CHAPTER XV.

THE EXERCISES IN NEW ORLEANS ON THE RETURN OF THE CAPTURED FLAG — A DISTINGUISHED ASSEMBLAGE PARTICIPATES - THE PROGRAMME ONE OF UNUSUAL INTEREST - VETERANS OF BOTH ARMIES FRATERNIZE AND EXCHANGE PATRIOTIC SENTIMENTS - CAPT. DANIEL CURRAN OF THE THIRD MISSISSIPPI RECEIVES THE COLORS
- ELOQUENT ADDRESSES ARE DELIVERED ON THE OCCASION.

THE day of the presentation finally arrived, and the exercises were thus described by the New Haven Morning News, Feb. 27: "The event of yesterday at the New Orleans exposition was the celebration of Connecti¬cut day and the formal restoration to the original owners of the tattered battle flag captured by the Ninth Connecti¬cut regiment at Pass Christian, Miss., in 1862. The colors up to the present time have been at the Capitol at Hartford, but both branches of the legislature sanctioned their return to the Ex-Confederates.

"Connecticut visitors are many at the great southern exhibition, and they were out in force. Long before the hour for the presentation, the streets were lined with peo¬ple hurrying to see the sight. The guard of honor, which had accompanied the flag from New Haven, had been considerably increased in numbers since it left Chicago, and on its arrival in New Orleans had been treated with distinguished courtesy by the managers of the exhibition and the survivors of the regiment from which the flag had been captured 23 years before. Public interest in the presentation had been increased by the action of the press, which had devoted much space to the story of the flag's adventures.

"The ceremonies were held in Music hall, an enormous building, which was elaborately decorated for the occasion. On the raised and handsomely ornamented plat-

form were all the United States and state commissioners to the exhibition, lady commissioners, a large number of representatives of the Grand Army of the Republic, the Army of Northern Virginia and the Army of Tennessee, the Ninth Connecticut veterans and a host of Federals and ex-Confederates of prominence. The best of feeling prevailed and it was evident that the return of the flag was deeply appreciated by the men who had worn the gray. As the old soldiers took their seats on the plat¬form the vast audience which filled the hall cheered re¬peatedly, and when the speech of presentation was made the applause was deafening.

"The ceremonies were opened by Acting Commis¬sioner of Connecticut T. R. Pickering, who introduced Col. John G. Healy, of the Ninth regiment, Connecticut Volunteers. Colonel Healy in an eloquent address trans¬ferred the flag to Capt. Curran, of the Third Mississippi. He dwelt briefly on the events which led to the capture of the flag and of the circumstances which brought about its return. Acting as the spokesman of his regi¬ment he returned the banner to its former owners with the best wishes of his comrades. He trusted, he said, that this would be but one of many similar restorations on both sides and would be at once a token of the good feeling which now exists and a means of bringing the two sections of the country into still closer relations. The chaplain of the Third Mississippi, the Rev. Thomas R. Markham, delivered an address of acceptance. He was followed in a speech by the Hon. J. R. G. Pitkin, of Louisiana."

The New Orleans Times-Democrat, Feb. 27, had the following report of the affair:

A beautiful day, with the largest attendance of the week. All through the day the grounds were bathed in

bright, warm sunshine, and the sweet Southern air was fanned by a gentle breese, wafted up from the broad, deep waters of the majestic Mississippi. A day of surpassing beauty it seemed to the thousands of Northern visitors on the grounds, who gazed in wondering admiration, not less upon the glory of the heavens above them than upon the splendors of the grounds around them; splendors that increase day by day as the exquisite floral mantle of the great park approaches maturity.

Such a day rendered complete the beauty and bril¬liancy of the scene that was being enacted in the Main Building. It was Connecticut day, and the hundreds of visitors here from that most famous of all the famous old New England States determined that the day set apart for the celebration of the Nutmeg State should not lack in interest. And it did not, for it witnessed one of the most interesting and pleasing events that have yet oc¬curred at the Exposition. It was a day that forged one more of those innumerable links that bind the North and South indissolubly together, a day to linger long in the memory of many thousands of people, a day to be re¬membered by historians in the future.

This event was the formal restoration to its original owners of a tattered battle flag captured by the Ninth Connecticut Regiment from the Third Mississippi Regi¬ment at Pass Christian in 1862. The captured colors have rested until now in the State Capitol at Hartford, Conn., but both branches of the Legislature of that State having cordially sanctioned their return to the old owners of the flag, they were brought here and gave rise to the brilliant ceremonies of yesterday, in token of the mutual willingness of the people of both States, and of all the States, to utterly obliterate the memory of past disputes.

The exercises commenced in the Music Hall at 2 o'clock, but long ere the hour arrived the vast hall was filled to overflowing by an immense audience. When the Mexican Band arrived and took up its station on the

platform, a loud burst of applause went up from the great gathering, which knew the oft proved excellence of the musicians about to entertain them. On the platform were nearly all the United States and States commissioners in town, a large number of lady commissioners, several ladies of the city, and also many representatives of the Army of Northern Virginia, the Army of Tennessee and the Grand Army of the Republic.

* * *

On the front of the platform stood a table draped with the Stars and Stripes. In front were suspended the two guidons of Mississippi and Connecticut, and on the table were a bronze equestrian statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee, a statue of a national standard bearer, and a bronze medallion of Gen. Washington. All these bronzes were made by the Ames Manufacturing Company of Chicopee, Mass., and belong to the Bay State exhibit, having been loaned to Connecticut for this occasion.

Several appropriate selections were rendered by the Mexican Band, and the exercises were then opened by Acting Commissioner T. R. Pickering, of Connecticut, who presided. He remarked: "The object of this meet¬ing has been so well portrayed, by the press and other¬wise, that I will not detain you by any remarks, but at once introduce to you Col. John G. Healy, of the Ninth Connecticut Volunteers."

Amid the applause of the audience Col. Healy stepped to the front. He said:

Boys of the Ninth Connecticut, of the Third Mississippi, and my friends: Twenty-three years ago the Ninth Connecticut Regiment, and a section of the Sixth Massachusetts battery visited Pass Christian, Miss. Twenty-three years ago you were the boys in gray, and we were the boys in blue. The war is over. The fires of the bivouac have been extinguished. May they never again be lighted, unless a foreign foe should interfere with this united country. Applause.] There seem to

be but few of your boys left. There are fewer of mine. In a few years we will have passed away. There are none to take our places. Our ranks cannot be filled. In a few years we will have joined the army above, and before we go, before we answer the last roll-call, let us shake hands, and remember that though we have fought on different sides in the same field, we are all citizens of a common and a united country.

The speaker here advanced a step and took the ex¬tended hand of Col. Dyer, of the Third Mississippi. They shook hands cordially amid hearty cheers, and Col. Healy concluded his remarks as follows:

If in the restoration of this flag your thoughts go back to the days when you received it from the fair hands that made it, and the remembrance of those days makes you happy, then you certainly give happiness to the boys of Connecticut, who carried the harp and the shamrock.

Then, while the immense audience sent up a continu¬ous cheer, and the Mexican Band rendered the stirring strains of the national air, the old flag, that had been twenty-three years in captivity, passed from the hands of Col. Healy into those of Capt. Curran, of the Third Mis¬sissippi. * * * Capt. Curran received the flag with the following remarks:

In behalf of the surviving members of our command, as captain of the Dahlgren Guards, of Pass Christian, Miss., it is with sincere pleasure that I receive the flag captured by you from them at Pass Christian on April 4, 1862. We were then Company H, of the Third Missis¬sippi, performing guard service along the unprotected Gulf coast of our State. Afterwards we became attached to Featherstone's Brigade, in Loring's Division of the Army of Tennessee, and as such served through the war, laying down our arms under Gen. Joe Johnston in North Carolina.

This day, sir, recalls another day and another presenta¬tion. It was a proud day for us, when full of patriotic ardor, we first received this flag, the work and gift of the fair hands of the ladies of the Pass, our kindred,

friends and neighbors. It spoke to us then and it speaks to us now of the spirit of our people and the courage of our soldiers. In returning it, you show a spirit which does you honor, and to which we heartily respond. Brave men respect the brave and, the war over, are ready to pursue the paths of peace.

In this return you show that you recognize our deeds in the past, and we accept it as a symbol of peace and good-will in the future. We fought you, as you know, long and well. You gained the day. We accept the issue and welcome you as citizens of a common country. And now, sir, I turn to the chaplain of our brigade, who knows how to speak, and who shared with us the fatigues of the march and the dangers of the field, and will ask him to give fit expression to the feelings that to-day move our hearts.

The flag was then by Capt. Curran placed in the hands of Mrs. M. D. Leonard, of Port Gibson, Miss., and Miss Maggie Kidd, of Aberdeen, Miss., who will act as its cus¬todians in the Mississippi department of the Government Building. An eloquent speech was then delivered by the Rev. Thomas R. Markham, chaplain of the Third Missis¬sippi.

He mentioned the pleasure it gave him to express the sentiments of the Third Mississippi, upon receiving their old flag back from the hands of its captors. It was espe¬cially pleasing to him, because he was a Mississippian born and bred, and he spoke for his State and for his comrades. He appreciated to the full the spirit of mag¬nanimity shown by the people and the legislature of Connecticut, and the knightly courtesy that had induced these gentlemen from Connecticut who were gathered on the platform to undertake in this wintry season, a long journey for the sake of returning to the Third Mississippi a token that would henceforth be as well an emblem of the peace that is, as of the war that was. [Applause.]

The present was the most suitable time that could have been selected for such an event as had just occurred, "for," said the speaker, "last Sabbath was to the people of this country a day of days. It was the day that commem¬orated the birth of our first man. The national authorities of this land acted as became the representatives of a Sab-

bath-keeping people, recognizing the sanctity of a day devoted to one infinitely greater than George Washing¬ton. One day in advance, the Saturday preceding, com¬memorated both the birth of Washington and the com¬pletion of that monument rising upright in its sky-piercing height, higher than any ever before erected by man.

They met together to recall him and his days, and was it not symbolic, sirs, that on that day there were in the ranks of that monumental procession first, your Gen. Ayers, and second our Gen. Fitz Hugh Lee, and that side by side were Edmunds, of New Hampshire, and Carlisle, of Kentucky: Winthrop, of Massachusetts, and Daniel, of Virginia? The object of one and all was to contribute their respect to the memory of that man who had been pronounced first in war, first in peace and first in the hearts of his countrymen—the greatest of good men, the first of best men." The speaker recalled reminiscences of the war, showing the bravery that had been evidenced on both sides, and ended by quoting the words of the immortal Webster, that the union of these States shall exist forever, and that liberty and union shall be one and inseparable now and for evermore.

Major Geo. Gowan, representing the ladies' department of the state of Mississippi, next spoke as follows:

No words of mine can express the emotions which swell my heart and the hearts of all Confederate soldiers on this occasion, nor language give utterance to the mingled joy and sadness which possess me as my eyes turn once again on these familiar colors.

This flag was mere bunting once—common merchandise on the merchant's shelf. Patriotic hands and patriotic hearts made it an emblem of Southern pride and Southern chivalry. It became the flag under which the Third Mississippi Regiment went out to battle:

of loved ones followed it. The sons of Mississippi rallied round it, to follow where it should go, to do and die in its defense. Thus going forth, its mission was to stir the hearts and nerve the hands of Southern soldiers, and

to find its place amid the scenes of carnage to which its presence would be an incitement. Grand flag it was then —the flag of the brave. How few survive who knew it in the pomp and circumstance of its early days.

A change came. In the fierce struggle its defenders went down. The fortune of war transferred it to enemies' hands. It was borne away from Southern soil, away from those who loved it, away from its baptism of fire and blood, to be a trophy of victory in the hands of foe-men. Far from the land of the magnolia and the orange it found its new home. For twenty long years it has remained in its banishment. There it has borne witness to the valor of its captor. There it has told of a South land humiliated, down trodden and left desolate.

But another change comes. Once more that old flag is under a Southern sun, and once more Southern hearts beat around it. Once it was an emblem of the high hopes and the grand enthusiasm with which the young men of Mississippi rushed to battle for their much beloved state. Once again, it was an emblem in the hands of victorious sons of Connecticut, to tell how nobly they have per¬formed the task which Connecticut assigned to them.

Now once again it is an emblem. Sons of Connecti¬cut and sons of Mississippi are once more around it. It went down in its beauty and its pride amid scenes of fra¬tricidal strife. With its stains and its battle scars it went among strangers, and has been treasured as a trophy won by brave men in fight. With its stains and battle scars it is here to-day. It does not look upon fields of blood. It does not lead and inspire to deeds of daring and death. It is an emblem now of peace restored, reconstruction complete, brotherhood re-established. It is an emblem now of mutual interest and mutual affection between the states of Connecticut and Mississippi. It is an emblem of a Union cemented afresh by Northern and Southern blood, a Union to endure forever.

We welcome the old flag for what it has been, and for what it is. We welcome our Connecticut brothers, who bring it as a token of kind feeling and reconciliation. Dear old flag! dear in the memories that cluster around it; dear in the association of which it reminds us ; dearest of all in its present mission of love. Now it tells us that the struggle was not in vain; now it tells us that the rich blood of North and South that mingled upon our battle-

fields was not wasted, but has been the seed of a new nation which shall know no North, no South, because their blood has been so blended. We thank you, men of Connecticut, from our hearts we thank you for this con¬summation. We thank you that we see this old flag once more. Come, let us join hands around it, and take up the old anthem:

"Liberty and union, now and forever, one and inseparable."

HON. P. C LOUNSBURY.

Hon. Phineas C. Lounsbury, of Connecticut, then delivered the following address:

It is an unexpected privilege that has come to me at the eleventh hour, to speak on this occasion in behalf and for Connecticut, my native state. It affords me the greatest pleasure to be able to speak words of friendship, love and truth—breathing the same spirit of cordial fraternity that greets us from the North, as we join hands far across that forever closed-up chasm with our brethren at the South —a chasm that once threatened to divide this great American Republic, which is now the pride alike of every American heart, whether in the North, the South, the East, or the West.

In the formation of this great republic the state that is honored to-day performed well its part. How instinctively our thoughts go back, and with laudable pride, to the days of our forefathers, those noble men of God; men who, obedient to conscience, severed the dearest ties of country and of kindred, braved the perils of the ocean, and the worse perils of an inhospitable shore and an inclement clime to enjoy the rights of civil and religious liberty, to worship God according to the dictates of their own consciences, and when these dearly bought rights were imperiled by the despotism of the mother country, dared to raise the standard of independence and defy the powers of royalty and through long years of deprivation, peril and blood triumphantly vindicated and established that independence; men who, obedient to personal con¬victions, and for the achievement or in defence of civil and religious right, voluntarily exchanged the peaceful implements of industry for the cruel weapons of war.

To-day, as ever, we honor these manliest of men; we honor them for that spirit of liberty and their love of right

which so possessed their souls that it strengthened them to endure hardships and privations for years, in order that they and we, their posterity, might enjoy individual rights and constitutional liberties, and unto God do we ever render thanksgiving and praise for His guiding hand, leading them on through many a dark and dreary season in the righteousness of their cause, from a self-declared independence to one owned and acknowledged by the nations of the earth. No longer subjected to the man¬dates of the king of the isle across the sea, they became free to form a government that was destined to become grander and more glorious than they ever conceived— whose arches should span the continent from ocean to ocean and from the lakes to the Gulf, and beneath the dome of whose vast temple of liberty the oppressed of all nations might find a welcome and a home. * * *

While we can never forget the heroes of revolutionary fame, may we not come down a little later and remember the heroes of 1812, who so gallantly and gloriously preserved and maintained all those institutions of justice and the rights bequeathed them by their fathers? That was a conflict in which the then infant state of Louisana immortalized herself, and in which the beautiful city of New Orleans made herself forever known to fame, by that victory, so signal, so complete—at that battle that bears her name—that the British lion has never dared to put foot on, or claim, one acre of Uncle Sam's domains.

We of Connecticut honor the heroes of New Orleans. We honor the chieftain who won fair laurels that shall ever encircle his noble brow. We honor those brave men who on that battlefield builded a tower of fame reaching to the very heavens, around which has gathered a halo of glory outshining the brightness of the meridian day. We honor the city of New Orleans, which has honored the loyalty and bravery of Gen. Andrew Jackson by a square that bears a monument that glorifies his name.

We honor the spirit that caused those prophetic words of his to be inscribed in letters of granite, those words that have long been indelibly written on the tablet of even' loyal heart, "The Union must and shall be preserved." I said those words of Andrew Jackson were prophetic words. They have again and again been verified in the history of the nation. England tested the strength of our Union, and, to her sorrow, proved its power.

You at the South had a long, strong pull and a pull all together, and it would not break; and it never will break, for it was welded, not in the sunlight of prosperity, but in the fire of battle. There were honest differences of opinion at the North and in the South, but they nevertheless did lead to dissensions that culminated in war; but in that war they were finally and forever settled, and the crowning glory is the happy issue in which you to-day at the South rejoice alike with us at the North in an undivided nation that is rapidly becoming an undivided people, for we to-day join hands and shout and sing, "The Union, now and forever, one and indivisible."

There may be, and no doubt there will be, minor dif¬ferences of opinion, but are we not less selfish as a people and so respect each other's views ? I can but believe that one of the greatest benefits to be derived from this Cotton Centennial Exposition will be the bringing together of the people from all over this vast country, giving us an opportunity, as never before, of knowing one another, wiping out all sectional lines, knowing no North, no South, no East, no West, simply a solid nation from the Canadas to the Gulf, and from the Atlantic to the Pacific over which shall float the stars and stripes, in fact and in very deed, "over the land of the free and the home of the brave."

As a token of the fraternal feeling that now exists our eyes have just witnessed a scene scarcely precedented in the annals of history. One year ago, indeed, a Grand Army Post of Connecticut, named after that gallant soldier, James E. Moore, under whom I had the honor to serve, returned to the Louisiana Guards of this city their colors.

Now, to-day, the state of Connecticut returns through the intrepid Col. Healy, of the gallant Ninth, the flag they captured from the equally brave and gallant men of the Third Mississippi. I doubt not that if there was a flag which you could return to a regiment of our state you would be quick to manifest a like kindly feeling with that which we exhibit to-day. Not with a spirit of boasting, but in recognition of a fact which does honor to the soldiers whose rifles you learned to respect, I may be per¬mitted to say that though the Connecticut regiments were often in the thickest of the fight, and though their flags were pierced with shot and shell, they carried them back

to their native state, where they now encircle the statue of the Governor, who presented them, with not one left behind. And now, soldiers of the two armies, but now citizens of the one common nation, recognizing the one flag and looking forward to the same destiny, let us address our¬selves to the new duties of the hour. The cry of earth's wailing tribes is in our ear, the struggle of oppressed nationalities is before our eye; let us build stronger and broader this temple of freedom, that those who wail and those who struggle may here find a rest and a home, and then this mighty nation shall neither crumble nor fall until the great archangel shall stand one foot upon the sea and one upon the land and declare that time shall be no more.

Mr. J. R. G. Pitkin, of New Orleans, next spoke as follows:

I am summoned by the Board of Management of this Exposition to discharge a pleasant duty. A word of preface:

I feel wholly at home with men of Connecticut, not only because I was a school-boy and law student within her borders, and because I have since stood upon her plat¬forms, but especially because I am descended from her tempestuous old governor, Wm. Pitkin, at whose council-board sat Jonathan Trumbull and Roger Sherman among other distinguished patriots. I am proud of my New England seasoning and of the rich vital contribution she has made to American civilization and to the nation.

With this obtrusion of self, let me say that no student of American growth can forget that Connecticut drafted in 1639 tne ^rst complete charter in the New World, in which was lodged all the material fibre of our present National and State constitutions—and that she projected her wise and efficient school system the ensuing year. She felt that to secure a stable political structure she must discreetly mould the man or brick with which to erect it.

To mature the man to his best competence for self-assertion, and to afford him so complete a representative plan that his government should be his ampler self, were the noble aims of the fathers of Connecticut; and I need not add that her enlightened career has been continuous testimony to their wisdom.

Nor need I recall her relation to the French and Indian wars and her sturdy temper toward Great Britain, against which she proportionately furnished more men and money than any other colony. These and other historic events of that past were simply expressions of her stout determination to compass a staunch and well-ordered commonwealth or to expand it to an American nation. She may have talked through her nose, but she spoke as well through her guns ; she may have shown hard elbows, but it was to open a path for manhood and for a splendid civilization. She had loved the mother country, but when her sons found it needful to draw iron colons and periods from their shot-pouches to interpret the misread charter of justice to man, they did it and made wadding of British prescripts.

In that especially dramatic incident in her history, when the royal Governor Andros demanded her charter; when the candles upon the Assembly table where it lay were suddenly extinguished, and the bold Wadsworth bore it off and secreted it in an oak, it was perhaps a rude thing to leave his Excellency in the dark and for the rest of his term, as to the whereabouts of the precious patent,—and he doubtless twitched his ruffles and denounced the ill-mannered colonists, but they were for the very substance of things and had no obeisance nor courtesies to pay in which was a jot of surrender. In rendering unto Caesar the things that were Cassar's they recognized him as standing in their own shoes and not in Andros' red coat. The same peremptory moral breath that blew out the Hartford candles, blew later from the cannon's mouth patents, governors and Great Britain herself out of the colonies and across the Atlantic! [Applause.] There was a great beneficent purpose behind the stern visor of the colonist's frown. Connecticut wanted a genuine free¬dom, and this trait in her sons may explain the laxity of her divorce laws to-day. [Laughter.] It is a marvel that amid all her harsh early experiences she exhibited so little of the intolerant disposition that characterized Massachusetts and drove Roger Williams thence to Rhode Island; although I suspect that as good Roger wanted his Baptist followers to lead clean lives amid all the buffets of fortune, he had an orthodox eye upon Rhode Island's delightful bays, in which so many thou¬sands of us, in grateful deference to his memory, seek total immersion every summer. [Laughter.]

There is certainly no record that Connecticut ever punished a witch—except by marriage—and I soberly re¬member that even during my sojourn there, her be¬witching women were often visited with this penalty after having been subjected for a period to the custody of some attentive young man and to the severe conventional ordeal of singing schools and sleigh rides. [Laughter.] In fact, my chaotic admixture of experience and hearsay moves me to venture the somewhat confident statement that the custodian has been known to surrender the reins to the fair object of his charge and hold her with both arms in order to save her from the perilous consequences of her rash driving; and the slowness of the horse in no wise diminished the intense police power of his solicitude. [Laughter.]

Old Samuel Peters, a Tory chaplain, a copy of whose Ancient History of Connecticut I have inherited in the original edition,—and Appleton's reprint of five or six years ago is at the command of you all,—devised, it is clear, what were called the Blue Laws of Connecticut as a slander upon the State, and a man who ascribes them to her to-day by way of taunt, simply discloses his dis-charity and ignorance. The liberality of her people, even in Peter's time, is indeed a matter of wonder. Nor can we forget that Connecticut has been a nursery of men who have been noble factors in the growth of other States. Their name is legion,—so are her Yale men,—so are her insurance agents. [Laughter.] At every turn, all over the Union, we are reminded that an educated man is the best gift to a State and a policy the best honesty to a family. [Laughter.] With her colleges, her grand school system, her libraries, her numerous asylums, hos¬pitals and factories,—with her affluent resources for brains and hands, and with her tons of manhood to the acre, Connecticut can hold her head erect amid her sister¬hood of states with pride for her history, service and de¬velopment, and for the fruitful distribution of her worthy sons throughout the Union.

Her return of these Confederate colors to-day imparts a spirit that merits our grateful notice. A peace enforces a grave duty upon the parties to it; it demands that each, victor and vanquished, shall maintain the unbroken stacks of its guns and forbear to re-awaken enmities concluded by the articles of peace. In view of the precious future

before us, and the sober relations and responsibility of each citizen to it, there is no dishonor to which an Ameri¬can citizen can debase himself so abject as that of fighting anew the old issues, whether in Connecticut or Louisiana —issues that remain in the tranquil hands of the dead and are registered in the ordinances of the nation. [Applause.]

In this regard I walk the soil of our republic as I en¬ter a cathedral, with a reverent sense of the sacrifices and examples that emphasize the personal demand upon myself. Patriotism should be a religion. I do not study the device of the stole or the face of the ministrant who wears it, nor should I be swerved from my devout civic duty by the partisanship of any Executive. The national altar at all times claims my affection and support, and he who stands by it, mantled with the sanctity of popular will, is a priest in holy functions. We are not patriots by paroxysms, but independently of the quadrennial fortunes of party, if we be true to our civic trusts. To me, as doubtless to you, it is most touching to see these Union veterans bearing back these colors across the trenches and hushed plains of both armies with fraternal greeting. Surely the gray storm-clouds were a presage of this serener blue in our American skies. [Applause.] Heaven has its own plan and time. Like boys, we build our statues of snow and pelt each other with snowballs to assault or defend them, but God, with a grander motive, nourishes the vitality of our soul with it for the vernal sun. We often misconceive the winters of our moral and political experience until the benignant summer of our prosperity follows upon our spent statues, snowballs and red, pathetic stains and footprints. I believe the Ameri¬can Union was never so firmly entrenched as now in the fellowship of her people; never so fully assured as now in the warm, fraternal clasp to which the old, stern battle-clench has thawed open in pledge of great progressive ends.

It is not amiss that I should advert to a body that, in i8i4,met at the capital of Connecticut—Hartford—where these captured colors have rested for a score of years. It was composed of delegates from New England (Roger Sherman, Harrison Gray Otis and George Cabot among the number), and was distinguished for such candor of purpose against the Federal government in its prosecu-

tion of the war with Great Britain that a Federal military officer was upon the ground to watch its proceedings. The rising murmurs of this war were the cradle-song of Louisiana as a State. It is not seemly for me at this late day to attempt an analysis of the motives that signalized that assemblage. I choose rather to remember that the tidings of Jackson's victory below this city, the patriotic service of Louisianians and others under him, and the peace concluded at Ghent, arrested the perilous purpose of the Hartford Convention; to know that throughout Connecticut and New England as throughout Louisiana there is to-day a common and fervid zeal to maintain this republic, and that never again will the states, whether of New England or of the South, refuse, as then, their militia as a wall between her and hazard. To-day Con¬necticut and Louisiana, the former visited at an earlier and the latter at a later stage of its history with a charge of treason, meet beneath this vast roof and challenge the faith of the Union as bulwarks, each of which a drum-tap will man with tens of eager thousands, and which the arts and education of a dearly bought peace will fortify to a surer maintenance of a jealous American brother¬hood.

In no place so fitting as this, where the American man is ennobled by industrial achievement and is bounteous in suggestion and incentive, could this challenge and pledge be given, and a declaration be made for the Union like Plato's for the world when he said: "All in the world is for the sake of the rest, and the places of the single parts are so ordered as to subserve to the preservation and ex¬cellency of the whole." Gentlemen of the Ninth Con¬necticut Regiment, which burst through our gates in 1862, report to your comrades upon your return that you have found in this old city no sullen hospitality, and that as every May her ex-Confederates devoutly visit the graves of your dead, so to your living she is always sum¬mer at heart. The soil whence she plucks her memorial blooms and the heaped arms in which she bears them to Chalmette, are always yours, come when you may. She will cherish your dead, and her pledge is the surer because she fosters her own. [Applause.]

The day has passed when these banners flared like torches in the grasp of hostile armies marching through the dark hours of civil conflict toward or in hope of vic¬torious dawns. We all face the same way! The stern tramp of men has settled to the metre of a calm, strong American heart-beat, and, as Pythagoras, in passing a smithy, caught from a beaten anvil the musical scale by which nations sing their paeans in brass to-day, so the stern pound and buffet of civil war have disclosed to North and South the grand resources of prowess and the broad brows and fervent souls with which we all as fellow-countrymen may jointly command, under Providence, a destiny for History and Song to remember forever. [Ap¬plause.]

It is needless to say that you can wholly trust these fighting parsons (pointing to Dr. Markham) upon either side and their congregations of Old Ironsides in camp; it is only the men who, after the great struggle, have dis¬covered their tardy gifts of valor and statesmanship; who insist that one's manhood, aspiration and civic service were grounded with one's gun, and who conceive that taunt is argument and embittered partisanship is patri¬otic expression: from such men alone can come menace to our common country! [Applause.]

In the name of the Board of Management, men of Con¬necticut and of Mississippi, I tender you an unstinted welcome. Over the heads of us all, as brethren from the Canadian to the Gulf line, one standard sways upon its staff as if pent with a mighty and generous passion, and God grant that the blood in its stripes may never, never, never soak into its stars!

The Mexican Band, with the grand organ accompani¬ment, then played "Marching Through Georgia," fol¬lowed by "Dixie." Both were received with the greatest enthusiasm, which rose to a pitch of intensity when the two great military anthems were blended into one, as it were, and "The Star Spangled Banner" sprung from the union.

A special feature in the musical programme of the exercises was the use of the grand organ by Mr. Harvy P. Earle, of New Haven, Conn., whose skillful performance

seemed to lend additional beauty to the tones of the grand instrument as they resounded through the hall. The effect of the organ, when played in accompaniment to the Mexican Band, was magnificent, and the applause showered on the musicians testified to the enjoyment it afforded the audience.

Capt. Daniel Curran, of the Third Mississippi, who received the returned flag from Col. Healy, was born in New York City, but his parents removed to Pass Chris¬tian, Miss., when he was but six years of age. There they settled. When the war broke out young Curran was very zealous and active in aiding to organize the Dahlgren Guards, of Pass Christian, which became attached to the Third Regiment, Mis¬sissippi Volunteers, Featherstone's Brigade, Loring's Division. He joined the company as a private, took part in the engagements of the Tennessee campaign, as well as at Vicksburg and Jackson, Miss. He was promoted to the captaincy of his company for valor, and on July 24, 1864, was shot through the body at the battle of Peach Tree Creek, near Atlanta, Ga., from which wound he never fully recovered.

He was subsequently employed as bookkeeper, and later accepted a position in the Hibernia Bank, now the Hibernia National, New Orleans, where he gave such satisfaction that he was steadily promoted, and finally ap¬pointed to the responsible position of paying teller. Capt. Curran was a member of the Association of the Army of Tennessee, and was much beloved and esteemed by all who knew him.

Shortly after the Ninth's committee returned to Con¬ necticut from New Orleans, the following letter was sent Capt. Curran:

NEW HAVEN, March —, 1885.

Dear Captain—During the brief visit to your city of the committee of the 9th Connecticut it was their pleasure

to be entertained in a marked degree by several gentle¬men, to whom they will ever feel under the deepest obli¬gations. So much sincere good feeling was exhibited that they are convinced that their mission was a fruitful one.

They wish to show their appreciation of your efforts toward the accomplishment of their desires by asking you to accept a cane, sent to you this day, as a memento of their esteem for you.

May you carry it for many a day, and when old age reaches you, and your steps become less active, lean on the cane, and remember the happy occasion that made us friends. Yours fraternally,

JAMES REYNOLDS,
LAWRENCE O'BRIEN,
MICHAEL P. COEN,
JOHN G. HEALY.

The cane just mentioned was a gold-headed one of artistic design. On one side of the head were engraved the words: "To Capt. Daniel Curran from His Friends, James Reynolds, Lawrence O'Brien, Michael P. Coen and John G. Healy." On the reverse the inscription was: "Connecticut Day, New Orleans, La., Feb. 26, 1885," and on the end, "9th C. V., 3d Mississippi."

The following pathetic news paragraph appeared in a New Orleans paper late in Jan., 1894: "Yesterday, while the laborers were at work digging the revetment levee at West End, they found the skeleton of a man between two pickets, and near the skeleton was found a brass but¬ton with the initials 'U. S.,' on it. The skeleton is sup¬posed to be that of one of the United States soldiers belonging to the Ninth Connecticut Regiment, which was stationed at West End when General Butler was in command of the city. The skeleton was taken in charge by Mr. A. B. Messmer, the keeper of the city bridge, and will be given a Christian burial."