Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 26.djvu/139

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WILLIAM HENRY CHASE WHITING, Major-General C. S. Army.

An Address Delivered in Raleigh, N. C., on Memorial Day, May loth, 1895, at the request of the Ladies' Memorial Society.

By C. B. DENSON, of the Engineer Service, C. S. Army.

" Respectfully dedicated to the surviving partner of the joys and sorrows of the matchless genius, the heroic soldier and the unselfish patriot, to whose memory these pages are devoted."

Ladies of the Memorial Association, Comrades of the

Confederate States Army, Ladies and Gentlemen :

The poet has said in touching numbers

" Fold up the tattered, blood-stained cross, !

By bleeding martyrs blest, And heap the laurels it has won,

Above its place of rest. It lived with Lee, and decked his brow

From Fate's empyreal Palm; It sleeps the sleep of Jackson now

As spotless and as calm.

Sleep, shrouded ensign! not the breeze

That smote the victor tar With death across the heaving seas

Of fiery Trafalgar, Can bid thee pale! Proud emblem, still

Thy crimson glory shines!

  • * * *

Sleep in thine own historic night!

And be thy blazoned scroll, A warrior's banner takes its flight

To greet a warrior's soul! "

Character is the foundation of human greatness. In its perfection, represents, in the individual, the sum of the activities of life; in a

lational sense, it is the development in history of the ruling spirit of >le, leading to the flower of achievement to the utmost limit

ol moral, physical and intellectual effort, in the discharge of duty.