Texas State Reunion, U. C. V., at Dallas

Mayor H. W. Graber, of Dallas, writes in regard to the Texas Reunion in that city:

We had the largest State meeting ever had in Texas, and a very harmonious and profitable one, though we were deprived of the presence of Gen. Van Zandt, who has been confined to his bed for about a week or ten days and is still unable to leave his room, which, you know, was a matter of sincere regret. I had also announced your expected arrival the last day, and your telegram announcing your inability to be present on account of failure to make connection at McAlester proved a great disappointment to the convention.

Please note the action taken on the Andersonville case, and suggest that if I was in error as to General Winder having his headquarters at Richmond in my article you make the proper correction, and also where I stated in the early part of 1864 should read in the early part of 1865 when a commission of Federal prisoners were sent to Washington to plead for exchange and medicine." See November VETERAN, p. 489.

NOTES FROM THE DALLAS NEWS.

Gen. K. M. Van Zandt, of Fort Worth, Division Commander, was reëlected by a unanimous vote. Resolutions were passed by the assembly expressing sympathy for the sick Commander.

The following Brigadiers were elected: First Brigade, T. J. Gibson, Mexia, Second Brigade, T. J. Largin, San Antonio, Third Brigade, Capt. W. B. Berry, Brookston, Fourth Brigade, John S. Napier, Amarillo.

In memoriam of Mrs. Jefferson Davis a service was held. Addresses were made by Comrades Shaw, Long, Clopton, Taylor, and Kirkpatrick. All the addresses were limited, but brief though they were, tears came to the eyes of the old soldiers as the patriotism and the suffering of the women of the Confederacy were recalled.

A resolution was passed pledging aid for the Confederate Home, which it is proposed to build at Austin and for which the Daughters of the Confederacy are endeavoring to raise funds. The Home is intended to shelter decrepit widows of Confederate veterans.

A telegram was received from S. A. Cunningham, editor of the CONFEDERATE VETERAN, stating that train connection had been missed at South McAlester, Ind. T., and that he would be unable to reach Dallas in time for the Reunion. A resolution of regret was passed.

The battle torn emblem of the 11th Texas Regiment of Cavalry was placed on the platform for the inspection of the veterans. It was moved by George T. Dodd that the Governor be requested to send to the annual Reunions of the State Division the Confederate flags which are kept at the capitol at Austin. The motion was carried without dissent.

For the next place of meeting Waco and Bowie were placed in nomination. After several addresses had been delivered by representatives of the two places, the roll was called, only delegates being allowed to vote. Bowie received 113 votes, Waco, 101.

Gen. H. W. Graber presided over the meeting.

All business having been attended to, the Division adjourned sine die. The veterans at the Fair had a good time. There were seated on the platform of the large auditorium General Cabell, General Gano, Judge C. C. Cummings, Historian of the Division, and others.

As the initial notes of "Dixie" came from the silvered instruments applause swept over the large auditorium and finished in a wild shout, at which the veterans and some of the ladies stood in their seats waving canes, hats, and handkerchiefs. Following "Dixie" was given the "Bonnie Blue Flag." This brought the second demonstration of the afternoon, in which George Boynton, an aged negro living in Dallas, with front bedecked with badges, pins, and pictorial buttons (the latter of General Gordon), jumped to the stage and, waving a tattered Confederate flag, danced from one end of the stage to the other. Over his shoulder was swung a haversack, from the top of which protruded a chicken's head. Boynton was introduced as "the colored man who went to war with his master, Lieutenant Boynton, of the 64th Georgia Infantry, and remained with him until he was killed." Boynton was immediately the center of attraction. He told the veterans that he was taken along to "look out for chicken." He had the honor of entertaining General Gordon at breakfast one Monday morning. It consisted of young pig, fried chicken, yellow yams, and "cawn" bread "what ain't be'n sifted." General Gordon afterwards told Lieutenant Boynton that he would never have his regiment searched for forage again. "So long as you folks come together I'm comin' too," was the way the old darky put it, "and I hopes de good Lawd will let it be often, for I's a Confed nigger." There was much cheering when the negro finished, and as the band played "Old Black Joe," many of the old fellows pitched coins to the negro's hat on the stage.

The musical programme was particularly appropriate for the Southern soldiers' gathering. It embraced these numbers: "Scenes from the North and the South," "Suwannee River," "My Old Kentucky Home," "Turkey in the Straw," "Take Me Back to Old Virginia," "Bonnie Blue Flag," "Tenting To Night on the Old Camp Ground," "The Arkansaw Traveler," and "Dixie." A vocal solo, "Roses in Heaven," was rendered by Miss lone MacLouth, accompanied on the piano by Mrs. R. E. Gahagan.

This morning were held memorial services for the most distinguished woman the South has ever produced Mrs. Jefferson Davis. She was a woman of the South and lived with her husband at the South's capital. There were no levees there, no music but the roll of the drum and the melody of marching feet. She was not the only one who remained at home faithful, cheering victorious soldiers on to battle. They made flags for the battlefield, gave up their carpets to make blankets, and whenever a body of Southern troops came by, she was at the front to cheer them on. She kept alive the spirit at home until no man could stay there with self respect unless he was infirm with age or a cripple. The victorious woman was everywhere in the South. When General Forrest reached Black River in pursuit of General Streight, he could not find the ford. Miss Emma Sansom, aged eleven years, mounted behind his horse and took him to a place to cross the river. Under fire she remained with the General, guiding him and his men until the victory was won. Talk about women, there were none equal to those of the sixties. When the first lady of the South died in a Northern city a few days ago, it was her dying request that her body be accompanied by a body of Confederate soldiers to its last resting place in Hollywood Cemetery, in Richmond, where it is to lie beside that of her sainted husband. He was a native of Kentucky, but had lived in Mississippi. When he died, Kentucky, New Orleans, and Mississippi all claimed him, but she decreed that his body should lie in Hollywood, and it was her request that she be laid there also. O, peerless womanhood of the South, may her memory live as long as the world shall endure

Speaking began with an address by Judge J. M. Pearson, of McKinney, who said in part:

I am glad to see so many of my fellow soldiers of a lost republic here this afternoon. The ranks are thinning, and it will not be many years before we will be numbered among the very few. This morning in the City Hall I looked into the faces of you veterans and thought the Lord had been patient with us, especially when it is considered that we went over twenty two hundred battlefields and those under fire.

All of you remember our trials and tribulations. One of Longstreet's men, after he had fought all day and marched all night, leaned against a tree, thinking of the battle. He said a man should love his country, that a man could do much for the love of his country, he could afford to die for his country, and he himself was willing to march all night and fight all day for the country he loved so well, but that if the good Lord would get him out of this scrape he would be slow to love another.

There are only two general officers with us, General Cabell and General Gano. It is as hard to tell a general now as it was during the war. General Pegram, going through the forest, encountered a straggler, when he asked the latter who he was. He replied: 'A plain soldier.'

After the band again played "Dixie," W. M. Pierson, of Winnsboro, was introduced. "I am glad that the band played that tune," he said, "for it would not be like a Confederate gathering unless it did. It is not the tune of the New South, for there is no New South, it is the Old South, beautiful in its memories and traditions. I enter my protest against the changing of the words of that song or a note of its music, for it means much to our history." The speaker then discussed the various phases of the war history and the causes which led up to the conflict. The veterans especially approved of his idea that the history should be taught as it was, not as it had been "made to fit." He declared that the greatest need to day was a history that spoke the truth.

Gabe Lucas, of McKinney, who only has to confine himself to certain actual facts in his boyhood experience in order to be entertaining, spoke concerning events in the early days when railroads in Texas were not and when only small settlements here and there marked the sites of future great cities. His address met with high favor, and there were many ejaculations of assent to his statements by the old men who had themselves passed through similar experiences. He said:

I had to work along in May, when the days were good and long and the sun was blazing hot, I had to hoe cotton, and if there was a bad hoe, crooked handle, or corner broken off, I had it to use and to keep my row up. When the men would fall under the shade of the trees at the end of the rows, they would say: 'Gabe, get a bucket of water while you are resting.' Maybe it was a quarter of a mile. I was never asked to walk and do anything, but always to run. 'Gabie, be quick.' 'Come in to dinner, the men folks eat first.' I had to wait until they got done eating, go out on the shady side of the house, turn a chair upside down, put a pillow on it, and take a snooze. Soon as I got done eating: 'Run, Gabie, slop the pigs, cut some wood.' Time I got the pigs slopped and cut some wood well, the men folks said it was time to go to work. No rest for Gabie in the fall of the year.

When we went to gathering corn, a big man on each side of the wagon, pulling two rows of corn standing, me pulling the down row, and when we came in with the last row at night, they would say: 'Gabie, take out the horses and water and feed them, run and drive up the cows, and milk and get in wood, you ain't been doing nothing to day but pulling the down row' like that wasn't work. I never got to eat at the first table always had to wait, and you know a boy gets hungrier than a grown person.

I thought that if ever I got to be a man I would be a preacher, so that I could eat at the first table and have all the boys waiting on me. I was raised by the Hardshell Baptists. Old Brother Detheridge used to come from up in Fannin County down to our church and preach. When he would come to our house, mother would say: 'Gabie, run catch a chicken, Brother Detheridge has come. Catch a rooster.' I go down the side of the garden fence where the big weeds are, where the chickens have dust holes, feathers all turned the wrong way scratching up dust, and throw into them. If I miss them, chase them around the barn, then around the hogpen. They would often start for the Rouse to get under the floor. Time I got that chicken's head wrung off and took him back to the kitchen mother would have the water hot, scald that chicken, and hand it back to me to go out there in the corner of the garden and pick that chicken so that the feathers won't get all over the place. Pick that chicken as quick as I could, hand it back to her. She would say: 'You ain't got the pinfeathers off good. Now run stake Brother Detheridge's horse on some good, high grass.' We always staked visitors' horses, we hobbled ours.

Time I got back to the house that chicken was smelling good, get around behind that stove and watch them turn over the nice brown pieces. Lord, how I like that good chicken! Put it on a plate, and leave me wondering what piece will be left for me. Make some good chicken gravy, pour all over the plate, set it all on the table, and ask them in to supper.

Brother Detheridge would always say a good, long blessing, and just as he got done reach over and get the thigh. Somebody else got the other one, then the breastpiece went, the drumstick, the pulley bone. The second round all that good chicken was gone. Time I got to the table I would say: 'Ain't there no chicken for me?' 'No, son, but here's some mighty good chicken gravy' like a boy would be satisfied with chicken gravy.

And that wasn't all. Next morning I had to get that horse, curry him off, saddle him off, and hold him out at the stile blocks. When Brother Detheridge would go to leave, he would say, 'My Brother So and So, and God bless you, and the Lord be with you, Sister So and So,' shaking all them grown people's hand, telling the Lord to be with them. Come out where I was, snatch the reins from my hand, and get on that horse, saying, 'Gabe, be a good boy' like I hadn't been good.

My friends, don't you know that the best gravy that was ever made sticks to the bottom of the frying pan? And my children won't sop it, I did, and it was mighty good for the first round. Judge Lewis, up at Madill, Ind. T., and I are stepbrothers, and he and I used to sop the pan together. I was little the largest, so he thought I was getting too much of the gravy, got hold of the pan, took his finger, marked down through the center of the skillet, and said: 'Now, Gabe, you sop on your own side.'

Mrs. Kate Cabell Currie was introduced to the audience by Gen. R. M. Gano, and was heartily applauded, for which she expressed appreciation.

The following resolution of thanks was passed yesterday by the Confederate Veterans:

Whereas Dallas has on this occasion of the fifteenth annual Reunion of the United Confederate Veterans of the State Division of Texas outdone herself in entertaining us by the many efforts on the part of her chivalrous sons and fair daughters, and whereas the Dallas Fair, one of the established institutions of the State of Texas, has likewise extended to us unusual courtesies on this splendid occasion, and whereas the railways have also done us proud on this occasion by substantial favors, which we highly appreciate, therefore be it Resolved, That we are under lasting obligations to this good people, and here express our deep and lasting regrets that we cannot be happy always as Dallas has made us feel, but we go away to our homes with breasts aglow for Dallas and her people."