Annual Greeting From Gen. W. L. Cabell
He urges Attendance at the Mobile Reunion

Confederate Veteran
Volume 18, Number 3, Page 102
March 1910

DALLAS, TEX.
January 20, 1910.

Comrades of the Trans Mississippi: A happy New Year to you, my old comrades, and all dear to you. The old year, with its pleasures as well as its sorrows and disappointed hopes, has passed away, never to return. As time passes our comrades are growing older and more feeble, our ranks are growing thinner, and during the last year many of our noblest and best have crossed to the great beyond and have answered to the last roll call. Let us thank God that the death roll is no greater than we have a right to expect, and that our comrades, enfeebled by old age, who are incapacitated by wounds, disease, and sickness, and unable to make a living, have been properly cared for by the great States of Texas, Arkansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, and the Territories by furnishing good shelter, good and ample food, good clothing, and good medical attention and nursing where the heroes, the unpaid soldiers of immortal principle, can spend the remainder of their lives in comfort and ease.

I would again call your attention to the growth of our noble order of United Confederate Veterans. Our Adjutant General, William E. Mickle, reports over 1,500 Camps. I am proud to say that more than one third of this number are in the Trans Mississippi Department. Continue this good work. Let me appeal to you by the memory of the brave men who died on the battlefield and in prison from wounds, sickness, or disease since the war to enroll. I appeal to you by the memory of the sufferings and hardships borne by the noble women of the South your mothers, your wives, your sisters, and your daughters who, with tears streaming down their cheeks, will tell you with pride of the heroism of their noble sons, husbands, or brothers, to enroll, to join some Camp and keep in touch with each other the few years you have to live, and where you can be attended to in case of sickness or other misfortunes by your old comrades.

I therefore call on the Division and Brigade Commanders of our States and Territories to give the necessary orders to increase the number of Camps as well as the membership of each Camp, so that at the Reunion to be held in Mobile, Ala., April 26, 27, and 28, 1910, you will have more Camps and more Confederates than have been gathered at any former Reunion. [But that can never be. —ED. VETERAN.] I would earnestly request every Division and Brigade Commander to urge every Camp to meet at least once each month, or oftener if necessary, and arrange for sending delegates and the necessary per capita to Gen. William E. Mickle by April 1. The Committee on Transportation, consisting of Gens. Oliver Steel and Mendez, B. F. Wathan and Milton Park, will do all in their power in connection with Brigadier General Graber to secure rates on all railroads leading to Mobile for this Department.

Then, my old comrades of the Trans Mississippi Department, consisting of the great States of Texas, Arkansas, Mississippi, California, Oregon, Washington, Montana, Idaho, Kansas, Nebraska, North and South Dakota, Wyoming, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Arizona, who were unable to attend past Reunions, can join us in our grand Reunion at Mobile, Ala. The people of Mobile will welcome you, and will extend to you that hospitality which they have already shown to the brave Confederates who have visited them in the past. Then, old comrades of the Trans Mississippi Department, Sons of Confederate Veterans, and Daughters of the Confederacy, come and bring with you your noble sons and beautiful daughters. Let memory call the roll of the heroes dead, and let their spirits mingle with love and affection. Let us not forget that we are like the leaves of the forest, falling out of this great column of gray, and one by one crossing to the great beyond. "There are no recruits, no volunteers to fill our ranks, and no man is numbered among us but received his baptism in blood and fire over forty years ago. Surely and rapidly are the lines of gray falling away, and but a few short years must intervene before those that now remain must look into their comrades' faces."

Business of great importance will be brought before you. Many objects worthy of consideration, especially the monument to Southern women, will come before you. Then come and let us make this a grand Reunion. If you cannot come, give proxies to some comrade to represent you. The Trans Mississippi Press is requested to publish.