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.
AGAINST CENTRALIZATION.
ADDRESS delivered before the Societies of the University of Virginia, June 25, 1889.
Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen: In thanking you for this cordial—this Virginia—welcome, let me say that it satisfies my heart to be with you to-day. This is my alma mater. Kind, in the tolerant patience with which she winnowed the chaff of idle days and idler nights that she might find for me the grain of knowledge and of truth, and in the charity with which she sealed in sorrow rather than in anger my brief but stormy career within these walls. Kinder yet, that her old heart has turned lovingly after the lapse of twenty years to her scapegrace son in a distant State, and recalling him with this honorable commission, has summoned him to her old place at her knees. Here at her feet, with the glory of her presence breaking all about me, let me testify that the years have but deepened my reverence and my love, and my heart has owned the magical tenderness of the emotions first kindled amid these sacred scenes. That which was unworthy has faded—that which was good has abided. Faded the memory of the tempestuous dyke and the riotous kalathump—dimmed the memory of that society, now happily extinct, but then famous as “The Nippers from Peru”—forgotten even the glad exultation of those days when the neighboring mountaineer in the pride of his breezy heights brought down the bandaged bear to give battle to the urban dog. Forgotten all these follies, and let us hope forgiven. But, enduring in heart and in brain, the exhaustless splendor of those golden days—the deep and pure inspiration of these academic shades—the kindly admonition and wisdom of the masters—the generous ardor of our mimic contests—and that loving comradeship that laughed at separation and has lived beyond the grave. Enduring and hallowed, blessed be God, the strange and wild ambitions that startled my boyish heart as amid these dim corridors, oh! my mother, the stirring of unseen wings in thy mighty past caught my careless ear, and the dazzling ideals of thy future were revealed to my wondering sight.