Part 13 (1/2)
In the record of her social, industrial, and political inst.i.tutions 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 landowning cla.s.s. He shares our school fund, has the fullest protection of our laws and the friends.h.i.+p 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 Emanc.i.p.ation Proclamation, your victory was a.s.sured; 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 defenseless 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, protests against injustice to this simple and sincere people. To liberty and enfranchis.e.m.e.nt 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 a.s.sertions to the contrary by those who a.s.sume 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 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 movement--a 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 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 emanc.i.p.ation came because in the inscrutable wisdom of G.o.d 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 s.h.i.+ning 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 enn.o.bled 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 G.o.d 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 in 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? (”No! No!”) 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? (”No! No!”) 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 sigh of his expiring soul breathed a benediction, a cheat and a delusion? If she does, the South, never abject in asking for comrades.h.i.+p, must accept with dignity its refusal; but if she does not; if she accepts in frankness and sincerity this message of goodwill and friends.h.i.+p, 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.'”
THE DUTY AND VALUE OF PATRIOTISM
John Ireland, Archbishop of Saint Paul, was born at Burnchurch, County Kilkenny, Ireland, September 11, 1838. As a boy he came to Saint Paul, Minnesota, in 1849, and there obtained his secular education at the Cathedral School. He studied theology in France, in the seminaries of Meximieux and Hyeres. During the Civil War he was chaplain of the Fifth Minnesota Regiment. In 1875 he was consecrated bishop of Saint Paul. In 1869 he founded the first total-abstinence society in Minnesota and has lectured much on temperance in the United States and Great Britain. The following extracts, used by special permission, are from his lecture delivered before the New York Commandery of the Loyal Legion, New York, April 4, 1894.
Patriotism is love of country, and loyalty to its life and weal--love tender and strong, tender as the love of son for mother, strong as the pillars of death; loyalty generous and disinterested, shrinking from no sacrifice, seeking no reward save country's honor and country's triumph.
Patriotism! There is magic in the word. It is bliss to repeat it.
Through ages the human race burnt the incense of admiration and reverence at the shrines of patriotism. The most beautiful pages of history are those which recount its deeds. Fireside tales, the outpourings of the memories of peoples, borrow from it their warmest glow. Poets are sweetest when they reecho its whisperings; orators are most potent when they thrill its chords to music.
Pagan nations were wrong when they made G.o.ds of their n.o.blest patriots.
But the error was the excess of a great truth, that heaven unites with earth in approving and blessing patriotism; that patriotism is one of earth's highest virtues, worthy to have come down from the atmosphere of the skies.
The exalted patriotism of the exiled Hebrew exhaled itself in a canticle of religion which Jehovah inspired, and which has been transmitted, as the inheritance of G.o.d's people to the Christian Church:
”Upon the rivers of Babylon there we sat and wept, when we remembered Sion.--If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand be forgotten. Let my tongue cleave to my jaws, if I do not remember thee, if I do not make Jerusalem the beginning of my joy.”
The human race pays homage to patriotism because of its supreme value.
The value of patriotism to a people is above gold and precious stones, above commerce and industry, above citadels and wars.h.i.+ps. Patriotism is the vital spark of national honor; it is the fount of the nation's prosperity, the s.h.i.+eld of the nation's safety. Take patriotism away, the nation's soul has fled, bloom and beauty have vanished from the nation's countenance.
The human race pays homage to patriotism because of its supreme loveliness. Patriotism goes out to what is among earth's possessions the most precious, the first and best and dearest--country--and its effusion is the fragrant flowering of the purest and n.o.blest sentiments of the heart.
Patriotism is innate in all men; the absence of it betokens a perversion of human nature; but it grows its full growth only where thoughts are elevated and heart-beatings are generous.
Next to G.o.d is country, and next to religion is patriotism. No praise goes beyond its deserts. It is sublime in its heroic oblation upon the field of battle. ”Oh glorious is he,” exclaims in Homer the Trojan warrior, ”who for his country falls!” It is sublime in the oft-repeated toil of dutiful citizens.h.i.+p. ”Of all human doings,” writes Cicero, ”none is more honorable and more estimable than to merit well of the commonwealth.”
Countries are of divine appointment. The Most High ”divided the nations, separated the sons of Adam, and appointed the bounds of peoples.” The physical and moral necessities of G.o.d's creatures are revelations of his will and laws. Man is born a social being. A condition of his existence and of his growth of mature age is the family. Nor does the family suffice to itself. A larger social organism is needed, into which families gather, so as to obtain from one another security to life and property and aid in the development of the faculties and powers with which nature has endowed the children of men.