THE MORRIS ISLAND MARTYRS.
Alvon, W. Va., June 11, 1896.
To the Editor of the Dispatch:
I see in the columns of your grand old Democratic paper the sketch given by Lieut. Barnes, one of the 600 prisoners sent from Fort Delaware to Morris Island, S. C, for retaliation, as the Yanks called it, but we thought it was done to show the fiendish and brutal treatment of the North towards the Southern people. Lieut. Barnes calls a few names of the 600 martyrs for the Lost Cause who are still living. We name a few more:
Col. D. W. A. Ford, Lewisburg; Rev. D. M. Layton, Frankford; Capt. J. W. Mathews, Alvon (the three above named all live in Greenbrier county, State of West Virginia) and Capt. Alford Edgar, Hillsboro', Pocahontas county, W. Va.
I would name the T. J. Jackson monument, in the Capitol Square, as the place, and July 1 at 8 a. m. as the time for the meeting of all the survivors of the immortal 600 who may attend the reunion.
Col. D. W. A. Ford has a list of names of the 600, taken at Fort Pulaski, Ga.
M.
This notice was put in Richmond paper, but failed to get survivors together.
At Louisville, Ky., June, 1905, the reunion of the U. C. V. Grand Camp, we succeeded in making a partial organization of the society with the following survivors present: Comrades J. L. Hempstead, W. W. Haliburt, T. M. Hammack, P. Hogan, Lamar Fontaine, J. W. Matthews, J. H. Johnson, C. P. Harper, W. D. Ballantine and J. Ogden Murray; this meeting was called to order by J. Ogden Murray. After stating the object of the call, to form a society of Hie survivors of the six hundred officers who were placed under fire in Morris Island and remained true during the brutal treatment inflicted upon us and all true men be considered active members, but the seventeen who took the oath should be forever barred from membership of this society and only those whom we knew to should be admitted to membership. This motion was adopted. On motion of Comrade Hammack, Capt. J. L. Hempstead was elected president and J. Ogden Murray, secretary of the society; then upon the motion of Comrade Murray the society adopted as its name, "The Immortal Six Hundred."
