The flag that once challenged the gaze of the world."
On the 12th, the Army of Northern Virginia was marshaled for the last time, not to do battle, but to stack its arms and pass out of existence—forevermore.
Of the Guilford Grays who were present at the final scene of this eventful history, the following answered to roll-call: Captain Jno. A. Sloan, Lieut. Rufus B. Gibson, 1st Sergeant Thomas J. Rhodes, Sergeant Joel J. Thom; privates Peter M. Brown, Lewis N. Isley, Jas. M. Hardin, Walter Green, E. Tonkey Sharpe, Geo. W. Lemons, Silas C. Dodson, and Samuel M. Lipscomb.
On the 11th, printed certificates, certifying that we were paroled prisoners of war, were issued and distributed among us, bearing date April 10th, 1865, Appomattox Court-House, granting us "permission to go home, and remain there undisturbed."
Comrades! We entered the service in the bloom of youthful vigor and hope, with cheerful step and willing heart, leaving happy homes in peace and prosperity behind. We took the field for a principle as sacred as ever led a hero to the cannon's mouth, or a martyr to the place of execution.
This principle was honor and patriotism; a firm determination to defend to the last that constitution which our fathers had handed down and taught us to revere as the only safeguard of our personal rights and liberties.
After four long years, we returned to our homes in tattered and battle-stained garments, footsore, weary, and with aching hearts. We returned to see poverty, desolation, and ruin; to find the hearts of our loved ones buried in the graves of the dead Confederacy. Aye! and we have seen other sorrows. We have seen that constitution subverted under the forms of law; we have seen the rights of individuals and communities trampled in the dust without hope of redress. Nay, more! We have seen the government of the fathers removed from existence, and an engine of oppression, no longer a Union of States, but a Nation, like the devil-fish of the sea, reaching its hideous and devouring arms in all directions from one common centre, knowing only one law of action and of motive—the insatiate greed of avarice and plunder.
But though the Confederacy went down in fire and smoke, in blood and in tears, that truth, which was the guiding-star of the devoted soldiers who fought its battles, and of those at home who toiled and prayed for its success—that truth did not lower its standard or surrender its sword at Appomattox. We submit to the inevitable. We submit in dignity and in silence. But because we accept, with becoming minds and conduct, that subjugation which the fortune of war has entailed upon us, shall we therefore pronounce the word "craven?" Shall we now recant? Shall we now solemnly declare that we did not believe what we professed to fight for? Shall we thus insult, either in word or act, the memories of the dead heroes—and we dare maintain they died heroes—who sleep on a thousand hillsides and in the valleys of our common country?
Should we thus prostrate ourselves to invite the scorn and contempt which even our enemies would have the right to bestow upon us? Never! A thousand times never! "Will not history consent, will not mankind applaud, when we still uphold our principles as right, our cause as just, our country to be honored, when those principles had for disciple, that cause for defender, that country for son—Robert Lee?
"Not to his honor shall extorted tributes carve the shaft or mould the statute; but a grateful people will in time give of their poverty gladly that, in pure marble or time-defying bronze, future generations may see the counterfeit presentment of this man—the ideal and consummate flower of our civilization; not an Alexander, it may be; nor Napoleon, nor Timour, nor Churchill—greater far than they, thank heaven—the brother and the equal of Sidney and of Falkland, of Hampden and of Washington!"