Devotion to the Confederacy was born in me. The first large gathering I ever attended was a reunion of Hood's Brigade in Texas, and I can still feel the thrill that went through my young soul as I heard the cheering of veterans and listened to the clarion voice of Roger Q. Mills, and the melodious tones of Norman G. Kittrell expounding the principles narrating the deeds and proclaiming the virtues "of the men who wore the grey." Richmond became in my boyish imagination a sort of shrine. The passing years and intimate acquaintance have made that shrine more sacred. The debates of Webster and Hayne, of Calhoun and Clay, of Davis and Douglas, are to me the masterpieces of American polemics. The years of '61 to '65 mellow my spirit and hold me with irresistible charm. Therefore, to accept an invitation to deliver the memorial address of Lee Camp for the second time is indeed a cherished pleasure.

Viscount Morley, in the most informing book of the past year (1917) makes a striking comment on the war between the states: It was "the only war in modern times as to which we can be sure: first, that no skill or patience of diplomacy could have averted it ; and, second, that preservation of the American Union and abolition of negro slavery were two vast triumphs of good by which even the inferno of war was justified."

As to the first statement: it is undoubtedly true that two conflicting ideas of government existed in the minds of the founders of the Republic, and persisted, without abatement on either side, to the outbreak of the war. They were incarnated in those two protagonists, Jefferson and Hamilton, whose debates across the cabinet table marred the harmony of Washington's administration and gave him many anxious moments. Ingenious statesmen, patriotic civilians and devout pacifists employed every known method of diplomacy to avert open conflict. All compromises and devices which postponed the final issue made its eventuality more certain and fatal. Clashing theories for seventy years presaged the glistening bayonets.

As to Lord Morley's second observation, that the results justified the war: we rejoice to agree that to-day we are one people, but I suggest the qualifying remark that slavery would have passed away had there been no war. It was a liability to our economic and social life, and scores of petitions were filed in the South for its discontinuance, and hundreds of owners had manumitted their slaves. If the fiery abolitionists had not lighted the match of civil war, Christianity would have settled the slavery question without bloodshed and slaughter.

On occasions like this it is deemed appropriate to discuss the merits of the Confederate cause more for the information of the present generation than for the encouragement of the veterans. You men of Lee's army know, better than I can tell, the principles for which you fought. Your consciences approve the course which you pursued. After fifty-six years' reflection, no one of you regrets his action. Under similar circumstances you would do the same thing again. Some of you bear in your bodies the scars of battle, and they are badges of honor. But in the bosom of no one of you does bitterness rankle. Time has healed the wounds and history is doing you tardy justice. In the Capital and heart of the Confederacy, of all places on earth, the lamps of true history should be kept trimmed and burning. What shall we say then of the ill-starred, but immortal cause, for which our fathers fought?

It was right morally. If three million people had the moral right to withdraw from the British government in 1776, why did not twenty million Southerners have the same moral right to withdraw from the American Union in 1861 ? If President Davis was a traitor, so were Patrick Henry, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin and President Washington; if General Lee was a rebel, so were Francis Marion, Thomas Sumpter, Nathaniel Green and Anthony Wayne. If all just governments derive their just power from the consent of the governed, who can deny the moral right of fifteen states to determine their form of government ? Wendell Phillips, never noted for Southern prejudice, pertinently said in a speech at New Bedford, Mass.,

on April 9, 1861: "A large body of people, sufficient to make a nation, have come to the conclusion that they will have a government of a certain form. Who denies them that right ? Standing with the principles of '76 behind us, who can deny them the right?" With him agreed Horace Greely, Salmon P. Chase, William H. Seward, President Buchanan, Edward Everett and Abraham Lincoln. As Charles Francis Adams remarked, "The difference was that, confronted by the overwhelming tide of events, Virginia adhered to it; they in the presence of that tide, tacitly abandoned it"

Imperialistic and despotic governments are maintained by force, but the United States was a government founded on fraternity. The voices of Lloyd-George and President Wilson eloquently proclaimed the rights of people to determine their own forms of government, and manage their own affairs, unawed by militarism. If we can interpret the jargon of articulations from Russia it is a demand for the right of people to determine for themselves their government and rulers. In other words, gentlemen, the moral strength of the Allies' cause to-day, and that which their leaders are anxious to have rooted in the minds of all men, is in essence the same as that for which you contended nearly sixty years ago.

It was right legally. The framers of our constitution had before them the British constitution. That document makes parliament a sovereign and omnipotent body with authority to change any law, even the administration of justice and the succession to the crown, and with unlimited power over property and person. But our constitution builders refused to follow the British precedent, and framed a document which limits the competence of national authority and leaves ultimate sovereignty with the people of the states.

We have always and truthfully insisted that the Union was a voluntary compact of sovereign states ; that these states won their independence from the mother country, and never surrendered it upon entering the Union; that they were the creators and not the creatures of the Union ; that all rights not specifically delegated in the constitution were expressly reserved; that it was a Union of consent and not of force ; that the right of secession had been proclaimed by Northern states notably at Hartford in 1814, when Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island in convention assembled, declared "it is as much the duty of the state authorities to watch over the rights reserved as of the United States to exercise the powers delegated"; and that no authority resided in the Union for preventing secession or coercing a sovereign state. The only answer I have ever seen to this argument is by Bryce in his American Commonwealth, who says, "the knot was cut by the sword." That is not really an answer unless we subscribe to the dictum that "might makes right."

Upon the less important question of slavery the South held its legal rights. Slavery existed in all the states before the Revolution. Because of climatic and economic conditions the slaves gradually gathered in the South. In the Constitutional Convention held in Philadelphia in 1787, upon the proposal of Virginia, slavery lifted its black, kinky head, and precipitated long and warm debates. It was the cause of two of the three compromises of that immortal document. Be it understood, however, that these two compromises were a tacit recognition of slavery. First, in that three-fifths of the slaves should be counted in the census as the basis of representation in Congress ; and second, that the importation of slaves might be continued to 1808. The fugitive slave law of 1850 provided for the rendition of slaves who had escaped to free states.

The Supreme Court decided in the Dredd Scott case in 1859 that under the Constitution neither negro slaves nor their descendants, slave or free, could become citizens of the United States, and added as a dictum that the Missouri Compromise was unconstitutional and that, therefore, a slave did not become free by being carried to a territory where slavery had been prohibited under that compromise. President Lincoln's proclamation, Jan. I, 1863, declaring that all slaves in states, or parts of states in rebellion, should be free, was as illegal and unconstitutional as if the President of the United States to-day should declare that all the horses in the west should be loosed on the wild plains.

The South, then, acted within its moral and constitutional rights in withdrawing from the Union. That act did not necessarily mean war. The Cotton States wanted no war and Northern statesmen advised: "If our sister states must leave us, in the name of Heaven, let them go in peace." But such was not to be. Gladstone's maxim, "those who could no longer co-operate with honor could at least part with honor," was unacceptable to the fire-eaters. The twice-repeated promise of Secretary Seward to Justice Campbell, that Sumpter would be turned over to South Carolina, was broken as if it were not so much as "a scrap of paper." Confidence in the word of the Federal government was destroyed, for the Secretary knew when the promise was made that a relief expedition had been ordered to hold the fort. Coercion was invoked where persuasion failed. Militarists mounted the saddle and rode the charging steed of invasion. It was then that the Southern men flew to arms. Virginia, cautious and conservative, but self-reliant and courageous, had waited and worked, prayed and hoped to avoid fratricidal strife. President Lincoln called upon her to furnish her quota of 75,000 men to coerce South Carolina. The die was cast! Disregarding the consideration of interest and expediency, and with a supreme loyalty to honor and justice, she linked her destiny with the Confederacy.

"To arms! to arms!" was the cry, and these veterans, then young and gay, brave and strong, responded with alacrity and enthusiasm. What a scene! On the walls of history there hangs no more inspiring picture than that of the Southern youths hurrying from ranch and plantation, from store and bank, from mountain and plain, from college and home-all the way from the Rio Grande to the Potomac-to draw their swords and imperil their lives in defending a small state against a powerful enemy. One of our own women, Mrs. Kate Langley Bosher, has described the struggle in the soul of our incomparable chieftain at Arlington, as he decided the issue between his state and his country:

A passion of conflict! Country or state,
Allegiance or loyalty, which clearer the call?
Man of the nation, a name blazoned on high,
On escutcheons of glory; should he part with the past
In which they-his people-had writ deep and fast,
Lee!
Harsh, bitter and cruel the struggle.
Then, white and undimmed,
The altar of duty shone out of the dusk,
And love burned away all dreaming of dross.
But he knew not when yielding one sword for another,
He had carved on the heart of his country forever,
Lee!"

Your actions, my fathers, combined the virtues of little Belgium, who made her bosom a battle ground rather than break her word; of Great Britain, who risked her hegemony to protect a small nation; of heroic France, who bled to repel invasion; and of the United States, who unsheathed her shining sword to make obligatory international compact on sea and land. What if you did lose ? You saved your honor and preserved your star from tarnish. The principles you cherished are the hope of all democracies and the dread of all autocracies the world around.

The South was no more fighting for slavery than France was preparing to attack Germany through Belgium. The South fighting for negro slavery! What a travesty upon truth! Only one in thirty-three of the people owned slaves, and half of these held only from one to four. Fitzhugh Lee, Joseph E. Johnston and A. P. Hill never owned a slave. Stonewall Jackson owned two, whom he purchased at their own request. He gave these the privilege of acquiring their freedom at the purchase price, by the use for the purpose of their wages. The man accepted the offer and became a freeman ; the woman preferred to remain a slave. Robert E. Lee, many years before the war, emancipated the few slaves inherited from his mother. The large majority of Lee Camp never owned a slave. The Confederate Constitution prohibited the importation of slaves. To say the South fought for slavery is not only to convict one's self of superficiality, but is also to fly in the face of unimpeachable history.

War at its best is bad, but there are other things worse. In your campaigns we see war at its best, not only, as Morley sees, in its issues, but in its actual events. Before Bernhardi wrote his book, "How Germany Makes War," he should have read "How Lee Made War." The darkest stain had been removed from Germany by following the precedent of Lee. Deeper than any wound which the Allies may inflict, more lasting than any defeat which she may sustain, is the wound, the wrong which Germany has inflicted upon herself by a war of atrocity and barbarity. A thousand years from now, if the world shall stand so long, impartial and untrammelled historians will record the crimes of Germany against the wounded, prisoners, non-combatants, and the helpless and defenseless women and children in Belgium, France, Poland, Servia, Montenegro, and Roumania, and posterity will condemn her to execration. In contrast they will set Lee and the Southern army, whose humanity and regard for military laws spoke a more civilized people a half century before.

Three notable instances illustrate how the Confederacy conducted war against its enemies. They are Lee's protests to General Halleck, his address to the people of Maryland, and his instruction to his own troops in Pennsylvania.

(1) Pope, who succeeded McClellan, inaugurated a program of rapine against the civilian population. General Lee earnestly protested to the Commanding General of the United States' army at Washington. He used, in part, this language: "Some of the military authorities seem to suppose that their end will be better attained by a savage war in which no quarter is to be given and no age or sex is to be spared, than by such hostilities as are alone recognized to be lawful in modern times. We find ourselves driven by our enemies by a steady progress, to a practice which we abhor, and which we are vainly struggling to avoid. Major General Pope and his commissioned officers are in the position which they have chosen for themselves -that of robbers and murderers, and not that of a public enemy, entitled after capture to be treated as prisoners of war. The President also instructed me to inform you that we renounce our rights of retaliation on the innocent, and will continue to treat the private soldiers of General Pope's army as prisoners of war."

He continues, using such expressions as, "until the voice of an outraged humanity shall compel the respect for the recognized usages of war," and, "a sacred regard for plighted faith which shrank from the semblance of breaking a promise." The protests of the Bishop of Malines may be more fiery, but in military annals, there is nothing finer than the firm, dignified language of our Chieftain. It accomplished the desired effect, for General Pope's orders were changed so that, "no officer or soldier might, without proper authority, leave his colors or ranks to take private property, or to enter a private house for that purpose, under the penalty of death."

(2) On September 8, 1862, General Lee issued an address to the people of Maryland, which he was about to enter, from which the following is quoted: "No constraint upon your free will is intended-no intimidation will be allowed. Within the limits of this army, at least, Marylanders shall once more enjoy their ancient freedom of thought and speech. We know no enemies among you and will protect all of every opinion. It is for you to decide your destiny, free, and without control. This army will respect your choice, whatever it may be ; and, while the Southern people will rejoice to welcome you to your natural position among them, they will only welcome you when you come of your free will." That promise was conscientiously kept and no Marylander suffered a loss or an indignity from the Confederate army. There was no intimidation, no rod of iron, no coercive measures, but rather the sweet accents of friendship and persuasion.

(3) From Chambersburg, Penn., June 27, 1863, General Lee issued orders to his troops. They knew how General Pope had ravaged the county of Culpepper until that smiling land was well nigh a waste. They knew how General Milroy, with headquarters at Winchester, had cruelly oppressed the people of the surrounding country. It was human nature for them, now that they had the opportunity, to pay the enemy back in his own coin but Christian charity triumphed over Mosaic retaliation, as we may see in the orders to the troops: "The duties exacted of us by civilization and Christianity are no less obligatory in the country of the enemy than in our own. The Commanding General considers that no greater disgrace could befall the army, and, through it, our whole people, than the perpetration of the barbarous outrages on the innocent and defenseless, and the wanton destruction of private property, that have marked the course of the enemy in our own country. Such proceedings not only disgrace the perpetrators and all connected with them, but are subversive of the discipline and efficiency of the army.

* * *

It must be remembered that we make war only upon armed men, and that we cannot take vengeance for the wrongs our people have suffered without lowering ourselves in the eyes of all whose abhorence has been excited by the atrocities of our enemy, without of fending against Him to whom vengeance belongeth."

How magnanimous, how charitable, how Christlike those sentiments of our Commander! He was made of finer stuff than the Kaiser. In General Lee there was no pharisaic pretense of piety, no contemptous familiarity with God, no posing as the "predominant" partner and authorized spokesman of the Almighty ; but a splendid example of that religion summarized by the prophet as doing justice, showing mercy and walking humbly before God. Could the Kaiser rise to the sublimity of Lee considering surrender at Appomattox, disregarding a staff officer's expressed fears of posterity's opinion, asking the sole question "is it right ? and if it is right, I take the responsibility," the world would be at peace within a week. But it is too much to expect a moral pigmy to reach the stature of a moral giant. It was such a character that Woolsey looked upon when he said, "I have met but two men who realize my ideas of what a true hero should be; my friend Charles Gordon was one, General Lee was the other," and it was our cause of which the same Lord Woolsey wrote:

"Ah, realm of shades but let her bear
This blazon to the end of time!
No nation rose so white and fair,
Or fell so free of crime."

As prudent people who are taught by experience, we should draw such lessons as we may from the failure of the Confederacy and apply their force to the present world crisis. We are told that the important generals of all the belligerents in Europe are studying the campaigns and strategy of Stonewall Jackson as they are no other man's, save, possibly, Napoleon's. The American people, lawmakers and civilians, may well ask what lessons the war between the states teaches them. Some are these:

1. Heroism without harmony is unavailing. Braver men than followed our generals never shouldered a musket or faced a foe ; but their daring and sacrifices came to naught when governors and editors and statesmen criticized and opposed the measures of the Confederacy. The conscript law was denounced, the President held up to contempt and the orders of the Confederacy were disregarded and defied when the tide of battle flowed against us. To some extent the same process is going on in Great Britain, France, Italy and Russia, and I pray that it may not be repeated in America.

2. The inability of civilians and congress to conduct a war. It is a painful memory that the attempt of civilians and law makers to determine military policies hampered President Davis and General Lee. They endeavored to control the appointment of military officers and delayed and debated important measures when decision and action were imperatively needed. A congress that should have employed every agency and strained every nerve to furnish Lee with all possible men and money, wasted precious sessions discussing alleged unfairness in the distribution of military offices.

Instead of accepting the advice of the Commanding General and the recommendation of the President for extending conscription from 35 to 45, congressional doctrinaires proposed a substitution of the volunteer system. To cure the ills resulting from straggling, General Lee asked for a competent and impartial court martial with power to inflict the death penalty, and the reply of congress was an investigation to see whether the officers of the army had imposed capital sentences. Congress twice enacted legislation which would have depleted the army by allowing irresponsible physicians to grant furloughs, and the President, in vetoing the bills, reminded the law makers that "an army could not be administered by statute."

An astute historian has said, "If ever a people attempted to bridle their Executive, the Southerners did so by their choice of civil representatives during the war." I am almost ready to take the position that the small bickerings, selfish ambitions, personal favoritisms and spoken and unspoken disloyalty within the Confederacy did more than the Federal army to wreck our Southern hopes and break the heart of our President. The lesson for us to-day is so plain that "he who runs may read." Politics may provoke a war, but it has never yet won a war.

3. The necessity, in time of war, of subordinating every other expediency to military efficiency. The Confederate cabinet was not the first nor the last formed to compose political differences rather than to engage the ablest talent. President Davis himself was a West Pointer, a brilliant officer of the Mexican war, a successful Secretary of War, a man trained for his task. He began with the policy of employing experts as generals-Samuel Cooper, A. S. Johnston, Robert E. Lee, Joseph E. Johnston, P. G. T. Beauregard-every one of them from West Point. Immediately popular political orators and distinguished civilians began to criticize him and they never forgave him.

In the Commissary Department his appointment was not so fortunate. A man, notoriously slow, uncertain and impervious to suggestions, was appointed and retained over the repeated complaints of General Lee. Though in some sections of the country store houses were crowded with supplies, General Lee dined on a single cabbage head boiled in water, and his men and horses were emaciated for want of food. Bacon sold in Richmond for $3.50 per pound, wheat for $15.00 per bushel, boots for S100.00 per pair, and wood for $19.00 per cord. The railways, sometimes managed by incompetent and disloyal officials, were inadequately equipped, distressingly dilapidated and maintained miserable schedules. An abridged volume of the same acts may be read in the United States right now.

4. The peril of unpreparedness. The South was a country of merchants and planters, with few manufactories. She had a long unfortified battle front with exposed sides, and a territory easily penetrated. Having no adequate navy, the ports were blockaded and her staple, cotton, became unmarketable and valueless. Without munitions of war she grew weaker from day to day while her enemy became stronger. Until an international court is constituted to compose all differences and enforce peace, and until the great nations have agreed to disarmament, the surest way for our nation to preserve peace is to be prepared for protection, notably by a citizen soldiery.

5. War necessarily calls for sacrifices and entails suffering. The aristocratic women of Richmond denied themselves for their men in the field. They wore old patched bonnets and sewed until their arms were tired and their fingers stiff. The moist earth under many a Southern home was dug up to obtain saltpeter, and the salt water of our coasts was evaporated to obtain a modicum of salt. The churches gave their pews to the hospitals and their bells to make cannon. Ah! my friends, war is a stern and cruel business! We have not yet begun to suffer. France, Great Britain and Belgium could understand better. You Confederates and your companions know. We have not yet "resisted unto blood, striving against sin."

"The earth moves freedom's radiant way,
And ripens with our sorrow;
And 'tis the martyrdom to-day
Brings victory to-morrow."

5. God can cause the wrath of man to praise Him. He is not a "War God," but He is a God of Providence. He makes "all things work together for good to them who love Him." His power is over all. He causes the bees to swarm and make honey in the lion's carcass. We now understand that He used, or over-ruled, two secessions to build a union, "one and indissoluble forever." No one of us would revoke His final verdict. Each of us would join with Cutter, paraphrasing the words of Henry Clay in his Bunker Hill oration:

"You ask me when I'd rend the scroll our fathers' names are written o'er,
When I could see our flag unroll its mingled stars and stripes no more ;
When with a worse than felon hand or felon counsels I would sever,
The union of this glorious land, I answer, Never! Never!"

Admonished by the lessons taught in the costly school of sectional war; united as brothers who understand each other better because we have tested, each the other's mettle ; conscious of the integrity of our motive and the righteousness of our cause ; loving our country better than ourselves and our God supremely:

"As ne'er before, our troth we plight, to rid the world of lies,
To fill all hearts with truth and trust, and willing sacrifice,-
 To free all lands from hate and spite and fear from strand to strand,
To make all nations neighbors, and the world one Fatherland!"