Memorial Day at Staunton, 1879

Written And Delivered By Captain James Bumgardner, Jr., With A Historical Introduction By D. Jonathan White

Staunton, Virginia, June 9, 1879

James Bumgardner served as a lieutenant in the West Augusta Guard before the war. He enlisted in the 5th Virginia Infantry in April 1861, serving as the regimental adjutant. He was then elected lieutenant in the 52nd Virginia Infantry, serving with that regiment as a company commander and then as regimental commander through the Wilderness and Bethesda Church. He was captured at 3rd Winchester and paroled when the fighting ended. After the war, he served as Commonwealth’s Attorney and judge, in addition to being active in the Confederate Veterans’ organization.

In this speech, he was speaking at the Memorial Day observances in Thornrose Cemetery in Staunton, Virginia. Because Staunton was surrounded by battles at McDowell, Cross Keys, Port Republic, and Piedmont and served as a hospital center for Confederate soldiers, Thornrose became the burial ground for some 1,500 Confederate soldiers, both known and unknown, from every state of the Confederacy. The Confederate monument was dedicated to honor them in 1888. In 1879, Captain Bumgardner spoke at the Memorial Day observances at the Confederate section of the cemetery. — D. Jonathan White

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“The Memorial Day at Staunton”

Address of Captain James Bumgardner, Jr.

Mr. President, Gentlemen of the Memorial Association, Ladies and Gentlemen: Whether it be Westminster Abbey, the chapel of Henry the Seventh, under the dome of the Invalides, a village churchyard, or a spot like this; whether the tenant be King, Black Prince or Emperor, hero or peasant, woman or child, a mysterious and reverential emotion in the bosom of living man attracts him to the silent home of the dead.

A nation’s monuments are the brief epitome of its history. They record at once the annals of the dead, and the character and faith of the living.

Whatsoever has been achieved of greatness, whatsoever in the character, spirit, and purpose of the dead that challenges the reverence and admiration of the living, is recorded on the tomb. Whatsoever is believed or hoped in regard to that life which is to come after death, is written in the epitaph. A brave, noble, patriotic, devoted, and wise people perpetuate in bronze and marble the memory of its heroes, patriots, saints, martyrs, and sages.

Hence the traveler in a strange land examines the cemetery with as much interest as the living city; for he sees there, at one view, all of a country’s past and all of its present.

If he learn then that the dead-brave are forgotten, he knows that the living are brave no longer. If he sees that the patriotic, the virtuous, and saintly of the past are not honored, he knows that patriotism, virtue, and faith have sought another clime. But where the graves of heroes are kept green, and where the foot of the pilgrim still seeks the shrine of the martyr, he knows that courage, truth, faith, and honor still abide in the hearts of the living.

By the monumental record which we make for the men who sleep here, who were of our country, of our kindred and blood, and who died as martyrs in our cause, will we, their survivors, the guardians of their name and fame, be known and judged as long as memory of their deeds live in the history of man.

It is said that we come here on this annual memorial day to do honor to the memory of the Confederate dead. Do we not rather come to perform a sacred duty to ourselves?

How dare we, as we are to be judged by future generations, omit to leave behind us. as the contemporaries, comrades, fathers, brothers, children of these men, imperishable evidence that we, who in life knew them face to face, who saw how nobly they lived, and how grandly they died, loved, honored, and reverenced them, whom history and song will ever proudly cherish as the brightest examples of faith, courage, and devotion that this world has ever seen; to whom aliens and strangers have erected monuments, to whom enemies have brought tributes of admiration, and for whom, from beyond the sea, have come chaplets and laurel wreaths, and praise in words like these:

“The knightliest of the knightly race,

Who since the days of old,

Have kept the lamp of chivalry

Alight in hearts of gold.”

Let us imagine that some three generations have past and that the survivors of the tremendous struggle in which these men fell have, like these, been laid each in his “narrow home”; and that some stranger comes in through yonder gate to learn the lessons that a spot like this will ever teach. We follow him as he passes slowly on, reading step by step the brief history of each tenant of the tomb.

On most of the monuments which will then crown the thickly peopled spot, he will read but “the short and simple annals of the poor”; a name, a date, a brief tribute of sorrow, gratitude or affection. He may pause here and there to note the vain pomp of wealth and pride, blazoned in florid inscriptions on costly mausoleum.

He will linger at the record of a life begun in high purpose, spent in noble acts, and closed in honor and reverence. And not long will it require for him to learn whether the living who there buried their dead out of their sight, held in honor most, the achievements prompted by selfish pride, grasping avarice, and earthly lusts, or those purer, better, nobler deeds, which find their reward in rest of saint, in martyr’s crown, or soldier’s grave.

And reaching the place where we now stand, though he see no column, shaft, or statue, and read no name graven on stone or bronze, he will see from shade and turf and flower, that the spot is a sepulchre and a shrine: that the cherished relics of a country’s noblest, best, and bravest are gathered here.

He will ask some bystander, “Who were these?” “Seventeen hundred Confederate soldiers.” “Went they forth to battle and to death from the city near?”

“No, they come from all over this Southern land, from the Potomac to the Gulf—from the Atlantic to the Rio Grande.”

“Were they gathered from some tremendous field of carnage near and buried here?” “No, they died, it may be, on a hundred fields or in the cheerless hospital ward, after the long torture of lingering wounds, or the slow agony of consuming fever.” “Belonged they, then, to some immortal Band, Household Guard, or Legion of Honor picked from the veterans of a hundred fields, covered with honors, and glittering with orders and decorations, splendid with shining panoply, and reserved in pampered ease, to rush to the front in a desperate crisis to conquer a doubtful victory or cover disastrous defeat?” Alas, no, they knew nothing of the pride, pomp, and circumstances of glorious war; nothing of its prizes, honors, and rewards; to their share fell only its trials, toils, privations, dangers; but clad in rags, spent with march and watch, worn with famine, they stood in battle storm, firm as Roman Legions, or Macedonian Phalanx—died with the devotion of Immortal Band, and rushed into the deadly charge as freely as Household Guard. “What then, was their peculiar history?” “They had no peculiar history. Their history is the history of the Southern cause, and of the soldiers who upheld it.”

The Confederate soldier needs no eulogy; his devotion and deeds will speak for themselves in history. He was tried by every test that measures the courage, endurance, faith, and devotion of man, and was never found wanting—and he will be best understood and appreciated when placed in closest comparison with the most renowned soldiers of other countries and other ages.

There is one incident in the history of the Army of Northern Virginia, so similar in many respects to an incident in the history of the Army of Italy which occurred during that campaign, conceded to be the most successful and splendid of all the campaigns of Napoleon, which so strikingly illustrates the character and spirit of the Confederate soldier, that I cannot forbear repeating it here, though at the risk of telling a twice-told tale.

The success of the entire Italian campaign turned upon the successful passage of the Bridge of Lodi. The Austrian army with its artillery were massed upon the other side, and the narrow pass must be won in the face of the concentrated fire. The French column was formed and ordered to advance. They staggered under the withering fire and retreated; but failure was ruin—the pass must be won. They were rallied, brought back to the charge, but again retreated; yet the pass must be won; when Napoleon himself, and by his order, Massena, Berthier, Cervoni, Dalmayne, and Lannes, placed themselves at the head of the column—“Follow your Generals,” was the order. They followed their Generals, passed the bridge, pierced the Austrian centre, and won the victory.

In the earliest dawn of a misty morning—the morning of the memorable 12th of May, 1864—one of those tremendous massed columns, which from time to time during that frightful campaign, were hurled against the army of Northern Virginia, dashed against our line with the fury and force of a tornado, and burst it asunder; and, through the breach, poured line after line and column after column, as wave follows wave in ocean storm.

In that moment hung suspended the fate of the Army of Northern Virginia. In the instant, just on the spot that rushing, solid, ever-increasing mass must be met, stopped, hurled back, or all is lost. Nearly in rear of the breach were two brigades, lying along the line of their stacked arms. In a few seconds after the order to “fall in.” they were ready for action, and General Lee rode to their front. And the picture he made, as the grand old man sat there on his horse, with his noble head bare, and looked from right to left, as if to meet each eye that flashed along the line, can never be forgotten by a man that stood there.

And every soldier along that line knew what that look meant; that it meant—“Soldiers, follow your General”; knew that work so desperate was to be done, and that interests so tremendous hung upon its successful doing, that everything, even the life of our greatest chief himself, must be put to the dreadful hazard, if necessary, to secure the result. But those men needed no such order and no such example. They wanted no General or Field Marshal dismounted in their front to stimulate them to do and dare all in mortal power.

From three thousand lips at once burst the cry—“General Lee to the Rear”—and not a foot would stir until he was led back through a gap in the line; and then the word was given, and the line moved forward, without pause, or waver, or break, right on, up to the very face of the solid opposing mass; on, till sabres clashed and bayonets crossed; on till the first line was driven back in confusion upon the second, and the first and second upon the third; on, into the angle of the salient, where batteries, massed on right, and massed on left, poured in a storm of shot and shell upon either flank, and still on, pressing back the stubborn heavy mass, covering the earth in piles with the slain, till the enemy, his organization lost in confusion, retired from the dreadful carnage, yielded back the captured works, and the crisis passed, and the field was saved.

Of the French engaged in what Napoleon calls the terrible passage of the Bridge of Lodi, the loss was one in four. The proportion of loss in the force engaged in that charge on the 12th of May, I do not know; but in one regiment, the centre regiment of one of the brigades, and if more exposed than others I know it not and know not why, the loss was one in two.

The time has come, or is soon coming, when personal sorrow for the loss of these men will be consoled. The time will soon come when these dead men. and those who mourned them, will belong alike to the past.

Their record is made up, and in it is written the verdict that they were worthy of the cause for which they died—were worthy of any cause in which men ever died.

Some pages are yet to be added to our record, and let us endeavor so to fill them as to secure for ourselves the verdict that we were worthy the offering of such lives.

References

1. Staunton Spectator, June 10, 1879, p. 3, col. 1-2.