It is possible that the conflicts of the South are not yet ended.  In America men pray for peace, but dark and mysterious forces, threatening the very foundations of civic liberty, are stirring even now beneath their feet.  The War of Secession may be the precursor of a fiercer and a mightier struggle, and the volunteers of the Confederacy, enduring all things and sacrificing all things, the prototype and model of a new army, in which North and South shall march to battle side by side.  ABSIT Omen!  But in whatever fashion his own countrymen may deal with the problems of the future, the story of Stonewall Jackson will tell them in what spirit they should be faced.  Nor has that story a message for America alone.  The hero who lies buried at Lexington, in the Valley of Virginia, belongs to a race that is not confined to a single continent; and to those who speak the same tongue, and in whose veins the same blood flows, his words come home like an echo of all that is noblest in their history:  “What is life without honour?  Degradation is worse than death.  We must think of the living and of those who are to come after us, and see that by God’s blessing we transmit to them the freedom we have ourselves inherited.”

NOTE 1.

Mr. W.P.  St. John, President of the Mercantile Bank of New York, relates the following incident:—­A year or two ago he was in the Shenandoah Valley with General Thomas Jordan, C.S.A., and at the close of the day they found themselves at the foot of the mountains in a wild and lonely place; there was no village, and no house, save a rough shanty for the use of the “track-walker” on the railroad.  It was not an attractive place for rest, yet here they were forced to pass the night, and to sit down to such supper as might be provided in so desolate a spot.  The unprepossessing look of everything was completed when the host came in and took his seat at the head of the table.  A bear out of the woods could hardly have been rougher, with his unshaven hair and unkempt beard.  He answered to the type of border ruffian, and his appearance suggested the dark deeds that might be done here in secret, and hidden in the forest gloom.  Imagine the astonishment of the travellers when this rough backwoodsman rapped on the table and bowed his head.  And such a prayer!  “Never,” says Mr. St. John, “did I hear a petition that more evidently came from the heart.  It was so simple, so reverent, so tender, so full of humility and penitence, as well as of thankfulness.  We sat in silence, and as soon as we recovered ourselves I whispered to General Jordan, ‘Who can he be?’ To which he answered, ’I don’t know, but he must be one of Stonewall Jackson’s old soldiers.’  And he was.  As we walked out in the open air, I accosted our new acquaintance, and after a few questions about the country, asked, ’Were you in the war?’ ‘Oh, yes,’ he said with a smile, ’I was out with Old Stonewall.’” Southern Historical Society Papers volume 19 page 871.