American citizen who was in sympathy with, or a participant in, those acts. Our people owe Captain Blackford a debt of gratitude also for this article. It can be found in the printed reports of the Virginia Bar Association for 1900. Ten thousand copies of it were ordered by the Association to be printed for distribution.
As we said in our last report, it will doubtless be asked by some, who have no just conception of the motives which actuate us in making these reports. Why we gather up and exhibit to the world these records of a bitter strife now ended more than a third of a century? Does it not, they ask, only do harm by keeping alive the smouldering embers of that conflict? We reply to all these enquiries, that such is not our intention or desire. But the four years of that war made a history of the people of the North and of the people of the South, much of which has been written only by historians of the North. In this history, all the blame concerning the war has been laid on the people of the South, and the attempt made to "consign them to infamy."
There were two sides to the issues involved in that war, and the historians of the North, with the superior means at their command, have used, and are still using, these means to convince the world that they were right and that we were wrong. They are striving, too, to teach our children that this was the case, and for thirty years their histories were taught in our schools, unchallenged, and in that way the minds of our children were prejudiced and poisoned against the acts and conduct of their parents in regard to that conflict. We therefore feel that we owe it to ourselves and to the memories of those who suffered and died for the cause we fought so hard to maintain, to let our children and the world know the truth as to the causes of that conflict, and how it was conducted. This Camp has, as we have said, done much in that direction; it can do much more; and, in our opinion, no higher or more sacred duty could be imposed on or undertaken by men.
There were during the war, and there are now, many brave and true men at the North. There were many such in the Federal armies, and there were many of these who, whilst taking sides
