The Houston Herald (Houston, Missouri), 01 Jul 1937. page 3, a transcription follows:
MEMORIALS TO THE SOLDIERS OF THE SOUTH SIGNIFY MORE THAN THE DEFEAT OF ARMIES IN THE FIELD
By DONALD P. BEARD (Written for the Missouri Democrat)
In the swift confusion of our modern life, its tempo accelerated by complex machines, there often comes to us the vague feeling that all these things will vanish presently like the wraiths of a dissolving dream, or like fleeting clouds swallowed up in the smile of the dawn.
Indeed, during rare moments of illumination when we stand before a memorial to a great leader or to some cause to which millions have consecrated their efforts and their lives, the conviction grows and takes possession of our hearts that all of life is not getting and spending, that man does not live by bread alone, that the "unseen God" of Paul is greater than any of the accidents of a mortal life.
The conclusion, last week, of the 47th encampment of the United Confederate Veterans at Jackson, Tenn., turns popular attention once more to the "lost cause" for which many touching and heroic sacrifices were freely made, and the ideals of which still live on and illuminate the hearts of those, still surviving in our late day, who dedicated their lives and loyalties to its fortunes.
* * * *
In Kansas City are several memorials and historic landmarks associated with the Confederacy and the stirring events of the Civil War period.
As one leaves the Country Club carline at Forty-seventh street and walks westward along Brush Creek boulevard, a plain truncated shaft of Indiana limestone may be noticed in the greensward of the parkway to the northward, about midway between Mill Creek boulevard and Main Street.
This is the memorial erected by the United Daughters of the Confederacy to commemorate the deeds and sacrifices of the loyal women of the Southland. The design for the memorial was evolved by Richard W. Wakefield and was chosen and approved by the municipal art commission early in 1934. The base for the shaft was laid August 30, 1934, and rests upon a platform of Missouri marble 24 feet long and 11 feet wide. The shaft itself is nine feet tall and about four and one-half feet in width.
On the obverse or front face of the severely plain and dignified shaft appears, near the top, a wreath enclosing the letters "U. D. C." Immediately below and flanking the wreath device are the crossed flags of the Confederacy and the Union with the numerals 61-65. Engraved on the front of the shaft is the inscription:
* * * *
IN LOVING MEMORY OF THE
LOYAL WOMEN OF THE OLD SOUTH
Erected by Kansas City Chapter No. 149,
United Daughters of the Confederacy, 1934.
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The reverse or east side bears the legend:
'TIS TATTERED,
BROKEN IN ITS SHAFT
AND SHATTERED,
AND THE VALIANT HOSTS
ARE SCATTERED
OVER WHOM IT FLOATED HIGH.
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A single word, "Courage," is engraved on the northwest seat-end of the limestone bench, of which the memorial shaft forms the central matrix, while "Fortitude" appears on the opposite or southeast end. The bench is of Indiana limestone and affords seating on both sides, in the shade of large trees. It forms indeed a beautiful retreat of memory dedicated to the women, who devoted their lives to the Confederacy.
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Another beautiful and appropriate memorial to the Southern cause has been standing in Forest Hill cemetery for many years since its dedication on Memorial Day in 1902. It was erected in memory of the Confederate leaders and soldiers who fell in the Battle of Westport. The site of the memorial is bounded on two sides by narrow footpaths sloping gently away to the trees on the west and north.
It was on this historic slope that General Jo Shelby, who, with General Sterling Price, commanded the Confederate forces, spent the night which preceded the fateful red dawn of October 23, 1864. In this crucial engagement 29,000 troops were locked in deadly conflict on the Confederate and the Union sides. This was the greatest battle fought west of the Mississippi and marked the deathblow to the Confederate hopes of winning the State of Missouri to the Southern cause.
On a commanding rise of ground, the monument towers over its surroundings, a great shaft of Vermont granite 36 feet in height, with a base 12 by 28 feet and weighing approximately 40 tons. At the summit of the shaft stands a Confederate soldier at attention, musket in hand, a life-size figure in bronze. On the bronze plate set in the face of the shaft an inscription reads:
"Erected by the Kansas City Chapter No. 149, Daughters of the Confederacy, to the Memory of Seventy-five Confederate Soldiers, Representing the States of Virginia, Texas, Arkansas, Missouri and Illinois, Who Fell in the Battle of Westport, October 23, 1864. Lord God of Hosts, Lest We Forget, Lest We Forget!"
The designs for the Confederate memorial in Forest Hill were submitted in 1901 from all over the nation, but the design by Mr. M. H. Rice won unanimous approval of the committee. At the solemn dedication in 1902, on Memorial day, addresses were delivered by Mayor James A. Reed and Judge James B. Gantt. Sealed in a receptacle that the committee placed in the base of the monument are a number of coins, papers and books of the Civil war period. Among the relics immured in the base of the monument is a sere and faded leaf from the bier of Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederate states--the most cherished relic of all.
On Memorial Day, 1935, only two Confederate veterans visited the memorial to renew in a few hallowed moments their devotion to the comrades of that remote conflict whose echoes have all but died out of our modern life--survivors of the pathetically "thinning gray line." They were Lem Stevenson, 90 years old, 510 West Forty-third street, and J. W. Basye, 93, 1156 East Fifty-sixth street.
Perhaps these two loyal defenders of the South felt that it was well they could withdraw a little time from the raucous and meaningless shaowplay of modern life and thus silently commune in the shadow of a Memorial to a great cause.
And who, in the light of historic events since those troubled years have become history, can be uncharitable enough to assert that a cause which evoked this deathless devotion of millions may be dismissed as "lost" merely because it failed to win the test of arms on the bloody fields of conflict? A deeper and holier significance touches with a peculiar glory all its own any cause that goes down to an honorable defeat, even though its proud flag of the Stars and Bars is "tattered, broken in its staff and shattered, and the valiant hosts are scattered, over whom it floated high." To its devotees must come adequate realization of the sentiment graven on the Confederate Memorial at Arlington National cemetery--a fitting epilogue to the cause of the South: "For the victorious cause was pleasing to the gods, but the fallen one to Cato!"
Lost Cause of the Confederacy
