The Builders

by Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

"And yet we Southerners, even old-fashioned ones like myself, see these evils as clearly as you Northerners," interposed Colonel Ashburton while Blackburn hesitated. "The difference between us is simply that you discern the evils only, and we go deep enough to strike the root of the trouble. If you want really to understand us, Sloane, study the motive forces in English and American history, especially the overpowering influence of racial instinct, and the effect of an injustice on the mind of the Anglo-Saxon."

With the Colonel's voice the old sense of familiarity pervaded Caroline's memory like a perfume, and she seemed to be living again through one of her father's political discussions at The Cedars—only the carefully enunciated phrases of Sloane and Blackburn were more convincing than the ringing, colloquial tones of the country orators. As she listened she told herself that these men were modern and constructive while her father and his group of Confederate soldiers had been stationary and antiquated. They had stood like crumbling landmarks of history, while Blackburn and his associates were building the political structure of the future.

"Of course I admit," Sloane was saying frankly, "that mistakes were made in the confusion that followed the Civil War. Nobody regrets these things more than the intelligent men of the North; but all this is past; a new generation is springing up; and none of us desires now to put your house in order, or force any government upon you. The North is perfectly willing to keep its hands off your domestic affairs, and to leave the race problem to you, or to anybody else who possesses the ability to solve it. It seems to me, therefore, that the time has come to put these things behind us, and to recognize that we are, and have been, at least since 1865, a nation. There are serious problems before us to-day, and the successful solution of these demands unity of thought and purpose."

There was a slight ironic twist to his smile as he finished, and he sat perfectly still, with the burned-out cigar in his hand, watching Blackburn with a look that was at once sympathetic and merciless.

"Colonel Ashburton has pointed out the only way," rejoined Blackburn drily. "You must use the past as a commentary before you can hope clearly to interpret the present."

"That is exactly what I am trying to do." The irony had vanished, and a note of solemnity had passed into Sloane's voice. "I am honestly trying to understand the source of the trouble, to discover how it may be removed. I see in the solid South not a local question, but a great national danger. There is no sanctity in a political party; it is merely an instrument to accomplish the ends of government through the will of the people. I realize how men may follow one party or another under certain conditions; but no party can always be right, and I cannot understand how a people, jealous of its freedom, intensely patriotic in spirit, can remain through two generations in bondage to one political idea, whether that idea be right or wrong. This seems to me to be beyond mere politics, to rise to the dignity of a national problem. I feel that it requires the best thought of the country for its adjustment. It is because we need your help that I am speaking so frankly. If we go into this war—and there are times when it seems to me that it will be impossible for us to keep out of it—it must be a baptism of fire from which we should emerge clean, whole, and united."

"Ashburton is fond of telling me," said Blackburn slowly, "that I live too much in the next century, yet it does not seem to me unreasonable to believe that the chief end of civilization is the development of the citizen, and of a national life as deeply rooted in personal consciousness as the life of the family. The ideal citizen, after all, is merely a man in whom the patriotic nerve has become as sensitive as the property nerve—a man who brings his country in touch with his actual life, who places the public welfare above his private aims and ambitions. It is because I believe the Southern character is rich in the material for such development that I entered this fight two years ago. As you know I am not a Democrat. I have broken away from the party, and recently, I have voted the Republican ticket at Presidential elections——"

"This is why I am here to-day," continued Sloane. "I am here because we need your help, because we see an opportunity for you to aid in the great work ahead of us. With a nation the power to survive rests in the whole, not in the parts, and America will not become America until she has obliterated the sections."

Blackburn was gazing at the hills on the horizon, while there flickered and waned in his face a look that was almost prophetic.

"Well, of course I agree with you," he said in a voice which was so detached and contemplative that it seemed to flow from the autumnal stillness, "but before you can obliterate the sections, the North as well as the South must cease to be sectional—especially must the North, which has so long regarded its control of the Federal Government as a proprietary right, cease to exclude the South from participation in national affairs and movements. Before you can obliterate the sections, you must, above all, understand why the solidarity of the South exists as a political issue—you must probe beneath the tissue of facts to the very bone and fibre of history. Truth is sometimes an inconvenient thing, but experience has found nothing better to build on. First of all—for we must clear the ground—first of all, you must remember that we Virginians are Anglo-Saxons, and that we share the sporting spirit which is ready to fight for a principle, and to accept the result whether it wins or loses. When the war was over—to dig no deeper than the greatest fact in our past—when the war was over we Virginians, and the people of the South, submitted, like true sportsmen, to the logic of events. We had been beaten on the principle that we had no right to secede from the Union, and therefore were still a part of the Union. We accepted this principle, and were ready to resume our duties and discharge our obligations; but this was not to be permitted without the harsh provisions of the Reconstruction acts. Then followed what is perhaps the darkest period in American history, and one of the darkest periods in the history of the English-speaking race——"