The Stark County Democrat

TENNESSEE.

Graves of the Confederate Dead Strewn With Flowers—Ex-Federal Soldiers also Participate in the Memorial Exercises.

NASHVILLE, May 28.—The graves of the Confederate dead buried at Mt. Olivet and Mt. Calvary Cemeteries were decorated with flowers this afternoon. A large number of Federal and ex-Federals were present and participated in the ceremonies.

THE ORATION.

The following is a synopsis of the oration:

"In the midst of funeral wreaths and sad tearful heart beatings, it is with a sense of deepest gratification that I am able to hail this auspicious day, not because we have ceased to mourn for our dead comrades who sleep here, not that we are rejoiced to bury out of mind the cause in support of which they fell, the victims of a pure and heroic patriotism. In our heart of hearts we shrine their memories, and their fame shall be as precious to us as the virtue of our women or our hopes for our children. I never belonged to that class in whose hearts surrender, or after wrongs, to put out the light of hope for my country—my whole country—neither in the hurricane of feeling which swept us into war, nor in the midst of years in which passion and swords revelled in blood not even on the black winter's night when I rode in the rear of General Hood's broken and almost crushed veterans across the raging Tennessee over crazy pontoons, nor on the saddest of all days, when at Greenville, Ala., I put my parole in my pocket, saw my comrades lay down their arms, our color-bearer fold and place in his bosom our ball riddled flag, and in minute sorrow turned my horse's head toward the home of my boyhood, midst the cedars and limestone crags of the old volunteer State—I say not even in these hours did I ever lose faith in the destiny of the South or the unity of the nation. To me the war, its course and results, have even been an episode both painful and necessary in the unfolding drama of our national existence. I have never served in a belief in the necessary oneness of these United States. After enumerating the causes that brought about the war, and believing that God and progress were in it, that these our comrades have not fallen in vain, he closed by urging a little more of the prompt and soldiery energy with which John C. Brown followed up the Trenton murderers, a few more Southern tours upon the part of Congressional statesmen and committees, and speeches from other soldiers such as Bartlett and the heroic death of these men, our comrades shall be seen to be rich fruit in a national life more glorious than the oldest past until the day dawns when the names of those truly good and great on either side will be turned in the nation's history as a common heritage of fame."