Duval County FlArchives News.....A monument to the soldiers of the state: Charles S. Hemming Generous February 23, 1896
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Jan Kuhn kuhn_j@firn.edu May 28, 2008, 6:00 pm

Florida Times Union February 23, 1896
FAIR FLORIDA IS FORTUNATE
A  MONUMENT TO THE SOLDIERS OF THE STATE
CHARLES S. HEMMING GENEROUS
HE PRESENTS A 60 FOOT SHAFT OF GRANITE AND BRONZE
CONFEDERATE VETERANS GRATEFUL
The news is received with Enthusiastic Applause-An address Delivered by the 
Donor
   Mr. Charles C. Hemming, who has agreed to erect a $20,000 monument to the 
Confederate dead in this city, was born in St. Augustine, September 16, 1844, 
and lived from the time he was 2 years old until the beginning of the war in a 
house on East Bay street, in this city, just east of the boat yard.  In the 
old house , which stood there, his father and mother lived and died.  Mr. 
hemming enlisted  in the Third Florida regiment when a boy and soon became 
sergeant-major.  He was captured and escaped from prison.  After his escape he 
went into the secret service and did splendid work as a spy, risking his life 
repeatedly and having many thrilling and sometimes hairbreadth escapes. Mr. 
Hemming came out of the war poor.  He moved to Gainesville, Tex., where he has 
made a fortune, being one of the leading bankers of that city.
   It has been the dream of his life to erect to the memory of the Confederate 
dead in the state of his birth a monument that shall endure for all time.  In 
his inquiries as what material would be most beautiful, marble was 
recommended.  Of the monument men he asked:
   “How long will marble last?”
   “Six hundred years,” was the reply
   “That will not do for me.  I want something that will last as near forever 
as possible.”  Then he asked: “What will last a million years?”
   He was told that Vermont granite and Austrian bronze were the most enduring 
of materials.  So he has contracted to have this monument of granite and 
bronze.
   A model of the monument was shown at the reunion in Ocala.  The model alone 
stands ten feet high, and is a work of art.  The center is an obelisk to rise 
sixty feet from the foundation.  Upon each of the four corners is to stand a 
statue-one of General Lee, another of General Stonewall Jackson, a third of 
General Johnston, and the fourth of Gen. J. J. Dickison, of Florida.
                 LEE CAMP ENTHUSIASTIC
   A meeting of R. E. . Lee camp, No. 58  U. C. V., was held at the Everett 
hotel yesterday for the purpose of receiving the report of Adjutant J. A. 
Enslow, jr., as the delegate to the state division reunion.
   Commander Boylston was appointed a committee to at once telegraph to Ocala, 
inviting Mr. and Mrs. Hemming to become the guests of the camp while in the 
city.  It was also resolved that a committee of five, of which the commander 
is to be chairman, be appointed to invite the co-operation of the Daughters of 
the Confederacy of Jacksonville to arrange for the entertainment of Mr. and 
Mrs. Hemming, which arrangements shall include a public reception on next 
Monday.  The committee appointed is as follows: Commander S. C. Boylston, ex-
Commander William Baya, ex-Commander G. Troup Maxwell, ex-Governor F. F. 
Fleming and Lieutenant-Commander E. F. Gilbert.  This committee met 
immediately after the meeting of the camp and appointed Gen. William Baya and 
F. P. Fleming as a sub-committee to wait on the ladies and arrange for the 
reception..  Commander Boylston sent the following telegram to Mr. Hemming at 
Ocala: “R. E. Lee camp invites you and Mrs. Hemming to be its guests during 
your stay in Jacksonville, at any hotel you desire.  Please signify your 
choice and inform us of the time of your arrival.”
   Later in the afternoon Commander Boylston received a telegram announcing 
that Colonel and Mrs. Hemming had left Ocala, presumably for Jacksonville.  
The surmise was correct, for Mr. and Mrs.  Hemming arrived at 3:30 and are the 
guests of Col. W. M. Davidson and wife on East Adams street.
          THE NEWS AT OCALA
   The following account of the announcement of Mr. Hemming’s generous gift 
comes from Ocala, where it was made at the annual reunion of the Florida 
confederate Veterans:
   On the stage of the opera house were seated Gen. J. J. Dickison, in the 
center; flanked on his left were Miss Lula Gary, Miss Mary Mayo, Miss Hattie 
Robertson, Dr. Burrows, Rev. Dr. Low, William Fox, Captain W. L. Ditto, Col., 
Joseph Armstrong and H. W. Long; to General Dickison’s right were Miss Bessie 
Moody, Colonel Martin, Major Robertson, Glover Miller, General French, General 
Low of the Bartow Military institute, General Bullock, Charles C. Hemming and 
Captain Baya.
   After the preliminaries came the introduction of the hero of the evening, 
only so known to his immediate friends for his heroic mould of thought and a 
liberal and catholicity of spirit and purpose that is the admiration and 
commendation of the informed and generous minds of earth - Charles C. 
Hemming.  He was received with generous applause.  Before reading a gem of an 
address, he indulged in telling some of the incidents of his soldier 
experiences, and did it with such grace, ease and marked effect that his 
audience hung with breathless interest on his words, smiled or laughed or 
applauded as the brilliant raconteur punctuated a good point and scored a base 
on a happening of unusual interest and amusing character.
   He spoke feelingly of his early association and school days in Ocala, when 
he attended the East Florida Seminary, which was then taught by the late Capt. 
H. D. McConnell and when a boy under this roof of that large-hearted citizen, 
General Bullock.  How he loved to come back in memory and live over those days 
again, and how much happier he was to feel that he was today living over these 
by-gone days in reality.  In substance, he said he was captured at Missionary 
Ridge, sent to the Rock Island, Ill., prison, and after several months of 
experience, by which he profited and gained his liberty-namely getting a 
Federal uniform, playing off desperately sick, getting excused by the 
sergeant, then falling into the ranks of the detail of one hundred men, he 
with his partner, marched boldly out of the fort, hid in a shed, took the 
first boat north on the Mississippi  river, falling in with jolly, good fellow 
of liberal and kindly disposition, who knew a good cigar and appreciated a 
good bibulous smile, and through whose generous kindness he was to be a fellow 
traveler to New York, where young Hemming was to show his new-found friends 
the sights and paint the metropolis socially carmine.
   How, in Canada, he was his kind friend, but he concluded he had more 
business in the dominion than in the states, so let his friend go on and he 
slid off the train at Toronto, where with 10 cents in his pocket, he 
luxuriated on a supper of ginger snaps and wandered around the town until 11 
o’clock before he could find shelter, though offering to do any work required 
to secure it. At last a big-hearted butcher took him in and made him feel at 
home.  Next morning he found Mr. Lynch, an ex-Confederate soldier, who took 
him to Jake Thompson of Memphis but of Canadian Confederate fame, who said “I 
can give you a job-will you do it? If you are found out and captured you will 
be hung.  What is it?  To ascertain the armament and men in all the forts from 
Milwaukee to Niagara.”  “Yes,” said Hemming, “only if I am hung never tell my 
folks.”
     In this experience he was twice arrested by United States detectives; 
once he jumped a train and escaped across the river, near Detroit; another 
time, at Toledo, where assurance, ready speech and grand army front took him 
out of the guards and let him cross the bridge of safety.  He then told how he 
went with Captain Beal and eight others to capture a money train near Harper’s 
Ferry, failed, but made his escape and sought and secured shelter in a maiden 
lady’s house at Fredonia, N.Y., who had kindly written him several letters 
while he was a prisoner of war.  How she befriended him and Captain Beal and 
no doubt through this act of kindness became Mrs. Co. hemming, his beloved 
stepmother.  He then told of his peril at Suspension bridge, in his efforts to 
cross it.  How at the depot Captain Beal and another  comrade were arrested 
and how he, in the excitement of the incident, the rush of an incoming train, 
made his escape across the bridge into Canada.  Mr. Hemming seeing  a train 
roll in from Rochester and knowing passengers changed cars for Chicago, he saw 
two ladies, several children, with sundry band-boxes and baskets trying to 
alight.  He rushed by the guard at the gate, seized a child and a basket cried 
out  “Come this way, your husband sent me to help you across,” how he took his 
charge on to the Michigan Central train, despite the obstacles of the guard 
and the efforts of the lieutenant  to come to headquarters; the train pulled 
out and in three minutes he was safe in Canada.  Poor Beal paid the penalty of 
his calling, was hung as a Confederate spy in New York in July, 1864.
   His next trying and amusing scene was when he went to Halifax to get 
transportation on the English steamer Owl, to join his regiment via Havana and 
Florida.
   The Confederate agent and he had a misunderstanding at this point and 
refused to grant him a passport or transportation.  And having secured the 
acquaintance of the second officer of the steamer, he went aboard, but was 
told he could not sail on that boat, but said he had only come aboard to see 
friends, which was granted him.  He secreted himself in the hold of the vessel 
and did not come on deck until sixty miles out to sea, when  he was arrested, 
the captain about to buck and gag him, when he pleaded his cause so 
eloquently  that he was released, given a preferred seat at the table, the 
best cabin on the vessel and his thirst quenched with Mum’s extra dry.
   After an exciting voyage, during which they were taken for a blockade 
runner and fired on, he was landed at St. Marks, Fla. And by foot and by rail, 
horseback and ox cart, he finally landed in South Carolina, was detailed to 
impress horses for the Confederate service.  His experience in North Carolina 
in the home of a Federal spy, while his foundered horse was recruiting and how 
he paid him off with an order for a sack of coffee, signed by him as a United 
States quartermaster-general, was amusing in the extreme by the naïve charm of 
his telling.
      H then read his polished, thoughtful and eloquent address, which will 
speak for itself, and then said: “I have had an ambition ever since the close 
of the war that if fortune favored me, I would rear in my native state a shaft 
that would commemorate the virtues and heroic deeds and glorious record of the 
heroes of the Confederate cause.  With that object in view he had labored , 
and with the approval of his family, he was now ready to carry out the dream 
and purpose of his life.  At this juncture he pulled aside a shade which 
revealed a drawing of a beautiful monument, suspended from the wall of the 
stage.
         MR. HEMMINGS ADDRESS
    The address, in part, was as follows:
   “Ladies, Gentlemen, and Comrades-When I look back upon the past and see how 
many friends whose cheerful faces it was a pleasure once to meet who are no 
more among us, it fills my soul with sadness, but none of us can expect to 
live forever. After a few more years roll by we shall all be gone, and such 
records as we have made in this life will have been left behind as a heritage 
to our friends and children.
   “In the early spring of ‘67, when the sweet bay blossoms were out upon the 
trees and the fragrance of the spring flowers floated on the morning air, I 
turned by face westward with a heavy heart to seek my fortune among new faces 
and to make new friends ,  and while I found in my new home many whose loyalty 
has been more than once tested, yet my thoughts  often returned to my noble 
friends of my youth and to the playmates of my earlier days; I could not 
forget them.
   “On this soil my father and my mother sleep and here my thoughts have often 
turned, and with a strong desire have I hoped for years that with God’s 
blessing I might some day make the deeds and the names of Florida’s noble men, 
who in her greatest hour of trial, did not leave her friendless, to go down 
upon the current of rolling years into the unbroken centuries of eternity, 
honored and remembered.  That the recollection of your noble sacrifices might 
live through some testimony for the nation in the ages to come, sublime 
examples of heroism, fortitude and virtue, which at all times you so grandly 
displayed.  That these imperishable attributes of your manhood might live for 
years to come and add to the fires of patriotism which should shine as a light 
to illuminate every age, and every country where liberty is appreciated.
   “For when patriotism ceases to be virtue and any people are destitute of 
that courage and inclination to protest against wrong;  then indeed the time 
draws near where chartered rights and written law are but the will of the 
despot and the tyrant.  It was that spirit of fortitude which kept the 
sentinels, with frost-bitten feet, along the picket line at Valley Forge, and 
it was the same strength that nerved the arm to burn the powder of Bunker 
Hill; and in our day and time, which lit the fuse that discharged the first 
gun at Sumter and put in motion four million men.
   “I hope I never will live to give that utterance to any sentiment which 
will stultify my conscience or brand with infamy the names of our respected 
dead.  We are a civilized people, we had reason, and judgment, and common 
sense.  We could discern the right and we knew the issue before us, and 
fearing not any consequence, we drew our swords and cast our fortunes without 
reserve upon the altar of liberty.
   “Our fathers, sons and brothers were dedicated to the cause we espoused, 
and charged to remember that within their veins flowed the continental blood 
which made rebels and traitors of Jefferson and of Washington.  We acted from 
conscience, sake, and the man who now makes apologies for the South and her 
people then, gives a lie to history, or himself  was ignorant of the universal 
spirit which animated us in that trying hour.
   “The wife sent her husband to the battle, repressing with firmness a flood 
of tears, that his step might not falter I the hour of his going, and the 
little ones waived from their dimpled hands many a good bye that was the last, 
while the maiden scorned the love and spurned the lover who proved recreant to 
the call of duty.  Then all were patriots and those patriots shall not be 
forgotten.
   “Comrades, those were stirring days, and before the sun went down upon our 
fortunes leaving us as it then seemed in eternal darkness, the Red Cross flag 
floated in 231 engagements, and inch by inch every foot was contested with the 
grandest army the world ever produced and recruited, one-fifth of which was 
foreign-born.  It was the rapier against the sword, for thrust we gave thrust, 
and before our flag was struck Roman courage and Spartan valor had been 
outdone, and upon an hundred fields the stories of the Alamo and Thermopylae 
were almost repeated.  Often along our depleted lines where the southern 
soldier confronted four and five and six to one, not only did he hold that 
flag above the smoke of battle, but to be sure that his brave combatants might 
know there still were some to hold it up, he would waive it again and again, 
and invite with defiant shout the charge which was sure to come.
   “The last gun whose reverberating notes fell upon the solemn stillness 
which hung over the fateful field of Appomattox was in the hands of a ragged 
and hungry Confederate soldier, and knowing the spirit which animated those 
immortal heroes who stood with Lee in that trying hour I warrant you, as he 
took that last parting shot, he said - ‘there, take it’ - The old guard at 
Waterloo, who fought in the sunken road at sunset under the eye of Napoleon 
will go down to history, clustered around his great name, and with it, as 
imperishable; but the men who starved and starving stood beneath our battle 
flags on the morning of April 9th 1865, with Lee and all who were faithful to 
the end; were born to add fresh brilliancy to the splendid record of the 
southern soldier.
   “One hundred years from now, when the mists of prejudice, and the 
unfairness of a beclouded history shall have passed away, it will be counted 
an honor supreme, to have descended from such gallant men.  To your children 
and mine there shall come then no blush of shame for when Lee and Jackson 
cease to be remembered among American people, Washington will be forgotten, 
and the glorious history of the revolution of ‘76 will have passed into the 
utter depths of oblivion.
   “Another thing you should remember of that fearful war, that when our 
country’s resources were almost entirely destroyed, and day after day she was 
becoming more and more impoverished, our people rose sublimely above every 
adversity, to that supreme height which the great occasion demanded of them, 
and grew richer in their exalted patriotism as their sufferings increased and 
their trials augmented; shall we not recount these great virtues as worth the 
keeping?  Or will we be recreant to the duty we owe ourselves and children, 
and let them pass away and be forever lost to American history?
   “Shall we not hold in high esteem the magnanimity of Grant and Lee, the 
courage of Farragut, and the friendship of Greely?  We have an interest in all 
the grand records made by their splendid soldiers, and the farther we get away 
from the war, and the more we get acquainted as a people, the higher they will 
esteem our great men and understand us, and the spirit which animated us, when 
we took arms to defend our rights.
   “Where is there a southern man today who does not honor and revere the 
memory of that man, who unaided and alone struck out in the forest and through 
the wilderness, blazed for himself a way, marked each tree as he went that 
others with less courage than himself might follow, that brave and noble man 
whose hand more than once kept a flatboat on its course and later years, from 
God received sufficient strength to meet and overcome all the sterner 
responsibilities of life, and at last, when from obscurity he climbed the 
dizzy heights of greatness, found in that same hand the destiny of a divided 
nation, and who, in the anguish of his great and manly soul suffered at the 
sight of the flowing blood, that came from wounds of angered brothers, and 
would, if he had lived quite as soon as died  the notes of the last gun of 
that fratricidal conflict put their hands in ours, and holding both, made us 
one.  Shall we claim no part in the wealth of great men on the other side 
which the war produced, or shall we not say in truth,, Lincoln was also ours 
and we honor him; sublime character, grand and noble man!
   “It is all right and proper for us to hold in high reverence the courage 
and the manhood exhibited by our people, but we have come to the time when we 
should give all respect and honor to those who were on the other side, for by 
this we prove our greatness, and when we have gone, we shall know that we 
leave behind us a nation, bound  together by those bonds of live and 
fellowship, which will enable them to look back upon all the glorious records 
of the past with a sense of common interest, and appreciation.
   “Let them build their monuments and we will build ours; let them honor 
their dead, and we shall transmit to future generations  faithful images of 
our own, that while they look upon ours, they shall draw from the picture the 
same inspiration which animated us.  They must not, and they shall not, 
perish, for to such men is immortality given.  They will forever live in song 
and story.  When the southern boy looks up at the bronzed image of those 
heroes who were made in fire and blood, his soul will receive new strength, 
new hope and new courage, and he, also, will become, if he is not already, a 
patriot.  Comrades, for years, this has been my thought and this is my mission 
here tonight.”
          WILD ENTHUSIASM
   The Confederate Veterans who returned from Ocala yesterday, say that the 
scene in the opera house when Mr. Hemming displayed a drawing of the proposed 
monument for the state of Florida was one of wildest enthusiasm.  The audience 
went wild  with delight and its joy knew no bounds.  General Bullock and 
General Baya hugged Mr. Hemming and General Dickison took him to his arms like 
a father.
   It was a profound secret.  Only General Bullock and General Baya knew of 
the surprise in store.  Dr. Burroughs of Jacksonville spoke of what woman had 
done grandly, and  his eulogy to Lee was fine.  Colonel Armstrong of 
Charleston pronounced a finished and beautiful address, paying a noble tribute 
to women.  He was instructive silly, humorous and eloquent.  The audience 
voted thanks to the orators, especially to Mr. Hemming, who was the hero of 
the night.  Thus ended in a blaze of glory the Confederate Veterans annual 
meeting.
   Mr. Hemming and wife were called on, last night at the residence of Capt. 
And Mrs. W. M. Davidson by many relatives and friends of the Hemming family.  
The ladies of the society of the Daughters of the Confederacy were profuse in 
their gratitude for the noble gift and expressed much admiration for the 
monument when the drawing was exhibited to them.  On the side of the base of 
the monument will be the coat of arms of the state of Florida, s the monument 
is a gift on the part of Mr. Hemming to the soldiers of the state, both living 
and dead, to perpetuate their memory.
          TO LOCATE THE SIGHT
   Mr.  Hemming is of the opinion that the selection of a site for the 
monument should be left to him to decide, so as to avoid any local jealousies 
of the people in any particular part of the city.  The idea appears to be a 
good one and will doubtless be adopted.
   “All that I expect the citizens of Jacksonville to do.” said Mr. hemming 
last night, “is to put in the foundation for the monument and to put a railing 
around it.  The contract is drawn up and signed and I have paid $3,000 down on 
the same.  The monument will be completed inside of a year and I will leave 
all arrangements in regard to it to R. E. Lee camp of Confederate Veterans, 
and General French, my representative.  I expect that when the monument is 
unveiled the governor of the state will be here to formally receive it.”
   Mr. Hemming is proud of being raised in Jacksonville, and the city may well 
be proud of him.  He enlisted in the Jacksonville Light Infantry at the 
breaking out of the war, and at the reorganization of that company in 1880 was 
an honored guest.  When he first went to Texas in 1866, he settled in Brenham, 
Washington County, where he married, fourteen years ago, and soon afterwards 
moved to Gainesville, Tex., his present home.
   He has been in the banking business for the past twenty-two years and is 
vice-president of the State Bankers’ Association of Texas, and will very 
likely be the next president of the association.  When the war ended he was 
sergeant-major of the Third Florida regiment, commanded by General Washburn.  
His last promotion to that rank was the last promotion made in the regiment 
before the surrender.
                    LADIES TO MEET
   The Jacksonville division of the Daughters of the Confederacy will meet at 
10 o’clock tomorrow, at the residence of Mrs. T. Hartridge, corner of Forsyth 
and Liberty streets, to take action regarding the reception of the monument 
and to meet the committee of R. E. Lee camp.  All members of the association 
are requested to be present at  this meeting.


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