The South and the Union—its battles.
Pause, now, upon the threshold, and geography and history will alike tell you that neither in its people nor in its leader was there lack of love for the
Union, and that it was with sad hearts that they saw its ligaments torn asunder.
Look at the
Southern map. There may be read the name of Alamance, where in 1771 the first drop of American blood was shed against arbitrary taxation, and at
Mecklenburg, where was sounded the first note of Independence.
Before the Declaration at
Philadelphia there had risen in the
Southern sky what
Bancroft termed ‘the bright morning star of American Independence,’ where, on the 28th of June, 1776, the guns of
Moultrie at the
Palmetto fort in front of
Charleston announced the first victory of American arms.
At
King's Mountain is the spot where the rough-and-ready men of the Carolinas and the swift riders of
Virginia and
Tennessee had turned the tide of victory in our favor, and there at
Yorktown is the true birth spot of the free nation.
Right here I stand to-night on the soil of that State which first of all
America stood alone free and independent?
Beyond the confines of the
South her sons had rendered yeoman service; and would not the step of the
British conqueror have been scarce less than omnipotent had not
Morgan's riflemen from the
Valley of Virginia and the peerless commander of
Mt. Vernon appeared on the plains of
Boston?
You may follow the tracks of the Continentals at
Long Island,
Trenton,
Princeton,
Brandywine,
Germantown,
Valley Forge,
Monmouth and
Morristown by the blood and the graves of the
Southern men who died on Northern soil, far away from their homes, answering the question with their lives: Did the
South love the
Union?
