The annual dinner by the Confederate Veteran Camp of New York City on the birthday of Gen. R.E. Lee, was, as is usual, an interesting occasion.

Col. A. G. Dickinson, Commander of the Camp, presided. There were 250 guests at the banquet board including representative men who were conspicuous in the Union as well as in the Confederate Armies. J. B. Wilkinson spoke of Gen.
Lee concisely, in which he said 

If you will follow him in his character as a son, as a father, in the home circle, as a citizen-if all of his old soldiers were to rally round the banner of his example-the name of Lee would achieve victories more brilliant and more lasting than were ever won by his peerless sword.

Some of our Confederate leaders we honored for what they did, some for what they suffered, but we loved and admired Lee for what he was. When he was getting $3,000 a year as President of a struggling college, we honored him far more than if he had accepted the munificent offers of the corporations that
tried to buy his fame as a signboard.

Capt. White, of the Old Guard, responded to the toast, "The American Soldier". He paid a high tribute to the bravery of the Confederate soldier, and declared that the American soldier was the greatest, truest and most terrible, and yet the most generous in the world. He concluded by saying:

While the great chasm which rent the North and South has been closed by mutual sacrifices, and closed forever by the returning love of both sections for the institutions of the country, we today are confronted by the great desire of the world for peace as represented by the arbitration treaty pending between this country and England.

Edwin W. Hoff sang several patriotic songs in which the diners joined, and Mr. Marion J. Verdery responded to the toast,

"THE EX-CONFEDERATE,"

"If I were called upon to epitomize my tribute to the ex-Confederate soldier, I would borrow one I sentence from my friend, Victor Smith, and say as he did in writing to me recently on the subject: 'The ex Confederate soldier, faithful to the lost cause, yet true to the cause that lost it.' (Hearty applause.) Lacking years deprive me of the privilege of speaking to the toast out of a personal experience, but the fact that I was not born earlier I than I
was is not my fault but my fate. I am not a Confederate veteran, but only a Confederate survivor; not 'the survival of the fittest,' but the survival of him who 'fit' not. (Laughter.) But I am licensed to speak to the toast through the blood of my brothers, and my whole heart is in the subject. I count myself happy to pay tribute to that disbanded legion of honor, whose every conflict was a battle for conscience' sake, whose every victory was the triumph of an
honest cause, and whose final defeat developed a heroism and fortitude without parallel in the history of conquered peoples. (Great applause.)

"The ex-Confederate soldier should feel proud of his past, satisfied with his present and hopeful of his future. He has proven himself a hero in war, a nobleman in peace and an honor at all times to the land of his birth. His record during the war was that of supreme courage, and his record since then has been that of heroic patience. Laying down his shield and buckler at
Appomattox, he buttoned his parole beneath his faded jacket next to his heart, and returned home to begin life anew. The battles he had fought during the four long years of bloody struggle were not half so hard as the one which now confronted him, and how he has fought that hardest fight is set forth in the rehabilitation of his land and the re-establishment of his people. He turned his face
homeward after the surrender with the brave spirit and manly resolution which filled the heart of that representative member of a Georgia regiment, who said to his comrades when he got his parole: 'I am going back to Dixie, kiss my wife and children, plough up my new ground field and make a crop, and if
the Yankees bother me any more, I will whip 'em again.' (Laughter and applause.)

"The ex-Confederate, standing today in unimpeachable loyalty to our indissoluble Union and vieing worthily with all others in upbuilding the strength and glory of our Republic, is also the hero of a past for which he has neither shame nor regret, but which he holds as a hallowed memory, more precious than his birthright and as sacred as his honor. That past recalls to him a mighty
struggle; recalls sorrows and sufferings so widespread and intense that his whole land seemed then one vast altar on which all the treasures and traditions of a people were laid in sacrifice for the faith that was in them. As a soldier the ex-Confederate needs no eulogy. His patience through privation outlasted the war itself, and his behavior in battle gave him the glory of renown and an indisputable title to knighthood. (Applause.)

"Since the war he has acquitted himself as a citizen with all the credit which his credit as a soldier demanded. He has trampled disaster under his feet; has made the devastation of his native land give place to new born thrift and prosperity; he has re-builded her destroyed cities and made the wide fields that drank the blood of her sons rich again with the beauty of ripening fruit and the harvests of golden grain; he has harnessed her rushing waters and drawn them like millions of laborers into service. His industry resounds in the ceaseless blows of heavy hammers on mammoth anvils from which sparks fly heavenward like stars of promise for his future.

"He has made his way to the front in every professional calling. In short, he is today a factor in all the affairs of our common country and can well afford to muster in dress parade before all the world and count on unstinted praise and esteem. The ex- Confederate soldier is immortal. He has his place in American history. He has illumined its pages and enriched its theme.

"While living, he will always so impress himself upon the material and intellectual developments of the day as to be a self-evident force in shaping the destiny of the country, and when dead his memory will be forever safe in the keeping of all who honor the true and the brave. The dead Confederate shall ne'er be forgot, until the splendid shafts which today rise heavenward in his
honor crumble to dust; until the elements are less true to him than they were at Arlington on that memorable Decoration Day, when the countless graves of the boys who wore the blue were hidden beneath a wealth of floral tributes, while the graves of the unknown Confederate dead, down behind the hill were forgotten. Don't you remember how in the darkness of the night, when the world was asleep, a great storm came out of the sky, and the wind dipped down on those hills and, gathering great armfuls of flowers from the favored graves, bore them away to the graves of the unknown dead?

"No Confederate soldier is buried out of mind, for even those who sleep in the fastnesses of Tennessee' mountains or in the winding Virginia valleys, have their graves marked, as Harry Flash so sweetly said:

Though no shaft of pallid marble rears its white and ghastly head,

Telling wanderers in the valley of the virtues of the dead; yet a lily is their tombstone and a dewdrop, pure and bright.

 

Is the epitaph an angel writes in the stillness of the night.

"The ex-Confederate soldier is the exponent of that short-lived government of which a great-hearted Englishman said:

No nation rose so white and fair,

None fell so pure of crime.

"When I study the heavens by night and contemplate the brilliancy of Jupiter, Mars, Saturn and Uranus, I see in their shining glory a fit emblem of the matchless record of our peerless Lee, our intrepid Johnston, our redoubtable Forrest, and our gallant Longstreet; and when the bright flashing meteors blaze their tracks of burning beauty across the firmament, I see in their shining splendor the careers of Stonewall Jackson and Albert Sidney Johnston. But
all these do not complete the glory of the night, but it has its fullness in the countless myriad of nameless stars as they troop toward the Milky Way, and in them I see the cohorts of Confederate soldiers whose deeds of daring gave new lustre to the pages of history, and whose splendid heroism made
imperishable impress on the heart and mind of the world. (Much cheering.)

'Then fill your glasses, fill them up to the brim,
We'll drink a deep bumper in honor of him,
Of dear Johnny Reb, in his jacket of gray,
Standing guard o'er thoughts of a bygone day.
O! River of Years, thou hast drowned that day,
Thy deep-flowing current has borne it away;
But thy banks still bloom with memories bright,
And our toast is to them and to Johnny to-night.'"
(Long continued applause and cheers.)


From Confederate Veteran; February 1897
Taken from Volume V compiled edition from The National Historical Society