Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 13.djvu/356

This page needs to be proofread.

The Battle of Honey Hill. 355

resistance of that weaker section when assailed by arms, invaded and wasted, he will find that it was subdued, not by military skill or superior valor, not by statesmanship or magnanimity, but mainly by superior wealth and overpowering numbers; and when he finds that the power, when once obtained, was administered with neither justice nor magnanimity, but in a spirit of cruelty and persecution, he will turn from that narrative with loathing and shame; and where shall he find balm for the feelings of a patriotism thus wounded, unless it shall be in a subsequent history of the united career of sections once discordant and warring, which union was obtained by a spirit of justice and peace, of equity and equality, without refer- ence to past differences, and signalized by an administration which accorded opportunity to energy, the rewards of discovery to intelli- gent enterprise, and attained an honorable primacy in the grand competition of nations even by ability and force a force accumu- lated by union, education, intelligence and energy, stimulated by an honorable and wise ambition. Then, when conscious of a power sufficient for self-defence, and so regulated by honor and honesty as to be innocuous to others, he may feel that the past is atoned for and condoned when his country in its outward seemings and inner de- velopments is so presented to the world that to say, I am an Ameri- can citizen, is enough to win the respect of any people in the civilized world.

The Battle of Honey Hill. By Colonel C. C. JONES, JR.

ADDRESS BEFORE THE SURVIVORS* ASSOCIATION OF AUGUSTA, GEORGIA, APRIL 2yTH, 1885.

Friends and Comrades :

Since our last annual convocation two members of the Confed- erate Cabinet have died. On the yth of Mav, 1884, within the quiet Vails of his apartments in the Avenue Jena, in Paris, the Hon. Jinlah P. Benjamin, full of years and of honors, entered upon his final rest. With a lucidity of intellect, a capacity for labor, and an ability .jiiite remarkable, he had, during the existence of the Confederate ernment, occupied in turn the offices of Attorney-General, Secretary of War, and Secretary of State. The struggle ended, he repaired to England, where, claiming the privileges of a natural born British