Dear Editor:
[The following was sung on the occasion of decorating the graves of the Confederate dead at Magnolia Cemetery, Charleston, S.C., 1867.]
Sleep sweetly in your humble graves,
Sleep, martyrs of a fallen cause;
Though yet no marble column craves
The pilgrim here to pause.
In seeds of laurel in the earth
The blossom of your fame is blown,
And somewhere, waiting for its birth,
The shaft is in the stone!
Meanwhile, behalf the tardy years
Which keep in trust your storied tombs,
Behold! Your sisters bring their tears,
And these memorial blooms.
Small tributes! But your shades will smile
More proudly on these wreaths to-day,
Than when some cannon-moulded pile
Shall overlook this pay.
Stoop, angels, hither from the skies!
There is no holier spot of ground
Than where defeated valor lies,
By mourning beauty crowned!
Henry Timrod}
So how do we remember these men? April is Confederate History Month in Georgia with the official day on April 26. Find your confederate ancestor and tell your children about him, find his grave and place a flag or a flower on it, if he doesn’t have a Confederate tombstone contact the Veterans Administration it won’t cost you a dime, or be in Savannah on April 27 at 1:00 pm for the Confederate Memorial Day service in Forsyth Park. Another local way to honor your confederate ancestor’s service, give a donation in his name to the Bryan County Confederate Monument Fund at the First Bank of Coastal Georgia in Pembroke, especially if he was from Bryan County. If you don’t know about your Bryan County ancestor’s service contact me at 653-2268, I have a six hundred and fifty name list of Bryan County’s soldiers and their units. Together we can assure his name is not forgotten.
-Alex Floyd