Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 30.
Reverend J. William Jones, Ed.

[101] nine, while the per centun of deaths in Northern prisons was over twelve.

We think it useless to prolong this discussion, and feel confident that we can safely submit our conduct on this, as on every other point involved in the war, to the judgment of posterity and the impartial historian, and can justly apply to the Southern Confederacy the language of Philip Stanhope Wormsley, of Oxford University, England, in the dedication of his translation of Homer's Iliad to General Robert E. Lee, ‘the most stainless of earthly commanders, and, except in fortune, the greatest.’

Thy Troy is fallen, thy dear land
Is marred beneath the spoiler's heel;
I cannot trust my trembling hand
To write the things I feel.

Ah realm of tombs: but let her bear
This blazon to the end of time:
No nation rose so white and fair,
None fell so pure of crime.

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Histories now used in our schools.

We have but little to add to what was said in our former reports concerning the histories now being taught in our schools, except to express our sincere regret that the State Board of Education, after first excluding it, reversed its action, and put on the list of histories to be used in our public schools, the work entitled Our Country, by Messrs. Cooper, Estill & Lemon. And with the profoundest respect for each member of the Board, we think they committed an unintentional mistake.

We understand the Board based its later action on the ground that the edition of this work, published in 1901, contained important amendments, as well as omissions, not found in that of 1896, which was, in our opinion, so justly criticised and condemned by the late Dr. Hunter McGuire and Rev. S. Taylor Martin, D. D., in their reports to this camp in 1899. Whilst it is true that this latest edition has been freed from many of the objections then urged against the former edition, and it is apparent that the authors have profited by these criticisms, and tried to adapt this ‘new issue’ to the sentiments which gave them birth; yet there are such fundamental objections to this work still, that should, in our opinion, have excluded it from our schools forever. In the first place we call attention to