Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 31.djvu/222

the Maryland women have erected to their soldiers and sailors of the Confederacy, and see the perfect type of young Maryland manhood—the private in the Confederate ranks—the true descendant of the Maryland cavalier. This shows what he was, and this, because the Maryland Daughters of the Confederacy have made manifest the truth in imperishable bronze, this is what will be seen and known of him in the ages to come; and as we gaze with tear-dimmed eyes on that beautiful, heroic form and watch the death agony stealing over that perfect face, can you not see Murray and Blackstone and Hoffman and Williamson, and Gill and Bowly, and Grogan and Snowden and the two McKims, and a host of other stainless heroes who laid down their precious lives as a free gift to justice and the right! The Maryland soldier in life and in death clung with unconquerable tenacity to principle; and, dying, bequeathed to his people and his State the glorious fact of his service to the Confederate States. And shall we not thank God that we were given the strength and means to make this memorial to him, and to know that as long as time shall last the grief of the women who loved him, there portrayed, shall follow him, and the glory, which the false enemy shall wrest from him, shall fold him forever to her breast, while the light of the Divine patience of his sacrifice of self shall shine ever round and about him, and more and more shall illumine our path from the dark mysteries here of pain and death to the heaven where we shall know the reason of it all! Is it a wonder, then, standing as we do, encompassed with the memories of the sufferings and glories of the past, that we should accept for Maryland no smaller recognition of heroic endurance and sacrifice for the South than that accorded to her sister States in suffering?"