The following appeared with the announcement of President Garfield's death. "In the history of the United States, President Garfield will be remembered as he whose nomination by the National Republican Convention strangled imperialism in its cradle, and as he whose assassination was quickly followed by an outburst of sorrow and sympathy which manifested to the North the true nature of the South, and do more than the arguments, the prayers and the common intercourse of thrice five years to bring together the peoples whom war had made separate. By the shedding of blood the North and South were sundered; and through the shedding of blood they are united.... In his wounding unto death passed away the alienation, the estrangement which prevented this country from being truly one, although men and millions had made it in appearance indivisible."[181]
Railroads, both because they allowed sentiment to become solidified in the South, and afforded great currents of intercourse with the North, were of first importance. And in the railroads, with the encouragement they gave to manufactures, and the stability they lent to trade in furnishing a strong commercial backbone,[182] appear early hints of the unifying force of Northern capital itself. A railroad, in which Northern men chiefly were interested, which proposed running up the James River Valley to Clifton Forge, was hailed by Richmond as bringing new prosperity. "We welcome the Northern gentlemen who are to co this invaluable work for Virginia, and we trust and believe that they may never have cause to regret the investment of their capital here. Every such investment is a new band around the States of the Union binding them more closely together."[183]
CHAPTER IV
CAPITAL
In the chapter on the conditions precedent to the erection of cotton mills in the South the attempt was made to show how the stage was set for the actual building of factories. The impulse for manufactures, and especially cotton mills was traced through its several more or less definite periods of development. The first of these was the recoil from the Hancock-Garfield election; the failure of the South's determined hopes for the success of the Democratic candidate, which would mean, it was thought, freedom from political insult and economic servitude, and an opportunity to wreak vengeance for the wrongs of radical rule, virtually marked the death struggle of the old exclusive social philosophy as the animating force in the South. This had been bred by the ante-bellum regime, called into concrete trial by the civil war, and intensified in character through each year of Reconstruction, and through each year proven more untenable. The questioned election of 1876, when Tilden was thrown out under circumstances peculiarly galling to the South, set the section as a unit and unalterable for the next four years in a passionate and dogged resolution against all odds to make a Democrat president in 1880. When Hancock was beaten in a fair fight by Garfield, the South was thrown prostrate; devastated by the war, pillaged and ridden in Reconstruction, to gather all her forces for a final defiant stand and have her last poor hope dashed was tragic. But this very extreme of bitterness was the South's salvation.
The leaders, with remarkable accord and almost simultaneously in all quarters, after recovery from the first inescapable shock, rallied to the situation like heroes, and called their less valiant brethren after them in a new resolution to build up another South founded on democracy and a purpose to employ every material resource for the building of a foundation which would bear the weight of the different structure that had to be erected.
Words unfamiliar in the South were heard on every hand; in this proposal of "real reconstruction" notions as novel as they were salutary were involved. Communication between States and parts of the same State, by railroads, telegraph and telephone; schools, churches, diversification of crops, deepening of harbors and rivers, municipal pride and civic reform were urged; it was demanded that politics and political wrangles be dropped forthwith, and that the section set about the course of material advancement as the only method of asserting rights against the North, and the only means of bearing her share of the national burden.
In the canvas of resources which this impulse brought, cotton mills were pounced upon as affording the readiest and most permanent instruments of success. It has been seen how platform and press and people concentrated their interest and attention upon the "cotton mill campaign", every new factory being hailed as another banner lifted in the fight. Two great impelling motives were patriotism—either local, state, sectional or national—and humanitarian considerations. These were held up in the plainest view of all, and impressed unceasingly. It was as a means to an end that cotton mills were argued for; their advocacy was grounded in the most splendidly fundamental beliefs and aspirations.