Manuscript copy of 'In Memoriam: Albert Sidney Johnstone' (page 3, with provenance and date)
Book 1, Page 68 ·1862–1871
Transcription
The third sheet of the manuscript copy, in the same cursive hand and brown ink, written in prose rather than verse.
The above inscription (a beautiful tribute,) was found pasted on a rough board at the tomb of Genl. Albert Sidney Johnstone, in New Orleans, before the removal of his remains to their final resting place in Texas.
It is probably the finest inscription that has ever been written as an expression of, and tribute, the virtues of the dead, in any language.
It is equally beautiful and true; for high as is the praise of the character of the departed hero and patriot, not a solitary word of exaggeration can be found in any part of it.
What is Most Singular, the Author has Never been Discovered.
Lower on the same sheet, in the same hand:
Ask the children all to memorize it [initials:] EB
Charleston 25 Feby 1871
AI Notes
Page 3 (final) of the handwritten copy of the ‘In Memoriam’ tribute to Albert Sidney Johnston begun on page 066. The copyist explains that the inscription was found pasted on a rough board at the General’s tomb in New Orleans, before the removal of his remains to Texas, and that the author was never discovered. Closes with an instruction to ‘ask the children all to memorize it’ and a docket: Charleston, 25 February 1871.
Johnston was first interred in the Mayor’s tomb at St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 in New Orleans; the Texas Legislature appropriated funds in January 1867 to remove his remains to the Texas State Cemetery in Austin, where he was reinterred. The copyist’s framing — “before the removal of his remains to their final resting place in Texas” — places the inscription’s discovery in the 1862–1866 window, with this Charleston copy made four years after the Austin reburial.