The flag and the women of the Confederacy : An address at the Confederate reunion, in Augusta, Ga., Nov. 10, 1903, in presenting a Confederate flag to Camp 1389, U.C.V., in behalf of Chapter A, Daughters of the Confederacy / by Hon. Boykin Wright

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THE FLAG AND THE WOMEN OF THE CONFEDERACY
AN ADDRESS AT THE CONFEDERATE REUNION, IN AUGUSTA, GA., NOV. 10, 1903, IN PRESENTING A CONFEDERATE FLAG TO CAMP 1389, U. C. V., IN BEHALF OF CHAPTER A, DAUGHTERS OF THE CONFEDERACY.
BY
HON. BOYKIN WRIGHT.
[Yesterday afternoon Chapter A, Daughters of the Confederacy, complimented the veterans with a notably brilliant reception. Assembling the company. President (Mrs.) Caswell said:
"As the representative of the Daughters of the Confederacy of this city, it gives me great pleasure to welcome this as.embly of United Confederate Veterans and their comrades in arms, from whatsoever quarter they may come.
"Soldiers of the Confederacy, ourselves and our city are yours/" Confederate Hall was converted into a scene of indescribable beauty. The large rooms were thrown together and gaily decorated with flags and bunting. The walls were covered with a net-work of smilax and bamboo vines. A deep frieze of grey moss further brightened the effect The columns were entwined with smilax and the mantel was a fragrant mass of bright-hued chrysanthemums. The lights were shaded in red and from each chandelier was suspended clusters of chry santhemums. The rostrum was decorated with palms and two crossed flags formed a pretty background. Ses.ted on the rostrum were officers and ex-officers of Chapter A, D. of C., Gen. Evans and officers of the Georgia Division U. D. C., sponsors and maids-of-honor, and officers of the Robt. E. Iee Chapter, Children of the Confed eracy, while the hall was crowded with an interested assemblage.--Augusta Chronicle, Nov. n, 1903],

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PRESS OF THE AUGUSTA CHRONICLE.

THE FLAG AND THE WOMEN OF THE CON FEDERACY.
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Mr. Wright spoke as follows:
"Confederate Veterans of Camp 1389--Daughters of the Confederacy, Veterans, Ladies and Gentlemen:
"My office on this occasion is to present in the name of the Daughters of the Confederacy a Confederate flag to a camp of Confederate veterans.
"What a train of associations and memories springs unbidden at the linking together of these precious names; what a revival of the spirit of the sixties!
"For the dear name of woman is as indissolubly and as gloriously associated with these sacred colors as that of the brave and undaunted heroes who followed them to death upon a thousand battlefields.
"Christened first in the tears of our women, then washed in the blood of our braves, the Confederate flag has now become glorified in the hearts of a devoted though vanquished people.
"Torn, tattered, blood-stained and blackened in the smoke of innumerable conflicts, its bullet-pierced folds, though to victory furled forever, are dearer to these vet erans who marched under it and to those who love the cause for which it stood, than ever before.
" 'For though conquered they adore it! Love the cold dead hands that bore it! Weep for those who fell before it! Pardon those who trailed and tore it! But, oh, wildly they deplore it! Now who furled and fold it so!'
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"Furled and folded for all time as a national flag, we and our children and our children's children to the latest generation shall preserve and cherish these colors forever as our most priceless relics. When not in use on such occasions as this we shall place them under glass covers --in holy receptacles--if not in national libraries and museums, in our own Confederate abbeys and Confeder ate homes--where they shall be displayed and watched over and guarded by the Daughters of the Confederacy-- that noble and patriotic order which has already taken its proud place side by side with the Daughters of the Revolution, and shall, with them, continue to preserve and perpetuate the highest type of valor and patriotism ever given to the world.
"And why should we not love this flag and keep its colors before the eyes of the world? I say let them float and float forever. Let them float in your hearts and in your memories, but also let them float in your homes and in your streets and be ever present in the decorations of all your gala days. Let no Southern child, for all genera tions to come, grow unfamiliar with their colors and their devices--the blessed stars and bars! Let no Southern child's heart ever cease to thrill and no Southern voice ever cease to cheer when its folds are thrown to the breezes, for they speak, as they flutter in the sun light, of the South's most heroic age; they proclaim mighty deeds performed by mighty men; they betoken colossal and glorious sacrifices, made and suffered by like sized men and women, fashioned only to fit the times.
"The present generation, by reason of its very envir onments, is incapable of conceiving the magnitude of those events or of the actors in that world's greatest war.
"We shall not see their like again, because the centu ries, as they had not in the past, cannot again in the future, reproduce the occasion which brought forth this noblest type of men and women. But as we cannot hope

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to attain their unapproachable greatness, let it at least be always our proudest ambition to so honor our heroic ancestors and the cause for which they battled as to '.:e worthy to be called their children.
"Animated by something of the spirit vhich inspi ! our noble women at the beginning of the war to conl ^ this holy ensign to their gallant defenders, these no" ^ Daughters of the Confederacy place in your keeping thiso silken folds that you may know they cherish for thes?colors and for the holy cause they represent the sa< *j undying love and loyalty that quickened the patriotic hearts of Southern women, when forty years ago, they placed the Confederate colors in your hands and sent 3^011 forth commissioned to bear them aloft in honor while liv ing, or dying, to let them enshroud a patriot's and a martyr's form. How well the brave sons of the Confed eracy kept faith with her holy women, the blood-stained battlefields from Pennsylvania to Texas richly attest. In song and marble and bronze those deeds have been memorialized and history is writing them in imperishable glory.
"But who has or shall ever record the achievements of our women in that war? What historv has written the
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story of her noble deeds, of her sacrifices and sufferings ? What painter has put them on canvas? What sculptor has yet chiseled in enduring marble the majesty, the greatness, the goodness, the unselfishness, the devotion, the faith and the beauty of her service to her country?
"Poet, historian, painter, sculptor all will find here, almost untouched, their richest and most inexhaustible treasurehouse. Which of her many sided traits, which of her many tragic situations will seize first the imagination of that future artist or appeal strongest to the inspiration of the poet who is yet to write the South's great epic? Or when the historian conies to write of her where shall his story begin, and where end? When shall her figure rise

most grand and luminous before their eyes; what service of hers, what act shall they, most admiring, seek to per petuate, each in his own undying art ?
"Was it her unspeakable sacrifice in the beginning when she first buckled on her loved ones the armour of that holy war and sent them away from home to fight for their country; or later her uncomplaining endurance of untold privation and loneliness and desolation at home while her defenders were facing the enemy and driving back the invader; or her divine fortitude, when father, husband, son, brother or lover fell on the distant battle field and came back to her no more forever; or when she moved like an angel through the hospitals or in the rear of the firing line, ministering to our wounded soldiers and soothing their last hours with her gentle words and soft deft hands; or when in the darkest hours of our blessed cause when the brave heroes in front were being crushed by overwhelming numbers, her faith, kindled by heavenly fires, kept alive the waning hopes and drooping courage of our naked, starving and shattered armies; or when at the end all save honor was lost, she met with her smiles the ragged remnant of the returning soldiers and pledged them her eternal faith and sympathy, and began at once her work of strewing flowers over the graves and build ing monuments t<5 commemorate the deathless deeds, of the dead; or when, as today the fairest, gentlest and most beautiful of all the Southland, meet in these annual re unions to greet, to cheer and show honor to these battlescarred veterans whose eyes are growing dimmer, and whose steps more faltering each passing year, but whose voice and presence were never more gracious to these loyal and loving ladies than now ? We do not know. But this we do know; when in the fullness of time the chivalry and genius of the South shall be prepared worthily to perform this holy trust and give to the world some fit and enduring memorial of woman's greatness and glory in that war, no matter which of her virtues shall be selected

as the crowning piece of that immortal structure, it will be pleasing in the sight of God and an inspiration to womankind forever.
"God bless the cause of the Confederacy, for it was freedom's holy cause. God bless and protect the remnant of the Confederate veterans still left with us; and above all, God bless and God perpetuate the spirit of Confeder ate women--the mothers and daughters of the Confed eracy."