Desert Shield/Storm. February 1991. Nothing flies away from us so fast as time, when we have much of :importance on our minds. Mr. ·nooley, the fictional Irish-American commentator invented by a newspaper columnist, said that scales and clocks were not to be trusted to decide anything that's worth deciding. 1/llhy tell~ time by a clock? he asked. Every hour is the same to a clock and every hour is different to me. Some are long, and some are short. But they all grow shorter as we find more of them behind us than before us. The Irish poet W. B. Yeats said that the young and the beautiful have no enemy b~t t:ime ••• which may mean that to my class of people time has become a friend. But how quickly the now becomes the then, and today becomes yesterday, and last month, and three years ago. It was on the night of November 8, 1989 that the world witnessed by live satellite TV the fall of the wall in Berlin, and the sudden lifting of the threat of military invasion into the ancient heart of Europe, and the nuclear threat to civilization. People danced in great joy on what had been for a generation the symbol of a divided and hostile and ugly world. If the Russians aren't coming, then who is? we asked ourselves, and people spo~e of a balanced budget, and a peace divi• dend, and and new and peaceful world a-borning. But how quickly it all collapsed, with the final• ity of the wall itself. One year and three weeks after I stayed up late into the night to watch the deliriously happy people dancing and hugging and sharing champagne at the party that was the funeral wake for a separated eastern block of captive nations, in new·York the security council of tne UN acted to ase military force against the Arab republic of Iraq. At that moment, on Thursday, November 29, 1990, the dancing stopped in mid-step ,4 and the dream of peace and plenty came crashing down into nightmare. It was only the second time in the 45-yr history oft he UN that the peace-keeping international body had voted to fight to protect a member of the commun• ity of nations, whose territorial integrity and political independence was threatened by an ag• gressor's unprovoked invasion. The other time was in June, 1950, when the invader was an artifi• cial state on the northern end of Korea, whose objective itwis to unite the two wrongfully sev• ered portions of the Korean nation into a whole. After a three-year war, and 50,000 U.S. cas• ualties, followed by 35 yrs of military occupation along a demilitarized zone, the country re• mains divided. Patriots on both sides of that line are constantly at work to undo the UN's intervention and restore the unity of a divided nation. I begin with the experience in Korea to suggest that the record of UN military action to compel the retention of imaginary political lines upon the earth is not one to inspire confidence. Then as now most of the troops, and therefore most of the expected casualties, will be American. But how quickly time has erased the memory, and the bitterness, of the Korean conflict. This time the military complement is called a coalition and not a UN police force, but still it is true that the greatest proportion of them are American. That situation, and that UN vote to approve military force to carry out a UN resolution, explains why we are gathered here today to discuss what happened, and "'1.y, and what it might mean to this present generation and the country in which they live. The present conflict began on August 2 of last year, when the Iraqd. war machine rolled al• most unresisted across a line in the sand between their own country and the Emirate of Kuwait. At first they announced, in Baghdad, and in Washington, and at the United Nations, that their incursion would be a brief one, to insure the security of their southern border. But very quick• ly it became clear that they intended to annex the territory of Kuwait and make it the 19th prov• ince of their country. Firstt~ust understand why the Iraqli.s decided.to invade a neighboring country, and why they intended to keep it. As you all know, in the past 10 yrs Iraq has waged a bloody and costly war against her neighbor to the east, Iran. It was fought over oilwells and refineries and the trade routes by which petroleum leaves that rich region and enters world com• merce. Oil is the one crucial raw material upon which theW3alth and the political stability of the industrial world depends. The finger on the pulse of the pipeline or the tanker lane has the power to produce prosperity or poverty in Japan, America, and Europe. Seventeen yrs ago it was Saudi Arabia that ceased its exports to us, in an attempt to compel a change in our foreign poli• cy toward Israel and the Palestinian Arabs. A dozen years ago it was Iran, and the Ayatollah, who seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran, and condemned America as the Satan nation. At that time, when Iraq with its Sunni Moslem sect and its Ba'ath Party, was the enemy of the Shi'ite Moslems in Iran, Iraq was America's ally. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, however brutal or barbar• ic. Western powers armed and trained the Iraqi forces. The British sold them the desert uni• forms they now wear in their bunkers, the Germans with traditional Teutonic thoroughness built "those bunkers for them, and ~50;f}bought chemical and biological weapons, and the ingredients for nuclear weapons, where they were offered for sale. When the war is over there will undoubtedly be Congressional investigations of the diplomatic messages that led up to the fighting; they will provide interesting and perhaps also chilling reading. But for the present it is a nice piece of irony that in the war with Iraq the coalition is largely facing weapons of its own manufac- wi+'V ture. I do not know the current state of U.S.-Soviet collaboration, but in the wineland-roses days when Mr. Gorbachev won the Nobel Peace prize, the Red Army provided the Iraqis/both fixed position and mob:i,,lqj>~ud ground to ground missiles, and sent technicians to teach the Iraqis how to use them, and~~sent others to the U.S. military to teach them how to attack the weapons. In the murky waters of the international arms trade, strange creatures hatch and grow into mon• aters. But 1988 saw a war-weary Iraq finally win a peace. How quickly that has receded into the past. It was a costly conflict. Iraq employed gas shells against the Iranians, and when Iraq's Kurdish minority rose in rebellion to win their independence, they used gas to kill them also. In all, both sides may have lost a million dead in the conflict, and both sides suffered physical destruction of its assets. In Iraq the ldrshp asked for assistance. For 8·yrs its ex• ports of oil were drastically reduced, thus depriving the country of its income. During the war the Kuwaitis moved into an oil field in the region between the two, and began to pump oil. When the Iraqis asked compensation, the Kuwaitis paid a ransom to keep the peace. That did not satis• fy the Iraqi rule~ Saddam Hussein. He planned an act of larceny, grand theft of an entire coun• try. But before~rooved, he asked the U. s. administration wh~r~pponse itw:>uld make to such an a ct. In July, the U.S. ambassador Ln Baghdad, a woman named/'Gl~pie, and the appropi:iate of• ficials at the Middle East desk of the state Dept in Washington, both assured Saddam that con• flicts between Arab and Arab lay outside U.S. national interests, and that the U.S. took no notice of Arabic borders. Acting upon those assurances, Saddai~ moved intc Kuwait on August 2. Last week Pres Bush declared that Saddam had miscalculated the response to his aggression. In retrospect, it is easy to understand why. · And then there was Kuwait. It would be a rich prize for anyone. It is the only seaport on the northwestern(X)rner of the Persian Gulf, and serves as shipment center for the world's richest oil deposits. It is separated from the other inhabited portions of the region by 200 miles of moonscape, the most forbidding and life-threatening terrain to be found anywhere out• side the polar ice caps. There is no water, so that the human body dehydrates in a very short time. Most of the year the temperature is unbelievably high at noonday, when not e ven madsdogs and Englishmen venture out of a protective shield. Then, in the small hours of the morning, it drops below freezing. Strong winds turn the sand into blindin~ curtains, and the grit gets in• to everything--eyeballs, living quarters, the delicate portions of tank or helicopter engines. Until the present century@was only a seaport through which little commerce pass~ A century ago, in 1889, the sheik gave over to the British the protection of his interests. PlB Wa1 'f · · · · In 1919, as part of the peace settlement, the British assigned its control to the same fami y which still, until last August, governed ~e seaport: In 1921 the present-boundaries were drawn by a British military official. Theyrould;a~~~sily assigned the port to Iraq. Then came the discovery of oil, and Aramco. It brought weal th beyond imagination to the small emirate. With a sparse population and enormous income, it was the world's richest country, in per capita wealth. There were no taxes, the govt apportioned funds to the citizens. The present Emir has 70 wives, a large number of luxury auto• mobiles, and a pvt fleet of jet planes. Many of the Kuwai. tistare dancing out the war in Cairo and Paris and on the Riviera. In all the fat years they offered no assistance to the Palestin• ians, rotting ~n re.f5ugee camps, a lost generation unschooled, without hope,steeped in anger and self-pity. They bought property in the wealthy world instead. They are the world's richest bank• ers--the Wall st Journal reported the quip that Kuwait is a banking system without a wountry, & the U. s. is a country without a bankings ystem--and they operate a substantial portion of the filling stations in Europe. The brand name is Q-8. Understandably, when Saddam attacked them, Arabs everywhere screamed with delight. Down with the bloated, greedy, selfish, bootlicking traitors. But then it developed that the assurances~d received from the St Dept were un• founded. He became the criminal aggressor, condemned in the world assembly and opinion. The American- administration also proved itself inept in its reasons for demanding the withdrawal from Auwait. At least six reasons have been given, none of them expressing the UN charter emphasis upon collective security by the world community for any member state attacked by any other '"Yi~ ~country. Because Soviet and American diplomats acted together in adopting UN resolutions, the ?resident called it a New World Order. Unfortunately, that was the same term Adolf Hitler had used~ yrs earlier. Those who do not remember the past, George Santayana said, are condemned to repeat it.~Thus it happened that on November 29 1990, for only the second time in its history, the UN approved the use of force to compel Saddam to relinquish the looted and raped emirate-• they have taken everything they could move, even the incubators in the baby wards of the hospital, throwing the prematurely born inhabitants out and on the floor; they have eaten dog food and de• clared it tasty. Then came January 16, three wee:ks ago, and the first Tomahawk cruise missile fired from the USS . All we can do is hope and pray it will be brief and relatively costless. But however it ends, it marks a new era in world history. People you and I know may die in battle to de.fen~ a mediev~l. monarchv wha.r..e JWroen ~v :RRfi ~e? it?J', and democratic meth- ods of problem-solving, co not exi.""S't. .M.ay you ·~.r;.i:- euJV.Y r w. J. Cash./'February 1991.

My dearly beloved ladies and gentlemen. Good morning, and welcome to this session of a gathering of scholars, artists, and pundits who are met in this place to celebrate the Soth anniversary of the publication of a book, and to memorialize the author who wrote it. The book is The Mind of the South, and the author is Wilbur Joseph Cash. Wilbur Cash was a student in the Wake Forest College thatlived, and breathed on the tree-shaded, rock-wall enclosed, bit of ground in what was the forest of Wake County, to the east of us. If he did not read everytook in the library, and re-read many of them, it was only because a professor had checked it out and did not return it. Wilbur Cash read, and thought and dis• cussed what he read and thought. These activities are the sacred vocation, and the prized opportunity, of the student. Then, for a decade and more, he-wrote what he had read about, and what he had thought. What he put down on paper has influenced the thinking of thousands of readers since the book's publication in 1941. It is that writing, and that writer, that we meet to remember, and to measure, and to judge against the context both of those borrowed years before another war, eighty years after that other one, and also to see Wilbur Cash's book from the perspective of this present time. The American writer Mignon McLaughlin said that all societies honor their live conformists and their dead trouble-makers. Let us hope that one deadiroublemaker named Wilbur Cash will continue to provoke and challenge living conformists in every decade. This session asks us to consider Wilbur Cash and the world he lived in. Cash Symposi ·mi. February 1991.

My dearly beloved, ladies and gentlemen. Good morning, and welcome to this session of a gathering of scholars, and poets, and pundits who are met in this place to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the publication of a book, and to memorialize the author who wrote it. The book is the Mind of the South, and theauthor is Wilbur J. Cash. Wilbur Cash was a student in Wake Forest College, when its campus was the tree-shaded, rock-wall enclosed, bit of ground in what was the forest of Wake County. If he did not read eVeJ!Y boo~ in the library it was only because a professor had checked it out and would not return it. He read, and he thought, activities which are the sacred vocation of the student, and then he wrote. What he put down on paper has influenced the thinking of thousands of readers since its publication. It is that writer, and that writing, that we meet to remember. The Ameri• can writer Mignon McLaughlin wrote that all societies honor their living conformists and their dead troublemakers. Let us hope that the dead troublemaker Wilbur J. Cash will con-

tinu.-.:; "Shock and to provoke the living conformists • ~re indeed fortunate to have so brilliant a galaxy of superstars for the conference. You see four of them in this roonvjwho will engage our minds and our memories on the theme 4f w, :.

~aeh;-an1 liff! uezld. First we shall hear Bruce Clayton, who was some years ago my colleague in the history- department of Wake ~orest College. Bruce was an undergraduate student at the un· s uri at Kansas City, and did his professional stuuty at Duke University. He is of an impressive shelf of books, and articles, and reviews, and has written a new _ hy. of W. J. f:;,.aj3h_, a book he hopes you will purchase, and I hope you will read.)~"" .-.cl -.p ~"\\(. 4 l'?-wtt. ~~ - speaker is Raymond Gavins, born in Atlanta, with undergratiuate study at iversiry and graduate work at the University of Virginia. He too is a widely-published ~a equent participant in conferences and symposia. He is currently at work on a numb projects, including a history of blacks in North Carolina. He is member of the department faculty at Duke University. )<.. .,,_ shall hear Richard Harvey King, who is presently a reader in American studies at the University of Nottingham in England. Professor King should feel himself at home in Winston• Salem, for there is a neighborhood in the city/named for Robin Hood and Maid Marion and Frisr Tuck. (whose streets are) / He was a· student at the University of North Carolina, but then he studied at G~ttingen varsity in West Germany (as it was named in those years), and did graduate work at Yale ersity and at the University of Virginia. His publication list is long and fascinating. shed books and articles about the Southern cultural renaissance, about Eros and l-6JWJ~-about Johnl.Brown and William Faulkner and Will Percy, about ilannah Arendt and E. ~ow, and he wrote the article on W.J. Cash for the :reKeX~Jm\ll:ixml0 Encyclopedia outhern History.

To summarize, and to direct our thinking and discussion, the commentator is Thadious Davis, from New Orleans. Her undergrad school is Southern University in Baton Rouge a rx:l her graduate degree is from University. She has specialized in Southern literature, and is now a professor in Brown University in . Cash Symposium. Feb 1991.

My dearly beloved, ladies and gentlemen. Good morning, and welcome to a gathering of scholars, poets,a-id pundits who are met in this place to celebrate the 5oth anniversary of the publication of a book, and to memorialize its author. The American writer Mignon McLaughlin, with a drop of vinegar in her pen, has written

' Boat People • February 1 991.

My dearly beloved, ladies and gentlemen, you do me honor to invite me to share this occasion with you. I am euvious of your friendship and camaraderie which I see when you meet in this place, and I am envious of your ability to go sailing, and boating, where you can be more free than any of us landbound lubbers can ever know. Kenneth Grahame, in TheWind in the Willows, gave you your motto when he said, Nothing, absolutely nothing, is half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats. You can know the light-hearted joy of leaving the land to go out on a lake, or down a river, or out to sea, which is a challenge and a delight. Even.your boats know the freedom of the open water; a ship in dock looks like a prisoner bound in chains, like a free spirit fettered, like a butterfly created to fly free caught in a bottle. 1ou who god own to the sea in boats are unique genetic t;wpes, and I salute you •• The snort of thee ngine, and the sound of the ship's be Ll., and the rustle of the waves beneath the keel, has the power to make the breath come in gasps, and to set the toes to tapping. There is a beautiful world on the other side of whatever water's edge we stand upon. The call of that other side of the big wet has an appeal that strikes a chord in all of us. The water has also been the battlefield where brave sailors, using the machines designed by imaginative and innovative engineers, determine the future of the world order. Athenian sailors in the narrow waters beside the island of Salamis in anci• ent Greece gave battle to the Persians of their century, and made possible western civilization; Spanish and Venetian sailors at Lepanto on the other side of the Grk peninsula defeated the Turks and preserve~ a European for another four ce~turies; English seamen at Ply• mouth and Southampton water resisted a gigantic Spanish armada that would have disrupted the Eng• land from which our earliest colonists came to inhabit this land of ours. But I want to take you in your imaginations to two episodes in the which began 130 years ago this year; the war for Southern Indepemrlence, if you prefer, or the war of the rebellion, or the war for emancipation of enslaved Americans. One of those episodes is familiar to all of you. It was the first battle ever fought between floating iron-clad vessels, and it took place just to the north of us, and eastward to the roads of the Hampton and the News of the Newport. It marked a turn in naval history, a dividing line between one class of vessel that had predominated for two thousand years of watery warfare, and another style altogether, one that still rides majesti• cally over the waters of naval battle. The new era began at 11:00 a.m. on Saturday, March 8, 1862 in Hampton Roads and the Gosport navy base near Norfolk. A gun fired at that shipyard was the signal that something new was afloat. In an instant the whole city was in an uproar--I am quoting a letter from a Confederate soldier on leave in the city; women, children, men or horse• back and on foot running down towards the river from every conceivable direction, shouting 'the Merrimac:- is going down." And so she was, slowly, ponderously, her 22-foot draft .E>a:mlif scrapdng the mud of the bottom, while thousands watched, and cheered, along the riverbank. It took two hours for the iron chicken-coop on a shingle to make her way along the nearly 10 miles from her dock to Hampton Roads, the ship channel in the outlet to the Chesapeake Bay. She had been captured when the Virginians seized the navy yard, .she had been raised from the water, and rebuilt, and f'efitted, and the 22 inches of wood which were her sides were covered by four inches of plate iil'On. She was the dreadnaught of her day, specially designed to defend Norfork harbor, and with her sister ships that would soon join her, ~ould break the Union blockade and open the new confederacy to the commerce of the world. She was rechristened the Virginia, although· she was better known then, and since, by her original name. Down the channel she stood, slow of pace, and difficult to manage as a water-logged vessel, as one of the seamen reported. Her was Commodore , whose naval career began in 1815 and included a major role in estab• lishing the Naval Academy. When Merrimac entered the channel, two U. s. Navy ves• sels rode at anchor in calm waters. As the ironclad approached, the lazy off-duty sailors began feverishly to prepare for battle. Through heavy fire which woulcr have wrecked an~older ship the Merrimac said, straight the USS Cumberland. It rammed the Union ship, and fired its cannon at point-blank range. Cumberland listed and filled rapidly; she sank, her colors shill flying; she settled on the bottom, SO feet below, the pennant still visible ab:>ve the water. Spectators lined the south shore of the Roads, watching naval history happen before their eyes. The ship then turned to attack the other Union ship, Congress; her captain grounded her to prevent her being rammed. Cannon fire cut down the ship's crew, until a white flag ran up her lines. The next tar• get was USS Minnesota, who took refuge in shallow waters in a ebb tide; she was safe for the night. The Merrimac's crew found 98 indentations where solid shot had ricocheted off the iron sides, doing no damage; but the barrels of two guns were blown off. Then, the next day, 1'1arch 9, spectators could watch, Union soldiers from Fort Monroe on the north, Confederate military and civilian watchers from the south, and iNorfolk.r:.L·Tt was a Sunday and wh9t happened that day was historic, the turning of the record of man's battles on the wat~r. At b a.m. the Confederate flotilla, four ships, moved to clear the river of the other u. S. vessels. Then, dramati- cally, the Confederate navy's advantage was challenged by something new, another experimental ironclad, the Monitor. It was a pillbox on a plank, shallow draft with a revolving turret that proved impossible to aim correctly. Her approach, and her initiation into battle, was also sig• nalled by the firing of a gun, this one from Fortress Monroe at Old Point Comfort across the riv• er. Her connnander was Lt John L. •·Jorden, amuch younger man than was the Confederate conunander-• born, in fact, three years aft~ Franklin Buchanan began his navy career. Monitor was designed by John Ericcson and built in ard at Greenpoint, Long Island. It was just an accident, but a fortunate one for the Union feet, that she was in Hampton Hoads, and ready to fight, on that Sun• day morning. The battle raged for four hours, and the range was brutally short, less than 100 yards, and at times the two ships almost touched. The pounding each took would have crushed any wooden ship that was then afloat. She looked like a pygmy beside the tall frigate she guarded, a witness recalled, but then added, her size was one great element Qf her success. In desperation the Confederate crew planned to draw alongside of the Monitor, board her, ~eM.set fire to her by throwing lighted oakum-balls down the pipes. But as Merrimac appraached, 1ionitor withdrew to shallow water. After some delay, the Merrimac also withdrew because the tide was falling. As Merrimac steamedd>wn the channel, the rear gun fired repeatedly at Monitor, and she returrnd the fire. Both sides claimed victory, because both ships left the scene of battle. But a Confeder• ate officer who was on board Merrimac later wrote, In this battle old things passed away, and the experience of a thousand years of battle and breeze was forgotten. It is a fitting tribute to the designers and builders and also to the sailors who took part, in an historic battle whose effectscnntinue to influence naval architecture and tactics. The officer who made that statement, who was present on March 9, 1892 for the celebration of the 30bh_anniversary of the battle, was , whose lively imagination and cool courage made possibl~~~~~isode in that conflict. It is called in navy language a cutt~~g:Jefferson Davis married Sara Knox Taylor, another of Taylor's children. , a Confederate general, was 's only son, and an uncle of John Wood. Zachary Taylor, Wood1s grandfather, was at the Mexican War battle of Buena Vista, and afterward was elected president of the United States in 1848. John Taylor Wood was thus grandson of one presi• dent, and nephew of another. Following the Monitor-Merrimac battle the Union Army captured Nor• folk, depriving the Confederate iron-clad of her dockage. Unable to take her up-river, or out to sea, the crew burned her at Craney Island in the Elizabeth river. Wood observed Union gunboats improperly defended, lying at anchor in the rivers that emptied into the bay. He remembered that in 18o4 Stephen Decatur-had captured ships in Tripoli Harbor by boarding them, and he asked permis• sion to try the same tactic upon the inexperienced seamen of the Federal navy. He designed small boats similar to whaleboats, large enough to carry 20 marises with arms and anununition, but small enough to be carried on wagons overland from one river to another. Some navy officers in derision called it ships on wheels, but at 8:00 a.m. on October 1, 1862 Wood left Richmond with a few care• fully chosen and specially trained troops, with three small boats tied on army wagons, and one am• bulance wagon to care for the wounded. It would 80 yrs later be called a connnando mission, but that word had not yet been invented. A week later, on the Potomac, the small band was ready to act. They spotted a like)..y target, a U. S. transport steamer, loaded with hay for the horses, stopped at anchor on the Maryland side of the river. After dark on October 7, quietly, the men put their boats into the water; quietly the commander gave the standard commands--up oars, shove off, let fall, give way. ·when the boats were close to the sleeping ship, the commandos threw grap• pling hooks over the side and climbed onto the deck. A bewildered crew of captain and 5 hands quickly sur-rendared , They were ta ken off, the ship was looted of its v aluables, and then burned. For the remainfM( of that fall and winter/Wood's team of raiders repeated that success, taking navy gunboats and merchant ships in the rivers from the Potomac to the James, in the dark of night, capturing sailors and officers, taking ship's instruments and stores, taking colors from the masthead, and taking prisoners to be exchanged. Hood waited long enough between attacks to permit the Federals once again to be complacent, and he made Virginia waters his field of action. In January he was transferred to eastern North Carolina, with orders to capture NewBern and open the Neuse River. This time he directed construction of somewhat larger boats, and had them ship• pep to Kinston on railway cars. On that river, and at that place, Wood captured the largest gun• boat in Carolina waters, a gunboat with strong fire9ower and one ~hat was, moreover, covered by fire from the shore. It was one of the most daring and most dangerous cutting-out expedition in naval history, and it was done by daring men, in small boats, in a North Carolina river. On Feb. 15, 1863, 128 yrs ago last week, the Confed Congress adopted a resolution commending Commander Wood and his crew,,for the daring and brilliantly executed plans which resulted in the capture of eight vessels in the rivers and in theChesapeake Bay. It was audacity, and it was welldone. Admin Mgmt Society, Marfil! 1991.

My dearly beloved, you honor me by asking met? share this company, and this occasion, with you. We can make a ease, you and I, that the most important activity in any soci. ety is leadership and guidance, and I am pleased that you are leaders and examples to the rest of us. It is one of the most ancient of truths that anyone can hold the reins when the horse is tamed, or hold the helm when the sea is calm. It is the maat essential of skills that there are people who can keep their heads when all around them are wild horses, and storms, and panic. It is the test of the leader that when he departs he leaves behind in other people the conviction and the will to carry on. Fifty yrs ago the novelist Henry M~ller said that the only vmy any one can lead a people is to restore the public belief in our ability to do what needs doing. To you very special people, I would like for a few minutes to take you back in your imaginations to a_ turning point leader at a crucial time in western civilization. The year was 880, 1120 yrs ago, and the scene was Wessex, the Saxon kgdm in the south of England. Since ~65-all of England had been terrorized by repeated ;invasions of the Vikings, a word which in their language means warrior. They came in long grace• ful boats with carved dragons on their prows and shialds hanging on their sides. They struck the coasts, and they sailed up the rivers to plunder the farms and the towns of the interior. They kidnapped the tall, blue-eyed, blond-haired Saxon people to be sold into slavery. No one could feel safe. Life, and property, and liberty, were all endangered. The invaders struck without warning, coming from the mists of early dawn, to kill, and rob, and destroy. Survival itself was an uncertainty. But equally as important as life and freedom was the threat to the mind and the spirit. The learning and the experiences, the lessons people had learned ~t such cost, about the meaning of life, and what really-matters, and the rule of law and the respect~for human rights-• all that was threatened. The mind and the spirit of humankind faced extinction, along with the civilization the Angles and Saxons and Jutes had nurtured upon the island. The monasteries with their collections of books were invaded and their contents burned, or thnown to the winds, destroy• ing the wisdom of the past. Mathematics, architecture, agriculture, artistic creativity, came to the brink of the darkness of brutality and ignorance, their teachers put to death, their students scattered and in hiding, their precious manuscripts and texts burned and great fires around which the invaders danced in triumph. Those were.years, and generations, which historians would later call the Dark Ages. · Into the chaos and despair of those fearful times came renewed hope and encouragement, for a leader appeared, a manager of human affairs, an administrator of intelligence and compassion, who inspired people to endure, and to conquer. There are two old English proverbs tmt becaroo current soon after the time of crisis, and both of them express the spirit of the leader who lifts people and teaches them to do more than they imagined possible. One of them said that the darkest hour is just before the dawn, and the other, When it gets dark enough, the stars come out. In the case of those distant ancestor of ours, the star that shone through the night was King Alfred, called Alfred the Great. Against the threat of the suffocation of the mind, of the stifl• ing of the imagination, even of the death of the soul that makes being human so magnificent a thing, Alfred stood stalwart. So strong, and so effective was his ldrship and his character that he inspired his beaten people to rise up in resistance to the violent intruders. In a series of battles that ended in 878, Alfred saved his people from extinction, and firmly established the peace and the independence of the island people. They would not become a colony of Scandinavia, nor would they furnish slaves and forcibly-seized property to enrich those who had not earned it. But Alfred was not content merely with a vigorous defense of his Kgdm. Victory in battle offers opportunity to create and embellish human life so it becomes richer and more meaningful. In the decade of the 8801s, 11 centuries and a few yrs ago, Alfred translated a number of Latin works into the Anglo-Saxon speech. They were books he considered important to read and to know-• as he put it, "some books which may be necessary for all men.11 The significant fact for us is that the books Alfred translated are the first works in the language which is the root origin of the English that we speak and read today. Alfred defended his nation from the raids of blood• thirsty warriors, but he also founded thew:-itten language which is our richest heritage. To do it he had to invent a number of alphabet characters to represents ounds which Latin did not pos• sess, as the "eth", or "edth" sounds of Anglo-Saxon verb forms. He prayeth best who loveth best, all things both great and small; the eth ending is one of those sounds. Alfred invented a letter that looks like a tired P, with its loop reaching down to touch ~ottom. But that was not all. He knew also that without schooling to preserve and pass a long to the young, all learning is lost. Any society that wants to last beyond a single generation must pay attention to education of the brain, and the fingers, and the imagination. It would do little good to protect the librarj:es if no one read books; it would be just as destructive for the in• vading book-burners to attack them as it would if the youngsters who will be tomorrow's parents, and leaders, and managers, did not know how to read, or cared nothing about reading. So at his castle at A thelney King Alfred began and supervised the f irst English school on the island. Its objective was to providectrained and disciplined lives and minds so that all people would not sink to the level of the destroyers and the thugs. Every free-born youth of Wessex, he said, should, and here I quote him, "a td.de at his rook till he can well understand Eng.LLsh writing." People who break, andburn, and destroy the art and ideas of humankind are those who do not know or- appreciate creativity, and so they accept as a truth that might, ands word, and fire, are stronger than thinking and feeling and knowing. So, in an uncertain time, King Alfred turned history a round, and pointed it in a new direction. Militarily he saved his nation from destruc• tion; and then he provided the rudiments of the English language; he began English literature; he stands at the head of English history, which is ours by adoption; and he mad~ possible the emergence of the Bnglish :;JI people. It happened 11 centuries and a few years ago. Yet therproblems King Alfred confronted remain with ut; this evening. We live in a world in which violent people invade and loot and destroy a neighbor, and then threaten chemicals and biologicals and the power locked in the atom. They take hostages and steal art treasures which can never be replaced. With one hand, then, we must, as did Alfred, hold back the night. We must resist those forces of blindness that would close the windows of the mind. We must stand against conformity and the regimentation of thought. The best evidence that the mind is free is its faith in its competence when faced with hard ques• tions. For this, your community and your country look to you, manageFs and administrators, for learning, and ldrshp, and inspiration to bear the burdens and the heat of the day. In any age, learning is like a candle in a high wind. Hold it high, and keep it burning, else victory in battle is meaningless. Learn, and teach, b~ opening a book, by listening to the chords of a Sibelius symphony or a Prokofiev ballet score, by reading the words of King 1ear as-he holds on his lap the body of his daughter, by- seeing how· Tintoretto or Michelangelo expressed the lights and the shadows of being human. Hold back the night, I beg of you, but do not fail to ~uild a school, and use the lib• rary, and attend the concert. Defend the helpless, and guide the confused, but make available the wisdomr:.of the ages; make smart tombs , but never cease the s tudy and love of your mother tongue. That was Alfred's purpose, 11 centuries ago. It is tha purpose of leaders and planners 1n all the centuries. Make it yours •

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-, George, Jam.es, and Wolfgang. Hi story DaY April 27 1991.

My dearly beloved, ladies and' gentlenen, boys and girls; I thank you for the invitation to share this occasion with you, to speak to you ah:>ut history. It is my profession, and my hobby, and my run in life. I am a professor of history, and that is not everybody's favorite person. One of the students asked me What is1he difference between a dead cat lying in the road, and a dead his• tory professor lying in the road. • • • I am also a backyard gardener, and I can what I grow. \But we are met belle in this place today to honor those who have excelled in a project about history. ~istory is the study of what th~ present finds remarkable, and helpful, in the past. That means that every generation must rethinlc <:and rewrite its past. It also means that e1ery itidividual among us has a past, and a history 1 that is different from that of the others of us. What my generat• ion found useful in the past need not be what you find meaningi'ul in what happened earlier. It was to my generation that P~esident Franklin D. Roosevelt, speaking at a time of depression and misery, said: there is a mysterious cycle in human events. To some generations much is given. Of other generationsk~~ch is expected. This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with des• tiny. As indeed it l""'el·~faced that economic downturn, and it fought a 4-year war in Europe and and Asia and in the Pacifie Ocean. That generation confronted violent e~periments in totalitarianism as the solutionnas the solution to misery and de$pair. Many of the world's people saw their choices as reduced to only two. Down one road there was liberty and individual free• dOMlls, down the other was economic survival. But that generation rejected outright that limita• tion. We shall have both of them, it said; human rights as free people, and also human welfare, were equally possible. That generation paid the price, in human life and in wealth and in years taken from private dreams and ambitions. So the history that generation found helpful was dif• ferent; the pa~aught them a spiritual and political heritage that was worth defending, and sac• fificing for. ,Another generation heard John Kennedy sa'j;, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. It was similar to the rendezvous with destiny, and again it compelled a rethinking of the gifts of the past. George Bush called Americans to be kinder and ~ntler, and i:nW.' ad ~to volun~id to the hungry, the weak, and the homeless, as the 1000 points of light in a dark sky. That is the call to the present generation, now in school, now learning its heritage fromthe past~~At the heart of the gifts we have received from those who went before, is the priceless treasure of freedom, human rightf, civil liberties, w1 th• out which the life of the free individual is impossible.~reedom thay really protects must come in the absence of goverrunent, as the gift of the God who creates humanity to breathe free. We hold these 1ruths to be self-evident, Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Deel of Indep, that all men-• and women--are created equal, and are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. It is the creator who endows the individual with rights, and liberty, and not a Govt, however compassionate and generous. To assure the blessings of Li~rty to that generation, and t~r own, the Founding Fathers did or- dain and establish a Constitution and presented it to the people for approvalJ.and ratification. But that original document contained no bill of rights. Your state of N. c. therefore rei'used to accept the Constitution, and in every state there were stubborn defenders of freedom who voted against it for that very reason. In those tense and uncertain years, two Americans took the lead in composing al'ti defending a statemt of rights to be added to the Constitution. In this year we celebrate the bi-centennial of that remarkable declaration of individual independence from an un• limited andcoercive government. One of those men was George Mason, the other was James Madison. Both were Virginians. Mason was 25 yrs older than Madison and was much less well-known. You and I owe both of them a thank-you fon the gift they gave us. George Mason wrote the Virginia Declar• ation of rights three weeks before Jefferson's Declaration of Ind pendence was approved in Phila• delphia. In it are the key phrases and topics which would later appear in the l

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/• Retiremt May 4/91.

My dearly beloved, friends, what can I say but Thanks, thanks for this occasion, which affects me emotionally. And thanks for all these years, in this place, with all the good people who make Wake Forest a special place. I am the luckiest man who ever lived, to know so many col• leagues and students. It was my misfortune to be badly educated at another school, so that I do not deserve to sit with you people, and break lettuce with you. R1t a dozen years ago the alumni council ele:cted me an honorary alumnus, as the citation reads, with all the rights, privileges, and annual giving solicitations of that high ranking. Now there are two schools that have the problem of explaining to the accrediting agency how I got on their alumni rolls. All that I can say in my own defense is that I've had the best of all possible worlds--41 years on this campus, working with these students and with this faculty. I am, as the California Italians sing, the most happy fella. But where did all those years go? Two weeks ago the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes expressed the amazement I feel this evening at the swift passage of time. Let's say life is this square of the sidewalk, the little boy says to his tiger. We're born at this crack, and we die at that crack. Now we find ourselves somewhere inside the square, and in the process of walking out of it. Suddenly we realize our time in here is fleeting. Is our quick experience here pointless? Does anything we say or do in here really matter.? Have we done arything important? Have we been Happy? Have we made the most of these precious few footsteps? The last panel in the strip shows the boy and the tiger, standing within the square on the sidewalk, looking apprehensive. It is now night, and the sliver of a moon is in the darkened sky. I have asked the same questions, as have all of you, as have many others. The 15th century French poet Fran~ois Villon said it in words we all learned--o~ sont les neiges d'antan? William Wordsworth said it--there was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, the earth, and every common sight, to me did seem apparelled in celestial light, the glory and the freshness of a dream •••• The pansy at my feet doth the same tale repeat: where is now the visionary gleam? Where is it now, the glory and the dream? It was in August 1950 that Helen and I, and Kay as yet unborn, arrived in the town of Wake Forest, and moved into one of those barracks apartments below the gymnasium. Soon afterwards, the Dept arranged a welcoming party at the ~roupes--the first time I s~w him he was i8ap1ng over the hedge the quicker to greet us. Margaret and Percival drove up in a black Dodge that had just taken them to the ends of the earth. When the te:nn began and I met my students, stories quickly circulated about Smiley's brashness and heresies. Presi• dent Tribble, who was a freshman the same year we were, called me in to his office on a number of occasions to show me his mail, letters from irate and outraged parents, or preachers, or high school teachers, all of them reporting that there was in the history dept a teacher who called himself God. We had only a one-year appointment, we had been hired sight unseen, without inter• views, and costly visits, with schedules and appointments on the dept bulletin board. I do not remember that there WAS a dept bulletin board. When I came home to wife and baby daughter to tell of encounters with \Students and college president, "el.en dared not unpack our things. But then one morning I was called into Dr. Tribble's office to see once again a letter he had received. I apologized to him for the trouble I had caused. He put his arm around me and said, My desk stands between you and all your critics. You go back into the classroom and do the job you were hired to do; I will do my job, and answer this letter •••• When I told Mrs. Smiley, she began to unpack tpe c rystail and the china. We had found a home, and a career, in a community of mind and spirit ~re people were not afraid to think, and to speak, who had nothing to prove, and there• fore nothing to hide. It was a grand and glorious dream come true, even on those rare occasions when I was awake and alert. (After we moved to this red hill, at exam time as tudent asked if I would like to take one of his alertness pills. No, I said, lf I ever get alert I'll lose rrrs job.) Two things need saying. One of them is the endless delight that has been mine in the study of history, the things men and women have done, and said, and imagined, and dreamed, through all the millennia since the Sumerians and the Egyptians and the Greeks, the Shang culture and the discov• eries of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, and the Sanskrit wisdom of the Hindus. There is an emotion• al as well as an intellectual effect in the failures and achievemts of the human animal on this earth. I comm.end it to you. Knowing that nearly everything we need to know, everything that af• fects the way we live and speak and think, began long before we were born, is an astringent and antiseptic experience. The past is not dead, William Faikner'Wl'ote; it isn't even past. We are trapped in history, James Baldwin wrote, and history is trapped in uchi of us. It has much to teach. We do not read it; it reads us, as someone said of a good book. If the learning of the past is not transnitted, then we become biological troglodytes, atavists who recapitulate the ills of the distant past. In one of Eudora Welty•s stories is a school teacher named Miss Julia Morti- mer, who understood what the academyis all about. "She didn 1t ever doubt but that all worth preserving is going to be preserved and all we had to do was keep it going--right ft-om where we are, one teacher on down to the next ,"

The other thing that needs saying is a repeated thar>.k you. But this time let Will Shakespeare say it for me. I can no ohher answer make but thanks, And thanks; and ever oft good turns Are shuffl1d off with such uncurrent pay. But were my worth, as is my conscience, firm, You should find better dealing.

Greetings, good wishes, keep in touch, and God bless you all. .:r~ ~~ v~\A.a, ~,z_ L·'*-w'.~i.t;e~ Women ih the Lffe of Jefferson Davis. June 1991 In one of her novels the American author Willa Cather wrote that Artistic growth is, more than it is anything else, a refining of the sense of truthfulness. The stupid believe that to be truth• ful is easy; only the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult it is.nTruth is the rock up• on which all people must build if their lives are to be rich and full and meaningful. To take Willa Cather seriously is to declare that among Americans very few have matched Jefferson Davis in the truth am realism of his character and personality. He was a man of both strong will and tender compassion, to endure what he had to endure and yet emerge personally victorious even as his dreams and his world vanished into memory. Part of what made Jeff Davis the man and the sym• bol that he becamel(is the instruction and the example of the women who surrounqed him, .and suppor• ted him, and nurtured him. Jane Cook Davis was his mother. In Kentucky she gave him life; and in she raised him to respect the truth, and to refine it, and to be a leader of men. Into her Bos, when she could no longer leave~er chair, Jane Davis was interested, and attractive. Her hair was a s oft 1rown and: her complexion clear and white as a child's, as a family member re• ported. There was also~sister Anna Davis Smith, a spirited1'intelligent v.oman, again the view of a relative. Anna practically brought him up from infancy, since his mother was seriously ill for some time after his birth. Lucinda Davis Stamps was another sister, gentle, quiet, and smart. But the women who meant the most to him in the trials that lay ahead were the two ha married, and the daughter he adored. To see the family group al.most intact, let us travel in our imagin• ations to a scene not too far from where we are sitting. The date was April 12, 1865, and the location was a room in Greensboro which John Taylor Wood had prepared for President Davis. Four days earlier General Robert E. Lee had surrendered his outnumbered and surrounded fo~ces at Ap• pomattox court house in Virginia, and the Confederate government left Richmond by tr,ain. They went to Danville and then to Greensboro in an attempttto reach Army units to the south and west, to continue the struggle for independence. John Wood was a hero of the war, commander of a small det~chrnent which attacked enemy boats on-the rivers. e was alno a grandson of Zachary Taylor, Old Rough and Ready, whose Mexican war record won him ele.ction to the Presidency of the United States in 1848. Wood's father~ Robert Crooke Wood, an Army surgeon, married Zachary Taylor's eldest daughter Anne. John Taylor Wood was in that rented room in Greensboro, standing beside the man who married his mother's sister. At that place, on that day, President Davis rece tved official notification of Lee's surrender. He read it slowly and sorrowfully, without comment, and then he turned aside and "silently wept bitter tears, n as a witness remembered. Robert E. Lae, Jr., and Wood, a nephew stood beside the President. Lee later recall'3d that Davis "seemed quite broken at the moment by the t angib'le evidence of the loss of his army and the misfortunes of its general.,> All of us, respecting his great grief, withdrew, leaving him alone with Wood." Much later, a sympathetic biographer observed that "Jef'I'er-son Davis was fortunate in hav• ing his first wife's nephew with hL'll at this crushing moment. He had loved profoundly and her death three months after their marriage had transformed the gay young man into something of a stoic. Now, with Lee 1 s official report of surrender clutched in his hand, Dav is again had an acute intimation of heartbreak." (H. Strode, III, 185-9) Three weeks later, in early May, in north Georgia near the Chat.tahoochie River, Jefferson Davis, witfi his . ephew Wood a con• stant companion, met Mrs. Davis with her infant daughter Winnie. On May 10,near Irwinville, the entire party was captured by Michigan and Wisconsin cavalry units. was beside her husband, and with them was a close rel.:iti¥e of the first Mrs. Davis. On that day, beside a swamp on Irwinville Road, there was ahlbleau that expressed Jefferson Davis's private life, and family, and the debt the great man owed to the women in that life. In his growth it was the women who assisted him(;finin~ense of truthfulness. tr\.~ Someone wiser and perhaps also bolder than !/fhas said that behind every successful man there is a loyal wife and a profoundly surprised motlier-in-law. To Jefferson Davis it was his first fath• er-in-law Zachary Taylor who was the astounded parent. Taylor was largely self taught wit.~ little fonnal educatio, the born soldier of bravery and common sense who scorned the upstart book-learn• ed . At an army base at Prairie du Chien in}iisconsin Davis met and fell in love with his commander's daughter. She was known by her middle name, Knox. Taylor opposed the match, in part because hew anted none of his daughters to suffer the hardshtips that went with Anny service on the Indian frontier in the 1830s. Davis therefore resigned his commission in order to marry Knox at her aunt's home in Kentucky. The newly-weds went to Mississippi, where Davis's brother Joseph provided them a plantation, Brierfield. It was idyllic, perhaps overly romanticized, be• cause of the sudden and shocking blow of tragedy. Only three months after the wedding, on a trip to St. Francisville to visit a Davis relative, both caught malaria and Sarah Knox Davis died. It was a grief from which Jefferson Davis only barely survived. For the next seven years he lived in virtual seclusion, fleeing the company of men and women to seek solace in solitude. Knox must have been a remarkable person. She was witty and :imaginative, she had been trained in the polite learning of a lady of her day, she was a small and graceful woman of beauty and mind. Her death changed Jefferson Davis. He gave up society, and became introspective and withdrawn. Family and friends worried about his sanity, and his life. Then, after a sabbatical of mourning, his brother Joe planned a Christmas party that might pull Jeff bSick into the country of the living. One of those invited was Varina Anne Howell, 17 yrs old, in the first bloom of youth, who lived in near'qf Natchez. Jeff Davis was 18 yrs older than Varina, in fact only 2 yrs younger than her moth• er. But it was as wift and irrevocable plunge into a deep and lasting love between two people of exceptional personal and mental roili't'.r. Varina was a complex and spontaneous person, as contra• dictory in mood and opinion as Jeff Davis was simple and consistent. Her wit was polished Irish, sometimes barbed bljtt always hilarious. Would you believe it, she wrote her mother after meeting Mr. Davis, he is refined and cultivated and yet he is a member of the Democratic party, She was charming, warm, and glowing. She enjoyed the company of intelligent and well-read men and women. She possessed a will asst.rong as steel; no one could control her, or dominate her. It was said of her that shevould stand up to the devil himself--strong praise among a people whob:llieved in the seductive powers of the Tempter. Nor did Varina dominate Jefferson; it was common talk in the family that she would ci:>ide no man she could dominate. In Dec 1865, with her husband in prison and their world broken and dark, shew rote him: 21 yrs of happy dependence upon the wisdom and love of another so much better and wiser does not fit one to stand a !on'Sd/ Another woman in Davis 1s life was fiisooloved diughtervarina Anne, named for her mother but affectionately knosn as Winnie. She came into his dark and hwnid prison cell like ab right little bird of joy. Winnie was born in the confederate White House in Rich.~ond on June 27, 1864. Less than a yr later her father was captur• ed and imprisoned in Fortress Monroe. The child lived with her mofiller across the compound from the casemates which were Davis's cell. Regularly she visited her father, and quickly became the darling of the garrison. Both the guards and the guarded delighted in her company, and recounted stories of her winsome ways and precocious intelligence. Her mother filled the unquiet hours by making a quilt, a patchwork containing a snippet of cloth from a dress of all the women who had been part of the Confederate government. As she -wrote of it ,11 it is the first symptom of the sere and yellow leaf which has been contentOwith my bodl.Y', and until now has left my mind untarnished." Little Winnie was the charmer, ano~her symbol of better days not so long before. Pie, her mother called her, is the sweetest brightest child I ever saw. She is as much company for us as a grown person." Davis built houses of wooden blocks for her, and recited.from memory and in broad Soots dialect his favorite poems. She helped him through the dark tunnel of despair, to new hope and confidence on the other side of it.l_;,.tt'n 1886, when Winnie was 22, at a veterans' rally in Atlanta to mark the 25th anniversary of the war's beginning, Genl John B. Gordon led her by the hand to the front of the platform, and introduced her as the Daughter of the Confederacy, the first of your noble tribe to glory in the name. On the same trip she went to Montgomery and stood at the sam~ spot where her father had taken the oath of · office a quarter-century earlier. At her side on that occasion was Letitia Tyler, who had in 1Si6l run up the firs~ Confederate flag; now she pinned a white rose on the lapel of Jefferson Davis's coat. The band played The Bonnie Blue F1ag while those who ;gathered shed tears ofs:>rrow, tears of love.;/'For al.mast 45 years Jefferson and Varina stood together as family, and as friends, and as associates and equal partners in a lovingI\3lation• shp. She did occasionally chafe under her husband's inability to forget thel:ride of his youth, the tragic Knox. One day while he was going through an old trunk he found one of her bedroom slip• pers B!l and, overcome with grief, fainted. Gradually she brought him out of his gloom. He returned to public life as a lawmaker and politician, where he found Varina an_indispensible member of the team, writing, researching, receiving political associates to tea or to dinner, mothering the chil• dren, keeping the home warm and satisfying. Every marriage is closed to all other people; no one, however close, can ever know what happens between two people in the most intimate of human contact~ no one can understand the hidden meanings in what appears to be routine conversation. But to out• ward appearances, Varina Howell made Jeff Davis a happy man. She relieved him of mahY..'"burdens, and she insulated him from strains and stresses so he could do themading, and thinking, and rest• ing, he needed to do his job. She idolized one lonely man who for 4 yrs had the weight of half a continent upon his thin shoulders. One who knew her only after the defeat said of her:\\she was a personality with the instincts of as ensi.ttte woman and the judgment of the strongest man. She was endowed with tender feeling and indomitable will." She died in New York in Oct 1906; her last words were O Lord in Thee have I trusted, let me not be confounded. Once again in death Varina Davis went to Richmond. The newspaper wrote a poignant obituary. \l45 yrs and a few months ago Mrs. Jefferson Davis came to Richmond, the wife of the new president coming to the capital ••• Today Mrs. Davis came back to Richmond to be buried, an old woman long widowed and bereft ••. The Confed• eracy has gone, the dreams are vanished. The vast majority of the strong young men who answered the president's call •• died on the field or have been carried away by the inexorable process of time But a ·few warn and aP-ed :y er s emain to re re ent th • Mr s on o st living memen- tOes oT 'tine vonrea g

For that reason we pay her tribute. We also salute all the women who were in that magic band, and those who keep fresh the memories. In 1890 Varina Davis published a Memoir in which she wrote of her husband, One of the most comforting memories of his life seemed to be the confidence and affection bestowed upon hfm by the women of the South. Sometimes, when h~~ticism upon himself made by disapproving Confederates, without saying why, he would~ "God keep and bless the women of the South; they have never shot an arrow at me. That is the refinement of the sense of truthfulness. And so say I. God bless and keep the women of the South. \ .1~"" '-"' L, ..k crf- ~Oil" Jefferson Davis. June 1991.

The date was April 12, 1865, and the scene was a rented hpuse in Greensboro which John Taylor Wood had prepared for President Jefferson Davis, Confederate States of America. Four days earl• ier Robert E. Lee had surrendered his outnumbered force at Appomattox, and the Confederate govern• ment left Richmond and travelled to Danville and then to Greensboro in an attempt to reach Army units to the southa'ld west, and continue the struggle for independence. John Taylor Woo~ ~as a naval hero o: the war engaging United States ships in what were called cutting out expeditions. With a small group of picked men, and with boats small enough to be hauled from river to river on large wagons, Wood •s force boarded an enemy ship in the dirk of night and with bravecy and sur• prise ca~tured the vessel and its car~o. Wood was widely praised and celebrated as a naval of• ficer. He was also a grandson of Zachary Taylor, old Rough and Ready, whose Mexican War record enabled him to win election to the presidency of the United States in 1852. Wood 's father, Robt Crooke Wood, an Anny surgeon, married Zacharjr, Taylor• s eldest daughter Anne Mackall Taylor. What makes this fact relevant is another fact: Jefferson Davis, who stood that afternoon in a small room in a rented house in Greensboro to plan the future campaigns to establish an independent southern republic, in June 1835, thirty years earlier, married General Taylor's second daughter, Sarah Knox Taylor. John Ta.vlor Wood's mother was thus a sister to Jefferson Davis's first wife. It was in Greensboro, on that afternoon of April 12, that President Davis received the official communication of Lee's surrender. He read it slowly and sorrowfully, without comment, and then turned aside and ''silently wept bitter tears," as a witness remembered. Wood, a nephew,.:,.and Rob• ert E. Lee Jr were standing beside President Davis. Lee later recalled that Davis "see?Md quite broken a t the moment by the tangible evidence of the loss of his army and the misfortunes of its general. All of us, respecting his greatgrief, withdrew, leaving him alone with Colonel Wood." Much later, a sympathetic biographer of President Davis observed: "Jefferson Davis was fortunate in having his first wife 1s nephew with him at this crushing moment. He had loved Sarah Knox Tay• lor pr.ofoundly and her death three months after their marriage had transformed the gay young man into something of a stoic. Now, with Lee's official notification of surrender clutched in his hand, Davi· again had an acute intimation of heartbreak." (Hudson Strode, III, 185-9) Three weeks later, in early May, in north Georgia near the Chattahoochee River, Jefferson DaYis, with his nephew Wood a constant companion, met Mrs. Davis on her way southward to Florida. On May lo, near Irwinville, Ga., the entire party was captured by Michigan and Wisconsin cavalry units. Var• ina Davis was beside her husband, and with the two of them was a close relative of the first Mrs. Davis.Jiit was a tableau that represented Jefferson Davis's private life, and family, and the debt the great man owed to the two women in his life./10n that day, beside a swamp on Irwinville Road, .. Someone wiser, and perhaps bolder, than I,has said that behitld every successful man there is a loyal wife and a profoundly surprised mother-in-law. In Jefferson Davis's life it was his first father-in-law Zachary Taylor who was the astounded parent. Davis was a West .Point graduate, while Taylor was largely self-taughtwith little formal education, a soldier's soldier who scorned the affectations and polish of tbe book-learning officers. Davis served in army posts on the Indian frontier in Illinois and Wisconsin and saw action in the in 1832; Abraham Lincoln was also a participant in that confiict. At an army base at Prairie du Chien in Wisconsin Davis met and fell in love wi t.b the Colonel's daughter,, who was called by her nrl.ddle name Knox. Taylor opposed the match, in part because he did not 1ike the young Mississippian, in part beca use he did not want any of his daughters to endure the hardships of the primitive and war-footing living standards on Anrry bases of the 1830s. Davis resigned his commission to marry at Knox's aunt's home in Kentu~ky. The newly-~ds went to Mississippi, where Davis's brother Joe provided a plan• tation, Brierf~ld. It was idyllic, perhaps romanticized because of the sudden blow of tragedy. For only three months after the wedding, on a trip to St. Francisville, La, to visit a Davis rela• tive, both caught malaria, and Sarah Knox died. It was a blow from lolhich Jefferson Davis barely recovered. For the next seven years he lived in virtual seclusion, fleeing from the company of men and women to seek solace in solitude. Knox must have been a remarkable person. She was witty and imaginative, she hadlBen train~d. in the polite learning of the lady of her day, she was a small and graceful woman, of beauty and mind. Her death changed Jefferson Davis; he gave up soc• iety, he became introspectivemd withdrawn. Family and friends worried about his sanity. Then, after a sabbatical of years in mourning, his brother Joe planned a Christmas party that might pull his younger brother back into the human world. One of those invited was Varina Anne Howell, seventeen years old, in the first bloom of youth, who lived in nearby Natchez. Jeff Davis was 18 years older than Varina, o ly two years younger than her mother. But it was a swift plunge into a deep and lasting love, between two people of exceptional mental ability. Varina was a complex and spontaneous person, as contradictory in opinion and mood as Jeff Davis was simple and consis- tent. Her wit was polished Irish, sometimes barbed but always hilarious. She was channing, and wann and glowing. She enjoyed the company of intelligent and well-read men and women.. She· possessed a will as strong as steel; no one could control or dominate her; it was said of her that she would stand up to the devil himself. Nor did Varina dominate Jefferson; it was common talk in the family that shew ould abide no nan she could dominate. In Dec 1865, with Davis in prison and the family, and their world, broken and dark, she wrote her husband: Twenty-one years of happy de• penden~upon the wisdom and love of another so much better and wiser does not fit one to stand ~lalone.'~or almost 45 years they stood together as family, as friends, as associates and equal ~partners in a loving relationship. She did occasionally chafe.under Jefferson's continued remin- ders of his first wife, the tragic Knox; one day while going through an old trunk he caine upon one of her bedroom slippers, and fainted away. Years later Varina remembered feeling 1 ike an outsider,, enduring her husband's grieving and brooding, his lonely rides around the country, hiss leepless nights spent in meditation and out of her world. Looking back upon those early days she s aid she had been a loving but useless wife to him. Gradually shebrought him out of his introspection; he returned to public life as a lawmaker and politician, and in that role Varina was a member of the team, writing, researching, receiving political associates, mothering Datis's children. All mar• riages are closed to all other people; no one, however close, can ever ~ow what happ:ins between t'wo people in the most intimate of human relatships, can understand the undercurrents and hidden meanings of ostensibly routine conversation. But to outward;;ppearances, Varina Howell made Jeff Davis a happy man, she relieved him of many obligations, and she insulated hilTI from strains and stresses so he could do the reading, and thinking, and resting, he needed to do his;Pb. She idol• ized o~ lonely man who for four years held the weight of half a continent upon his thin shoul• ders. One who knew her only a~er the.cataclysm said of her: she was a personality with the in• stincts of a s ensi ti ve woman and the judgment of *he s trongest man. She was also endowed with ten• der feeling and indomitable will." She died in Oct 1906 in New York; her ilast words were O Lord in Thee have I trusted, let me not be confounded. Once agai~rina Davis went to Richmond. The newspaper wrote an obituary. Forty-five years and a few month ago Mrs. Jefferson Davis came to Richmond, the wife of the president of a new republic·coming to the capital ••• Today Mrs. Davis came'tlick to Richmond to be buried, an old woman long widowed and -.Pereft ••• The Confederacy has gone, the dreams are vanished. The ~astmajority of the strong young mer'i who answered the President's call. •. died on the field or have been borne a way by the inenorabl~ process of time. But a few worn and aged veterans remain to represent them. Mrs Davis was one of the last living mementoes of the> Confederate Government." For that reason, we pay her -tribute\ _,J? ~;..__~l>v

~~~ ·~ ~( 9~)0k._ ~ i1~~~~ li*k b,'~ jo'1, Another woman in Davis's ife was his beloved daughter, Varina Anne, named for her mother, kno. fectionately as Winnie.~nnie waslDrn in the Confederate White House, in Richrr-ond, on gune 27, 1864. Less than a yr later her father was imprisoned in Fortress Monroe. With .her mother the infant Winnie lived across the compound from the casemates. She regularly visited her father in his comfortless cell, and quickily became the darling of the entire company. The guards, and the guarded, enjoyed her company, and recounted stories of her winsome ways and precocious intelli• gence. Her mother filled her unquiet hours by making a quilt, containing a piece of cloth fronna dress of all of the women who had been part of the Richmond government, as a memory of better days~ It is the first symptom of the sere and yellow leaf which has been content with my body, and until no.w .has le:f.t my mind untarnished •11 But little Winnie was a charmer. Pie, her mother called her, is the sweetest brightest child I ever saw. She is as much company :tor us as a grown person." The prison time began a long and loving relation b3tween f atre r and chughter. Davis built houses with wooden blocks for her, and recited from memory his favorite poems. When Winnie was 22, in 1886, at a veterans' rally in Atlanta, Genl John B. ~ordon led her by the hand to the front of the plat• form and introduced her as the Daughter of the Confederacy, first of your noble tribe to glory in the name. On the s rune 1rip she went to Montgomery and stood at the very same spot her father had stood, a quarter of a century earlier, to take the oath of office as Confederate President. At her side was Letitia Tyler, who had run up the first Confederate flag; now she pinned a white rose on the lapel of Jeff Davis's coat. The band played The Bonnie Blue Flag, while those gathered shed tears of §orrow, and tears of love. Would y-ou sign that Declaration? Declarat Indep Jul4 1991

2d Cont Congr met Philad May 1775, took lead in revolution. Rejected Britain's Olive Branch becaise it did not renounce the right of Parl to tax people who were not represented in it. It petitioned the Kg again to redress grievances, but at same time :& it defended American claims to self-govt and taxat only by those who must pay and who would know best how to levy. For·many yrs after 1775 it was that group of people who directed the American response. A ~ruly remarkable and talented group of people. During its long tenure it numbered among its members nearly every outstanding leader in the colonies. From Virginia, Washington, Jefferson, Wythe, Harrison, and the Lees. From Massachusetts Samuel and John Adams, Elbridge Gerry and John Hancock. From Pennsylv Benjamin Franklin and Robert Morrie. From North Carolina William Hooper, Joseph Hewes and John Penn. From Georgia Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, and George Wal• ton. From S. Car. l!":dward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Thomas Lynch, and Arthur Middleton.

Del;egates were citiz of substance and had respect of their neighbors. Of the 56 who signed the Declarat, 8 were merchants, six were physicians, 5 were farmers, 25 were lawyers. Most got their political training in local politics, where they learned the arts of compromise and concession to get measures approved. Many had served in colonial legislats, most had been active and outspoken in the debate over British policies. Nearly all were plain citiz with natural talent for political managemt. They had an advantage that among them was n~ repre• sentative of an ancient aristocracy eager to cast off restraints upon their contrQl of local af• fairs. Among them no zealous ideologu~willing to risk the success of the venture in order to win support for a private vision of pet'fection of society. Among them no professional soldier seeking a way to ride into power with the aid of sword and cannon. Among them no demagogue to stir the DX)b against lawful authority for the personal gain of the leaderl Again, they had the advantage that they were in agreement that govt must base its authority upon the expressed will of the majority, and that it must be republican (small r) rather than the public possession of a private few, and that it must be civilian and secular rather and military or sectarian. Every debate heard repeated fears of military power, to co• erce compliance by force. They feared a triumphant American army almost as much as they did the hired troops of George III. At no time did a dictator arise to seize control of govt. George Washington could have done it, but such behavior was foreign to his nature. When extraordinary power"'Was granted him by Congress, he always returned it unaffected by personal amm:t.tion. They had their flaws, those people; some of them were accused of mingling personal finances with the public exchequer; but concentrated power to profit from the public's business was not among them. Even in the darkest hour of the American cause, no man on horseback appearad to pro)Jise sal• vation in return~ for subjugation and restrainas upon individual liberty. Again, they had advantage in that there was little of the dramatic in their

This led to !I Continental Congress. First met Sept 1774. Estalb Association. Brit occupy Boston, Genl Thomas Gage, to Lexington-Concord, 18th of April in '75. Second Contineatal Congr. Patrick Henry, March 1775r An appeal to arms and to the God of Hosts is all that is le~ to us~ ••• is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?_r Forbid it, Almighty Godl I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me deathl . Geo Washington: Unhappy it is ••• that the once-happy and peaceful plains of America are either t~'OO drenched with blood or inhabited by slaves. Sad alternative! But can a virtuous man hesitate in his choice? Deel of the Causes & necessity of Taking up Arms, July 6, 177j°i Our ca11se is just. Our union is perfect. Our internal resources are great, and, if necessary, foreign assistance is un- doubtedly attainable. We f18ht "for the preservJtion of our liberties, being with one mind resolved to die free men rather than live slaves.'}? .:y Thomas Paine, Common Sense, Jan 1776. May 20, 1776, Mecklenburg Deel, never presente April 13, 1776 N. c. was first to direct its delegates to go for indep, whatever other colonies might decide. ~ Ametica is already independant. Why' then declare it?// -- Sam Adams. lllDlll J May 10, .Richard Henry Lee proposed that the colonies create their own govts in the absence of British rule. On May 1S·the proposal with preamble was presented to Congress. When it was accepted, by roll-call vote, independence had become_ a reality. In Wmaburg the BUtish tlag wasp ulled dow from the capitol and Congress' flag raised. 1tA whole govt of our own choice, managed by persons whom we love, revere and can confide in, has charms in it for which men will fight."' John Adams. To be no longer Englishmen but Americans, to stand before the world.tfee and indep, in control of their own destiny, was an intoxicating prospect. It is revolution, ~ohn Ad• l\IllS wrote, the most complete, unexpected and remarkable of any in the history of nations. 1 June 7, Richard Henry Lee offered ab rief resolution--that these united colonies are and of right ought to'be free and independent states. A committee of 5 was chosen to draft a docu• ment proclaiming independence; Thos Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sheman of Conn, Robt LiYingston or NY, the o~ member of the committee who neither Yoted for or signed the declaration. · J~ 2 the Congress approved the declaration, July 4 final draft finally adopted, Jul.7 8 printers delivered copies, and it was read in what became Indep Square. No drama, no bells, no firecrackers, until later. Comfort. Sept/91.

In Dec of this yr the world will mark the 200th anniversary of the death of Wolfgang Amadeus Moz• art. '!here will be concerts and the issuing of records and conferences and discussions all over the world. Mozart was the composer of beautiful music that is still played and loved wherever people enjoy music that shows us joy and hope even when things do not go -well with us. The Swiss theologian Karl Barth"loved Mozart, and began each day with a recorded concert of Mozart•s music. It may be, Barth wrote, that when the angels in heaven go about their t:ask of praising tiod they pl~y only Back, 1rut when they are together in the family circle, they play Mozart and that then too our dear Lord listens with special' pleasure.- ·Mozart, Barth wrote, knew the center and essence of things. His music contained pain and joy, storm clouds and sunshine, tears and laughter; he translated into music •• re al life in all its discord. Barth wrote that Mozartl s music was a parable of heaven; he knew the peace of God, and the light shines all the more brightly because it breaks forth from the shadow; he heard the harmony of creation to which the shadow also belongs but in which the shadow is not cl arkness, deficiency is not defeat, sadness cannot become despair, trouble cannot degenerate into tragedy and infinite melancholy is not ultimately forced to claim undis• puted sway. Life does not fear death, but knows it well; so Barth wote of Mozart• s music. It expressed the good creation of God, which also includes the limitation and end of humanity. In a11 of these ways Mozart's music is an act ef worship of God. There is a text in one of Paul's letters which speaks about sharing suffering and comfort, and words that lift Paul the apostle and missionary to the heart of being human, of knowing the presence of God when we are lonely,1~~.we hurt, and when we need a companion to help us bear our burdens. Let us listen. 2 Cor l: ~ This short passage divides easily into 3 parts. Part 1 is the salutation, 1,2; p:r-:-; ~ l~f blessing, 3,4; part 3 is the partnership of suffering and comfort. We look first at the saluta• tion. Paul 1s name begins the ltr, as its writer; he describes himself as an apostle of Im Xr J by the will of God. It is his call to apostleship which is his authority for preaching and teach• ing, and building churches. Paul, he began, an apostle; and Timothy our brother. Timothy was younger than Paul, his helper and servant, his co-writer who took down what Paul dictated.1'The ltr was directed to the Ch of God which is in Corinth, including all the saints in the whole reg• ion. Members of churches at that time were all regarded as saints, people set apart, made holy, for the service of God. Called out of the world, but still a part of it; the Kgdm of God was their address, but the port city of Corinth was their mission. They had been called from the worship of this present life, and this age, to the worship of the God of J Xr. It is acalling that all of us have heard, to which we are all invited, with all the gracious hospitality of which God our Father is capable. What matters in this life is what we put first in our order of· prior• ities. God calls us, in the words of the First Comdmt, to have no other gods tbefore him, to p\lt our trust in him and not in treasure that rusts, and rots, and that thieves break in and steal. Grace to you and peace, are the next words; it is the age-old wish of those who are weary of dis• cord and quarrelling in the church, and of terror, and need. I cannot speak with the authority that Paul possessed, but to the extent that I can, I wish for all of you the knowledge of the grace of God, and the peace that passes all understanding, peace not as the world gives, but peace that only the assurance of forgiveness and mercy can bring. W/v.3 we read the blessing and the thanksgiving, and we also read the beginning of a precious promise, one we should memorize, and write out on a piece ofplper, and stick on our mirrors, where we can see it every mQrning and every night. It is the promise that in a world of suffering, God will bring comfort. Blessed be God the Father of our Lord, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort. There is a world of meaning in that sentence. Fewer than 20 words, yet an entire library of promise. Thanks to God is the beginning of faith, it is the first syllable in prayer, and it is the motive for all morality and for generous _giving of self. Wha taver happs ns, there is always ~hing for which we can praise God, and give thanks. In this sentence the thanksgiving turns into a description of the God who gives us what it is/that we feel thankful for. God is father of mercies, and God of all comfort, v.3. This continues the thanksgiving, but it also begins a little hymn to the comfort which is ours in Xr. Comfort is the key word in this passage. In five verses it appears, as a noun or as a verb, ten times. If you read the K.N you will see that the word for comfort is twice translated as consolation, which me 3l'lS the same thing. Our word comfort has changed its meaning. It now means something soft and cuddly, downy, something that keeps us warm on a cold night. It means the care we get when we bump an elbow and hurt. Certainly that kind of comfort is a b lessing. But the word comfort is made of sterner stuff. Its Latin root is the same word from which we get fortify. It means strong; fortitude, fortress, forte in music. It means to make strong; to encourage us to risk, and to dare, and to trust the word of God when we cannot see proof for faith. Comfort is not something to put us to sleep, or to ease our pain, or to make us feel comfortable in church.It means strengthener, that which gives us courage to continue the struggle, to get up and try again. The promise of God, like Mozart's music, contains pain and joy, stonn clouds and sunshine, that part of creation to which the shadow beilongs, but which tells of a light so strong that the darkness cannot put it out. Here Paul combined weakness and strength, victory and loss. It reminds us that God became human flesh and emptied himself of hisc:Bity; he was weak but was raised in strength and glory, was made poor so he could make us all rich in the things of the spirit, in the inner peace that overcomes the world • The meaning of the gospel i13 that thru suffering there comes triumph; redeeming love that will not let us go, in which we rest our weary souls; O Cross that liftest up our heads, in dust we lay life's glory dean, and frmn the ground there blossoms redj life that shall endless be. George Matheson's poem transfonns the ugliness of suffering into the beauty of relig:faith. V .4, God comforts us in all affliction, so that we may comfort those who are in affliction, with the comfort with which we are ourselves comforted by God. As we share in Ir's suffering, so thru Xr we share abundantly in his comfort. To share a grief, or a sorrow, or a suffering, cuts it in half; toEhare a joy doubles it. That is the strange arithmetic of faith. Comfort ye, comfort ye, rrry people, saith the Lord. Deficiency is not defeat, sadness cannot become despair, trouble cannot degenerate into tragedy, and infinit melancholy cannot overcome us. In the mercy and love of God we have comfort to match thetriils through which we must pass. May we all give thank!S:.

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' J George, James, and Wolfgang. Sep~/91. -vf-fl(t·-, My dearly beloved, ladies, youh ohor me by inviting me to shar0his occasion with you. {ihis (ip.onth is --COnst.itution meeth, a~F was on the 17th7\ of tlii week in Philadelphia, that 'the founding fathers adopted the documen which has, or more years han any other written framr, of govt, provided our system of union. i er But this is also the bicentennial of the bill of rights that was added to the Constitution as is first 10 amendmts in Dec 1791. To secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves

, ladies and gentlemen, it is again an honor and a delight to share this occasi a remarkable thing that you do here this month. ·You celebrate a nd i;:;ive thanks for two centuries, through war and peace, through famine and plenty, through ages, and deaths, peop1e have come together in this place to worship the· God wh 1e Providence who sus La i.ned them. It sets you apart, that before there was a Su e there was a Forsyth County, there was. a pioneer Methodist Church on this spot, neeting last week we noted that 1791 was a good year for the beginnings of thing Bill of Rights was added to, the U.S. Constitution, th.us col'!lple~ing an era which h the end of the war with lirance, and which LncLuded the Declaration of Indepen r which made good the Declaration, and the ~iting and adoption of the new Ameri rmanent written documents of governruent. We also noted that eve ryvher e in the ople looked to the U .s. as the guide .and leader in the effort to remove the bur that weighed down the minds and spirits of men- and ~omen:ftand -that the America 1 as proof that human beings were capable of imagining, and then making -real, a terrors and injustices. In 1791 America •meant progress, just as since 1492 it nity~ It gave support to the idea that human nature was.not created with an in do evil, but that .. through benevolent institutior1s. and the blessings of educ at Lon as infinitely pepfectible. That was one of the fundamental assumptions of the , which considered itself.enlightened, and called the age in which it lived the istorians date the enlightenment loosely to include the half-century between p of n;:itional leaders known as enlightened despots took control of European cou ginning oft he Fronch Revolution .. in 1789. It was a time in which human intell iava s:m.ergad t r-Lumpharrt over the forces of barbarism and obscur-ant.i.sm, a time in ailed in all things. The idea of progress dominated the thought of the educate yin every way things we.re getting better and better. The Golden Age lay not i of Paradise, or in tho Roman world ~f peace and prosperity from Britain to the he Ukraine and the rich delights of Babylon and the far-distant. Indus River. Th e; the hf3EL 0£ Gold awaited us, down a broad a venue of years marked by reason an 1 bettennent of liberated humanity. Bigotry, intolerance, superstition, and em f any kind, were inappropriate for civilized people. All ideas were equally va in somet.hi.ng that c ou1d not be proven to the senses was childish and oubmoded , W'lo intervened in humAn affairs, and the idea that some human actions were good ere inventions of mankind and were therefore beneath respect. They are to be urt. Natural man can do no sin, for in nature all actions are ecplicable and no ay be, but only as creator and lawmaker .of an impersonal universe. If there French philosopher Voltaire said, we would have to Lnverrt one in order to remai we have the prob.l em of explaining where matter came from. Even today, if I ma: the proponents of the Big Bang theory of creation make no effort to explain the imordial chunk'.that blew up to begin time and universe. To enlightenment scho• ists and unitarians and not, trinitarian Xns , God was like a watchmaker who build the spring, and sets the l•heels in motion subject to laws of physics which the man may subsequently discover and measure mathematically. The watchmaker is n canfji ter the novomerrt of the wheels and gears and cogs. Rain comes when the e cloud reaches the dew-point, not when a group of people perform a rain dance ound with sticks. To 'the Deist there can be no miracle, no deviation from the

gs of the natural law. There could then be no;1Xty, which proclaims the miracle n , of the Great.or who became part of the creation, and limited himself to time ere could be rn ~iritual truth, or anything real that could not be observed and e of f~ith became the age of reason--to which a modern wit in our century added l?J'mnen and secession. Lexington Oct/91. My dearly beloved ladies, you honor me by your~ invit~tion to share this occasion with you. The supject of your meeting is women and secession, and l. commend your choice. Secession is a topic we read about each morning in the newspapers, with de~larations of independence by ne~rly all the republics of what once was the soviet Union, and by the three Baltic states, and by important por• tions of the ethnicU1odge-podge wh.ich is Yugoslavia. Last wk in the Wall St Jour Arthur Soble s• inger Jr wrote that local indepe.ndencies are attractive but must not be carried to extremes. Then he said that we honor George Washington for winning a secession movement from the British Empire, and we honor Abraham Lincoln for suppressing a similar movement 80 years later. Secession we can understand and appreciate, for it is part of our history. My grandfather lost a leg at Fredericks burg and lived and farmed, hobbling, until 1922. All of his life he t:new that when people did not want you, you respond not by overthrowing and taking control; you just pick up your marbles, shake the dust off your feet, and go home. To him, that was secession. And ah! women! The favor• ite subject of all reasonable people. Walter Landor said God made the rose out of 'What was lert of woman at the creation; she is made of sugar and spice and everything mice, the old poem goes. The novelist George Eliot wrote that a woman's hopes are woven of sunbeams; a shadow annihilates them. But there is a sharper aspect of women, Washington Irving said that there is in every true woman's heart a spark of heavenly fire, which lies dormant in the broad daylight of prosperity, but which\d.ndles up and beans and blazes in the dark hour of adversity.11 The winter of 1860-1861 was a time of adversity-and desperate decisions which determined the course of h:iEtory from that time to this present moment. And, if you read the traditional texts you will get the impression that it was a male dominated activity, to which women contributed only the county battalion's flag, and some knitted socks. Scarlett O'Hara, in Gone With theWind, wanted it that way. The Tarleton twins came home, expelled from yetai.other university, but itching to fight the Yankees. U 1tWhy honey, of course there:!s going to be a war," said Stuart. . Scarlett made a mouth of bored impatience. 11 If you say •war 1 just once more, I 111 go in the house and smt the door. I •ve never gotten so tired of any one word in my life as 1war,' unless it's 'secession.' Pa talks war morn• ing, noon and night, and all the gentlemen who come to see him shout about Ft Sumter and State's ' ~ Rights and Abe Lincoln till I get so bored I could scream! And that's all the boys talk a bout, too, that and their old Troop. There hasn't beenaiy fun ~t any party this spring because the boys can't talk about anything else. I'm mighty glad Georgia waited till after Christmas before it seceded or it would have ruined the Christmas parties, too. If you say 1war' again, I'll go in the house." The boys were enchanted, as she intended them to be; they thought more of her for it, because war was men's business, not ladies 1, and they took her attitude as evidence of her femininjty.~But for all Scarlett's borecfbm at any subject other than herself, there were many members of the Confederacy's bonnet brigades who thought, and spoke, and expressed their opinions. Indeed, it is not too much to say that without the support of the women there would have been no secession, and no Confederacy, and ~en adversity reared its harsh head it was the women whose spirits kindled up and beamed and blazed, to which the men, dased and confused, turned for streng• th and guidance. In Louisiana the 20-yr old Kate Stone kept a diary in which she recorded her fury at the fireside braves, the men who chose not to enlist, and at the enemy whose .fbrces intrud• ed upon and upset the placid ways of her life. "Nothing in the papers but War, War from the first to the last column. Throughout the li.ngth and breadth of the land the trumpet of war is sounding, and from every hamlet and village, from city and country, men are hurrying by thousatxls eager to be led to battle against Lincoln's hordes. Bravely, cheerily they go, willing to meet death in . defense of the South, the land we love so well, the fairest land and the most gallant men the sun shines on. May God prosper us. Never again can we join hands with the North, the people who hate us so." And in the debate over remaining in the Union, and leaving it to fonn independent repub• lics, many women made their voices heard. Those who read the newspapers and heard the speeches{/ in general approved and encouraged the move to secession. "Better Carolina should be ahnihilated, better to be crushed by superior strength, than live under false colors,11 Grace Elmore said. Some ~.-~af'rh~he victory of the Republicans as a triumph of puritanism with its q9).J..~r-than-tbou snobbery. (h""'1ft(d'~reed with it jealousy of the cotton and sugar plantations' wealth•,~ demagoguery with its crowd-pleasing untruths, ~'1Jiey considered the election of Lincoln as an assault upon the con• stitution with its compromises in the cause of union. As the gulf South states left the Union, women applauded and approved their actions. Plantation mistress Susan Cornwall defendedffiparate state secession as an answer to Yankee coercion. "Do the Republicans think then that we 'ire degen• erate as our slaves, tt shew rote, "to be whipped into obedience at the command of our self-styled masters?" In Florida a group of women wrote a public letter on secession which denounced the, and I quote, "Submissive policy of Southern politicims." They promised to e!llulate haf the 11 d our RevoautionarY matrons, and proposed dusting off their sp1nn1ng wneeis ana Iooms ro~ tfte e sacred cause. The women of the Sou.th could then, the letter declared, "reserve their crinolines ~ 9.t.\1~4>\f\- r/{;v-( °"'\ My dearly beloved, ladies and g entlemen, boys and girls, friends. It is deeply satisfying to me that in the face of my palpable dearth of talent you have included me in this gathering. The few minor appearances I made upon the 7th level theatre were memorable failures, but I do not recall any greater fun in my lifetime in this place than I found in the company of thespd.ans. That may be true for everyone who ever smearea make-up over face, or put on a costume that did not fit nor were the fasteners dependable. The first name of theatre is fun, isn't it? A few yrs ago some tody issued a book of theatrical anecdotes, full of choice plums and turkeys and eggs and bombs laid clumsily upon floorboards. My favorite among them is the tale of an English Shakespeare company doing a show in New York ••••••• I saw it in Brooklyn, in Yiddish. It l011ses so much in translation.

We are met here to add to the treasury of theatre anecdoees, and to express in love and fond affection what was lost in translation. I begin with my own bumbles and snuffles. Perhaps the most memorable production ever staged on this campus was that celebrated HAMLet not. long after the upper levels of the library were rechristened and transformed into a stage. It was accompanied by the lusty shouts of a panty-raid taking place just across the s treat at the women's donns, noises that drewned out both audibly and artistically the conclusion of the play. And there was that other time, when the stage was crowded with dead bodies and the lights were lowering all but imperceptibly, when across the stage from center rear there entered the nightwatchman. I, who was in another incarnarion Young Lord Osric, put on purple long-handles, and a short flouncy diaper, to play the part. There is a short scene, I enter on one side, go under the seats, out the rear door, around and down stairs, to enter the other side. I could not wear my glasses..... John Hamlet Rosenthal was calling WHERE ISytioung lord osric? And then, to top it off, on another evening I went out, mincing my steps, and drew a complete blank. to present to our SouthernPoliticians who have compromised a way the rights of the South.11 Thus did those detennined women question the mahhood of those leaders who supped with the devils who lived to the north of them. Secession debates took place also in homes, in parlors and over the dinner tables. Some women lived in families that were nearly torn apart by the crisis, for the war our grandfathers fought was a brother's war, and it was as well a sister's war. Another plan• tation daughter quarreled with her Unionist parents, though it offended her sense of what was right when she disagreed with them. "Now the Union is no longer glorious, it ceases to be volun• tary, and it degenerates into a hideous oppression," she wrote. "Regret it heartily, mourn over it as a lost friend, but do not seek to enforce it; it is like galvanizing a dead body!11 For herf the American flag had become an "old striped rag," symbol of cowardice on one side, and vandalism on the other, and the source of domestic discord. Man;y a daughter and a sister, with eyes blaz• ing and voices raised, shocked families with the vehemence of their anger. One brother told his south Carolina sister, "I must tteat your opinion 'With more deference hereafter." Many a man learned to his pleasure, or amazement, or chagrin, that the women in his life not only held strong opinions but had the courage, and the language, to speak their minds. But there were many other women who held their tongues, and if they had epinions about thr horrors of the coming conflagra• tions they kept silent. Women generally take events as personi and not distant affairs; they think of the consequences upon the family, and t home, and the children. It is eev€r ea·sy fr.r any of us to think of war in the abstract, as heroics, and flag-waving, and brave men, all clean and young, marching in cadence to astirring patriotic melody. Women had premonitions, and intui• tions, of countless personal tragedies, as~ar-ctl.uuds gathered on the horizon. Their concern for the local and the p~wticular, which indica'---'ted a narrow view, but also a most acute one, made their fears vivid and realistic. It made excruciatingly difficult the choice between a declara• tion of independence, with its consequent risk of battle, and a spineless subjection to what was perceived as a loss of liber~s and respeRt• In the Iliad,-Vthat classic account of men at war, Hector told Androm~~he that it is the men who must see to war." The Tarleton twins agreed with him. War has beenVsince the ancientsft'an activity which separates 1he genders, into those who march away and face the gory god of battle, and those who remain behind to improvise, and know lonelines~m~~nd to mourn the dead and bind up the wounds of the maimed.~ Early in the war of 1861~ Louisiana•"'Wtote in her journal that "we are leading the lives which women have led since Troy fell." They were present at the moment of decision, they cast their votes by inciting their men, and they were foundations of the Confederacy. Their prayers for humility, morality, and strength, arose in their worship, as their minds and voices encouraged their men. They silenced doubts, they stifled personal feelings, and kept heads high. Country came before individuals, and so they hid their tears when the troops marched away. Having influenced the decision of their states to secede, they now prepared to do their part at home.

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