tempted outrages on the truth of history which has ever been. essayed," that which relates to the treatment of prisoners at Andersonville, it would have deserved the gratitude of all lovers of truth. The boldest and baldest truly! 220,000 Southern prisoners are in the North; two hundred and seventy thousand Northern prisoners are in the South; the North abounds in resources; the South laid waste, anything but abounding; for three weeks in the early part of 1864 unable to issue rations of meat to her soldiers in the field. Yet, with fifty thousand more prisoners in Southern stockades, the deaths are four thousand less; nine per cent. the death rate in the South, twelve per cent. in the North. The South, using every humane argument, entreats the North to take back the prisoners at Andersonville. The ruling authority says, "No; my policy of wearing you out by attrition demands that these men be not taken back. The more of our men you have to feed, the fewer of your own you will be able to feed. Humanity to the men left in our ranks demands that our prisoners continue to prey upon your vitals." "We are unable to provide your prisoners with suitable clothing," we said to Secretary Seward; "will you provide them?" "The Federal Government does not supply clothing to prisoners of war," replied the Secretary. Tried by their own standard, it is seen that our care of their prisoners was exceptionally kind. Nevertheless, after the war a victim is demanded. A group of citizens, "organized to convict," unknown to the law, prohibited by the law, hears what evidence it likes, refuses to hear what may operate against the end in view, renders the presence of counsel nugatory, and in due season proceeds to murder the victim, no form or principle of law being at any time consulted. "Military commissions never disappoint the expectations of those who employ them." It is the act of Macbeth, smearing the daggers of the guard with the blood his own hands have spilled. Defend your great days.

A poem of human life our battle of the Wildernes easily becomes, fought as it was in the rough brake, and the deep shadow, and the fierce death glare. As you strike with intelligent unity and decision, determined to conquer or die, you do conquer even though you die. At all times the strongest is but as a reed shaken with the wind, quivering in the play of forces which threaten or entreat. Not alone of memory may it be said, "Thou, like the world, the oppressed, oppressing." The forces around human life are so. A world of forces, yielding, and taking the shape we give, harsh and heavy when we quail or sink, wraps itself around each, to bear or forbear as victory inclines. Does supineness intervene? The load of a mountain is hung about

the neck. Does a cheery heart stiffen the spinal column? The hard adversity melts away, or curves into an arch of triumph. "Two afflictions well put together," says the proverb, "shall become a consolation." A poem of human life, I say. Under the warm touch, the stern fact of these two days moulds itself into a symbol of imagination for the mind's eye: as such is a reality; not for one place and time only, but for all places, from generation to generation.

The life of to-day has not ceased to be faithful to the old similes of the Wilderness and warfare. Our life is a battle and a march. We fight once more in "continual, poisoned fields," where, it may be, are many greatly discontented with the Wilderness, and very greatly indeed preferring the flesh-pots of any other country. Solemnly as ever a mother State says to each: "With your shield or upon it." We have chiefly to see to it, that when we are borne from the field, it shall be with the banner of a honorable day, and a pious hope, flung over us, and a music of gentle deeds to commemorate us when we are gone. So fares it with our cause. It sleeps well now, as a dead man might, with a stone for his pillow. So fares it with a cause, henceforth all enobled for us, by honorable death on the field; guarded henceforth by the army of the dead, whose dead march the muffled drum of living hearts is beating. A hero cause borne on its shield to the grave of hero death, pierced with wounds, for us is lovely; covered with reproach, for us is pure; crowned with thorns, for us is holy. We will never weave a grander oriflamme to be our fair image of duty and the path to it. We are on duty still. Remember the Wilderness! how we struck in forlorn valor; fighting for a world's cause, in the midst of a world's indifference, when we grappled in those lonely gleams and shadows, as, from age to age, the true heart flights. When was the hero's battle other than a lonely battle? Remember the whole war!

Tenderly beautiful to-night, in its tears and for them, with the sweet, pathetic beauty of our last sad farewells, is that great memory, which draws us here, and gathers all hearts in one. The saddest, sternest of all faces-the face of the irrevocablestares on us from those farewells-farewells of hope, farewells of valor, farewells wrung out, not in speech, but in silence and closed lips, in battle and in night, when the very stars glittered icy cold on the field of the slain. The spring and summer of á people's manhood, the manly sweetness of the warrior boy, the beautiful simplicity we shall never see again on this earth, the unbought valor, which fronted a world in arms, and died fronting-to all these our chivalrous farewell! Not till all noble grace departs will their memory depart! Last Sunday I stood again,

where Gregg's Texans put on immortality; where Kershaw led in person three of his brigades, to compensate them for the absence of the fourth; where the three brigades under Mahone charged whooping through the woods. Out of the mist of years. I almost seemed to see the faces, and out of the buried din to hear the voices, of the past, speaking those old languages, so frank, so brave, so unapproachably dear, just because they are gone, and return no more. They died that we might not live in vain. It is for us so to live, that they shall not have died in vain. And if, to-night, this voice from the ranks could reach the leaders, who now marshal the way before us, I would say, "Look there! See what the noble in man can do! At your peril oppose to it the ignoble in man. Appeal once more to the watchwords of the past, to our courage and our conscience, if you would renew for us, and for yourselves, the laurel of the past. Once more quit yourselves like men. The white plume of the ages, the flag of your duty summons you there. The martyred valor of the South fell, as it was charging right onward there. There, by the side now of his last captain, and of ours, is Jackson, 'standing like a stone wall'!"

Finely has it been said of him whose followers we all were, that in the quiet hall of the professor, he renewed the war, transferring it to the sphere of mind. In this high sphere, fight we ever, as in his eye. To walk firmly in duty, bravely in principle, honestly in conviction, at all times, is the first business of a man. We will have enough to do to prove that the plow-share of our peace is of the same metal, which went into the glorious sword of our war. With us, or without us, history will say, that in an age whose greatest fiction was "without a hero," there were two Virginians, worthy to be named by the side of Phocion and Epaminondas. It is in our power to cause it to be added, that the South was greater in defeat than her enemies in victory; that, indeed, the difference between the North and South was not so much a difference between victory and defeat, as it was a difference between successs and glory. It may be well not to be too certain which scale will kick the beam, with Grant, Sherman, Sheridan, and success all on one side; but defeat and Robert Lee, death and Stonewall Jackson, all on the other. As plainly enough now stares us in the face, the insolent hope of sapping by corruption the principles, which could not be overcome by force, I am tempted to say to you, as our great captain said to us all, in the trenches of Hagerstown: "Soldiers! your old enemy is before you. Win from him honor, worthy your right cause, worthy your comrades, dead on so many illustrious fields."

On motion of General D. H. Maury, seconded by General J. A. Early, the Association spread on its record a feeling and appropriate tribute to the memory of General Nathan Bedford Forrest, who had died on the 29th of October. Both General Maury and General Early pronounced fitting eulogies on the great "Wizard of the saddle."

On motion of General Early, the same officers were, unanimously and by acclimation, elected for the ensuing year.

THE BANQUET.

A splendid banquet was spread to-night at the Saint Claire Hotel, and after disposing of the rich viands in a style worthy of the reputation of "hungry Rebels," the President announced the regular toasts, which were responded to in eloquent and telling speeches by Colonel James H. Skinner, Colonel Hilary P. Jones, Doctor J. S. D. Cullen, Judge Farrar, Colonel Berkley, General Early, General W. S. Walker, General Robert Ransom, General J. R. Cooke, Colonel H. E. Peyton, and others.

EIGHTH ANNUAL REUNION.

On the night of October 30th, 1878, a brilliant audience crowded into the State capitol at Richmond, and was called to order by the President, General W. H. F. Lee.

The meeting was opened with prayer by Rev. Dr. J. Wm. Jones. General Lee then made an exceedingly felicitous address of welcome, and appropriately introduced as orator of the evening, Colonel William Allan, of McDonough School, Maryland, formerly of Jackson's staff, and Chief of Ordnance of the Second corps, Army of Northern Virginia.

Colonel Allan was received with loud applause, and was frequently applauded as he delivered the following address:

After the disastrous termination of Braddock's campaign against Fort Duquesne, in the summer of 1756, Colonel George Washington, to whom was entrusted the duty of protecting the Alleghany frontier of Virginia from the French and Indians, established himself at Winchester, in the lower Shenandoah Valley, as the point from which he could best protect the district assigned to him. Here he subsequently built Fort Loudoun, and made it the base of his operations. A grass-ground mound, marking the site of one of the bastions of the old fort, and Loudoun street, the name of the principal thoroughfare of the town, remain to recall an important chapter in Colonial history.

It was this old town that Major-General T. J. Jackson entered on the evening of November 4, 1861, as commander of the Valley district, and his headquarters were established within musket-shot of Fort Loudoun. He had been made Major-General on October 7 for his services at the first battle of Manassas, and was now assigned to this important command because of the expectations formed of his capacity, and because of his acquaintance with the country. His district embraced the territory bounded north by the Potomac, east by the Blue Ridge, and west by the Alleghanies. Born and reared in Western Virginia, and filled with a patriot's devotion to the land of his birth, he had manifested a strong desire to be employed in the operations in that region, and had cherished the ambition of freeing his former home from hostile