| The Attack On Fort Stedman |
Following
Gov. Frazier’s remarks below, Mayor Williams of Nashville said “I can
recall no period or occasion in the past history of my life among the
good people of Nashville fraught with so much pleasure as the
distinguished privilege . . . to stand in the august presence of an
assemblage of soldiers and patriots such as now confront me . . . [and]
welcome every one of you to every home and fireside in grand old
Nashville.” Many North Carolina veterans traveled to Nashville to
represent The Old North State.
Bernhard Thuersam, Chairman
North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission
"Unsurpassed Valor, Courage and Devotion to Liberty"
"The Official Website of the North Carolina WBTS Sesquicentennial"
Tennessee Governor Welcomes Confederate Veteran Reunion in 1904
“We
extend to you a hearty greeting because you are the remnant of the
greatest army of individual fighters that ever went to battle. The
personnel of that army was the most magnificent the world had ever seen.
They were the descendants of the men who suffered at Valley Forge with
Washington, the greatest of rebels. Those men sprang from noble sires.
Up
to the war the South had played a conspicuous part in the government of
this republic. A Southern man had written the Declaration of
Independence, Southern men had dominated the Constitutional Convention,
and a Southern man had written the organic law of the nation.
It
was a Southern man that planted the flag of the nation on the palaces
of the Montezumas. Men who sprang from such an ancestry could not
deliberately conspire and fight for the destruction of the government
they had created. The Confederate army fought for the great and
inalienable right of local government. If you had had equal resources
with our brothers across the line, to-day the Stars and Bars would float
as the national emblem.
I
welcome you to the grand old hospitable State of Tennessee. I welcome
you to the warmth of her sunshine, and if that ain’t warm enough, I
welcome you to some of her moonshine.”
The
band played Dixie and the convention went wild. Gen. [G.W.] Gordon
then appropriately introduced Mayor Williams [of Nashville], saying that
“if any get too much of that moonshine to which the Governor so kindly
referred in his speech, he will take care of you.”
(Address of Governor James B. Frazier, Tennessee Reunion, Confederate Veteran, July 1904, pg. 324)
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