UNVEILING OF MONUMENT AT LEESBURG, VA

May 28, 1908 will long be remembered by our country people, as it embraced more of pleasant occurrences than any other day within the memory of our people.

In the early morning a large crowd gathered for the celebration of Memorial Day.  The multitude marched with music and carried beautiful flowers to the cemetery to decorate the graves of Confederate dead.  On returning to the courthouse lawn, the veterans were cordially received and entertained at an elegant luncheon tendered them by Mrs. Stirling Murray, President of the Loudoun Chapter of the U.D.C.  The hour for the unveiling of the beautiful monument having arrived, Gov. Claude A. Swanson was introduced, and made an eloquent address, after which Col. Edmund Berkeley, who commanded the splendid old 8th Virginia, spoke to his cheering veterans. At the conclusion of Colonel Berkeley’s address our beloved United States Senator, John W. Daniel, held his audience spellbound for two hours by his eloquent recital of the facts that made glorious the record of the Army of Northern Virginia.

Our townsman, Harry T. Harrison, a son of one of Loudoun’s soldiers, recited the following original poem:

A Statue.

A statue, proof of thy maker’s art, bronze cast;
In days to come a monument to ages past;
To-day to us who gather here
You are that some one our hearts hold dear.
That father, brother, husband, lover
At peace with God beneath the sod,
Who heard the call, who walked the way,
The soldier of right who wore the gray.

A statue mutely telling the sad story
Of a nation that died midst a halo of glory;
Of shattered hopes, ambitions dead,
Of noble blood that was freely shed;
Of the bugle’s call for more to fall;
Of those who went, none being sent;
Of where the fiercest waxed the fray
Was found the soldier who war the gray.

A statue linking the heavens with the earth,
The form of that hero to whom our nation gave birth,
Who followed on where honor led,
Till he rested with our holy dead;
And when at last the trumpet’s blast
Sends forth that call that comes to all,
As an honor guard on that last day
We’ll find the soldier who wore the gray.

All that preceded was a delightful introduction to the effective unveiling of the beautiful bronze statue surmounting a massive granite base, which was presented as an affectionate testimonial to the memory of the faithful sons of Loudoun County by the Loudoun Chapter, U.D.C.

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