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.