Fort Fisher, N.C., May 19—“Burying their griefs deep within their own hearts and exchanging swords and guns for implements of industry, the Confederate soldier upon the conclusion of the War Between the States set themselves to the restoring of their desolated homes and the rebuilding of their shattered fortunes.”
Thus did General A.J. Bowley, commander of Fort Bragg, North Carolina, eulogize the soldiers of the Confederacy at the memorial exercises held here Sunday in honor of the last stand that the Confederates made to defend the gateway to the South. Two generations have passed away since the close of that great war, said the general, and the smoke of civil conflict has vanished from the skies. The whole country, under the new conditions, evolved from its four years of struggle, finds itself united in developing its vast resources in successful rivalry with the other nations of the earth.
“Whose vision is now so dull that he does not recognize the blessing it is to live in an undivided country?
“Who would today relegate his own state to the position it would hold in the world were it declared a sovereign, as are the states of Central and South America? To ask these questions is to answer them. And the answer is the acknowledgement that it was for the best for the South that the cause was ‘lost.’ The right to secede, the stake for which the South fought so desperately, were it now offered as a gift, would be rejected as a proposition of suicide.
“The story of the defense of Fort Fisher is a familiar subject in all the histories covering the War Between the States. Its importance is well known to all students of that war. let us not go into the details of the struggle that took place on this hallowed ground, but let us think of the defense of this stronghold as typifying the efforts of the entire South during the war of 1861-65.
“The Confederate veterans? With these words does there not arise in every mind that thought of a meteoric army which 63 years ago sprang into existence, as it would seem, out of space and nothingness and after a career of four years, unsustained by treasury and arsenal but unsurpassed for brilliant fighting and lavish outpour of blood, vanished from the earth as if it had been a phantom of imagination.
A Federal historian wrote of this army:
“’Who can forget it that once looked upon it? That array of tattered uniforms and bright muskets, that body of incomparable infantry, the army of Northern Virginia which for four years carried the revolt on its bayonets, opposing a constant front to the mighty concentrations of the power brought against it; which, receiving terrible blows, did not fail to give the like, and which, vital in all its parts, died only with its annihilation.’
“This is but a small and crowded planet, now that science has brought its ends together by her great inventions. Neither states nor nations can longer dwell to themselves. An irrepressible conflict is on between barbarism and civilization.
“Through human imperfection, much that must be done may seem harsh and cruel; but for all we must look forward and not backward, and walk boldly in the paths of progress.
“As in 1865, one wicked hand retarded our unification by the murder of Lincoln, so in 1898 another assassin, equally wicked and equally stupid, by the blowing up of the battleship Maine, and again in 1917 still another assassin, by violating the sacred rights of nations, have twice given us a common cause and made us at last and indeed a nation in the front rank of the world’s civilization, with its greatest problems committed to our care.
“Was all the Southern blood shed in vain? Was all the agony endured for the lost cause but as the water spilt upon the sand? No! A thousand times, no!
“The South has set a world record for devotion to a cause. She has given to her children proud memories and to history new flames to be a theme and an inspiration for unborn generations.
“She has taught the armies of the world the casualties to be endured in battle. And the qualities of the heart and soul developed both in her women and men, in the stress and strain of the poverty and in the furnace of her affliction, have made a worthier race, and have already borne rich reward in the building up of our country.
“But above and beyond all, the firm bonds which today hold together this great nation could have never been wrought by debates in Congress.
“Such bonds must be forged, welded, and proved in the heat of battle and must be cemented in blood.
“The Confederate here who deserves the highest pedestal who bore the greatest privations and contributed most freely of his blood was the private soldier. Practically without pay, and on half rations, he enlisted for life or death and served out his contract. He did not look the fighting man he was. He was lean, sunburnt, and bearded; often barefoot and ragged. He had neither training or discipline, except what he acquired in the field. He had antiquated and inferior arms until he captured better ones in battle. He had not even military ambition, but he had one incentive that was lacking to his opponents, brave and loyal as they were. He was fighting for his home.
“And Fort Fisher, the position that commanded the last gateway between the Confederate States and the outside world, will ever stand as a monument to the unflinching bravery of the defenders and the undaunted courage of the attacking forces.
“At its end, the Federal losses had reached a total of 124,390 men. The confederate losses can never be known, for their army was wiped out of existence, and no reports were possible.
“But I prefer to leave the picture as it stands. The South did not go into her cause; she was born into it. She fought it out to its remotest end and suffered to the very utmost its dying aches and pains. They were rich in compensation and have proven to be only the birth pangs of a new nation, in whose career the Southerners are proud to own and to bear a part.”
From the front page of the Elizabeth City Daily Advance, Monday, May 19, 1924
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