The spirit that impelled contributions for the erection of the Confederate monuments in different sections of our country from donors, irrespective of former affiliation, has been benign in its influence. In 1897 the Hon J. N. Smithea instituted a movement for such a memorial in Little Rock, Ark., stipulating that responses should be limited to one dollar. Impressed that our race should not be indifferent to such an appeal, I transmitted the following:
J. N. Smithea, Editor "Gazette,"
Little Rock, Ark.:
I notice your effort to erect a monument to the Confederate dead. A third of a century has elapsed since the civil war. Conviction in the minds of the participants on either side as to who was right and who was wrong is as firmly fixed as the eternal hills. Given, that a view of events leading up to that fraternal strife, the bravery of the one or heroic conduct of the other from standpoints necessarily different will never find mutual ground for justification, it seems the mission of patriotism and national unity to give the hand of welcome to every effort that will unite us in all that will promote the common glory of the Republic. As one of the representatives of a race, especially in this southland, I cheerfully subscribe my dollar to the fund, feeling that the Negro should joyfully hail every effort to soften animosities which are the outgrowth of a struggle in which, unwittingly, he was so important a factor.
WILLIAM A. PLEDGER,
Chairman Republican State Central Committee of Georgia.
Born near Athens forty-five years ago—Has been a delegate to every National Republican Convention for the last twenty-five years—A leader trusted and tried.
No one should be more anxious to cement the friendly and good offices of our more-favored fellow-citizens, from whom we are receiving the largest share of our educational and material assistance, so greatly needed to bring us up to the full measure of a noble citizenship. By the providence of God we are here, and are here to stay. We are producers of wealth and the conservators of peace. Therefore, encourage us by the exercise of justice and magnanimity, that we can say to you, as Ruth to Naomi in Holy Writ: "Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee, for whither thou goest I will go; and where thou lodgest I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God; where thou diest will I die, and there will I be buried; the Lord do so to me and more also, if aught but death part thee and me."
Very truly yours, etc.,
Monuments are the mute mile stones, the connecting links between a finished effort, and an inspiration for continued struggle. But monuments are not created after the death of those they commemorate, although they may seem to be; they are but memorials of the structure already built, the solidity of whose base and symmetry of whose lines were projected and fashioned by intensity of conviction and the unswerving courage of their prototypes in ameliorating conditions while they lived. Bereft of this, "monuments themselves memorials need."