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[140] predecessors here will cheerfully make room and salute with the old time mark of respect and affection. Were it for us of R. E. Lee Camp, No. 1, to choose an epitaph for the monument yonder at Columbia, it were not easy, I apprehend, to find one more appropriate than is contained in the supreme testimony of Lieutenant-General Wade Hampton's virtues and abilities by his great commander, peerless Robert Edward Lee, in a letter from the latter to him in the summer of 1865. If I might venture to make a request of those to whom I have here so feebly spoken, it would be that they ponder well the words therein written and with which I close my remarks; ponder them in all their deep and unmistakable significance as they wend their homeward way from this hall to-night. In all the annals of war you shall find no higher praise of one great soldier and every way great man from another. What a world of meaning General Lee's words convey! What a world of meaning! They are these: Listen! ‘Had you been there with all our cavalry the result at Five Forks would have been different.’ Taken in their obvious connection and comprehensive sense, what unspeakable pathos in the words: ‘Had you been there with all our calvary the result at Five Forks would have been different.’
Richmond, VA. 1904.
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