AT THE AUGUSTA EXPOSITION.
IN November, 1887, at the Augusta Exposition, Mr. Grady delivered the following Address:
“When my eyes for the last time behold the sun in the heavens, may they rest upon the glorious ensign of this republic, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in original lustre, not a star obscured or a stripe effaced, but everywhere blazing in characters of living light all over its ample folds as they wave over land and sea, and in every wind under heaven, that sentiment dear to every American heart, liberty and union now and forever, one and inseparable!”
These words of Daniel Webster, whose brain was the temple of wisdom and whose soul the temple of liberty, inspire my heart as I speak to you to-day.
Ladies and gentlemen: This day is auspicious. Set apart by governor and president for universal thanksgiving, our grateful hearts confirm the consecration. Though we have not been permitted to parade our democratic roosters in jubilant print, we may now lead them from their innocuous desuetude, and making them the basis of this day’s feast, gather about them a company that in cordial grace shall be excelled by none—not even that which invests the republican turkey, whose steaming thighs shall be slipped to-day in Indianapolis, and attacking them with an appetite that comes from abounding health, consign them to that digestion that waits on a conscience void of offense.
We give thanks to-day that the Lord God Almighty, having led us from desolation into plenty, from poverty into substance, from passion into reason, and from estrangement into love—having brought the harvests from the ashes, and raised us homes from our ruins, and touched our scarred land all over with beauty and with peace—permits us to assemble here to-day and rejoice amid the garnered heaps of our treasure. Your visitors give thanks because, coming to a city that from deep disaster has risen with energy and courage unequaled, and witnessing an exposition that in the sweep of its mighty arms and the splendor of its gathered riches surpasses all we have attempted, they find all sense of rivalry blotted out in wondering admiration, and from hearts that know not envy or criticism, bid you God-speed to even higher achievement, and to full and swift harvesting of the prosperity to gain which you have builded so bravely and so wisely.
I am thankful, if you will pardon this personal digression, because I now meet face to face, and can render service to a people whose generous words on a late occasion touched my heart more deeply than I shall attempt here to express. I simply say to you now, and I would that my voice could reach every man in Georgia to whom I am in like indebted, that your kindness left no room for resentment or regret; but a heart filled with gratitude and love steadier in its resolution to deserve the approval you so unstintingly gave, and more deeply consecrated to the service of the people, that in giving me their love have given all that I have dared to hope for, and more than I had dared to ask. I know not what the future may hold for the life that recent events have jostled from its accustomed path. It would be affectation to say that I am careless—for, in touching it with your loving confidence, you have kindled inspirations that cherished without guile, may be confessed in frankness. But if it be given to man to read the human heart, and plumb the quicksands of human ambition, I know that I speak the truth when I say that if ever I hold in my grasp any honor, in the winning or wearing of which my State is disadvantaged, and my hand refuses to surrender it, I pray God that in remembrance of this hour He will strike it from me forever; and if my ambitious heart rebels, that He will lead it, even through sorrow and humiliation, to know that unworthy laurels will fade on the brow, and that no honor can ennoble, no triumph advance, and no victory satisfy that is not won and worn in the weal of the people and the prosperity of the State.
It gives us pleasure to meet to-day our neighbors from Carolina, and by the banks of this river, more bond than boundary, give them cordial welcome to Georgia. The people of these States, sir, are ancient and honorable friends. When the infant colony that settled Georgia landed from its long voyage it was the hands of Carolinians that helped them ashore, and Carolina’s hospitality that gave them food and shelter. A banquet was served at Beaufort, the details of which proved our ancestors to have been doughty trenchermen, and at which we are not surprised to learn a goodly quantity of most excellent wine was served, nor to learn—for scribes extenuated then as now—that, though the affair was conducted in the most agreeable manner, no one became intoxicated. When the Georgians took up their march to Savannah they carried with them herds from the Carolinians’ folds, and food from their granaries, and an offer from Mr. Whitaker—blessed be his memory!—of a silver spoon for the first male child born on Georgia soil, the first instance, I believe, of a bounty offered or protection guaranteed to an infant industry on this continent. When they settled, it was Carolina gentlemen with their servants that builded the huts and sheltered them, and Carolina captains with their picket men that guarded them from the Indians. As from your slender and pitiful store you gave then bountifully to us, we invite you to-day to share with us our plenty and rejoice with us that what you planted in neighborly kindness hath grown into such greatness.
I am stirred with the profoundest emotion when I reflect upon what the peoples of these two States have endured together. Shoulder to shoulder they have fought through two revolutions. Side by side they have fallen on the field of battle, and, brothers even in death, have rested in common graves. Hand clasped in hand, they enjoyed victory together, and together reaped in honor and dignity the fruits of their triumph. Heart locked in heart, they have stood undaunted in the desolation of defeat and, fortified by unfailing comradeship, have wrought gladness and peace from the tumult and bitterness of despair. Of them it may be truly said, they have known no rivalry save that emulation which inspires each, and embitters neither. If we match your Calhoun, one of that trinity that hath most been and shall not be equaled in political record, with our Stephens, who was as acute in expounding, and as devoted in defending the constitution as he; your Hayne, who maintained himself valiantly against the great mastodon in American politics, with our Hill (would that he might be given back to us to-day), who took the ablest debater of the age by the throat and shook him until his eager tongue was stilled and the lips that had slandered the South were livid in shame and confusion; if against McDuffie, eloquent and immortal tribune, we put our Toombs, the Mirabeau of his day, surpassing the Frenchman in eloquence, and stainless of his crimes; if against Legare, both scholar and statesman, we put our Wilde, not surpassed as either; if we proffer Lanier, Barick and Harris, when the praises of Sims, and Hayne, and Timrod are sung, it is only because we rejoice in the strength of each which has honored both, and glorified our great republic. Let the glory of our past history incite us to the future; let the trials we have endured nerve us for trials yet to come, and let Georgia and Carolina, that in prosperity united, in adversity have not been divided, strike hands here to-day in a new compact that shall hold them bound together in comradeship and love as long as the Savannah, laying its lips on the cheeks of either, runs down to the sea.
The South is now confronted by two dangers.
First, that by remaining solid it will force a permanent sectional alignment, under which being in minority it has nothing to gain, and everything to lose.
Second, that by dividing it will debauch its political system, destroy the defenses of its social integrity, and put the balance of power in the hands of an ignorant and dangerous class.
Let us discuss these dangers for a moment.
As to the first. I do not doubt that every day the South remains solid, the drift toward a solid North is deepening. The South is solid now in a sense not dreamed of in ante-bellum days. Then we divided on every question save one, that of preserving equal representation in the Senate. Clay championed the protective tariff. Jackson flew at Calhoun’s throat when Carolina threatened to nullify. Polk, of Tennessee, was made president over Clay, of Kentucky. In 1852, Pierce received the vote of twenty-seven States out of thirty-one, though this period marked the height of slavery disturbance. The South was solid then on one thing alone. On all other questions national suffrage knew no sectional lines. To-day the South is a mass of States merged into one; every issue fused in the ardor of one great question, and our 153 electoral votes hurled as a rifle-ball into the electoral college. The tendency of this must be to solidify the North. Indeed, this is already being done. Seymour and Blair, in 1868, on a platform declaring the amendments null and void, were beaten in the North by Grant, the hero of the war, by less than 100,000 votes. Mr. Harrison, twenty years later, beat Cleveland with a flawless record and a careful platform, over 450,000 votes in the northern States. The solid South invites the solid North. From this status the South has little to hope. The North is already in the majority. More than five million immigrants have poured into her States in the past ten years, and will be declared in the next census. Four new States will give her eight new senators and twelve electoral votes. In the South but one State has kept pace with the West—and that one, Texas, has largely gained at the expense of the Atlantic States. The South had thirty-eight per cent. of the electoral vote in 1880. It is doubtful if she will have over twenty-five per cent. in 1890. To remain solid, therefore, is to incur the danger of being placed in perpetual minority, and practically shut out from participation in the government, into which Georgia and Massachusetts came as equals—that was fashioned in their common wisdom, defended in their common blood, and bought of their common treasure.
But what of the other danger? Can we risk that to avoid the first? I am sure we cannot. The very worst thing that could happen to the South is to have her white vote divided into factions, and each faction bidding for the negro who holds the balance of power. What is this negro vote? In every southern State it is considerable, and I fear it is increasing. It is alien, being separated by racial differences that are deep and permanent. It is ignorant—easily deluded or betrayed. It is impulsive—lashed by a word into violence. It is purchasable, having the incentive of poverty and cupidity, and the restraint of neither pride nor conviction. It can never be merged through logical or orderly currents into either of two parties, if two should present themselves. We cannot be rid of it. There it is, a vast mass of impulsive, ignorant and purchasable votes. With no factions between which to swing it has no play or dislocation; but thrown from one faction to another it is the loosed cannon on the storm-tossed ship. There is no community that would deliberately tempt this danger; no social or political fabric that could stand its strain. The Tweed ring, backed by a similar and less irresponsible following than a shrewd clique could rally and control in every southern State, and daring less of plunder and insolence than that following would sanction or support, blotted out party lines in New York, and made its intelligence and integrity as solid as the South ever was. Party lines were promptly recast because New York had to deal with the vicious, who once punished may be trusted to sulk in quiet while their wounds heal. We deal with the ignorant, that scourged from power to-day, may be deluded to-morrow into assaulting the very position from which they have been lashed. Never did robbers find followers more to their mind than the emancipated slaves of reconstruction days. Ignorant and confiding, they could be committed to any excess, led to any outrage. Deep as was the degradation to which these sovereign States were carried, and heavy as is the burden they left on this impoverished people, it was only when the white race, rallying from the graves of its dead and the ashes of its homes, closed its decimated ranks, and fronting federal bayonets, and defying federal power, stood like a stone wall before the uttermost temples of its liberty and credit, and the hideous drama closed, that the miserable assault was checked.
Shall those ranks be broken while the danger still threatens?
Let the whites divide, what happens? Here is this dangerous and alien influence that holds the balance of power. It cannot be won by argument, for it is without information, understanding or traditions—hence without convictions. It must be bought by race privileges granted as such, or by money paid outright. Let us follow this in its twofold aspect. One faction gives the negro certain privileges and wins. The other offers more. The first bids under, and so the sickening work goes on until the barriers that now protect the social integrity and peace of both races are swept away. The negro gains nothing, for he secures these spoils and privileges not by deserving them, or qualifying himself for them, but as the plunder of an irritating struggle in which he loses that largeness of sympathy and tolerance that is at last essential to his well-being and advancement. The other aspect is as bad. One side puts up five thousand dollars for the purchase of the negro vote and wins. The other, declining at first to corrupt the suffrage, but realizing at last that the administration on which his life and property depends is at stake, doubles this, and so the debauching deepens until at last such enormous sums are spent that they must be recouped from the public treasuries. Good men disgusted go to the rear. The shrewd and unscrupulous are put to the front, and the negro, carrying with him the balance of power, falls at last into the grasp of the faction which is most cunning and conscienceless. National parties, finding here their cheapest market and widest field, will pour millions into the South, adding to the corruption funds of municipal and State factions until the ballot-box will be hopelessly debauched, all the approaches thereto corrupt, and all the results therefrom tainted.
I understand perfectly that this is not the largest view of this question to take. The larger interests of this section and of the Union do not rest here. I deplore this fact. I would that the South, fettered by no circumstances and embarrassed by no problem, could take her place by the side of her sister States, making alliance as her interest or patriotism suggested.
Let me say here that I yield to no man in my love for this Union. I was taught from my cradle to love it, and my father, loving it to the last, nevertheless gave his life for Georgia when she asked it at his hands. Loving the Union as he did, yet would I do unto Georgia even as he did. I said once in New York, and I repeat it here, honoring his memory as I do nothing on this earth, I still thank God that the American conflict was adjudged by higher wisdom than his or mine, that the honest purposes of the South were crossed, her brave armies beaten, and the American Union saved from the storm of war. I love this Union because I am an American citizen. I love it because it stands in the light while other nations are groping in the dark. I love it because here, in this republic of a homogeneous people, must be worked out the great problems that perplex the world and established the axioms that must uplift and regenerate humanity. I love it because it is my country, and my State stood by when its flag was once unfurled, and uplifted her stainless sword, and pledged “her life, her property and her sacred honor,” and when the last star glittered from the silken folds, and with her precious blood wrote her loyalty in its crimson bars. I love it, because I know that its flag, fluttering from the misty heights of the future, followed by a devoted people once estranged and thereby closer bound, shall blaze out the way, and make clear the path up which all the nations of the earth shall come in God’s appointed time.
I know the ideal status is that every State should vote without regard to sectional lines. The reconciliation of the people will never be complete until Iowa and Georgia, Texas and Massachusetts may stand side by side without surprise. I would to God that status could be reached! If any man can define a path on which the whites of the South, though divided, can walk in honor and peace, I shall take that path, though I walk down it alone—for at the end of that path, and nowhere else, lies the full emancipation of my section and the full restoration of this Union.
But it cannot be. When the negro was enfranchised, the South was condemned to solidity as surely as self-preservation is the first law of nature. A State here or there may drift away, but it will come back assuredly—and come through such travail, and bearing such burden, as neither war nor pestilence can bring. This problem is not of our seeking. It was thrust upon us not in the orderly unfolding of a preordained plan, but in hot impulse and passion, against the judgment of the world and the lessons of history, and to the peril of popular government, which rests at last on a pure and unsullied suffrage as a building rests on its cornerstone. If it be urged that it was the inexorable result of our course in 1860, we reply that we took that course in deliberation, maintained it in sincerity, sealed it with the blood of our best and bravest—and we accept without complaint, and abide in dignity, its direct and ultimate results, and shall hold it to be, in spite of defeat, forever honorable and sacred. This much I add. No king that ever sat on a throne, though backed by autocratic power, would have dared to subject his kingdom to the strain, and his people to the burden that the North put on the prostrate, impoverished, and helpless South when it enfranchised the body of our late slaves. We would not undo this if we could. We know that this step, though taken in haste, shall never be retraced. Posterity will judge of the wisdom and patriotism in which it was ordered, and the order and equity in which it was worked out.
To that judgment we appeal with confidence. From that judgment Mr. Blaine has already appealed by shrewdly urging in his written history, that the North did not intend to enfranchise the negro, but was forced to do it by the stubborn attitude of the South. Be that as it may, it is our problem now, and with resolute hands and unfailing hearts we must carry it to the end. It dominates, and will dominate, all other issues with us. Political spoils are not to be considered. The administration of our affairs is secondary, and patronage is less. Economic issues are as naught, and even great moral reforms must wait on the settlement of this question. To quarrel over other issues while this is impending is to imitate the mother quail that thrums the leaves afar from her nest, or recall the finesse of the Spartan boy who smiled in his mother’s face while he hid the fox that was gnawing at his vitals.
What then is the duty of the South? Simply this. To maintain the political as well as the social integrity of her white race, and to appeal to the world for patience and justice. Let us show that it is not sectional prejudice, but a sectional problem that keeps us compacted; that it is not the hope of dominion or power, but an abiding necessity—not spoils or patronage, but plain self-preservation that holds the white race together in the South. Let us make this so plain that a community anywhere, searching its own heart, would say: “The necessity that binds our brothers in the South would bind us as closely were the necessity here.” Let us invite immigrants and meet them with such cordial welcome that they will abide with us in brotherhood, and so enlarge the body of intelligence and integrity, that divided it may carry the burden of ignorance without danger. Let us be loyal to the Union, and not only loyal but loving. Let the republic know that in peace it hath nowhere better citizens, nor in war braver soldiers, than in these States. Though set apart by this problem which God permits to rest upon us, and which therefore is right, let us garner our sheaves gladly into the harvest of the Union, and find joy in our work and progress, because it makes broader the glory and deeper the majesty of this republic that is cemented with our blood. Let us love the flag that waved over Marion and Jasper, that waves over us, and which when we are gathered to our fathers shall be a guarantee of liberty and prosperity to our children, and our children’s children, and know that what we do in honor shall deepen, and what we do in dishonor shall dim, the luster of its fixed and glittering stars.
As for the negro, let us impress upon him what he already knows, that his best friends are the people among whom he lives, whose interests are one with his, and whose prosperity depends on his perfect contentment. Let us give him his uttermost rights, and measure out justice to him in that fullness the strong should always give to the weak. Let us educate him that he may be a better, a broader, and more enlightened man. Let us lead him in steadfast ways of citizenship, that he may not longer be the sport of the thoughtless, and the prey of the unscrupulous. Let us inspire him to follow the example of the worthy and upright of his race, who may be found in every community, and who increase steadily in numbers and influence. Let us strike hands with him as friends—and as in slavery we led him to heights which his race in Africa had never reached, so in freedom let us lead him to a prosperity of which his friends in the North have not dreamed. Let us make him know that he, depending more than any other on the protection and bounty of government, shall find in alliance with the best elements of the whites the pledge of safe and impartial administration. And let us remember this—that whatever wrong we put on him shall return to punish us. Whatever we take from him in violence, that is unworthy and shall not endure. What we steal from him in fraud, that is worse. But what we win from him in sympathy and affection, what we gain in his confiding alliance and confirm in his awakening judgment, that is precious and shall endure—and out of it shall come healing and peace.
What is the attitude of the North on this issue? Two propositions appear to be universally declared by the Republicans. First, that the negro vote of the South is suppressed by violence, or miscounted by fraud. Second, that it shall be freely cast and fairly counted. While Republicans agree on these declarations, there are those who hold them sincerely, but would be glad to see the first disapproved, and the second thereby wiped out—and those who hold them in malignity, and who will maintain the first that they may justify the storm that lies hid in the second.
Let us send to-day a few words to the fair-minded Republicans of the North. Here is a fundamental assertion—the negroes of the South can never be kept in antagonism with their white neighbors—for the intimacy and friendliness of the relation forbids. This friendliness, the most important factor of the problem—the saving factor now as always—the North has never, and it appears will never, take account of. It explains that otherwise inexplicable thing—the fidelity and loyalty of the negro during the war to the women and children left in his care. Had Uncle Tom’s Cabin portrayed the habit rather than the exception of slavery, the return of the Confederate armies could not have stayed the horrors of arson and murder their departure would have invited. Instead of that, witness the miracle of the slave in loyalty closing the fetters about his own limbs—maintaining the families of those who fought against his freedom—and at night on the far-off battle-field searching among the carnage for his young master, that he might lift the dying head to his humble breast and with rough hands wipe the blood away, and bend his tender ear to catch the last words for the old ones at home, wrestling meanwhile in agony and love, that in vicarious sacrifice he would have laid down his life in his master’s stead. This friendliness, thank God, has survived the lapse of years, the interruption of factions, and the violence of campaigns, in which the bayonet fortified, and the drum-beat inspired. Though unsuspected in slavery, it explains the miracle of ’64—though not yet confessed, it must explain the miracle of 1888.
Can a Northern man dealing with casual servants, querulous, sensitive, and lodged for a day in a sphere they resent, understand the close relations of the races of the South? Can he comprehend the open-hearted, sympathetic negro, contented in his place, full of gossip and comradeship, the companion of the hunt, the frolic, the furrow, and the home, standing in kindly dependence that is the habit of his blood, and lifting not his eyes beyond the narrow horizon that shuts him in with his neighbors? This relation may be interrupted, but permanent estrangement can never come between these two races. It is upon this that the South depends. By fair dealing and by sympathy to deepen this friendship and add thereto the moral effect of the better elements compacted, with the wealth and intelligence and influence lodged therein—it is this upon which the South has relied for years, and upon which she will rest in future.
Against this no outside power can prevail. That there has been violence is admitted. There has also been brutality in the North. But I do not believe there was a negro voter in the South kept away from the polls by fear of violence in the late election. I believe there were fewer votes miscounted in the South than in the North. Even in those localities where violence once occurred, wiser counsels have prevailed, and reliance is placed on those higher and legitimate and inexorable methods by which the superior race always dominates, and by which intelligence and integrity always resist the domination of ignorance and corruption. If the honest Republicans of the North permit a scheme of federal supervision, based on the assumption of intimidated voters and a false count, they will blunder from the start, for, beginning in error, they will end in worse. This whole matter should be left now with the people, with whom it must be left at last—that people most interested in its honorable settlement. External pressure but irritates and delays. The South has voluntarily laid down the certainty of power which dividing her States would bring, that she might solve this problem in the deliberation and the calmness it demands. She turns away from spoils, knowing that to struggle for them would bring irritation to endanger greater things. She postpones reforms and surrenders economic convictions, that unembarrassed she may deal with this great issue. And she pledges her sacred honor—by all that she has won, and all that she has suffered—that she will settle this problem in such full and exact justice as the finite mind can measure, or finite hands administer. On this pledge she asks the patience and waiting judgment of the world, and especially of the people—her brothers and her kindred—that in passion forced this problem into the keeping of her helpless hands.
Shall she have it?
Let us see. Was there a pistol shot through the South on election day? Was there a riot? Was there anything to equal the disturbance and arrests in President Harrison’s own city? If so, diligent search has not found it. Where then was the vote suppressed through violence? In the 12,000 election precincts of the South, where was a ballot-box rifled, or a registry list altered? Thirteen Republican congressmen were elected, many of them by majorities so slender that the vote of a single precinct would have changed the result. In West Virginia, with its wild and lawless districts, the governorship hangs on less than three hundred votes, and this very day the governor of Tennessee and his cabinet are passing on a legal question in the casting of twenty-three votes that elects or defeats a congressman. In West Virginia and in Tennessee the law will be applied as impartially and the official vote held as sacred as in New York or Ohio. Where, then, is the wholesale fraud of which complaint is made?
In the face of this showing, let me quote from an editorial in the Chicago Tribune, one of the most powerful and a usually conservative journal, charging that the negro vote is suppressed and miscounted. It says:
“The trouble is, the blacks will not fight for themselves. White men, or Indians, situated as the negroes, would have made the rivers of the South run red with blood before they would submit to the usurpations and wrongs with which the black passively endure. Oppressed by generations of slavery, the negroes are non-combatants. They will not shoot and burn for their rights.”
Mark the unspeakable infamy of this suggestion. The “trouble” is that the negroes will not rise and shoot and burn. Not the “mercy” is that they do not—but the “mercy” is that they will not massacre and begin the strife that would repeat the horrors of Hayti in the various States of this Republic. Burn and shoot for what? That they may vote in Georgia, where in front of me in the line stood a negro, whose place was as sacred as mine, and whose vote as safely counted? That they may vote in the thirteen districts in which they have elected their congressmen?—in the 320 counties in which they have elected their representatives, and in old Virginia, where they came within 1400 votes of carrying the State?
As the 60,000 Virginia negroes who did vote did so in admitted peace and safety, where was the violence that prevented the needed 1400 from leaving their fields, coming to the ballot-box, and giving the State to the Republicans? And yet slavery itself, in which the selling of a child from its mother’s arms and a wife from her husband was permitted, never brought into reputable print so villainous a suggestion as this, leveled by a knave at a political condition which he views from afar, and which it is proved does not exist. To pass by the man who wrote these words, how shall we judge the temper of a community in which they are applauded? Are these men blood of our blood that they permit such things to go unchallenged? Better that they had refused us parole at Appomattox and had confiscated the ruins of our homes, than twenty years later to bring us under the dominion of such passion as this. Hear another witness, General Sherman, not in hot speech but in cold print:
“The negro must be allowed to vote, and his vote must be counted, otherwise, so sure as there is a God in heaven, you will have another war, more cruel than the last, when the torch and dagger will take the place of the muskets of well-ordered battalions. Should the negro strike that blow, in seeming justice, there will be millions to assist them.”
And this is the greatest living soldier of the Union army. He covered the desolation he sowed in city and country through these States with the maxim that “cruelty in war, is mercy”—and no one lifted the cloak. But when he insults the men he conquered, and endangers the renewing growth of the country he wasted, with this unmanly threat, he puts a stain on his name the maxims of philosophy and fable from Socrates all the way cannot cover, and the glory of Marlborough, were it added to his own, could not efface.
No answer can be made in passion to these men. If the temper of the North is expressed in their words, the South can do nothing but rally her sons for their last defense and await in silence what the future may bring forth. This much should be said: The negro can never be established in dominion over the white race of the South. The sword of Grant and the bayonets of his army could not maintain them in the supremacy they had won from the helplessness of our people. No sword drawn by mortal man, no army martialed by mortal hand, can replace them in the supremacy from which they were cast down by our people, for the Lord God Almighty decreed otherwise when he created these races, and the flaming sword of his archangel will enforce his decree and work out his plan of unchangeable wisdom.
I do not believe the people of the North will be committed to a violent policy. I believe in the good faith and fair play of the American people. These noisy insects of the hour will perish with the heat that warmed them into life, and when their pestilent cries have ceased, the great clock of the Republic will strike the slow-moving and tranquil hours, and the watchmen from the streets will cry, “All’s well—all’s well!” I thank God that through the mists of passion that already cloud our northern horizon comes the clear, strong voice of President Harrison declaring that the South shall not suffer, but shall prosper, in his election. Happy will it be for us—happy for this country, and happy for his name and fame, if he has the courage to withstand the demagogues who clamor for our crucifixion, and the wisdom to establish a path in which voters of all parties and of all sections may walk together in peace and prosperity.
Should the President yield to the demands of the pestilent, the country will appeal from his decision. In Indiana and New York more than two million votes were cast. By less than 16,000 majority these States were given to Harrison, and his election thereby secured. A change of less than ten thousand in this enormous poll would restore the Democratic party to power. If President Harrison permits this unrighteous crusade on the peace of the South, and the prosperity of the people, this change and more will be made, and the Democratic party restored to power.
In her industrial growth the South is daily making new friends. Every dollar of Northern money invested in the South gives us a new friend in that section. Every settler among us raises up new witnesses to our fairness, sincerity and loyalty. We shall secure from the North more friendliness and sympathy, more champions and friends, through the influence of our industrial growth, than through political aspiration or achievement. Few men can comprehend—would that I had the time to dwell on this point to-day—how vast has been the development, how swift the growth, and how deep and enduring is laid the basis of even greater growth in the future. Companies of immigrants sent down from the sturdy settlers of the North will solve the Southern problem, and bring this section into full and harmonious relations with the North quicker than all the battalions that could be armed and martialed could do.
The tide of immigration is already springing this way. Let us encourage it. But let us see that these immigrants come in well-ordered procession, and not pell-mell. That they come as friends and neighbors—to mingle their blood with ours, to build their homes on our fields, to plant their Christian faith on these red hills, and not seeking to plant strange heresies of government and faith, but, honoring our constitution and reverencing our God, to confirm, and not estrange, the simple faith in which we have been reared, and which we should transmit unsullied to our children.
It may be that the last hope of saving the old-fashioned on this continent will be lodged in the South. Strange admixtures have brought strange results in the North. The anarchist and atheist walk abroad in the cities, and, defying government, deny God. Culture has refined for itself new and strange religions from the strong old creeds.
The old-time South is fading from observance, and the mellow church-bells that called the people to the temples of God are being tabooed and silenced. Let us, my countrymen, here to-day—yet a homogeneous and God-fearing people—let us highly resolve that we will carry untainted the straight and simple faith—that we will give ourselves to the saving of the old-fashioned, that we will wear in our hearts the prayers we learned at our mother’s knee, and seek no better faith than that which fortified her life through adversity, and led her serene and smiling through the valley of the shadow.
Let us keep sacred the Sabbath of God in its purity, and have no city so great, or village so small, that every Sunday morning shall not stream forth over towns and meadows the golden benediction of the bells, as they summon the people to the churches of their fathers, and ring out in praise of God and the power of His might. Though other people are led into the bitterness of unbelief, or into the stagnation of apathy and neglect—let us keep these two States in the current of the sweet old-fashioned, that the sweet rushing waters may lap their sides, and everywhere from their soil grow the tree, the leaf whereof shall not fade and the fruit whereof shall not die, but the fruit whereof shall be meat, and the leaf whereof shall be healing.
In working out our civil, political, and religious salvation, everything depends on the union of our people. The man who seeks to divide them now in the hour of their trial, that man puts ambition before patriotism. A distinguished gentleman said that “certain upstarts and speculators were seeking to create a new South to the derision and disparagement of the old,” and rebukes them for so doing. These are cruel and unjust words. It was Ben Hill—the music of whose voice hath not deepened, though now attuned to the symphonies of the skies—who said: “There was a South of secession and slavery—that South is dead; there is a South of union and freedom—that South, thank God, is living, growing, every hour.”
It was he who named the New South. One of the “upstarts” said in a speech in New York: “In answering the toast to the New South, I accept that name in no disparagement to the Old South. Dear to me, sir, is the home of my childhood and the traditions of my people, and not for the glories of New England history from Plymouth Rock all the way, would I surrender the least of these. Never shall I do, or say, aught to dim the luster of the glory of my ancestors, won in peace and war.”
Where is the young man in the South who has spoken one word in disparagement of our past, or has worn lightly the sacred traditions of our fathers? The world has not equaled the unquestioning reverence and undying loyalty of the young man of the South to the memory of our fathers. History has not equaled the cheerfulness and heroism with which they bestirred themselves amid the poverty that was their legacy, and holding the inspiration of their past to be better than rich acres and garnered wealth, went out to do their part in rebuilding the fallen fortunes of the South and restoring her fields to their pristine beauty. Wherever they have driven—in marketplace, putting youth against experience, poverty against capital—in the shop earning in the light of their forges and the sweat of their faces the bread and meat for those dependent upon them—in the forum, eloquent by instinct, able though unlettered—on the farm, locking the sunshine in their harvests and spreading the showers on their fields—everywhere my heart has been with them, and I thank God that they are comrades and countrymen of mine. I have stood with them shoulder to shoulder as they met new conditions without surrendering old faiths—and I have been content to feel the grasp of their hands and the throb of their hearts, and hear the music of their quick step as they marched unfearing into new and untried ways. If I should attempt to prostitute the generous enthusiasm of these my comrades to my own ambition, I should be unworthy. If any man enwrapping himself in the sacred memories of the Old South, should prostitute them to the hiding of his weakness, or the strengthening of his failing fortunes, that man would be unworthy. If any man for his own advantage should seek to divide the old South from the new, or the new from the old—to separate these that in love hath been joined together—to estrange the son from his father’s grave and turn our children from the monuments of our dead, to embitter the closing days of our veterans with suspicion of the sons who shall follow them—this man’s words are unworthy and are spoken to the injury of his people.
Some one has said in derision that the old men of the South, sitting down amid their ruins, reminded him “of the Spanish hidalgos sitting in the porches of the Alhambra, and looking out to sea for the return of the lost Armada.” There is pathos but no derision in this picture to me. These men were our fathers. Their lives were stainless. Their hands were daintily cast, and the civilization they builded in tender and engaging grace hath not been equaled. The scenes amid which they moved, as princes among men, have vanished forever. A grosser and material day has come, in which their gentle hands could garner but scantily, and their guileless hearts fend but feebly. Let them sit, therefore, in the dismantled porches of their homes, into which dishonor hath never entered, to which discourtesy is a stranger—and gaze out to the sea, beyond the horizon of which their armada has drifted forever. And though the sea shall not render back for them the Arguses that went down in their ship, let us build for them in the land they love so well a stately and enduring temple—its pillars founded in justice, its arches springing to the skies, its treasuries filled with substance; liberty walking in its corridors; art adorning its walls; religion filling its aisles with incense,—and here let them rest in honorable peace and tranquillity until God shall call them hence to “a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.”
There are other things I wish to say to you to-day, my countrymen, but my voice forbids. I thank you for your courteous and patient attention. And I pray to God—who hath led us through sorrow and travail—that on this day of universal thanksgiving, when every Christian heart in this audience is uplifted in praise, that He will open the gates of His glory and bend down above us in mercy and love! And that these people who have given themselves unto Him, and who wear His faith in their hearts, that He will lead them even as little children are led—that He will deepen their wisdom with the ambition of His words—that He will turn them from error with the touch of His almighty hand—that he will crown all their triumphs with the light of His approving smile, and into the heart of their troubles, whether of people or state, that He will pour the healing of His mercy and His grace.