[¹] Copyright, H. C. Hudgins, publisher of “Life of Grady.”
HERE was a South of secession and slavery—that South is dead. There is a South of Union and freedom—that South is living, breathing, growing every hour.
I accept the term, “The New South,” as in no sense disparaging to the Old. Dear to me is the home of my childhood and the traditions of my people. There is a New South, not through protest against the Old, but because of new conditions, new adjustments, and, if you please, new ideas and aspirations. It is to this that I address myself. You have just heard an eloquent description of the triumphant armies of the North, and the grand review at Washington. I ask you, gentlemen, to picture, if you can, the foot-sore soldier, who, buttoning up in his faded gray jacket the parole which was taken, testimony to his children of his fidelity and faith, turned his face southward from Appomattox in April, 1865. Think of him as ragged, half-starved, heavy-hearted, enfeebled by want and wounds. Having fought to exhaustion, he surrenders his gun, wrings the hands of his comrades, and, lifting his tear-stained and pallid face for the last time to the graves that dot the old Virginia hills, pulls his gray cap over his brow and begins the slow and painful journey. What does he find?—let me ask you, who went to your homes eager to find all the welcome you had justly earned, full payment for your four years’ sacrifice—what does he find, when he reaches the home he left four years before? He finds his house in ruins, his farm devastated, his slaves freed, his stock killed, his barns empty, his trade destroyed, his money worthless, his social system, feudal in its magnificence, swept away, his people without law or legal status, his comrades slain, and the burdens of others heavy on his shoulders. Crushed by defeat, his very traditions gone, without money, credit, employment, material, or training—and, besides all this, confronted with the gravest problem that ever met human intelligence—the establishing of a status for the vast body of his liberated slaves.
What does he do—this hero in gray with a heart of gold—does he sit down in sullenness and despair? Not for a day. Surely, God, who had scourged him in his prosperity, inspired him in his adversity! As ruin was never before so overwhelming, never was restoration swifter.
The soldiers stepped from the trenches into the furrow; the horses that had charged upon General Sherman’s line marched before the plow, and fields that ran red with human blood in April were green with the harvest in June. From the ashes left us in 1864, we have raised a brave and beautiful city; and, somehow or other, we have caught the sunshine in the bricks and mortar of our homes and have builded therein not one single ignoble prejudice or memory.
It is a rare privilege, sir, to have had part, however humble, in this work. Never was nobler duty confided to human hands than the uplifting and upbuilding of the prostrate South—misguided, perhaps, but beautiful in her suffering, and honest, brave, and generous always. On the records of her social, industrial, and political restoration we await with confidence the verdict of the world.
REGARD FOR THE NEGRO RACE.
From speech on the Race Problem, at annual banquet of the Boston Merchants’ Association, Dec., 1889.