crops, and their climate well suited to open air avocations. Agriculture proved profitable, and they became largely an agricultural people. But all these colonies were alike in one respect, viz, all were under the Brittish rule. Becoming dissatisfied with certain measures imposed on them by the Brittish government, the colonies made common cause with one another in a war against Great Brittain for independence. They were victorious, and the sovereignty and independenc of these separate colonies was acknowledged by the Brittish government in the treaty of peace. They then set to work to form a new government by which the several colonies were to be bound together in a un ion of states. In the formation of the new government, the colonies, having diverse interersts, disagreed in numerous im portant particulars. Compromises, therefore, had to be made all along the line. They had enemies on every hand whom they could not separately oppose, and some sort of a union was therefore forced upon them by their necessities. The English held Canada on the North, the Spanish and French held Florida and Louisana on the South, and savage tribes of 
 
 Indians surrounded them in nearly every direction. So they were forced into a union whether the terms were satisfactory or not. 
One of the causes of disagreement in the formation of the Union was with reference to African slaves. Up to that time it had been considered for thousands of years entirely right and proper for a superior race to enslave and hold in bondage an inferior race. The custom had received the sanction of all the great races in history. It had Scriptural precedent. All the ancient civilizations had practiced it. England was al ready engaged in capturing negroes on the coast of Africa and selling them into slavery when the first American colony was established. The colonies themselves later took up the trade, Massachusettes taking the lead. Georgia was the last of the thirteen colonies to be established, and the others were en gaged in the slave trade and the use of slaves long before this colony was in existence. By the time Georgia was establish ed, a sentiment was developing in some quarters against slavery, and for the first sixteen years of its history Georgia was an anti-slavery colony. When the war of Independence came on slavery had been practiced in Georgia only twentyseven years. In all the older colonies it had been in vogue much longer. All of them had thoroughly tested it. In the Northern states slaves had proved unprofitable. They were unsuited to mechanical, manufacturing or maratime pursuits. In the Southern states their use in agricultural pursuits was found satisfactory and profitable. So the North seized and sold them, and the South bought and used them. At this time the sentiment against slavery was stronger in the South than in the North. Thomas Jefferson, Madison, and a num ber of leading Southerners opposed it vigorously. The North had probably found the importation of slaves even more profitable than the South had found their use. The cotton gin had not yet been invented. In the Constitution it was finally adopted, slavery was recognized and protected, and the resti tution of runaway slaves to their owners provided for. The importation of slaves was permitted for a period of twenty years; after that it was to be prohibited. This was all in the nature of a compromise. 
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Another point on which the constitution was a compro mise was as to whether the state governments or the united government should have the supreme power. This point was compromised in many ways, and in many particulars left al together unsettled. It was also left undetermined as to whether a state could withdraw or secede from the union if it became dissatisfied. Most of the states, North as well as South, in ratifying the constitution left a loop hole through which they expected to get out of the union if the new gov ernment failed to come up to their expectations. The Con stitution was adopted in 1787. It was ratified by the last of the colonies to act on it Rhode Island in 1789. Almost immediately causes of dissatisfaction arose, mainly in the Northern States. Three years later in 1792 secession on the part of the Northern States began to be agitated. In 1794 and 1796 the sentiment had grown much stronger. When Thomas Jefferson was elected President, the New England states were hot beds of secession sentiment. In 1803 and 1804, 1809, 1810, 1811 and 1812, secession was openly advo cated by Northern public officials, Northern newspapers, speakers and ministers of the Gospel In 1812, during the second war with Great Brittain, the secession sentiment in New England became so strong that a convention of several of the New England states was held at Hartford, Connecticut, for the purpose of providing for a withdrawal from the union, and the establishment of a new government among them selves. The war of 1812 was very objectionable to them be cause it intefered with their maratime commerce. In fact, it may be stated as a general rule, that up to the very breaking out of the Civil War the right of a state to secede, while as serted on numerous occasions, had never been expressly de nied by any recognized authority. It was even taught in the text book on Constitutional law used at West Point, the Na tional military academy where Lee and Jackson, Grant and Sherman, and other leaders on both sides were educated. The author of the book was a native of Pennsylvania. It was even asserted by the abolitionists in the late forties and fifties, and if Lincoln had been defeated for presidency in 1860, and a Southerner elected instead, it is practically cer- 
 
 tain that Northern instead of Southern States would have been the seceders. The conflict was inevitable and irrepressible. As Union was a necessity in 1776, so dis-union was a necessi ty in 1860. The union had become a cheat and a delusion to both sides. It fettered the North, and failed to protect the South. Buchanans administration was a vacillation between two irreconsilable extremes. He dared not oppose the South, and he feared to attempt coercion of the North. Through seventy-three years of increasing friction, contention and strife, the two sections had come to cordially hate each other. If war had not immediately followed secession, it would have come very shortly thereafter. The two governments would have soon clashed, and the two sections have soon come in conflict. War and war only could settle the many questions in dispute. The Constitution itself, with its compromises and evasions, bore within its own body the geims of dissolution. The knife was the only resort. 
We used to hear the word rebellion used in connection with that Titanic struggle by those in whom passion and hate had not yet yielded to reason and judgment. As a matter of fact, the abolitionist states of the North had stood in sullen rebellion to the Federal government for 10 3Tears prior to 1861. While the Constitution and the acts of Congress had provided for the return of escaped slaves, each several one of these abolition states had adopted their so-called "Personal liberty" bills, declaring that an escaped slave became a free man as soon as he landed on their soil. And these laws were uniformly enforced by their public officials, though in direct violation of the Federal Constitution which they all had sworn to observe. And no United States marshal in those states dared attempt to carry out an order of court returning a fugi tive slave to his master for fear of mob violence. And the President dared not attempt to enforce the Act of Congress <on the subject for fear of open war with those rebellious states. Lincolns election meant to the South an open denial -of its rights under the constitution and the laws., Being re mediless in the union, she sought to peaceably withdraw and .^seek new securities for her safety. 
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(1) That the Southern states were denied their rights under the constitution and the laws while members of the union designed for their protection. 
(2) That the Southern states had a perfect legal and moral right to secede from the union when the union ceased to protect them. 
(3) That neither the North nor the Federal government had any legal or moral right to coerce them back in the un ion, and that the war was a war of subjugation. 
As to the question of slavery, which was one of the issues involved in thatconflict, it is probably too soon to draw con* elusions. The tendency at present is towards the belief that slavery was morally wrong, and its abolition, by some means or other, morally right. The particular means by which emancipation was brought about however, was robbery and confiscation of the most glaring type and wholly unjustified even by the laws of war. And what will be said of emanci pation itself a thousand years from now might make interest ing reading* The idea that slavery is wrong is little more than a hundred years old; the idea that slavery is all right is six thousand years old and over, and superior age is always entitled to great respect. 
The slavery question was only injected into the war by a species of political strategy and intrigue. A large element of the North the abolitionists were ready to fight to freethe Southern slaves. Not all the Northern people took that view of it not even a majority of them. But when the Con federacy fired on the flag at Fort Sumpter, the abolitionists by a clever stroke of politics, skillfully played upon the idea that it was a fight on their part to save the union, and soon had the entire North and West crystalized against us. Up tothat point Lincolns administration was undetermined as to whether the seceding states should not be allowed to go in peace. It will probably never be known just how near seces sion came being acknowledged as an accomplished fact. But the abolitionists provoked us to fire the first shot, and then* quickly seized the advantage thus gained and the opportunity thus given to play upon Northern sentiment, * In its seventy- 
 
 five years of existence the Union had grown great and pow erful. Its government had come to be greatly respected at home and abroad. Men had grown accustomed to the Union idea. Great wars had been fought and great victories had been won under the stars and stripes. So that millions of our countrymen who cared little or nothing for the slavery is sue had come to love the Union and the starry flap: under which their fathers had fought. All these the Abolitionists enlisted in the so-called fight to save the Union. But as soon as the war was well under way the Emancipation proclama tion was issued. It was merely an executive order issued by Lincoln as President, without any authority of any sort to do so. It had none of the force or effect of law. There was two objects to be achieved. First, it was erroneously sup posed that the issuance of the proclamation would cause all the millions of Southern slaves to rise in insurrection. Their masters were all in the armies at the front, and the South was, as to the slaves, defenceless. If the insurrection had taken place as anticipated, the Southern soldiers would have been compelled to return home, the Southern armies would have been quickly melted away, "and the war would have been won. In the second place, the Abolitionists thought it was a good time and place to carry out their desire to free the negro. It could only be accomplished unlawfully, and during war was thought to be a good time to do an unlawful thing. And then, if the North won, the South in its helplessness would be obliged to ratify it. And this last was the way it happen ed. After the war the poisoned chalice of the thirteenth amendment to the Constitution was offered to our lips, and at the point of the bayonet we drank it. 
Did they wage war against us to save the Union? Let us see. All the fruits of the war are epitomized in the thir teenth, fourteenth and fifteenth amendments to the Constitu tion. They are the summary and the result of four years deadly fighting the final decree of the court of Mars. You will look in vain in those amendments for a single word rela ting to the Union and the right to a state to secede. They all relate to the Negro. Thus did the Abolitionists by their own works, unmask themselves. They enlisted Northern 
 
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Democrats under a deceptive plea. Into the hands of those patriotic men they placed false colors, and sent them to their death with a misleading battle cry upon their lips. They fought as they thought for their country and its flag, but events have proven that they fought and slew their brothers and kinsmen for an alien and an inferior race. The Puritan had completed the circle and boxed the compass. He taught us secession, and then declared it was treason; he established slavery on the American continent, and then with the sword proved it was wrong; he warranted the title to our property, then declared the sale was contrary to public policy and void and ousted us from posession, but kept the purchase price; he sold us the Negro, and then took him away from us, and, worst of all, he made us ratify and confirm the steal, and grumbled because we wouldnt say we liked it. 
But we got even with this incomparable trader in a meas ure after all. When the war came on, we captured his ra tions, and then fought him with the strength given by his own provender; we took his rifles and bullets away from him, and then whipped him with his own weapons. "Bill Arp" said he killed as many of them as they did of him, and so was satisfied. Startling as it may sound, the number killed, wound ed and captured of the Northern armies exceeded the total enlisted strength of the Southern armies. Measured by prac tically every standard, it was the greatest war of all times. In centuries to come, the history of its battles and the losses sustained by the opposing armies will be considered as large ly fiction, much as we look upon some of the histories of He rodotus and other early writers. It reads like gross exageration; it sounds too stupendous to be true. The charge of the Light Brigade at Balaklava has been rendered forever famous by Tennysons stirring poem. It is generally thought to have been a fight of almost unparalelled fatality. The actual loss to the Light Brigade in killed and wounded was 247 out of a total of 673, or 36.7 per cent., of the number engaged. In the Civil War, 150 regiments 75 on each side sustained a greater percentage of loss in single engagements. At Gettys burg the First Minnesota regiment lost in killed and wounded 82 per cent., of the number engaged; at the battle of Antietam 
 
 the First Texas regiment lost in killed and wounded 82.3 per cent., of the total number ingaged. At Gettysburg the Sec ond North Carolina battalion had 200 men killed or wounded out of 200 present. All in all, nearly 1900 general engage ments, battles and skirmishes were fought during those mem orable four years with a loss on both sides of half a million men killed and one million more permanently disabled. 
It was the last of the great wars. Modern wars are short. They are fought at long range, and the men are well protect ed. The loss in killed and wounded is therefore comparative ly slight. They are too expensive to be kept up long at a time. The bankers soon refuse to advance any more mon ey, and peace is declared. It is largely a battle of dollars with the odds in favor of the fullest treasury. 
Our war was not an outburst, but a growth. It was the culmination of long continued strife, the result of the conten tions of three generations, over a variety of matters in dispute. It taught both sides several things they wouldnt previously admit. It showed that hard-headedness, intrepid courage, and great endurance were not confined to any one section. It proved that under ordinary circumstances four Northerners could overpower one Southerner, but that it would take a mighty long and hard struggle to do it, and that when it was over the four would have some scars to indicate that they had disputed a right of way with a barbed-wire fence or some thing similar. It demonstrated that "Johnny Reb" had the nimblest pair of legs, could march the longest and fight the hardest on an empty stomach of any known animal of his kind. Stonewall Jacksons "foot cavalry" was appropiately named. For celerity of movement they have never been sur passed, unless by some of their opponents when marching to the rear. 
The Southerner had the advantage of fighting on their own soil. This gave them added courage. The Northerners were invaders. We noticed the difference each time we crossed the line. At Antietam and Gettysburg the Northern troops fought much more stubbornly. 
Practically every other advantage was on the side of the North; greatly superior numbers, (the proportion being more 
 
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than 4 to i,) with all the outside world to draw from; plenty of money; a government already established in all its depart ments, an army already raised, a navy already built; mints for coining money; numberless factories for turning out guns, powder, bullets, clothing and everything else necessary to carry on war. Nearly all these things the South had to has tily improvise. In practically no single respect was the South prepared for a war. In fact, it was not seriously thought that war would ensue. In the Georgia Secession Convention in 1861, the prevailing argument in favor of seces sion was that it was the only way to prevent war. And this idea was accepted by the ablest body of men that has ever met in Georgia. 
But whether we expected a fight or not, we came very near getting it; and whether the other side expected us to fight or not, we mixed it up with them very much on divers and sundry occasions. When we saw we had to fight we gave them the best that was in us. And such a fight it was. The world will never cease to marvel at it. And yet it was all very natural, It was simply in the blood. The South was more purely of Anglo-Saxon lineage than any other section of the country. Eight hundred years separated Chicamauga and Hastings, and yet in many particulars they were much alike. The Southerner came of the best fighting stock of all the ages. His ancestors were with Richard the Lion Hearted at Acre and Jaffa, with the Barons at Rimymede,with the Black Prince at Cressy and with Henry V, on every hill-top in France; they were with Washington at Valley Forge and Yorktown, with Jackson at New Orleans, with Zachary Taylor and Col. Jef ferson Davis in Mexico. . John Mclntosh Kell was Admiral Drake over again, and John B. Gordon was the re-incarnation of Prince Eugene. But there was none before him like Rob ert Lee; and perhaps the world will never see his like again. Among all the other Immortals, he is doomed to solitude by transcendant greatness. 
The South suffered because it was unable to change its opinions and convictions to suit passing fashions. It had been taught by history and tradition, by precept and example that slavery was right. It saw no reason to change that opin ion because the North had found slavery unprofitable. It had 
 
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been taught the doctrine of state sovereignty and the right of a state to secede, and could not change its convictions on that subject because forsooth through the protective tariff in favor of its manufacturers the North had found the Union profitable, and should therefore be preserved in order that they might continue to tax money out of our pockets into theirs. The South was old-fashioned in its ideas about stick ing to principals. It is old-fashioned yet. It still maintains that public honor is to be preferred to private gain; that principle is never to be sacrificed at the behest of self inter est, that "an honest man is the noblest work of God" and rapidly becoming one of the rarest; that dollars are not more important than duty; that money is not the only thing worth living for and one of the last worth dying for; and it still be lieves, and in spite of Northern Presidents, Northern minis ters and magazines, will continue to believe that the purity of one fair Southern girl is worth more than all the lives of all the black brutes ever spawned out of Africa. The South is always conservative. Its religion and morals and politics have not yet become commercialized. It produces no new ologies, and isms. It clings to the faith of the fathers, the faith in which they lived and for which they died. 
Those heroes in whose memory we have met today stood for the old South; they enlisted to defend it, they fought for its principles, and died for its rights. They were parts of that mighty host which sprang untrained from the paths of peace into the arena of war, and for four years dazzled the world with its valor and achievements. They were Confederate soldiers. And when that is said, all is said. I never look up on an old gray coat without experiencing a feeling of sadness. You will pardon, I know, a personal explanation: Two broth ers of my mother and one of my father wore that old coat. Three of those three died in it, died for it, and for what it represented. Twenty-four years afterwards, my father, too, died of disease contracted from exposure and hardships suf fered during the four years that he wore the old gray coat. There is scarcely a family in the South that cannoj ilar story. With scarcely half its present State of Georgia contributed to the Confc 
 
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regiments and 26 battallions of troops consisting of 120,000 men. In the Spanish-American war, with twice as large a population, we thought we were doing well to raise three regiments. 
The Confederale soldier will live in history for having accomplished the maximum of result with the minimum of means for doing it. Half fed and half clad, he continually whipped armies two and three times as large as his own, and composed of the same race of men. He carried his countrys flag without pay; he fought his peoples battles without re wards. He fought with unflinching courage against over whelming odds, and did not falter even when he knew his cause was hopeless. He fought for the right as God gave him to see the right. He did not fight for conquest, nor for the spoils of war. He fought neither for fame, nor for glory, nor for empire. He fought for country, for liberty, for indepen dence, for local self government. He fought for home, for family and for fireside. A hostile foot had been planted up on its soil, and he offered his life for his native land, 
How well he fought and how bravely he died, history will declare. Every battle-ground of the South is a monument to his valor and his dauntless fortitude. He was as brave as the bravest Lacadaemon at Thermopylae, and as fearless as any grenadier that ever bore the eagles of Napolean. Daugh ters of the South and Sons of the South will never cease to render him the honor he so richly merited. All honor to the Confederate soldier ! All honor to his name, all honor to his deeds, all honor to his memory ! Let Southern poets sing his actions in heroic verse. Let Southern orators lift up their voices to proclaim the grandeur of his life. Let Southern childhood chant the anthems of his praise. Let Southern mountains stand as monuments to his deathless fame. Let Southern streams and rivers, as they run wanton to the sea, murmur their solos in his name. Let every tongue and voice in Southern sea and air and sky unite in everlasting song to the memory of the Confederate soldier.