Edward Ward Carmack speech, September 20, 1903 dedicating Gallatin Confederate Monument

CMWinkler

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Senator Carmack, the orator of the day, was introduced by Judge George E. Seay, and said:

Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: I am always pleased when I have an opportunity to meet the fair daughters and the stalwart sons of my native county, Sumner; but I am doubly pleased to meet you on an occasion at once so solemn and so inspiring as this; so full of sorrowful memories of the past, and yet of hope and inspiration for the future. If we cannot think without sorrow of the noble dead whom we here commemorate, neither can we recall their glorious deeds without a thrill of pride and a renewal of hope for a country whose womb is so fruitful of heroic sons. "I am glad to meet you here on this sacred spot, which one of the noblest of our Southern women has dedicated in love and tears to the memory of the Confederate soldier. And so long as this monument shall stand, and even after its fragments have mingled with the dust at its base, her name will be-loved and honored, linked with that of one who belonged to 'the knightliest of a knightly race;' whose sweet and unsullied life in time of peace was in vivid contrast with the record of his valor in time of war; for I believe that Tennessee lost one of the noblest and most stainless of her chivalry when the gentle and heroic spirit of Julius A. Trousdale passed over to the other side of the river to rest in the shade of the trees. "I rejoice that I, as one of those whose cradles were rocked in the storm of war, am permitted to testify for a new generation our fidelity to the memory of our hero dead, our love and admiration for those, broken with time as with wounds, who will soon have gone to join their loved companions on the farther shore. In the course of nature they will ere long have passed into the shadow of that solemn and inevitable hour. I trust that no one of them will go to the grave broken-hearted by the ingratitude of his' countrymen, his dying hour embittered by the thought that his wounds and sufferings are forgotten. This monument, let me say, is raised not simply to tell the world of the valor and fortitude of the Confederate soldier- they have builded for themselves a monument more .lasting than brass and higher than the regal summit of the pyramids, a monument broad based on the universal admiration of man kind, and which will tower to heaven when the stateliest memorials of princes shall be trampled into formless and unhallowed dust. No, my friends, this monument is not to perpetuate their glory. Its chief purpose is to proclaim that you, my countrymen, arc proud to honor their deeds and to claim them as the noblest heritage of yourselves and your children forever. If you shall ever cease to do so, this monument to their glory will be a monument to your shame.

"I know that no such dishonor will ever brand the laureled brow of this proud and historic old county-a county which gave three thousand of her best and bravest to the cause of the South; whose valor was tried and tested in the blaze and thunder of the greatest war that ever shook the earth, who stood with the suffering South through four stormy years on the red edge of battle, until every field was drenched and every river ran red with the blood of her sons. An d suffer me here to pay my humble tribute to one of the many hero sons of Sumner County, one whose name will be ever glorious in the records of fame, who, thank God! is still spared to be the shepherd of his people, a shining example of civic virtue as of martial valor. Full of years, full of fame, and full of honors, he will bear with him to the grave the blessings of his country and a record without the spot of an unworthy or an unknightly deed. Until Sumner County becomes ashamed of an integrity that knows no weakness and a valor that knows no fear, it will exult in the name and fame of William B. Bate.

"No, ladies and gentlemen, never, never, never will the time come when there will be a son or a daughter born of the blood of Sumner County whose eye will not dim with tears or kindle with fire for the deeds and sufferings of their sires.

"Happy is that land, my countrymen, that is filled with the memorials of great deeds and glorious sufferings, whether they be of triumphs nobly won or of inevitable disasters proudly and heroically borne. It needs not that these memorials be wrought in arch and column and temple of victory. The land may be black with ruin, it may be strewn with the ashes of desolation and billowed with the graves of its dead ; but it will be and remain a land of legend, a land of song, a land of hal lowed and heroic memories. 1£ the hearts of the people be not tamed to servitude; if they accept the inevitable in no craven temper, nor lick the dust in abject servility at the victor's foot ; if they face the future with undaunted spirit and erected brow-every ruin will be a temple, and the very ashes of the dead will kindle with a living and heroic fire.

"My friends, I love the South not only for her shining and heroic deeds ; I love her for her sorrows and sufferings, for her misfortunes and calamities, and for the dead that sleep within her bosom.
"It has been said that 'a land without ruins is a land without memories, and a :and without memories is a land without liber ties. A land that wears a laurel crown may be fair to look upon ; but twine a few sad cypress leaves about the brow of any land, and, be that land barren, beautiless, and bleak, it becomes lovely in its consecrated coronet of sorrow and wins the sympathy of the heart and of history. Crowns of roses fade; crowns of thorns endure forever. Calvaries and crucifixions take deepest hold on humanity. 'Tis their sufferings that are graven deepest on the chronicles of nations.'

"My countrymen, if the South is filled with graves, it is filied also with memories. These memories of the dead past will quicken into a living fu ture. These graves of heroes are the wombs of heroes yet to be born. Who does not feel the truth as well as the beauty of the words of Father Ryan, the poet of the lost Confederacy :
" '0 give me the land where the ruins are spread,
And the living tread light on the hearts of the dead.
o give me the land that is blessed by the dust,
And bright with the deeds of the war-slaughtered just.
Give me the land where the battle's red blast
Has flashed to the future the fame of the past.
Give me the land that hath story and song
To tell of the strife of the right with the wrong.
Give me the land with a grave in each spot,
And names in the grave that shall not be forgot.
Give me the land of the wreck and the tomb:
There is grandeur in graves, there is glory in gloom,
For out of the gloom future brightness is born
As after the night comes the sunrise of morn ;
And the graves of the dead with the grass overgrown
Shall yet be the footstool of liberty's throne ;
And each single wreck in the warpath of night
Shall yet be a rock in the temple of right.'
"Ladies and gentlemen, in rearing this monument to the Confederate soldiers we testify to the country and to mankind our enduring fidelity to their memory, we commemorate their valor and devotion as displayed on many a bloody field. In doing so, let it be known to all that we come in no spirit of contrition for the past. We beg no tenderness of the future historian, no charity from the enlightened judgment of mankind Standing in the presence of this noble and impressive monument, we proudly front the world and proclaim to the present and the coming time: 'These are our heroes, and their cause was ours.' We make for them no confession of wrong, we plead for no forgiveness of error, we ask no higher honor and no prouder fate than that by their deeds we may be judged, and our most fervent prayer is that the descendants of these heroes may be worthy of their sires. All that was mortal of the vast majority of those 'whose deeds and memories we revere has passed from the knowledge of living men.

"They are not dead. The blood with which they drenched the battlefields of the Confederacy has risen from the ground in a new generation of heroic sons; their hearts beat in the very bosoms that ache above their dust; their spirits will animate generations that are yet to be born. We may not look again into those fearless eyes that blenched not when death stood before them; we may not clasp those hands that 'struck for liberty the dying blow.' And yet they are not dead. 'He never dies who falls in a great cause. His bones may sodden in the sun, his head be hung on city gate or castle wall, but still his spirit walks abroad.'
"The flag they followed no longer proclaims-it will never again proclaim-the existence of a new nation upon the earth. 'The warrior's banner has taken its flight to meet the warrior's soul,' and together they stand at the bar of God, willing to be judged. But let us never forget that the cause of the South was sanctified by the prayers of her peerless daughters; that it has been baptized in the blood of her sons; that your fathers died for it; that your mothers prayed for it. When I appeal to you, therefore, to cherish those hallowed memories of the past, when I beg you to let no disrespectful word escape your lips for the .cause that sleeps 'with the ashes of your sires, I do so by authority of the divine inj unction to 'honor thy father and thy mother.'

“Ladies and gentlernen, thoughtless or malevolent persons have sometimes reproached us for honoring our fallen heroes, and have demanded of us as a pledge of our loyalty to a reunited country that we give their memory to oblivion and their graves to the wilderness, They know not what they ask. They would have us prove our loyalty to the Union by proving ourselves recreant to the noblest sentiment that could swell the bosom of an American patriot. The valor of our Southern soldiers, the fortitude of our Southern women, and the fidelity with which we cherish the memory of their deeds and their sufferings are but the measure of our devotion to a reunited country and to the flag that 'waves over it from the lakes to the gulf, and from sea to sea. If the time shall ever come when the people of the South cease to exult in the glorious deeds of our Southern heroes and the matchless devotion of our Southern women, when their eyes will no longer swim with tears as the sorrowful memories of the old heroic days come trooping back, then indeed may we be scorned as a degenerate
and ignoble race who could not be loyal to any country or faithful to any flag. No, my friends, the world respects us for what we are doing to-day. It will despise us if we ever renounce our own glorious past.

"The victors have a right to ask of the South that she submit in good faith to the issue of that war upon which she staked her cause. That submission the people of the South have made. Proudly, patiently, with a silent heroism which outshines all the deeds of valor that were ever done in the crash and roar of battle, they have accepted the new duties . and obligations placed upon them, and have lived up to them with a martyr's courage and a martyr's faith. All this, the victors of that war may ask of us, but no more. We admit that we were defeated; we will not admit that we were wrong.
We admit that our adversaries had a larger army, but we will not..adrnit that they had the better cause. Let me say to you, my countrymen, there were some things that were not surrendered at Appomattox. We did not surrender our rights in history, nor was it one of the conditions of surrender that unfriendly lips should be suffered to tell the story of that war or that unfriendly hands should write the epitaphs of the Confederate dead. We have a right to teach our children the true history of that war, the causes that led up to it, and the principles involved. We need not confess that our fathers were traitors; we need not prove our fidelity by defaming the dead and calumniating the blood in our own veins. We resent such accusation not onlybecause it is defamatory of our fathers but because it would be most mischievous teaching for coming generations not only in our own country but throughout the world. The world has paid its just tribute to the characters of the Southern leaders and the Southern soldiers. History has already placed the statesmen, the military chieftains, and the
armies of the South beyond the reach of hatred and detraction. In the name of the young men of America, in the North as well as in the South, I protest against the effort to make them believe that crime can outrival virtue in the greatness of its achievements and the sublimity of its sufferings. N0, My friends, it is not necessary to the safety of the country that coming generations of the South should be taught that their fathers organized a treasonable rebellion against the governrnent. They have a right to know that their fathers fought for a right which belonged to them under the Constitution. The doctrine of secession was maintained by the ablest publicists of the North as well as of the South. The very first treatise on the Constitution, written by the then leader of the Philadelphia bar, asserted the right of a State to secede from the Union. On no less an authority than that of Senator Lodge, of Massachusetts, the men who framed the Constitution regarded it as an experiment, and did not :question the right of a State to secede if it so desired. The first secession
movement in this country had its origin in New England, and not in South Carolina. Only sixteen years before South Carolina seceded, the State of Massachusetts, by solemn act of its Legislature, threatened to secede.

"And, my countrymen, whatever else may be said of the secession leaders, they were bold, they were brave. They did not wait for a favorable opportunity, when the nation was weakened and distracted by a foreign war, to put their doctrine to the trial of arms. With a courage so great that their enemies have described it as sheer folly and madness, they challenged the power of a great nation, vastly superior in numbers, with practically unlimited resources and unlimited credit. Without an army, without a navy, without munitions . of war, without factories to supply them, without money, without credit, without even a government, they entered upon that contest. Against the appalling odds of nearly five to one they maintained it through four terrible years, and for a long time the issue of battle hung doubtful in the balance. All this the impartial historian must say of the Southern secessionists; that same historian must say of the New England secessionists that they organized their rebellious conspiracy without any just cause of quarrel with the Union, and when the nation was in the throes-of a doubtful conflict with the greatest power in the world..

"All this we may say in no factious or sectional spirit, but because it is truth and a part of the history of our country have have a right to teach all these things to our children, teaching them at the same time that we have accepted in good faith the reconstruction of our government; that the causes which once threatened to divide the country have passed away, and that henceforth the strength and glory of the South are bound up forever with the strength and glory of the Union. After all, these States are united by stronger bonds than the phrases of a written constitution. We are bound together by a common interest, a common heritage, and a common hope.

‘Our Union is river, lake, ocean and sky;
Man breaks not the medal when God cuts the die.’

"Those who were loyal to the Confederacy will be as loyal to the Union, and those who are to come after them will be animated by their spirit and example. We rouse no spirit that is dangerous to the Union or to the peace of nations when we glorify their deeds. War is glorious only when it is fought for noble ends and when those who fight are inspired by noble motives. The Confederate soldier fought not for greed or conquest. He fought for home and fireside and country, inspired by the same sentiment that nerved the soul of the Roman hero who kept the bridge 'in the brave days of old.'

“But, my countrymen, while we honor these heroes, let us never forget the heroines of the South. It is related that when the sons of Rizpah fell victims to the vengeance of David and their outcast bodies were left unsepulchered on the hill, she spread sackcloth upon the rock, and from the beginning of harvest until water dropped upon them out of heaven she suffered neither the birds of the air by day nor the beasts of the field by night.

“When the Southern soldier returned to his ruined home, there in the humble doorway stood the Southern woman like an angel of hope, cheering him on to victories of peace more glorious and renowned than those in war; and through all the years that have passed, through all the time of hate and malice and persecution, she has remained like Rizpah upon the rock, guarding with sleepless vigilance the ashes of her dead. We do well to build monuments to the valor and prowess of the Southern soldiers; but if the power were mine, I would raise a monument to the Southern woman whose shaft should pierce the sky.”

Speech by Senator Edward Ward Carmack on September 20, 1903 at the unveiling of the Confederate Memorial at Trousdale Place, Gallatin, Tennessee as reported in Confederate Veteran, April 1904.
 
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