e
inscription:--

"Here lies a Confederate soldier.
He died for his country."

The September day which brought the body of this mountain hero to that
home among the hills which had smiled upon his infancy, been gladdened
by his youth, and strengthened by his manhood, was an ever memorable
one with the sorrowing concourse of friends and neighbors who followed
his shot-riddled body to the grave. And of that number no man gainsaid
the honor of his death, lacked full loyalty to the flag for which he
fought, or doubted the justice of the cause for which he gave his life.

Thirty-five years have passed; another war has called its roll of
martyrs; again the old bell tolls from the crude latticed tower of the
settlement church; another great pouring of sympathetic humanity, and
this time the body of a son, wrapped in the stars and stripes, is
lowered to its everlasting rest beside that of the father who sleeps in
the stars and bars.

There were those there who stood by the grave of the Confederate hero
years before, and the children of those were there, and of those present
no one gainsaid the honor of the death of this hero of El Caney, and
none were there but loved, as patriots alone can love, the glorious flag
that enshrines the people of a common country as it enshrouds the form
that will sleep forever in its blessed folds. And on this tomb will be
written:

"Here lies the son of a Confederate soldier,
He died for his country."

And so it is that between the making of these two graves human hands and
human hearts have reached a solution of the vexed problem that has
baffled human will and human thought for three decades. Sturdy sons of
the South have said to their brothers of the North that the people of
the South had long since accepted the arbitrament of the sword to which
they had appealed. And likewise the oft-repeated message has come back
from the North that peace and good will reigned, and that the wounds of
civil dissention were but as sacred memories. Good fellowship was wafted
on the wings of commerce and development from those who had worn the
blue to those who had worn the gray. Nor were these messages delivered
in vain, for they served to pave the way for the complete and absolute
elimination of the line of sectional differences by the only process by
which such a result was possible. The sentiment of the great majority of
the people of the South was rightly spoken in the message of the
immor