SCV Oklahoma Divison

Edward Ward Carmack Represented Tennessee in the U. S. House of Representatives from 1898 to 1901. He delivered one of the most eloquent and widely remembered speeches before that body on April 22, 1898 and ended it with what has become known as “Carmack’s Pledge To The South.” It is presented here from the book, When The South Was Southern, by Michael Andrew Grissom:

                                    The South is a land that has known sorrows; it is a
                                land that has broken the ashen crust and moistened
                                it with tears; a land scarred and riven by the plowshare
                                of war and billowed with the graves of her
                                dead; but a land of hallowed and heroic memories.

                                To that land every drop of my blood, every fiber of
                                my being, every pulsation of my heart, is consecrated
                                forever.

                                I was born of her womb; I was nurtured at her breast;
                                and when my last hour shall come, I pray God that
                                I may be pillowed upon her bosom and rocked to sleep
                                within her tender and encircling arms.