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and we have no desire to revive them. We recognize, too, that this whole country is one country and our country. We desire that, government and people doing that which is right, it may become in truth a glorious land, and may remain a glorious inheritance to our children and our children's children. But we believe the true way to preserve it as such an inheritance is to perpetuate in it the prin- ciples for which the Confederate soldier fought the principles of Constitutional liberty, and of local self-government or, as Mr. Davis puts it, "the rights of their sires won in the Revolution, the State sovereignty, freedom, and independence, which were left to us, as an inheritance to their posterity forever." This definition, a dis- tinguished Massachusetts writer says, is "the whole case, and not only a statement, but a complete justification of the Confederate cause, to all who are acquainted with the origin and character of the American Union."
Yes, we repeat, this is our country, and of it, we would say, with Virginia's dead Laureate at the Yorktown celebration:
" Give us back the ties of Yorktown,
Perish all the modern hates, Let us stand together, brothers,
In defiance of the Fates, For the safety of the Union
Is the safety of the States."
At Appomattox, the Confederate flag was furled, and we are con- tent to let it stay so forever. There is enough of glory and sacrifice encircled in its folds, not only to enshrine it in our hearts forever; but the very trump of fame must be silenced when it ceases to pro- claim the splendid achievements over which that flag floated.
HATTLE-FIELD, NOT A FORUM.
But, Appomottox was not a judicial forum; it w r as only a battle- field, a test of physical force, where the starving remnant of the Army of Northern Virginia, "wearied with victory," surrendered to "overwhelming numbers and resources." We make no appeal from that judgment, on the issue of force. But when we see the victors in that contest, meeting year by year and using the superior means at their command, to publish to the world, that they were right and that we were wrong, in that contest, saying that we were "Rebels" and "traitors," in defending our homes and firesides against their cruel invasion, that we had no legal right to withdraw from the Union, when we onlv asked to be let alone, and that we
