Smoky Mountains Sunrise

Thursday, May 10, 2012

Confederate Memorial Day - "The Battle Cry of Freedom"



Confederate Memorial Day is a state holiday in Alabama, Florida, and Georgia on the fourth Monday in April. In Mississippi it is observed on the last Monday in April. In South Carolina and North Carolina it falls on May 10.
“The Confederate Soldiers were our kinfolk and our heroes. We testify to the country our enduring fidelity to their memory. We commemorate their valor and devotion. There were some things that were not surrendered at Appomattox. We did not surrender our rights and history; nor was it one of the conditions of surrender that unfriendly lips should be suffered to tell the story of that war or that unfriendly hands should write the epitaphs of the Confederate dead. We have the right to teach our children the true history of the war, the causes that led up to it and the principles involved.”
 - Senator Edward Ward Carmack, Tennessee, 1903


2 comments:

kkollwitz said...

Never heard this before, thanks. How old is it?

Daniel J. Cassidy said...

There was a highly popular Union version of this song written in 1862, which was later used as Lincoln's campaign theme in 1864. This Confederate version dates to those same years.