By Robert L. Taylor.
One of the most brilliant civilizations that ever flourished in the
history of the world staggered and fell with broken sword and shattered
shield on that dark day when the flag of Southern hope and glory went
down in blood and tears. Its decimated armies, too exhausted from loss
of blood to longer pull the trigger, too weak from starvation to charge
the enemy, too footsore and too proud to run, stacked their old, bent
and battered muskets in the anguish of defeat and went limping back to
their ruined homes in Dixie.
There is nothing left of that civilization now but a few remnants of its
gray columns—_themselves_ grown gray as if in honor of the uniforms they
wore—and the thrilling and pathetic story of its vanished prestige and
power lingering among its tombstones and monuments like the fragrance of
roses that are faded and gone. Never again will the white-columned
mansions of the masters glorify the groves of live oak and the orange
and the palm where Southern beauty was wooed and won by Southern
chivalry, and life was an endless chain of pleasure. Never again will
the snowy cotton fields and rice fields, stretching away to the Gulf or
to the river, teem with happy slaves and ring with their old time
plantation melodies. Hushed forever is the music of the Old South!
Closed are the lips of its matchless orators! The dust of its statesmen
mingles with the dust of the heroes who died to save it. Only three are
left in the counsels of the nation: Morgan, the brave and the true, the
able, the eloquent and learned Senator from Alabama; Pettus from the
same state, the peer of Morgan in all the exalted traits of character
that distinguish the unswerving and incorruptible representative and
defender of Southern ideals and Southern traditions; and Bate, that
grand old man of dauntless courage, that fearless soldier with many
scars, the hero of Shiloh, the strong and faithful Senator who in
private life is as pure and gentle as the mother of his children, and in
war as bold and daring a cavalier as ever drew a sword![1] It is true
there are other splendid men from the land of cotton and cane in
Congress, whose heads are silvered o’er, and who have nobly led Southern
thought and sentiment. They are superb exponents of the old ante-bellum
civilization, but they were too young to taste the sweets of its glory.
Some of them were born soon enough to listen to the lullaby of the old
black mammy and to sit in the negro cabin and listen to the
blood-curdling tales of uncle ’Rastus about ghosts and goblins; some,
like Daniel of Virginia, Berry of Arkansas, and Blackburn of Kentucky,
were old enough to follow Lee and Jackson and to fight to the finish;
but their youth forbade them from sitting on the throne of living ebony
with these older men, who, in reality, are all that is left of the Old
South in the national legislature; and in whose presence all men,
whether of the North or of the South, delight to lift their hats with
that profound reverence which true nobility of character always
commands. What a shame there are not four!
Footnote 1:
Senator Bate has died since this was penned.
[Illustration:
SENATOR WILLIAM B. BATE.
]
[Illustration:
GOVERNOR JAMES B. FRAZIER, OF TENNESSEE.
]
A sigh of deep regret came from the Southern heart when Missouri
registered the decree that Cockrell, the soul of honor, the
impersonation of truth and integrity, the soldier and the statesman,
must cease to reflect honor upon that great commonwealth as one of its
representatives in the United States Senate. But it must be a sweet
consolation to him to go back among the people whom he has served so
faithfully and so well, with the consciousness of a clean life behind
him, both private and public, and with the prestige of a glorious record
in the service of his country.
[Illustration:
GOVERNOR JOHN C. W. BECKHAM, OF KENTUCKY
]
To those who have marked the passing of men in recent years, how solemn
the thought that there are so few left to tell the tale of the manhood,
the wealth and the influence of that chivalrous race who staked all and
lost all save honor in the struggle to preserve its institutions. There
is only one remaining who served in the cabinet of Jefferson Davis, in
the person of the venerable and beloved John H. Reagan of the Lone Star
State. The dews of life’s evening are condensing on his brow and its
shadows are lengthening around him, but the burden of his fourscore
years and five still rests lightly upon him. The snows that never melt
have fallen upon his head, but there’s no snow upon his heart; ’tis
always summer there! He has been distinguished through life for his
rigid honesty and the fearless discharge of duty, and he will die, as he
has lived, the idol of his people. May God lengthen the twilight of his
declining years far into the twentieth century![2]
Footnote 2:
Since this article was set up, Judge Reagan, too, has passed away.
One by one the great majority of the star actors in the thrilling drama
of the past have made their exit behind the sable curtain of death, and
in all probability another decade will clear the stage.
[Illustration:
GOVERNOR ANDREW J. MONTAGUE, OF VIRGINIA.
]
[Illustration:
GOVERNOR EDWIN WARFIELD, OF MARYLAND.
]
[Illustration:
GOVERNOR J. M. TERRELL, OF GEORGIA.
]
It is one of the purposes of this magazine to aid in keeping ever fresh
and green the history and traditions of the Old South; to keep alive its
chivalrous spirit, and to tell the pathetic story of the lion-hearted
men around whose names are woven some of the greatest events of history.
It has been beautifully said that “literature loves a lost cause.” If
this be true, the South will yet be a flower garden of the most
enchanting literature that ever blossomed in any age or in any land.
Some Homer will rise, greater than the Greek, and dream among the
cemeteries where its heroes sleep and sing the sweetest Iliad ever sung!
The spirit of another Hugo will brood over its battle fields and gather
tales of valor and reckless courage; of grim visaged men scorning shot
and shell and riding to the cannon’s mouth; of bayonets mixed and
crossed; of angry armies clinching and rolling together in the bloody
mire of the awful strife; of Death on the pale horse, beckoning the
flower of the Old South to the opening grave! He will gather up the
tears and prayers and the withered hopes of a dying nation; the piteous
wails of pale and haggard maidens for lovers slain in battle; the
shrieks of brides for grooms of a day brought back with pallid lips
sealed forever and jackets all stained with blood; and the swoons of
mothers with the kisses of fallen sons still warm upon their wrinkled
brows. He will gather them up and weave them all into volumes of
romantic love more vivid and terrible than the story of Waterloo! He
will paint in burning words a picture, not of all the horrors that
followed the blunder of Grouchy in that battle upon which hung the fate
of empires, but of Stonewall Jackson falling in the noontide of his
brilliant career and passing over the river to rest under the shade of
the trees; a picture, not of Wellington seizing the fallen Napoleon and
banishing him to solitude and death on a rock in the sea, but of the
great and generous Grant receiving our own immortal Lee like a king at
Appomattox, declining to accept his sword and bidding him return to the
peaceful walks of private life among the green hills of old Virginia; a
picture, not of Ney, who had fought so long and so bravely for the
triumph of his beloved France, shot through the heart by cowards within
the very walls of Paris, but of Gordon, with golden tongue portraying
the last days of the Confederacy amid the shouts and tears of the brave
men who had faced him with booming cannon and rattling musketry on a
hundred fields of glory; a picture, not of the English Channel as the
dividing line between the drawn swords of France and Britain, but of
Mason and Dixon’s line healing into a red scar of honor across the
breast of the great Republic and marking the unity of a once divided
country!
[Illustration:
GOVERNOR NEWTON C. BLANCHARD, OF LOUISIANA.
]
[Illustration:
GOVERNOR N. B. BROWARD, OF FLORIDA.
]
[Illustration:
GOVERNOR JAMES K. VARDEMAN, OF MISSISSIPPI.
]
[Illustration:
SENATOR JOHN T. MORGAN.
]
Not very long ago, during the Spanish-American War, there was commotion
in a far Southern town, caused by a coterie of young men bitterly
protesting against the sons of Confederate veterans wearing the blue and
fighting under the old flag. An elderly man with “crow’s feet” at the
comers of his eyes and silver in his hair, listened for a while in
silence, but finally arose from his chair and said: “Young men, you are
wrong. I followed the stars and bars for four long, weary years! I saw
its colors go down at last and I straggled back to my native state,
barefooted and in rags, only to find my home in ashes. I swore eternal
enmity to the stars and stripes and to the blue. But one day, after the
battle of Manila Bay had been fought, a Mississippi regiment went
marching up the main street of my town and lo! my boy was in the ranks
dressed in the Federal uniform. In my rage I rushed to the Colonel and
shouted, “Take that blue uniform off these young men and let them put on
the gray and show the world how the sons of Confederate veterans can
fight!” but the Colonel smiled and shook his head and the regiment
marched on eager for the fray. I went home in my fury more bitter
against the North than ever before. But when one day they brought my boy
home in his coffin and I looked down upon him pale and motionless, in
his blue uniform and wrapped in the old flag, my animosity vanished in a
moment and in my tears I said: ‘Henceforth that uniform is my uniform,
that flag is my flag and this whole country is my country.’” This
sentiment is not incompatible with loyalty to the gray nor to the folded
stars and bars, but it is the expression of the only feeling that will
ever unite all the sections of the Union.
[Illustration:
SENATOR B. F. PETTUS.
]
We must recognize the fact that a new civilization has arisen in the
South from the ashes of the old, and while her people cherish the past
for its precious memories, their faces are turned toward the morning.
They are not only producing more cotton than ever before, but building
gigantic plants among its snow-white fields, and with the magic of
modern machinery are transforming the raw material into finished
fabrics; they are pulling down the hills and dragging forth their
treasures of coal and iron, of marble, zinc and lead, and are converting
them into all the finished implements of peace; they are harnessing
their beautiful rivers to the thunder-clad steeds of the storm and
turning the myriad wheels of industry with electric power; and they will
some day out-herod Herod in the marts of the world.
The representatives and governors of the South, confronted with new and
perilous problems, have had the courage to grapple with them, the brain
to control them and the heart to turn many of them into blessings. They
have brought wealth out of poverty and prosperity out of desolation; and
Hope stands on the horizon with a new crown in her hand, beckoning this
new civilization to a throne of power never dreamed of by the old. And
yet, while the Southern people rejoice in the resurrection of their
country from the dead and in the bright prospects spread out before
them, let them never forget to worship at the shrine of memory nor to
permit the glory of the blessed past to be dimmed by the splendor of the
future.