HEALING OF THE NATION’S WOUND.
It was a gaping, festering sore that was left by the fratricidal war. A speedy healing was not to be expected. It took nearly a century for the mother country and America to get over their grievance. There is much of encouragement that this later feud will be more speedily composed. There have been some special influences at work. The occurrence of the Centennial tended to divert attention from the old trouble, to arouse the spirit of patriotism and to abate ill-will. The prevalence of an epidemic at the South for two seasons gave the North an opportunity to express moral and material sympathy, which did much to awaken reciprocal good-will on the part of the people of that section.
When President Garfield was shot, the people of the South rose up with as much indignation and sympathy as those of the North. It was a benediction for the Nation to be lifted by such a ground-swell of emotion, and that the impulse of Christian patriotism. We feel confident that President Garfield, restored to soundness, will by this dreadful dispensation be all the more disposed to temper his administration with fairness and righteousness, such as will carry on the process of healing in the body politic.
The Peabody fund and its judicious disbursement at the South is doing its work of palliating feeling. Miss Willard’s tour of temperance lecturing through the South was a hopeful revelation of harmonious sentiment. Dr. Mayo’s eminently successful educational visitation was in the same line.
Then it is also clearly manifest that the scheme of the North for aiding the South in the education of the colored people is coming to be recognized there-away as one of pure philanthropy and patriotism. The testimony of Dr. Haygood in his book, “Our Brother in Black,” to this effect, is but the expression of not a little of latent sentiment. He pronounces “immortal honor” upon these teachers. He says that without such service the South would be uninhabitable by this time. Our teachers and preachers, dwelling there from year to year, and returning North betimes, become interpreters of the mutual and improving good feeling. They command respect at the South, they retain affectionate regard at the North, and so become a bond of union between the two sections. More and more this process will go on with happiest results.
The National Cotton Exposition to be held this fall at Atlanta, upon a gigantic scale, will be another mighty loom for weaving the fabric of national good-will.
We be one people, with one English inheritance of language and history, of character and civilization, with a common possession of Revolutionary glory and of pride in our national development. We must let the dead bury their dead. We must push on in all proper ways to remove prejudice and to restore confidence. Service for our common country in the way of evangelization and of righteous civil administration, will be one of the most effective aids in healing the Nation’s wound.