Duval County FlArchives News.....Under the Old Flag:  First Encampment, Florida Division: UCV June 10, 1892
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Jan Kuhn kuhn_j@firn.edu May 24, 2008, 2:28 pm

Times Union June 10, 1892
UNDER THE OLD FLAG
Veterans of the Gray March Again to the Tune of "Dixie"
BATTLES ARE FOUGHT OVER AGAIN
The Fair Flowers of the New South were There in Force
The Military and Veterans Reviewed by General Dickison  The Skies Are painted 
with Peaceful fire - Events of the Day
   Since Wednesday afternoon every incoming train has brought crowds of 
visitors to Jacksonville, until yesterday morning the streets were thronged 
with people.  The decorations on Bay street were made more beautiful until 
every nook and cranny is covered with bright streamers and gay bunting.
  The exercises commenced with a fire department practice.  The hose was 
attached to the plugs at the four corners of the park and streams were shot on 
the foliage in the park.  The sunshine caught the drops and made them shine 
like diamonds.  The steam engine was also brought out and a stream from it was 
sent over one hundred feet in the air.
   After the fire department practice the grand procession was formed under 
the oaks in front of the St. James hotel.  Fully two thousand visitors were 
present.  The balconies of the St. James, the Windsor, the Oxford and the 
opera-house were all crowded with spectators.
   Gen. J. J. Dickison was in command of the procession.  Gen. F. L. Robertson 
was his chief of staff, Maj. W. B. Young was marshal of the day, and General 
William Baya was in command of the veterans.  They were all mounted.
                 THE ORDER TO MARCH
   At 10 o'clock the order to move was given and the procession marched on 
Laura to Forsyth, west on Forsyth to Julia, south on Julia to Bay, east on Bay 
to Market, north on Market to Forsyth, west on Forsyth to Main, south on Main 
to the Sub-Tropical.
   The order of the parade was as follows:
   Police force, twenty-three strong, in command of Chief Phillips and 
Lieutenant Keefe on horseback; colored band; Jacksonville Light Infantry, 
twenty-seven strong , in command of Capt. L. H. Mattair.
     Then cane a beautiful float representing the states of the Confederacy 
and camps of Florida. The float was a pyramidical platform covered with 
bunting and drawn by four horses.  Each camp was represented by a young lady 
in an allegorically patriotic costume, wearing a helmet and insignia of the 
state represented and carrying a banner.
      The various states and camps in the first float were represented as 
follows: Miss Carrie Mickler, E. Kirby Smith camp; Miss Belle Jones, J. J. 
Finnegan camp; Miss Texas Porter, the Lone Star state and Anderson camp, 
Monticello; Miss May Martin, Alabama; Miss Lila Shine, Orlando camp and 
Georgia; Miss May Pacetti, camp 148, Inverness; Miss Emma Ximanics, Jasper 
camp; Misses Emma Delaney and Eloise Moore, sponsors for Sons of Veterans; 
Miss Lazelle MacWhoter, Ward camp of Pensacola; Miss Ella Love, Quincy camp, 
and Tennessee; Miss Eva Radcliffe, Newnan camp of Padina; Miss Eva Wilson, 
Dove City camp, and R. E. Lee camp, represented by Miss Effie Drysdale, who 
also was the central figure representing the Confederacy.
     Then came the Home Minstrel band; Wilson’s battery, fourteen strong, in 
command of Lieutenant George Emery, and next the old veterans and sons of 
veterans bearing various battle and company flags.  In this section were the 
R. E. Lee Camp, the St. Augustine camp, Orlando camp, Finnegan camp, Nassau 
camp, and veterans of various camps throughout the state.  After these 
followed the governor’s carriage, in which were Governor Flemming and Miss 
Lelia Rogers, representing the whole Confederacy.  Miss Rogers is a daughter 
of Colonel St. George Rogers.  She carried a banner of the United Confederate 
Veterans and was undoubtedly the center of deserved admiration.  After the 
Governor’s carriage came another in which were Mayor Hy. Robinson, Rev. C. A. 
Fullwood, William Fox and Adjutant-General Laug; the next contained Col. 
George Troupe Maxwell, Gen. J. J. Finley, Major A. J. Russell, Col. James 
Armstrong and the midget, Col. Abe Sawyer.
     After these followed the carriages of distinguished guests and citizens. 
                          A BEAUTIFUL FLOAT
     Following this came the float of Florida.  The fair lady impersonating a 
fair state was Miss Eloise Moore of Green Cove Springs, who is as lovable and 
accomplished (so the lads say) as she is beautiful.  The float itself was the 
happy inspiration of J. A. Enslow.  It bore on each corner the coat of arms of 
one of the four nations-Spain, France, England and the United States-which 
have at one time or another occupied Florida.  Besides the coat of arms were 
groups of the flags of the nations represented.
                                      A SPLENDID PARADE
     The parade was over two blocks long and certainly presented a martial 
appearance.  Flags and banners floated in the breeze, the band played 
patriotic airs, and the crowds cheered.
     Then all hands, filed into the big Sub-Tropical building, where an 
audience of fully two thousand people had already assembled.
     The principal event at the Sub-Tropical was the eloquent and patriotic 
oration by Capt. James, Armstrong.  Captain Armstrong is a fluent talker, and 
his address was an Inspiration which was cheered to the echo.  He said:
     Four days ago I was favored with an invitation to be present at the re-
union of the R. E. Lee camp of United Confederate Veterans.  The kind letter 
of Colonel Maxwell also contained a request that I would deliver an oration.  
I thought it best to decline as it would be impossible, having a multiplicity 
of official duties to discharge, to prepare a suitable address, one worthy of 
this interesting occasion.  A letter from my friend and fellow townsman, Capt. 
Joseph A. Enslow, Jr., urged me to attend.  He stated that an elaborate speech 
was not expected-that you would be satisfied if I spoke to you of the proud 
and precious past in a simple and sincere manner.  This, my friends, I shall 
try to do.  I mentioned that Joe. Enslow and I are Charlestonians.  To 
paraphrase a line of some song which some of those present may have heard 
sung, “I’m His Ami  and He’s My Joe.”  The band will please not play “Annie 
Laurie,” even if the name of the gallant and accomplished chairman of your 
committee (alluding to Colonel Maxwell) is suggestive of “Maxwellton’s Braes.”
     I has been said that after a man has arrived at a certain age he does not 
like to hazard any intellectual enterprise which may endanger the quantum of 
respect or popularity at present allotted to him.  Although more years have 
dawned and departed since I first beheld the beauty of the world that I wish 
to acknowledge before the fair, charming ladies whose welcome presence 
heightens the attractiveness of this scene, I have not reached  that period in 
life when one pauses to consider the responsibility involved in the acceptance 
of an invitation to speak, especially when I am to address Confederate 
survivors, to whom I am attached by ties of the fondest associations and the 
brightest memories.  In agreeing to be with you I consulted not my head-
although you will observe it still wears the gray-but my heart, which told me 
to go and I have obeyed its promptings.
     Many present will remember the words of Henry Bertram, touching the 
sentiment of pre-existence. “How often do we find ourselves in society, which 
we have never before met, and yet feel impressed with a mysterious and ill-
defined consciousness that neither the scene, the speakers, nor the subject 
are entirely new; nay, feel as if we could anticipate that part of the 
conversation which has not taken place.”  While this is the first time it has 
been my privilege to speak to the Confederate veterans of Florida - a state 
that furnished thousands of the finest, most fearless soldiers we had in the 
army- the scene that now meets my gaze has been pictured in my mind, and the 
faces that beam upon me have been impressed upon my memory for many years.  I 
can read your thoughts-they are filled with reminiscences of former days; they 
are thrilled with the recollections around which the tendrils of the heart are 
entwined; they are peopled with the long lost, but ever remembered comrades, 
whose courage and constancy ennobled, and whose suffering and self-sacrifice 
hallow the southern cause.
     You can readily anticipate what I am about to say.  I shall speak of that 
heroic time  when your footsteps were as buoyant as your hearts were light-
when you enjoyed the golden hours of youth-when our hopes were as bright as 
the camp-fires which blazed in one continuous chain throughout the South.  
When the youth and manhood of the Southland were inspired by the loftiest 
instinct of patriotism, and their breasts were nerved with a courage that has 
never been excelled.
     We have  assembled here today to renew the memories, to revive the 
recollections, to recall the fond faces and familiar forms of the storied 
past.  It is in no spirit of strife that we summon from the tomb of the dead 
past those stiffing scenes which shook the country from center to 
circumference, which changed peaceful and pleasant streams into a red sea, 
over which war was waged and beneath which so many thousands  sank to rise no 
more.  There is no hostility in our hearts, no bitterness in our breast.  We 
are here in the discharge of a sacred duty, to commune as comrades who, 
divided by distance, seldom see one another.  If we recur to the lost cause it 
is simply to speak of the sad, sweet memories it awakens; with those memories 
there is no hope expressed of again seeing the Confederate flag on the 
battlefield.  The men who followed that flag as it was carried on the tide of 
triumph and who stood by it until the surrender, are engaged in peaceful 
pursuits.  They realize and appreciate the fact that the men who did the 
fighting on the northern side are frank and friendly toward the soldiers of 
the South,  over whom the sword of the nation no longer casts a darkening 
shadow.  If any proof were wanting to show that the people of the South 
cherish no resentment toward their former foes, that they too can admire 
virtue and valor amongst the soldiers of the army that was arrayed against 
them, it is to be found in the earnest and enthusiastic manner in which they 
supported for the highest office in the gift of the American people that 
splendid soldier Winfield Scott Hancock.  Among the tear-gemmed garlands that 
were laid upon Garfield’s grave none were fresher or more fragrant than those 
sent from the Sunny South.  There was no sorrow more sincere, no pity more 
profound, then that which was felt throughout the South when the terrible 
tidings of his death were told.
     Brother survivors, your presence, your cheers, have awakened harmonies 
which have been slumbering among the chords of memory for many years, whose 
mystical mournful vibrations sound in the ear, as if they were the voices of 
the laurel wreathed cypress-crowned comrades from whom death divided us, but 
whose pale, pure faces and shadowy forms we seem to see through the mist of 
tears.  There are no brighter names than theirs on the martyrology of freedom, 
no more deathless deeds than theirs recorded in the pantheon of fame.
     We roam today through Virginia’s lovely valleys, beneath the purpling 
shadows of her immemorial mountains; march along Missionary Ridge; bivouac on 
Shiloh’s famous field, aid in checking McClellan’s advance at Sharpsburg, 
stand by the guns of grand old Sumter, already press up the crimson heights of 
Gettysburg, see our flags furled at Appomatox, “stack arms” amidst the gloom 
at Greensboro, where was heard the final heart beat of our young nation’s life.
     These scenes are blended with our dearest thoughts, they are interwoven 
with the holiest emotions of our breasts, and are repeated by every pulsation 
of the hearth.  No matter where we are, whether joyous or sad, the last words 
spoken to us by those who stood with us in bivouac and  battle ring in our 
ears.  We hear them in the murmuring of the waves, which roll along the coast 
they died to defend; in the rustling of the leaves  which overspread their 
graves, in the whispering of the winds that sing the requiem.  Oh, this hidden 
harp of memory, how sad and sweet and solemn are its reverberations around the 
hearthstones of southern homes and in the sanctuary of southern hearts.  The 
picture that I have presented is pale.  It would require the rare enchantment 
of a Clarendon, or a Kinglake, fittingly to describe the storied splendor that 
encircles the Confederate cause-the glorious heroism which the men of Florida 
and other southern states displayed.
     There may be, and doubtless are, those who would have us forget the past-
the past in which you and your comrades behaved so handsomely and so 
heroically; in which so many of them went grandly down to death.  But my 
friends, my comrades, if we were to forget the past we would be unworthy to 
call the South mother!  Forget the past, the history of which has been written 
in the blood of the bravest and the best of men! The past in which you periled 
your lives, in which the gallant and glorious Floridians , who were the 
chivalry of courage, who so nobly upheld the martial renown of the South, who 
added new luster to the light of her fame and met death with fortitude and 
patriotism; the past in which the men in the ranks -the real heroes of the war-
displayed more than Spartan courage, exhibited more than Roman fortitude, 
accomplished all that valor and self-sacrificing heroism could; whose devotion 
and daring scarcely find a parallel in martial history; the past to which our 
noble women immortalized themselves-whose silent suffering and sublime self 
sacrifice furnish a theme to which eloquence will cling with rapture-never! 
Their names are inscribed high on the scroll of southern fame in characters as 
brilliant as the blessed sunlight which beams upon us today. 
     Your camp bears the honored name of Lee, the simple mention of which 
thrills every southern heart to its center.  There have been no darts of 
destruction  leveled at his character, which resembles a polished mirror in 
which the world can see the whiteness of his soul.  He was a generous as he 
was great, as good as he was grand.  It has been said that the blood of Robert 
Bruce flowed in his veins.  He was no less renowned than the hero of 
Bannockburn.  In speaking of Robert E. Lee I am reminded of Curran’s 
felicitous words touching the noble blood of Lord Edward Fitzgerald, which are 
no less apposite when applied to the leader of the Army of Northern 
Virginia.  “Nobler that the royalty that first ennobled it, that like a rich 
stream rose till it ran and hid its fountain.”
     I wish that I were gifted with the power of delineation that John Esten 
Cooke possessed, in order to describe camp scenes of the Confederacy.  Let us 
recur to the bivouac.  See the mists of morning vanish from the valleys  and 
disappear from the hills.  We are making preparations for the march.  Listen 
to the cheery-voices.  “Tom, you take the ax and I’ll tote the 
spider.”  “Bill, old boy, you pulled all the covering off me last night.”  
Bill doubtless answered: “You are a backslider and strayed from the fold.”  
While many of the men are as lively as if they were holiday soldiers, others 
are in a meditative mood, there is food for reflection-the only food they 
have, the commissary not being in a rational mood, some are still asleep.  A 
messmate goes to one of the slumberers and says: “Come, get up and let us fold 
the blankets, the regiment is falling in.”  The answer is: I wish they would 
let me fall out”  Again we hear: “Hurry up, do you want the first regiment to 
be the last? The first  thing you know you’ll be left.”  The answer in this 
instance is: “Then I’ll be all right.”  Some of them want to know if we are 
ever going to get out of the wilderness.  It rained during the night  and most 
of the men are as wet as water can make them.  One is asked how he got along; 
he answers, “swimmingly.”  Another shakes his blanket and says he feels as if 
he had slept in the bed of a river.  Fires are dimly burning, upon which are 
placed the cups containing a dark fluid-called by courtesy coffee-which to 
present an old saw, that newspaper files enables us to use, furnishes 
considerable “ground for complaint.”  A few are fortunate enough to have a 
modicum of meat, not the salt junk, which, from its toughness is jocularly 
called “the sinews of war, “ but bacon, which though fat, is well-not 
fragrant; this stuck on the end of a stick they are heating.  There are a few 
shelter tents, the corners of which are kept down by bayonets.  These tents 
were borrowed (?) from our friends, the enemy, who, unlike the Arabs that 
Longfellow mentions in one of his charming poems, did not stop to fold them 
when they “silently stole away.”  The uniforms are anything but uniform, there 
are more jackets than coats; the former have shrunk and the appearance they 
present leaves one to believe that the weavers have out-grown, or rather grown 
out of them.  Worsted socks are badly “worsted,” in many cases they remind one 
of what the Hibernian mathematician gave us the definition of nothing “A 
footless stocking without a leg.”  I have often sympathized with the soldier 
who, after a fatiguing drill, said to the sergeant: “You may teach me this 
trade, but I’m blamed if you’ll get me to work at it when the war is over.”  
How ludicrous it must have seemed to the general who, in conducting his 
brigade into action, noticed that one of the companies had halted.  He 
shouted: “Why don’t you move forward?”  Before the captain could answer 
several of the man cried out:  “General you order us and each one will obey, 
but we are not on speaking terms with out captain.”
     I have spoken to you in the language of sincerity and truth.  It has been 
a labor of love to speak of those glorious recollections which shine through 
the mists of memory, through  the tears and trials and troubles of intervening 
years.  If I have succeeded in touching a single chord in the harp of a 
comrade’s heart by awakening the memories of the past, in grouping together 
some of the cherished days and heroic deeds which form the guerdon of your 
glory; in revealing images of our long lost comrades, the sanctified slain , 
amidst whose graves our spirits wander, who walk like Faithful through the 
valley of the shadow of death, through the gloom of the world to the glory of 
the home on high, above the skies, beyond the stars, I shall feel that Love’s 
labor has not been lost.  Guard the memories of your fallen comrades if you 
cannot mark their graves.  The people of Athens interred their dead n the most 
beautiful suburb of the city, except those who fell at Marathon.  They , in 
recognition of their extraordinary valor, were buried on the spot they 
perished.  Many of our comrades were buried where they fell, having like 
untombed Romans on the field of Pharsalla, the glorious covering of heaven’s 
arch, a nobler resting place by far than tomb or mausoleum.
     Devotion to our dead heroes does not detract from the duty which we owe 
to the American Union, the freest and happiest and best country on God’s green 
earth.  :Loving what is lost does not lessen our loyalty to the flag which 
proudly floats from Maine to Margenta bay, from the straits of Fuca to the 
Cape of Good Hope.  The clouds of conquest which dimmed that flag have 
disappeared before the blessed smile of friendship and fraternity, and its 
stars now shine brightly and benignantly upon the graves of the men in grey.
   “Forget not the field where they perished
       The truest, the best of the brave;
     All gone-and the bright hopes we cherished
        Gone with them, and quenched in the grave.”
     After this magnificent oration, Maj. A. J. Russell, made the response in 
his usual eloquent style, which the Times-Union would like to give in full , 
but it cannot.  Captain Armstrong is a guest and we give his speech in full.  
Major Russell is one of us, and we can get a whack at him most any time.  
After the address the various organizations were reviewed by Gen. J. J. 
Dickison and Gen. John M. Martin.  The program at the Sub-Tropical completed 
the exercises of the morning.

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