prevailed in the beginning of the century, save only to gratify a partisan desire to help those men to high positions who have been the chief barrier to the drawing together of the people.
If their friends think them worthy of reward, even as the enemies of peace, how much more ought they to rejoice to reward them as the magnanimous friends of a reconciled and happy country.
The American people, moved by an impulse of mutual affection long restrained by unworthy resentment, have, at a single step, risen to the height of their former glory. "A union of hearts and a union of hands" has made them again one people.
In the beginning and in the end, before the war and since the war, the vital question was whether the Constitution, with its guarantees to the States of the right local self-government, could be preserved during the tempest that swept the institution of slavery front this continent.
It was long submerged beneath the billows of anarchy and despotism, but at last they have subsided, revealing the old rock of the Constitution standing secure and firm on its eternal foundations.
Gathered upon this rock, with honor untarnished, spirit undismayed, their souls elate with noble aspirations and aflame with love of country; the soldiers and people of the Confederate States are at home again, welcomed to the honored abode of their fathers by the heroes who fought them in war, honored them in victory, and love them in peace.
General Morgan was frequently interrupted with rapturous applause, and the thanks of the Society were warmly voted to the orator for his "able and eloquent address," and a copy requested for publication.
General Early paid a brief but touchingly-appropriate tribute to the memory of Admiral Raphael Semmes, late Vice-President of the Society for the State of Alabama, and, on motion of General Dabney H. Maury, the following minute was unanimously adopted:
The death of Admiral Raphael Semmes, the Vice-President of this Society for the State of Alabama, having occurred since the last annual meeting, the Society takes this occasion to express its high admiration for the exalted character, eminent abilities, and distinguished services of the deceased, and its profound regret for the loss to the Society has sustained in his death; which is ordered to be entered on the Journal.
