The Cavalry—Remarks of Private James N. Dunlop, at A. N. V. Banquet, October 29th, 1879.
Mr. Dunlop was called on to respond to a toast to the cavalry and spoke as follows:
| "To horse, to horse; the sabres gleam, High sounds our bugle call; Combined by honor's sacred tie, Our watchword, laws and liberty! Forward! to do or die." |
Mr. Chairman and Fellow Comrades—The simple melody of our bugles when, in days of yore, they called us to "mount," or sounded "the advance," is heard anew in the sentiment just proposed and in our ears again ring their commands—set to the notes of Scotland's chief minstrel—breathed from the magic touch of the "Wizard of the North."
And so the events of those times, that "tried men's souls," the homely detail of the soldier's daily life—no less than the splendid achievement of "peril's darkest hour"—shall furnish material for the solemn, stately muse of history and thrilling theme for story and for song.
The sentiment, sir, is an epitome of our struggle, and by a single happy touch delineates the instinct of the citizen soldiery of the South, as, bound together less by the iron bands of discipline than the golden cords that draw the patriot's heart, they stood to defend their people's liberties, to vindicate a violated Organic Law. In this behalf your "cavalry" was privileged to do battle. For this they "drew sabre."
| "Combined by honor's sacred tie, Their watchword, laws and liberty." |
Grave views of the philosophy of our struggle, or of its bearing upon the future of the country, were illy obtruded on this occasion of sacred memories and of chastened mirth. Thus much, at least, the sentiment suggests in the "watchword" it utters—For "laws and liberty," for constitutional freedom, our war was the grandest protest a century has witnessed, and its principles will prove the only sure bulwark for that freedom through centuries yet to come. Deep down, beyond the fate of passing issues, the upheaval of local institutions, the tottering of a fair social fabric—broader in import, undiminished in vitality—repose these principles, universal, eternal. Before the government was born, they were. They rocked the cradle of Liberty on this continent, and when they perish Liberty will have found her grave.
For one, I cannot, in the light of the sacred past, remit the future to the chilling counsel of a desolate despair. Nay, rather, from the altar of our memories, I would kindle the flame of our hopes, and in these "reunions" pour annual libation to the Truth, that "had its being" incarnate in our cause.
