Valley Virginian

From the broad and calm Potomac,
To the Rio Grande's waves,
Have the brave and noble fallen--
And the earth is strewn with graves.
In the vale and on the hill-side,
Thro' the woods and by the stream,
Has the martial pageant faded,
Like the vision of a dream.

Where the reveille resounded,
And the stirring call "to arms,"
Nod the downy heads of clover
To the winds mesmeric charms;
Where the heels of trampling squadrons
Beat to dust the mountain pass,
Hang the dew drops fragile crystals
From the slender stems of grass.

Where the shock of meeting armies
Roused the air in raging waves,
And with sad and hollow groanings
Echoed earth's deep hidden caves;
Where the cries of crushed and dying
Pierced the elemental strife,
Where lay death in sick'ning horror
Neath the maddened rush of life--

Quiet now reigns, sweet and pensive,
All is hushed in dreamless rest,
And the pitying arms of Nature,
Hold our heroes on her breast.
Shield them well, oh tender mother,
While the morn and evening breath
Whispers us, the sad survivors,
Of their victory in death.

What, though no stately column
Their cherished names may raise,
To dim the eyes and move the lips
With gratitude and grace--
The blue sky, hung with bannered clouds,
Their solemn dome shall be,
All heaven's choiring winds, shall chant
The anthem of the free.

The Spring with vine leafed arms shall clasp
Their hillocked resting places,
And summer roses droop above
With flushed and dewy faces;
Fair daisies, rayed and crowned, shall spring
Like stars from out the dust,
And look to kindred stars on high,
With eyes of patient trust.

And vainly shall the wilting's lip
Assail with envious dirt
The fame of our heroic dead,
Whose strong hold is the heart--
The Nation's heart, not wholly crushed,
Tho' each throb be in pain;
For life and hope will still survive,
Where love and faith remain.

Eufaula, Alabama, June, 1865.

Below we continue the list of Confederate Soldiers buried in Thornrose Cemetary, at this place.

Virginia

H. C. Gibson, 5; A. Goody, 55; R. Smith, 61; H. G. Dargen, 61; T. Petway, 53; A. Williams, 53; J. E. McBride, 57; B. F. Shader, 25; W. G. Woodruff, 5; Sergeant D. Matridge, 61; W. Stone, 16.

North Carolina

M. S. Hagan, 23; Sergeant J. Mumb, 27; J. Shreeves, 13; J. Paget, 18; C. A. Ramsey, 1st N. C. Art; Ruben Crutchfield, 22; Ruben Wagoner, 1; A. C. Wilson, 18; C. A. Craig, 37; J. J. Parsons, 48; S. Bradley, 37; A. Reddick, 46; T. Alexander, 49; J. Ellis, 2; W. Gray, 30; S. Reyman, 2; J. S. Burnett, 7; W. Grey, 59; J. M. Keet, 23; A. G. Heat, 2; I. Edwards, 35; A. Dees, 48; J. McBride, 2; E. Crocket, 1; J. S. Claman, 20; W. A. Chance, 13.

South Carolina

Sam'l Cooke, 7; J. H. Foster, Cobbs Legion; J. J. Thompson, 7; G. H. Liman, 7; A. P. Flagler, 15; J. Hudson, Palmetto; H. D. Orwalt, 3; J. C. Collins, 8; S. P. Hinney, 3; J. R. Luster, 7; M. Stokes, 6; B. F. Green, 15; J. W. Brown, 3; J. R. Worther, 1; D. F. Roper, 7; T. Hinton, 3; D. H. Bailey, 18.

Alabama

T. L. Howard, 13; Timothy Ryan, 8; J. Sloan, 5; M. B. Spradlon, 13; Corp'l Lewis Hicks, [unclear]; E. Stickley, 26; J. J. Turner, 47; W. Coogler, 4.

Florida

W. Walker, --; W. Wood, 5; W. G. Williams, 5.

Georgia

William Harrold, 22; H. Hobbs, 11; J. S. Houghton, 3; J. H. Banksten, 53; D. H. Roberts, 51; P. Kelley, 12; A. A. Every, 38; F. M. Richardson, 5; H. Scarboro, --; A. Page, 35; R. W. Roland, 3; W. Seagrass, 51; H. S. Roland, 50; D. Douglas, 26; A. M. Patman, 23; A. Jackson, 53; W. H. Higginbottom, 15; J. M. Harlan, 61; J. A. Shrapebire, 10; E. Ward, 13.

There are crises in the history of States as in the lives of individuals; periods when the character of the future perhaps for a century is to be determined by the action of the present. These crises come unbidden, and the responsibilities they bring are not to be put aside. They demand action, and the failure to act is oftentimes as decisive as the contrary course. In these cases opportunities lost are opportunities destroyed. Upon such a time have we fallen in Virginia. Amid the ruins of our former civilization we are to lay the foundations of a new structure. Our people and Legislature are now shaping the destiny of the State, most probably for generations. History will hold them to account for the manner in which they perform their duties.

Amid the duties of the present there are none more important than those which tend to the development of our resources, the increase of material wealth. Our public improvements, as a main agent in this matter, should be pushed forward with all energy. The completion of the Canal and our great Central railway line would in ten years transform the State. The trade and travel that would pour from the [unclear] of these, the most direct lines, to the sea board, would build up our cities, and infuse new life into our commercial interests. The state is too much crippled now to finish these works herself, but it is possible to negotiate with capital elsewhere to effect it. No better investment could be made than to give the State's interest in many of her unfinished public works to any parties who would undertake to complete them. Some of our public works offer such inducements for the investment of capital that parties are to be found willing to complete them. Some of our public works offer such inducements for the investment of capital that parties are to be found willing to complete them, if the mere permission to do so be given. This is the case with the great scheme in which our section is specially interested; viz: a Valley Railroad. We are glad to see so much interest manifested, from the Potomac to the Tennessee road on the subject of this improvement. A generation has been frittered away in attempts to harmonize contending interests, and in feeble efforts to do that, which, if it had been done thirty years ago, would to-day have made us five-fold more rich and prosperous than we now are. We hope this is to be the case no longer; that the Valley is no longer to be sacrificed to petty interests of some Eastern Virginia Railroad, or to the effete notions of some driveller in regard to concentrating trade in our own cities. We have now the opportunity of having a road made from Winchester to Salem, of having the magnificent agricultural and mineral resources of the finest portion of the State opened up. We can have from five to ten millions of dollars brought into and distributed in the Valley, in the next three years. All that is needed is to give the Baltimore and Ohio Company the right of way. The charter can be so guarded as to prevent discrimination in favor of Baltimore, and when the road is done three-fourths of this productive region will be from fifty to one hundred miles nearer Richmond, by canal and rail, than to Baltimore. Nothing but a prejudice, proof against intelligence, can see in such a work any danger to Richmond, or to any other interests in Eastern Virginia. Its largest benefits would accrue to those very interests it is supposed to endanger; while to the Valley it would bring speedy resuscitation. The very money that would be spent among us in its construction, would go forward, relieving the pressing necessity that may cripple our energies, and the [unclear] would open a new era in our [unclear] city. We see that the neighboring [unclear]. At Lexington a public meeting is to be held on the subject. This example should be followed here. We should have a mass meeting of such character and numbers as would give an unmistakable indication of public feeling. Let the hands of our Senators and Delegates be strengthened by an expression of sentiment from the people. Let us convince our friends beyond the Ridge that we are in earnest. Could we not have such a meeting at the January Court?

In a conversation I once held with an eminent minister of the church, he made this fine observation: 'We will say nothing of the way in which that sex usually conduct an argument; but the intuitive judgements of women are often more to be relied upon than the conclusions which we reach by an elaborate process of reasoning. No man that has an intelligent wife, or is accustomed to the society of educated women, will dispute this. Times without number you must have known them to decide questions on the instant, and with unerring accuracy, which you have been poring over for hours, perhaps with no other result than to find yourself getting deeper and deeper into the tangled maze of difficulties. It were hardly generous to allege that they achieve these feats less by reasoning than a sort of sagacity which approximates to the sure instincts of the animal races; and yet there seems to be some ground for the remark of a witty French writer: that when a man has toiled, step by step, up a flight of stairs, he will be sure to find a woman at the top; but she will not be able to tell how she got there. How she got there, however, is of little moment. If the conclusions a woman has reached are sound, that is all that concerns us. And that they are very apt to be sound on the practical matters of domestic and secular life, nothing but prudence or self conceit can prevent us from acknowledging. The inference, therefor, is unavoidable, that the man who thinks it beneath his dignity to take counsel with an intelligent wife stands in his own light, and betrays that lack of judgement which he tacitly attributes her.

From a long and suggestive article in the Chicago Republican, concerning the Jews, we extract the following:

The Jews rise gradually above the average of mankind whenever their immense mental resources and their formidable intensity of purpose are consecrated to religion, to humanity, to liberty, to letters, or art. Then they become prophets, reformers and composers, and the moral and intellectual and artistic teachers of the world, producing Mendelsohns, Spinizas, Reanders, Bernes, Heines, Rachels and Meyerbeers. Among the German political reformers of the present day there are a great number of young men of Jewish parentage, who are the most ardent champions of liberty. France possesses in Cremieux, the Jew, one of her most unflinching Republicans. And so there are in every country Jews who show that as soon as they devote their great power to some ennobling purpose they exact as much in the higher walks of thought and life as the bulk of their fellow religionaries in the lower.