Paladins of Liberty's Cause

“If our ancestors could awaken from their graves, they could not but look with approbation upon their descendants … confident that the cause of liberty for which they fought could not be left in better hands than those which maintained it on the bloody fields of Manassas, of Shiloh, and of Sharpsburg. A hundred years hence, and we, too … will assume the proportions of Paladins, and with ghostly hands thrust from our unforgotten graves, challenge future generations to prove themselves men by measuring their strength, their virtue and their heroism with out own.”

Henry Timrod, February 1864