TO SOUTHERN VALOR

Mrs. D. Giraud Wright Describes Confederate Monument.

DAUGHTERS FIX INSCRIPTION

Shaft To Be Unveiled In December-Delegates Chosen To The General And State Conventions.

The Daughters of the Confederacy held a meeting yesterday at Lehmann’s Hall and discussed preliminary plans for the unveiling of the monument which is to be erected at Mount Royal and North avenues through the efforts of the Daughters in memory of the Maryland soldiers and sailors of the Confederacy. The unveiling will take place early in December.

Mrs. Wright’s Address.

One of the features of the meeting was the address by the president, Mrs. D. Giraud Wright, who spoke as follows:

“During all the rears we have worked together for the cause we love, and they have been many and long, we have never met on just such an occasion as the present. From time to time we have gathered our forces, summoned by that irresistible call, to whose clarion note I believe our souls would respond when the heart fails and the eye grows dim, and shoulder to shoulder, with an energy born of undying love, we have clothed the naked and fed the hungry of our brethren in our midst; we have found shelter for the homeless and helped to provide a place where the maimed and suffering soldier in the armies of the South might lay his weary head, for it is only in the hearts of his comrades and the women of his land that the meet charity to minister to his needs is found.

“From year to year we have gone, a sorrowing but triumphant band, to lay memorial wreaths upon the graves of our sacred dead-sorrowing that all in vain was made the sacrifice of those precious lives; but triumphant in remembering the glory that sheds its pure light on the last resting place of our heroic dead.

Daughters’ Happy Achievement.

“And when the time seemed ripe we rallied once more for a supreme effort in spite of discouragement and gloomy prophecies of failure, not sparing ourselves, but puzzling heart and brain to find a way by which we could fitly commemorate the heroism of that martyr band who for us and for love of country gave fortune and life itself for the cause we love. And now today is the day of days which sees us come together to announce the full frut-tion of our work-the crowning of the labors and the hopes of many years.

“And we whom you have chosen to lead you in this work, upon whom has rested the weighty responsibility of fulfiling to the best of our ability that sacred trust— we come before you today to render an account of our stewardship and to say with heartfelt gratitude that while we have labored faithfully, with a deep sense of the confidence reposed in us and with love unfeigned for the blessed work in hand, that as the man at the helm of the storm-tossed ship is helpless without the noble efforts of the gallant crew, so we, with our best energy bestowed, with all our love and hope and faith in the ultimate success of our work, would have been powerless and our labors fruitless without the cooperation of the heroic women of our organization, who never faltered when called upon, who worked and tolled with heart and hand, early and late, with prayer on the lips and in their souls, in all the shadows of weariness and hope deferred until now that happy day has dawned when they can rejoice with us that through our united efforts there shall be erected in Baltimore a monument in everlasting bronze which shall for all time commemorate the glorious deeds of the men of Maryland who ‘wore the gray.’

Idealization Of The South In Defeat.

“And more than this, to us shall attach in the future to us, the members of the Maryland Division of the Daughters of the Confederacy-the peculiar honor that we are the first band of Confederate women to erect to our heroes a monument which embodies in itself an idealization of the Confederacy in an allegorical representation of the glory of the South in her defeat.

“The sculptor, with a happy felicity and a poetic interpretation simply marvelous, has portrayed in this group the spirit of our motto-‘Glory stands beside our grief!’ It is veritably an apotheosis of the Confederacy.

“The subject embraces and typifies the sentiment lying deep in all our hearts; that which we feel but cannot express is here expressed for us, and better than that, for all to see that our beloved South, though conquered, was never humiliated. In the strength of her endurance, in the suffering of her people for principle, in the magnificent courage of her soldiers, in the pure patriotism of her noble women, in the genius of her great leaders, in the personnel of her armies and navy, where no higher type of men has ever been produced than those who fought in the ranks as common soldiers, where, whether dying on the field of battle mid clang and clash of arms or of disease in the loathsome hospitals, they displayed a sublime courage that compelled the admiration of the world, and which has made the name of the Confederate soldier the synonym for incomparable valor.

What The Figure Teaches.

“In this monument of ours it is not too much to say that all this thought is fully expressed. That Confederate soldier, upon whose boyish face still lingers the light of Innocence of youth, yet in its lineaments displays high heroism and the stern sense of duty, which stamps it with a noble man-hood. Look at the beautiful, fearless brow, the closed eye-no terror there; the pain in the lines around the sweet, young mouth. He ‘consents to death, yet conquers agony.’

“See him as he stands at bay, face to the foe-alone. No arm outstretched to save. One hand is pressed to that brave young heart in mortal pain; the other grasps even in dying the dear crimson banner, the tint of whose ensanguined folds is deepened with his blood!

“To him that flag is the cause for which he dies, and even in the throes of death he never falters, never yields the principles for which he fought. See the tense muscles in that rigid arm. He would, even In dying, hold it close, close! We tremble as we look. Will he fall? Will that sacred banner drop from his nerveless band and be trailed and trampled in humiliation and the dust?

“A gloom black as night hangs over the battlefield. Look! The clouds are cleft, and through a path of light a radiant vision comes. Glory descends. Her eye has pierced the darkness, and seeing her beloved in such straits, on swift pinions she swoops from the skies and ere he falls with one mighty arm she draws him to her side. Aloft she holds a laurel wreath-it emblem of the glory of the South – and with calm, unruffled majesty she stands defying the world to match his valor or to take him from, her side. While he, like a tired child safe in his mother’s arms, falls asleep forever on Glory’s breast.”

The Inscription.

Mrs. Wright showed a photograph of the monument, which has heretofore been reproduced in THE SUN.

The Daughters decided unanimously upon the following inscription to be placed at the base of the monument:

GLORIA VICTIS.

—

To the

SOLDIERS AND SAILORS OF MARYLAND

In the Service of the

CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA.

GLORY STANDS BESIDE OUR GRIEF.

Erected by the

MARYLAND DAUGHTERS OF THE CONFEDERACY,

December, 1902.

Fatti Maschii, Parole Femine.

1861-1865.

Deo Vindice.

Delegates Elected.

Delegates to the annual convention of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, which will meet in New Orleans November 12 and to the meeting of the State organization which will be held December 7 were elected. The same delegates will serve both conventions. They are:

DELEGATES.

Mesdames—                                Mesdames—
Robert Barry,                                Hugh Lee,
Thomas B. Gresham,                   M. B. Brown,
James Mercer Garnett,               Joseph Branham,
B. Jones Taylor,                            H. A. Fenwick,
J. D. Iglehart,                                J. Francis Dammann,
Edgar M. Lazarus,                        Eugene Blackford,
Turner,                                           Robert Bowie,
W. P. Zollinger,                              Eugene Poultney,
Samuel Hough,                             Charles Marshall,
John P. Poe,                                  J. E. Tate,
J. D. Bruns,                                    Henry Clark,
E. S. Beall,                                      A. Leo Knott,
Felix Sullivan,                                 F. P. Clark.
Frank Markoe,                               Miss Lillian Grifinn.

ALTERNATES.

Mesdames—                                 Mesdames—

H. C. Kennard,                               Wilson Nicholas,
Walter Bullock,                               Alfred Rogers,
J. H. Tegmeyer,                              J. P. S. Houstoun,
H. C. Painter,                                  George Lay,
Edwin G. Elden,                              Sadtler,
McHenry Howard,                          Shaefer,
Clunet,                                            C. K. Harrison,
George Hodges,                            Edward Jackson,
William Remington,                        M. W. Brantly,
Bowie.

Misses—                                          Misses—
Keys,                                                Roby,
Donell,                                             Winn,
Mordecai,                                        Suldker.
Mary Minor,                                     Mary Jonnston.
Maria Williams,

The delegates and alternates will meet Monday morning at 11 o’clock at the residence of Mrs. E. S. Beall, 225 West Monument street.