480 NortH Carotina Troops, 1861-’65.

the real deeds which we and our associates enacted, and the
real issues before us as the only proper motives which incited
to their performance, is a solemn duty we owe to ourselves
and to posterity. It is especially due to our own posterity—
to those who are to succeed us as citizens of the United States
under a peculiar and most complicated system of government.
The light which our conflict will afford them in grappling
with many difficulties of the future, will be as a lamp to
their feet, if our story be truly told; but if falsely related, it
would prove a delusion and a snare. False history must
teach false lessons, and false indeed would have been the ver-
dict of the muse had it been inspired alone by the bitter rant-
ings and partisan war cries of one side; and that side, too,
making history, or trying to make history, for the purpose of
keeping itself in power. But after a season, bold and repre-
sentative men begin gradually to creep into the National Leg-
islature and other positions where their voices may be
heard. Both sides now make statements; contention arises,
and from its fiery heats, so alarming to the timid, comes
forth the precious gems of truth, pure and glorified, whose
lessons, like the leaves of the tree of life, are for the
healing of the nations. Surely, there is in our story food
to satisfy the reflective and to fire the hearts of the brave, for
many generations; how that written constitutions which men
are sworn to support, are yet as feathers in the gale before
the fierce passions excited by interest, sectional hatred, and
religious bigotry, and that the only hope of freedom is, after
all, when her anchors take hold deep down in the hearts of
men; how that a simple agricultural people, unused to war,
without manufactures, without ships, shut out from the world
and supposed to be effeminated and degenerated by African
slavery, yet waged a four years contest against four times
their numbers, and ten times their means, supplementing all
their necessities, and improvising all their material almost
out of dreary wastes of chaos; how that their generals
wrought out campaigns not discreditable to the genius of
Hannibal, Caius Julius, Marlborough and Napoleon; whilst
their gently nurtured soldiers fought and marched and en-
dured with the courage of the Grecian phalanx, the steadi-

. Norta Caroiina’s Recorp. 481

ness of the Roman Legion, and the endurance of the British
Lion—and all because the Southern people had preserved
the lofty souls and gallant spirits of their ancestry; had
treasured up the traditions of chivalry and personal honor
which their fathers had bequeathed them as the highest glory
of a race, instead of the heaping together of dollars; the
great lesson which this age is striving to forget, that States
will be as their men are, that men will be as their souls are,
sordid or lofty as they are taught. And if there be any man
among us, North or South, who feels that the truth of this
eruel war should not be known, or that it is dangerous to
honor that courage and patriotism which extend to the giving
of life in its support, in any cause which a Christian soldier
could maintain; or that unfaithfulness to present duty is
bred from a reverencing of the memory of those who died to
preserve their faith ; with such I have no desire to harmonize,
the good opinion of all such I can afford to despise. We
know that the glorious profession of arms is of the highest
importance to a State; and a skill to wield the sword and the
manhood to fight battles are cardinal elements of successfui
civilization. All peace and mental cultivation produce ef-
feminate Greeks of the lower empire. All war and physical
development produce the Goth and the Hun. But when the
martial and the civil spirit are judiciously combined, the
highest types of human progress are brought forth.
Zesuton B. Vance.

Wuirtr Sutpuur Sprines, W. Va.,
18 August, 1875.