You can hardly walk a mile in any direction out of this city
without stumbling upon an old breastworks. And in the city--well, you
know all the great old landmarks, all around us as we stand here now. On
this porch behind us sits a lady who knew Lee well. Many's the talk she
had with him after the war. My mother, a bride then, sat in the pew
behind Davis that Sunday he got the message which meant that the war was
over. History! Why this old town drips with it. Do you think we should
forget our heroes, Mr. Queed? Up there in Massachusetts, if you have a
place where John Samuel Quincy Adams once stopped for a cup of tea, you
fence it off, put a brass plate on the front door, and charge a nickel
to go in. Which will history say is the greater man, Sam Adams or Robert
F. Lee? If these were Washington's armies going by, you would probably
feel a little excited, though you have had a hundred and twenty years to
get used to Yorktown and the Philadelphia Congress. Well, Washington is
no more to the nation than Lee is to the South.
"But don't let anybody get concerned about our patriotism.
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