Address by Maj. Joseph B. Cumming, at the unveiling of Cenotaph on Greene Street. December 31, 1873

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TO MY FRIEND
JAMES C. C. BLACK
AN EXCELLENT LAWYER, A BRILLIANT ORATOR, A GOOD MAN.
AND TO COMPLETE THE CLIMAX A BRAVE CONFEDERATE SOLDIER:
Also a wise and safe Counselor, \viih one exception: he it was, who instigated me to do the foolish thing of putting into comparatively permanent form these "Addresses", worthy at best to survive only for such brief peri ods as they might live in the memory of friendlyaudiences.

ADDRESS
BY
Maj. JOSEPH B. GUMMING,
AT THE
UNVEILING OF CENOTAPH
ON GREENE STREET.
DECEMBER 31, 1873.
CHRONICLE JOB PRIHT, AUGUSTA, GA.
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Eleven years ago today, at this hour, a great conflict was

raging on the banks of Stone River. All day long the tide of

battle rolled through the cedar forest. The result was in

decisive, and night found both armies shattered and bleeding

the living and the dead lying down together on the frozen

ground. I can see now the faces of the slain the blue coated

and the grey in the pale moonlight, where it struggled

through the rifts of the forest. Among them were the faces

of some of those whose names are inscribed on this monument.

Some of these were lifted from their gory beds by comrades*

hands, and now rest in their native soil commemorated by

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other monuments. Others still sleep where the}' first sank to

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rest: their graves are lost in the depths of the forest or the

plowshare has passed over them, and no man shall know their

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sepulchre henceforth forever until the great day.

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I speak of Murfreesboro, because this happens to be the

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anniversary of that bloody struggle. It was, however, but a

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type. \Yhat happened there was then happening ever}*where

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in this war stricken land. Everywhere the brave were falling.

In the few instances, the bleeding clay was borne lovingly to

weeping kindred and thus gathered to the resting places of

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their fathers: but the great number found scanty burial where

they fell. And this, too, was true of the vast multitude

who took their departure less stormy but not less heroic

from the fever-smitten hospitals.

The conflict ceased, and while, as yet. no true peace came,

at least the sound of actual warfare rolled away in the dis

tance. Then followed that which was hitherto unknown in

the annals of time a conquered people busied itself to erect

monuments which should perpetuate the memory of its con

quest. Strange spectacle! and yet not strange. \Ve were

conquered, but our cause was just. \Ve had fallen, but were

not dishonored. Our efforts had failed, but those efforts

had made the world ring with our praises. We had the

irreparable and the irrecoverable to lament: to blush for noth

ing. And we might fitly rear monuments with proud front,

albeit covered with the symbols of mourning.

Had there been, however, only this feeling of mournful

pride, it alone would not have expressed itself in the erection

of monuments. l>ut it soon became the pious care of our

people after the war to preserve the names of our martyrs.

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and to inscribe on the monuments erected to their memory simple legends protesting to earth and Heaven the purity of their motives. Few were the offerings they could make at first out of their poverty, and the work has been slow. But it was a sacred enterprise, not to pass away with the freshness of grief, but to become deeper rooted with time and to expand with returning prosperity. Moreover, our enemies, exercising the right of conquerors, ungenerously I would say, but I pause with the words unspoken when I remember that they did it for their dead our enemies were studding our own land ours if not to control, at least to live and to die in with monuments to their soldiers, imposing their version of the great struggle upon our children and our children's chil dren. And thus in some of the lovliest places of the land, the child receiving his first impressions, the wayfarer, the un learned, who reads nothing except what he finds in his path way, are confronted by monuments, on which, in a perverted vocabulary, a just cause is styled rebellion, and tme men are branded traitors. Then, what had been a sentiment for the dead became also a high duty to the living and the unborn : and what had been intended only as a memorial of heroism became also a protest against calumny. And so, devoted men and women working in tender love for the dead and with unwaver ing conviction that they were right, this monument, planted in love, watered by the tears of mothers, wives, (laughters, sisters, now rises under these trees to perpetuate, as far as imperishable marble can make them perpetual, the names of the soldier dead of Richmond Count}*, and to proclaim while it lasts, that their's was a just cause, and their's a sweet and honorable departure.
In what language docs this monument make these weighty utterances? Read j "These men died in defense of the prin ciples of the Declaration of Independence". And is this not true? These men fought for the right of self government and against centralization. These men fought for the right of communities, empires in extent, organized and self sustaining, to regulate their own affairs, and against the interference of a people alien in sentiment and interest. These men shed their blood for the independence of a country four times more populous, and many times larger than the original United States. "These men died in defense of the principles of the Declaration of Independence." What did the fathers more or other than this? And were these men rebels and their cause treason? If so, Washington was a traitor, and Benedict Arnold truly loyal.
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And if this monument speaks thus fitly of the cause in

which these men suffered, what does it say of their discharge

from service? Read again. "Dulce et decorum est pro patria

mori". How simple and how old! Adopted by all people

. until it belongs to no one alone from the time that the poet

first traced it on his tablet of wax, the immortal phrase,

chiseled upon aspiring monuments, engraved upon minister

pavements where great empires collect the ashes of their

heroes, lettered upon the unpretending slab or cross beneath

the cedar, the myrtle and the pine, rudely carved by the hands

of comrades on the rough head-boards of the battle-field

the immortal phrase has proclaimed to every age and in all

climes that it is sweet and honorable to die for one's country.

And is it less effective because so old? Xay, it is so old

because so effective. The human heart, which changes not,

when it seeks to convey one of its universal immutable sen

timents, borrows the same vehicle from age to age. Aud do

hearts respond the less as time goes on? As soon bid the

heart to beat no quicker henceforth forever to the old story

of love; for it was spoken in simplest language in the bowers

of Eden, and was whispered to-day, unchanged, in the ear of

beauty. Old, old, phrase, denied to an Emperor, falling in

the midst of brilliant battalions with insigna of orders for

he pursued ambition and conquest it is rightfully due to the

poor Confederate soldier, buried, it may be, in his thin rags

by hostile hands on a lost battle-field, for he indeed died for

his country : and so dying found sweet and honorable discharge

dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.

The task of love is accomplished. The Cenotaph has

risen. The statement of the cause is made. The Roll of Honor

is inscribed. A time-honored formula, dedicated to the fallen

brave, is chiseled upon it. The work is done. We shall pass

away: it will continue. We commit it to the judgment of

future generations, in the firm faith that they will commend

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our purpose and approve its execution. So much for this monument and this visible world. But

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there is over us and around us a world to us invisible, in habited by the great army of those gone before. How thin

the veil depending between these two worlds: how transparent

to the ecstatic soul J Who shall forbid that I shall attempt

to penetrate it? Who shall say I am tco bold if. lifting up

my eyes. I seem to see the ranks of the departed marshalled

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in the air. looking down on this scene? Who should forbid

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that I recognize in these ranks of spiritual bodies so like the

natural, but more glorious the form of those who stood and



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fell in the ranks of battle? Who shall say that but a shadow flits across my brain when I seem to see along those shadowry lines the waving of the conquered banner? Who shall deny that I seem to see them in their places rest, attentive to this pageant, knowing the while that all we can do is very little
for those who gave their all for us, yet pleased that what we can we do. And if I may not see these marshalled hosts; if these be but unsubstantial shadows, no man may deny that
surely this is true: Above and beyond where these banners seem to float, and these hosts seem to stand, Himself, the God of Hosts, looks down and orders all: and while for his own
purpose decreeing defeat where we had hoped for victory, able, in His own way, to change the former into the latter, and in his own good time to permit the same people to place by the side of their monuments of mourning the trophies of triumph.

ADDRESS
OF
Hon. JOSEPH B. GUMMING
BEFORE THE
Georgia Teachers' Association,
AT TOCCOA, GA.
AUGUST 9, 1877.
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CHKONICLB JOB FKIMT, AUGUSTA, GA.

Such an audience as this, and the occasion which has brought it together, would suggest that no theme for an ad dress would be appropriate except the profoundly interesting and highly important one of Education. To discuss any other topic than one of the many phases of this subject would seem to fall little short of impertinence. You have assembled here for a definite purpose, and to exchange views upon a given subject, not to be entertained by essays on miscellaneous themes: and no one who occupies any portion of your valua ble time can be excused for introducing any other subject, however attractive. You have come together to reap and glean this particular field, not to wander at will, culling wild flowers along any pleasant path.
I have felt the pressure of this very proper restriction, and have preferred to prose rather than to transgress. I have chosen, therefore, one view of the general theme which en gages your deliberations.
One situated as I am incurs this risk: the subject is new to my thoughts, it is very familiar to yours: views of it may bear to me the aspect of novelty, while to you they will appear trite: I may endeavor to establish by labored argu ment propositions which, to your mind, are exiomatic. If this turn out to be the case in this instance, then at least I shall have the consolation of knowing that no greater evil can ensue than the loss to \-ou of the time which your cour tesy has assigned to me, while I discuss, in a plain way. both in the abstract and with reference to Georgia, the relation of the State to Education.
Georgia, in the last few years, has done much towards shaking oft" her prejudices and indifference. But while I believe that most of us will live to see the time when our citizens will be divided in their views of the right, the expe diency and the duty of the State to furnish general education by taxation, no more than they are now divided in their senti ments as to habeas corpus, yet at present there are thousands in the State who deny, or doubt, or disapprove. Any word which will tend to produce harmony of sentiment and concert o.f action on this great subject will be fitly spoken. Anything that is done firmh" to establish an enlightened and progressive system of general education as a normal and matter of course part of our economy, is done in season. Whoever contri butes in any degree to the confirming, improving and per-
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feeling1 such system, will have a share in the magnificent result of increasing the wealth of the State, of enlarging the happi ness of her people, and even of making her fair face still fairer: for intelligence cannot become general, and now un seen resources not be discovered: wealth cannot accumulate, and the uncultivated places not blossom and bloom : the heart and mind of man cannot be enlightened, and new beauties not spring up around his home and about his path.
One class of those who deny, or doubt, or disapprove, do so from a common and useful spirit of opposition to every thing new. They are ultra conservatives. They look on the support of education by the State as a modern invasion oi individual rights. I propose, by a few general observations, to show that these objectors are mistaken in fact; that there are few things older than the practice, to some extent, of States educating the citizen or subject. Whenever the State has needed a trained soldier, that State whether a pure Democracy or an absolute monarch, like Louis XIV, who said of himsjelf. "I am the State!" has not hesitated to take the public money and educate the soldier: nor has it ever entered the mind of citizen or subject to question State edu cation in this form: for, in such a case, the expediency of educating the soldier in the art of war has been apparent the benefit to be derived by the State obvious and direct. Hence, preceding State schools for instruction in other duties of citizenship, we find military schools established and ma : ntained by the State and approved 'by the people. What. too. is an established Church but an institution supported by the State for the eductation of the people? The fact that the instruction imparted by it is mainly religions affects not the principle. Through that part of history which we call the Middle Ages, almost all the intellectual food provided for the masses of Christendom came from the Church : and. dark as those ages were, they would have been overhung by a still blacker pall but for the feeble light which the teachings of the Church imparted to the masses of the people. It is true that the Church drew much of her revenues from the endowments of pious founders, but it may be laid down as a proposition substantially correct, that the Church was sup ported from the coffers of the State: and we wander not far from the truth when we say that in this way such education as the people had. the State provided. If we turn back further to those States whose records have come down to us least impaired, and to which the scholar turns most lovingly.

we find not a little of State education. It is true we do not. or at least I do not, know much about public schools in Greece or Rome, but it is quite certain that both Athens and Sparta had educational laws: that in Athens at least the orphans of soldiers killed in battle were educated at the public expense, and that all children in Sparta were taken from their parents and sent to public schools. But there was other education furnished to the people more or less directly at the public expense. Many prisoners brought Caesar and other conquerors home to Rome, whose ransom did the general coffers fill, and much public money acquired in this way, and in others, was at Romet and in the cites of Greece, laid out in public buildings and in works of art. Was there no education in the masterpieces of statuary and architecture which adorned Athens ar'! ^me? Was there nothing ele vating in the constant presence of these embodiments of the beautiful and sublime? Who could look at the Acropolis and not feel the stirrings of his better nature? Who could live in the daily presence of the works of the masters know them as familiarly as the tools of his trade, and not enter somewhat into the spirit of the master, and be lifted some what near the master? And was there no instruction to be had in the Agora, when Pericles discoursed of high themes there? And did not the masses who crowded the forum to hear Cicero become more enlightened while he philosophised? That this idea is not merely fanciful, let a little reflection on the populace of Rome determine. It was as keen, and sprightly, and quick-witted a people as ever lived good judges of public men and public measures: people of ideas and taste withal some of the commonest of them uttering senti ments which have come down through the ages. Think how superior they were to their neighbors neighbors in time and space, in intelligence, in those mental and moral quali ties which make a State great. How superior we must admit them, in many respects, to the uneducated masses of our own people. Take, for instance, their appreciation of oratory. Imagine a son of old Rome some Gracchus, or Claudius, or Fab his. or Antony, ascending the rostrum in the forum at the Comitia. and treating this keen, wide awake, practial Roman audience to such a speech as your average Georgia politician dispenses from the stump. Imagine h : m. after the manner of our fellow citizen, shouting the whole of h:s speech from the exordium all through the peroration with the same monotonous vociferation, with sublime contempt for

grammar, ungraceful, awkward, violent in his gesticulation, slovenly in his pronunciation, and' commonplace sadly in the matter and manner of his discourse generally. In other words, take our average Georgia "public man," put him
in the forum, array him in a toga, let him talk Latin as badly as he talks English; let him bawl as lustily at the Comitia as he does at the barbecue: let him saw the soft Italian atmosphere as he does the free air of Georgia; in short, let him make such a speech on the public affairs of Rome as he is ready to favor you with whenever called for: let him give his Georgia manner and style to the inhabitants of the etrnal city, and what fate would your expect for him? 1 am not accurately informed what treatment was usually accorded by a disgusted Roman audience to an intolerable bore: but such as it was, be sure our Georgia friend would have received it, full measure, heaped up. pressed down, and running over. Xow, what was the cause of this superiority? Is it not to be found, to some degree at least, in the public education furnished, more or less directly, by the State to the Roman citizen an education that came to him from the pub lic assemblies, the public buildings, the works of art. which
Consuls and Tribunes of the people, out of the public coffers,
put before him. on his right hand and on his left? But T cannot dwell on this part of my subject. I meant
only to throw out some few observations in opposition to the idea entertained by many that this thing of education, fur nished at the public expense, is a new invasion by Govern ment of individual rights. I have endeavored to show, by a few general observations, that in remote times States have more or less directly furnished some sort of education to the people. T rather apprehend that the difference in this respect between the past and present is to be found in the greater regularity and uniformity of operation, and obviousness and directness of connection. Then the raising of money for public purposes was not so much as now a matter of rule. Tt was not. as now. when if a dollar of public money is spent for any purpose, it must be seen and known of all men. In other words, in these days State education requires an educa tional tax, and this question is thus thrust upon the notice of every man : "Ought the State to use one man's monev for the education of another man's children?" And the fact is left out of view, that to some extent, with more or less directnrs. through various ways of spending the public money, civilized States have alwavs done this thine.

The exact proposition of the objectors is this: The State

has no right to take money from one man to educate another.

This objection would be found most naturally with, and

would come with most force from, the childless rich. Is it

not met and answered, or do I only convince myself by the

question is not one man's blood spent for the benefit of

another? War lowers upon the confines of the State: does

the State hesitate to send any of her citizens to the front?

The man taken may* have ver*y little at stake. The invadingo army can do him but little harm. His hut is safe in a

sequestered glen of yon rugged mountain. The vine and the

fig tree, beneath which his humble life would have passed,

smooth and peaceful, would not be wasted by the spoiler.

The scanty acres, sufficient for his frugal wants, would not be

coveted by the conqueror. It is the waving fields of the rich

that will be trampled. It is those abodes of wealth and

luxury that will attract the plunderer. It is yon defenceless

cities of the plain that will feel the shot and shell, and will

vanish in fire and smoke: and he might witness their over

throw in the same security and with more indifference than

Lot, looking from the mountain at the destruction of Sodom

and Gomorrah. Successful invasion might sweep the land,

one government be overthrown and another succeed, tribunes

be cast down and a throne set up. and the even current of his

life rlf.w undisturbed, and the contented domestic circle be

unbroken. But the State summons him to the frontier, and

that the wcatlh of the land may be spared, there he must

bleed and die. Shall the State have all the blood of this man

to defend the property of the rich, and not have a pittance of

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the property of the rich to enlighten this man? But there are no wars. The commercial intercourse of the country oc cupies chief attention. High roads for travel and trade must

be constructed and kept in order. Who is most interested in

this subject, the poor man who has neither time nor money

for travel, who goes not to market because he has no surplus

to sell, and no money to buy withal: or the rich, who has

his surplus crops or his merchandise to transport. And yet

Georgia, at least, has always required the labor of every man

alike for this purpose.

Leaving out of view for the present the great blessings she

derives to herself from educating her citizens, and putting the

question upon the lower ground of returning service for ser

vice, the State, or society for under our system these are

convertible terms owes something to every citizen. She

extracts everything of every one that her normal wants or

pressing emergencies demand. She is content, with his sweat

and his money, if they suffice: she will have his blood, if it

is needed.

What will she give him in return? All are agreed that she

owes him something at least food and raiment, shelter and

burial, if his own efforts cannot provide them. Witness our

poor houses and potters' fields. Upon what principle does

she owe these? Will it be said that humanity demands this

much? Most true, humanity does demand this much. But

upon what principle do the claims of humanity, if the State

can respond to them at all, stop with the care of the body

and leave the mind and soul to starve?

I only seek, in this dull, labored way, to advance a little

from well established positions. These established positions

I understand to be. that the State, or society, claims ordinary

or extraordinary services from the citizen, even to his life,

according to her exigencies; that the State, or society, has

long admitted some counter claim on the part of the citizen,

and has provided for the preservation and burial of the body.

The position to which I move in advance of these established

propositions is this: That no principle of law, of political

ethics, or private rights, or of humanity, limits the action of

the State to these admitted obligations: that the obligation

to give what she does give is not in the nature of thing more

binding than the obligation to give more: that her right to

tax for those things for which she habitually taxes is not in

principle better established than her right to tax for other

things: that whether the State will sustain a liberal system

of public instruction by taxation, is a question not of right,

but of expediency, to be dealt with like any other matter of

established right. This is a safe committal of the subject to

the forum of enlightened expediency. Our people is an emi

nently safe people. They are calm, reasonable, conservative:

they will deal with this question in practical wisdom ; con

tests will be waged over it. as over every interesting subject

of public policy. There will be your enthusiast, unable to see

any proper appropriation of the public money except for edu-

cat : onal purposes who will believe in his heart that a liberal

school system will be a panacea for all ills, political, social,

financial: he will be at one end of the list. At the other

will be vour constitutional crumbier, who would neither give



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millions for defence nor a farthing for tribute who conceives

himself robbed whenever he pays his poll tax who hates

new things who loves, if he loves anything, the abuses of

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the past who (that I may sum up in one sentence his depth of darkness on this subject), if he had to be taxed at all for education, would return to the old Inferior Court poor school system, of which more anon. Rut neither of these extremists will prevail. The people of Georgia have never failed in the long run to deal in wise moderation with every problem of State policy, and this one they will settle with due regard both to the progress of the age and the sacredness of private rights.
So much for the relation in the abstract of the State to education. What has been her relation historically to this subject? She has never been, since her independence of the crown, wholly apathetic and indifferent. What she has done or attempted may be considered under the two heads of the common schools and the University. I adopt the names which the laws gave them. :p.oth these designations were in appropriate. There were no common schools until recently: there has never been a University.
First of the schools: In 1/85 the Legislature, in a flaming preamble to one of its acts, set forth the importance of edu cation. In 1820 it exempted real estate of academies from taxation. In 1821 it passed an act for the permanent endow ment of academies and common schools. This act set apart 8500.000 of bank stock owned by the State and appropriated the dividents of it to free schools and academies. The yield from this source, if the stock remained intact, could not have been more than $40,000 per annum. From that time until 1843. while hardly a session of the Legislature passed without some legislation on this subject, it was nothing but tinkering and botching a wretched and wholly inadecjuate system. The scope and purpose of such legislation was ordinarily to alter some trifling detail of a bad plan, such as to prescribe who should take the census of the children, whether the Jus tices of the Peace or some other person: what amount of l)ond should be given by the treasurer of the poor little fund ; what form of rath should be taken by the half paid teachers, as it such changes could transform an extremelv faulty svstcm into a perfect one. Such were the efforts of the State until 1843. The act of 1843 codified, as it were, all the pre vious legislation on the subject. In the meantime, part of the bank stock that of the Bank of Darien had disap peared: and this act of December 27. 1843. set apart about $2fSo,oco of stock of the State Rank and of the Rank of Augusta. The yield from this source was about $20.000 per

annum. These dividends, and such additional fund as the Justices of the Inferior Courts might levy by taxation on the recommendation of the grand juries of their respective coun ties, composed the educational fund. Most of us can remem ber how reluctantly such a tax was laid, how small it was, how little it swelled the pittance derived from the State, how contemptible was the aggregate amount.
Inadequate as it was, it was administered honestly but not wisely. The stewards of it were the Justices of the Inferior Court. That respestable magistracy was in their time over whelmed with gratuitous services to the public. They were Pontifices Maximi. or chief bridge builders; they managed the roads, the finances, the public buildings, the jail, the poor. They were a Court of Common Law, and the Court of Ordinary, and a Criminal Court, for the trial of felonies among negroes. A more patriotic set of men no country could show, but there were not selected ordinarily with ref erence to any special cnlightment on the subject of educa tion. They meant well, doubtless, and- they managed the educational interests of their counties not much worse than they tried law cases, bat a good deal worse than the}' made roads and bridges.
The fund thus administered by these respectable gentle men, was from the time of its creation, in 1821, until 1840, known indifferently to the law as the free school fund, the common school fund, and the poor school fund. There never was any appropriateness in the name of common school the schools which, by its feeble aid, "languishing did live." were not common to the children of the State. In 1840, some legis lator, with an eye to the eternal fitness of things, had the name made to conform to the thing, and thenceforward by law it was. what it had always been in fact, in more senses than one. the "Poor School Fund." This sapient legislator would have done well to disregard absolute symmetry in this respect. He dealt a serious blow to the already sickly system. With out this name, it had already too many distasteful features for the poor. In fact, under this system, education which, in its own right, is associated with ideas of dignity and ennoblement presented itself to those to be benefitted b}' it it the guise of social inferiority. The act of December 22, 1828. in so many word's, made "extreme indigence" the quali fication of admission to these schools. It had for the parent or the child of spirit, the objection of charity given almost contemptuously. It was presented as one of the branches of
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pauperism; it stood in the minds of men on the same footing

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with the poor house; it smelt of broken victuals. Education

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acquired in this wayT was at too great a cost to natural and

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respectable feelings of the human heart, and doubtless many

a parent preferred for his child, and many a child preferred

for himself, perhaps with false but insurmountable pride,

ignorance and equality, rather than "the three R's" with

social inferiority. The teachers themselves did not wholly

escape the shabbiness of the system. The}* were miserably

compensated, and the pittance they received was paid them

only after their oath that they had done their simple duty.

The whole system was a poor one, based upon fundamental

errors. As much was done as could be, by giving it degrad

ing names, and throwing around it an atmosphere of con

tempt and meanness, to make it as unattractive as possible, it

is not strange that it accomplished little or no good. The

best that can be said of it is that it showed that the great

heart of our mother was burdened with solicitude for her

children and could not rest. She must be doing something

for them, albeit ineffectually and foolishly.

In 1850 the benefits of the system, thitherto confined to

the poor, were extended in theory to all alike: practically, the

poor children had the preference. This was an important

step in the right direction. It was at least a partial recogni

tion by the State of her duty to supply education to all her

children. This change of theory, and the addition, under

certain restrictions, of the net earnings of the State Road to

the educational fund, brings the school system down to what

I shall call its Modern History, that history commencing with

the Constitution of 1868.

Let us now turn to the "University." The act of 1785.

before referred to. was "An act for the more full and com

plete establishment of a public seat of learning in this State."

The language of the preamble is so full of grand expectations

that I recite it, and let it speak for itself:

"As it is the distinguishing happiness of free government

that civil order should be the result of choice and not neces

sity, and the common wishes of the people become the laws

of the land, their public prosperity, and even existence,

very much depends upon suitably forming the minds and

morals of their citizens. When the minds of the pepole in

general are viciously disposed and unprincipled, and their

conduct disorderly, a free government will be attended with

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greater confusions, and evils more horrid than the wild, mi-

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cultivated state of nature. It can only be happy where the

public principles and opinions are properly directed, and their

manners regulated. This is an influence beyond the stretch

of laws and punishments, and can be claimed only by religion

and education. It should, therefore, be among the first ob

jects of those who wish well to the national prosperity to en

courage and support the principles of religion and morality,

and earh- to place the youth under the forming hand of

society, that by instruction they may be moulded to the love

if virtue and good order. Sending them abroad to other

countries for their education will not answer these purposes,

is too humiliating an acknowledgement of the ignorance or

inferiority of our own, and will always be the cause of so

great foreign attachments, that upon principles of policy it is

inadmissible.

"This country, in the times of our common danger and

distress, found such security in the principles and abilities

which wise regulations had before established in the minds of

our countrymen, that our present happiness, joined to the

pleasing prospects, should conspire to make us feel ourselves

under the strongest obligation to form the youth, the rising

hope of our land, to render the like glorious and essential ser

vices to our country.

"And whereas, for the great purpose of internal education,

divers allotments of land have at different times been made,

particularly by the Legislature at their session in July, 1/83,

and February. 1784, all of which may be comprehended and

made the basis of one general and complete establishment:

Therefore enacted."

What rolling sentences J What magnificent expectations!

What immense superiority over all foreign institutions of

learning is foreshadowed! As we read we begin to feel

almost sorry for the departing glories of Oxford and Cam

bridge waning before this one general and complete estab

lishment. All this magniloquence of the preamble rolling in

our cars conjures up before us nothing less than Salamanca,

with its 12,000 students, and Bologna, with its 13,000. The

lame and impotent conclusion was Franklin College. Follow

ing *

this

tremendous

flourish

there

was,

through CT^

a

Ions: ^>

series

of years, any quantity of legislation in reference to the

"I'nivcrsity." but it was all petty and barren of good results.

It was mainly, from time to time, to increase or diminish the

number of trustees, to prescribe the time of meeting of the

Senatus Academicus. to perfect titles of purchasers of the

12

University lands. There was enough of this patching and tinkering to keep the Legislature in rememberance that they had a University, so-called; but it did not advance that insti tution one step nearer the position arrogated to it by its high sounding name. Silver and gold for this beggar, sitting at the beautiful gate of learning, the State had none, but such as she had trustees freely gave she unto it. To look through the legislation of this subject of the "University." one could hardly escape the conviction that the Legislature thought its views fluctuatingo between foflviiifof and taking^ awa*v that Franklin College was to be made what the preamble to the act of 1785 contemplated, "the one general and complete establishment" of learning, by the addition and subtraction of trustees, and that the cause of advanced learning was fixed on a firm foundation when the trustees assembled in august senatus academicus. Little had this legislation to do with that, without which there could be no improvement money. \Yhen it could spare time enough from making and unmaking trustees. the Legislature, on two occasions, loaned the "Uni versity" $5.000 and $10,000. having good care to secure the repayment. The permanent endowment became in 1821 $8,000 per annum, less than one-third of the sum now raised annually by Richmond county to suppliment the State aid to her common schools. Xot much could be expected, of course, from such an institution. It was in vain that it had honorable and learned and zealous professors. Dependent for his support upon private tuition, it had to debase its cur riculum and lower its standard so far that none inclined to apply should be rejected, and none ever admitted should thereafter be cast out. The consequence was inevitable. The instruction it imparted was that of a tolerable academy, and the degree it conferred alike on the proficient and the unlearned had neither value nor honor. I do not mean to say that there are not many ripe scholars among the alumni: but I do say that its curriculum and its standard were not calculated to make scholars. It would be more agreeable to myself, and doubtless more popular among my hearers, to speak of the "University" in different terms. Rut we are dealing with this subject as men seeking to improve. \Ye shall not improve while we make that which is unworthy the subject of commendation. Rut I do not speak of the Frank lin College of the present hour. I confess my ignorance of its actual condition. I trust that there have been improve ments of which I have not heard.

So much for history. \Ye are now confronted with the
immediate present. \Yhat shall \ve do? Fortunately, we have not now to commence in this consideration with first principles. The Constitution of the State, the course of legislation under it, and, more important still, public opinion, recognize the fact that the State must foster a system of gen eral and advanced education. It is no longer an answer to
the advocacy of such measures that the}: require taxation. So do Courts and the administration of civil and criminal law: but no one dreams of closing the Courts on this account. Public opinion is prepared to recognize that the sustaining a liberal system of education is a legitimate and desirable exer cise of the powers of government. Ho\v shall this power be exercised in Georgia? At your invitation, I give my crude views for what they are worth.
I would say: First, The State should furnish directly a system of primary schools, as free and as universal as wide air. The sum necessary for this branch of the system should be appropriated directly from the Treasury of the State. The primary schools should be recognized as one of the prime necessities of the State neither subject to the apathy or prejudices of local interests, nor dependent upon the fluc tuations of particular funds. Right here I would say that I would divorce the fortunes of education from those of
circuses and the retail of liquor, which are now wedded by our law. It is a most unnatural alliance. I am assailing neither the retail of liquor nor vhe exhibitions of the circus
and cf negro minstrels: but it is rather a fantastic result of our legislation, that its direct tendency is to make the friends of education desire the spread of bar-rooms and welcome the
coming of a clown as a great boon.
Hy comment consent, it seems to be agreed that the stud ies in these primary schools shall be reading, writing and arithmetic: but. as I shall present!}' show, I would have this matter regulated by the University the University of the future. I>ut. university or no university, I would have as a part of this primary instruction, presentation in simple narra tives of the characters of great and good men and women. This primary department is the only part of the system sure to reach every child: and I would give him, before he goes out into this common-place world, a higher ideal of humanity than he will be apt to encounter in his actual experience not
omitting from my sketches those glorious old heathens who. however much theologians may be puzzled to locate their

departed spirits, played here in the flesh grand roles of virtue

and true greatness. In this way ingenuous youth might be

led to lift his eyes to better models than the small men, to

whom it is the disgusting practice of the times to accord cheap

apotheosis.

The practical qualification of the beneficiaries of this part

of the system would be a minimum age. Xo better can be

devised. As a rule, children reaching a certain age are capa

ble of receiving corresponding instruction. In the interest of

the little things, I would not have the minimum a'e too low.

<3

*-i:

Between the universal primary schools at one extreme of the

system and the University at the other, I would have too

other grades of schools, the admission to each grade to be

restricted by examination and by a minimum of age lack of

proficiency or lack of age to exclude. I would have this

minimum of age so low that no bright child should run the

risk of staying out of school altogether, or in a lower depart

ment, which he had already mastered. These two interme

diate grades, also, like every part of th'e system, I would have

supported by_ the State, but these two by that portion of the

political State which acts through the counties. The primary

department is universal: the census determines the number of

its beneficiaries. The second and third grades will each grow

smaller than the preceding, and their numbers will not be so

easily ascertainable in large areas. By the time the second

grade is reached many will have dropped out from various

causes. Xot least among them will be the discovery, among

the children of the rich and poor alike, that many have taken

in all that their minds can hold. In the condition of the poor

the inequality of which is of God's ordinance, and which

human institutions cannot wholly remove many a bright

little scholar, having received his quantum of the rudiments,

must come even now to the work of life. His services are

needed to take care of the little brothers and sisters, or his

puny efforts may be valuable in weeding the small garden or

in tending yon scanty flock. This general cause of depletion

of the schools will operate more forcibly in each higher

grade. The workshop, the store, and the farm will make

inroads upon the ranks of scholars, and the particular effects

of these causes can be best measured and provided for by

local authorities. As. too, these higo her gorades are less a matter of necessity than the primary. I would leave the

system as to them more flexible and more dependent upon

the fluctuations of local prosperity.

15

As I would have the broad base, the primary schools, sup ported directly by the State, so also with the apex, the Uni versity. I would have a University in its true sense, with its college of literature and its colleges of law, medicine and philosophy, meaning by the last the sciences; should have it not only a University, but one of a high order, if good pro fessors, selected without favoritism and fairly paid, could make it so. It should be the fountain of instruction, from which streams should flow all through the educational system. It should license the teachers: it should prescribe the cur riculum of the schools. This latter duty was, under our old system, performed by the Justices of the Inferior Court. This was ludicrously absurd. Is it much better when it is left as it now is, in many instances, to county officers, s-elected with out reference to fitness for this thing? The weakness of the system, apart from its poverty, has been in the past, that it expected the performance of a special act as an incident of offices having no reference to it, whereas it is a high and difficult specialty, to be performed, if at all well, by those whose specialty it is.
The State of Georgia is a great country. I know that love of country is a sentiment most apt to mislead. Xot least among its provisions for human happiness. Providence has ordered that to each man that land on w'hich his eyes have first opened, and upon which ordinarily the}* will last close, shall be to him the happiest and best of earth.
"The shuddering tenant of the frozen zone Boldly proclaims that happiest spot his own : Extols the treasures of his stormy seas. And his long nights of revelry and ease. The naked negro, panting at the Line, Boasts of his golden sands and palmy wine; Basks in the glare, or stems the tepid wave. And thanks his gods for all the good they gave. Such is the patriot's boast, where'er we roam. His first best country is at home."
There is on the West coast of Iceland, about ten miles from it. a group of islands called the \Yestman Isles. They rise 900 feet of perpendicular rock out of the stormiest sea that rolls. The only inhabitated one of the group Heimaey floes not contain ten square miles. Xot a tree can rear its head from the barren rock, or could withstand the unceasing
16

gale. Xo verdure is there no nourish flock or herd. The food of the inhabitants is fish and the flesh and eggs of sea birds. This unwholesome diet slays their little ones with a slaughter almost as general as King Herod's. X~o harbor indents that iron-bound coast save the narrow crater of an extinct volcano. Xot more than twice a year can any craft leave or approach those storm-swept cliffs. There the few inhabitants live and die in almost absolute isolation, in a dreary waste of rocks and waters, a desolation of wind and storm; and yet, to them, it is "that happiest spot on earth." In 1627 one of the few calm days vouchsafed to that stormy coast came fraught with dire disaster to those poor islanders. A vessel of Algerine pirates, cruising these seas, swept away all the inhabitants of Heimaey. Most of them died in cap tivity. The survivors, few in number, ransomed by the King of Denmark, having the whole world to choose from, im pelled by that universal feeling, love of country, preferred their desolate rock to all other parts of the earth, and thither they returned.
Notwithstanding such warning as this against the blind ing effect of love of home. I think I may reasonably say that Georgians have a heaven-favored land. In extent, an em pire : in natural characterists of endless variety: in capa bilities for the future of boundless promise. One can within her borders breathe the bracing atmosphere of the mountains, and be fanned by the soft airs coming up from the not distant tropics. Great rivers flow through her wide territory, and the boundless ocean receives them at her own doors. Her fertile plains wave with plentiful harvests; her hills are cov ered with priceless timber, and the sides of her mountains barely conceal the rich mines they hold. What may we not expect from such a land when universal enlightment shall cover it as with a mantle, and the mind of knowledge shall inform, the eye of science scrutinize, and the hand of taste adorn?

3
MURDER 99
AN ADDRESS
DELIVERED BY
Hon. JOS. B. GUMMING
BEFORE THE
Contestants for the Prizes Awarded for Proficiency in the Study of English Literature and Language, at Emory College, Oxford, Ga., June 28, 1880.
JOB PMNT, AUGUSTA. GA.

My theme is murder. I shall not fatigue you with tectiiiical definitions of the crime and with nice distinctions be tween it and other kinds of slaughter. I shall confine myself to sketches of some classes of murderers, and some of the methods, by which the atrocious crime is committed. I shall then endeavor to arouse in your minds and hearts a strong feeling, if it does not already exist there, against the inhuman practices which I shall speak of, and I hope to have you join me in heartfelt regret that capital punishment is not meted out in every instance of guilt: and also in a sentiment of gratitude that enlightened gentlemen have inaugurated here in Emory College a movement for the suppression of this awful crime.
T have said that I shall not trouble you with definitions and nice distinctions, and I shall not. But nevertheless I shall distinguish between some of the characteristics of the crime and of the criminals. I shall show that the largest class nf murderers are not impelled by particular malice, but are ac tuated by what is known as general malice. They are those, who entertain no settled purpose to murder and provide them selves with no particular weapons of destruction, but slay with anything at hand as it were a stone, a club, a ragged stick. The}* do not meditate deliberate murder: but their moral sense is feeble and their ignorance is great, and they murder without rightly knowing that they do so. This class, though more numerous, is less dangerous than any other: because the mem bers of it soon betray their true character, and all are on guard against them.
Another class goes better prepared for the commission of the crime. Its members do not attempt it so frequently, but there is a deadlier certainty in their efforts. The}*, too. are not at heart deliberate murderers, but they find their prototynes and congeners among the bearers of the concealed pistol. Xe ; ther my murderer, nor the pistol hero, starts out with the deliberate nurpose of murder, but the convenient appliances are at hand, and so they do murder on every apt occasion.
The only other class, which T shall specify, is that of the deliberate murderer those who. in States which grade the c^me. would be rated murderers in the first degree. These ^ : t ; n the ; r rl^sets. their offices, and plan murder, meditate : t. work it nn laboriously, and then go forth and comirnt it delib erately. To this class belong the poisoners.
j

For the purpose of description, and to summon the mur derer before you more conveniently, I shall adopt the device of the old dramatists notably Shakspeare who, disdaining ordinarily to give names to the miscreants whom they em ployed for the exigencies' of the tragedy, simply numbered them "First Murderer," "Second Murderer.'' and so on. And so at the proper time I will give the equivalent of the stage manager's signal: "Enter first murderer," "enter second mur derer." "enter third murderer."
l"ut in order that I may allay any nervousness among the most timid of my auditors, T lake this early occasion ''to state that the murder, of which I have spoken and propose further to speak, is not "the unlawful killing of a human being in the peace of the State with malice aforethought, either ex press or implied:" and neither my first, second nor third mur derer drips with human gore. The murder I speak of is the murder of the King's English, and the murderers are those of our own household. If any one breathes freer at this an nouncement-1 beg that he will not abate, in any considerable degree, the indignation and horror which would be justly ex cited by the thought of actual human murder: for strong should be our reprobation of the unprovoked, unnecessary, unspairing slaughter of our unoffending language.
The murderer of the first class needs not much attention. He is for the most part a sinner through ignorance. The class is composed of that large number of our fellow-creatures, who make deadly havoc of the ordinary every day language, cur rent in the household and in the mart. The little that will be said of the murderer of this class, will contain this of extenua tion, he slays without malace. Tie has no malice against verbs, adverbs, nouns or pronouns. Against adjectives, participles, prepositions or conjunctions he has no ancient grudge: he does not even know them. His usual victim is syntax: but he has no particular malice against syntax. The parts of speech have done him no harm, and he has no sweet revenge airainst tlum to gratify. Yet he slays them with a pen. that is deadly, and a tongue, that spares not. As he acts without malice, perhaps he should not be styled a murderer. But the law sometimes departs from pure logic and is guided by a sound poFcy. Thus, it is the policy of the law. which will not permit a m?n. too intoxicated to entertain any purpose, malic ; f us or otln rwise. to slay a human being and the slaughter ?o be aught but murder. The same policy pronounces him a murderer, who wantonly hurls a stone into a crowed and slays

one whom he hated not. knew not. On the same principle must we deal with that man, who blindly lays about him with a tongue, lost to all sense of linguistic duty, or with a pen. that recks naught of parts of speech, and with one or the other weapon commits reckless and indiscriminate slaughter.
I call this first murderer "the grammatical murderer" which appellation, however, is not subjective but objective, and designates not the criminal himself, who is not at all gram matical, but his victim, the murdered grammar.
Let us, however, be just, and accord to this class of mur derers such mitigation of their crime as can be found in their ignorance. The crime here spoken of consists in those sole cisms of syntax and even blunders of orthography, prevalent among the ignorant and the careless. As savage people lightly slay their fellow-creatures, not because the God of all the earth has made their hearts by nature worse than the hearts of enlightened peoples, but because, in their ignorance, they are like the btasts of the forest: and as the corrective with them is knowledge and enlightment. so with th.se enemies of orthography and syntax, the spelling bo. )k and the grammar will in time convert those blind ravagers of the language int> good citizens of the Republic of Letters And with this hope ful view I dismiss them.
I wish I could speak as hopefully and as charitably of my second murderer, who, with the same caution already give-n in the e^ase of the first murderer in reference to subjective ness and objectivencss. 1 call the purity" murderer the assassin of the purity of the language.
This offender is more enlightened than.the first, and to that extent can claim less of charitable forbearance. Y\ hi:e the former lays about him in stupid recklessness with such weapons as chance provides, the second arms himself before hand. It is true he entertains no settled, deadly malice towards the purity of the language: but he has his ends t attain, and he will slay it if it interferes with them. He makes deadly assaults upon the language by the use of words not belonging to it. or. if belonging to it. wrested from their legitimate use and signification. He has many lethal weapons in his arsenal, but his favorite is a barbarous one. bearing*-^ a barbarous name SLAXG.
There are some implements of destruction, the very sight of which inspires horror. I have seen in collections of medie val weapons poniards twisted and curled and toothed, so ^s r.-T5t onlv to inflict death, but to carrv torture with it. In the

same spirit of diabolism is fashioned the horrid "creese" of the
Malay pirate. And our own free American bowie knife, with its manifest capabilities for making a dreadful incised wound, then enlarging it, and by deft turning to the right and left, in flicting a high degree of tortue is calculated by its sight merely
to curdle the blood of the ordinary citizen.
Like unto all these is the weapon "slang." It is uncouth, it is deadly, it is torturing. With these characteristics, it is a favorite with the purity murderer. The class, contributing most freely to this type of murder, are the local editors and paragraphists of the newspapers: and slang is their chosen weapon. But conversationalists also use it. Your popular orator enlivens the dullness of his discourse by flourishing it; the young men, emulous of the reputation of society wits, brandish it even in the parlors of the polite and, alas! alas! as Lucrezia Borgia, the most fascinating woman of her time, cultured in intellect, rich in accomplishments, charming in manners, beautiful under the warm sky of Italy with the beauty of the Xorth the blue eye, the fair skin, the blonde hair not morose and gloomy, as one would suppose from her career, but gay. light hearted, sunny tempered as this paragon of womanly attractions was withal a pitiless murderess, so. alas! alas! the adorable young =woman of the period wields this weapon of slang without stint and without ruth. I will not liken her to Athene standing by Achilles and guiding the
flight of his javelin, for while in this Homeric picture there
are blood and death there are also open war and the gleam of knightly weapons: but rather do I liken her to the dreadful shape of Ate, revelling with uncouth and horrid weapons in indiscriminate slaughter.
Some crimes bring their own swift retribution. Xonc more surely than the use of slang. The form the punishment assumes is almost total deprivation of speech. I have not the time to elaborate this idea, but I shall endeavor to illustrate it by a familiar example. The simple, frequently grand and beautiful, always appropriate, terms to express things inportant or imposing in the physical or the moral world, have drrmped out of the speech of a large number of our fellow-
citizens, addicted to the use of slang. Instead of the language nf civilized man. selected and used according to the require ments of epch occasion, these wretched criminals, overtaken by a punishment of their own providing, are reduced on all occasions to the use of the same monosyllable "boom." Like the monotone of an idiot is the utterance which greets every

reference to what is striking or grand. The prosperity of the country, "boom :" the happiness of the people, "boom;" the enthusiasm of an assemblage of freemen, "boom ;"" the popu larity of a candidate, "boom :" his worked up, manufactured strength this also "boom." Great feats of arms, "boom." Great triumphs of oratory, "boom." The raging of a storm, "boom." The majestic flowing of a river, "boom." The blessing of Heaven, shown in succession of rain and sunshine, producing the waving fields and promising the abounding harvest, "boom." Anything, Boom ! Everything BOOM !
Deprive the poor creatures of this idiotic monosyllable,
and they are reduced to a condition verging on dumbness. How many editors, how many speakers, how many conversation alists have lost the language, in which to describe greatness or grandeur in anything by reason of their dependence on this absurd gibberish.
But our greatest horror is reserved for the poisoner. So I designate the style murderer. The speaker, the writer, who. perverting the language from its proper use, viz: to serve as the simple but grand vehicle of the ideas of the mind, the emotions of the heart, the longings of the soul: to be the teacher, the entertainer, the messenger of truth, the pure hand maiden, read}* to serve mind and heart in her own chaste and simple way the writer, who perverts the language, which
ought to be thus regarded, into an instrument of strained con ceits, bombastic utterances, extravagance in words with mean ness of ideas who. using it not merely for speaking or writ ing somehting which it were well to write or speak, but for effect only, for the gratification of vanity in fine writing or fine speaking: who, discarding all moderation of praise or cen sure, dealing in hyperboles, taking everything ordinary mor tals and the ordinary affairs of life out of their natural air and light, elevates them to the stars or depresses them to the realms of eternal night him I call the poisoner. He is a murderer, for these practices are deadly and require thought and deliberation. And inasmuch as his death-dealing agencies pervade the whole system of his victim. I call him the poisoner.
The case of this murderer, I fear, is hopeless: but thanks to whatever overruling power, thanks are due there is a specific antidote for his poison "SIMPLICITY."
But dropping the conceit of murder and murderers, how really inexcusable the wrongs we do that which we lovingly call our "mother tonue." If our sentiment toward it were

more in keeping with this affectionate appellation how much more careful and tender we would be with it. If even dis carding all sentiment, we consider it simply as a convenient instrument of every day use, how much better we would find it to keep it clean and bright. Regarding it as the vehicle of the soul's great creations, why convert into a creaking- road wagon this chariot of fire,- fitted to scale the battlements of Heaven.
In that respect, in which the language is most important to us, our daily ordinary intercouse, it is as easy to use it well as ill. As handled by the masters of it, it is pure, and yet so copious as to need no assistance from the flippant barbarisms of modern invention. Of course, there will be a new language of arts and sciences as they are discovered or o ^aiuUd. I s;x~ak not of it, but of language as the vehicle nf intellectual and iroral ideas the vernacular of the old humen heart "The sole indestructible state Time can touch with no change. Which before Rome, before Carthage was such, as it will be when London and Paris are gone," This language needs no accession to its full and compact popula tion. but needs only to be protected from invasion by the bar barians. Style is form, and form is art. The loftiest heights of art were reached long ago in language no less than in painting, sculpture and architecture. And as the painter of to-day cannot equal Raphael, of the fifteenth century, and as even Thorwaldsen of our own time could not attain to the height of Phidias in the age of Pericles : nor can the new houses of Parliament be named with the Parthenon : so we cannot improve in the style of writing and speaking upon the old masters. ( )ur attempts to do so but produce grotesqueness and deformity. Take the three ways, upon which I have commented, by which the language is wounded in the house of its friends, and consider a moment. When we compare the diction of one speaking our every day language with correct ness and in simplicity with the incorrect and slovenly manner, in which his neighbor may handle the same instrument, what reason can be in veil for the course of the latter? When we read the glorious pages of Macaulay, rich to opulence in ideas and expression, all couched in purest English, what reason can be given for seeking reinforcements or slang? -When we read the clear, simple, easy, compact pages, so abounding in the English classics, what reason can be given for the strained but ineffectual, the extravagant, but weak, contortions of the popular orator and the contemporaneous press. \Tay, T with-
8

1
I ! * |
1 ?.
:; * * ?

draw these questions and frame an easier. I ask not for

reasons, but demand what excuse can be given for the sloven

liness of ordinary speech, for the jargon of slang and the

labored vices of journalistic style?

One word more. The true mission of the champion of

the English language is not reform, but defense. The true

legend to be emblazoned on his shield is not Reformer, but

"Defender." His true policy is not the conquest of new

realms, but the integrity of the old. Take the dear mother

tongue as it exists under your watchful protection and guard

it sacredly; and that you may appreciate the sacredntss of the

duty, think what is that mother tongue in its purity, undis-

figured, undeformed, unpoisoned by the murderous practices

I have spoken of. It is all-sufficient for the wants of domestic

and friendly intercourse. It is the language, in which humor

and pathos have formed the closest alliance. It is the lan-

guage. in which the orator, secular or sacred, finds scope.

-boundless as the air. free as the ocean. On the wings of tlr.s

English language, epic poetry has made its subliemst flights:

and in its accents, the lyric poets have sung their sweetest

strains. In its terms, have the truest principles of civil liberty

been formulated. It is Freedom's true mother tongue. Clear

enough for the philosopher, sublime enough for the poet, ro

bust enough for the orator, airy enough for the wit. tendtr

enough for the lover in a word, possessed in its purity of all

linguistic excellencies, keep watch and ward over this qreat

C?

J.

C^

treasure and repel all who would approach it with unhallowed

hands.

I i

X.
"THIS DISEASE IS BEYOND MY PRACTICE.'
AN ADDRESS
BY
Hon. JOS. B. GUMMING
AT THE
MEDICAL COMMENCEMENT
OF THE
UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA
MARCH 1, 1881.
\
JOB P&XNT, AUGUSTA, GA.

The doctor and "the waiting gentle woman" watched in the ante-chamber of the sick Queen. The scene, which I speak of, is laid a long time ago. The saintly Edward the Confessor sits on the throne of England and Macbeth. with desperate, bloody hand, grasps the sceptre of Scotland. The sick chamber is bare and comfortless, for the abodes of Kings in those times and those then rude countries of Northern Europe lacked the comforts and conveniences of domestic life now common in the house of the mechanic and the cottage of the laborer: and this Castle of Dunsinane. destined next day to witness the "equivocation of the fiend that lies like truth'', this Dunsinane where "hang cut the banners on the outward walls", this Dunsinane which was to witness the startling onset of Birnam Wood, may have been a tolerable abode for the well and the strong, but was a dreary place for a sick woman, were she Queen or beggar.
For the gentle woman, who watches the sick Queen, this is the last as it turns out of many nights of vigil by her bedside: for the doctor, who watches with her. it is the second. Being the second and there being as yet no manifestation of the disorders which he has been called in to observe and pre scribe for, he begins to doubt their existence. This old time doctor has always commanded my esteem, especially by the honest utterance, to which I shall present!y call your attention. but partly, also, by the plain, non-technical language, so grate ful to the layman, in which he discusses the Queen's symp toms. While he is in the midst of this simple talk, all doubts that he has previously entertained of the existence of her disorder, are 'set at rest: for there, in her night dress, holding a taper, "fast asleep." her "eyes open." "'but their sense shut." she stands before them, seeming to wash the small white hand, which "all the perfumes of Arbaia cannot sweeten." and utter ing broken and heart-broken sentences, full of dark allu sions to the night of horror, in v.hich her ruin commenced. Then it is that this good honest doctor exclaims: "This dis ease is beyond my practice." I take this sentence as the suggestion of a few thoughts, for which I claim no higher A-alue than for a mere placebo.
It was not strange that the doctor pronounced this disease beyond his practice. At least it was not strange that he thought it so. however faithless he may have been to the tra ditions of his profession, in making this open confession of

failure. Not strange, for, in the first place, at any stage of medical science, this would have been a hopeless case. It would have been not less so in the nineteenth century, and at the Hotel Dieu. in Paris, than it was in the eleventh at dreary and battle leagncred Durisinane. For the Queen had poisoned the springs of life. She had planted in her breast "a rooted sorrow." She had aroused the furies and now they took their place upon the midnight pillow.
"More needed she the divine than the physician."
Remorse, for which there is no specific, had done its work on the delicate tissues of the brain, and the physician of any age, from Esculapius to Brovvn-Scquard, could only recognize in her case a ruin.
But even if the case, instead of being one of this universal and panchronous hopelessness, had indeed bten one with which modern medical science deals with case and success, in all probability our honest Macbethian doctor would still have found it beyond his practice. If this good doctor had been in Spain, he would not, perhaps, have so soon pronounced disease in general beyond his skill. The Moors, who conquered that country, were at that period of history the most enlight ened and learned people in Europe. In medicine no less than in everything else in the nature of science, these Orientals were far in advance of the people of the West. Had cur good old doctor been a turbaned Moor, he would not have been brousofht so earlv- in an ordinary* case to the confession of the text. But being only a Scot of the period, his learning and science soon came to an end. For Britain was like the rest of Europe, Spain excepted, rude and ignorant, and medicine which, in all times and countries, has borne some direct ratio to general learning, was in a very low state. Besides, while there is no evidence that our excellent Macbethian doctor was in religion any thing except a layman, as a fact, most of the practitioners of medicine were priests and monks, and prayers and saints were more in demand at the bedside of the sick than prescriptions and sinful doctors. What bleeding and a very limited materia medica could not remedy some relic of a saint might cure; but if the relic was of like inefficacy, the monkish practitioner of this system of medicine must then prepare to do what confession and shrift could do for the part ing soul. Soon, ah! very soon, in those good old da}^, did the fine old doctor reach the end of his art. With anatomy still oppressed by the idea that it was sacrilegious to dissect a human body: with the circulation of the blood not discovered;
4

with the theory of respiration not understood; with a very limited known materia medica; with chemistry unstudied, except as the means of discovering" the philosopher's stone in a word, with dense ignorance on every subject relating to medicine, there was little for the doctor to do but to bleed, to bleed after the fashion of the time: to look wise after the manner of his brethren of all times, and very early in his case, unless the vis medicatrix triumphed over disease and remedy alike, to make the confession, at least to his own heart, thnt the disease was beyond his practice.
Returning to this utterance of cur good doctor, I desire to say of it in all sincerity, and without any admixture what ever of sarcasm, that he ought not to have made this confes sion under ordinary circumstances. It did no harm on th;>
particular occasion, for the patient, whom it might have in jured, was beyond its reach, both by reason of the general hopelessness of her case and by her particular state at the time of insensibility to actual surroundings. To make such a con fession to a conscious patient would be unpardonable. Its logical sequence would be the abandonment of the field, where the rival forces of disease and health are contending. To do so is to dismiss the strongest ally of physician and patient hope and to reinforce the enemy with the cohorts of despair. And thus, when the physician seats himself by the couch of his patient, his first duty is to question pulse and tongue, an:l all other witnesses of his patient's condition, what that con dition is: and also a part of that duty is. though he may doubt, though he may question in vain, to assume a tone of certainly. And when he tells his patient with confidence that there is a spot, which he locates with nicety cne inch from the lower part of the left lung, and a half an inch frcm some other point, the size of a silver dime, inflamed to a certain shade of redness, which he also specifies, and that it is the inflammat: on of this spot which has given his patient fever and made him reflect upon his sins, and think of putting his house in order: when he dees this so unfalteringly and with such an air of quiet con fidence that the patient for the time attributes to him the eye of a lynx, and feels satisfied, that though he is himself des perately ill, here at least is a man who knows to the nicety of a hair what is the matter with him; this excellent physician is not playing the charlatan. He is simply holding a line of bat tle, presenting a brave and confident front until the disposi tions of the enemy can be accurately ascertained. He ma}~ not prescribe and treat on the line cf his confident assurances, but he will put out his skirmish line of placebos and develop the

enemy. In the meantime he docs right to pretend to know all

about the disease and what is to be done. \Yhat good general

ever on the eve of battle expressed to his soldiers clcubt or

apprehension of the result? lie may feel his own weakness

and know his enemy's strength. He may at the moment be

prudently preparing for defeat and planing retreat, but his

ringing battle orders speak only of advance and victory.

1 may appear to treat the occasion too lightly. But, in

deed, such is not mv intention. I recognize thoroughly that

*

^ ""

levity would be singularly out of place in addressing those,

whose experience with the suffering side of human life is

about to begin. I do not forget how much of the time of the

good physicion is spent in the solemn border land between

life and death the land of the valley and the river. I remem

ber how often he descends into the mistv. shadowv reo-ion

--

*

o

neither all of life nor all of death but partly of both that

region where the every day sounds of this life seem far off

and low, and where the listening ear seems to hear, faintly at

least, the.waves beating on the other shore. I recollect to

him suffering and anguish in every form are frequent com

panions. That while mingling Hke other men with his fellow-

men, his pathway is thronged with mournful shades. I know-

that the cry of distress is a sound in his ears as ceaseless as

that which breathes faint and low, but forever, in the concave

shells of ocean. I cannot forget that the day which dedicates

you to such a life, hallowed by the atmosphere of suffering in

which it is to be spent, ennobled by the labors and anxieties

which it is to endure, is no time for jest or levity, even if the

subject mic^ht provoke it. And standing face to face with

the life, which opens to the faithful, earnest physician. I

would lose sight of all the provocations to satire, which might

be presented by the blunder? and absurdities of the profession

in past ages, or the solemn pretcntion to superhuman wisdom

.sometime observed in the present; and I would readily adopt

the serious tone appropriate to this occasion.

In that tone, and returning to what I call my text, the

next reflection suggested by it is: How much less often now

is the physician driven to this despairing utterance even to

his own heart. Since those old days, when our good doctor

confessed the end of his skill, stupendous have been the ad-

varces in all departments of scientific learning. X"o branch

of learning has outstripped medicine. The human intellect,

whose triumphs have reproduced the age of miracles, has

shone nowhere more brightly than in the science and practice

of medicine. It would be presumptuous in me, a layman,

6

addressing professional men in reference to their own pro

fession, to undertake to speake minutely of the causes and

results of this wondrous change. I can speak but in general

terms. The ignorant empiric of old has given place to the

man of science: materia medica grown from a few simples to

proportions co-extensive with the vegetable and mineral world.

The knowledge of anatomy changed frcm the assumed analogy

between frames of the lower animals and man's to accurate

knowledge of the human organization itself. Pain and physi

cal anguish, the fell destroyers of thousands, whom the disease

itself would have spared, conquered by blessed anesthetics.

Multitudes of disorders cured by surgical operations, ihen not

ventured, or by remedies not then known. And as the result

of these changes, and of others more numerous and mere vast,

which -vou know better than I do. the material lengotheningo^ of the average human life. If I might venture an opinion teach

ing the accomplished, and a speculation in reference to the

prospective, 1 would say that the triumphs already achieved

and the hope of conquests yet to be made depend most of

all upon those things that relate to diagnosis. Am I not

right in thinking that all the means, scientific and mechanical,

which enable the physician to see. actually to see. the seat of

the disease, to hear, aye actually to hear, the language of the

afflicted organ, are immense gains in the practice of the healing

art? It is one thing to stand outside the living human frame and

conjecture what may be its hidden disease, and quite another

to see, by the aiel of medical inventions, the disorder no longer

hidden.

Put

vourselves
*

back

along O

with

vcur
*

brethren

<. f

former times, who had not the speculum, the stethoscope,

ophthalmoscope, or the aurcscope. to whom the interior of the

living human organism, for lack of these, was wrapped in im

penetrable darkness: for whom the heart and the lungs were

dumb, or spoke only in muffled tones: and consider your im

mense advantage. It is the advantage of certainty over con

jecture, of knowledge over guessing the advantage of the

sure evidence of eye and ear over the uncertain results of

fallible reasoning it is such inventions as these, that showing

the physician where and what is the trouble, enable him to

deal intelligently with it. But while these are vast strides,

after all how far short of the exigencies of the case do they

stop. The greater part of the human frame is still impene

trable to the eye of the physician so long as it lives. That

life, which it is the object of the physician to save, stands an

impregnable fortress in his path, when he seeks to penetrate

the lurking places of the enemies of life. All the aid of the

7

stethoscope, what is it? The physician hears the rush of the

stream of life; he sees it not. The traveler hears in the dis

tance the Mow of waters, and knows that whence it comes

some majestic river is coursing towards the sea, but not until

he approaches and stands upon its banks, will he see its

breadth and understands it depth, and know what pleasant

islands or what rugged rocks obstruct its course: whether its

waters flow clear and limpid or roll along muddy and turbid.

AYith the aid of this same invaluable stethoscope, the physi

cian can hear the passage of air through the lungs, but he

cannot see the trace it leaves. He is as one walking abroad,

who hears in the distance the sweep of the wind and the

noise of the waves, but not until he approaches the coast and

casts his eye abroad over the sea, will he know whether it be

a gentle breeze whispering to the wave and the wave kissing

the pebbly beach, cr the rushing of the gale and the rear of the

breakers. And so medical science should not relax its re

searches until that which is now only heard with the ear shall

be seen also with the eye. And is there anything wild in this

suggestion? Already through the stethoscope the heart has

given up its secrets and the lungs have whispered their tale

of life or death to the listening ear. Already the brain has

revealed through the ophthalmoscope seme of its mysteries

to the searching eye. And the auroscope has found a clue

even to the intricacies of the ear, though they be complex as

the labyrinth of Crete. Have the stethoscope, the ophthalmo

scope and the aurosccpe. exhausted the inventive mind? Do

these triumphs of science mark also the limits of science? And

is it wild to anticipate that some new application of the laws

of light, some new wonder of electricity, some agent, old or

new. may yet reveal to the eye of the physician the now

hidden wonders of the living frame, so that they will be seen

as a man sec< the face of Iris friend? Every daily newspaper

reveals a greater marvel. One man sits in his office at Wash

ington there comes flashing to him this message from a peak

in the Rocky Mountains: The snow is falling thick and fast

aloncr the mountain sides. From the qrcat lakes comes anoth-

<T*

*

er: A mighty wind is rushing from the Northwest to the

Southeast, whose breath is icy. The Atlantic sends up from

its coasts a notice of fog and mist. The Gulf makes signal of

rain. Our own Georgia, perhaps, sends a joyous greeting of

clear skies and soft, light winds: and Florida takes up the

refrain, ''fair and still," "still and fair." And to this man,

receiving these messages, the future, hitherto wrapped in

more impenetrable darkness than the hidden parts of the liv-

8

)
ing human frame, is revealed; and the march of the elements, hitherto less understood than the progress of disease, is spread out before him, and back goes the message to this place: Display storm signals and let the ships ride at anchor. To this other: Let the barque sail with the assurance of sunny seas and favoring winds. In advance of the icy blast speeds the warning to the farmer: Seek shelter for your flocks and herds; while, in another direction, wings the message: Drive your teams afield under a clear sky and amid the whispering of Spring. Seeing the wonderful triumphs of the human in tellect, is it extravagant to anticipate a not distant day when all parts cf the living human frame will lie bare to the eye of the physician. Then, knowing for a certainty what the disease is, how seldom he will have occasion to say: "This disease is beyond my practice."
But the discoveries of science, the triumphs of mechanism, may be what they may be in aid of the healing art: but cne disease will continue to be beyond the practice of the most skillful physician. This so-called disease is death. We lis tened, yesterday, with delight to a discourse delivered by the honored Dean of the Faculty, which proceeded on the highest planes of thought, was enriched by the stores of profound learning, and swept along in the strains of the purest diction. Its theme was the Persistence of Life. We have no occasion to oppose these grand speculations. This rapt vision of the philosopher may be realized, but death of that human frame. which is the field of the physician's labor, will continue. The forces of life may persist in another form: but this vision of the philosopher does not contemplate a time when the forces of life shall be so understood that their exhaustion in the human frame may be prevented: that the seat of life will be so well ascertained that it can be effectually guarded. Ir does contemplate that this human frame shall still, like the house cf the chambered nautilus, be left "an out-grown shell by life's unresting sea." Xor need we contend with the theologian. who teaches that death came by sin, and cry out in unbidden doubt: The birds of the air. the songsters of hedge and grove. when sinned they? And yet. do their pinions never fail and do their voices not cease their sweet notes forever? By what deadly impurity did the violet and the lilly. the jasmine and the rose, forfeit their pristine immortality? When did the falling leaf become the solemn declaration that all nature had sinned? It is enough. Philosophy and theology alike recog nize the continuance of death. But why call cleath disease? Why regard it otherwise than birth itself? They are both
9

stations in the existence of that mystery, which we name man. Death marks the separation between the living and "those other living 'whom we call the dead." Premature death is disease. The buds, which put forth today to greet the first morning of Spring, may in their immaturity meet a chilling frost, wither, decay and die. This is disease. But the rose which opens to the April sky and blooms in all its beauty, and sheds all its fragrance on the vernal air, and in due time scatters its last leaves upon the ground, is not the victim of disease. It has filled to the full the measure of its being. And so with the wonderful human frame. There is hope that, with the progress of knowledge, no disease, which shortens its due existence, will be beyond the practice of the physician. But that which marks its termination as the falling rose leaf whispers that the perfect mission of the rose is accomplished will be alike for philosopher, theologian and physician, ever ''beyond his practice."
IO

^
/ .."'' "'.^ ? ": * ft ' -~; '. . .
- . . -/ -\ --.- 7. ?

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. <.. '.' ? -.:*v*"!>?

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I-*'.."

.

-

i

J.-?* T* '^

THE MAN AND THE LAND.
REMARKS OF JOS. B. GUMMING AT THE REUNION OF THE SUR
VIVORS OF THE FIFTH GEORGIA REGIMENT, AT AUGUSTA,
AUGUST 30, 1883.
MY COMRADES: It has been given out through the press that I was to make an address to you today. The little I might have to say has been heralded by the high-sounding title of "oration." I am sorry that anything1 of this sort has been done. It may have aroused expectations which I cannot satisfy. I have pre pared neither address nor oration. I have had neither time nor inclination for either. I hasten to remove any wrong impres sion which this last expression may make. Of course, I do not mean to say that I am not glad we have met again, or that I altogether regret we have survived. I mean only that I have a poor opinion of "speechifying" at all times, and especially at a reunion of men, who were originally assembled for deeds, not words. The men of w^ords, as such, were entirely out of place in those days, and men of action were demanded by the exigen cies of the hour. Speech is a plentiful commodity at all time in this country utterly worthless in such times as we are here to commemorate, and entirely too cheap even in the piping times of peace. The word "address" is painfully suggestive to my mind of weary and bored audiences, and "oration" conjures up at once the conventional Fourth of July celebration, the glories of which have perceptibly waned in these latter times. Please dismiss all apprehension of either of these nuisances. Five min utes will cover all the time I shall abstract from the pleasanter occupations of the hour. The talk, which used to run from mouth to mouth around the camp fire, the humor and the jest,.

which enlivened the bivouac, the light-hearted chat, which no weariness of the march, no shortness of rations, no heat, no cold, no imminence of deadly conflict could suppress these be the appropriate occupations of this occasion; and an oration would be as much out of place as used to be the occasional black beaver hat, that wandered unwarily into a Confederate camp, and a general outcry of "Fold up that oration," would not be less appropriate than our old familiar slogan, "Come down out of that stove-pipe/'
But it seems that I am expected to say something, and if I am to speak, too many solemn shadows rise before me as I turn my face to the past the camp, the battle field for me to be tempted into levity by the reminiscenc^ of an old jest current in every Confederate camp. I shall endeavor to present a few serious thoughts: but, in doing so, I shall not attempt to play the historian and speak of foughten fields, however proud as a Fifth Georgia man I may be of those memories. I prefer to contemplate the moral, the spiritual, the sentimental aspects of those tremendous times.
Do I not voice the feeling of every Confederate heart, or do I only speak for myself, when I say that that period of my life is the one with which I am most nearly satisfied? I take my own career as that of the average Confederate soldier nothing bril liant, nothing dazzling in it; but a persistent, steady effort to do my duty an effort persevered in in the midst of privation, hard ship and danger. If ever I was unselfish, it was then. If ever I was capable of self-denial, it was then. If ever I was able to trample on self-indulgence, it was then. If ever I was strong to make sacrifices, even unto death, it was in those days. And if I were called upon to say on the peril of my soul when it lived its highest life, when it was least faithless to true manhood, when it was most loyal to the best part of man's nature, I would answer: "In those days when I followed yon bullet-pierced flag through its shifting fortunes of victory and defeat/'
I believe this would be the sentiment of every true Confed erate. And what I sav of the Confederate soldier is true also of

1

tlie land he fought for. Those will be noted whether we con

sider all the past, or in imagination scan all the future as the

days of its greatest glory. Xot the glory merely of victories of

inferior over superior forces, or of triumphs won by the w?ak

from the strong; but the glory of devotion and sacrifice. The

bright sky above us will doubtless in the years to come look

down on this country and see it far richer than now its ham

lets grown into towns, its villages into cities, primeval forests

'

changed into fruitful fields, its natural resources converted into

accumulated wealth, its population multiplied manifold. But if

1

beyond and above this bending sky there resides an Eternal

Intelligence, that regards the lands through all ages, and meas

ures the nations by other standards than those of wealth and

success, it will note that the time of this Southern land's true

glory will not be those coming days of wealth and teeming

millions: but th.it time has been, and was when its cities were in

ashes, its fields were wasted, each home a house of mourning,

and the smoke and the blood of sacrifice covered the land.

I know that such sentiments as I have been uttering are not altogether popular and fashionable in these latter times. It has come to be considered the proper thing to "shake hands across the bloody chasm," whatever that high-sounding ceremony may be, and to "fraternize," though this latter performance seems to be fatally associated with a great deal of sentimental twaddle. Well, let them shake if they choose, there is no law against shaking: let them fraternize if they will how beautiful it is for brethren to dwell together in unity. But I take leave to believe, or at least to hope, that the sentiments current on such occasions have their fountain in the convivial punch bowl, rather than in rhe loyal Confederate heart: and I trust that on future occasions, however much Southern men may appreciate courtesies, and though the proprieties of the hour may impose reticence of their real feelings, no expressions will be used to discredit this sentiment, which is. or ought to be. in every loyal Confederate heart, viz: The Xorth is rich and powerful, but the South won greater victories than did the Xorth, and made sac-

rifices of which the North not even dreamed. We are not ashamed, but we are proud, and if we have tears to shed they are not tears of repentance for our sins.
Well, we have survived. This fact seems to be sufficiently apparent. How many men, as good, as true, as brave, as worthy to live as we, have we survived! It would be the conventionall}' proper thing to say we will drop a tear to their memory. I have no such phrase to use, nor any other which assumes as a necessary fact that there is advantage in survival. How many a sailor has ridden out the storm only to meet tidings of death and desolation in the port! How many of us, recalling some time and place of deadly peril, where we had made up our minds that we must fall, have not felt at times that it would have been better for us to have sunk then and there into a soldier's grave! Who will be so presumptuous as to say, when he recalls some comrade falling by his side, that the bullet, which stretched him on the field, was not his truest friend, clothing him then and there with imperishable honor, and providing him a lasting refuge from unnumbered ills, from deadly sorrow! If I should use words of pity for those honorable departed, doubtless more hearts than one among us would protest that envy, not pity, was the word. But whether pity or envy, certainly HONOR honor from the survivors to those whom thev survived.

Sake! et Vale!
RESPONSE

F.Y

o

O ILJ XI XI I

TO THE TOAST;
"flew Ideas, New Departures, flew Soiltli"

AT THE 74* ANNUAL DINNER
OK THE
New England Society of Charleston, S. C.,

DECEMBER 22o, 1893.

. :HROMCLE JOB PRINT. AUGUSTA, GA-

My hearers will, I trust, indulge me in a few remarks at

the outset of at least questionable taste, for they are more

about myself than my theme. They are. however, not so far

removed from the sentiment, which I am asked to respond to.

i

but that that sentiment has itself suggested them. 1 am asked to

I

speak of new things "Xew Ideas, Xew Departures, a Xew

South." Unfortunately my temperament is such that I am ever

less interested in the new than in the old. I have ever been

more disposed to look back with tenderness than forward with

interest. My guest even of happy hours has been Hope less

often than Memory. 1 have ever found more to charm in the

softened recollections of the past than in high expectations of

the future. Were 1 a worshipper of the Sun. my sacrifices would

be made to the setting rather than the rising orb. Had my lot

been other than that of a commonplace worker in the world's

affairs, had my life been one not of action but of contemplation.

I would have been a fond dreamer over things departed, and not

the clear visioned prophet of things to come. My spirit turns un

bidden, not to our bustling, stirring West, but where. "West of

our West, sleeps the ancient East."

But after all. the theme, to which you invite me. is not

alien to this temperament. ft calls for retrospection as well

as insight into the present and foresight of the future. For can

1 speak of the new without first describing what is old? By

such a commonplace argument 1 strive to rind a reason why.

though commissioned apparently to speak only of new things. 1

turn my face fondly to that i >ld South, of which 1 shall have

so much to say.

The theme is a verv comprehensive one. Surelv those who

proposed it intended to put some limitation on its treatment. 1

have found the true limitation. 1 believe, by construing, as it

were, the several phrases of the sentiment, as lawyers say,

in pari materia. So construing them. I conceive that the keynote

to the whole is the word "ideas." It is to the field of ideas that consideration is to be confined. The new "departures" are the new views of thing's, social and political, whose fountain is the. changed ideas of the day. The phrase' "New South" is not meant to invite me to a review of the progress made by these Southern States in material pursuits. But, rather, as 1 conceive it, the "Xew South" of the theme has nothing- to do with any purely geographical division as such, but with the people who inhabit this Southland under conditions radically changed from those which their fathers knew, and the discussion is as to how this people is changed in its ideas, its views, its manners, its senti ments. It is a supposed new social and political and sentimental South that the theme makes mention of. It is to be a study in sociology rather than in statistics.
And' here let me pause to define as is always best to do one of the principal terms, as I understand it, to be used in this discussion "The South." Of course, the term is not meant to be expressive of any geographical relations. "The South." of this toast, it is conceivable, might have had its situs in some far northern region, or have rested east or west. The word is used here to express a civilization, maintained by the people dwelling south of the Mason and Dixon line. Xo rela tion to the Pole or to the Kquator is intended to be indicated by the word "South," used in this connection, but conditions, ideas, manners, sentiments.
In this comparative treatment the only form of treatment I can conceive of in which we measure the new by considering the old, unquestionably, looming up as bv far the most con spicuous feature in the landscape, is slavery. Unquestionably that in>titution was the mo>t potent formative factor of the Old South. In a half flippant way, we speak of it as "the peculiar institution." But how few of those who use this phrase really consider how unspeakably peculiar it was! In thus characteriz ing it. I do not refer so much to its intrinsic features as to its place in time and as to the people who maintained it. What a stupendous anachronism it was! Surviving far into the Nine-

teenth Century an age strongly, aye fiercely, anti-privilege, a

leveling *^

ag^ e an

ag^ e

wherein

the

theorv

of

the

en ualitv--

of

man

is entertained all through Christendom, at least, and the practice

of it is at least widespread, there was maintained with all the

force of law and public opinion of the South complete and

perfect slavery of millions of human beings. In an age when

all privileged classes were generally considered indefensible

anomalies, the white men of the South were absolute lonk and

masters of millions of men. Most peculiar and wonderful, then,

was this institution in its relation to time.

I tilt far more wonderful was it viewed in relation to the

.people who maintained it. \\here would the thinker of abstract

thoughts look for a slavery with as few limitations as that of

the South? Would he expect to find it among a humane, a

refined, a gentle and a generally pious people? And yet con

spicuously such were the people of the ( >ld South. Xot only,

therefore, was slavery a peculiar institution in relation to the

epoch in which it flourished, but also in reference to the people

who cherished it. Its supporters would be looked for bv the

abstract thinker among a rude, a harsh, a pitiless people. Hut in

the ( >ld South there existed the most thoroughlv organized sv>-

. ~*

^.

^^

~

tern of servitude that perhaps the world has ever known, upheld

by law. approved by religious teachers, and sustained and de

fended to the last extremity by a noble, a humane and a gentle

race of men.

It could uoc be otherwise than that this strangc^e condition was a powerful factor in forming the character and in moulding

the traits of the people of the South. It could not be otherwise

than that a people, living under different conditions from all

other people, should sl'ow the effect of their unique environ

ment and be different from other people. And so they were.

1 canrot hope to unfold before you the differences from other

people which marked the South, but that there was a difference,

whatever may have caused it. was felt by friend and foe alike.

The term "South" meant a people apart.

This tremendous force, slaverv. was all the more etfec-

6
live. too. by reason of the isolation it produced. For truly the South was isolated -isolated in the matter of things material, and isolated in its habits of thought. The stupendous anachron ism of slavery, like a rock bound coast, beat back the tide of immigration. ( >n the side of intellectual development, the necessity \ve were under a necessity which grew apace as time rolled on to defend our peculiar institution against the opinion, the sentiment and the conscience of Christendom, cut us off from the great world of thought and forced us into a little Republic of letters of our own a Republic full of fight, aggressive, even fierce, and in its way strong.
In this great, aye. and solemn isolation, there was a wonder ful meeting of extremes, such as the world had not known and could not know befoie. In it there existed a slavery which, so far as legal sanction was concerned, was as absolute as any far younger time and any far different land had ever known. Hut it was shone upon by the light of this as yet latest century of time. Here was a dominant race absolute masters of another race. Hut on this dominant race were the influences of the most enli*gTM htened of the ai^res. Thus the extremes had met and one of the results was that slavery that is to say, the possession of unrestrained pt ower over one's fellow-man,- which amongo barbarons people tends to brutality, there in the Old South, shone on bv the spi irit of the a<*.r>re, furnished the rare vq^-arden in which grew self-control, generosity, genuine kindness for the weak, mercy, and many other ennobling traits. And so, too, under this remarkable juxtaposition of the ancient estate of slavery and the softening inlluences of the latest of the centuries, there lived a ruling people whose characteristics were all its own: and on this Old South there were lights and shadows which rested on no other land under the vault of heaven.
If I had the ability and the equipment as T have not for the historical, sociological and philosophical study of the other forces, political, social, religious, racial, educational, cli matic, which made the representative people of the South what they were, this would not be an occasion for the undertaking.

Let us only consider and that necessarily only very partially " what they were, what characteristics they presented, which seemed to segregate them from other peoples, even those of their own land. As in considering the forces which formed them into what they were, I have dealt only on the greatest, slavery, so necessarily only a few can 1 mention of their traits.
Perhaps the one word which has been oftenest used to indi cate that there was something in the representative Southerner in his sentiments, his bearing1, his conduct characteristic of him, is chivalry. It was in use by friend and foe alike. In the mouth of some, it might be a boast; on the lips of many, h was apt to be a sneer. An impartial critic ought to find in it its true significance. Doubtless there passed under this name whereof to boast and also under the same name whereat to sneer. There was the false and there was the true. There was a "chivalry"' which manifested itself in bravado and turbulence. A "chivalry"' which combined the absurd and the tragic, grotesque punctilio with the shedding of blood. Anything stamped with the name of "chivalry" would receive the sneers of some, but here was a brand of chivalry worthy the execrations of all. Rut by the side of this noxious weed grew a noble plant, a true tlower of chivalry. If one cannot exactly describe it, one can tell what it was not. It was not sordid. It was not mean. It was not low. It was not commercial. If one cannot present a well-defined, clean-ciu image of it, one can at least name some of its qualities and its ways. It was high-minded. It was generous. It scorn ed unfairness. Like King' Arthur and his greatest knight, it "forebore its own advantage."' To it there was "no heaven so high as faith." It lived in an atmosphere other than that of the mart. It esteemed many things better than wealth. To it stainless honor was a priceless jewel. True deference to woman was its sacred duty and its graceful ornament. Such as it was, it was not a mere profession, but it was a genuine senti ment, a rule of conduct and a living force. Let those of us who cherish the memory of the South not permit ourselves to be laughed out of the use of this goodly word, when we wish to

8

speak tenderly hut truthfully of the vanished past, for it ex

pressed a living reality, helated perhaps in a prosaic age. but

worthy of all honor.

Another feature in this mental and moral landscape we look

back upon was something", which on another occasion I have

spoken of as "that spirit, that morality, that habit of thought and

of feeling, whatever it may be called, which will not make mer

chandise of principles: which will not worship success for its

own sake: which raises love, friendship, honor, faith to the realm

of sacred things in a word, which finds its Rome, its city of the

soul, in the world of sentiment rather than in the world of ma

terialism ."

1 cannot undertake to dwell on other features of this land

resting ^

in

the

shadow.

I

can

onlv

touch

lightly

~



here

and

there.

1 can sj^eak only a passing word as to how the rural life of its

representative people fostered reflection, contemplation, revery.

JIow it was the land of independent thinkers and romantic

dreamers thinkers and dreamers alike without ambition, and

clothing their reflections and their dreams in no literature. How

the voice of nature was stronger and the rule of conventionalities

weaker than with us. How fashion was neither enshrined nor

enthroned. How within the limits of essential principles there

was variety of conduct. How the world was not in a whirl.

3low there was not the rush and feverishness of competition in

all things. JIow it was the home of peace and repose, and romance's own native land.

Alas! alas! vain is my effort to unroll before you a chart

of that perished time, of that vanished realm. My effort is to

point out the differences between the South and other people. 1

feel them, 1 know them, 1 confidently proclaim their reality, l.ut

how difficult they are to seize: how ghostlike they elude our

grasp and glide into the shadow! They live not so much in sub

stance as in spirit. They are not so much revealed to the

senses and capable of description in language as they are dis

cerned by the spirit.

1 imagine to myself some visible spirit of the air commis-

sioned by the Great Ruler to direct his flight over all lands and

inspect them from his aerial path, as he wings his way over that

Old South. His master has not sent forth this minister unfitted

for his great and solemn mission. Wherefore this trusted ser

vant of his experiences not the limitations, which time and dis

tance impose on our clogged human senses: and so the little

cities, scattered here and there, lie before him, and sequestered

:

homes all over the land emerge into his view. Sound, too. comes

I

to him. unimpaired by space or obstacle. It brings to his per-

j

ceptions no hum of the market place, no noise of fierce com

petitions, no clatter of the mad race after riches. This minister.

;

too, to do his heaven-appointed task, is endowed with such sus

ceptibility and receptivity, that he not only embraces all sub

jects of sight and hearing, but the thoughts and feelings, the

sentiments and aspirations the soul and spirit life of peoples

qualify for him the air which uplifts his mighty pinions and

affect his spirit nature, as the mingled fagrance of many flowers

floats on the breath of the summer night to our own delighted

senses. And so the strong wings seem to become more buoyant

in his flight over this ()ld South, into whose atmosphere have

floated the emanations of soul and spirit of a goodly people. I

seem to see this wonderful inspector of realms at the moment he

enters the air piled above that old land, and to note his mani

festations of solemn surprise. I seem to hear him sav: This

land that lies down there is not like any other beheld in all my

course. \Yhen 1 return to those high courts that sent me

forth. 1 must report that a strange shadow overspreads it: that a

wondrous light mingles with the shadow. The shadow itself

seems very dark, but there is some marvelous quality in the

light, so that the mingling is unlike anything else beheld in all

mv flight over land and sea. It is not blackness, neither is n

the light of perfect day. It is not gloom, neither is it

the brightness of joy. A sort of twilight rests upon the land.

The overhanging air, too, has qualities all its own and the

j

boundaries of this land stand out bold and stern, marking it

4

off from all else of earth. And this my report will be the latest

IO

on this sequestered land: for my successor in this high office at

his coming, though it be delayed but a little while, will find this

land not here but vanished.

Thus in many ways, even to the calling to my assistance

the spirits of the air. I try to body forth some image of the Old

South. I fear I have succeeded in nothing except in showing

that I cherish its memory blindly as well as fondlyi Rut 1 am

not blind. 1 have spoken of it as a land under a great shadow.

I know it held its sordid, its vicious, its ignorant, its brutal. I

know that to the vicious and the brutal slavery gave opportuni

ties for hideous deeds, which elsewhere could not have happened.

And yet I have treated this ( )ld South only in reference to such

noble characteristics as true honor, true chivalry, and elevated

traits of character. And so I think it ought to be regarded in

any general treatment of the subject. To treat the Old South

in detail is out of the question on an occasion like this: and to

treat of any subject in a general way, one must present its most

salient characteristics. J believe I have presented the ()ld South,

so far as I have presented it at all. as it stands in the memory

<f its living assessors, and as it should live in song and story.

Hut it is gone! The Island of Atlantis has not more effec-

tuallv disappeared beneath the billows of the Atlantic. The

physical forces which held that mythical island above the waves

were withdrawn and it sank. The political and social forces,

which created the ( )ld South, are spent, and it has disappeared.

The whole landscape has changed. The forces and the resultants

are rone forever.

JUit why, it may well be asked, do I linger so long speaking

of old ideas and the ( )ld South, when my theme is the Xcw?

T can fancy the dismay of my hearers at the apprehension that

these remarks may run on indefinitely, if all this talk about the

Old is only introductory of my real theme, the Xew. I hasten to

allay all anxiety on this point. The subject assigned me is in

effect, the "Xew South." I can only treat that subject as it

presents itself to my mind. I could not deal with the subject

bv

telling *

YOU
*

what

the

Xew

South

is;

fur

to

mv f

vision

no

Xew

South is revealed.

II

The toast must needs address itself to m\ mind as if this

hospitable society had said to me: Tell us whether you think

there is a Xe\v South., and if there is. give us your views about

it. To this my thought and mv convictions answer: There is

f

VT*



no Xew South. l>ut T could not content myself or maintain an

attitude of deference to you by a mere curt anil bald statement

to that effect. ] must justify it. if I can, by some reason. I

have tried to do so by showing- what the "Old South" was. If

I have half succeeded in this. I have, in the doing it. demon

strated that there is not. and there cannot be. a "Xew South."

For "South" in this connnection indicated a peculiar civilization,

a condition. In that sense, there could not be any South but

that ()ld South. It was the resultant of certain forces. It could

not exist after those forces ceased any more than the bark will

sail on when the wind subsides. The firmly rooted land, it is

true, bears the same relation as of yore to the points of the

compass, but it is no longer the "South." There are "new

ideas" in this land thus situated, but they are not ideas of a

"South;" they are simply the ideas of a universal and uniform

civilization. There are "new departures," but they indicate

nothing except that we have taken our place in the uniformed

ranks of the Avorld generally.

As expressive of anything existing today the word "South"

is meaningless, except in its primary signification of certain rela

tions to the pole and the equator. Our "new ideas" are the

assimilation of our ideas to those of the civilized world ^^^ener-

allv. Our "new departures" consist only in our doino- like the



jL

_.

*^

rest of the world. It all means no more than this: \Ve have

"joined the procession." As it marches by there is nothing to

distinguish us from the ranks generally. \Ye are no more

"South" in the sense of that word, used to describe a civiliza

tion, than we are Xorth. \Ye are following the fashion as far as

we can, whatever it may be. We are striving to be as much

like other people as we possibly can, and the farther we fall

short in that endeavor the more awkward we feel. \Ye have lost

all thought of being different from other peoples.

12

Our newness of ideas and of departures consists wholly in

conforming to the ideas of the rest of the world and doing- just

as they do, and to speak of our new ideas and new departures

would be to take this uniform world as a theme. And so, from

my standpoint, unless one is going to enter upon the discussion

of the world's pi rog*^ress <g^ enerally- in ideas and achievements, he can sav nothing on the toast, "Xew Ideas" and "Xew De

partures" in the South, except that we are like the rest of the

world. The "South" has not wholly ceased to exist. There are

some fragments of it yet. l>ut when you find them they are

ld the (>ld South. Whatever there is of new is not the

"South." hut the world. What there is of "South" is fast dis

appearing as time rolls on. just as the geographical South is left

behind one who turns his back upon the Xorth Pole and

inarches steadily to the equator.

There may seem to be a tone of regret running through

what I sa*v.

If

there

is.

it

is

the

regret <'

that

one

feels

when

the

idle t'ow of the river is set to work to turn the wheels of a factory,

or when the stately monarchs of the forest must be laid low

that some railway may have its right-of-way.

So, all hail the Xew! It is colorless, but strong. It is uni

form, but it is not out of place in the ages. It is hard, but it is

practical. Whatever it is, of good or of evil, it is not "South."

And farewell the Old! the land where the ancient shadow

and the new light commingled, making a twilight land: the land

with an atmosphere all its own: the land with the rock-bound

coast: the land of impassable frontiers the isolated, the lonely

and the friendless!

All haii! thou new! We receive thee as our fate and

fortune.

Farewell thou old! Thee, thee we cherish in pathetic

memory.

Hail and farewell. She r.t rale !

TRUE LOVERS.

gMfc*> f*tef, ^EJ i

Jf'\

REMARKS MADE BY JOSEPH B. GUMMING,
INTRODUCING
Gen. Matthew Calbraith Butler,
ORATOR OF THE DAY,
ON THE OCCASION OF

>*v

THE AUGUSTA CEMETERY,

Memorial Day,

1895.

\i-1 * -& L - ', ~ t -v- ;

TRUE LOVERS.

REMARKS MADE BY JOSEPH B. GUMMING,

INTRODUCING
Gen. Matthew Calbraith Butler,

ORATOR OF THE DAY.

ON THE OCCASION OF

Decorating

dies' Graves

AT THE AUGUSTA CEMETERY,
Memorial Day,

1895.

rHERE in all the world is presented such a scene as this ? When in all time shall we look for such an occasion ? Some with broader knowl-
ledge or richer memories may find a ready answer to this inquiry. My own limited vision discovers nothing like it elsewhere than in this Southern land, or in any other time than in these years which have followed the great War between the States. It is true that in a few weeks our brethren of the North, when their loitering spring-time shall have reached the stage where ours is today, when for them then as for us now
"Spring rolls in her sea green surf In flowery foaming waves,"
will assemble in like places and for like purposes; and some on-looker with vision only, but without reflection or memory, may deem the occasions altogether similar. But indeed, indeed how wide apart! The difference between victory and defeat. The difference between success and failure. The difference between a cause that is won and a cause that was lost. The difference between the swelling strains of triumph and the minor chords of a requiem.
How common in all times and in all countries has it been, by anniversaries and celebrations, to keep alive the memory of national triumph. But when before us has a people given its work of hand and heart to per petuate the story of its conquest ? When did French men weave garlands and floral wreaths for the anniver sary of Waterloo, though coming when the gorgeous month of June carpets their fair land with flowers ? When did Prussia ever establish celebrations in the rich autumnal harvest time in memory of Jena ? When did the Conscript Fathers decree u a Roman

Holiday1 ' for the fatal day of Cannae? Nowhere,

methinks, save in our land, and never save in our time

has a people busied itself to preserve the memory of its

defeat. Why is this ? Permit me to answer in part in

language which I used niore than twenty years ago:

"Strange spectacle, and yet not strange! We were

conquered, but our cause was just. We were fallen,

but not dishonored. Our efforts had failed, but they

had made the world ring with our praises. We had

the irreparable and the irrecoverable to lament: to

blush for, nothing."

But this answer, considered sufficient then, has

ceased to satisfy. The reasons then given were nega

tive in their nature sufficient, perhaps, to explain

why for a season we were not ashamed to keep alive

the memory of our failure, but inadequate to account

for the continued survival of an active living spirit,

which at the end of thirtv long years still refuses to die.

J

<3 J

I think I find the true reaso" in my own heart, and

I believe I would seek it successfully in yours. Indeed,

strange as the declaration may sound to some, that

great war was fought on the part of the South more on

a sentiment than any other war in all history. We

went to war not for conquest, not for glory, not to

escape oppression. But a proud and high-spirited peo

ple flew to arms to defend what they considered their

sacred right, from high-handed and presumptuous

interference, albeit the right itself was little better

than an abstraction. Nothing sordid mingled with

our motives. No vulgar ambition stained our high

resolve. No selfishness tainted our lofty aspirations.

We embraced the cause in the spirit of lovers. True

lovers all were we and wj^at true lover ever loved less

because the grave had closed over the dear and radiant

form?

And so we we at least, who as men and women inhaled the true spirit of that momentous time come together on these occasions not only with the fresh new flowers in our hands, but with the old memories in our thoughts and the old, but ever fresh, lover spirit in our hearts, and seek to make these occasions not unworthy of the cause we loved unselfishly and of these its sleeping defenders.
In one respect at least how fittingly have we ordered this occasion. The orator of the day, whom I shall have the honor to introduce to you, is most fitly chosen. Fitly chosen for his ancestry's sake those Ormonds and Butlers who three centuries ago in the Emerald Isle fought in knightly fashion for their native land a .race of gentlemen, who through three genera tions have been found sword in hand, ready to strike a blow aye and striking it right doughtily for this their country, in the Revolution, in 1812, in Indian wars, in Mexico, and r latest of all, in that vast conflict which shook all the land and resounded through all its borders. Well, too, have we chosen on his own merits the bold rider, the dashing sabreur, the gallant lead er, the wise and able commander the soldier whose twenty-eighth year found him, in right of his own brave deeds and honorable wounds, a Major-General of cavalry in the glorious army of Lee. Thrice well chosen as the incarnation of those sentiments and prin ciples, which made the old South what it was and the war it waged an undying glory. Him, gallant soldier, distinguished statesman, representative and type of the best Southern manhood, I now present to you Gen eral Matthew Calbraith Butler.

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^ORATOR OF THE DAY, -". -r '

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AUGUSTA. GA.

BANISHED AND RECALLED.
REMARKS
JOSEPH B. GUMMING,
-INTRODUCING-
HON. EMORY SPEER
ORATOR OF THE DAY,
July 4, 1897.
AUGUSTA. GA. Chrpniclc J>b Piinting Co.
1897.

BANISHED AND RECALLED.
No American citizen, doing anything he may be called on to do in celebrating this day, ought to need any other inspiration than the day itself and its inseparable and undying memories. Surely the small but very gratifying and highly honorable part I have in the program ought to find all its materials near at hand. Nevertheless, in somewhat the spirit with which the devout Christian turns naturally to his Bible in all the interesting occa sions of life, to find there a voice for his feelings, I am apt to have recourse to another immortal volume to arouse my slow brain or to speed my halting speech. So, from the moment I learned I was to be something more than a mere listener on this most interesting occasion, a line of surpassing beauty from Shakespeare has been making music in my thoughts.
You all recall the "induction" to the Taming of the Shrew-- how the prince, returning from the chase, finds a poor, drunken vagabond at his gate in besotted sleep. He gives his attendants directions to bear him gently into the palace without disturbing his heavy slumber; to convey him to the most luxurious apart ment ; to lay him in the most voluptuous bed and to draw its silk en curtains about him. He charges them to let his waking senses be greeted by the softest lights, the most delicious perfumes and the most enchanting music. He is to be surrounded in the hour of returning consciousness by obsequious courtiers, whose duty it shall be to persuade him that this fair environment is only his due; that he is indeed a prince. He is to be convinced that for many years he has been a victim of insane delusions, imagining i imself the poor drunken tinker, Christopher Sly; but that this is the hour of returning reason; that Christopher Sly was a dream and the prince is the reality.
So, as he awakes, the courtiers, "with low7 submissive rever ence," attest their joy that their lord's reason has come back from its wanderings in the realm of degrading delusions. "Wilt thou have music?" asks one.

"Hark! Apollo plays, And twenty caged nightingales do sing." "Say thou wilt walk, we will bestrew7 the ground; Or wilt thou ride, thy horses shall be trapped, Their harness studded all with gold and pearl. Dost thou love hawking? thou hast hawks will soar Above the morning lark; or wilt thou hunt? Thy hounds shall make the welkin answer them And fetch shrill echoes from the hollow earth."
And the princely contriver of the plot, finding the poor awak ening tinker amazed and dazed by this wonderful transformation and halting between bewilderment and belief, himself adjures him in the sweet line I spoke of as singing in my brain:
"Call home thy ancient thoughts from banishment."
The prince appeals to him:
"Bethink thee of thy birth, Call home thy ancient thoughts from banishment:"
That is what we are doing this day. We bethink us of our birth'right and call home our ancient thoughts from banishment. For there was a time, so long ago that a generation has been born meanwhile and attained middle age with no knowledge of it--a time, however, which lives in the memory of us elders-- when this was wroiit to be a day of days, a day of oratory and eloquence, a festal day, a day of civic pageant and military pomp and circumstance.
Since then more than a third of a century has intervened, dur ing which the Declaration of Independence and all other voices, once so audible on this day, have been unheard in this Southern land. In the first years of this long silence, the tremendous exi gencies of the passing hour engrossed our every thought and taxed our ever}- faculty. Xext came a period of stupid and humil iating misgovernment, well fitted to estrange us from the once cherished traditions of the common countrv. Then followed the

struggle--which still persists, forsooth--against the hard con ditions of these latter days--a struggle which has left little time or opportunity or heart for aught but the material side of life.
Whether I attribute it to its proper causes or not, the fact itself exists that for more than a generation the Fourth of July, its memories and observances were exiled from this Southern land. We now "call home our ancient thoughts from banishment," and we intend to enjoy the delights of the palace which our own fathers builded.
In the furtherance of this high purpose, our first choice in the matter of the chief function of the day fell upon the eminent citi" zen--jurist, scholar and orator--whom I shall have the honor to introduce to you. He graciously consented to make his large contribution to this revival and thus give auspicious beginning to this new dep arture.
I would be* d oing a superfluous thing to spend words in making him known to you and be wronging you by further deferring the pleasure you will have in hearing him. Therefore, without adding to the delay I have already made and for which I crave pardon, I present to you the Honorable Emory Speer^ orator of the day.

THE GEORGIA COLONEL.
RESPONSE OF
MR. JOSEPH B. GUMMING
TO THE TOAST
"GEORGIA,"
AT THE
Banquet of the Sons of the Revolution,
AT SAVANNAH, FEBRUARY 7, 1898.
AUGUSTA, GA. The Chronicle Printing Company.

"THE GEORGIA COLONEL.

(Reprint from the Atlanta Journal of March 1S9S. )

Major Joseph B. dimming, of Augusta, one of the State's

4

lending la\vyers and most polished orators, at the recent banquet

j

of the Sons of the Revolution in Savannah, responded to the

to.st "Georgia."

His treatment of the subject was decidedly unique and clever.

He spoke as follows:

Dr. Holmes, in The Autocrat, speaks of a certain pert young

man, who sat at that immortal breakfast table, named John. The

humorist takes occasion, in discussing this youngster, to

advance the proposition that every individual is in reality a

trinity--in the particular instance under review by the writer the

trinity includes three Johns, viz. : the John known to his Maker,

the ideal John that lives in John's conception of 'himself, and

John as he appears to his fellowmen. The two ideal Johns are

apt to be different from each other and are sure to be different

from the real John, known to his Maker.

It seems to me that Georgia is a similar trinity . \Vhen I speak

of Georgia I do not mean a certain territory with its geographical.

meteorological and physical characteristics generally, but a peo

ple, a social and political aggregation . Of this trinity, of course.

the Georgia which really exists is known to its Maker, and a5

that Georgia is not my theme. I shall only say of it. that in view

of the awful certainty aiul completeness of that knowledge, we

. should be humbly grateful that our Maker is long suffering and

plenteous in mercy. Neither is my theme that member of the

trinity, whic'h is the Georgia that appears to our fellowmen. The

little I shall have to say will relate to the Georgia--the socio

political entity passing under that name--which we picture to

our own thoughts.

Vou all recall the highly disappointing", not to say dishonest, conduct of Balaam. You remember that he was hired by Balak to curse the children of Israel and furnished with quite a remark able donkey to ride to certain high places for that purpose; but P>alak had this just complaint to make of him: "I took thee to curse them, and behold thou hast blessed them altogether."
Now, I am afraid my performance on this occasion will be in a mild degree somewhat after the manner of Balaam's--with a difference. Whereas, presumably I was brought to this high place to praise, behold I shall censure, not "altogether," but somewhat. I shall not actually malign Georgia, but really I can not gush over her. I cannot for the life of me, be altogether insensible to some of her weaknesses, or refrain from discussing them when it is in order to speak of her at all. She has plenty and to spare of eulogists. A critic now and then will be in place, especially if, like myself, he is imbued with a filial spirit; for 1 am a Georgian as my ancestors have been for three generations.
For some inscrutable reason, it is the habit of many Georgians to speak of Georgia as if she possessed some peculiar and signal superiority and precedence over other communities composed from like elements. One of the earliest and mildest manifesta tions of this spirit is the addition of another syllable to the State's name. This is effected by dividing the first syllable into two, by which process we get Ge-orgia. But this is the simplest and least complex form of the dementia, is entirely 'harmless and need not receive further notice.
Again, how many of us instead of saying simply "Georgia," when there is occasion to speak of the State otherwise than merely colloquially, must need fill our mouths with "grand old Georgia." Wherefore grand 0 What is her peculiar grandeur which excuses such vaporing? And as for "old," if there is any reason for bragging of age, let us remember, especially on this occasion, that Georgia--Ge-orgia, if you choose--is the young est of the original thirteen. Again, among many enthusiasts it is impossible to speak of this fairly respectable commomvealth by any other appellation than the "Empire State of the South." Why "empire 7" What is there imperial about her? Whence cometh the warrant for such arrogance? By what larger possession of those

things which make empires does she presume to rate relatively

as provinces any one of her sisters, that on the north or the south,

the east or the west touch the hem of her imperial garments?

The Carolinas, with their wide territory, their fertile fields-and

their rivers, their mountains and their ocean-washed shores--

and that which makes the glory of empires, their illustrious his

tory in peace and Avar; Tennessee, the rich and the bountiful,

smiling like a garden, stretching as far east and Avest as Georgia

.,

does north and south, traArersed by great rivers and bounded by

greater, contributing, too, her full quota of illustrious men to

^

the common country's history; Alabama, born of Georgia, taken

t

out of Georgia's side, her people our people, her territory and

her population hardly less than ours; her soil, her mines, her

rivers, her climate equal to ours, her past as honorable and her

future as promising: and Florida, the wonderful peninsula, rest

ing on her couch of coral, bathed by two seas, fanned by the

breezes of Gulf and Ocean, with the opulence of the sub-tropics

and the beauty and surprises of dreamland--why are these prov-

!

inces Avhile Georgia an empire is?

j

Why, if Georgia is an empire, be these not empires also? I

can go only a part of the journey with him, who discOA*ers some

r

peculiar excellence in Georgia, making her better than her sis

ters. When she is called an empire, I echo the phrase. Yes, as

I stated in an address years ago: "In extent an empire. A

heaven-favored land. In natural advantages, of endless A-arietv.

%^

*

V

In potentialities for the future, of boundless promise. One can

within her borders breathe the bracing atmosphere of the moun-

<-

tains, and yet again, still within her boundaries, be fanned by the

f

soft airs coming up from the not distant tropics. Great river*

traArerse her Avide territory and the boundless ocean receives them

at her doors. Her fertile plains AvaA*e with bountiful han-ests.

Her hills are cOA-ered Avith priceless timber. The sides of her

,

mountains scarcely conceal the rich mines they hold/' All this

is true. But is it not true also of her neighbors on the right hand

and on the left, aboA*e and below? If Ave speak of her distin

guished men, her statesmen, her soldiers. Yes, she has and has

had them and it is her right to be proud. But any more so than

I

any other of that band of sisters, Avho haA*e shared with her the

same good and evil fortune from the beginning? So, before indul ging in bragging in any key, let us take thought and consider whether we have any call to do so. Let us see whether there is not a more pressing need for reformers than for trumpeters. Let us, instead of boasting, try to come nearer a worthy ideal. Let our public men lay aside somewhat of pure demagogy and become in some degree at least brave leaders of public opinion rather than the subservient followers of popular movements, which they know to be wrong and the mere madness of the passing hour. Let our lawyers purge their ranks of shysters, barrators and "bailiffers." Let our farmers become more thrifty. Let our merchants be more enterprising. Let our newspaper men learn to prefer trut'h to sensation. Let our railroad men be--well, better than they are. Let our doctors operate less often for appendicitis. Let our women be--just what they are, God bless them!--and we shall have attained mucli nearer a proper crowing perch than we are now roosting upon.
I know that in pursuing this line of talk I am not living up to the traditions of such occassions. To respond to a toast at such times is generally to eulogize its subject. I wish I could do so witii a clear conscience, I am so sensible--though most cer tainly not in any pharisaical spirit--of the foibles and weaknesses embraced in the limits of the politico-social entity we call Geor-' gia, that I find it impossible to soar in its behalf into the realm of eulogy. If one must speak about Georgia, I would have him, even in the festive atmosphere of a banquet, improve the occa sion, not exactly to preach a sermon, but to protest gravely, more in sorrow than in anger, a gainst some of the follies and v.-orse, which pass unchallenged, and thus, rather than by mis placed eulogy, show his love for Georgia. Just think of the good this noble society could do in one or two centuries of its life, by having a sermon preached at each annual reunion from the text "Georgia"--by once a year making a determined onslaught on some derision-provoking foible or some insolent evil now tol erated in our midst.
I venture with your permission to make a beginning this evening in this missionary work. I take as my text for a short

discourse the Georgia Colonel. I do not claim that in doing this I am assailing the greatest evil that raises its head in Georgia,

but I do say that it is the one which afflicts a proud and sensitive

Georgian most. We can stand abuse, we can endure poverty, we

can survive oppression, we can tolerate wickedness of various

grades and species. But to be laughed at, to be the object of ridi

cule, to be the subject of perennial derision, to have a perpetual

horse laugh, maintained at our expense, roaring in our ears--

this is an evil, the removal of which is well worth the effort of

the Sons of the Revolution, or anybody else's sons. Whence

comes this particular affliction? That is the first division of TMy

7

discourse. What is the remedy? That is the second division.

I am unable to find a satisfactory answer to my first question.

)

I am sorely puzzled. It is to me a most inscrutable pschyco-

social problem. I rack my brain in vain for an explanation oi

the mad passion of our people to call and be called--colonel. It is

a form of mild dementia, sinking to the grade of imbecility and

idiocy, which baffles explanation. If the fact did not surely live

)

before our eyes, we should not be able to believe that some

thousands of the white male citizens of Georgia, who know

nothing of the manual of arms, who cannot even keep step, who

never entertainted for a moment the idea of following a military

career, delight in being called--colonel.

Xay, more; the withholding of this title from any public or

quasi public man, legislator, lawyer, tax collector, mayor, coun

cilman, coroner--indeed any man who stands out ever so little

from the mass of the little community in which he lives--is looked

upon in many parts of the State of Georgia, as nothing less than

a slight. Attend any State court, at least outside of the cities, and

in what-an army of colonels you find yourself. Every lawyer, from

the youngest to the oldest, has left his regiment somewhere--

the Lord only knows where--to attend the court. Read in our

papers of any incident, however pacific and involving however

little occasion for the service cf the military arm, and you will

find that all the actors in it are--colonels. The judge on the

bench, the editor in his sanctum contribute their aid to keep

'!

this strange folly going.

fi

The future painstaking historian will be greatly perplexed

and probably misled, when he conies to deal with

this period in his "History of the People of Georgia." Like every conscientious and judicious writer of history, he will, to the full est extent, consult contemporaneous documents and the current every day literature of the people he is dscribing. How very reasonable it will be in him to write such passages as this:
"At that period there was for more than a generation an epoch of unrest and anxiety, the causes of which are very difficult to discover at this day by the most diligent research. But for some reason the people of Georgia lived throughout this period under martial law. All the usual civil functions were performed by military officers. Indeed, civilians seem for many years not to have been eligible to office. From these data an estimate may be made by the careful and judicious historian of the vast mili tary establishment of this people at that period and also of the density of the population necessary to sustain such an establish ment. For a careful consideration of contemporary documents will show, that apparently even military officers were not eligible to civil office until they had attained the rank of colonel. As it is well known that in the military organization of that age a colonel was the leader of 1,000 men, and as there were not less than 5,000 colonels, we can safely conclude that the standing army of the state was 5,000,000--which, of course, implies a cor responding population."
So things will appear--and naturally, too,--to our judicious historian. But we, who live in the time of this remarkable folly, know that if the whole normal arms-bearing population were distributed equally among the colonels, each would have a fol lowing of about five men. Falstaff was ashamed to march through Coventry with his scarecrow company, but that was a martial host which assembled under his banner, compared with the muster of each of our Georgia colonels.
If it were possible to be serious in dealing with this unspeak ably ridiculous folly, I would note the injustice which is done the officers of our organized militia by this indiscriminate be stowal of the title of colonel. To the officers of our organized State guard must we look for the preservation of the military spirit so essential to the safety of the state, and it is not fair to them to have to share the titles, which are legally their due, with

a lot of usurpers. Unfair, too, if indeed the ludicrous feature of

the thing- did not swallow up every other aspect of it, to the vet

eran soldier, whose title of captain, for instance, won by service

and wounds and blood, is outranked on every side by wliipper-

snapper lawyer colonels .

We have many thing's to deplore in Georgia. Frequent homi

cides, the cowardly practice of the concealed but ever alert pistol,

the increasing- lynchings. All these are bad, very bad.. They deter

immigration and check our growth . But these tragedies are more

endurable than this roaring- farce. Oh. that resounding horse

laug-h! !Oh, that ringing shout of derision that echoes throughout

I

the iand at the expense of the Georgia colonels! Cannot something

be done? Can we not have a constitutional amendment on the sub

ject 7 Will not the legislature at least intervene with some meas

ure of relief? May not at least an act be passed for the benefit of

the small oppressed minority who do not want to be called

colonel, making- it justifiable homicide to kill a man who fixes

that title on an unoffending1 citizen in the peace of the State? If

our public authorities will do nothing, will not the Sons of the

Revolution, the sons of sires who freed the country from a les

ser burden, come to the rescue now?

I

I

ADDRESS OF MAJOR JOSEPH B. CUMMIXG

ON OCCASION OF CELEBRATION OP MUNICIPAL CENTENNIAL OF
THE CITY OF AUGUSTA.
One hundred years ! A century ! How great ! How small! What a mere span compared with the life of the human race, even when measured by the Mosaic account which attributes only six thousand years to man's presence on this planet ! What a mere needle's point beside these eons, which in the belief of the learned of this age have elapsed in the building of the everlasting hills, in fixing the shores of old ocean, in hollowing the river's rock-bound beds ! Oh, the littleness of a hundred years, measured by the great facts of nature, which represent time too long for our minds to grasp or our thoughts to hold ! Even in our habits of thought, we belittle a century soon after it has drifted back into the boundless past. We are apt, for instance, to think of William the Conqueror and Richard the Lion Hearted as practically contemporaries; yet a century and more rolled between them. Coming down nearly to our own times, we are prone, of course in a careless way, to regard our original thirteen states as belonging to the same period. Yet between the oldest and the youngest there was a stretch of one hundred and twenty-five years. How little is a century ! And yet how great ! A single one of many solemn facts attests its greatness. In its course it removes from beneath the sun and the stars, from under the bending sky, from city and from country, from hill and field, from the banks of rivers and from the riverless prairies, from the ocean's shores and from the ocean's waves--from every habitation and haunt of man, it re moves, by the time it has run its course, every mortal whom it found at its beginning. If nothing else could be said of the great ness of a century than that it sweeps away before its close every mortal it found at its opening, we would sa\- great and awful is a century of time !
While any subject might be selected for my discourse without violating a'iy express condition of my commission to speak to you on this. C< ntennial occasion, I feel, nevertheless, that there is an implied un iertaking on my part to ii^ake Augusta my theme.
When I i pproacli it, I find myself perplexed in deciding how to .-leal with it Shall I transport myself, in imagination and by the

aid of records, to that point in Augusta's history, the centennial of which we are here to celebrate, and I live for a time only in it ? Shall I. by the aid of traditions and of contemporaneous documents, and confining myself to the one point of view, present a sketch of the place and its people as they were then ? This were eas}r and safe but meagre. Or shall I endeavor to lead you down the path of a century through all the story ? This were long and tedious. In deed, the subject is one which I find difficult and tiresome, for it holds nothing of thrilling, soul-stirring interest.
I trust that none of my hearers have come here expecting any thing like a consecutive and detailed historical sketch of Augusta. To any such I must say at the outset that their expectations will not be fulfilled. I shall not say that they will be disappointed, for nothing, me thinks, could be more interesting, even to the degree of dreariness, than a minute recital of the uneventful histor3T of a small town during the course of a hundred j-ears. Such is the drama of human life, that in no year of the hundred have there not been episodes and experiences of more absorbing interest to the actors therein than the history of wars or famine or pestilence or any of the tragedies in the lives of States. But their interest lived and died with the actors in them, the memory of them has perished, and, even if it could be revived, it would invoke no interest from the living of today, absorbed, as they are, by the concerns of the all exacting present. Certainty, too, there have lived in Augusta in the century, the close of which we are now celebrating, citizens in all walks of life, in all its avocations, of peace and of war, of whom any city may be proud. But if I should undertake to speak of them, what could I do in the compass of this occasion but present to you a catalogue of names ? Homer could make a catalogue inter esting and even poetic, as when, in the close of the second book of the Iliad, he gives a list of the ships that sailed from Greece and her islands and the men they carried to the siege of Troy, and called the long roll of the defenders of that devoted city. But a less than Homer should not undertake such a feat.
The way, in part at least, in which I shall endeavor to comply with the expectations of the occasion, will be to present to you pic tures of Augusta at various periods of her history, and, as if a hundred years were not field enough, I will go back to her very r:r:. ; n one hundred and sixty-three years ago.

The first thing to do for the infant then just beginning to live was to name it, and the loyal Oglethorpe gave her the name of the Prin cess Augusta. Augusta, unlike some of her neighbors, has not been moved to change her name bestowed b\- her father in her infanc3TAtlanta, for instance, commenced life as "Marthasville." Of course she could not be expected to tolerate long so plain a name as that, sure to be corrupted into " Marthysville." Its rusticity could not comport with the fine airs and metropolitan ways she was soon taking on. She must have a name suggestive of greatness, vastness, expansion as wide as ocean or at an3* rate as far as to the shores of ocean. Think of the great and brilliant '' Gate City 3) covering all her glory with the name of * 'Marthysville !'' But Augusta, whether because her name had been chosen more wisely at the first or because she is proverbably. conservative and slow, has been satisfied to retain the name she received from her sponsors in baptism.
Let us take a glimpse of this infant in her cradle. The striking feature of the little Augusta was then, as it is now and ever will be while waters seek the sea, the noble river which bathes her northern limits. Not only was it and is it and ever will be it, her great fea ture, but it was her cause. Because a water highway could connect her with Savannah and thence with the mother country and the world, Augusta came into existence. How beautiful was her tutelary river then ! The axe had not denuded its banks. The plowshare had not reduced its hillsides to red powder to stain forever its then crystal waters. The willow and the reed dipped into its stream on either bank, lining with emerald both sides of an unpolluting conduit for its waters. Xoble forests came down to its very edge and spread their shade far over its bed. Between such banks and in such shadow flowed a vast volume of water, clear and cold as the springs from which they took their source. Over rapids the beautiful river came with a roar, or through long stretches it flowed in impressive silence. But ever, in roar or in silence, the same clear limpid water, a suggestion of which is given us dwellers in this age sometimes in a long autumnal drought, but the perfect beauty of which is lost forever. In this glorious stream abounded such fish as rejoice in clear waters. The fresh water mussel, to which mud is death, was found in myriads, furnishing food for man, and a pearl of 110 mean beauty as an ornament--for woman. Xo wonder that the Indian haunted the shores of this magnificent river as of a Pactolus, a river of gold for all his wants. Xot strange

that along its banks the school boy still finds the frequent Indian arrow head. No wonder that the archologist unearths on its islands the populous Indian burying ground--for where men live their graves soon outnumber their habitations.
The existence of the rapids a few miles northwest of this spot, presenting an impassible barrier to further navigation of the river, except by the canoe of the Indian, determined the general site of town. The high bluff, emerging here from the alluvial lowlands, decided its particular location.
But wiry, it may be asked, was this settlement made at all at that period? There were thousands of square miles and millions of acres of fertile, fineljr watered and nobly timbered lands between Savannah and this bluff below the rapids, sufficient to provide the increasing population for generations with ample farms and planta tions. Why was this extensive intervening region left unpeopled by the white man ?
Again, what was to be the business of this isolated and remote settlement ?
Both questions may receive one and the same answer. It was the trade with the Indians. Pelfry, skin of even- kind, including even that of the buffalo, which were in those daj^s a not distant neighbor to the spot where we are now assembled, was the staple of a brisk trade with the aborigines. I read in the sketch which our fellow townsman, Mr. John North, has lent me, of the half-breed German Cherokee Indian, Se-quo-yah, or George Gist: "Augusta was the great center of this commerce, which in those days were more ex tensive than would be now believed. Flatboats, barges and pirogues floated the bales of pelf to tide water. Above Augusta trains of pack horses, sometimes numbering one hundred, gathered in the furs and carried goods to and from remote regions.''
While there was a strong element of romance and adventure in this trade, the threading of the primeval forests by mere paths, the constant association with nature presenting here a novel and virgin aspect, the floating down a beautiful stream of limpid waters be tween banks cove-red with noble and variegated growth, gorgeous with flowers and musical with the song of birds--so different from the dusty beaten paths of commerce in this prosaic day, alas! I fear that these sentimental features of the situation had no effect on the keen traders of that day. Trade is trade. Its ultimate objective is money making. It is successful only when it brings

profits. It is most successful when its profits are greatest. Primi

tive nature, grand forests, noble rivers, song birds, the jasmine, the

wild honeysuckle, the bay and magnolia about its paths do not

modify its essential spirit. So we find our trader, who gave import

ance to infant Augusta, pl\ung his avocation not for the romance

i

which in that age accompanied it, but for colossal profits. I read in

j

the same sketch as follows : '' The trader immediately in connection

|

with the Indian hunter expected to make one thousand per cent.

The wholesale dealer made several hundred. The governors, coun

cils and superintendents made all they could. It could scarcely be

called commerce. It was a grab game.' J

History repeats itself ! The poor Indian was the real producer in

this business. With tireless foot, with scant}- food, with, at the

first at least, ineffective weapons of the chase, in sunshine and

storm, through forest and across streams, by day and by night, he

pursued the beasts of the woods. His labor, his fatigue, his hunger,

his privation, at last have the reward of a skin stripped from the

deer or the buffalo. More weary leagues to get his pelf to the trader.

There the fruit of the toil and danger of the chase is exchanged for

a few colored beads, a yard of cheap calico, or at most a few ounces

of powder and a scanty weight of lead, and the trader has closed a

transaction--"made a deal"--which pa\-s him one thousand per

cent, profit.

Thus history repeats itself. Then, as now, trade furnished

greater rewards than production. Then, as now, the producer

toiled for its benefit more than for his own.

The chapter in Augusta's history which I have thus far consid

ered, extended from its first settlement in 1735 to the outbreak of

the Revolution. During this period it grew steadily, but its popu

lation even at the end of the period was probably not high up in the

hundreds.

If anything of man's work of this first period remains, I do not

know it, except a few streets and their names, Centre, Broad, Ellis,

and Reynolds.

The Revolutionary history of Augusta is most interesting. But

I shall not dwell on it, for the reason that less than a year ago at

this same place, and in the hearing of substantial!}' this same audi

ence, an eminent citizen of the State delivered a most eloquent and

exhaustive oration 011 that subject. Nothing of interest, whether

of matter or style, of form or of substances, could be added to that

masterly presentation by Hon. Emory Speer. It was heard by you at the. time with deep interest, and doubtless abides fresh and vivid in your memory. I shall only say in passing that the little town witnessed deeds of valor by friends and foe not surpassed on more imposing theatres. It also witnessed acts of barbarity, not only by Indian allies, but by men of our own race, not outdone by the alleged horrors of the Cuban war. For, my hearers, war is war, war is cruel, war is barbarous, war makes fiends of men, whether they be Spanish or Anglo-Saxon, whether they strike for conquest or for freedom, whether they fight to impose or to shake the yoke.
The next division in the history of Augusta covers the years be tween the close of the Revolutionary war and the end of the century. I shall call this the " Tobacco Age." Up to the war, it may be said with substantial accuracy, that the life of Augusta, its reasons to exist, was the Indian trade. The little agriculture which existed near and around it was for the purpose of home support. Xothing left it for export except the peculiar }rield of the forest. Nothing came to it from beyond the woods seaward, but the articles to be exchanged for these sylvan products and a few staples for consumption by its meager population and on a few outlying, not distant plantations. But by the end of the Revolutionary war the yield of the forest had greatly diminished. Its denizens them selves were fewer. They were already feeling the pressure of deadly civilization, and, depressed in spirit, were retiring towards the setting sun. The red man was still not an infrequent figure in the little town. The deer skin--but no longer the buffalo robe--Indian ponies and various simple articles of Indian handiwork were still brought to Augusta for sale or barter. But this commerce had shrunken to a very slender rivulet compared with the great stream which a few years earlier had flowed through the little town. But now, first to supplement and then to replace this waning traffic, came the tobacco business. As we are informed by that conscien tious and accurate historian, who to our great sorrow departed from our midst a few years ago, Charles Colcock Jones, the settlers from Virginia brought them the seed and the cultivation of this plant. The industry soon attained in soil and climate admirably adapted to It, large and flourishing proportions. Government tobacco .ware houses were established at various points in the interior of the State west and northwest of Augusta, and were presided over by govern ment inspectors. To these warehouses the tobacco was brought by

the producers of the contiguous country, was inspected, weighed and packed in hogsheads, all under governmental supervision. The market*where this tobacco was to pass from the hands of the pro ducer into the hands of the merchant was Augusta. How did it make the journey from the interior warehouse to this mart ? Some of it, in districts contiguous to the Savannah, floated down the river in boats, the percursors of the Petersburg merchantmen of the present day. But the most of it made the trip in a mode which, as far as 1115^ knowledge goes, was peculiar to this trade and absolutely unique. The day of pack horses, sufficient for the transportation of loads of small bulk but comparatively large value, as pelfry, was passed. The wagon roads of the country were few. The wagons themselves were not numerous. So, as Col. Jones tells us, ' 'the hogshead or cask being made strong and tight and having been stoutly coopered, was furnished with a temporary axle and shafts to which a horse was attached. By this means it was trundled over the country roads to market.
Thus for a while Augusta was, as greatness went in that da\-, a great tobacco market, and whether nurtured b\- skins or tobacco it continued to grow. Under the conditions of transportation of that age it could not but grow. A navigable river flowing past its doors to the ocean gave it an immeasurable advantage over any place not similarly situated. What would have become of poor little '' Marth\'sville'' having no river, without the railroads ? But the lordly Savannah was to Augusta as the Thames to London, the Tiber to Rome, and the Xile to all Egypt. So. by the end of the century Augusta had grown to be a very flourishing town of about 2,000 inhabitants.
It was in this tobacco age, but when it was waning, and at the opening of the next period, which I shall call the cotton age, that the event occurred of which we are now celebrating the icoth anni versary. In January, 1798, the Legislature incorporated the free holders residing in a certain area, which may be roughly described as lying between the river on the north and Tel fair street on the south, and between Elbert and Marbury streets 011 the east and west. The charter then granted has never been repealed. We live under it at this day. Movements have been made from time to time of late years to substitute a new charter for this venerable instru ment; but they have come to nought. It has been built upon and enlarged in some particulars to meet the wants of a later civilization,

but in its essential parts it remains as it was in the beginning. A most liberal and comprehensive '' general welfare'' clause, which provided; -" The said City Council shall also be vested with full power and authority to make such assessments on the inhabitants of Augusta, or those who have taxable property within the same, for the safety, benefit and convenience of said city, as shall appear to them expedient," has served the city a good turn on many an occasion, when progress in public works would otherwise have been arrested for lack of some specific authority from the Legisla ture to the City Council. But this provision of the charter has lost much of its beneficent elasticity since the constitution of 1877.
I trust that this audience will, at this point in my remarks, per mit me the indulgence of a gratified feeling by reminding them that the first executive of the city, iiitendent, as that official was then called, inaugurated on the occasion which now, after the lapse of one hundred \~ears, we are celebrating, was my grandfather, Thomas Gumming. Then just completing his thirty-third year, for thirty-six years thereafter he resided in Augusta, leading and closing here a life which, I trust I may be pardoned for speaking of as that of the good and just man, "vir integer vitae scelerisque purus," the good citizen, seeking no office, but avoiding no public duty. He was not only the first intendent of the city; he was also the presi dent of its bank, and held that office from the foundation of the bank until his death in 1834, the old Bank of Augusta, chartered in 1810, and pursuing its honorable and prosperous career until swept away, like so many hitherto solid institutions, by the great war between the states. If a breath of reproach ever attached to the name of this good citizen, it has not reached the ears of his descendants of this day, who still in the fifth generation cherish his memory and seek in it inspiration for unambitious and faithful citizenship.
The next period in the history of Augusta I shall call the* "Cotton Age" by the opening of the century, near whose close we are now standing, the cotton gin had come into common use. With climate and soil adapted the best in the world to the cultiva tion of, cotton, with this product itself more universally adapted than any other to all the uses for which cloth is needed, whose place in preceding periods was supplemented and inadequately sup plied by the fabrics of wool and flax and silk, its cultivation had been discouraged previously by the impracticability of separating

the fibre from the seed. Where this result was effected at all it was accomplished slowly, laboriously, expensively and scantil}- by hand. Whitney's cotton gin produced a stupendous industrial revolution. It is a fact of no small interest in connection with the history- of Augusta that Whitiie}- manufactured his gins at a little factory, the power of which was furnished by the little Rocky Creek on the plantation of the late Mr John Phinizy, now almost included in the present boundaries of the city.
At once the kingdom of a new and great monarch, King Cotton, rose to power. Practically all the cultivable land in Georgia and Carolina was speedih- embraced in his wide domain. The compara tively feeble forces of tobacco and indigo were promptly sub iued and banished into the unreturning past. This great potentate made rapid and extensive inroads on the primeval forest. In the service of this great king roads were opened; and at the right season of the 3'ear, in the beautiful autumnal weather, when the skies were at their bluest, when the air held a light haze, softening and mellowing the landscape, when the forests were glorious in their robes of the turning leaf, these roads were crowded with the royal progress of the king from the interior of his realm to the great outer world. Right merrily did his majesty descend from his rural seats to his busy mart. In those da\-s, when the railroad was not, fine,- teams of mules were the motive power of land transpor tation. Great care was taken in their selection and pride felt in their equipment. A part of the equipment was a bow cf bells. raised high over the withers of at least the leaders of every team. These were not the dull little tinklers of the horse car, heard only when that now almost obsolete affair is close upon the foot passen ger; but bells--bells that rang loud, clear and musical on the still autumnal air. And thus, with music along his route, coming up from the valleys and resounding from hill top to hill top, King Cotton came marching down.
Let us pause here and unroll a map of this period before cur mental vision. Our map shall have no regard for State lines. It will be in the form of nearly half of a circular disc, whose base line shall run through Augusta as its centre. This half circle shall have a radius of 200 miles, and shall sweep around the city from a point 200 miles northeast of it to a point 200 miles southwest. Through out this region cotton is raised. In this truly vast area where is

10
there a cotton market but Augusta ? Atlanta, Macon, Columbus, Chattanooga, Athens were unborn. Where could the cotton come for a market but to Augusta ?
All roads led to our little city. As the traveler even of this day still occasionally encounters the old Roman milestone in ever}' part of Europe, with the Roman inscription "S. P. Q. R.," "Senatus populusque Romanus," reminds us of the time when all roads led to Imperial Rome, so throughout the region I have sketched all the mile stones, to have their truest significance, should have marked the distance to Augusta--Augusta on the Savannah.
Where could the cotton come except here? Wiry must it, of necessity, under the conditions of that age, come hither ? Oh, the river, the river ! Our Thames, our Tiber, our Nile ! It beckoned it to its banks and solicited it to embark on its bosom. Here, then, it was in fact collected. Hence, in the first years of this century, in flat boats and barges, and later by steamboats, it was floated down the river to Savannah, where it found itself at the gateway of the outer world. So already at the commencement of the century one hundred thousand bales of cotton found a market in Augusta, and one hundred thousand bales represented then man}- times the amount of money enclosed in the same number now.
This period was Augusta's most prosperous. Without rivals, without competitors, she collected on the banks of her fostering river the wealth producing crop of a vast tributary, and gathered in its magnificent proceeds. For the boats, at first barges and flatboats, and then several distinct fleets of steamboats, which took the cotton to the port, brought back the hardware, the groceries, the dry goods, the furniture, in a word all the necessaries and luxuries of life of that age, for consumption in that extensive back country, from which the cotton was drawrn. The wragons which brought the staple to Augusta, marched back with the same merry chimes, laden with the merchandise I have mentioned for the use of the producers of the cotton--master and slave--in the interior. HOWT easy then for the merchant of Augusta to grow rich. It is true the one thousand per cent, profit of the Indian trader was a thing of the past. Even the three or four hundred per cent, of an earlier gen eration of Augusta merchants had ceased. Still his profits \vere ver}- large. And they came so easily. How little of wear and tear was in his life ! How different from the strain on the faculties of the business man of this da}*- ! His at first weekly, then semi-

II
weekly mail was received. It was then his business to write in reply a few of those formal, ceremonious, stilted letters of the period,-which he subscribed; "With great esteem and distin guished consideration, I have the honor to be 3~our obedient, humble servant." This done with great deliberation, not to say solemnity, and the letters turned over to a clerk to be copied by hand, there was nothing to make even a ripple of excitement in the business life of 3^our solid merchant of that age until the arrival of the next weekly and semi-weekly mail. Our tormentors, the three or four daily mail deliveries, and those fiends of modern life, the telephone, the telegraph and the ' 'ticker,'' afflicted him not. What steadiness of nerve, what sweetness of temper, ought not your merchant of that time to have had ! What piety, too, for with his leisurely, easy going life, he could attend church Sunday, and was not obliged to make that day one of literal and absolute rest of body and brain to repair the ravages of six days of physical and mental tension. The fortunes of that period are in a large measure what Augusta is living on at this day. The struggles of these later times have been considered successful if they have been able to keep the accumula tions of that period from being worn away by the attrition of maiiy years of ' f hard times.''
The next period of Augusta's histor>r I shall call " The Manufac turing Age." The immediately preceding period, which I have just been speaking of as the "Cotton Age," was not only the time of Augusta's greatest prosperity to her own people, but also of her greatest relative importance to the rest of the world. At that time she dominated commercially a wide territor\*, in which she found not a single rival. She possessed in the Savannah river a magnificent highwa}'- of the onl}- kind then used for heavy traffic, between herself and the outer world. In the last quarter of that period, it is true that a new kind of highway, one, as the future was to show, of stupendous potentialities, was extended to her doors from the sea. I refer to the old South Carolina railroad. But this rathei added to than subtracted from Augusta's relative importance; it diverted no commerce from her, and it increased the facilities of that which she already had.
But all this was soon to change. About 1840 the Georgia rail road became a potent factor in Augusta's history. Its tendency, so long as it was merely a local road, extending 100 miles or so into the interior, was not so much to bring trade to Augusta--for that

12
trade already came b\' the wagon roads--as to build up rival markets in the interior. Moreover, Macou, Coliimbus,*-Athens and other places in the interior began to divide with her the commerce of a back countrj7 , which was once all her own tributary province. I shall not dwell tediously on this evolution of a new situation. Suffice it to say that the relative, if not absolute, decline of Augusta was apparent. At this time thoughtful and public spirited citizens realized the fact that something must be done to invigorate her languishing life. The scheme which commended itself to them was the construction of a canal to furnish water power for manufactur ing purposes. The result was the old Augusta canal, constructed between 1845 and 1847. This project did not at first meet with unanimous approval. Respectable and conscientious citizens opposed it on honest grounds of public policy. I shall not weary you with the details of that struggle. I shall not even pause, though sorely tempted to do so, to say a few words of affectionate eulogy of that private citizen, the originator and master spirit of the enterprise, who in the midst of an exacting professional practice, and with the cares of a large family, gave, as president of the Board of Canal Commissioners, several years out of the prime of his life to unselfish and gratuitous devotion to this public work. This old canal was a slight affair compared with the present work, which was brought up from its former small estate to its present magnifi cent proportions, under the administration as Majror and largely by the wise measures of our venerable fellow citizen, Mr. Charles Estes, who still abides with us. Xeither was the first effort at manufacturing on the canal successful, but it failed not from any inherent error in the general idea of making Augusta a manufacturing centre, and the failure brought no discouragement to this aspiration. The old canal accomplished its purpose. It directed the business thought of Augusta into an additional channel. Previously nothing was considered but commerce. Naturally, for trade had made Augusta one of the most favored places in the country. When that trade began unmistakably to withdraw from her, it is not strange that she became alarmed and felt the forebodings of death. But since the advent of the Manu facturing Age a new stream of life has been coursing through her veins.
The next period in the history of Augusta was " The War Age." Short it was, compared with the shortest of other periods, but not to be measured by its duration in years as to the place it will hold in

13
her history. It is true that Augusta, unlike in this respect many Southern towns, knew not the actual tramp of hostile armies; but she knew and felt the exultation and the bitterness of *\var in every other aspect of the dreadful scourge. How glorious, too, is her war record!" Of the military companies forming her volunteer battalion in the peace time preceding the war, the Clinch Rifles, the Oglethorpe Infantry, the Irish Volunteers, the Richmond Hussars, the Washington Artillery, all went promptty to the field with full ranks and took their places in the earliest organizations of the Confederacy. But these old and alread3* historic companies were but a fraction of those which Augusta sent to that great conflict. There were at least ten other companies which came into life with that crisis. All these were at " the front," and most of them from the beginning to the end of the struggle. That meant that there were men constantly falling in their ranks and new men going to take their places. Be sides this, not a few young men of Augusta for one reason and another joined military organizations elsewhere. I think I am safely within bounds when I say that first and last Augusta sent two thou sand of her sons to the battlefield. How many of these were num bered among the *' unreturning brave!' 5 How niaiij- returned only on their shields!
But that was not all. There was the front and there was the rear. There was the field where the men battled, and there was the home where the women waited. There were the brave hearts in the camps, and the aching hearts by the firesides--not in a few homes, but in all. - There were mingled sorrow and pride, grief and joy--sorrow for the fallen, pride for the hero. Grief for the death of dear ones, joy for their glorious memory! We who are still living and were living then know that that was the period of Augusta's highest as well as intensest life. We know that that was the time when the sordid, the selfish, the commercial in us was subdued by our higher nature. While we live we can attest with our tongues the nobility of Augusta in her war period. But in a few more mornings such witnesses will have taken on the silence of the tomb. Well then is it that enduring monuments commemorate that period of Augusta's history.' They will ever be her most glorious memorials. As the stately shaft in her principal thoroughfare towering heavenward is the loftiest of all her monuments, so it marks the culmination of her spiritual life. In the time to come great railroad systems may rear huge habitations for themselves on her soil. Successful commerce
..

14
may build themselves palatial exchanges within her borders. learn ing ma}- here construct for itself some vast temple, dedicated to books and science. Religion itself ma3T here uprear ostentatious fanes. But while God and man rate the spiritual above the material, self-sacrifice above self-indulgence, duty above success, so long will the private soldier of the Confederacy, fronting the eternal east from the top of that noble column, be a type and a memento of Augusta's highest life. Spare it ye forces of nature! Disturb it not, thou dreadful earthquake! Pass it b3r, ye destroying cyclone! Blast it not, thou deadl}- lightning! Touch it not. ye frosts, with insidious fingers! Guard it, ye spirits of air and earth, that it may speak to distant ages of Augusta's noblest and highest life!
But one other period remains--the period stretching from the close of the war to the present day--which I shall call " The Iron Age." Primarily I so denominate it for the reason that it is the period when the iron road has become a tremendous factor, an upbuilder or de stroyer, in the history of towns and cities. Augusta, like all other industrial centres, has felt the influence of this force, whose enor mous development is a thing of this post bellum period. I make bold to believe that that influence has been on the whole beneficial to Augusta. I cannot explain her steady and satisfactory growth on a contrary supposition. But I would not discuss that intricate question on an occasion like this. Suffice it to say that she has be come and is a very important railroad centre, from which distribution can be made in all directions, inward and outward, to the land and to the sea.
But I have called this period " The Iron Age " for another reason. There has ever been among the myths of the human race a belief in a golden age. The characteristics of that mythical period are ease and plenty, love and peace, life blessed with good things acquired without effort, and crowned with tranquil happiness. Those same traditions have ever taken note also of an " Iron Age." That age has always been the then present. The dwellers in every period have regarded it as an iron age. Pressed with the hard con ditions, the bitter struggles of life, they have been prone to regard the past and the future as more to be desired than the present. Their thought has been: Life was easy in the past; it will be happy in the future. In the past it was golden in its beauty and excel lence. Xow it is iron in it* hardness.
Very justly, 1 think, we may call this latest period of Augusta's

15
history an iron age in a business sense as compared in the same sense with the golden past. The struggle for business success in these latter times has been severe. The conditions,- not merely locally but generally, have been unfavorable. Notwithstanding, to her credit be it said, she has gone ahead. She has taken no step backward, but many fonvard. She has grown, and she has taken to herself in nearly every particular the fruits of a progressive civili zation. But why should I prolong this already too tedious discourse by speaking of this phase of her history to those who not only know it, but have made it ?
Thus, with no design on my part to distribute Augusta's life up to the present hour into seven ages, like Shakespeare's division of man's life, I find that it has naturally and of itself fallen into those parts. And now, one lingering look backward and I am done.
We dwellers in this age, looking over this relatively long period, have just grounds, as citizens of Augusta, to be gratified at the retrospect. From the day she came into life, an isolated outpost of the white race, a speck of civilization in the wilderness, down to the present hour, her course has been respectable, honest, honorable. True, no brilliant *' boom'' period with its inevitable reaction finds a place in her history. But her progress has been steady and her advance always held nulluin vestigium retrosum. The little settle ment at the head of navigation, perched 011 the very bank of its river of life, has gradually spread far and wide over the adjacent plain and climbed the sides of its circumscribing hills. In the bitter times of war, she has risen heroically to the fullest measure of patri otic duty. In the long periods of blessed peace she has been con spicuous for her civic virtues--the chiefest of which are law and order and financial integrity. Of these, she now reaps the rich re ward in credit unsurpassed and in respect unfeigned. In time of pestilence, which has twice visited her habitations, she has had the fortitude for the trial and has uttered no cry for help. When swept by devastating floods, she has found in her own stout heart and in her own reserved resources, strength to meet the ordeal, and has de clined, not churlishly but proudly, all proffered assistance from with out. All this she has done without the blare of trumpets or the beating of drums or the waving of flags. Quiet, self-contained and self-sufficient, she has maintained her steady way onward and up ward. Our fathers and our fathers' fathers planted wisely, and if from that far shore whither they went long since, their vision could

i6
revert to this time and this expansion of their work, they would know that those who came after them have been true to their trust and their opportunities.
Why, then, should I withhold high sounding words in speaking of Augusta? Why should I hesitate and falter at the epithet '' great ?'' Wherein consists the greatness of a city ? Xot in popu lation. Athens, the light of whose greatness in art and arms shines on and on down ages, would have been engulfed in the population of any of a thousand cities of inglorious Cathay. Sparta and Thebes, great and immortal, how slender were they in population! Rome \vas already great when her citizens were less numerous than our own. It is the quality not the number of citizens that makes the greatness of a city. The patriotic in war--the law abiding and honest in peace--the constant in adversit\---on these firm foundations is built a city's greatness.
Then, oh, Augusta, strong in this test, call thyself "Great." For once sound a loud trumpet, blow a clear clarion blast to the world, proclaiming in tones not to be challenged thy real merits. And hope for thyself--aye, secure for thyself--excellence in all the time to come. ^ My people are of the same blood and lineage as of old. Civic virtue is prized as much now as in the days of our fathers. The soil that nourished them is equall}- generous to us. The atmosphere in which they lived lives of industry and usefulness, many of them through four score years, plays about your heads. The same benefi cent sky bends over us. And our river! With it my story began, and with it will end. Oh, our river! Shorn of much of thy pristine beauty, thou art strong and beneficent still, thou great and lordly Savannah! Thou everlasting traveler from the mountains to the sea, didst lure the little Augusta to nestle on thy banks. Here thou didst nourish her infancy. Thou didst give her strength as she grew. In time thou didst bring her wealth. Thou art still benefi cent to her, furnishing her drink, for her fighting the fire fiend, for her turning the wheels of her factories. Let no man think thou art not also still the guardian and protector of her commerce, not dead but sleeping. At any threat of danger to her prosperity, thou mayst awake and, as of old, show to thy beloved cit}^ how powerful thou canst be in her behalf. For thy God-built highway all the works of puny man are impotent to abolish or annul. Augusta's fostering river still flows by her gates and will do so forever. Labitur et labetur in omne volubilis zevum.

NUMEN.
RESPONSE OF JOS. B. GUMMING
TO THE TOAST,
THE MAYFLOWER,"
AT THE
79TH ANNUAL DINNER
OF TH
NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY,
Of
DECEMBER 22, 1898.
Chronicle Job Printing Co.

NUMEN.
RESPONSE OF JOS. B. GUMMING
TO THE TOAST,
THE MAYFLOWER,"
AT THE
79TH ANNUAL DINNER
OF THX
NEW ENGLAND SOCIETY,
Of
DECEMBER 22, 1898.
Chronicle Job Printing Co.

The third regular toast was "The Mayflower," to which the Hon. Joseph B. Gumming responded' as follows:
Not long ago I saw a little engraving which purported to be a picture of the ark of the Pilgrim Fathers, the "Mayflower." If anyone cares to see it 'he will find it illustrating the very brief sketch of John Alden in Appleton's Encyclopaedia of Biography. But I would not advise anyone to waste time in 'looking it up, for it is a very insignificant little picture.
I would not trust myself here in a seaport city to handle'nauti cal terms, even if it were my purpose to try to give a description of the Mayflower. I shall only say that to my landsman's eye she presents in this little sketch a very forlorn spectacle. It is true that in this picture her masts and yard's are bare. Then eye rests on nothing but wood and 'hemp. Not a single sail woOs a favoring breeze. No voyagers tread her deck. A very different sight might she have been on some autumn day of that long voyage..when, with crowding canva's, she rose and dipped on a sunlit sea. But in the picture I have referred to a very dreary and depressing little .craft she seems to be. How 'small, too, was she in fact. One Jiimdred and eighty tons 'her burthen. And how slow she must have

been with her broad hull and rounded prow. But perhaps this dispiriting picture bears not the slightest resemblance to that lit tle barque of immortal memory. It is not difficult to imagine that this picture was only an artist's fancy, a sort of symbol, his con ception, expressing itself in the forms of art, instead of in words, of the dreary outlook of that momentous crutse, as it must have appeared at the time to a scornful world and even to the subli mated voyagers themselves--unless these latter, among the other spiritual endowments wliich exalted them above all the ills of this world, possessed the gift of prophetic vision.
Ah, indeed, with its aid, looking down the vista, of the future and beholding what that ship's company were to be in their rela tion to a great nation and its marvelous career, they would have seen that the name of that wretched little craft would live as long as that of any of the famous argosies, which, in history or in myth,

have sailed the waters of this planet. They would liave known that neither the Argo of Jason, with its seekers for the golden fleece, nor the ships of Hiram bringing rich material for Solo mon's temple, nor the high turreted galleon San Marten of the in vincible Armada, nor the ship with Castor and Pollux for its sign and the Apostle ?aul for its passenger, nor tfhe silken-sailed and silver-oared galley of Cleopatra, nor even fche brave little Santa Maria of the great discoverer, would -have a surer place in the world's memory than the Pilgrim's Mayflower. But if this comforting gift was withheld, or if sometimes it suffered eclipse when the wintry storms of the Atlainti'c buffeted their little craft, there must have been occasions when the resolute 'hearts of its company doubted whether it -had not been better that s'he liad never weighed an'dhor and never spread -sail. And even when the voyage was ended and the little vessel rode at anchor on a rockbound and snow-wrapped coast, how desolate s'he must liave looked in the offing. And when those who had gone down to the sea in this little sfhip realized on that repellant shore that slie was the only link between them and flie fair world they had left be hind them, not more did: the'sea gulls liover about the lonely craft than did the anxious fears of the exiled voyagers. And then the name of it! "The Mayflower 1" There was that in this name, with its reminder of the sweet Engvi'S'h meadows in Hie loveliest of all the months, to -break the exile's -heart on that lone, forbid ding shore. Not strange, then, -that the artist makes me a dreary and depressing little picture of die "Mayflower.'/ .
But w'hy do I linger so long over -that little s'liip? For really, though it is inseparably associated witfi the memories of the day we celebrate, it is not the Mayflower of my theme. That May flower of the Pilgrims sailed the ocean in a "high latitude of the north temperate zone. The other Mayflower of my thoughts burst into bloom in distant tropical seas. That Mayflower of our early history withered and peris'hed two centuries and more ago. The Mayflower, with which my thoughts are busy at this moment, is still in gorgeous and expanding efflorescence. The wintry ocean, which bore upon its bosom the earlier flower, and the seas at the equator, which witnessed the bud andf bloom of the Mayflower

of today, are not more different, are not more separated in kind

than the two flowers themselves. The Mayflower of 1620 has

wafted its subtle dnfluence through nearly three centuries. The

Mayflower, which burst into sudden and unexpected flamboy-

ancy in this present year of grace, needed but a single night and

day to send its strong^ exhalations across ten -thousand miles of

ocean, and to pervade a whole continent with its intoxicating

fragrance.

On the thirtieth day of April in the year of our Lord, 1898, -the

people of this country were feeling all the exaltation which takes

possession of a people, rejoicing in their strength and conscious

of a high purpose, at the prospect of war. Strange as it may ap

pear, still it seems to me to be true that a nation readies its great

est spiritual heights as it prepares for war. This, if it be true--

as I think it is--is true because the occasion calls into the fulles-t

activity the noblest and the nearest divine of all human attributes

--die spirit of self-sacrifice. At -such times, in all the ramifications

of society, this spirit is astir in the many forms which will occur

to any one wlio stops to think of it. Whatever may be the mo

tives and design's of monarch's or statesmen or demagogues in

launching a people in a war, however silly or sordid or wicked

its instigators may be, the masses of 'the people themselves reach

their highest levels, get farthest away from tire petty, the mean,

the -selfish and the commercial in responding to -the trumpet call

of the hour. In the hearts and spirits of the people, consciously

or unconsciously, rules for the time this uplifting force of self-

sacrifice. In the hearts of those who carry to the field their much,

if they are to fight and live, their all, if they are to fight

and die, and in the hearts and spirits of those who

are senders to the field of their best and dearest--vea, in





'

the hearts of all the people, in greater or less degree, this spirit

lives and moves. Added to the usual spiritual forces which exalt

a people's tone in such a -crisis there was in this occasion a strong

element * cf knight errantry. We had persuaded

ourselves that we were going to war not for

ourselves, not to extend our borders, not to acquire commer

cial advantage. In a prosaic and self-seeking age we toad become

0


crusaders engaged in a -holy war, not, it is true, to retrieve the

Holy Sepulchre frcm the infidel, but the oppressed from the op-'"

pressor. For this purpose we were to go beyond our doors, but

still well within our own hemisphere. Shores, which the straining

eye could almost discern from our own shores, and the narrow

sea between, traversable in the compass 0$ the shortest summer

nigiit, were to mark the limits of our no'ble emprise. A 'single

island of the Gulf, which washes our own coasts, not archipela

goes in 'the far-off seas of the Orient, filled our thoughts and

bounded our aspirations.

The night of April 30 of this year, which now

draws to a close, when this American people had fallen

asleep, or sleeping or waking, were dreaming only the compara

tively sober dream I have mentioned, an American war fleet rose

and -fell to the gentle undulations of a tropical !sea. On the first

day of May that fleet had achieved a victory, which reads more

like a tale frcm wonderland than a leaf frcm the annals of naval

warfare. But, wonderful as was the victory itself, it seems com

monplace in comparison with the immediate results. On that

May day burst into bloom the Mayflower of my story.

Of all strange flowers this was the most wonderful. Every flow

er that springs from the bosom of earth is a wonder and a mys

tery; the most flaunting" orchid of tropical forests not more so

than the lowly violet that scarce lifts its head from the graves of

loved ones in our own" village church yard's. We dwellers in a

warm climate have net a few times made our vtsit in the spring

evenings to some shrub of the garden, revealing s:carcc percepti

ble buds, and have been greeted at early mom with a flood of

bloom and fragrance, the transformation of a single vernal night.

We have in every recurring year noted at .eventide the oncom

ing of the springtime in the budding branch, and 'have looked

out at dawn on the leafy tree. How many a summer morning have

our senses been deli*g*j hted bvf somethinkgj which liv ed not in the evening air. It was, peraclventure, the magnolia grandiflora on

whose glorious flowers the witchery of the intervening night had

wrought its wonderful "work.



Not only lias opulent nature these sweet greetings of the morn-

V
ing; she has also her delicious floral surprises for the night time, as when, like some court beauty, who spends the hours of garish day on 'her couch in dreamy languor behind silken curtains, re serving the brilliant apparition of 'her charms for the hour of the ball and the banquet, our own night blooming cereus, close wrap ped all day in its dainty russet mantle, awaits the shades of night to unfold its beauty and dispense 'Its fragrance.
Not only do we know nature's magic in this part of her king dom, but we have read of man's strange counterfeit of her work intfii's same domain. We have read,and with our own ears we have heard from the lips of travellers, cf the incomprehensible feat of the East Indian juggler. He will plant you a seed in the earth be fore your very eyes. In a few minutes the earth's crust will stir and break. Then the first beginning of the plant rises above the ground, leaves burst forth, and it is a matter of minutes only be fore a brilliant flower crowns the work of the magician.
Marvelous as are these familiar works of nature and this clever juggling of man, never yet in any anthology has there been gath ered so wonderful a flower as my Mayflower oi this year of grace. When I thus characterize it I am not thinking of the vic tory itself in Manila bay or its glory, or its completeness, or its blessed blcodlessness. I am thinking of the sudden and marvelous outburst cf a new idea, a new sentiment, a new aspiration of *he American people. Where was there a man in all this broad land, from the chief magistrate to the -humblest cit'izen, from the most thoughtful statesman to the most blatant jingo, who en the day of April 30 thought, or in the night of April 30 dreamed, of colonial posses sions in the Eastern Hemisphere? Up to the going down of the stin on that epochal day there was nothing more foreign to our policy and our traditions, or further away from our thoughts. We laid us down and slept Americans for America; we awoke filled with imperial longings. Our armies were assembling up to that night only to leave our Southern shore to carry food and freedom to starving and oppressed Cubans. We awoke to bend 0 our energies equally for the gathering of fleets and armies on our western coast in order to possess ourselves of archipelagoes a

8
tfliird of the earth's circumference from our dfcors, inhabited' 'by peopile who starved not, and who desired not our coming. The whole spirit of our dream, changed in a single night. Political iso lation, the watchword of the Republic from its birth, was drowned in the new language of imperialism. Under the influence of this new sp-irdt She emancipaltion of Cuba ceased) to be fhe only pur pose and aim of our armaments, and became a mere incident. And the poor reconcentrados--if they were ever worth considera tion--ceased to get it. In the vast expansion df our vision, and with our eyes uplifted to distant archipelagoes, they were simply overlooked--and perished long ago, unheeded and forgotten.
I have said that the germination and the blooming of every, flower, even the lowliest, is a mystery. Who among us, even the wisest, can say more of the daisy, or the lily of the valley, or any of th'e flower's that border our pathway, than that they come in response <to forces in which man has no part? And in this, my gorgeous Mayflower is like unto them. Who can detect the hand of man in fashioning it? Who can recall a single voice which, prior to that May morn, spoke of empire and the islands of the orient? What statesman or writer had broadcasted in the hearts and mind's of the American people the seed of this new aspiration, which, without preconcert, in a single day, burst into bloom in all parts of this broad land? If there was any such man name him. Rehearse -to us the speecSi he has made; point us to the line he has written antedating the first day of our latest May. Indeed, in deed, when was it ever given to any man to sweep with a new thought in a single night through the hearts and minds of a whole nation, whose domain stretches from ocean to ocean and from Artic lands to tropical seas?
Let ufs not be behind the old Romans in our recog nition of forces other than man's shaping the des tinies of nations. When the army of Parthia and the army of Gaul, the legions on the Danube and the legions on the Tiber, as sometimes happened, without inter-communication, became actuated and moved' ait the same time by -the same im pulse, those old heathen had the one ready and the one only ex planation, lie "Numen!" It was the divinity, which, unlimited

in its operation by time and space, had, unseen, unheard and unfelt, laid its work in l5ie minds and hearts of widely separated communities. This invisible, inaudible, imperceptible power is still at work. If I may liken great things to small, the unseen to the visible, the spiritual to the material, I would say -that at works as does some skilled electrician: invisible threads are skillftiMy e-stablis'hed, connecting with the source oi light and ramifying into all parts of a great city. The work of preparation may be slow; it may go on unobserved, but once ready, it requires but -the strength of a single finger to produce in a moment an outburst of light in all that city's borders.
This is not the time, the place or the occasion to mention any theme in such fashion as to provoke discussion, debate or con troversy, but I remain within the limits Which I recognize when I express the trust that no one will successfully assail the evolu tion of my Mayflower. All, me! When this portentous appari tion of emptre agitates some of us so horribly, we ii^eu scuim such theory as I have feebly set forth to calm our perturbed spirits. In the prospect of an imperialism that embraces the death-dealing islands of the tropics, with their millions of untamed and untameable inhabitants--an imperialism that beckons the choice of our manhood for many conning years to blood and pestilence--an imperialism which, in the light of mere 'human wisdom, is ap parently in the humanitarian aspect so Quixotic, in -the Chris tianizing purpose so hopeless, in the business outlook so barren, in the fiscal view -so oppressive, in every view so wild and fantas tical--in the presence of such an apparition some of us can pre serve our calmness only by dwelling on such thoughts as I have endeavored to present. \Ve are only saved from rage, as well as despair, by recalling- the remarkable circumstances of the advent of diis new aspiration, and by being able to note the absence therefrom of man's machinations, and thus to calm ourselves, even in this <Sreaflfu! prospect of imperialism, while we say with humility, and noi without -hope, ''Deus regnat!"

SPEECH
(By Request) OF
JOS. B. GUMMING
AT A MEETING OF
AN INSTITUTE OF COLORED TEACHERS
AT AUGUSTA, GA.
JULY, 1900.
CHIOHICI.B JOB AUGUSTA. GA.

Mr. Chairman and Friends: I recall, when I hear this generous applause, a text of scripture. I am aware I am in the presence of preachers and I may not give it correctly, and I ask their indulgence while I quote it as nearly as I can: "Let not him who putteth on his armor boast himself as he that taketh it oft." A public speaker is always gratified by applause: but its true value and its true meaning depend upon the stage of his remarks when he receives it. At the com mencement, as now. it is simply a manifestation of your good will and I accept it as such and I accept it with gratification. But it may not come at the end. If it should come at the end. it will be a mark of your approbation. I do not know that I shall get your approbation this evening. I should like to have it; but I would not get it from any assembly at the sacrifice of what I consider right and true. I expect to speak to you plainly. I expect to speak nothing but the truth--or what I believe to be the truth. Eut unfortunately, the truth is not always agreeable. Of course I shall speak to you as a friend. When I say "friend" the word has a double meaning in my thoughts. It means that I am ycur friend, and that I believe that you are my friends--that you are friendly. I hope so. The first proDCsition I know to be true: I know that I am your friend. I do not say a friend of every individual member of this assembly for most of you individually are unknown to me: but as I look over this audience I see indivicluV-s whom I know as my friends. I say. friends. Why not? W;-;- should not my heart swell with friendship when I look irf :r. an as sembly of your race? As I stand here tonight my thoughts go back to other days: for I am an inheritor of old tradi tions. I have lived under two civilizations--that which passed away in 1865. and that which has existed since. I am the inheritor of the old as well as the possessor of the new. And from the inheritance has come a friendship that grew out of the old relations--relations that cannot be appreciated by this generation. They were very close. The}- were very true. There is no language with which we can express them and there is no future generation that will ever know what they were. They are past and gone: but to me and to you few who remain who lived in the midst of them, they are a beauti
ful memory. Another reason why I should have this sentiment: I
recall those four years of war. when the white men of the South had to leave their homes, their property, their wives.

their children, their all. They left them in the hands of your

ancestors, and in the hands of some of the gray heads I see

around me now. They were in your power. But how beau

tiful, how unswerving was the fidelity with which your people

stood by my people in those days. I regret to note that that

fact is forgotten by the younger generation of the white peo

ple. It ought never to be forgotten. It ought to be blazoned

on the pages of history, as it was one of the most remarkable

evidences of fidelity to be found in the annals of time.

I recall, too, a man who was my friend, a man of your

race, a man born in his condition of life in the same family in

which I was born in my condition of life. He went with me

early in the war. and he came back with me at its close.

For weeks at a time there was scarcely a day and never a night

when he could not have left me and accepted freedom, but

he preferred to stay by me: not merely to serve me, but to

protect me. and after the war for thirty-five years he remained

my friend, and it was only a few weeks ago when your minis

ter was one of those who officiated at his funeral. He was

one who had spent a generation of life as a slave. A good

man. one whom all had grown to respect, and what was of

much less consequence, my friend to the last.

Xow I say, that under these circumstances, it is not

strange that I speak to you as a friend. Whatever I say will

be with the deepest friendship, and whatever I may say that

may be in itself unpleasant shall be entirely respectful both in

word and in spirit.

I was asked to address you upon the legal status of the

teacher. I said to Professor AYalker, who brought me the

invitation, and with whom I had correspondence and cover-

sation. that that was a very narrow subject, that really, if I

confined mvself to the letter of that subject the best thins: I

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O

could do would be to take the Acts of the Legislature and

read them to you and sit down. But I said I preferred to do,

with his permission and with the permission of the Institute,

what the preachers sometimes do--take a text, and talk about

anything; and I said to him, as I say to you now, that I would

take that narrow text and discuss some larger and broader

questions.

I intend in what little I shall say to you to tell you what

the teacher should teach. I will say this in reference to the

teachers themselves. They occupy a vantage ground. In the

first place, presumably, and actually, they are among the

most intelligent of your fellow citizens, the best educated.

They are the persons whose calling gives them the opportunity

4

and the leisure to read and to reflect, and especially it gives

them the opportunity of inculcating their views upon those

who come in contact with them. They are in a position to

wield a great influence, and they ought to do it, if I may

presume to instruct other people in their duties. The\- ought

to do it in a broad and wise spirit. When I say that I propose

to tell you what the teacher ought to teach. I do not mean to

say what he ought to teach out of the books. I look outside

of the text bocks, and think of these great practical questions

which affect your people and my people, and those are the

questions to which I would direct the attention of the teach-

i.

ers of this Institute.

;

It seems to me that the first thing that the teacher should

understand, thoroughly grasp and take in. is the environment,

the surroundings of the race to which he belongs. Xow I

\

know that the first and most salient fact in that connection is

American citizenship. We are all here tonight, without dis

tinction of race or ancestry or color. American citizens. We

are all to that extent upon the same plane. We all have the

same rights, at least theoretically before the law. but there is

something that is deeper and stronger than the law. and that

is the race feeling; and he would be an unwise man, be he

teacher or preacher, if he ignored that factor. Xo law. no con

stitution, can be so levelling, and make things so uniform as

to obliterate that which the Father of us all has seen proper

i

to create. It will not down. You cannot ignore it. You

cannot overcome it. It is there, and there is no man, who is a

wise teacher, that will close his eyes to that great fact.

And so you find yourselves in the midst of another

race. What is your relation now to that race in some of the

great factors which must control our existence? In numbers.

'

for instance? Your numbers are fewer. I am not prepared



to say whether the white race quite doubles your race in the

Southern states. You teachers know better than I. But there

is, at an}- rate, a great preponderance of the white race. Xot

only is there this preponderance of the white race at this time.

!

but it is a preponderance that is bound to grow. There are

1

two ways in which the population of a country in increased--

one by the number of births exceeding the deaths, and another

by the influx of new people into the country. Roth these

influences are against you. The white race is increasing more

'

rapidly than your race. You are getting no increase by im-

I

miration and never will. Your brothers at the Xorth are

not comin to the South. It is more likeh*. if certain concli-

tions prevail, that you will go to them. Though in that you

5

will make a mistake. Hut from no foreign parts is any increase coming' to your ranks.
\Vhcn it comes to the matter of wealth, the white race is far wealthier than yours, and it is going to remain so. I do
not mean that you will not increase in wealth. I believe you will, and hope from the bottom of my heart that you will. Hut relatively speaking you arc going to be outrun in the race
for wealth, because wealth increases of itself. The rich be come richer. 1 am not prepared to say that the poor get poorer, but it is certainly true that wealth breeds wealth, and as time goes on you will find the disparity in this respect will also increase.
When it comes to the question of intelligence and knowl edge, there is no necessity of discussing which race has the greater vitural gifts. Hut the white man is intellectually better f .liApjp. ed. I know that in some thingos *vt our race psr ossesscs :*:t n of superior merit. In all those things in which the imagination plays a great part, such as oratory, and perhaps art, your race is highly gifted. However, with the accumula tion of knowledge the white man has great advantage of you. AYe have the accumulation of hundreds of years. You are only beginners. So really all these elements of strength and power are on cur side and thev. are not o eonio s1 to be shifted. Thev^ are going to be increased rather than diminished. You teach ers will make a mistake in guiding the people that are com mitted to your guidance, if you do not make these most seri ous and controlling facts clear io their minds. It may not be pleasant to do it. but it is right to do it. It is wise to do it. As I have said, I did not start out to flatter you. I started out to tell the truth. I started out with the consciousness that I was going to say things that perhaps would not be agree able, and ] am just on the eve of one such announcement.
It follows from what I have said that you are at the mercy of the white people of this land. When I say at their mercy I do not mean to say that you need cringe: that you need go down in the dust: but I mean that there is always in this race feeling a latent fire, a dormant antagonism, and if that is ever aroused, whatever may be the disasters to both races, you will find that you are in the hands of those that are far more powerful than yourselves. All the elements of power are on the side which in that event will be opposed to vou.
r
Xcw I have said all the disagreeable things I feel called upon to say. I want all who hear me to recognize the truth of what I believe to be the truth, and that is the existence of

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this radical race feeling, and the fact that it is apt to breed antagonism and that when any such antagonism is aroused, the strength and the power are on one side and the weakness is on the other.
Recognizing these facts, to which no wise man will close his eyes, let us see if we can pursue a course which will pre vent antagonism. I think we can. I should be truly unhappy if I thought we could not. But it is no easy task. I said just now that I believed that I had delivered myself of all the un pleasant things that I had to say. But I will say one other. Let me tell you that the keynote of your conduct should be conciliation. Avoid aggression. Avoid those things that are likely to arouse passion upon the part of those of the other side. Pursue a course that will confound your enemies, and strengthen the hands of your friends, whom I regret to say are fewer now than at any period in your history. Do not for a mcment delude yourselves with the belief that the white men of the Xorth are going to stand up for you against the white men of the South. The day for that is past. You who read the newspapers, }*ou who keep up with the current of events, you know that I simply give utterance to what is in your own hearts, and that is that 3*011 are more friendless today than at am* period in \*our existence. There was a time when it was different, and a great wrong was done to 3*011 at
that time. I do not think there was am* wrong in abolishing
slavey. I rejoice in it, and I do not believe that there is a
man of 1113' race, who has am- sense, who docs not. I need not sa3* there was a wrong committed when 3*011 were made equal.
political^*, with the white man. The wrong that has been
done to 3*011 since in this respect, has been done b3* 3*ourselves. But the wrong done then was that 3*011 were made to believe
not only that 3*011 were the equal of the white man. but that 3*011 were better. You were taught then that 3*011 were in
ever3* respect equal to the people of the South, and what
turned the scale in 3*our favor and made 3*011 even better was 3*our Io3*alty to the Union, and there was an attempt to invert
the cone and stand it upon its apex, and that aroused resentment that has not altogether subsided even 3*et. But there has been a revulsion of sentiment in the Xorth since that time, and now the3* are less 3*our friends than we of the South. I will not take up the time to discuss these matters further. Read what is said even in Boston papers about 3*011. Things that would never be said in a True Southern newspaper.
Xo\v 3*011 ma3r sa3* I have presented a gloonn* outlook
for your people. I am rather endeavoring to save 3*ou from

a gloomy experience. The outlook need not be gloomy except as you yourselves make it so. I think that your destiny is largely in your own hands, if you will recognize those fun damental facts, which I have endeavored to present to you, and shape your course accordingly. It is in your power by your own wise and prudent conduct to confound your enemies and strengthen the hands of your friends.
Eut why call the picture gloom}* at all? The effect of every picture depends greatly on the point of view and th! light, in which one regards it. Do not, therefore, dwell so much on what you aspire to be in future generations, but think more on what you have been in a comparative recent past, and what you are in this wonderful present. There never has been in the history of the World such rapid progress from savagery to a high civilization as your people have made. But a short time ago, as we measure time in the history of races, your ancestors were superstitious savages in the wilds of the cradle of your race. For several generations they went, in the course of their progress from that estate to civilization, through the hard bitter school of slaver}'. But we must all admit that there was no other school, in which such vast numbers could be taught and such rapid progress be made. Above all we must admit that it was the school, which the Providence that rules over us all permitted to stay open till it had accomplished its work. And all because you are not absolutely abreast with the white race, which has had its hard and bitter and bloody struggles of two thousand years to reach its present position, you are to become gloomy and discontented! Let your thoughts dwell upon the present. How much it holds for you J There is your absolute freedom, which you prize so much. This fine church edifice with its educated and enlightened pastor--types each of so many others. Your numberless schools with their efficient teachers, in whose support the money of the State, collected mainly from its white people, is freely given. The enjoyment of the same property rights as the freest people in the World--and no one who hears me can say that your property rigths are not protected by the courts as sacredly as the white man's. Your personal liberty is the theoritically at least, and almost practically, as secure as his. I know that colored criminals are convicted oftener that white criminals, but that does not mean injustice to you. but shame to us white people. There is no wrong done in convicting a colored man who is guilty; but there in disgrace in letting a guilty white man escape. Your homes are in a climate which suits you. The soil, in
8

which you can have as sacred an ownership as the richest and the highest, responds generously to your industry. Into the homes at least of the chosen and educated members of your race come many of the comforts and refinements, and into your lives an almost equal share of the material progress of this wonderful age--and to all. educated and uneducated, a fair reward for industry--I fail to see the gloom of this pic ture. On the contrary to me. endeavoring to look at it from your standpoint, it looks cheerful and smiling. And now, my friends, .let us all try to keep it so. or to make it better. I think we can do it. Much, if not most, of the task is yours. Let there be no excesses of conduct or of speech. Discounte nance disturbing elements. Put down your Thomas T. For tunes and your Bee editors-- these '*Long Toms" who at a safe distance fire shots, which can hurt no one but yourselves. If, in your newspapers, you will discuss politics, civil rights and social questions, do so with moderation and reason and without passion, avoiding the angry and bitter word. In your pulpits preach the Gospel: that is a big enough theme to claim all the efforts of the greatest orator of any race. In your schools teach the curriculum and all other things which make for peace and good and reputable living. In your every day life be sober, be honest, be industrious.
But why should I go into details en this point in address ing this intelligent assemblage of teachers? You understand what the problem is. and how light is the slumber of this terrible Race Spirit.
Let your course, as far as in you lies, be such as to con found those, who are unreasonably your enemies, and to strengthen the hands of those who are sincerely your friends.
LIBRARY

REMARKS
OF
JOS. B. GUMMING,
AT A PUBLIC MEETING OF
CITIZENS OF AUGUSTA
ON THE OCCASION OF
THE DEATH OF PRESIDENT McKINLEY
CHRGKICLE JOB PRINT, AUGUSTA, GA.

I am entirely sincere when I say that I would have pre ferred to be among the many who are here to listen rather

than one of the few who are here to speak. I am occupying

that position against my preference, for the one reason that I

\vas requested to do so and I did not consider that it was

decorous in any one to withhold his contribution, however

slight, to this occasion. I cannot hope that anything I may say can reach the average even of the magnificent fitting

things that are being said in similar gatherings all over this

stricken land. I cannot hope to add anything to what has al

ready been so well said here this evening and the other fitting
things which will be said before the close of this occasion. v^
Indeed, I have felt inclined to ask myself why should I say
anv,, thing? Whv- should aii-v one spr eak? "What can be said better than silence is" in the presence of so great a calamity

as that which has brought us together?

Xo words that any mortal tongue may utter can bring

this great and gcod man back from the dead to the living.

Our words of sorrow, of esteem, of love, cannot follow him and

cheer him. They cannot even save the stricken wife a single

one of her flood of tears, or bring to her even one fair dream

when blessed sleep has let down a curtain between her and"

her immeasurable sorrow.

If we were to stop to find reasons for speaking, surely

silence would descend upon us all. But we do not stop to

reason on such occasions. We yield to sentiment, to impulse.

and surely it speaks well for a people that with extraordinary

unanimity, with one voice, under circumstances which exclude

f

the possibility of self-interest, or flattery of the great, or adulation of the powerful, when in the nature of the case there can be nothing but a genuine outpouring of their feelings --it speaks well, I <ay. for a people under those circumstances

to make such demonstrations as we are making tonight. It

manifests convincingly that we are not, as a people, as is so

often said of us. given up wholly to the material interests of

life and devoid of sentiment. If I were obliged to give a practical reason tor such demonstrations. I can think ^of but

one. and by no means hopeful] v, of that one. I do not know how the anarchist brain is constructed or what motives affect

the anarchist's conduct. 'Hut it is barely possible that that

hideous monstrosity of this age may be impressed with what

is happening all over this land and indeed in all the world.

It may be that this grand chorus, without a single discordant note going up from all the earth, may make even anarchists have a sense of awful isolation, make them realize that they are but a drop in the mighty ocean of humanity, and that their craz}r screeches are drowned in the mighty anthem of civiliza tion. Possibly it may make even them realize that they occupy to humanity in general about the same relation as spiders or rattlesnakes. A rattlesnake may perchance sink his death-dealing fangs in the flesh of a great and good man. A venomous spider even may sting to death a noble life. Anarchists may compass similar achievements, but they may be made to feel that equally with rattlesnakes and spiders they are powerless to check or divert the course of civilization.
Of McKinley can be said tonight what cannot be spoken of you or me or any of the living. Hundreds of years ago it was said by one of the wise ones of the earth, that no one could be pronounced happy till the day of his death. What ever eminence a man may attain, however fondly fortune may seem to smile on him, whatever blessings may "attend him, such are the reverses and vicissitudes of life, that up to its last hour he is in danger of calamities that may make but dust and ashes of all that has gone before. But the dead has passed beyond that mortal peril. McKinley is happy; his great fame is secure: many, very many, pronounce him great: all pro nounce him good, and now the record is made up and closed and nothing can happen now henceforth forever to change the judgment. He is happy.
My hearers, what we say and do tonight will be soon for gotten. The columns of tomorrow's newspaper, which record it, will be read and laid aside. The words spoken tonight, however eloquent they may be, are thrown upon the air and soon waited beyond the sense of listening ears. We shall in a little while break away from this assemblage and go the one to his farm, another to his merchandise, another to his office and all of us to the exactions of our busy lives--and what we have said and done tonight will be overlaid by our daily pursuits and forgotten. Shall we not do something simply, but I believe appropriately, to preserve here in 0111* verv midst, lasting memory of the great and good man? Pardon me while I make a suggestion on this line.
T was not among those so fortunate as to see President McKinley when he visited Augusta in December, 1898. I was absent. You will recall that he did not come into our city by rail. That was a marked epnch in our country's history, an<t one of the unusual facts of the time was the encampment of

ten thousand soldiers of the army of the United States on the

thitherto peaceful hills west of the city. The President de

scended from his luxurous special train at \Vheless, and. ac

companied by his brilliant retinue, drove to the top of the hill

and thence through lines of troops presenting arms along the

beautiful road which crosses that high and breezy plateau,

and so came into your city. AYhy not get the railroad authori

ties to name the place of his descent from his train McKinley?

Why not erect there a simple but tasteful monument, record

ing the fact and briefly stating the circumstances of its erec

tion? Why not get your county authorities to designate that

ij

tin-named road as ''ThePresidents Road", "The President's

Avenue", or even "The Road of Triumph".

Thus simply but appropriately we would at the same time

ourselves honor this good man and preserve a local memory

for those who are to come after us. And I ma}* say, in passing,

thus the older countries of the world are made more interesting

to the traveller. Speaking for myself and without conference

with any but one trusted friend, I should like to see a move

ment to that end in this very meeting."

ADDRESS
OF
JOS. B. GUMMING
ON
THE OCCASION OF THE ERECTION OF A MONUMENT ON THE SITE OF FORT AUGUSTA. (ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD) NOVEMBER 22, 1901.
CBKOKICX.K JOB PRINT, GA.

All countries of this planet are equally old--yet we speak of old countries and new countries. When we speak of the new we mean a country newly opened to civilized man.
A new country addresses the sentimental or spiritual side of humanity only through the manifestations of external na ture. Such food as this part of man's organism requires, he must find in such a country in the solemnity of the unbroken forest, the grandeur of the lofty mountain, the majesty of the brimming river: or in the less obtrusive beauties of foliage and wild flower, vale and rivulet, and the throusand other appeals of unmarred and unscarred nature to man's spiritual part.
But the nature stage of a country passes. In the thirteen original states of this Union--in which fair sisterhood Georgia is the youngest--the duration of that stage was short, as \ve count time in the lives of countries. Then enters a country into the historv sta<ore. In this stasore. that less s?ross and material part of man. which "cannot live by bread alone"', and which, in the country's nature stage, fed upon the food, which nature's grandeur and beauty provided, finds at least some of its pabulum in the contemplation of the trials and achieve ments of humanity.
Let me give a concrete illustration of these abstract de
liverances. I find it on this very spot. Oglethorpe, when he first came to the site of our city, which was to be, a century and two-thirds ago. found himself in the midst of primitive nature. If, outside of his subjective resources, he craved re freshment for the spiritual part of him, he could find it only in that encompassing nature. \Vliat had she to offer him on this spot? Doubtless all the charms of the forest--magnificent umbrageous oaks of every variety of that noble tree and wide-spreading elms and hickories, interspersed with the bay and the magnolia, and intertwined by vines, florilerous and many-colored. To the north and west he looked upon an am phitheatre of the everlasting hills, also crowned with the glories of the primeval forest. He saw debouching from those hills and flowing under this bluff a majestic river, greater in length and breadth than many another famed in song and story--more beautiful, too: for then crystal were its waters and emerald its shores. P>ut this spot had no other interest than those unchanging features of nature. It had no history. The country was devoid of memories to stir the blood and quicken the pulse. It held no spot hallowed and glorified by

a noble life or an heroic death. It possessed no locality where one might stand and say: "This is holy ground. This place is baptized in patriot blood. This spot witnessed brave deeds done in a sacred cause." There was no field on which mem ory aided by imagination could marshal the spirits of the illustrious dead.
This same Oglethorpe, who stood on the wooded banks of the Savannah, had many times trod the aisles of Wesminster Abbey. These two extremes present the idea I am seeking to express. The spirit here on the Savannah finding its re freshment in the beauty and majesty of nature. The spirit in Westminster Abbey feasting on the quickened memories of a glorious history. Which appeals strongest to humanity? Na ture or history? The everlasting hills, the perennial river, the primeval forest? Or the ancient Abbey, the tombs and the effigies of those immortal "other living whom we call the dead ?" Each will answer this question for himself.
This spot has passed beyond the nature condition and entered not a little way into the history stage. I fear its de parture from the former has been proportionately greater than has its entrance into the latter. "What man could do man hath well done" to mar "the changeless things"--the hills, the river. The noble forests have fallen. The axe has denuded the hills. The plough has stained forever the limpid river with the color of the upturned soil. One must find interest in this spot in other features than those which characterized it in Oglcthorpe's time. While in fancy we picture its then natural beauty, and while we lament its disappearance, we are largely consoled by reflecting on its present interest, deeper than forest or hill or river ever inspired. Since that time it has become the site of a temple of the living God. to which generations have brought their prayers and praise, their chil dren to be baptized, their parents to be buried, and their lovers to be wedded. Hut its special interest, which has brought us here today, is the first fact in what I have ventured to call the history stage of this spot. We are here under the auspices of that noble band of patriotic women, the Colonial Dames, whose motto is "Yirtutcs majorum filiae conservant." to take part in the ceremonies, intended to perpetuate the memory of the fact that this is the site of the little colonial fort which Os'lethorpe bnilded one hundred and sixty-six years ago. In those far off days this outpost of civilization, which has grown into our fair city, was known not as the town of Augusta, but as ''Fort Augusta". To this place traders resorted both for its commercial advantage mid for the protection which this
4

little fortification afforded from the denizens of the neighbor ing boundless forest.
But everything passes--colonial days went by, and states struggled for independence. Then a more dramatic interest gathered about this spot. Within the compass of these walls, above these graves, in the sight of yon onlooking hills, in hearing of the murmurs of the near by river, men fought and bled and died in and around a larger fort--each in the cause he espoused, each under the flag he cherished. Here men fighting loyally for their king, and men fighting unselfishly for their country have hallowed the spot and given it an interest, which
it could never have derived from the mere beauties of nature, were they ever so great.
In response to that sentiment of our nature which dis tinguishes and consecrates localities where critical parts of the historic drama have been acted, we come to this place after the lapse of one hundred and sixty-six years since the planting" of the little colonial fort to commemorate that event, and that one, too, of larger interest--the siege and capture of the Revo lutionary fort, within whose lines we are now standing, some time British and sometime American, changing its name with its shifting fortunes, now "Cornwallis" and then again and lastly "Augusta". Henceforth while granite and bronze en dure, this monument will keep these historic memories from perishing from the earth.
With all reverence for the teachings imparted for genera tions in this nearby sacred edifice. I say it: How little we know of that other world in which, we all believe'* How far is it? How near? How thick the veil which hides it from our mortal vision? How thin? While "across the narrow night
the-v flinsOr us not some token", are those on the other side better endowed than we, so that while we cannot penetrate the veil they may see and know what passes here? If that be true and there be among those lookers and listeners from the other side any who tasted here the double bitterness of death and defeat, they will know that we erect this monument not in triumph but simply in memoriam--in memory of the little fort, in this region the first bulwark of commerce and civilization: in memory of the Revolutionary fort, the goal and prize of disciplined battalions: and in memory of victor and vannuished alike. Success is an ignoble shrine at which to worship. Courage and devotion to duty, these be worthy of monuments. We are a people who have not hesitated to erect memorials to failure. Witness our noble Confederate monu ments, all of them recording a magnificent failure frankly and

proudly, because filled with brave and noble self-sacrifice. We have imparted a new meaning to battle monuments. The theme of our monuments is not victory--perhaps unmerited; but courage and devotion to duty--though defeated. Let this monument, which we unvail to-day, stand on that high moral plane--a monument to duty done, an equal memorial to the victor and the vanquished, the successful and the unsuccessful brave, the men who found their duty in fighting for their country, and the men who saw theirs in upholding the standard
of their king.

/,
t
"The Great War"
ADDRESS OF
JOSEPH B. GUMMING,
BEFORE
Camp 435,
United Confederate Veterans,
AUGUSTA, GA.
MEMORIAL DAY,
1902.
THE CHRONICLE JOB OFFICE, AUGUSTA. GA.

3

MY COMRADES:--It is forty-one years since the great war

commenced. This day marks the thirty-seventh anniversary of

its close. Of the thousands who survived its ravages, by far the

greater part have, in the intervening years of peace, joined their

comrades, who perished while it was still flagrant. Those who

knew its realities and now preserve its memories; those who

did their duty then and IIOWT enjoy that consciousness; those

who then made sacrifices and now feel a just pride in recalling

them--these are a small minority of those who first and last

mustered under the Confederate Flag. During the war death

untimely on the field an,d in the hospital, and death, during the

long years of peace, in the order of nature and in the fullness of

years has reaped the greater part of that mighty host. The

remnant is relatively small ,and its disappearance is proceeding

with accelerated velocity.

One of that fast diminishing remnant, addressing my com

rades and fellows, I am not disposed to play the historian or

chronicler. There is a great deal of that going on all the time.

Do not for a moment, however, infer from the expression just

used, that 1 would, if I could, discourage the work of the chron

icler. It is from the plain simple sketches and narratives which

individual soldiers are contributing out of the fullness of their

experience, that the judicious historian of the future, when all

passion is dead, when the last lingering resentment is in the

grave, when politics and pensions no longer distort the view,

will derive his truest color for his history of that pericd. But

for myself, I prefer to devote a little time to the consideration

of some of the vestiges of that momentous period as we find

them in the thought and heart of the Present. Some reflections 011

that line give satisfaction; others kindle a feeling of sadness, in

which is mingled a degree of vexation. We old fellows look

back upon that glowing period of our lives with so much emo

tion, it stands out in our thoughts and feelings as so different

in quality from the life of common times: the present with its

commonplace pursuits and interests seems so small in com

parison with that heroic age, that we feel disappointed, aye. vex

ed, at the lack in the generation, which has grown up since the

war--our own children--of appreciation of the greatness, the

solemn isolation of that tremendous epoch. This vounsrer een-

*

--

^^

^^

eration knows in a general way that forty years ago there was

a war in the land.' Thev also know that four vears a<ro there



v

^^

was a war. They saw something of this last mentioned war.

It was not much of an affair, they say, and justly. What differ-

ence, they say, between the war of forty years and four years ago? This younger generation is too busy with the struggles, the duties and the pleasures of the life of today to concern themselves with a dead and gone past. This is natural and per haps we should not cherish any resentment, but we cannot escape a feeling of disappointment.
As those, who did not live in that time, or who, if living then, were not old enough or receptive enough to receive a true im pression of it, and do not understand the then emotions of the actors therein, or the effect now of its memories on its survivors, let me endeavor to recall feebly at least the spirit of an unprece dented era.
What is man in the world's government but an instrument in the hand of its Ruler? How little we short-sighted mortals imderstand of His ways! How inscrutable to us His choice of methods to effect great changes here on His footstool! Shall we, gropers in the dark, presume to inquire whether the changes to be wrought out by war might not have been accomplished amid all the beatitudes of peace? Shall we impudently complain that the power which can order the hearts and minds of men as He wills, did not ordain that His purpose in this instance should be effected in amity and brotherly love? It is sufficient for us to know that the time had arrived in the government of the world when a great change was in order. For reasons which we cannot fathom, it was to come, like so many great mutations in the world's history, only through tears and blood. If tears and blood were to flow in rivers, then were it necessary that men should rise above the level of ordinary times. And thus it was ordered by the Supreme Ruler. A whole people was ennobled, elevated, sublimated. Human nature rose to its loftiest heights. For the time its selfish and its sordid parts were purg ed away. Gain, wealth, office, pleasure and the things generally for which men struggle and jostle each othe-r in smaller times, were contemned by the spirit of that age, while it soared to nobler things. Self, whether asserted in self-seeking activity or manifested in self-indulgent ease, was for the time dethroned and the spirit of sacrifice reigned in its stead. We in the midst of a material and self-seeking age, whose atmosphere affects us all, scarcely recognize this as the same world or ourselves as those spiritually uplifted mortals of forty years ago. Is it strange, then, that we cherish tenderly "and fondly the memory of days when we moved on a higher plane than now? At suvh times, we are hearing the voice of our better nature, speaking to us out of that nobler past, reminding us that we were not al ways engrossed in the selfish pursuits/ which absorb us now, and that there was a time, when we were deaf to such things

5

and barkened only to the trumpet call of duty, summoning us

to immeasurable sacrifices. At such times there rises before

our eyes, not unapt to be dimmed with tears, the vision of a bet

ter age, peopled with heroes, among whom we moved not wholly

unworthy. Is it strange then, I say, that when anniversaries like

this lead us back to a nobler past, in which we were at home, we

feel an exaltation, which the commonplace present cannot give

or take away?

I fear that with all my laboring I cannot make those, who

Avere not dwellers in that period, comprehend either its spirit or

^

the effect, which its memories have upon us who did live and

f

move therein. They cannot understand us. Our language is

strange to them. They marvel at the depth of our feelings.

They regard us with a sort of patronizing pity. They are dis-

!

posed to account charitably for our silly enthusiasm on the

score of age. What more can be expected, they say to them

selves, of a lot of old fellows, who, conscious of their impotence

in the affairs of the living present, dream about, and in their

dreams magnify, a dead past, in which they played their little

part? We thank them for their amiable and charitable senti

ments; but let us tell them with due modesty, that while we be

lieve that they, who are of the same blood and lineage as cur-

selves, would, under the same circumstances, do as we did,

strive as strenuously, suffer as cheerfully, be unselfish and self-

denying as thoroughly, we have this advantage of them: We

had the opportunity which they have not had, and which, God

forbid, that they should. We have done what they would do.

We have in our time risen to heights of devotion and conduct,

to which they would rise, if the opportunity were given. And

I

incomprehensible and ridiculous as it may seem, we are very

proud of it. We feel on such anniversarries as this uplifted, for

*

they take us back to a period in which, whatever we may have

done and been since, our soul-life was on a higher plane than

it has ever been at any other time. Aye, as I have said more

than once, speaking as the representative of the average Con

federate soldier: "That period of my life is the one with which I

am the most nearly satisfied. A persistent, steady effort to do my

duty--an effort persevered in in the midst of privation, hardship

and danger. If ever I was unselfish, it was then. If ever I was

capable of self-denial, it was then. If ever I was able to trample

on self-indulgence, it was then. If ever I was strong to make

sacrifices, even un^o death, it was in those days; and if I were

called upon to say on the peril of my soul, when it lived its

highest life, when it was least faithless to true manhood, when

it was most loyal to the best part of man's nature, I would an-

swcr: "In those days when I followed a battle-torn flag through

its shifting fortune of victory and defeat."

And now. my comrades, -how easy it is to name the word that

characterizes and strikes the key-note of that time and should explain our pride to all the world--self-sacrifice--that spirit and

that conduct which raise poor mortals nearest to divinity. Oh,

(iod in heaven, what sacrifices did we not make! How our very heart-strings were torn as we turned from our homes, our parcuts, cur children--in some instances "the bride, was made the wedded wife yestreen!" How poor we were! How ragged! How hungry! When I recall the light-heartedness, the courage, the cheerfulness, the fidelity to duty which lived and flourished under such circumstances, from the bottom of my heart I thank (iod that for four long years I wore, if not brilliantly, at least faithfully and steadfastly, in camp and bivouac, in advance and retreat, on the march and on the battlefield, the uniform of a

Confederate soldier.

I am very glad to receive from a most competent helper time ly assistance jn my feeble effort to portray the spirit of that

age. <n

In

Ins

recent

noble

oration

in

memorv

of

McKinlev, *

Sec-

retary of State Hay has, with the gifts of a scholar and an ora

tor, unfolded this subject. For we must, my comrades, recog

nize the truth that the same spirit prevailed among our foes.

They, like ourselves, felt that they were fighting for their coun

try. From our standpoint they were carrying en a war of con

quest, which we were resisting with the indignation of patriots, defending our country against insolent and wicked invasion. Such was their spirit, and such was ours. Love of country was the source cf both. Devotion to duty, as seen by each, was its life. And so Mr. Hay. in the oration to which I have referred, speaking of the young volunteer McKinley, uses language which applies to the youth of 1861 equally well, whether he don ned the gray or the blue. He says: ''It is not easy to give those of a later generation any clear idea of that extraordinary spiritual awakening which passed over the country at the first red signal fires of the war between the states. * * * I do not mean that in the north alone there was this austere wrest ling with conscience. In the south as well, below all the ef fervescence and excitement of a people, perhaps more given to eloquent speech than we were, there was a profound agony of question and answer, the question to decide whether honor and freedom did not call them to revolution and war * * * The men who arc living today and who were voting in 1860, will m.-vc-r forget the glory and glamour which filled the earth and ~ky whf-n the long twilight of uncertainty and doubt was ended :?.:.'! thf tirw- for action had come. * * * The fluttering of

the flag in the clear sky drew tears from the eyes of young men. Patriotism, which had been a rhetorical expression, became a passionate emotion, in which instinct, logic and feeling were fused. The country was worth saving; it could be saved only by fire. Xo sacrifice was too great; the young men of the country were ready for the sacrifice; come weal, come woe, they were ready.
"At seventeen years of age William McKinley heard this
summons of his country. He was the sort of youth to whom a military life in ordinary times would possess no attractions. His nature was far different from that of the ordinary soldier. He had other dreams of life, its prizes and pleasures, than its marches and battles. But to his mind there was no choice or question. The banner floating in the morning breeze was the beckoning gesture of his country. The thrilling notes of the trumpet called him--him and no other--into the ranks."
I have thus, with the help borrowed from Mr. Hay. attempt ed with a view mainly to make our feelings understood, to re produce the spirit in which we entered into the war. Let none of my hearers, whether old comrades or those others, who honor us with their presence, have any apprehension that I in tend to take up the war itself--and with such a theme extend this discourse to a deadly length. I have no purpose to play the historian and attempt to describe campaigns and battles. I prefer to the narrative of foughten fields, however proud we justly are of them, the consideration of the mental and spiritual features of those times. So I shall say only of the war itself that the same exaltation of spirit, the same elevation above the material interests which rule in ordinary times, the same victory of self-denial, the same reign of sacrifice, with which the war commenced, endured to the end. For different reasons I shall not dwell upon the next period--a period in which from hatred, generated by the strife, or stupidity, or both, our conquerors undertook in our despite to reverse the order of civilization, to subordinate intelligence to
O
ignorance, the superior race to the inferior, the Anglo-Saxon to tile African. I refer, of course, to the hideous reconstruction period. Let us pass that by. Let us try to forget it; for its memory revives in our hearts a bitter hatred which four years of bloody war had not engendered. Let us think of this peaceful evening of our career, and take some account of some changes of view ami of speech concerning the war. These changes, to which 1 refer, have all taken place among our former foes. \Ve have not changed. \Ve felt from the beginning that we were right. We feel the same way now. 1 have yet to meet the L'ontVilcrate soldier, who does not helieve that the principle on

8
which he fought was right. Whatever may be his view as to the wisdom of this great country remaining united under one gov ernment, and however unreservedly he may concede that the is sue cf the war settled for all time that it was to be so united, lie accepts that conclusion as the decision of the sword, and not the logical outcome of the1 argument. Placing himself back in i86r, he knows that his state had the right to secede fronn one confederacy and join in forming another. He knows that he was never a rebel. He is sure that while he did his part to the best of his ability in a great war, he never took part in a rebel lion. He knows that he did his best to repel the invasion of his country, but he is certain that he was never untrue to his alle giance. These were his sentiments the:?, they continue with him now, and they will accompany him to his grave. No change has come over us.
Hut the views of our brethren of the north seem to have changed somewhat in this respect. They begin to see that great struggle in its true light. They begin to recognize the fact that great organized communities (sovereign states we regarded them), in population five times more numerous than the re volted colonists in revolutionary times, and in territorial extent a vast empire, were united with practical unanimity in uphold ing political doctrines, which history, tradition and logic ap proved, though statesmanship and expediency might condemn. They begin to admit that we were not resisting lawful authority. \Ve were not seeking to overturn any government. History, tradition or logic never warranted the application of the term "rebellion," to that great struggle--and the people of the north have begun and more than begun to see that truth. How the words "rebel" and "rebellion" are passing out of use. Here and there there may be some paltry creature, narrow, rancorous, with small brain and smaller soul, like that idiot of a Grand Army camp commander in Washington, I believe, who recently made a spectacle of his silly self by proclaiming that we "were and everlastingly shall be rebels." But generally you will find in the current speech and literature of the north, instead of the eld nonsense, "rebel" and "rebellion," the words "Confederate" and "Civil War." This is of interest to us, not as marking the disuse of terms for which we cared not in the least, but as marking progress in the north's true appreciation of that great struggle. But the phrase "Civil War," while marking an ad vance towards the truth, is still not correct. It was not a civil war. The true conception of a civil war is that of a war be tween opposing parties in the same state or kingdom--a con flict in which communities are disrupted, families divided, broth er arrayed against brother. Our war had none of those fea-

tures. There was no division in Georgia, for instance. There
was no friction of the machinery of goverment. There was no
suspension of civil law. There was no closing of courts. There
was no resistance to t'he tax gatherer. Xo portion of the citi
zens of Georgia were fighting any other portion. The seces sion of the state had not changed the relations of its citizens to the state or to each other. All internal affairs remained in their normal condition. All things pertaining to government went on as if nothing had happened. What was true of Georgia was true of all the other states of the Confederacy. All that vast region between the Potomac and the Rio Grande was solid and undi vided, and its population was united with practical unanimity. That wide empire and that great population, presided ever by one organized government and living under the folds of one flag, was at war, not with parts of itself, but with a great out side power. Such a contest does not meet our understanding of "civil war." In the border states of Kentucky and Missouri where the people were divided among themselves, that phrase could be used with more propriety. But as to the great strug gle as a whole, "civil war" is a misuse cf language end a perver sion of history. The accurate and exact appellation of that war was given by Mr. Stephens, when in 1867 he wrote his book, "The War Between the States.*' That was what it was: no "re bellion," no "civil war," but a war between a majority of the states, united in a government retaining the name of United States, and a minority of the states, united in a government as suming the name of "Confederate States." The only objection to the name is its length. It is too long for a busy people, who are disposed to be as brief as possible in their speech and have no time, for instance, to say telephone or telegram, but must needs shorten them to "phone" and "'wire." Then why not drop "rebellion," "civil war," "war between the states," and call it simply "The Great War?" There is 110 danger that any well in formed person will be misled or in doubt by reason of that des ignation. It was not only a great war, but 'The Great War." When, in the tide of time, has there been one greater cr so great? XTone of which we have any authentic history. We read, but not without distrust, of Xerxes' army of a million men. The north put in the field more than two million. The vast host of Xerxes was marshalled against a few score thousands of Greeks--a mere handful to the armies, which, though inferior in numbers to the armies of the north, marched by hundreds of thousands first and last under the southern banner. Great as compared with all other wars in the numbers engaged, it was relatively greater in the area of its operations, Great in the size of its armies, greater in the vastness of its area, it was

IO
greater still in the number of its battles--an average of a battle for ever}r week of the four years of its duration--battles, not skirmishes, many of them Shilohs and Gettysburgs--not San Juans and El Canevs. Greater still in its slain, its wounded, its rivers of blood. Greatest of all in the noble sentiments which actuated the combatants on either side. "The Great War" then, let it be in our speech and our school books, as well as in our
memories. My comrades, we are taking a long look backward today.
When we face about and look the other way, there is but a little space to be swept by our mortal vision. We know not what those few remaining years may bring, but we do know what they cannot take away. They cannot take from us the recollec tion that we were good soldiers in "The Great War." They cannot rob us of our just pride in that fact. They cannot, while life lasts, stop the quickened rhythm of our hearts, whenever we recall those davs of dutv and sacrifice.

July 229 1864. ADDRESS OF
JOSEPH B. GUMMING,
............ AT THE ....-.-.
Unveiling of the Monument
............TO............
Maj. Gen'1 William Henry Talbot Walker
/
m
...........ON THE ...........
BATTLE FIELD OF ATLANTA,
JULY 22, 1902.
OKKIC-K. -\I-iSfj4TA. SA.

July 22, 1864. ADDRESS OF
JOSEPH B. GUMMING,
AT THE
Unveiling of the Monument
TO
Maj. Gen'1 William Henry Talbot Walker
........... ON THE
BATTLE FIELD OF ATLANTA,
JULY 22, 1902.

Surely this is a most remarkable occasion. If any man of the thousands assembled on this field 38 years ago. had ventured to predict what we now see with our eyes and hear with our ears, the apparently rational explanation would have occurred to all who heard him that the excitement of battle had affected his brain and dethroned his reason--so wild would have seemed
his prophecy. What are the salient features of this remarkable occasion?
The men, who then stood apart in hostile ranks, united here in a contest as to which will do the greatest honor to his foeman of that dreadful day. The gray vying with the blue in laying flowrers on the monument of the brave Federal McPherson. The blue side by side with the gray to unveil a monument to the gallant Confederate Walker. The cannon, the characteristic feature of that monument, contributed to do honor to Walker by the government against which he fought. The same gov ernment sending a company of its gallant officers and men to salute the unveiling of that monument.
What a contrast, too, between that day of booming cannon and roaring musketry, of smoke and bursting shells, cf blood and passion and this scene of peace and good will with nothing in the air more deadly that the rays of the July sun and no sound more discordant than the rustling of the leaves in the summer wind.
The like of this, so far as I know, has never occurred in his tory, and, as I verily believe, could not happen elsewhere than in this wonderful country, which the greatest war in history could not rend in twain.
A short sketch of the man whose memory we are seeking to honor this day will probably be more interesting than any mere declamation or words of eulogy of the present speaker. In presenting such sketch, no attempt will be made to arrive at per fect exactness as to mere dates.
William Henry Talbot Walker was born in Richmond county. Georgia, November 26, 1816. He was the son r,f Freeman Walker, a distinguished lawyer and a senator of the United States. He graduated at the West Point military academy in July, 1837. The following Christmas day he was borne as a dead man from the bloody field of Okeechobee--that fierce bat tle with the Indians in the Everglades of Florida. Put it was not written in the P>ock of Fate that that wiry form should per-

ish thus earh% or that that dauntless spirit should be dismissed from its earthly career by the bullet of the Seminole. While Ponce de Leon had vainly sought in this same Land of Flowers for the Fountain of Youth, there seemed, on this occasion at least, to be some potent life preserving quality in its waters. This brave young soldier, being carried from the battlefield to be consigned at the very cutset of his career to a soldier's grave, was laid by his bearers, as they stepped to rest, where no per fectly dry ground was to be found. The touch of the water of this mysterious fairy land set that gallant heart to beating once more.
If even at that early day he had been borne to a soldier's grave, he had achieved enough to make his resting place worthy to receive such a monument to his memory, as now, sixty-five years later, we unveil this day. But instead of to a gloryhaunted tomb, he was borne to a bed of anguish, where that brave spirit wrestled with and baffled the hand of death.
Ten years later we find him in Mexico. Where would one look for Walker in the day of battle ? Surely in the forefront of it--a place where his superiors, who wished daring deeds to be done, would place him and whither his own gallant spirit would carry him. Here again his career seemed to be closing and this day to be rendered impossible. Hopelessly wounded, as it was thought by the surgeons, as he led the assault at Molino del Rey, it seemed that, like Lady Macbeth, "more needed he the divine than the physician/' When the man of God approached him with such ministrations as alone his case seemed to call for, cur hero dismissed him not irrevently. not disrespectfully, but with the rational purpose of concentrating all the resources of his brave spirit upon the task of coming up again from the jaws of death. And then, when, in his own opinion, but not that of his surgeon, he had sufficiently recovered for the attempt, he commenced that long retrograde movement, which was to bring him again to home and country. And so this young captain, who had marched gaily and gallantly at the head of his company from the sea to the plateau of Mexico, from Yeracruz to the ancient capital of Montezuma, retraced his steps, stretched on a litter, keeping a spark of life aglow by his unconquerable spirit and high hopes of the future.
In those far off days how long and how weary the way from Mexico to Albany on the Hudson, where his young wife awaited him! How meagre the means of transportation of those times! How comfortless, how rough compared with the luxurious ap pointments of today! Xo comfortably equipped hospital ships, no smooth running ambulance trains then! V/hat tempestuous tossings on the Gulf! How slowly the steamboat labored up the Mississippi! Ho\v descending currents retarded the progress of the wounded man, when, leaving the ''Father of Waters," he

journeyed eastward up the Ohio! How many weary days and weeks before, still 'hovering between life and death, loving hands received him on the Hudson! Even then, long after he had reached this goal, which in those days was so far off, his condition was precarious and his sufferings extreme. But still, in spite of the prophecies of the surgeons, he would not die. It was left for two bullets through the heart seventeen years later to quench that dauntless spirit here on this hallowed spot.
But while, as I have said, there remained to him seventeen years of life--and a part of them the most active and the most glorious--he never recovered from the shock of the desperate wounds, whose scars he bore to the grave. These of us who recall his erect and spirited figure, whether on foot or on horse back, remember how attenuated it was, how frail it seemed to be, and how it was a never ending marvel to us that he was capable of so much exertion and fatigue. And those of us near est to him knew what a martyr he was to several phases of bodi ly suffering.
During the twelve or thirteen years between his recovery from his Mexican wounds and the outbreak of the Great War, he was, when his health permitted* on the active list of the United States army. His most conspicuous tour of duty dur ing that period was as commandant of the corps of cadets at West Point during the years 1854, 1855 and 1856. The election of Lincoln found him major and brevet lieutenant colonel. On the happening of that event, believing that war was inevitable. he resigned from an army, which he, foresaw would be used against his people. He was at that "time at his home on an indefinite leave on account of his shattered health. When the state of Georgia seceded, there being at that time no Southern Confederacy, he offered his service at once to the great war governor of Georgia, the father of the gentleman, to whom is due the credit of this occasion. Gov. Brown proceeded immed iately to raise two regiments of infantry, to the command of one of which he appointed Colonel Walker and to the other Colonel Hardee. When, however, a few weeks later the Confederacy was formed, both these veteran soldiers offered their services to that government. I pause here in this narrative to say that the two contemplated Georgia regiments, which I have mentioned. were consolidated into one. which achieved a glorious record in the armv- of Northern Virg^inia as the First Georgoia Re^gulars.
His offer of his services to the Confederacy was met with the tender of a colonelcy. This he considered not commensurate with his record and reputation as a soldier, and it was declined. The Confederate government scon took the same view and ten dered him a brigadier-generalship, which he accepted. He as sumed command of a brigade composed of Louisiana troops in the Armv of Northern Yinnna. and soon brought it to a higfh

state of discipline and devotion to him. In December, 1861, the Confederate war department, following out a policy of brigading together troops from the same state and appointing over them a brigadier from the same state, took the Louisiana brigade from General Walker and assigned to its command the president's brother-in-law, General Richard Taylor. In an impulse of dis appointment and indignation General Walker resigned his com
mission.
At that time Governor Brown was organizing for the defense of Savannah a division of three brigades of excellent troops. The division commander was already appointed, or doubtless
that position would have been offered to General Walker. He was given a brigade which he accepted. But the passage of the conscript act in April, 1862, dissolved this division, and he was again out of service, and so continued until February, 1863.
Thus a great war raged around him without any participation in it by him for nearly a year. During this period of inaction the battles around Richmond, Second Manassas, Sharpsburg and Fredericksburg had been fought by the Army of Northern Virginia, and Perrvville and Murfreesboro by the Army of Ten nessee. Those-who knew well our hero can imagine how that fiery spirit chafed against this inaction. The sound of battle in his ears and he pursuing the ways of peace! Human nature is radically the same in all ages, and doubtless in that home on the Sand Hills there was a repetition of the inner life, the chafing, the rage, the restlessness, the unsuccessful search for justifica tion of his inaction in real or fancied wrongs, which three thous and years before were compassed by the tent of Achilles, raging against his treatment by Agamennon. To oitr hero it was an intolerable situation. A war, in which his beloved country was in a death grapple, and he a soldier by nature, by taste, by edu cation and experience taking no part therein! Feeble health and a frame shattered by the wounds of two wars furnished to his knightly soul no good reason why he should not be at the front. So, repressing his sense of the in justice done him, he again offered his sword to his country. He was immediately re-appointed to a brigadier-generalship. This was in February or early March, 1863. It was at this time that my association with him in military life began. I was ordered from other fields to report to him as his brigade adjutant. Xow, nearly 40 years thereafter, at a time of life when one expects little of the future and turns with anxious inquiry to the past to find, among its vicissitudes, its errors, its failures and its disap pointments, peradventure at least here and there some firm ground, where the spirit may encamp with satisfaction. I look back on that association as one of those cherished resting:
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places. I cannot refrain from so much of cgctism as will voice the deep satisfaction I feel in knowing and remembering that

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from the day I reported to him until the words of respectful re monstrance,' which I addressed to him a short half hour before this spot received his. blood, I enjoyed his friendship and his
entire confidence in camp and field.
His rank of brigadier was of short duration. In a few weeks, on the application of General Joseph E. Johnston, to whom he had reported and between whom and himself there continued to the last the closest friendship, he was promoted major general.
In the Chicamauga campaign he commanded the Reserve Corps cf the Army of Tennessee. When the generalship of Rosecrans deranged Bragg's plan of battle, this corps, intended to be kept in reserve, was the first to be attacked in an isolated position, and for hours, Saturday. September 19. 1863. bore with Forest's cavalry the brunt of the fierce and bloody battle, but held its ground until reinforcements arrived and the new crder of battie was inaugurated. On the reorganization of the army at Dalton in January, 1864. he resumed command of his division.
It is not my purpose to follow our departed friend's career day by day and movement by movement during the arduous campaign of the summer of 1864, in the midst of which he ren dered up his life. What more I have to present to you in the way of narrative shall be confined to the twenty-four hours. whose end was marked by his fall on this very spot, the morn ing of the 22d of July of that summer.
General Hood in his book "Advance and Retreat" says that Hardee's Corps was selected for the main attack of that clay. because among other reasons, after the battle of Peachtree Creek on the 2Oth. it was fresh and unfatigued. How different from this view is my vivid recollection of that night march from the line of the creek through Atlanta and then south to the position where we were to reach the left flank and rear cf the federal army. How many miles of that weary march I slept in my sacldie! How many better men fell literally out of the ranks having first fallen asleep! ()nc incident in the early stages of the march I would recall: As we reached Gen. Hood's headquarters at the Leyclen house still standing on Peachtree street. General Walkor dismounted and went in. In a few minutes he returned full of serious enthusiasm. He told me, as we rede, that Hood had earnestly impressed him with the conviction that a battle next day was necessary to prevent the immediate fall of Atlanta, and had rapidly unfolded his plan and the arduous nature of the undertaking. That was enough to tone the noble spirit of our hero up to its highest pitch. He was aglow with martial fire from that moment and his attenuated, tireless figure sat his horse erect all through that weary night, and his uplifted spirit soared above all suggestion of fatigue or danger.
I hasten on_to what, relatively to this occasion, was the culminating event of the day, pausing only en one incident. I have

spoken of a respectful remonstrance on my part as among the last words which passed between us. When we had filed out of the road on which we had been marching, and formed line of battle under the orders of the corps commander to do so and to advance in line in the direction of the enemy, I observed a thick tangled briar patch in front of one of our regiments. 1 called General Walker's attention to it and to the difficulty of breaking through it in line and suggested that that regiment should pass this obstacle in the movement "by right of com panies to the front." He approved this suggestion. Any other commander of his rank would have taken the discretion to mod ify the orders, which he had received, in this small particular. But so scrupulous was he in his exact obedience of orders that he would not make the change without the corps commander's approval. So he rode up to General Hardee, who was near by, and began to state the situation. Without waiting to hear him through, General Hardee turned roughly and rudely upon him and said loudly in the presence of staff officers and orderlies: "No, sir! This movement has been delayed too long already. Go and obey my orders!" Near at hand then was the hour when he should fall dead from his saddle; but the bullets that pierced that proud and sensitive heart had not for it the sting of those bitter tones. The fiery 'reply rose to his lips, but was checked there, but the fierce glare at his commander was not to be repressed. He saluted, turned his horse and slowly rode back. As we rode, he said in tones in which rage and self-con trol contended, "Major, did you hear that?" I replied: "Yes, General Hardee forgot himself." He answered: "I shall make him remember this insult. If I survive this battle, he shall answer me for it." Our line soon advancing, some order to carry or other exigency took me for a few minutes from his side. When I returned, he told me that a staff officer from General Hardee (I think it was Lieutenant Colonel Black) had just come to him to say that General Hardee regretted very much his hasty and discourteous language and would have come in per son to apologize, but that his presence was required elsewhere, and that he would do so at the first opportunity. I said, "Now. that makes it all right." But being still in great wrath, he said: "Xo, it does not. He must answer for this." Then it was that I ventured to remonstrate with him and to say that the occasion called for other thoughts. It was enough. At once everything was forgotten, except the requirements of the hour. The whole man was once more only the patriot soldier and the zealous commander wholly devoted to the duty in hand.
Our advance through the woods continued. So dense was the growth that it was impossible in places for each brigade to see the flank of its neighbor brigade, and thus to preserve the proper intervals and alignment. To meet this difficulty, he dis-
8

patched three of his staff, Captain Ross, Captain Troup and myself, one to each of the three brigades, keeping with him his volunteer aid, Captain Talbot, and Lieutenant Bass, of his es cort. It was but a short while after this, before the batttle was fairly begun, while I was conducting to the best of my ability Steveiis' brigade, a courier brought me the intelligence that

General Walker had fallen. My immediate duty was to find

the senior brigadier, General Mercer, and report to him. This

I did, and from that moment the exigencies of the battle, which

lasted all day and into the night, demanded my poor services 011

the field. And thus it happened that after my few well received

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words of remonstrance and his brief words of command, never

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again did I look upon that martial figure or that noble counten-

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ance in life or in death. Before I left that field, his body, bear-

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ing its recent wounds and the scars of two other wars, was on

its way to its resting place in his mother earth, which never took

back to her bosom a nobler son.

What manner of man was he, whose memory we are honor

ing today? I have labored in vain if in the tedious narrative I

have given you I have not presented his career in such a way

as to enable you to characterize him. What can any feeble word

of mine add to the facts of his honorable life and glorious

death? If I tell you that he was bravest of the brave, the soul

of honor and generosity, the incarnation of truth, the mirror of

chivalry, the devotee, I had almost said the fanatic, of duty,

^ xvhat do I say which his life and death have not proclaimed with

more of eloquence? I who knew him best in the latest and

most marked period of his life, pronounce, in addition to all I

have said and to what his life and death have eloquently pro

claimed, that of all things under the vault of heaven, for noth

ing, not whistling bullet, nor shrieking cannon ball, nor bursting

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shell, nor gleaming bayonet had he any fear--for nothing ex-

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cept one thing--failure to obey orders to the letter and do his

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soldierly duty to the uttermost. Only at times, when unexpect-

f

ed circumstances rendered impossible the literal performance of

orders, have I known anything in the semblance of fear to ap

proach that dauntless soul.

While we do honor this day to him who stood above the

ranks as leader, let us not forget the followers who fell on the

same field.

Not less worthy were thev.



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The

low

Iving:



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vallev^ s

are just as much a part of this beautiful world as are the moun

tain peaks; but it is these latter which are glorified by the rays

of the morning and evening sun. And so it is a part of the for

tune of war that he, who by merit cr fortune has risen high in

command, draws to himself the fame and glory which brave fol

lowers have helped him to win. What dangers they encounter

ed, how hotly his division fought, will appear from a few simple

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facts. On the 2Oth of July its major general and its three brig-

adiers led their respective commands. By eventide of July 220 the major general and one brigadier general were dead 011 the field and another brigadier general grievously wounded. A few months later I saw Gist, one of these brigadiers, and Smith, who after General Stevcns was killed, July 20, commanded Stevens' brigoade in the battle of the 22d,* dead on the bloodv* field of Franklin. Of one division and four brigade commanders, all but one had in four short months fallen on the battlefield.

Whatever estimate may be made of the battle on this spot thirty-eight years ago, the general cause in which we fought it was lost. Must it be held, therefore, that Walker and the many other brave men who perished in it gave up their lives in vain?

Is it true that there is no good thing but success? Oh, God in heaven! Is it permitted that men shall in honest devotion to a cause and in the noblest spirit of self-sacrifice endure suffering and surrender life, and no good thing spring from such planting of what is best in human nature? Are the noblest deeds and

sacrifices to be considered wasted unless they achieve the very thing at which they were aimed? Shall courage, patriotism,

fidelity to convictions be pursued even unto death, and no fair llcwcr spring from such precious seed unless, peradventure, they be watered with what short sighted mortals call success? To each of these questions, had I the tones of Jove, I would thunder Xo! and that negation should roll through the empy rean till it was heard of all people. Nothing worth having comes without toil and sacrifice more or less, and the price which a people pay for glory, for the respect of the world and their re spect for themselves is counted in tears and blood. That we peo ple of the South have presented to all the world an exhibition of unsurpassed courage, energy, devotion, heroism and endur ance, and have, though failing in the particular objects of our efforts, made the world ring with our praises: and especially that we have acquired for ourselves and shall transmit to our pos terity the consciousness that we were capable of great deeds and untold sacrifices, that we have heroic memories as a people in stead of a dull record of commonplace, commercial, money-seek ing history--these precious possessions have we obtained in the

onlv obtainable wav. through tears and blood and wounds and

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death.

And when we turn from this general view to the contempla tion of the particular case of our hero, dare we say that he was

a loser by his glorious death? "Dulcc ct decorum cst pro patrict won." The prospect of failing in the discharge of duty on the battlefield is ever before the true soldier, until it comes to pass that he falls in love with that picture and looks to it as the fit

ting crown of his career. Lifting our eyes from this little span of human life and regarding the ages which will roll over this imperishable monument, what a gainer he was by the day which

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we are commemorating! On that day he exchanged for what of life may have remained to him in the order of nature, filled as it might well have been with sorrows and trials and disappoint ments, and which in any event would have terminated long be fore this morning--on that day he exchanged for that fragment of "mortal life the lasting fame, which this monument will make perpetual.
We, therefore, salute thee, thou stately shade, who. we fain would believe dost move invisible across this scene; we salute thee not only with honor, but with felicitations, thou brave and gallant soldier, thou true and knightly gentleman, thou of the generous heart, thou of the dauntless spirit, who didst fall on this spot, which we can only mark but thou didst consecrate.
IBRARv

INSCRIPTION
Written for the Georgia Monunent on the Battlefield of Chickamaojia:
To the lasting Memory and perpetual Glory Of all her Sons, who fought on this Field,
Those who fought and lived and those who fought and died. Those who gave Much and those who gave ALL
GEORGIA
Erects this Monument. Around it sleep Slayer and Slain
All brave, all sinking to rest Convinced of Duty done.
Glorious Battle! Blessed Peace! This Monument stands for both of these--Glory and Peace:
For this Memorial of her soldiers' valor Georgia places on a foundation, laid for it,
In this day of Reconciliation, By those 'gainst whom they fought.
Glory and Peace encamp about this stately Shaft! Glory perennial as Chickamauga's flow, Peace everlasting as yon Lookout Mountain!
Only the first six lines (with the words "and perpetual Glory" omitted) are actually inscribed on the Monument.