ON RESOLUTIONS. Colonel CHARLES S. VENABLE, Chairman............... Hon. R. T. BANKS.... Albemarle. Lynchburg. Lieutenant RICHARD H. CHRISTIAN............... .......................... General BEN. HUGER... Fauquier. Botetourt. ........................... Private JOHN A. ELDER......... .Baltimore. General C. W. FIELD................................................ ............................................................... Virginia. Georgia. Sergeant LEROY S. EDWARDS............................ ........................... .................... Richmond. Lieutenant S. V. SOUTHALL ...................... ... Albemarle. Colonel WILLIAM E. CAMERON................................. .................. ............................ General WILLIAM B. TALIAFERRO Captain J. MCHENRY HOWARD............................................................................. Baltimore. Captain E. GRISWOLD......................... ........... After an absence of a few minutes the Committee on Permanent Organization, through their chairman, General Terry, made the following report, which was unanimously adopted, amidst great applause: For President-Hon. JEFFERSON DAVIS. For Vice-Presidents- Mr. Davis' advance to the chair was hailed with a burst of irrepressible enthusiasm-he was cheered to the echo-and his address enchained every eye and thrilled every heart in the audience from the outset to the end. ADDRESS OF PRESIDENT DAVIS. Soldiers and Sailors of the Confederacy, Countrymen and Friends-Assembled on this sad occasion, with hearts oppressed with the grief that follows the loss of him who was our leader on many a bloody battlefield, there is a melancholy pleasure in the spectacle which is presented. Hitherto men have been honored when successful; but here is the case of one who amid disaster went down to his grave, and those who were his companions in misfortune have assembled to honor his memory. It is as much an honor to you who give as to him who receives, for above the vulgar test of merit you show yourselves competent to discriminate between him who enjoys and him who deserves success. Robert E. Lee was my associate and friend in the Military Academy, and we were friends until the hour of his death. We were associates and friends when he was a soldier and I a congressman, and associates and friends when he led the armies of the Confederacy and I held civil office; and therefore I may claim to speak as one who knew him. In the many sad scenes and perilous circumstances through which we passed together, our conferences were frequent and full; yet never was there an occasion on which there was not entire harmony of purpose and accordance as to means. If ever there was difference of opinion, it was dissipated by discussion, and harmony was the result. I repeat, we never disagreed, and I may add that I never saw in him the slightest tendency to self-seeking. It was not his to make a record; it was not his to shift blame to other shoulders; but it was his, with an eye fixed upon the welfare of his country, never faltering, to follow the line of duty to the end. His was the heart that braved every difficulty; his was the mind that wrought victory out of defeat. He has been charged with "want of dash." I wish to say that I never knew Lee to decline to attempt anything man should dare. An attempt has also been made to throw a cloud upon his character because he left the army of the United States to join in the struggle for the liberty of his State. Without entering into politics, I deem it my duty to say one word in reference to this charge. Virginian born, descended from a family illustrious in the Colonial history of Virginia, more illustrious still in her struggle for independence, and most illustrious in her recent effort to maintain the great principles declared in 1776; given by Virginia to the service of the United States, he represented her in the Military Academy at West Point. He was not educated by the Federal Government, but by Virginia; for she paid her full share for the support of that institution, and was entitled to its benefits as well as to demand in return the services of her sons. Entering the army of the United States, he represented Virginia there also, and nobly performed his duty for the Union of which Virginia was a member, whether we look to his peaceful services as an engineer, or to his more notable deeds. upon foreign fields of battle. He came from Mexico crowned with honors, covered by brevets, and recognized, young as he was, as one of the ablest of his country's soldiers. And to prove that he was estimated then as such, not only by his associates, but by foreigners also, I may mention that when he was a Captain of Engineers, stationed in Baltimore, the Cuban Junta in New York invited him to be their leader in the revolutionary effort in that island. They were anxious to secure his services, and offered him every temptation that ambition could desire and pecuniary emoluments far beyond any which he could hope otherwise to acquire. He thought the matter over, and came to Washington to consult me as to what he should do. After a brief discussion of the complex character of the military problem which was presented, he turned from the consideration of that view of the question, by stating that the point on which he wished particularly to consult me, was as to the propriety of entertaining the proposition which had been made to him. He had been educated in the service of the United States, and felt it wrong to accept place in the army of a foreign power, while he held the commission which must have caused the offer to be made. Such was the extreme delicacy, such the nice sense of honor, of the gallant gentleman we deplore. But when Virginia -the State to which he owed his first and last, allegiance-withdrew from the Union and thus terminated her relations to it, the same nice sense of honor and duty which had guided him on a former occasion, had a different application, and led him to draw his sword and, throwing it in the scale, to share her fortune for good or for evil. When Virginia joined the Confederacy, and the seat of Government was moved to Richmond, Lee was the highest officer in the little army of Virginia, and promptly co-operated in all the movements of the Confederate Government for the defence of the common country. When he was sent to Western Virginia, he made no inquiry as to his rank, but continued to serve under the impression that he was still an officer of Virginia; and though he had, in point of fact, then been appointed General by the Confederate Government, he was so careless of himself as never to have learned the fact, and only made inquiry when, ordered to another State, he deemed it necessary to know what would be his relative position towards other officers with whom he might be brought in contact. You all remember the disastrous character of that campaign in Western Virginia to which I have referred. He came back carrying the heavy weight of defeat and unappreciated by the people whom he served; for they could not know that if his plans and orders had been carried out, the result would have been victory rather than retreat. You did not know it, for I would not have known had he not reported it, with the request, however, in consideration for others, that it should not be made public. The clamor which then arose followed him when he went to South Carolina; so that it became necessary to write a letter to the Governor of that State, telling him what manner of man Lee was. Yet, through all this, with a magnanimity rarely equalled, he stood in silence, without defending himself or allowing others to defend him, for he was unwilling to injure any one who was striking blows for the Confederacy. [Mr. Davis then spoke of the straits to which the Confederacy was reduced, and of the danger to which her capital was exposed just after the battle of Seven Pines, and told how General Lee conceived and executed the desperate plan to turn the enemy's flank and rear, and how, after seven days' bloody battle, the protection of Richmond was secured, and the enemy, driven far from the city, cowered on the banks of the James river, under the cover of his gunboats. The speaker referred also to the circumstances attending General Lee's crossing the Potomac and the march into Pennsylvania, and to the censures to which that movement had been subjected by those who did not comprehend the purpose for which it was undertaken. He said that if necessary he had always been willing to assume the responsibility of it, and had at the time written a vindication of the enterprise. Whatever were the sacrifices of that campaign, it achieved the result for which it was intended. The enemy had long been concentrating his forces, and it was evident that if they continued their steady progress, the Confederacy would be overwhelmed. Our only hope was to drive him to the defence of his own capital, that we, thus relieved, might be enabled in the meantime to reinforce our shattered army. How well General Lee carried out that dangerous experiment need not be told. Richmond was relieved, the Confederacy was relieved, and time was obtained, if other things had favored, to reinforce the army.] Mr. Davis then proceeded: I shall not attempt to review the military career of our deceased Chieftain. Of the man, how shall I speak? He was my friend, and in that word is included all that I could say of any man. His moral qualities rose to the height of his genius. Self-denying-always intent upon the one idea of duty-self-controlled to an extent that many thought him cold. His feelings were really warm, and his heart melted readily at the sufferings of the widow and the orphan, and his eye rested with mournful tenderness upon the wounded soldier. During the war he was ever conscious of the insufficiency of the means at his control; but it was never his to complain or to utter a doubt—it was always his to do. When in the last campaign he was beleagured at Petersburg, and painfully aware of the straits to which we were reduced, he said: "With my army in the mountains of Virginia, I could carry on this war for twenty years longer." His army greatly diminished, his transportation deficient, he could only hope to protract the defence until the roads should become firm enough to enable him to retire. An untoward event caused him to anticipate the projected movement, and the Army of Northern Virginia was overwhelmed. But in the surrender he trusted to conditions that should, both for policy and good faith, have been fulfilled-he expected his army to be respected and his paroled soldiers to be allowed the peaceful enjoyment of civil rights and property. Whether these conditions have been fulfilled, I leave it to others to determine. Here he now sleeps in the land he loved so well, and that land is not Virginia only, for they do injustice to Lee who believe he fought only for Virginia. He was ready to go anywhere, on any service, for the good of his country, and his heart was as broad as the fifteen States struggling for the principles that our forefathers fought for in the Revolution of 1776. He sleeps with the thousands who fought under the same flag-and happiest they who first offered up their lives; he sleeps in the soil to him and to them most dear. That flag was furled when there was none to bear it. Around it we are assembled, a remnant of the living, to do honor to his memory, and there is an army of skeleton sentinels to keep watch above his grave. This good citizen, this gallant soldier, this great general, this true patriot, had yet a higher praise than this or these-he was a true Christian. The Christianity which ennobled his life gives to us the consolatory belief that he is happy beyond the grave. But while we mourn the loss of the great and the true, drop we also tears of sympathy with her who was an helpmeet to him— |