ADDRESSES OF MAJOR LACEY 293 



esty shrank. How he returned to the front before his 

 wounds were healed and the train upon which he was 

 riding was wrecked and he fell into the hands of the en- 

 emy. How he escaped and was hunted down with blood- 

 hounds and recaptured in the black darkness of a cypress 

 swamp. How he was cast again into prison and again 

 escaped and on his arrival into the Union lines, fell a vic- 

 tim to the hardships that he had gone through. 



I select him as an example of the heroism of the young 

 men of those days, and many a counterpart to the story 

 may be told to the other young men of this same com- 

 munity. 



And when I look upon Jesse McClure, Mehanna Hoit, 

 and others who left the community in 1861, and think of 

 Lewis and Prank Eveland, of Frank Mistinger, of the 

 McClure boys, of Price Jones, of Weekly, and a score 

 more of the friends of that early day, I rejoice that the 

 boys and girls before me have, through their death, had 

 the opportunity to celebrate the Fourth of July of a free 

 and united country. 



We meet here today not as Republicans, not as Demo- 

 crats, not as Greenbackers, not as Union Labor men or 

 Prohibitionists, but as Americans all and forgetting all 

 party strife and party feeling send up our rejoicings to 

 the God of the Universe, who has seen fit to make so free 

 and happy a land, and in his own good time has permitted 

 us to enjoy it. 



Whilst we stand for a moment in silence regretting the 

 dead who are gone, and stand in silence on the shore of 

 the great unknown future, we, nevertheless, will enjoy 

 today to its fullest extent the present hour. 



The old days that I have been speaking of were full of 

 hardships. The fever and ague were a constant visitor 

 then, but have disappeared, destroyed by the beautiful 

 and universal blue grass, which has turned the land into a 



