"To all true hearted women and men, who would rescue from oblivion the memory of the brave, who died in defence of home and country, we present this appeal: The stern pressure of military necessity made it impossible, properly, to care for the remains of the gallant dead who fell on the bloody fields of Fredericksburg, Wilderness, Chancellorsville, Spotsylvania Courthouse and in scores of skirmishes which, in a war less terrible, would have been reckoned as battles. "Our Association proposes to preserve a record, and, as far as possible, mark the spot where every Confederate soldier is buried in this vicinity, whether he fell on these memorable fields or otherwise died in the service. To the bereaved throughout our suffering South we pledge ourselves to spare no exertion to accomplish this work. "In a land stripped of enclosures and forests, desolated and impoverished as ours, we cannot, without aid, guard these graves from exposure and possible desecration; we can only cover them with our native soil. And, with pious care, garland them with the wild flowers from the fields. But, with the generous aid and cordial coöperation of those who have suffered less, but who feel as deeply as we do on this subject, we confidently hope to accomplish far more--to purchase and adorn a cemetery, to remove thither the sacred dust scattered all over this region, and to erect some enduring tribute to the memory of our gallant dead. "Shall that noble army of martyrs, who, for years of toil and suffering, bore, in triumph, the 'Conquered Banner' from Chattanooga to Gettysburg, sleep on the fields of their fame unnoticed and unknown? Shall their names pass from the knowledge of the living to be treasured only in the mind of Him 'to whom the memory of the just is precious?' "What spot so appropriate for the last resting place of these heroes, as some commanding eminence overlooking the memorable plain of Fredericksburg? And what nobler work for the hearts and hands of Southern women, than upon its summit to rear a monument to the unrecorded Confederate dead, which, through all time shall testify to the gratitude of the people for whom they so gloriously died? As no State, and scarcely a town or county throughout the limits of the late Confederacy, is unrepresented on these battle-fields, may we not hope that the coöperation required in order to accomplish our holy work will be as universal?