"There was a South of slavery and secession - that South is dead. There
is a South of union and freedom - that South, thank God, is living,
breathing, growing every hour." These words, delivered from the immortal
lips of Benjamin H. Hill, at Tammany Hall in 1866, true then, and truer
now, I shall make my text to-night.
Mr. President and Gentlemen: Let me express to you my appreciation
of the kindness by which I am permitted to address you. I make this
abrupt acknowledgment advisedly, for I feel that if, when I raise my
provincial voice in this ancient and August presence, I could find
courage for no more than the opening sentence, it would be well if, in
that sentence, I had met in a rough sense my obligation as a guest, and
had perished, so to speak, with courtesy on my lips and grace in my
heart. Permitted through your kindness to catch my second
wind, let me say that I appreciate the significance of being the first
Southerner to speak at this board, which bears the substance, if it
surpasses the semblance, of original New England hospitality,
and honors a sentiment that in turn honors you, but in which my
personality is lost, and the compliment to my people made plain.
I bespeak the utmost stretch of your courtesy to-night. I am not
troubled about those from whom I come. You remember the man whose wife
sent him to a neighbor with a pitcher of milk, and who, tripping on the
top step, fell, with such casual interruptions as the landing afforded,
into the basement; and while picking himself up had the pleasure of
hearing his wife call out: "John, did you break the pitcher?"
"No, I didn't," said John, "but I be dinged if I don't!"
So, while those who call to me from behind may inspire me
with energy if not with courage, I ask an indulgent hearing from you. I
beg that you will bring your full faith in American fairness and
frankness of judgment upon what I shall say. There was an old preacher
once who told some boys of the Bible lesson he was going to read in the
morning. The boys finding the place, glued together the connecting ages.
The next morning he read on the bottom of one age: "When
Noah was one hundred and twenty years old he took unto himself a wife,
who was" - then turning the page - "one hundred and forty cubits long,
forty cubits wide, built of gopher-wood, and
covered with pitch inside and out." He
was naturally puzzled at this. He read it again, verified it, and then
said: "My friends, this is the first time I ever met this in the Bible,
but I accept it as an evidence of the assertion that we are fearfully
and wonderfully made." If I could get you to hold
such faith to-night I could proceed cheerfully to the task I otherwise
approach with a sense of consecration.
Pardon me one word, Mr. President, spoken for the sole purpose of
getting into the volumes that go out annually freighted with the rich
eloquence of your speakers - the fact that the Cavalier as well as the
Puritan was on the continent in its early days, and that he was "up and
able to be about." I have read your books carefully and I
find no mention of that fact, which seems to me an important one for
preserving a sort of historical equilibrium if for nothing else.
Let me remind you that the Virginia Cavalier first challenged
France on this continent - that Cavalier John Smith gave New England its
very name, and was so pleased with the job that he has been handing his
own name around ever since - and that while Miles Standish was cutting
off men's ears for courting a girl without her parents' consent, and
forbade men to kiss their wives on Sunday, the Cavalier was courting
everything in sight, and that the Almighty had vouchsafed great increase
to the Cavalier colonies, the huts in the wilderness being full as the
nests in the woods.
But having incorporated the Cavalier as a fact in your charming
little books I shall let him work out his own salvation, as he has
always done with engaging gallantry, and we will hold no controversy as
to his merits. Why should we? Neither Puritan nor Cavalier long survived
as such. The virtues and traditions of both happily still live for the
inspiration of their sons and the saving of the old fashion.
But both Puritan and Cavalier were lost in the storm of the first
Revolution; and the American citizen, supplanting both and stronger than
either, took possession of the Republic bought by their common blood and
fashioned to wisdom, and charged himself with teaching men government
and establishing the voice of the people as the voice of God.
My friend Dr. Talmage has told you that the typical American has
yet to come. Let me tell you that he has already come. Great
types like valuable plants are slow to flower and fruit. But from the
union of these colonist Puritans and Cavaliers, from the straightening
of their purposes and the crossing of their blood, slow perfecting
through a century, came he who stands as the first typical American, the
first who comprehended within himself all the strength and gentleness,
all the majesty and grace of this Republic - Abraham Lincoln.
He was the sum of Puritan and Cavalier, for in his
ardent nature were fused the virtues of both, and in the depths of his
great soul the faults of both were lost. He was
greater than Puritan, greater than Cavalier, in that he was American
and that in his homely form were first gathered the
vast and thrilling forces of his ideal government - charging it with
such tremendous meaning and so elevating it above human suffering that
martyrdom, though infamously aimed, came as a fitting crown to a life
consecrated from the cradle to human liberty.
Let us, each cherishing the traditions and honoring his
fathers, build with reverent hands to the type of this simple but
sublime life, in which all types are honored; and in our common glory as
Americans there will be plenty and to spare for your forefathers and for
mine.
In speaking to the toast with which you have honored me, I accept
the term, "The New South," as in no sense disparaging to the Old. Dear
to me, sir, is the home of my childhood and the traditions of my people.
I would not, if I could, dim the glory they won in peace and war, or by
word or deed take aught from the splendor and grace of their
civilization - never equaled and, perhaps, never to be equaled in its
chivalric strength and grace. There is a New South, not through protest
against the Old, but because of new conditions, new adjustments and, if
you please, new ideas and aspirations. It is to this that I address
myself, and to the consideration of which I hasten lest it become the
Old South before I get to it. Age does not endow all things with
strength and virtue, nor are all new things to be despised. The
shoemaker who put over his door "John Smith's shop. Founded in 1760,"
was more than matched by his young rival across the street who hung out
this sign: "Bill Jones. Established 1886. No old stock kept in this
shop."
Dr. Talmage has drawn for you, with a master's hand, the picture
of your returning armies, He has told you how, in the pomp and
circumstance of war, they came back to you, marching with proud and
victorious tread, reading their glory in a nation's eyes! Will you bear
with me while I tell you of another army that sought its home at the
close of the late war - an army that marched home in defeat and not in
victory - in pathos and not in splendor, but in glory that equaled
yours, and to hearts as loving as ever welcomed heroes home. Let me
picture to you the footsore Confederate soldier, as, buttoning up in his
faded gray jacket the parole which was to bear testimony to his children
of his fidelity and faith, he turned his face southward from Appomattox
in April, 1865. Think of him as ragged, half-starved, heavy-hearted,
enfeebled by want and wounds; having fought to exhaustion, he surrenders
his gun, wrings the hands of his comrades in silence, and lifting his
tear-stained and pallid face for the last time to the graves that dot
the old Virginia hills, pulls his gray cap over his brow and begins the
slow and painful journey. What does he find - let me ask you, who went
to your homes eager to find in the welcome you had justly earned, full
payment for four years' sacrifice - what does he find when, having
followed the battle-stained cross against overwhelming odds, dreading
death not half so much as surrender, he reaches the home he left so
prosperous and beautiful? He finds his house in ruins, his farm
devastated, his slaves free, his stock killed, his barns empty, his
trade destroyed, his money worthless; his social system, feudal in its
magnificence, swept away; his people without law or legal status, his
comrades slain, and the burdens of others heavy on his shoulders.
Crushed by defeat, his very traditions are gone; without money, credit,
employment, material or training; and, besides all this, confronted with
the gravest problem that ever met human intelligence - the establishing
of a status for the vast body of his liberated slaves.
What does he do - this hero in gray with a heart of gold? Does he
sit down in sullenness and despair? Not for a day. Surely God, who had
stripped him of his prosperity, inspired him in his adversity. As ruin
was never before so overwhelming, never was restoration swifter. The
soldier stepped from the trenches into the furrow; horses that had
charged Federal guns march before the plow, and fields that ran red with
human blood in April were green with the harvest in June; women reared
in luxury cut up their dresses and made breeches for their husbands,
and, with a patience and heroism that fit women always as a garment,
gave their hands to work. There was little bitterness in all this.
Cheerfulness and frankness prevailed. "Bill Arp" struck the keynote when
he said: "Well, I killed as many of them as they did of me, and now I am
going to work." Or the soldier returning home
after defeat and roasting some corn on the roadside, who made the remark
to his comrades: "You may leave the South if you want to, but I am going
to Sandersville, kiss my wife and raise a crop, and if the Yankees fool
with me any more I will whip 'em again." I want to
say to General Sherman - who is considered an able man in our hearts,
though some people think he is a kind of careless man about fire - that
from the ashes he left us in 1864 we have raised a brave and beautiful
city; that somehow or other we have caught the sunshine in the bricks
and mortar of our homes, and have builded therein not one ignoble
prejudice or memory. But in all this what have we
accomplished? What is the sum of our work? We have found out that in the
general summary the free Negro counts more than he did as a slave. We
have planted the schoolhouse on the hilltop and made it free to white
and black. We have sowed towns and cities in the place of theories and
put business above politics. We have challenged your
spinners in Massachusetts and your iron-makers in Pennsylvania. We have
learned that the $400,000,000 annually received from our cotton crop
will make us rich, when the supplies that make it are home-raised. We
have reduced the commercial rate of interest from twenty-four to six per
cent, and are floating four per cent bonds. We have learned that one
Northern immigrant is worth fifty foreigners, and have smoothed the path
to southward, wiped out the place where Mason and Dixon's line used to
be, and hung our latch-string out to you and yours.
We have reached the point that marks perfect harmony in every household,
when the husband confesses that the pies which his wife cooks are as
good as those his mother used to bake; and we admit that the sun shines
as brightly and the moon as softly as it did "before the war."
We have established thrift in city and country. We have
fallen in love with work. We have restored comfort to homes from which
culture and elegance never departed. We have let economy take root and
spread among us as rank as the crabgrass which sprang from Sherman's
cavalry camps, until we are ready to lay odds on the Georgia Yankee, as
he manufactures relics of the battlefield in a one-story shanty and
squeezes pure olive oil out of his cotton-seed, against any downeaster
that ever swapped wooden nutmegs for flannel sausages in the valleys of
Vermont. Above all, we know that we have
achieved in these "piping times of peace" a fuller independence for the
South than that which our fathers sought to win in the forum by their
eloquence or compel on the field by their swords.
It is a rare privilege, sir, to have had part, however humble, in
this work. Never was nobler duty confided to human hands than the
uplifting and upbuilding of the prostrate and bleeding South, misguided
perhaps, but beautiful in her suffering, and honest, brave and generous
always. In the record of her social, industrial, and
political illustrations we await with confidence the verdict of the
world.
But what of the Negro? Have we solved the problem he presents or
progressed in honor and equity towards the solution? Let the record
speak to the point. No section shows a more prosperous laboring
population than the Negroes of the South; none in fuller sympathy with
the employing and land-owning class. He shares our school fund, has the
fullest protection of our laws and the friendship of our people.
Self-interest, as well as honor, demand that he should have this. Our
future, our very existence depend upon our working out this problem in
full and exact justice. We understand that when Lincoln signed the
Emancipation Proclamation, your victory was assured; for he then
committed you to the cause of human liberty, against which the arms of
man cannot prevail; while those of our statesmen who trusted
to make slavery the cornerstone of the Confederacy doomed us to defeat
as far as they could, committing us to a cause that reason could not
defend or the sword maintain in the sight of advancing civilization.
Had Mr. Toombs said, which he did not say, that he
would call the roll of his slaves at the foot of Bunker Hill, he would
have been foolish, for he might have known that whenever slavery became
entangled in war it must perish, and that the chattel in human flesh
ended forever in New England when your fathers-not to be blamed for
parting with what didn't pay - sold their slaves to our fathers - not to
be praised for knowing a paying thing when they saw it. The
relations of the Southern people with the Negro are close and cordial.
We remember with what fidelity for four years he guarded our defenceless
women and children, whose husbands and fathers were fighting against his
freedom. To his eternal credit be it said that whenever he struck a blow
for his own liberty he fought in open battle, and when at last he raised
his black and humble hands that the shackles might be struck off, those
hands were innocent of wrong against his helpless charges, and worthy to
be taken in loving grasp by every man who honors loyalty and devotion.
Ruffians have maltreated him, rascals have misled him,
philanthropists established a bank for him, but the South, with the
North, protects against injustice to this simple and sincere people. To
liberty and enfranchisement is as far as law can carry the Negro. The
rest must be left to conscience and common sense. It should be left to
those among whom his lot is cast, with whom he is indissolubly connected
and whose prosperity depends upon their possessing his intelligent
sympathy and confidence. Faith has been kept with him in spite of
calumnious assertions to the contrary by those who assume to speak for
us or by frank opponents. Faith will be kept with him in the future, if
the South holds her reason and integrity.
But have we kept faith with you? In the fullest sense, yes. When
Lee surrendered - I don't say when Johnston surrendered, because I
understand he still alludes to the time when he met General Sherman last
as the time when he "determined to abandon any further prosecution of
the struggle" - when Lee surrendered, I say, and Johnston quit, the
South became, and has since been, loyal to this Union. We fought hard
enough to know that we were whipped, and in perfect frankness accepted
as final the arbitrament of the sword to which we had appealed. The
South found her jewel in the toad's head of defeat. The shackles that
had held her in narrow limitations fell forever when the shackles of the
Negro slave were broken. Under the old regime the Negroes
were slaves to the South, the South was a slave to the system. The old
plantation, with its simple police regulation and its feudal habit, was
the only type possible under slavery. Thus we gathered in the hands of a
splendid and chivalric oligarchy the substance that should have been
diffused among the people, as the rich blood, under certain artificial
conditions, is gathered at the heart, filling that with affluent
rapture, but leaving the body chill and colorless.
The Old South rested everything on slavery and agriculture,
unconscious that these could neither give nor maintain healthy growth.
The New South presents a perfect democracy, the oligarchs leading in the
popular movements social system compact and closely knitted, less
splendid on the surface but stronger at the core - a hundred farms for
every plantation, fifty homes for every palace, and a diversified
industry that meets the complex needs of this complex age.
The New South is enamored of her new work. Her soul is stirred
with the breath of a new life. The light of a grander day is falling
fair on her face. She is thrilling with the consciousness of growing
power and prosperity. As she stands upright, full-statured and equal
among the people of the earth, breathing the keen air and looking out
upon the expanding horizon, she understands that her emancipation came
because in the inscrutable wisdom of God her honest purpose was crossed
and her brave armies were beaten.
This is said in no spirit of time-serving or apology. The South
has nothing for which to apologize. She believes that the late struggle
between the States was war and not rebellion, revolution and not
conspiracy, and that her convictions were as honest as yours. I should
be unjust to the dauntless spirit of the South and to my own convictions
if I did not make this plain in this presence. The South has nothing to
take back. In my native town of Athens is a monument that crowns its
central hills - a plain, white shaft. Deep cut into its shining side is
a name dear to me above the names of men, that of a brave and simple man
who died in brave and simple faith. Not for all the glories of New
England - from Plymouth Rock all the way - would I exchange the heritage
he left me in his soldier's death. To the foot of that shaft I shall
send my children's children to reverence him who ennobled their name
with his heroic blood. But, sir, speaking from the shadow of that
memory, which I honor as I do nothing else on earth, I say that the
cause in which he suffered and for which he gave his life was adjudged
by higher and fuller wisdom than his or mine, and I am glad that the
omniscient God held the balance of battle in His Almighty hand, and that
human slavery was swept forever from American soil - the American Union
saved from the wreck of war.
This message, Mr. President, comes to you from consecrated ground.
Every foot of the soil about the city in which I live is sacred as a
battleground of the Republic. Every hill that invests it is hallowed to
you by the blood of your brothers, who died for your victory, and doubly
hallowed to us by the blood of those who died hopeless, but undaunted,
in defeat - sacred soil to all of us rich with memories that make us
purer and stronger and better, silent but stanch witnesses in its red
desolation of the matchless valor of American hearts and the deathless
glory of American arms - speaking an eloquent witness in its white peace
and prosperity to the indissoluble union of American States and the
imperishable brotherhood of the American people.
Now, what answer has New England to this message? Will she permit
the prejudices of war to remain in the hearts of the conquerors, when it
has died in the hearts of the conquered? Will she
transmit this prejudice to the next generation, that in their hearts,
which never felt the generous ardor of conflict, it may perpetuate
itself? Will she withhold, save in strained courtesy, the
hand which straight from his soldier's heart Grant offered to Lee at
Appomattox? Will she make the vision of a restored and happy people,
which gathered above the couch of your dying captain, filling his heart
with grace, touching his lips with praise and glorifying his path to the
grave; will she make this vision on which the last sight of his expiring
soul breathed a benediction, a cheat and a delusion?
If she does, the South, never abject
in asking for comradeship, must accept with dignity its refusal; but if
she does not; if she accepts in frankness and sincerity this message of
goodwill and friendship, then will the prophecy of Webster, delivered in
this very Society forty years ago amid tremendous applause, be verified
in its fullest and final sense, when he said: "Standing hand to hand and
clasping hands, we should remain united as we have been for sixty years,
citizens of the same country, members of the same government, united,
all united now and united forever. There have been difficulties,
contentions, and controversies, but I tell you that in my judgment
Those opposed eyes,
Which like the meteors of a troubled heaven,
All of one nature, of one substance bred,
Did lately meet in th' intestine shock,
Shall now, in mutual well-beseeming ranks,
March all one way.
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