Virginias Famed Rebels, Both Earlier and Later

From: bernhard1848@att.net

“He is but a narrow-souled or a most ignorant American who does not hold the name Virginia in reverence. Whether he comes from the oldest settlement of New England or the newest “clearing” in the youngest territory, if he knows aught of the history of his country, or feels the faintest spark of pride in contemplating the achievements which have made it great, the name of this grand old Commonwealth must always be associated in his thoughts with what is noblest and most venerable in our annals.

If he…follow

[s] the now broad and splendid track of American progress back for two centuries to where its first traces were blazed in the pathless forest, he will find at every step the evidences of her genius and her patriotism. Whether in the earliest struggles against arbitrary power, before the beginning of the eighteenth century, or at the genesis of material development on this continent, when Spotswood, “the Tubal Cain of Virginia,” established the first iron furnaces in America, and colonized German vinedressers on the Rapidan – or during the long colonial dawn – or in the century that has elapsed since one of her sons clothed himself with immortality as the founder of this republic – at all times she has been the nursery and home of greatness, both in deeds and men.

Who shall pronounce a fitting eulogy upon her, who not stand abashed before so great a theme?

The fame of more than one of her sons has filled the earth, and will live in the hearts of men when every material monument to their memory has perished. Will it diminish that fame to know that they, both of their earlier and later days, were called Rebels?”

(An Address before the Association Army of Northern Virginia, Hon. A.M. Waddell,  October 27, 1887, William Ellis Jones Printer, 1888, page 31)