Lee-Jackson-Maury •• January 1994.
ADD: -- And what is it that we remember? First, and foremost, in this month of birthdays, are the three leaders of the Confederate cause. Robert E. Lee was born Jan 19, 1807, 187 yrs ago tomorrow, noble hero 'Who stands tall on everyone's list of outstanding spirits; Thomas Jon• athan Jackson was born Jan 21, 1824, 170 yrs ago this Friday. They called him Stonewall, and with reason,for he confronted a succession of invaders into his state with courage and imagin• ation, whtle marching his foot-cavalry eastward to the Richmond region when reserves were needed. Matthew Fontaine Maury was born Jan 14, 18061 188 yrs ago last Frid.:zy-. Another Virginian, Ma~ry was an internationally honored oceanographer and seaman who, with Lee and Jackson, answered the call of mother Virginia in 1861. These three heroes serve as monuments of memory for all the others, the sung and the unsung, who put a tear in our eyes and a lump in our throats, as we remember. Lee-Jackson-Maillzy" Jan 1994.
My dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to engage in an exercise of remembering. Next to life itself, memory is the greatest gift of the Creator, for it is one of those traits that set mankind apart from other animals. Without memory we would not know who we are, or how we got here, or what there is for us to do. And yet, how easy it is to forget, to turn to other inter• ests, to live only for the moment, to let the drama and the emotion of the past fade away with the years. So, to help us keep fresh the memory, we erect monuments, altars of piled stones, and we make for ourselves regularly repeated ritual events. And what is it that we remember., we who gather here because of,our blood relationships with the past? We renember the sacrifices and the actions of men and women of courage and valor and g allantiy and loyalty and endurance. Three of them whose birthdays we celebrate in the month of January are heroes of a very ~cial quality, and may serv~ to remind us of them all. Robert Edward lee wasi:orn Jan 19, 1807, 187 yrs ago tomorrow, fifth child of Henry Lee, himself a hero of the war for American Independence, and learned about duty and honor and country from his family, and his neighborhood, and his schooling. Folwg the example of his soldier-father, Robert attended the military acadeil\V at West Point, where he distinguished himself by his scholarship and by his proficie rey in the arts and sciences of warfare. In 1829 he graduated without a single demerit on his record, a feat that put him into the highest rankings in the history of that rigorous academy. From that training Lee entered the Army as a professional soldier of character and integrity, intelligence and compassion. Thirty yrs after his commissioning, when his state seceded from the union in defense of the principles which had given that union its birth and its constitution, he chose to go with Virginia rather than with the United States. He resigned his commission, sadly, because his nation was not centered in Washington, but in his state. Although he hoped hew ould not be called upon to participate in a war he deplored, when his state asked for his sword in its service he readily complied. He became military advisor to~President Jefferson Davis, and then commander of the Armies of Northern Vir• ginia, to confront and to repel repeated invasions of the state. When he was given the command, Federal General George McClellan with 100,000troops was within 7 miles of Richmond. In the cri• sis Lee demonstrated his superior skills as tactician and respected leader, moving his forces to outwit and outflank his opponents, and in the process humilia:.ing his enemy while winning the un• dying love and trust of his troops. He knew them personally, he knew their families and their interests, he cheered them into battle, Hoorah for Texas, or brave Carolina, he would shout, wav• ing his hat in the air, standing in the stirrups of Traveller to see them. They responded with deeds of heroism that rach Confederate Flag Day. Raleigh, March 1994. 5, · David .i.. • Smiley. In a world filled with things,· one of the oldest of human activities has been the use of a thing to remind people of another, and far more important thing. The rainbow in the sky following the storm tells us of the covenant promise of Never Again; the dove-with a green twig in its beak is a symbol of peace and the drying-up of the genocidal floods; the vision of the fire on the hearth awakens all the emotions and the memories of home and family, of warmth and good will. Among man• kind's reminders, one of the oldest and most effective is the bit of cloth, richly colored, that we call a flag. The word itself is of norlh European origin, meaning a swath of bunting that rep• resented something much larger than itself. It sent a message to all who saw it that they were in the presence of a community, an armed force, or an official of importance. We know them by many names--colors, standards, banners, ensigns, pennants, guidons. They are descended from solid metal·or wooden standards, carried before rulers and military forces, so theycould be identi£ied from a distance.~The pharoahs of ancient Egypt had standards as symbols of their pwer, and there are inscriptions~owing them, with the words indicating that they were sacred icons, "agents of the enemies 1 ·discomfo.:rtune. 11 The legions of the Roman anny carried standards giving their designa• tion and their campaigns, and ~ere were also units which tied a piece of colored cloth to a· spear as they went into b~ttlel'\f'lags thus,begAn a~ insignia of leadership, and as a means of knowing friend and foe, and ~s a center toWiich embattled warriors could rally. There was a tradi tion of hbno~ expressed by symbols and standards long before our contiQent was discovered by Euro• peans. Before our national independence was daclared, a c ontinehtal flag flew over American troops beseiging Boston in 1776. It had 13 red:and white stripes; and the British Union Jack, wit~ its two crosses superimposed, on the upper left corner. Alroost a yearr after the d eclaration of inde• pendence, the continental congress adopted a design for a national flag. As the resoiutio~ stated its appearance, "' The flag of the United States shall be 13 stripes alternate red and white, with a union of 13 stars of white on ablue field, representing a new constellation." It was the old continental .flag, with all traces of British allegiance erased from its d~sign. But even before that change, the tiny Dutch island ofSt. Eustatius in the West Indies fired cannon to salute a ship flying the stars and stripes, marking the transfer of power formerly exercised by nobles and momrchs to a new order based upon the consent of the governed1 written com titutions, and freely (r.~lJ!cted representatives. A similar, and to us gathered here today equally as important, change a:::- ~~he political bands which united sovereign states prior to 1860. When people of seven Gulf• south states acted upon what they understood to be their civil rights·, dissolved those bands, to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to 'Which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitled them--to quote the familiar and respected language of Thomas Jeffer• son in the Declaration of Independence--they acted quickly to provide a flag for their new nation. Early in Feb., 1861, at the Montgomery convention, a committee wasappointed to select a flag. Its report was adopted on March 4, 1861--133 yrs ago yesterday, and .the same day-·that Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated president of the United States,. the 27 Qf ±hem. that remains&. The symbolism of the selection of a flag to represent the new union, and the swearing-in of a leader who denied the dissidents the right of choice, of consent of the governed. The resolution adopted in Montgom• ery read as follows: the flag of the Confederate States of America shallCX>nsist of a red field with a white space extending horizontally through the center equal to one-third the width of the flag, the red spaces above and below to be of the same width as the white; the union blue, exten• ding down through the white space and stopping at the lower space; in the center of the union a circle of white stars corresponding to the number of States of the Confederacy." This flag became known as the Stars and Bars, and was first displayed over the state house in Montgomery. There have been disputes through the;>ears abou~ who designed that banner, whe~her a North Carolinian named Orren R. Smith, or Nicola Marschall of Marion, Alabama, born in Pru~iJ., an artist and craft man. Whoever did it, it was the Confederate ins1gnia, officially approvedlfAnother was celebrated in the song many consider the confederate national anthem--the bonnie blue flag thatl::aars a single star. And then there was the more familiar battle flag. At the first large battle of the war for southern independence, at Manassas Junction, near Bull Run, July 21, 1861, where the rebel yell first frightened the 1Bderal t roops , the officers noticed that the stars and stripes, and the stars and bars, looked alike from a distance. So Gen. P.T.Beauregard/designed a battle flag, ap• proved by the Confed Congress, afterward used by (w/Wm Porcker Miles & others) soldiers in line of battle. It has a square red field, with a .:blue St.Andrew's
( Stokes County Democratic Party, ~pril ;1994.
My dearly beloved, ladies and gentlerMn, boys and girls, I~ gratef.ul to you for the invitation to ,share this occasion with you. I am a professional h;lstorian, required by the o~th Qf my of• fice to be objective and non-partisan in my classroom •• iut I am also a native Mississippian, bern long enough ago to ltnow that Republicans were like the unicorn, or the manticore, imaginary mon• sters that sisted only in ancient fables. Not'until I came to North Carolina did I learn to my amasementthat Republicans were real. Ivan.then I knewthere was something fioti~ious about them; in his presidential campaignof 1,52 Adlai Stevenson described them in these words: the elephant has a thick skin, a head full of ivory, and as everyone knowswho has seen a circus parade , pro• ceeds best by graspini the tail of his predecessor. So, from the innocence of m:r boyhood, in a lanq where everybody was a Democratj{and ~ll debated heatedly with theirtmeigh bors, as Democrats do,#I stand before you to commend your c oice of political philosophy and program and party, and to wish you well in this year's political decisions. When a person gets to be my age, he may avoid political meetings, and rallies, and parades, but he reads thetpers and adds up the atj;uments, makes up his mind fairly and objectiYely, and goes to the polls and votes Democratic. The reason is that Democrats are people wh0 lcnow hew to find tom0rrow, wh their opponents continue to live on the street namedYesterday . In 1'58 John Kennedyencouraged his hearers to seetc''not a Democratic answer er a Republican answer, but the right. answer; let us n2t seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept responsibility tor the future.'' Living on the street namedYesterday is not the map of the pathways and programs that will help us find tomorrow. Franklin Roosevelt said,LlEternal truths are neither true nor eternal unless they have fresh meaning for every new social situation.'' ThomasJefferson, the thinker and doer who founded the Democratic party, saw America as a land of shining newness, a land of limitless and blessed future,[{who said, s peakinc as if he stood amongyou this day,"It is part of the American character to consider nothing as desperate; to surmount every difficulty 'by resolution; remote from all other aid, we are obliged to invent and to execute; to find means within C:>urselves." These, dearly beloved, are not words stored between the covers of old and discarded lrooks; they are instructions for the present. Mis• tory is always in the making. Its record is never complete until each one of us has his/her say, and does what needs doing, to help the coo.nty, and the country, find tomorrow. Living on a street namedYesterday may be fashionable, or comfortable, but it does not find tomorrow. Yesterday's solutions, and resolutions, and doubts and fears, do not assist people who want to live better, and learn more, and mjoy an honest and peaceful life. Democrats are people who knowhow to find tomorrow,.,becauae Democrats can build a future on the basis of common values and the sound common sense of the common people who make America great. So I call upon you to conduct a campaignth.at offers the c itisens a real choice--between ast and future, between the old order and exciting possibilities for improving it, between those whose only platfonn is a loud Neigh">1r.nd those who want to write Yes to humanaspirations and needs ~his year, as in e very year since the foundation of the Republic, voters must choose between two views of humannature--one that divides people into the favored few, and the ~~of us; the other includes all people//in~.the counting of the favored/of earth.· A choice between two Yiews of the place of governmentin humanaffairs--'1>ne that teaches us that iovernment cannot ever be the solu• tion, because government is the problem; and one that accepts the idea that covermnent is the duly constituted representation of an organised society of humanbeings, created by them for their mutual protection and well-being. Democratsknow that the political expression of mankind cannot ignore hunger, and disease, and the failure to offer meaningful.work to all able-bodied men and women. Two parties, two choices, for voters. One-1-iqs on the-street-ft811led f19sterday, t.bB gtft.9-r.-\mows the- way- to fiftd.-t1'llll0t'row. I call upon you to conduct a campaignthat returns to the basicsf for this year, more than most, people are concerned, notat>out foreign trade, or one or another of those large issues we dispute; no, people are concerned about crilne in the streets, and in neighborhoods, where families should live in peace; people are concernedti>out the cost and the atailabliity of health,,care, from before birth to the sunset years;; education, which is a basic and elementary need-; and now causes dismay for many of us. Anyone who cares a bout the fu• ture, about finding theway to tomorrow, must write h~ith and education in large letters on the agenda. Somethingtoo must be done for the unemploye~ and for the reform of the welfare system so that tomorrowwill be better than yesterday ever imagined being. Eternal :truths are nei1her eternal nor true unless they have fresh,rmeaning, and fresh thinking, to meet the conditions and the needs of present and future. So I call upon yeu to give your county, and your country, the benefits of your best thinking, and your imaginationsf yes, even your dreaming out loud. To a party that has no fear of toroorrow, but which wants to lead us all into its bounties, thinking, and imagining, and dreaming, are honored and welcomedactivities. Get; back to the basics, X~lt_i./l~~.-"-v/c:--s~w--Jt\fw~ ~v
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r- Tokai Commencement, March 31, 1994
My dearly beloved, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, •• Nearly a century ago the British poet Rudyard Kipling declared; in a celebrated announceroont, that East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet, till earth and sky stand presently at God's great judgment seat. We are different creatures, Kipling said; at either end of the round earth our foods, our fash• ions, and our fads drastically oppose each other, so that there can be no common ground upon which to s t and , on this side of the arch-angel's trumpet. But then, in a d ram a tic reversal of his gloomy view, Kipling denied the division of earth's peoples. In the final verse he wrote: But there ~neither east nor west; tnrde r , nor breed, nor birth, When two strong people stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth! We meet here today to celebrate, and to remember, an event the ee&_ofvhich no eye can see nor mind can comprehend. East is east, and west is west, to be sure;·~we should all give thanks that it is so. But in the learningex:periences we have shared in thisbrief time, and in this place, we have shown, we have learned, that we CAN stand face to face, in respect, and in admir• ation, and in love. I thank y•u, Tekai-jin, Nihon-jin, because for a short time you became Amer• ica-jin. May you remember, as I shall. Domo arrigato, go kuro-san, ai s hite Imasu, and sayonara. 0 jee yee. Reynolda Manor Library, May 6, 1994. dearly beloved, ladies- and gentlemen, It is an honor. to me to share this occasion with you. more than-thirty years my family and I have been·.friends of this library, cominghere in sea ch of informatiom1and the pleasure reading that makes life so delightful, finatng within these walls what someonesaid a good library should be--a joyful place where the imagination roams free~, and lil'e is actively enriched. For all that local governmentowes us, ip security and health and roads, in clear water and good schools, I put the public library high on the list of necessities. As reassuring as the sound of a police siren in the s treat, as ref'~shing as ~ cup of cold water on a sultry afternoon, what every communityneeds is an idea, a fact, ~r a story to s_tretch and to nourish the imagination. So I thank you, and I salute you, for being friends ~of this nfghborhoodlibrary, thiSlrefuge from the humdrum,this essential repository of food for ~~nd. We are met here to thlnk about world events that happened a h?-~J-century ago,the cele• bration o the end of the. horror of battle in Europe, for which the date"'!'s Sunday, May 8; and the beginning of the end of that horror, on the beaches of N~rmandiein France, 50 yrs ago todau-1 -le:as Ofu5 111oulsh. War is an ugly monster, and can in no waybes oftened or madeattractive. Win• ston Churchill said of it, war used to be cruel and.magnificent, but now has becomecruel and squalid, to which he might have added, the only be.autiful thing about combat is that it not oc - curpand next to that, that _y•u survive it. He did-say that when Pres. Rposevalt asked what name would be appropriate for :the- war, he said at once, '' U ec sary War." It fits, because it could be said of every one of them.· War testifies t nkind 's failure o intelligence and civil- ization and morality, and however romantically we may envision the clash of machines on the ground and in the sea and in the air, war remains a matter of flesh and blood. It is a hideous monster that can be tole.rated onl.v by considering the alternatives. Virginia patriot Patrick Henry said it in 1775: Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slav ery?'I If that is the choice, then do free people shoulder their a nn.s and march forth to battle, willing to trade their lives for their family; as one British war memorial put it, whenyoui go home tell them of us, and say., for- your tomorrowwe gave our todCij'" .n In every genera~ion, young men and women have offered that gift, the last full lllleasureof p~votion,,in a cause greater than thems~lves, for a tomorrowfor people they do not know. On the Sanday afternoon of Pearl Harbor, 'December7, 1941, · (: [ was a memberof a regitnental band. We marched at the head of the troops for parade retreat, and then took our position to play the national anthem as the flag was lowered. Because it was a special occasion, there were families and small children on the parade ground. Tears cameto my eyes as I played my Plrt., for I saw a beautiful _little girl .playing a game of her own, unaware of the solemn ceremonytaking place before her. I thought, howmany people will die in the war so~ litt:i~~l,.M2}ave the tomo?Towshe has not yet desired, one lik:e the gro'Wi.ng-uptime we enjoyed?~enth we sbdtl mrk a milestone 511' th• llMrl 8!MllfT from the invasion of Europe, and the battle which ended a year later. The reason Norm.a~ywas a great suc• cess, one observer said, w~~ that the soldiers would rather have fought thousands of Oe.rmansthan to go back into those boats and be sea-sick again. As one of the youngmen in my unit said, putti the palm of one hand over the back of the other, is it too late for me to tell them my hands don't DBtch?But go those young men went, some of them to die be~ore another )O· seconds had elapsed, others to live, to knowfamily .;"an.d profession, to read books and hear music, to rejo=~ in the pain of creaks and gratings in bodily joints, because .t~Qy_arA..~norable wounds~the elderly. They find joy in rememberingthe glad day 49 years ag~, when the lights came on again all over the wrld, whenbluebirds appeared over the white cliffs of Dover, whenthey could live in thee xpectation of sitting under the apple -tree with that very-~ecial girl, who promised not to sit there wil.th anyone else. The campaign that ended on May 8 was large, unprecedented in numbers of combattants, in the array of sea and air power that transported fighting men across a narrow strip of stonny water and dumpedthem onto ~h~ sands of'""Frenchbeaches, into exploding shells , and concrete-reinforced defensive positionsYBut it was only part-A~a muchlarger conflict. It is inaccurate to call it a wo.rldwar, tor it was a combination of ['m-a that £or mysterious and pro• found.politicail. and emotional reasons all happened at the same time. Britain against Germanyand Italy in Europe, and against Japan in the distant reaches of the Pacific--Singapore and Malay:and the rich resources of the East Indies--that was one war, or two, if you want toseparate them. Ger• manyand Italy against the defenders of Europ~Jl.:::~.rica and the Mediterranean shores, that is an• other :war. Germanyagai t Old Russia and the't}'Stti>of Ukraine, and the oil of the cauc~sus--that was another war. ~ina against Japan, still anotner. The Far Eastern mainland of Siberia and Manchuria, coveted goal of Japanese imperial dreams, that was anothe~. our own wars, for the con• trol of the Atlantic Oceanand western Europe, on one side, and for control of the Pacific Ocean and its rich shoreline and island worlds, that made anothe.r pair of wars. You may distinguish more wars, if you include the conflict between Italy and Greece over Albania, or that of an invading Russian bear into the snowyforests of Finland; or the civil wars between the six natians, which c ~ uN ,./'f=. '--- RaK!story of bitter hatreds and atrocities, in the Balkan region we could call Yugoslavia not so very long ago. But enough. For six years the world was in flames, with only the American conti• nents escaping invasion and destruction. And what a mighty show of power the United States staged in that warl In April 1945', Winston Churchill marvelled at American strength, saying, There was no greater exhibition of power in history than that of the American army, fighting from the Ar• dennes into ~antral Evope with one hand, and advancing from island to island towards Japan with the other. War production set records, and achieved numbers that are even yet incredible--battle- ~ships from 17 to 23, aircraft carriers from 7 to 28, hundreds of other ships, sailors to almost 3.5 million. Airforce, then a part of the Army, numbered about 3 million troops, and nearly 80,000 planes. Marine Corps to 5 Divs, with air support. Anrry nearly 14 million people, in 89 combat divisions, all but two of which saw action in the war. Two of them wer& destroyed in battle, others were continually £trengthened by replacements, so that their total casualty rate was lar• ger than the size of the division. Two paratroop divisions were dropped into 11he Nonn.andy land• ing zones hours before the beach parties appeared, and were employed again in a forlorn and costly attempt to seize control of the Rhine crossings in the Netherlands. Every aircraft, every ship, from boat to giant carr>ier/)had its story of boredom and frantic excitement, and in three of those ships were future presidents of the u.s. Every platoon of infantry, every tank crew, every artilleryman and company cook and medical corpsman, returned with unforgettable adventures burned into his memory tubes-. To quote -Supreme Court ..:-'1lat-i.~ 01~ We l.1 li.Glme.r;, wh e war was th t of 1861, who was wounded three times, to whose poetic description of the lessons of battle I have often turned, "Through 'our great gbod.tbrtune, in our youth ourtearts were touched with fire. It was given us to learn at the outset that life is a profound and passionate thing •• we learned that whether a man accepts from Fortune her spade and will look downward and dig, or from Aspiration her axe and cord and will scale the ice, the me and only- success which it is his to command is to bring to his W>rlca mighty heart." It also teaches the simple joys of bath, clean bed, wann food. Ernest Hemingway, an observer of the action, reported on the af'tennath of battle. "History now was old K-ration boxes, empty f oXholes, the drying leaves on the branches that were cut for camouflage. It was burned German vehicles, burned German tanks, •• dead bodies along the roads, in the hedges and in the orchards •• equipment scattered everywhere •• our wounded and dead passing back strapped two abreast on top of the evacuation jeeps. But mostl.v history was getting where we were to get, on time, and waiting for others to come up ," A111'1Y sgt Bill Mauldin, who drew pictures of dog-faced soldiers in as eries called Up Front, asked people to imagine diggli.pg a hole in the bakk yard in a heavy rains-tom, getting into it, sit there for 48 hours, till the water is above your ankles; do net fall asleep, for people are sneaking around waiting for a chance to club you on the head or set your house on fire. Get out of the hole, fill a suitcase with rocks, pittcit up, put a shotgun in your other hand, and w a1k down the muddiest road you can find. Fall flat on your face every flw:Jllinutes •• turn and run back to your hole and get in. If you repeat this performance every thr.pe days, for several months, you may begin to understand why an infantryman gets out of breath."Jlls part of the reminders of those events, and that life, of 49 and 50 yrs ago, some old ~terans will return to Omaha or Utah Beach, others will drop by parachute into the hedgerow coun• try of Normandy, others will remember with a moment of silence at the time they crossed from the sea to the land, marking the transition .from one life to another, entirely different. There are also books; I enjoyed and learned from Len Deighton's massive vfilume, Blood, Tears, and Folly, which will stand beside others he has written, of factual and of fietion; if you do not know Good• by Mickey Mouse, put it on your list~ He also wrote a history of the air battle of Britain, and of the National Socialist:.state in Germ.any fro the rise of Hitler to the blitzkrieg that compel• led the evacuation of th~ continent at Dunquerque in June 1940. other recent books include the Voices of D-Day, :memories of participants; and another on the paratroop drops inland from the lan• ding beaches. The first dead American I saw, once we had left the beach, was a paratrooper whose 'chute had caight on the steeple of the church in the village of ste-Mere-Eglise, and he was shot by the enell\Y"• The face of battle is ugly, and I hope that none of you ever look into it. But for those who must, it is a watershed, a deep abyss between two worlds~ Folly is there, along with blood, sweat, toil, and tears, for soldiers are also human. Glory is not there; only mud or clouds of choking dust, with hunger, and cold, and fear; blood and guts, noxious odors, and fati• gue beyond all understanding. But the war we remember gave the United States 20 years of military and economic supremacy in the world, with another 20 years of gradual decline, with a debt so large that all of the moneys received from t·axes on income cannot pay the interest on it. Once upon a time the American GI, and his Yankee dollar, stood stride a world at war,striding through rubble, the wreck of what once was civilization. It is for us to honor those whose sacrifices gave us this generation of power and progress, and to find the path that will return us to the heights from which k have retreated. I\ William Barksdale •. July 1994.
My dearly beloved, lad.lies.and gentlemen, I thank you for the honor and pleasure of another visit to your beautiful part of this beauti.ful~state, and to break bread, and lettuce, with a group of good people who take pride in their Confederqte anceatryf who are not ashamed to claim kinship with people some in our day would call losers, but whi~h we know to be heroes who made us what we are. There were giants in the earth in those days; the Biblical word is clear, and it is awesome. Ttiey were the mighty men of old, people who were large iQ mind and soul. This evening we gather together in this place to remember the giants whose footsteps are still visible in the sands of time, people to whom we owe so much that ~e can never repay. All that we can do, in token ~four debt, is to remember•• their names, their regiments and companies, and bits of land they fought over, and hallowed, by the shedding of their blood and their tears. Let 115 take one of them this evening, as representative of them. all. for that, any of than would do, for they were transformed in the crucible of battle,.from individuals to members of a band of brothers. They lost concern for themselves as they knew that something of which they were a part--a reginent, an _army, a cause or a country--was threatened. That knowledge welded them into a common personality that, while not diminishing their individual beings, held them under- the control of a sing;Le desire. However ,~small the engagemt, as th:ly participated in it they enshrined their names deep in the hearts of ~ -their countrymen. Any of them would serve as representative, but for a few minutes let us remem• i, bar the deeds of one whose name beccwi ,Gfnonym for his stat~ in battle--William barksdale, com- mander of a regiment, and then of a~ ~in the Army of Northern Virginia.: To speak of''Barks- v. dale's Mississippians"is not far from saying it all. in just(.e word), I too· am a Mississippian, > bo m almost exactly a century after Barksdale 1.s birth;· I was nursed and nurtured on my nat tve state's Confederate traditions, in which the soldier's name is written large, and in 1,m.perishable ~letters. °)(Barksdale was born 21August1821 in Rutherford County, TN, which is south-ea~t of Nash• ~ ville, near Murfreesboro,where his grandfather had settled inJ8o8, moving there from Virginia., _!where his family had lived for over a century. ~studied in Nashville before moving -to Columbus, ~Miss, where he read law and was admitted to the~r. He practised for a ti~e, but gave.it up to ~become edit r of a newspaper, the Colunivus Democrat, in which he expressed strong p~o..South senti- ments. In hia"middle 20s the United States declared war upon ~he Mexican Republic, and he enlisted
in the 2d MissiSsippi RegflJient. In that unit he was appointed captain and asst-c19mndssary of vol• unteers in Jahuary 1847. He served .until August 1848, wh~~:he returned to ~~ssissippi and began a career aa_editor and Democratic politician. In 1852 he w~s a delegate to the Natl Democr, Conv where a Mexican War general was nominated to oppo another Mexican War general whose hat was in the Whig Party ring. The Democrat, Franklin Pierc_e,was an unknown, while :WinfiBld Scott was a. national treasure.; hut the old war horse was no match for the dark hor-se, as people said, and as William Barksdale wanted it to.be. With that elent~on Barksdale won a seat in theCongress where he sat until his state seceded from the Uniqn in 18{>1, a move he heart~ly approved. He became Qtr• Master of the Armies of the Republic of Mississippi, whose ~ander was another Mississippian named Jeff Davis, also a Mexican war veteran. tatel'>'ih 1£61 ·entered. the Confed mil svca as Col commandingthe 13th Mississippi Regt. It was the fulfill.mt o his previous ·activity as newspaper editor and as congressman with the reputation o( l:eing the hottest of the fire-eaters, strongest defender of states' -rights, longtime advocate of his st~te' s _secession.· Barksdale led his regi• ment at First Manassas, and in the months .of training and drill~ich folwd he was widely recognize as a competent regimental comdr, The followings pring bis brigade comaanoar. Tecommendedthat he be promoted to general. A year later Robt ~. Lee· wrote John Bell Hood-wourArmy would be invin• cible if it could be properly organized and officered, "lte uJl!tt• ."There never were such men in an Army before. They will go anywhere and do anything if properly led. But- there is the difficulty-• proper cornmanders--wherecan they be oS!t ined?" William Barksdale was a proper commander, as the record of his regiment amply illust ra • In the Peninsular Campaign his Mississippians covered themselves with glo:ry, doing so well in eed that their Mississippi president asked that his belov• ed fellow-staters be kept in separate brigades and divisions, and not appqrtioned through the or• der of battle. Barksdale's commandabilit~es at Malvern Hill, t~last of the 7 D~~s' Battles, and one of the bloodiest engagements of that war, .were offered in support of his promotion to brigadier-general. At that battle, July 1/62, General Lee testified to Barksdale's heroism, "seiz• ing the colors himself and advancing under a terrific fire of .a~tillery and -infantry," he display..; ed "the highest qualities of the soldier." In August the promotion was made; and Barksdale 's bri• gade came into existence. As President Davis desired, i~ contained only Mississipp~ troops, the 13th, 17th, 18th, and 21st regill¥3nts. They stood out in an Army of colorful and courageous troops. They contained the tallest, hardest, mos t pwrfl men in Lee 1S .command; in the 17th regiment thirty• five men stood "taller than 6 feet, andwaighed more than 200 pounds. In those regi.rrents the rnen regarded combat astone of life's g~atest pleasures, and amongthem were many bear hunters from the cane\:rakes of the deep South who knew how to live in the open, and were SUQh accurate marks- men that at times the enemy took them to be specially-selected sharpshooters. A Virginia soldier who fought alongside Barksdale's Mississippians said that they like~othing better than to hear ttthe racket," of guns near them, and whooped and hollered with deliglit. 1'heir commander had been Philadelphia-born Richard Griffith, who had lived in Mississippi for more than 20 years; he was killed at the battle of Savage Station, June 29/62. Barksdale assumed command, and two months Jat er received the rank to go with the duty. The following DeU'ember at Fredericksburg, Federal troops commanded by the cocky and blundering Ambrose Burnside attempted to cross the Rappahannock River to attack well-positioned Confederates. On the left of the line, at Marya's Heights, the Missis• sippians resisted the bridging of the stream; the ensmy brought up pontoon boats. Barksdale infonn ed his division commander Lafayette·MCLaws; they permitted the work to go on in the night darkness until more than half of the boats were in place. Then wit.h the precision fire of accomplished s:iuir rel hunters they began to pick off the bridge-builders and swept the bridge. With so much inves• ted, the Federals decided that they ~~st cross at that point. Nine distinct and desoerate attempt --the words are those of Gen. McLaws1t~Cfio avail, and to heavy.-loss. When they later attempted to ~ross in boats, a picked team of shooters, the 17th Miss w/companies of the 18th, successfuJ.ly repelled every effort. Again quoting Gen McLaws, a small fraction of Barksdales 's brigade pre• vented the crossing of Edwin Sumner, and held up Gen Wm Franklin's entire offensive for 24 hours. "The def'ense of t}:le river-crossing in front of Fredericksburg was a notable and wonderful feat of arms," Gen. McLaws said; it challenged11aoinparison with anything that happened during the war." In 186~ Barksdale commanded the Mississippi brigade in $-~major battles·--Antietam in Se t an . in 1863, at Chancellorsville in May, where Lee's invincibles beat back Joseph Hooker5army, one e ~described as "the finest army on the planet." And then to Gettysburg, July 1863. There, on the second day, William Barksdale and his Mississippians wrote their names into the book of the immor• tals:,f'with an a tt.ack that doove nearly two miles into Federal lines, cut up and drove off every reg~nt.that s.tood~rto oppose them, captured cannon by killing the ~orses before the gunners could move their weaoons;rrthey attacked on the army's left flank, from Pitzer's Woods across open fields to the Emmitsburg Road, and to the Peach Orchard beside the Wheatfield Road. Joseph Kershaw's brigade, of six S-.C. regiments, was on the right. The story of theira::ivance, with Br sdale's troops going farther and doing more damage, is as thrilling a story of courage and eompetence as you will find anywhere in the military records of warfare. The messenger who~ivered to Barks• dale the command to go forward saw the general's face ~raliiant w/joy,11 and on~ prancing horse, that was/flike itf~-~iderUeager to begin, he.gave the command--Attn, Mississippiansl Battalions, For ward in And then ,r'"Temembered his second in command Ben Humphries--later to oo elected governor of Mississippi--"1400 rif~es were grasped w/firrn har.ds, and as theJi.ne officers repeated the nd 'Forward, march 1 the meh sprang forward and 1400 voices ra Lsed the famous .'Rebel yell' which told the next brigade (Wilcox's A la bamians) that the Mississippians were in motion." Barksdale led the charge, hat off, his wispy white hair shining in the sun. He was 41 years old, and all of his life ' had been a preparation of that day's action. When the line reached a fence, it disappeared, so that they destroyed with a crashing volley the Federal line behind it. Next was a regiment of red-leg• ged Zouaves, General Charles K. Graham's main defense line. The Mississippians remembered sweep• ing the eneTTt'{ -bef'ore them like -chaf'f before the witld. Now .they were in the Federal rear, where artillery batteries stood, all bit defenseless; Two Penna regts moved to intercept them, with a NY regt; the Mississipp~ans, yelling' like banshees, emerged from the smoke to blow down the blue• clad defenders. They advanced in a well-formed,tighvly-closed line; now Kershaw's brigade moved . beside them on their right, 'makd.ng a fl'bnt of 8 regiments on the prowl and howling. William Wof• - ford 1s Georgians also arrived to 'support the attack. From the Peach 0 rchard they continued toward the Cemetery Ridge, bowling ov~efender~an tting cannon out of action. 71,72,73 NY melted before them--as one officer remembered, they ght "like devils incarnate," Later. efforts to compose an orderly account of Barksdale's roops proved impossible; all of the soldiers were caug up in the emotion of battle, shouting, shooting, succeeding, shattering{blue formations that could "not; stand against them.\\Crowd them~1their fire-eating commander shouted; :we have them on the run. Move your regiments •11 Batksdale held high his sword, pointed to the front, and shouted, Brave Mississippians, one more charge and the day is ours.~ But fatigue, and thirst, ~nd battle losses, combined to slow them, and then to stop them. So did the loss of their brigadier. Pvt Joe Lloyd of C Company, 13th Miss, ran thru a wheatfield near Plum Jtun, and felt a blow strike him in the arm; he had been hit with a ball. A comrade made a sling for the ann and left him to himself. He began walking to the rear. A short distance away he found Gen Barksdale lying on the ground, woua• ded and alone, no staff-aide in sight. He had lost a foot, and was wounded with a large hole in ·Jhis chest. The soldier gave the genera~ drink, and noticed that water seeped from the chest. He le~ the general on the ground. Later~was ca?tured and taken to an aid station. There he was identified, everything about him was cut off for souvenirs. That night he di.ad and was buried in a temporary grave • In 1866 a Penna private took to Mrs. Barksdale a bit of gold braid, and a general's button, mementoes of her-hero husband. Yes, they were giants in the land in those days. And yes, we rernem~r. I £{ ~ ?>o~ q 'f- t) . (_. S/v"'.:d e '--, . D-plus 6-plus SO ye~rs. There is an old proverb which says that any education that is not a con• tinuing one, never id begin. So I am pleased to see you here today, to continue what you began in this college, an \to express the hope that you read at least one serious book a month, and many others with what one /of my students described as lots of conversation in short sentences. My mis• sion here is not. t~ ~gale you.with the heroic epic of my tiny part in the Normandie invasions of fifty years ago.~~ of y9u may have heard me sai in~lass--YOU would not know it to see me in my dignity and prominence, but once upon a time my govt defined me G'S expendable and hurled my not in• considerable weight against an implacable foe, who began to run when I set foot upon the sands of Fra:1i~a ~Ud did not stop·until I net the Red Army west of Leipzig, far into the enemy's homeland. I sing""1.ih.. ami3§iy· saved civilization, I have been heard to say, and then to add, and ~en I see what some of you are doing to tt I doubt that it was worth.the effort. But all that, you may be sure, was only a dull professor's fumbling attempt at humor. The trµth is, as we often find it, far in another part of the field. The date was June 12, 1944, the time about 9:.)0 pvm, , double British war time, and the place a few hundred yards of what the Army defined in coder as the Tare portion of Utah Beach. Tare, the telephone spelling for the letter T, was subdivided into 9olor areas-• red, white, and blue. I do not know what color was our assignment; it was the beachgassigned VII Corps, First U .s. Army, and the lead unit was the three battalions of tH.e 8th Inf', and the Jd bat• talion of 22d Inf, ~ of 4th Inf Div. We were hea V:f artillery supporting the Corps, and there• fore assigned a landing time in the second wave of landi~ craft, scheduled for D-plus-3; a storm in the channel delayed the return of the bo~~s w~ wouldru~~' ~ it was not until D-plus-5 that we , departed for our rendez-vous with destiny a day later.1~~el(ere quartered iQ a substantial 18th• Cen manor house pear Wimborne Minster, In Dorsetshire, with the gun crews living in Quonset huts --odd-sh~ped metal buildings which the British, with that insular perversity for which they are justly famous, called Nissen huts_. We are, as s:>me'wit proc Lafmed ,:' two nations divided by a common language. (In.May 1945, a~er the campaign, Genl Eisenhower returned to a hero's welcome in Lon• don, and spoke fran a box in the royal opera house, a speech I heard on radio; he began by saying that he was glad to \::e back aipong a people whose language he could ALMOST understand.) !le were in that place when, about 11 p.m, D-minus l, June S, a gig~ntic air armada thundereg overhead, six or eight planes.abreast, carrying paratroops or pulling gliders, in the dark we could not tell, and in a procession that continued for hours, into the dawn and the noontime of June 6. '}.'l'm Oll'tain was up for the pig show, and we made preparation~ for our part in it. On D-plus-5 we moved out to an embarkation center with a s~rong fence around it, with guarded gates; for when we entered it we went into bsttle conditions. rhe colonel showed us the top-secret map of our destination, and explained the strategy of keeping the enemy guessing as ~o which seaport, LeHavre or Cherbourg, we would try to take; he pointed out our first battle ~sition, and where our proba~le targets for fire were located. 'lben we went to a gigantic feast~e an article for the WF Magazine about my invasion; there are copies here if you would ~~ur last meal before beginning the in• sults{ of field rations I to our delicate internal mmbranes~ Jwi th huge piles of steak, take all you can eat, with mshed potatoes and green beans and hot_·ro)..15' with butter an~~9l)oice of gooey des• serts; it was the Army's way of begging forgiveness for what would follow lit' dockside in the bus• iest port in the world that week, and for weeks to come, Portland, at the ip of Dorset near Wey• mouth, to await the arrival of our landing crafi •• The unit crossed in two LCTs, each carrying about twenty vehicles. \-hen they tied up they first had to be emptied of their passengers. First came the stretcher wounded, to be transferred to ambulances to be taken to hospitals; then came the wal• king w:>unded, bloody bandages around heads and bodies; then came about 200 German prisoners, walk• I ing 4 abreast, hands on heads,.eyes looking downward. Then came the dead, in plastic body bags, al• so put into ambulances. 'Wilen all had debarked, the doCkComdr shouted to us--OKboys, it's your turn now. It was the kind of psychological warfare the Army considered a macabre joke. But in we went, and tied down the vehicles. At midnight we cast off, and about 20 hours later were travel• ling northwar'1._, about a mile off a dark land-mass on our left, to get to the Tare of Utah. There we turned .har,iiaport, to the left, and headed directiy toward the shore, where an ant-hill of ac• tiyity was going on, boats of all sizes discharging their cargoes of people and equi~nt, deliver• ing supplies to an arrrrr in battle; and where an occasional artillery shell exploded, spreading bits of steel and dense black smoke. As our small boat bore us inexorably into that confusion, we began to understand that this was for real, this ~as no drill; people were getting killed on that small stretch of sand. At that moment one of the men came to me with a remark that temporarily drove ap• prehension from our minds. Putting the palm of hie left hand over the back of his right, so that the thumbs stuck out on either side, he asked, Is it too late for me to tell them my hands don't match? We were still laughing when the ramp came d own with a clatter of chains, and we made ready to go through the surf, into whatever lay ahead. Ahead of us was the battle for--the port of Cher• bourg, the break-out at~-~ and the Falaise-Argentan gap in which First u.s. !ntJY- trapped the Gennan defenders of thei ortress Europe, followed by the mad dash· across France. ~ crossed the river Seine at Melun, 3 miles or so upstream from Paris; from there we turned north and east, to the battlefields of the First War--i1eaux, Chateau-Thierry, Reims, Vervins, 1Dlllll M:mla, to cross into Belgium at Maubeuge, to Mons, and to the ancient invasion route along the rivers Sambre and Meuse, to Charleroi, Namur, and Llege. At Namur we were held up for hours because the Meuse bridges were out, and·only pontoon spans were open; we had to wait our turn, behind 2d Armored Div, Vihich had miles to go before they slept, and by training· they must go first. Ahead of thatrlay three months of small-town Germany, near Aachen; one of the gun batteries in my unit was the first in the Army to fire a round from German soil. It does not matter now; but in Sept 1944, it was important. In December came the German countttr-attack, through Luxembourg and the Ardennes Forest, in what we kne as the batt1e of the Bulge. In January 1945 we were pulled out of the 1 ine to repair the guns; constant firing, around the clock, for about three weeks, together with the extreme cold of a 'Bel ian winter, demanded maintenance procedures. Slowly we moved to the Rhine river, where one RR bri~ge still stood; an engineer unit captured the Remagen bridge and a foothold on the eastern bank of the boundary river; we crossed by pontoon bridge three days after the crossing, and invaded Ger• mahy, along the Sieg River; the word in German means victory, and we were on our way to meet the Soviet allies. Two vignettes invite repeating. One was in Normandie, a week into the battle. To take a sponge bath I got a helmet-full of water, and was wal~ing along a lane in the bocage country. With my helmet off I met a peasant, who looked at the shiny top of my skull, slapped his knee, and with a 1 augh told me, In- Franch, we have a saying, if there 1 s no hay in your barn, the re 1 s n o need to put a roof on it. I walked on, pretending I did not understand; it would have caused trouble with our French fr:tend s ', The other was · n Re.l -·um, ..J....ifi.e.re rrTY unit travelled on a road where no othe T Allied force had gone. We were the liberators, and'~ose being liberated it was a grand and glor• ious day. They came out of the woods and held-hands across the road, to stop the convoy. They cut off buttons, and unit patches, anything they could get, for a souvenir, they said to us. One woma had a handful of wild flowers--it was late August.v-and with a friend wasPhanding them to the troops in the trucks. she came, chattering to the friend, to the jeep in which I rode. She.said, I will give him, the driver, a flower; and him, the major, a flower; Lookfng atne on the back seat, she told her friend, and I'll give him 'fWO flowers, because he's fat. v1owly I spoke in French; je ne suis pas gros. The poor woman, thtnking herself~aking only te English-compreheni\ng ears, turned bright red, dropped her flowers in the road, and ran screaming into the woods. (,_.ff\