The cannon shots presaged the speeches. Colonel Penycrake’s speech was thankfully brief, for the old man was short of breath, then the erstwhile congressman gave a seemingly interminable peroration after which Washington Faulconer gave a fine, spirited address that first regretted the necessity of war, but then described the nest of northern vipers which, with hissing mouths, flickering tongues and noxious breath were spreading their reeking poison across the land. “Yet we southerners know how to treat snakes!” The crowd cheered. Even the assembled black slaves, brought by their owners to the annual feast and confined to a small roped enclosure to one side of the assembly, cheered the Colonel’s sentiments. The Colonel, whose voice was strong enough to reach across the whole assembly, spoke of the two races that had arisen in America, which races, though sprung from common parentage, had been separated by climate, morals and religion, and had thus grown apart until now, he declared, their ideas of honor, truth and manliness were so different that the two could no longer abide under the same government.

“The northern race must go its own way!” the Colonel declared, “while we southerners, who have always been in the forefront of America’s fight for Liberty, Truth, Decency and Honor, will keep alive the shining dream of the Founding Fathers. Their sword has passed to us!” And he drew the bright blade presented to his grandfather by Lafayette and the crowd cheered for the idea that they, and not the degenerate, factory-sweated, education-spoilt, Roman-Catholic-infested northerners were the real heirs of those great Virginian revolutionaries, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and James Madison.

The Colonel concluded his remarks by saying he did not think the struggle would be long. The North had blockaded southern ports and the South had responded by forbidding the export of cotton, which meant the great mills of England would inevitably fall silent, and England, he reminded the crowd, would die without the cotton to feed its mills. If the blockade was not lifted then, within weeks, the world’s greatest navy would be off the coast of the Confederacy and the Yankees would flee back to their harbors like snakes to their nests. Yet the South must not look to Europe, Faulconer hurried on, nor need it look to Europe, for southern fighting men would see the Yankees off southern soil without European help. Soon, the Colonel said, the Yankees will regret their temerity, for they will be sent packing and running and screaming and hollering. The crowd liked that.

The war would be over within weeks, the Colonel promised, and every man who helped achieve victory would be honored in the new Confederacy whose flag would fly forever among the banners of the nations. That was the cue for the Legion’s flags to be brought forward and presented. And, astonishingly, the Colonel’s wife had stirred herself out of her sickroom to be the donor of the two colors.