Portentous indeed have been the developments of the past six months; the national domain has been extended far into the Caribbean Sea on the south, and to the west it is so near the mainland of Asia that we can hear grating of the process which is grinding the ancient celestial empire into pulp for the machinery of civilization and of progress.
In a very short while the last page of this war will have been written, except for the effect it will have on the future. Our flag now floats over Porto Rico, a part of Cuba, and Manila. It must soon bespeak our sovereignty over the island of Luzon, or possibly over the whole Philippine group. It will, ere long, from the staff on Havana's Morro, cast its shadow on the sunken and twisted frame of the Maine—a grim reminder of the vengeance that awaits any nation that lays unholy hands on an American citizen or violates any sacred American right. It has drawn from an admiring world unstinted applause for the invincible army, that under tropic suns, despite privations and disease, untrained but undismayed, has swept out of their own trenches and routed from their own battlements, like chaff before the wind, the trained forces of a formidable power. It has bodily stripped the past of lustre and defiantly challenged the possibilities of the future in the accomplishment of a matchless navy, whose deeds have struck the universe with consternation and with wonder.
But speaking as a Southerner and an American, I say that this has been as naught compared to the greatest good this war has accomplished. Drawing alike from all sections of the Union for her heroes and her martyrs, depending alike upon north, south, east and west for her glorious victories, and weeping with sympathy with the widows and the stricken mothers wherever they may be, America, incarnated spirit of liberty, stands again to-day the holy emblem of a household in which the children abide in unity, equality, love and peace. The iron sledge of war that rent asunder the links of loyalty and love has welded them together again. Ears that were deaf to loving appeals for the burial of sectional strife have listened and believed when the muster guns have spoken. Hearts that were cold to calls for trust and sympathy have awakened to loving confidence in the baptism of their blood.
Drawing inspiration from the flag of our country, the South has shared not only the dangers, but the glories of the war. In the death of brave young Bagley at Cardenas, North Carolina furnished the first blood in the tragedy. It was Victor Blue of South Carolina, who, like the Swamp Fox of the Revolution, crossed the fiery path of the enemy at his pleasure, and brought the first official tidings of the situation as it existed in Cuba. It was Brumby, a Georgia boy, the flag lieutenant of Dewey, who first raised the stars and stripes over Manila. It was Alabama that furnished Hobson—glorious Hobson—who accomplished two things the Spanish navy never yet has done—sunk an American ship, and made a Spanish man-of-war securely float.
The South answered the call to arms with its heart, and its heart goes out with that of the North in rejoicing at the result. The demonstration lacking to give the touch of life to the picture has been made. The open sesame that was needed to give insight into the true and loyal hearts both North and South has been spoken. Divided by war, we are united as never before by the same agency, and the union is of hearts as well as hands.
The doubter may scoff, and the pessimist may croak, but even they must take hope at the picture presented in the simple and touching incident of eight Grand Army veterans, with their silvery heads bowed in sympathy, escorting the lifeless body of the Daughter of the Confederacy from Narragansett to its last, long rest at Richmond.
When that great and generous soldier, U. S. Grant, gave back to Lee, crushed, but ever glorious, the sword he had surrendered at Appomattox, that magnanimous deed said to the people of the South: "You are our brothers." But when the present ruler of our grand republic on awakening to the condition of war that confronted him, with his first commission placed the leader's sword in the hands of those gallant confederate commanders, Joe Wheeler and Fitzhugh Lee, he wrote between the lines in living letters of everlasting light the words: "There is but one people of this Union, one flag alone for all."
The South, Mr. Toastmaster, will feel that her sons have been well given, that her blood has been well spilled, if that sentiment is to be indeed the true inspiration of our nation's future. God grant it may be as I believe it will.