Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 22.djvu/67

This page needs to be proofread.

<>f tin Smith. ;,:.

the object of her untiring solicitude, no Confederate ever asked assistance from Mrs. Cox but it was cheerfully rendered.

" She marched as the infantry did, seldom taking advantage of offered rides in ambulances and wagon trains. When Mrs. Cox died, a few years ago, it was her latest expressed wish that she be buried with military honors, and. so far as it was possible, her wish was carried out. Her funeral took place on a bright autumn Sunday, and the entire town turned out to do honor to this noble woman.

"The camps that have undertaken the erection of this monument do honor themselves in thus commemorating the virtues of the heroine, Lucy Ann Cox."

My Comrades of Picked Camp, Ladies and Gentlemen :

The beautiful sentiment which has called into existence Camp Pickett, Camp Lee and all other kindred Confederate Camps in our land, touches the heart and commends itself to posterity.

In honoring our dead heroes; in erecting a monument to our fallen braves and chief in Hollywood; in building a cottage at Soldiers' Home; in providing for our sick and destitute old soldiers; in per- petuating the memory of our noble dead, and in decking their graves with sweet and lovely flowers as the circling seasons pass, we have earned the praise and admiration of the civilized world.

But in all this we have been aided by an influence and agency equal to, if not greater, than our own. Though lar in rear of the line of battle, that line could not have been formed nor maintained without the influence and inspiration of this agency a power direct, vital and all-pervading. I allude to the typical woman of the South- ern Confederacy.

While our beloved Southland is historic and glorious from the monuments to our generals and soldiers, which proclaim to unborn generations and future ages the valor of our men, there is nothing in marble, granite or brass to immortalize the courage, fortitude nay, heroism of the women of the South.

Only a few weeks ago a monument was completed to the memory of the mother of George Washington, about one hundred years after it ought to have been done, and at last, mainly through the exer- tions of her own sex.

It is to ask you to-night that I come to aid a movement that shall give to the women of the Southern Confederacy a monument worthy of their beauty, fortitude, love, suffering, heroism and holiness. Was there ever a nobler or dearer subject?

In selecting such a topic I feel that I come close to your homes