A discourse preached in the Huguenot Church, Charleston, S.C.

A Discourse Preached in the Huguenot Church
Charleston, S. C.,

Before Camp A. Buraet Rhett,

U. C. V.

GN2~AL LIBRARY
UN!VZ;V3Vr Cr GEORGhV MOGRi ?ur;ci-:ASE, 1935 '

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By the Pastor,

Rev. Charles S. Vedder, L L D.,

November 17, 1901. V

THE SOUTH VINDICATED.
. "Behold Thou Desireth Truth in the Inward Parts."
Eloquent Sermon by the Rev. Dr. Vedder in which the Terrible Indictment of Rebellion and Tre&son is Considered in the Light of the Constitution, the Admissions of Northern Scholars and Sol diers, and the Heroic Lives of the Great Generals and Heroic Sol diers Who Fought in the War of Secession--"That Glory is Part Now of the Priceless Heritage of the Whole American People." Following is 'the text in full of the admirable sermon delivered
by the Rev. Dr. C. S. Vedder Sunday, November if, 1901 *. at the Huguenot Church-, before" Bnrnet Rhett Camp of Confederate Veter ans, written out for the camp and published by its request.
PENN BROS., Printers and Publishers,' MONTICKLLO, GF.ORC.IA.
1902. '

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'"Behold Thou desirest truth in the inward parts."-^Psalm 51; 6,
Before passing to the immediate application of the text to the . purpose of this hour we cannot properly forego the brief considera tion of its meaning'in all hours and with references'to all purposes. There is a theory, far more commonly held than openly avowed, that "it is no matter what a man believes so only that he is honest-ia his belief." No doctrine could be more untenable. It obliterates all distinction between good and evil, right and wrong. It makes every man a law unto himself. Its practical effect is to-maKe the opinions of men the only sanctions and safeguards of morals. It misreads the text by making it say that God desires sincerity--not truth--in the inward parts.
To give the most recent illustration of the fallacy and fatality of this reasoning, that "it is no matter what a man believes so only that he is honest in his belief," it must be said, if this doctrine be true, then the electric chair took an innocent life when, a few weeks ago, it inflicted the penalty of death upon the assassin of the beloved president of the United States. For did not that victim of human . justice say at the time, and continue to say up to the moment of his death, that he believed himself only doing his duty in' responding to a welcoming hand by discharging a deadly bullet into its kindly 'heart? Was he not a consistent and practical believer in the theory that he could determine for himself what was right, and in refusing to hearken to the ministers of God who would confront him with an other law than his o\vn opinions?
Czoi.oosz, A CASK IN POINT.
And this case--which has been cited as representative and typical, and therefore doing away with the necessity of multiplied example-- exhibits the process by which a man comes to enthrone over himself as law his own thoughts and vagaries. He does not accept the fact

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that he is responsible for his opinions~and cannot, therefore,' responsibility for. the acts to which those opinion's lead. Could* ] have known better and would not? Was every opportunity for moral and intellectual enlightenment, and did he despise Was he content to be at odds,-nay, in revolt, with the moral dardsof the world? Did he know that the crime to which he claimed; to have been driven by honest convictions must be committed wkft every element of atrocity, and that it would be immediately visited'by a flaming wrath, which would tear him to pieces, if not forcibly pre vented by that law which he had defied? -Did he kuow this so clearly that the hand which was to do the dastardly work of his "honest" convictions had to shroud itself from observation until that fearful work was done? Could he say that if he was a fiend of malignant ferocity he need fear no judgment hereafter, and could accept all obloquy for all time because he was honestly what he was the enemy of all law and all that men hold sacred? To ask such questions is to answer them.
And yet there are men who, upon a higher plane, solace them selves with something akin to such reasoning. They do not believe the Bible, they say, and therefore cannot be expected to conform their lives to it. Do they know what the Bible teaches, or do they make a Bible of their own and follow that? They doubt as to an after life and, therefore, will live this life as they list. Have they not stifled all those impulses and aspirations which make immortality as necessary to thought as.it is clear in Revelation? "Judgment to come!" Why there may be something like this to be met, but they have nothing to fear from it, they'think. Has that thought refused to occupy itself with a theme so upleasing, so that its conclusions are rather those of its inclinations than of its knowledge! For the opin ions which thus dominate the life, scorning light and defying conse quences, a man is responsible. Sincerity in embracing and maintain ing truth is indispensable to loyalty +o it, but a sincerity which invents its own truth and calls-all else falsehood is error, voluntary, gratui tous, ineradicable, fatal. The Scripture describes those who do this as saying: "We-have made lies our refuge and under falsehood

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~taye we bid ourselves."

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:" -' Thus far we have considered the text especially in its relation to

things spiritual and moral, as beseems this Sabbath and sanctuary

service. For this there need be no apology notwithstanding the foot

nay, because of it that the remainder of this discourse will occupy .itself with matter not often discussed in the sacred desk.

WAS IT "REBELLION* AND TREASON?

You have asked me to speak to you, my friends and brethren of Camp A. Burnet Rhett, of the United Confederate Veterans upon the

recurrence of your anniversary, and the theme is self-suggested. It

is the cause of which you are the survivors and representatives. That

cause has long been, and is yet, often misunderstood and misrepre

sented. It has been denounced as unjust and iniquitous, as folly, re

bellion and treason and as fore-doomed to go down in utter shame and

ignominy. Those who gave their lives in its defence have sometimes

been branded as challenging the execration of mankind sincere, per

haps, and brave beyond measure and example, but as leagued together

for armed assault upon the principles which und' rlie the American

polity, an .1 the overthrow of the best government which-the world ever

saw. It cannot be amiss, then, to consider for a moment for the sub

ject is too familiar to need more than one or more comprehensive facts

whether or not this terrible indictment is true.

The states which claimed the right forty years ago to resume

their sovereignty did so upon the principle that the Union was one oi

consent, not constiaint; upon the principle of the Declaration of

Independence, that when a government beconaos subversive of th

end to secure life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to the governed,

it was the right of a people to alter or abolish it; that, in forming i

federation of all the states into the American Union, no state abro

gated its own sovereignty as such, each state reserving to itself all thi

rights which it had. save certain rights which it had yielded to th<

central authority in the interests of the welfare of the whole. Al

though the view of separate state sovereignty was warmly questioned

by some in some parts of the land, it was never questioned in th>

south. On- the contrary, it was held as sacred; vital and invtolabk

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f -^ay, in that very portion of the country where afterward it. was dis''puted, even unto blood, the right of a state to withdraw from the
Union was formally and officially avowed. On the annexation of Texas the following resolutions were passed by the Legislature of Massachusetts:
1. Resolved, That the annexation of Texas was, ipso facto, a dissolution of the Union.
2. Resolved, That Texas being annexed, Massachusetts is out of the Union.--"Fowler's Sectional Controversy," 387.

In 1811 Josiah Quincy of -Boston, representative in congress,

made a speech on the admission of Louisiana as a state, in which he

said, "I am-compelled to decide it as my deliberate opinion that if

this bill passes, the bonds of this Union are virtually dissolved ; that

the states which compose it are free from their moral obligations;

* and that, as it will be the right of all, so it will bs the duty of som-2,

to prepare definitely for a separation--peaceably if they can, forcibly

if they must." .,

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This was according to Hildrctt, the historian, "the first an nouncement on the floor of congress of the doctrine of secession."

That the American Union was not an indissoluble entity was declared by Daniel Webster as late as 1851, when he spoke of "the national compact" and said, in the same year: "If the Northern states refuse wilfully and deliberately to carry' into effect a part of the Constitution * * * and Congress provide no remedy, the south would be no longer bound to observe the compact. A bargain cannot be broken on one side and still bind the other side."
The right of secession had been asserted and claimed from the . beginning by eminent jurists at the north as well as the south. This
could be easily shown if it" were disputed. Even at the cost of priceless blood and treasure the states of the
south rested their cause upon principle; upon the Constitution, even as it had been interpreted by the states which combined afterwards

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^ to. crush them. They were not those who asked consideration because . they were sublimely sincere in error, but those who had a right to . expect countenance and aid from all right-thinking men, because they
showed, themselves a right in the forum of principle, as they were , intrepid ip the field contending for it. If the contest settled down to a "differencein the interpretation of a Constitution, and that contest was decided against them, it was to their imperishable honor that it could | "^ only be so decided by overwhelming numbers, who, in the language
of the most bitter of those numbers, "camped outside of the Consti tution." If they accepted defeat and the new conditions which it imposed it was because they had referred the quarrel to the arbitra ment of the sword and submitted umurmuringly to the decision.

WHAT.' A YAI.K PROFESSOR SAYS.

And the conditions which followed the overthrow of the south

were as much in defiance of the Constitution as had been the war

which ended in that overthrow. Prof. Roger Foster, the lecturer on

law in Yale University, in three volumes comments on "the Consti

tution of the United States, Historical and Juridical." He devotes a

scries of chapters to show that the southern belief in the legality of

secession was justified; that the south was warranted in fighting, for

its rights, and that it is an act of injustice to brand their secession as

treason. "His History of Reconstruction," says an adverse critic,

"reads like a gloomy tale of injustice, incompetence, fraud and

intimidation." And yet that tale but touches the .borders" of

the truth, as we know it. But another statement of Prof.

Foster, in;the language of that same adverse critic, "takes the breath

away" Well it may, for this learned teacher of law at Yale declares

that the thirteenth amendment of the Constitution of the United

States has never obtained the requisite ratification by three-fourths

of .the states, unless the validity of the former insurgent states, ille

gally reorganized by Presidents Lincoln and Johnson, is taken into

.account. And then Mr. Foster adds:

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"The Reconstruction Act must consequently be condemned as

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unconstitutional, founded in force, not law, and so tyrannical as to. imperil the liberty of the entire nation should they be recognized as binding precedents. * * * It seems impossible to find any justi fication for the Reconstruction Acts in law, precedent or consistency."
If these things are recalled today it is not that bitter memories may be revived, veterans and friends, but that we may see--if such sight needs in the least to be re-called--that you need not even remotely doubt of the duty, privilege and pleasure of maintaining* your organization and thus impressing upon your children the fact that, as they can never be aught but proud of the valor with which their fathers fought, they need never have less pride in the cause for which that valor was spent in vain.

MAr.XAXiMocsCoKpi. TANNER.

_ Said Corpal James Tanner,. that heroic northern soldier to whose patriotic efforts Richmond owes its "Home for Confederate Soldiers," and who was received after the war in what had been the Capital of the Confederacy with enthusiastic acclaim; said Corpal Tanner, who lost both legs by Confederate bullets, speaking to Lee Camp, of the United Confederate Veterans: "Fellow Veterans, I have told my northern comrades so often that I am entitled to speak it here today, that had we been born and brought up in the south, educated in the doctrine of states' rights.
drinking it in with our mothers' milk, until we came to believe in it as we believed in our mothers' Godj the chances are that ninetynine out of every one hundred of us would have worn the southern grey instead of the northern blue." And if you offer no apology for the cause in which you fought
. how is it with those who stood and stand today as its representatives and embodiments? Is there not one name the mention and even the thought of which sends the blood bounding to the heart, and the tears welling up from an inexhaustible fountain of reverence, pride, love and devotion? But your and my emotion at the name of Robert Lee may be thought that of blind partiality, and even the infatuation

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of prejudice. But nothing like this can be affirmed of the judgment of the world, add that world has.no measure, or little, in its honor and admiration of the Confederate chief. Shall we cite in proof a few tributes, not brought out by the glamour of success, but coming spontaneously for a defeated soldier:
Prof. Philip Stanhope Worsley, of Oxford University, England, presented his great translation of Homer's Iliad in Spencerian verse m these words:

"To Gen. Robert E, Lee, the most stainless of living command

ers, and, except in fortune, the greatest."

The volume was accompanied by an exquisite poem, of which a

single verse will suggest the whole, when it says of the conquered

south:

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"Ah. realm of tombs! But let her bear

This blazen to the en'd of times;

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No nation rose so white and fair

Or fell so pure of crimes."

Nor does the bias ot sympathy show itself in the words of the famous president of Brown University, Dr. E. Benjamin Andrews, who fought against Gen. Lee, but who has made his life the theme of a great public lecture, and as part of an eulogium which almost exhausted the language of praise, said of Gen. Lee that he was a war rior worthy to rank with the greatest of all history, and as a man pure to the very core of his being, whose private letters were manuals of

holiness."

ROOSEVELT ox LEE.

Nor did the present president of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt, utter words of a sectional and political affinity Roosevelt himself a gallant soldier when he said, in his life of Thomas, H. Ben-
ton, that Gen. Lee was "the greatest soldier whom the English-speak ing people had produced although his last and greatest opponent in the field must take rank with Marlborough and Wellington."
No, no; nor was it the kinship of-like conviction the exaggera-

tiouof unreasoning bias, which prompted Senator Benjamin H. Hill

to utter that magnificent regies of antitheses in which panegyric rises

to its sublimest height, nor once transcends sober truth.

Gen. Lee was possessed of all the virtues of other great com-

tnaaders without their defects. He was a foe without hate; a friend,

without treachery; a soldier without cruelty; a victim without mur

muring. . He was a public officer without vice, a private citizen witb-

"out wrong, a neighbor without reproach, a Christian without hypo

crisy, and a man without guile. He was Caesar without his ambi

tion, Frederic without his tyranny, Napoleon without his selfishness,

and Wellington without his reward. He was obedient to authority

as a servant, and royal in authority as a true king. He was gentle

as a woman in life, modest and pure as a virgin in thought, watchful

as a Roman vestal in duty. He was as submissive to law as Socrates

"and grand in battle as Achilles."

And inis is the man, who, loving the Union with passionate devo

tion, and assured of the highest preferment under it, felt it a sacred

duty to go with his state, and fight, as he himself said, "For constitu

tional government!"

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TtiF. II>KAI..CHRISTIAN SOI.IMKK.

And what shall, what can be said that has. not been immeasura

bly better said of. his great lieutenant. Stonewall Jackson? The

world knows the record of his unequalled career in arms, and of the

loftiness and purity of his life. It places him among the greatest

heroes who have illustrated Christian virtue upon the tented field.

It were a work of supererogation Co dwell upon his exploits, but we

may give a moment to the recollection of the close of his brilliant his

tory. A few weeks since there flashed around the world the last

words of xhe assassinated President of the United States. But thope

of Stonewall Jackson were almost identically the same. Smitten to

the death- in the moment of his greatest victory, and by the errinjf. ;

hands of those who would have given their lives to save his, Gen.

Jackson said to weeping friends about his bed, "It is all right. I

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would not have it otherwise if I could. I had hoped to live to serve
my country, but it will be infinite gain to be translated and to live '
with Christ."
And what 'of Sidney and Joseph Johnston and Jeb Stuart, of Bishop Polk, and a roll so long tfiat it would almost exhaust this hoar to call it, high upon the roll of which must be our own Hampton and Kershaw and Richard H. Anderson, and Maxcy Gregg and James Conner and--but you know the names better than I can call them.
TRIBUTES FROM "Oi'R FRiENns, THE ENEMY."
But what of the rank and file? Again we may summon north ern lips to voice their eulogium. "Better soldiers the world never" saw than those who followed Lee," said Theodore Roosevelt. And lest this praise should seem to confine itself to the Army of Northers Virginia, let another northern voice speak of Chickamauga. Gen. H. V. Bnnyton, to whom is due the setting apart of that bloody field as a national cemetery alike for thj blue and the grey, describes "the unequalled fighting of the thin and contracted line of heroes--the N magnificent Confederate assaults." He tells of the almost inacessible heights of that part of the field called the Horseshoe, against which the Confederates "dash wildly and break there like angry waves, and~ recede only to sweep on again and again, with almost regularity of ocean surges, ever marking a higher tide," and there is no exaggera tion in this metaphor, for the Confederates made seventeen successive charges upon the Federal works. The word "Chickamauga" means "river of death," and it proved such indeed to thousands of heroic men. * .
Take another typical fact, as it is recorded by another northern pen. When the Confederates passed through Greencastle, Maryland, on the way into Pennsylvania, a little girl stood in a doorway of a dwelling, wrapped about defiantly in the Stars and Stripes. The boys in grey cheered the little child.

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"With the generous glow of the stubborn fighter,

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And not a finger was raised to fright her." .

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And who they were who showed themselves

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so nobly we learn, .

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"Pickett's Virginians were passing- through, Supple as steel and brown as leather;
Rusty and dusty of hat and shoe, And wonted to hunger and war and weather.
"Peerless and fearless, an army's flower, Sterner soldiers the World saw never;
Marching lightly that' summer hour To death and failure and fame forever."

And how they \von that fame still another

northern poet tells r

' 'The brave went down! Without disgrace

They leaped to ruin's red embrace,

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And only heard fame's thunder wake

And only saw her sunburst break

In Smiles on Glory's bloody face."

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. THK HOYS WHO DIED FOR DIXIE.

And the boys of the Confederacy! How did they illustrate American valor? What of Sam Davis, going to the scaffold, from which a single word would have saved him? Pelham, the boy artil lerist, winning the plaudit of his great commander for phenomenal skill and daring.? What of "Little Giffin, of Tennessee?"

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"Smitten of grapeshot and gangrene;

Eighteenth battle and he sixteen."

What of the five boy color-bearers at Gaines's. Mill obeying the command of their colonel: "Die by yonr colors, lads, but never let them trail;" James H. Taylpr, of Columbia, aged 16, shot down three

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. times before his flag passed to George Cotchett, who fell, and it passed to Shubrick Hayrie, and when he was shot down to Alfred Pinckney, who was instantly mortally..wounded, and as Gadsden Holmes was about to1 seize and bear them he fell, pierced with many .-balls. Of these five heroes Taylor was 16 years, Hayne but 18 and the other three" were less than zr. And that flag, so baptized in youthful blood, was grasped and borne throughout the fight by one whom we delighted to honor, the stalwart and modest Dominick Spellman, of the Irish Volunteers. Among the color-bearers who won. deserved renown as such were Corpal William S. Durst, of Edgefield, and Sergant William Gregg. of Marion. Aud these were but types of many others.
But what of our women? Let this church give its part in the -great record. It is due to two lady members of this little flock that organized ministry of loving hands went out from our city to the soldiers in camp and on the march and in hospital; that Gettysburg gave back its buried dead to sleep with their comrades in our Mag nolia ; that every soldier's grave has its headstone and that a noble monument towers over all in memory of the Lost Cause. Yea, it is 'due to these two devoted and widowed sisters that a home for Confeder^te widows and a college for Confederate orphans and-other claimants of Confederate sympathy exists in Charleston today, after a beneficent existence and record of thirty-five years.
Yes, and may not attention be called to the fact that the tablet upon our walls which honors the memory of the gallant soldier, Col. Peter C. Gaillard, who bore an empty sleeve to his grave because he' braved a whirlwind of fire to which he would not expose any one of his aides, that that tablet stands side by side with another, which .bears the name^of seven of this congregation who fell in the Confed erate service, and three of that seven were, but i 7 }Tears of age.
NOT TO OPEN OLD WOUNDS.
No! No! These things are not recalled to open old wounds, but

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wholly to show that they were honorably earned; only to show that

if the fealty of the south to the American Union now is to be an ele-

ment of strength, pride and glory forever, it can only be as that .

south was true to its convictions of right and duty during the four

years of its unparalleled struggle, and that it will be as true, fearless

and formidable in accepting the results of that struggle:

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' 'Tell it as you will, it never can be told,

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Sing it as you may, it never can be sung,

The stoiy of the glory of the men who

wore the grey."

But that glory is part now of the priceless heritage of the whole American people, and that people have more than begun to treasure it as such, when the name of Robert E. Lee is inscribed upon our country's temple of fame; when the late lamented President of the United States formally declared that the time had come when the whole country should charge itself with the care of Confederate graves, and. when the present executive of the land is proud that his own near kin was represented in the Confederate forces.
When Benedict Arnold, the traitor, was dying in that England which "Icved his treason, but hated the traitor," dying in deserved ignominy, he asked that he might die and be buried in his uniform of a general in the American Continental army, saying, "God forgive me for having ever put it off."

You, my friends of Camp Burnet Rhett, should you meet your last enemy and sleep your last sleep clothed in your jacket of grey, you need never ask your forgiveness for having put it on. for you had been false to your convictions of right hact yon failed to do so. Nay, nay, nor need you ask forgiveness for having put it off again, when further struggle was hopeless, for then you accepted the issue which you had promised to abide. What Robert Lee accepted, those who love him cannot refuse.

A people with no pride in its past can have no pride in its future.

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Your just pride in your past is the presage of a future for the whole country in which you are to have an illustrious part--a part already begun- in the grand share which the south had in the war with Spain. The Confederate officers and their sons, who bore themselves so ; magnificently there, proved, as all others will, that the "truth" Which the Lord "desires in the inward parts" is in those who, holding in undying affection and reverence the flag which has gone down, array themselves in patriotic faithfulness for the defence atid honor of the standard under which their sires fought in the American Revolution, the flag which waves over the whole land, and represents American liberty, and the prowess which can defend it in every clime to the remotest bounds of earth. They hear the voice which says, again in the lines of a northern pen,of all that caused our war in the past:

4 'Fold, fold the banners! Smelt the guns;

Love rules! Her gentler purpose runs,

The mighty mother turns tears

The pages of her battle years,

Bemoaning all her fallen sons!"-