Louise Wigfall Wright

“ They shed the first blood of the war in Baltimore and were the last of Lee's heroes at Appomattox. Who is greater, the man who fights for home and country, or the friend who, for pure love of him, throws himself between him and the foe? In their own noble hearts they received the death wound, aimed at another, and 'Virginia's green fields were crimsoned with the blood of the Maryland boys!' They fought and died for principle and the South, not for themselves. ”

“ And shall we not thank God that we were given the strength and means to make this memorial to him, and to know that as long as time shall last the grief of the women who loved him, there portrayed, shall follow him, and the glory, which the false enemy shall wrest from him, shall fold him forever to her breast, while the light of the Divine patience of his sacrifice of self shall shine ever round and about him, and more and more shall illumine our path from the dark mysteries here of pain and death to the heaven where we shall know the reason of it all! ”

“ Of him who had everything to lose and nothing to gain! 'Old Virginia needs assistance.' That, in the words of his old camp song, that was the cry that moved him to lay down the pen and the pruning hook and the quiet arts of peace and prosperity and rally to the aid of the old Mother State whose green hillsides were bristling with the spears of the foe, whose fair fields and valleys were to be plowed and harrowed with sorrow and drenched with the red blood of her martyr sons! ”