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THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
suitable monuments to commemorate the dust of our heroes which they had gathered into hallowed spots. The women in every city, town and country village were organized, this time into Confederate Historical Societies, Ladies’ Memorial Associations and so forth, and early in the seventies in Richmond and Montgomery and many other Southern cities, splendid monuments began to tower aloft “In memory of the Confederate dead.” What the noble women of Memphis, Tenn., have done in this respect, is but an example of what the women everywhere have done, or are doing. In that city within one inclosure nine hundred and fifty-nine graves have been inclosed with a coping, a neat stone tablet marks the head of each grave, and a splendid gray granite shaft rises to heaven bearing the significant inscription on its face “ Illis Vic- toriam non Immortalitatem, Frater, negaverunt,” and the simple dedication “ To our Confederate dead.” This granite shaft cost the sum of $90,000. All this work was accomplished and paid for through the ardent patriotism, business enterprise, and executive ability of the women of that city. Among the women who have builded the monument we cannot refrain from mentioning the names of Mrs. C. W. Frazer, the first president of the Memphis Memorial Society, and Mrs. Luke E. Wright, the charming daughter of Rear Admiral Raphael Semmes, and Mrs. Keller Anderson.
It is the women of the South who—
“Accepting with unmurmuring lips
War’s stern decree, its grief, its losses,
And nobler through that blood eclipse And stronger for its burdening crosses—
She folds no hands in languid pause Child of her father—true to duty,
She weeps at heart the dear lost cause!
And fills the busy hours with beauty.”
At the same time she instills into the hearts of her young sons and daughters of today an honest pride in the memony of our immortal Jefferson Davis and our host of fallen braves; she teaches them to rejoice in the preservation of, and to stand firm for the Union.
These same women who have already builded so much of their Southland’s strength and fame, today unfurl to the breezes of the South the star spangled banner, with as much pride and grace as ever.they flung to the same winds the silken folds of their own handiwork, the bonny blue flag of the confederacy.
It was her women who have largely made it possible for the South to be represented here today. And in this Columbian year while Mrs. Grant and Mrs. Davis are sharing the hospitality of the same roof in New York, the Southern woman of today extends her hand in cordial invitation to her sisters of every clime to unite with her in building up
“A perfect woman(hood) nobly planned To warn, to comfort and command.”
An altar at which men and angels may love and worship forever.
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