THE SIX HUNDRED TO MEET IN LOUISVILLE, Col. Lamar Fontaine writes from Lyon, Miss.:
"To all the survivors of the immortal six hundred Morris Island prisoners who remained true and loyal to the end, I appeal to you, my dear friends and companions, to meet me at the grand reunion of the United Confederate Veterans in Louisville, Ky., on the 30th day of May, 1900, there to organize a camp to meet once a year and to give to the world the history of our treatment from August 20, 1864, until the end. My comrades, I wish you, each and every one, to be present. Lay aside all business for just one week, and let us meet again in the flesh. I know it is but sentiment that prompts this appeal to you, but it is coupled with love, and that love is sacred, for it was born on the fiery, crimson fields of death, where we battled for the most sacred cause ever bequeathed by sire to son and christened in the gloomy cells of Fort Delaware and in the foul hold of the Old Crescent City, and baptized on the sterile, sandy shore of Morris Island in her prison pen, beneath the hissing bombshells and humming shot, surrounded by black, cruel, savage negro guards, under the command of a Massachusetts tyrant, and cemented and crystallized by forty-one days of starvation on musty, rotten corn meal and spoiled pickles, where the barrack rats and old tomcats were our only luxuries in the rock-ribbed Fortress Pulaski. Thus born, thus christened, baptized, and crystallized, it can never die. No history with which I am familiar recites such sufferings as we were forced to endure; and now, after a lapse of thirty-five years, I think it behooves us to compile and give to our descendants a true history of that dark page in the annals of our common country. It will be but justice to us. Again I appeal to you to meet at Louisville, Ky., on May 30, 1900. The shadows of life are growing longer and the valleys darker. We are standing on the shores of the
narrow sea, whose waters splash the sandy beach of the hidden land of Beulah, and it behooves us to make
ready to cross over. The time is short, and but few of
that immortal band are on this waiting shore. The
great majority have long since crossed over and are
waiting for us under the shade of the trees in the eter-
nal bivouac in the beautiful gardens of God, and it is
meet and right that we should gather together ere the
taps are sounded and emblazon the deeds and suffer-
ings of the immortal six hundred upon the pages of
our country's history, to shine like a glittering star
above the dark cesspools of infamy and corruption that surround our people."
Comrade Fontaine makes the appeal "with a comrade's love and friendship here and in the great here- | after." Such a union and organization seems proper and desirable, and, as Comrade Fontaine indicates no particular place for the meeting, the Veteran suggests its headquarters at No. 434 West Jefferson Street, next door to the general headquarters, and the meeting place can be indicated then.