ADDRESS 
 
 Maj. JOSEPH B.CUMMING, 
 
 AT THE 
 
 UNVEILING OF CENOTAPH 
 
 ON GREENE STREET. 
 
 DECEMBER 31, 1873. 
 
 Chronicle Job Print, 
 Augusta, Ga. 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2016 with funding from 
 Duke University Libraries 
 
 https://archive.org/details/addressbymajjoseOOcumm 
 
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 Eleven years ago today, at this hour, a great conflict was 
 raging on the banks of Stone River. All day long the tide of 
 battle rolled through the cedar forest. The result was in- 
 decisive, and night found both armies shattered and bleeding 
 — the living and the dead lying down together on the frozen 
 ground. I can see now the faces of the slain — the blue coated 
 and the grey — in the pale moonlight, where it struggled 
 through the rifts of the forest. Among them were the faces 
 of some of those whose names are inscribed on this monument. 
 Some of these were lifted from their gory beds by comrades’ 
 hands, and now rest in their native soil commemorated by 
 other monuments. Others still sleep where they first sank to 
 rest; their graves are lost in the depths of the forest or the 
 plowshare has passed over them, and no man shall know their 
 sepulchre henceforth forever until the great day. 
 
 I speak of Murfreesboro, because this happens to be the 
 anniversary of that bloody struggle. It was, however, but a 
 type. What happened there was then happening everywhere 
 in this war stricken land. Everywhere the brave were falling. 
 In the few instances, the bleeding clay was borne lovingly to 
 weeping kindred and thus gathered to the resting places of 
 their fathers ; but the great number found scanty burial where 
 they fell. And this, too, was true of the vast multitude 
 who took their departure less stormy but not less heroic 
 from the fever-smitten hospitals. 
 
 The conflict ceased, and while, as yet, no true peace came, 
 at least the sound of actual warfare rolled away in the dis- 
 tance. Then followed that which was hitherto unknown in 
 the annals of time — a conquered people busied itself to erect 
 monuments which should perpetuate the memory of its con- 
 quest. Strange spectacle! and yet not strange*. We were 
 conquered, but our cause was just. We had fallen, but were 
 not dishonored. Our efforts had failed, but those efforts 
 had made the world ring with our praises. We had the 
 irreparable and the irrecoverable to lament; to blush for noth- 
 ing. And we might fitly rear monuments with proud front, 
 albeit covered with the symbols of mourning. 
 
 Had there been, however, only this feeling of mournful 
 pride, it alone would not have expressed itself in the erection 
 of monuments. But it soon became the pious care of our 
 people after the war to preserve the names of our martyrs, 
 
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and to inscribe on the monuments erected to their memory 
 simple legends protesting to earth and Heaven the purity of 
 their motives. Few were the offerings they could make at 
 first out of their poverty, and the work has been slow. But 
 it was a sacred enterprise, not to pass away with the freshness 
 of grief, but to become deeper rooted with time and to expand 
 with returning prosperity. Moreover, our enemies, exercising 
 the right of conquerors, ungenerously — I would say, but I 
 pause with the words unspoken when I remember that they 
 did it for their dead — our enemies were studding our own 
 land — ours if not to control, at least to live and to die in — 
 with monuments to their soldiers, imposing their version of 
 the great struggle upon our children and our children's chil- 
 dren. Aud thus in some of the lovliest places of the land, the 
 child receiving his first impressions, the wayfarer, the un- 
 learned, who reads nothing except what he finds in his path- 
 way, are confronted by monuments, on which, in a perverted 
 vocabulary, a just cause is styled rebellion, and true men are 
 branded traitors. Then, what had been a sentiment for the 
 dead became also a high duty to the living and the unborn ; and 
 what had been intended only as a memorial of heroism became 
 also a protest against calumny. And so, devoted men and 
 women working in tender love for the dead and with unwaver- 
 ing conviction that they were right, this monument, planted 
 in love, watered by the tears of mothers, wives, daughters, 
 sisters, now rises under these trees to perpetuate, as far as 
 imperishable marble can make them perpetual, the names of 
 the soldier dead of Richmond County, and to proclaim while 
 it lasts, that their’s was a just cause, and their’s a sweet and 
 honorable departure. 
 
 In what language does this monument make these weighty 
 utterances? Read! “These men died in defense of the prin- 
 ciples of the Declaration of Independence". And is this not 
 true? These men fought for the right of self government and 
 against centralization. These men fought for the right of 
 communities, empires in extent, organized and self sustaining, 
 to regulate their own affairs, and against the interference of 
 a people alien in sentiment and interest. These men shed 
 their blood for the independence of a country four times more 
 populous, and many times larger than the original United 
 States. “These men died in defense of the principles of the 
 Declaration of Independence.” \\ hat did the fathers more 
 or other than this? And were these men rebels and their 
 cause treason? If so, Washington was a traitor, and Benedict 
 Arnold truly loyal. 
 
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And if this monument speaks thus fitly of the cause in 
 which these men suffered, what does it say of their discharge 
 from service? Read again. “Dulce et decorum est pro patria 
 mori”. How simple and how old! Adopted by all people 
 until it belongs to no one alone — from the time that the poet 
 first traced it on his tablet of wax, the immortal phrase, 
 chiseled upon aspiring monuments, engraved upon minister 
 pavements where great empires collect the ashes of their 
 heroes, lettered upon the unpretending slab or cross beneath 
 the cedar, the myrtle and the pine, rudely carved by the hands 
 of comrades on the rough head-boards of the battle-field — 
 the immortal phrase has proclaimed to every age and in all 
 climes that it is sweet and honorable to die for one’s country. 
 And is it less effective because so old? Nay, it is so old 
 because so effective. The human heart, which changes not, 
 when it seeks to convey one of its universal immutable sen- 
 timents, borrows the same vehicle from age to age. Aud do 
 hearts respond the less as time goes on? As soon bid the 
 heart to beat no quicker henceforth forever to the old story 
 of love; for it was spoken in simplest language in the bowers 
 of Eden, and was whispered to-day, unchanged, in the ear of 
 beauty. Old, old, phrase, denied to an Emperor, falling in 
 the midst of brilliant battalions with insigna of orders — for 
 he pursued ambition and conquest — it is rightfully due to the 
 poor Confederate soldier, buried, it may be, in his thin rags 
 by hostile hands on a lost battle-field, for he indeed died for 
 his country ; and so dying found sweet and honorable discharge 
 — dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. 
 
 The task of love is accomplished. The Cenotaph has 
 risen. The statement of the cause is made. The Roll of Honor 
 is inscribed. A time-honored formula, dedicated to the fallen 
 brave, is chiseled upon it. The work is done. We shall pass 
 away; it will continue. We commit it to the judgment of 
 future generations, in the firm faith that they will commend 
 our purpose and approve its execution. 
 
 So much for this monument and this, visible world. But 
 there is over us and around us a world to us invisible, in- 
 habited by the great army of those gone before. How thin 
 the veil depending between these two worlds ; how transparent 
 to the ecstatic soul I Who shall forbid that I shall attempt 
 to penetrate it? Who shall say I am too bold if, lifting up 
 my eyes, I seem to see the ranks of the departed marshalled 
 in the air, looking down on this scene? Who should forbid 
 that I recognize in those ranks of spiritual bodies — so like the 
 natural, but more glorious — the form of those who stood and 
 
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fell in the ranks of battle? Who shall say that but a shadow 
 flits across my brain when I seem to see along those shadow’ty 
 lines the waving of the conquered banner? Who shall deny 
 that I seem to see them in their places rest, attentive to this 
 pageant, knowing the while that all we can do is very little 
 for those who gave their all for us, yet pleased that what we 
 can we do. And if I may not see these marshalled hosts ; if 
 these be but unsubstantial shadows, no man may deny that 
 surely this is true: Above and beyond where these banners 
 
 seem to float, and these hosts seem to stand, Himself, the God 
 of Hosts, looks down and orders all; and while for his own 
 purpose decreeing defeat where we had hoped for victory, 
 able, in His own way, to change the former into the latter, and 
 in his own good time to permit the same people to place bv 
 the side of their monuments of mourning the trophies of 
 triumph.