Part 5

Instead of superficial adornments and supine action, the intellectual sympathies and interests of these women were large, and they undertook with wise and just guidance, the management of households and farms and servants, leaving the men free for war and civil government. These noble and resolute women were the mothers of the Gracchi, of the men who built up the greatness of the Union and accomplished the unexampled achievements of the Confederacy.

J. L. M. CURRY

June Sixth

To the brave all homage render, Weep ye skies of June! With a radiance pure and tender, Shine, oh saddened moon! Dead upon the field of glory, Hero fit for song and story, Lies our bold dragoon. JOHN R. THOMPSON

_Turner Ashby killed in Shenandoah Valley Campaign, 1862_

_Patrick Henry dies, 1799_

June Seventh

Peace to the dead! though peace is not In the regal dome or the pauper cot; Peace to the dead! there's peace, we trust, With the pale dreamers in the dust. JAMES RYDER RANDALL

_Monument created, 1910, to the memory of Confederate officers who perished from starvation and exposure at Johnson's Island_

June Eighth

Aurora faints in the fulgent fire Of the Monarch of Morning's bright embrace And the summer day climbs higher and higher Up the cerulean space; The pearl-tints fade from the radiant grain, And the sportive breeze of the ocean dies, And soon in the noontide's soundless rain The fields seem graced by a million eyes; Each grain with a glance from its lidded fold As bright as a gnome's in his mine of gold, While the slumb'rous glamour of beam and heat Glides over and under the windless wheat. PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE

_Stonewall Jackson turns upon Fremont at Cross Keys, 1862_

June Ninth

He sleeps--what need to question now If he were wrong or right? He knows ere this whose cause was just In God the Father's sight. He wields no warlike weapons now, Returns no foeman's thrust,-- Who but a coward would revile An honest soldier's dust?

Roll, Shenandoah, proudly roll, Adown thy rocky glen, Above thee lies the grave of one Of Stonewall Jackson's men. MARY ASHLEY TOWNSEND

_Stonewall Jackson meets Shields at Port Republic, 1862_

June Tenth

The indomitable courage, the patient endurance of privations, the supreme devotion of the Southern soldiers, will stand on the pages of history, as engraven on a monument more enduring than brass.

MAJ. JAS. F. HUNTINGTON, U. S. A.

_United Confederate Veterans organized at New Orleans, 1889_

_Battle of Bethel, Va., the first regular engagement of the War between the States, 1861_

June Eleventh

We believed that it was most desirable that the North should win; we believed in the principle that the Union is indissoluble; but we equally believed that those who stood against us held just as sacred convictions that were the opposite of ours, and we respected them, as every man with a heart must respect those who gave all for their belief.

JUSTICE O. W. HOLMES (Massachusetts)

June Twelfth

The band preceding the coffin smote on their ears with poignant loud lamenting, then carried its sorrow to die moaning on the night. As the shadowy cortege filed by--men bearing lanterns on either side the hearse--a horse, riderless, with boots empty in the stirrups, following--a few soldiers carrying arms reversed--a single carriage with mourners--the effect was infinitely sad. So common the spectacle during the Battle Summer, it did not occur to them to even wonder which of our martyrs was thus journeying to his last home.

MRS. BURTON HARRISON

June Thirteenth

A little bird there was once, with golden wings; In the stars she would build her nest; And so, with a twig in her beak, at eventide When Hesperus sank to rest, Away to the starry deep she flew;--for said she, "In the Pleiades shall my nesting be!" Ah, little bird! There are heights far, far too high For the reach of those tiny wings! Down here by this thicket of haw let us rest, you and I, And list what the brooklet sings! ALLEN KERR BOND

June Fourteenth

A flash from the edge of a hostile trench, A puff of smoke, a roar Whose echo shall roll from the Kenesaw Hills To the farthermost Christian shore, Proclaims to the world that the warrior priest Will battle for right no more. HENRY LYNDEN FLASH

_Gen. Leonidas Polk, the Warrior Bishop, killed at Kenesaw Mountain, 1864_

June Fifteenth

O, Art, high gift of Heaven! how oft defamed When seeming praised! To most a craft that fits, By dead, prescriptive Rule, the scattered bits Of gathered knowledge; even so misnamed By some who would invoke thee. WASHINGTON ALLSTON

June Sixteenth

W'en banjer git ter talkin' You better hol' yo' tongue, Hit mek you think youse gre't an' gran' An' rich an' strong an' young, An' ev'rything whar scrumpshus Right at yo' feet is flung.

Oh, my soul gits up an' humps hisse'f An' goes outside an' walks, W'en a picker gits ter pickin' An' de banjer talks! ANNE VIRGINIA CULBERTSON

_Winchester captured by Confederates, 1863_

June Seventeenth

GENEROUS TRIBUTE OF A BRAVE FOE AND DISTINGUISHED AMERICAN SOLDIER AND CITIZEN

Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia never sustained defeat. Finally succumbing to exhaustion, to the end they were not overthrown in fight.

CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS (Massachusetts)

June Eighteenth

Now, Ham, de only nigger whut wuz runnin' on der packet, Got lonesome in de barber-shop, an' c'u'dn't stan' de racket; An' so, fur to amuse hese'f, he steamed some wood an' bent it, An' soon he had a banjo made--de fust dat wuz invented.

De 'possum had as fine a tail as dis dat I's a-singin'; De ha'r's so long an' thick an' strong,--des fit fur banjo-stringin'; Dat nigger shaved 'em off as short as washday-dinner graces; An' sorted ob' em by de size, f'om little E's to basses. IRWIN RUSSELL (_Origin of the Banjo on Board the Ark_)

June Nineteenth

By Captain Winslow's account, the _Kearsarge_ was struck twenty-eight times; but his ship being armored, my shot and shell fell harmless into the sea. The _Alabama_ was not mortally wounded until after the _Kearsarge_ had been firing at her _an hour and ten minutes_. In the meantime, in spite of the armor of the _Kearsarge_, I lodged a rifled percussion shell near her stern post--_where there were no chains_--which failed to explode because of the defect of the cap. On so slight an incident--the defect of a percussion-cap--did the battle hinge.

RAPHAEL SEMMES

_The "Alabama" sunk by the "Kearsarge" off Cherbourg, 1864_

June Twentieth

Jamestown and St. Mary's are both within the segment of a circle of comparatively small radius whose centre is at the mouth of the Chesapeake. In this strategic region, the key of America, Raleigh chose the base from which he would colonize the new empire; here the Jamestown experiment succeeded, after Raleigh's head had fallen on the block; the Revolution was fired by the eloquence of Patrick Henry, and was consummated at Yorktown; the War of 1812 was settled by the victories of North Point and Fort McHenry; the crisis of the Civil War occurred; and seven Presidents of the United States were born.

ALLEN S. WILL

_The first Lord Baltimore obtains from the Crown a grant of the territory lying between the Potomac and the 40th parallel, 1632_

_Secession of West Virginia from Virginia sustained by the Federal Government, 1863_

_"Virginia, who had given to all the States in common five great commonwealths of the northwest and the county of Kentucky, was now bereft of half of what remained to her"_

June Twenty-First

What care I if Cyrus McCormick was born in Rockbridge County? These new-fangled "contraptions" are to the old system what the little, dirty, black steam-tug is to the three-decker, with its cloud of snowy canvas towering to the skies--the grandest and most beautiful sight in the world. I wouldn't give Uncle Isham's picked man, "long Billy Carter," leading the field, with one good drink of whisky in him--I wouldn't give one swing of his cradle and one "ketch" of his straw for all the mowers and reapers in creation.

GEORGE W. BAGBY

_Cyrus Hall McCormick of Virginia patents his reaping machine, 1831_

June Twenty-Second

If I could dwell Where Israfel Hath dwelt, and he where I, He might not sing so wildly well A mortal melody, While a bolder note than this might swell From my lyre within the sky. EDGAR ALLAN POE

_Arkansas readmitted to the Union, 1868_

June Twenty-Third

THE BROOK

It is the mountain to the sea That makes a messenger of me: And, lest I loiter on the way And lose what I am sent to say, He sets his reverie to song And bids me sing it all day long. JOHN B. TABB

June Twenty-Fourth

AN AMUSING COMMENTARY ON THE MAKING OF SOME HISTORIES

I have here a small volume entitled, "John Randolph, by Henry Adams." It is one of a series called "American Statesmen," and emanates from the thin air of Boston. The series is edited by Mr. J. T. Morse, Jr. By what law of selection he has been governed in allotting to particular authors the preparation of respective biographies it is impossible to divine. It is quite clear, however, that he has not followed any rule of qualification or congeniality hitherto recognized by men or angels. For example, a foreigner, Dr. Von Holtz, who, in an emphatically European and un-American treatise on the Federal Constitution, had already denounced Calhoun as a kind of Lucifer, is appointed his biographer; Henry Clay, the father of Protection (as it is called), is assigned to Carl Schurz, who, I understand, is an ardent advocate of Free Trade; while John Randolph is turned over to the tender mercies of a descendant of the first Vice-President, and the grandson of John Quincy Adams!

Had this unique law of selection prevailed hitherto, we might have had a biography of Luther by Leo the Tenth; a life of St. Thomas Aquinas by Thomas Payne; while Pontius Pilate, or more likely the devil himself, would have been selected to chronicle the divine career of Jesus Christ.

DANIEL B. LUCAS

_John Randolph dies, 1833_

June Twenty-Fifth

But far away another line is stretching dark and long, Another flag is floating free where armed legions throng; Another war-cry's on the air, as wakes the martial drum, And onward still, in serried ranks, the Southern soldiers come. GEORGE HERBERT SASS

_Beginning of Seven Days' Battle around Richmond, 1862_

June Twenty-Sixth

A PROPHECY, 1869

The close of the Civil War found the conquering States so nearly equally divided between the Radical and Conservative parties, that if the South should be restored to her relative might in the Union, the balance would be thrown at once in favor of the Conservatives. The problem therefore assumed a mathematical form, and demanded that the South should not reinforce the Conservatives of the North. This could be prevented only in two ways, _viz._; either by keeping the South out of the Union entirely or by placing the political power there in the hands of a minority. To adopt one or the other of these expedients was a party necessity. This is the whole key to Reconstruction; and fifty years hence no man living will be found to deny it.

JUDGE J. FAIRFAX MCLAUGHLIN (_In the "Southern Metropolis," June 26, 1869_)

June Twenty-Seventh

The duties exacted of us by civilization and Christianity are not less obligatory in the country of our enemy than in our own.

ROBERT E. LEE

_Lee issues his famous Chambersburg order, 1863_

_"Winnie" Davis born, 1864_

June Twenty-Eighth

COL. WILLIAM MOULTRIE; SERGEANT JASPER; "PALMETTO DAY"

The battle holds a conspicuous place in the history of the Revolution. It was our first clear victory over the British, and won over one of England's most distinguished naval officers.

JOHN J. DARGAN

_Defence of Fort Sullivan, (Moultrie,) 1776_

_North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Alabama, and Louisiana readmitted to the Union, 1868_

June Twenty-Ninth

His trumpet-tones re-echoed like Evangels to the free, Where Chimborazo views the world Mosaic'd in the sea; And his proud form shall stand erect In that triumphal car Which bears to the Valhalla gates Heroic Bolivar! JAMES RYDER RANDALL

_Henry Clay dies, 1852_

June Thirtieth

Yes, there's a charm about the name of Mary Which haunts me like some old enchanter's spell, Or rather like the voice of some sweet fairy, Singing low love-songs in a lonely dell. It hath a music that can never weary, A strain that seems of love and grief to tell, The echoes of an anthem from the shrine Of peace, and bliss, and rest, and love divine. WILLIAM WOODSON HENDREE

_Robert E. Lee marries Mary Page Custis, great-granddaughter of Martha Washington, 1831_

July

A SUMMER SHOWER

Meanwhile, unreluctant, Earth like Danae lies; Listen! is it fancy, That beneath us sighs, As that warm lap receives the largesse of the skies?

Jove, it is, descendeth In those crystal rills; And this world-wide tremor Is a pulse that thrills To a god's life infused through veins of velvet hills.

Wait, thou jealous sunshine, Break not on their bliss; Earth will blush in roses Many a day for this, And bend a brighter brow beneath thy burning kiss. HENRY TIMROD

July First

A SOUTHERN SOLDIER'S TRIBUTE

To the Union commander, General George Gordon Meade, history will accord the honor of having handled his army at Gettysburg with unquestioned ability. The record and the results of the battle entitle him to a high place among Union leaders. To him and to his able subordinates and heroic men is due the credit of having successfully met and repelled the Army of Northern Virginia in the meridian of its hope and confidence and power.

GENERAL JOHN B. GORDON

_First day at Gettysburg, 1863_

July Second

General Lee distinctly ordered Longstreet to attack early the morning of the second day, and if he had done so, two of the largest corps of Meade's army would not have been in the fight; but Longstreet delayed the attack until four o'clock in the afternoon, and thus lost his opportunity of occupying Little Round Top, the key to the position, which he might have done in the morning without firing a shot or losing a man.

GENERAL JOHN B. GORDON

_Second day at Gettysburg, 1863_

July Third

General Lee ordered Longstreet to attack at daybreak on the morning of the third day.... He did not attack until two or three o'clock in the afternoon, the artillery opening at one.... Nothing that occurred at Gettysburg, nor anything that has been written since of that battle, has lessened the conviction that, had Lee's orders been promptly and cordially executed, Meade's centre on the third day would have been penetrated and the Union Army overwhelmingly defeated.

GENERAL JOHN B. GORDON

_Third day at Gettysburg, 1863_

_Joel Chandler Harris dies, 1908_

July Fourth

General Lee, according to the testimony of Colonel Walter H. Taylor, Colonel C. S. Venable, and General A. L. Long, who were present when the order was given, ordered Longstreet to make the attack on the last day, with the three divisions of his corps, and two divisions of A. P. Hill's corps, and that instead of doing so he sent fourteen thousand men to assail Meade's army in his strong position, and heavily intrenched.

GENERAL JOHN B. GORDON

_Lee awaits the attack of Meade at Gettysburg throughout the fourth day, 1863_

_Vicksburg surrenders, 1863_

_Thomas Jefferson dies, 1826_

July Fifth

Opinion, let me alone: I am not thine. Prim creed, with categoric point, forbear To feature me my Lord by rule and line. Thou canst not measure Mistress Nature's hair, Not one sweet inch: nay, if thy sight is sharp, Wouldst count the strings upon an angel's harp? Forbear, forbear. SIDNEY LANIER

July Sixth

A golden pallor of voluptuous light Filled the warm Southern night; The moon, clear orbed, above the sylvan scene Moved like a stately queen, So rife with conscious beauty all the while, What could she do but smile At her perfect loveliness below, Glassed in the tranquil flow Of crystal fountains And unruffled streams? PAUL HAMILTON HAYNE

_Paul Hamilton Hayne dies, 1886_

_John Marshall dies, 1835_

July Seventh

Do orioles from verdant Chesapeake, And crested cardinal, With linnets from the Severn, come to seek, Obedient to thy call, If they can give thee one new music-thought, Who ev'ry note from ev'ry land hast caught? E. G. LEE (_The Mocking Bird_)

July Eighth

Sweet bird! that from yon dancing spray Dost warble forth thy varied lay, From early morn to close of day Melodious changes singing, Sure thine must be the magic art That bids my drowsy fancy start, While from the furrows of my heart, Hope's fairy flowers are springing. CHARLES WILLIAM HUBNER (_The Mocking Bird_)

July Ninth

And to defenders and besiegers it is alike unjust to say, even though it has been said by the highest authority, that Port Hudson surrendered only because Vicksburg had fallen. The simple truth is that Port Hudson surrendered because its hour had come. The garrison was literally starving. With less than 3000 famished men in line, powerful mines beneath the salients, and a last assault about to be delivered at 10 places, what else was left to do?

LIEUT.-COL. RICHARD B. IRWIN, U. S. V.

_Fall of Port Hudson, 1863_

_Defeat of Lew Wallace by Early at the Monocacy, Maryland, 1864_

_Alexander Doniphan, "the Xenophon of America," born 1808_

July Tenth

MAMMY'S FIRST EXPERIENCE AT THE 'PHONE

We heard Mammy say "Hello--H'llo! (What meks you rattle de handle so?) Is dat _you_, Miss?--wants Main twenty-free! (I ain't gwine to have you foolin' wid me!) I say, Main twenty----what's ailin' you? '_Bizzy!_' I guess I'se bizzy, too! You gim-me dat number twenty-free, I'se bizzier 'n you ever dared ter be!" MARY JOHNSON BLACKBURN

July Eleventh

The Old World had its Xantippe; but----the facts have not been fully established in the New!

"Under This Marble Tomb Lies The Body Of The HON. JOHN CUSTIS, Esq., Of The City Of Williamsburg, And Parish of Bruton, Formerly Of Hungar's Parish, On The Eastern Shore Of Virginia, And County Of Northampton, Age 71 Years, And Yet Lived But Seven, Which Was The Space Of Time He Kept A Bachelor's Home At Arlington, On The Eastern Shore Of Virginia."

"This Inscription put on His Tomb was by His Own Positive Orders."

July Twelfth

Jackson's genius for war, Lee's resistless magnetism, were not vouchsafed to Hill; but in those characteristics in which he excelled: invincible tenacity, absolute unconsciousness of fear, a courage never to submit or yield, no one has risen above him, not even in the annals of the Army of Northern Virginia. He was the very "Ironsides" of the South--Cromwell in some of his essential characteristics coming again in the person and genius of D. H. Hill.

HENRY E. SHEPHERD

_D. H. Hill born, 1821_

July Thirteenth

Though the Grey were outnumbered, he counted no odd, But fought like a demon and struck like a god, Disclaiming defeat on the blood-curdled sod, As he pledged to the South that he loved. VIRGINIA FRAZER BOYLE

_N. B. Forrest born, 1821_

July Fourteenth

Pleasant and wonderfully fair, Like one that knows her own domain, Magnolia-flowers in her hair, And orange-blossoms rare, Let her not knock in vain! Lift up your equal heads to her, Of all your courts contain, co-heir, For lo! she claims her own again! DANIEL B. LUCAS (_The South Shall Claim Her Own Again_)

July Fifteenth

FACT OR FICTION?

For four years the Northern States fought to keep their Southern sisters in the Federal family; then having soundly thrashed these sisters in order to keep them at home, they suddenly shut the door and kicked them down the steps! The "erring sisters" are now fully restored to the family circle; but they had a longer and more painful struggle in the effort to get back than in the attempt to get away. More briefly, for four years the Federal government, led by Lincoln, maintained that all of the Southern States were in the Union and could not get out; and then for five years, under the rule of the Radicals, it argued that some of these States were out of the Union and could not get in!

MATTHEW PAGE ANDREWS

_Reconstruction ended and the Union restored by the readmission of Georgia, 1870_

July Sixteenth

I shall yet live to see it an English nation.

SIR WALTER RALEIGH

_Raleigh's first colony arrives at Roanoke Island, 1584_

July Seventeenth

KIN

A visitor in the Old Chapel Graveyard, in Clarke County, Virginia, asked the aged negro sexton if he knew the whereabouts of a certain grave, adding that the deceased was her relative.

"Ole Mis' Anne? Why ob cose I knows whar my ole mistis is! She your gran'ma! Jus' to think now, if you hadn't spoke we never would have knowed we was related!"

July Eighteenth

Uncle Remus was quite a fogy in his idea of negro education. One day a number of negro children, on their way home from school, were impudent to the old man, and he was giving them an untempered piece of his mind, when a gentleman apologized for them by saying: "Oh well, they are school children. You know how they are."

"Dat's what make I say what I duz," said Uncle Remus. "Dey better be at home pickin' up chips. What a nigger gwineter learn outen books? I kin take a bar'l stave and fling mo' sense inter a nigger in one minnit dan all de school houses betwixt dis en de New Nited States en Midgigin. Don't talk, honey! wid one bar'l stave I kin fairly lif de vail er ignunce."

(Quoted by) HENRY STILES BRADLEY

July Nineteenth

What was my offense? My husband was absent--an exile. He had never been a politician or in any way engaged in the struggle now going on, his age preventing. The house was built by my father, a Revolutionary soldier, who served the whole seven years for your independence.... Was it for this that you turned me, my young daughter and little son out upon the world without a shelter? Or was it because my husband was the grandson of the Revolutionary patriot and "rebel," Richard Henry Lee, and the near kinsman of the noblest of Christian warriors, the greatest of generals, Robert E. Lee?... _Your_ name will stand on history's page as the Hunter of weak women and innocent children; the Hunter to destroy defenseless villages and refined and beautiful homes--to torture afresh the agonized hearts of widows; the Hunter of Africa's poor sons and daughters, to lure them on to ruin and death of soul and body; the Hunter with the relentless heart of a wild beast, the face of a fiend and the form of a man.

HENRIETTA B. LEE