Public Ledger

A Truth of History.

The subjoined eloquent extract is made from an address recently delivered by Colonel Breckinridge, of Kentucky, who, if we are not mistaken, commanded a cavalry brigade in the Confederate army. The occasion of the address was the dedication of a monument erected to the Confederate dead. It is an eloquent tribute to the heroism of the South, and should be preserved with our cherished memories:

"The contest was a most unequal one - the South fought at every disadvantage. With a white population of less than five millions and a half; with an arms-bearing population of less than nine hundred thousand; Maryland, Missouri, Tennessee, Kentucky and Virginia divided; without a regular soldier or a military organization; without a ship or navy yard; with but few guns, and they of inferior quality, and not a manufactory where any part of a gun or any part of its ammunition could be made; without money or organized credit; cut off from all the world, in whose markets she was not allowed to purchase even the medicines for the sick; isolated from all mankind, and even thrust out from all sympathy; encompassed with vastly outnumbering foes, whose armies, daily recruited from every nation under the sun, were supplied with every appliance of warfare and every possible comfort as well as necessary; every harbor closed with watching war vessels, and every stream occupied by hostile gunboats; her soldiers hungry, ragged and barefooted; she yet fought with such tremendous power, and was wielded with such skill, that the expenditure of money to conquer was more than would have purchased every foot of her land, every house in her cities and villages, every slave on her plantations, and all her property of every kind; and the killed and permanently disabled of her enemies amounted to more than her entire armies during the whole struggle. You may search history in vain for a parallel."