And its foes now scorn to brave it.
Furl it, hide it, let it rest.”
I lift the curtain and look again. I see the clouds roll away. The laughter of other days is hushed; the mansions lie in charred and blackened ruins, and there is nothing left but mourning and requiems above a land of desolation and of new-made graves. I see the triumphant armies of the Union, with flags flying and bands playing the martial airs of victory, marching in pomp and splendor through the grand avenues of their cities, amid the plaudits of rejoicing millions, leaving the weak and helpless race they had emancipated as a charge upon their ruined and impoverished masters. I see the remnants of the Confederate armies giving shelter and food and raiment to this helpless race and furnishing them with land and plows and mules, and building school houses and taxing themselves to promote the education of the negro children at their doors. I see the sturdy veterans at work in every department of life, and new cities and towns rising in the track of war, and the devastated South blossoming like the rose.
Now a vision of the future opens before me. I see the land of Washington and Jefferson, of Jackson and Polk, of Hill and Gordon again the richest land in all the world, not only in material wealth, but in the wealth of brain and courage and manhood, and in the Cabinet and the Congress, wielding again the destinies of the republic. I see generation after generation weaving garlands of the lily and the rose and hanging them about the monuments of those who wore the gray. I see the North and the South clasping hands in eternal friendship and brotherhood, and Old Glory waving above a united people for a thousand years to come.
The knightly spirit of the cavalier, that led their comrades to the opening grave, inspired the heroes who still survived, to face the dark and lowering future as bravely as they had faced the foe in the dreadful past; and buttoning on their tattered jackets of gray, their paroles of honor, they turned their tanned and tear-stained faces Southward and straggled back to Dixie to rebuild their ruined homes and raise the domes and spires of a new civilization in the air above the ashes of the old. Upon their faithful souls there is no stain of treason; upon their noble brows they wore no bloody wreath of conquest, but only the crown of honor. When impartial history shall be written by the truthful and the just, the names of these men who knelt at the shrine of the Old South and laid their hopes, their fortunes and their lives on its sacred altar, shall shine with the names of the world’s greatest heroes, and generations yet to be shall scatter flowers above their hallowed dust, as sweet tokens of their undying love and their devotion to the precious memories that cling about the folded Stars and Bars.
To the jaded politician who has grown weary of fishing for votes and angling for suckers, there is surcease of sorrow in the brawling brooks of the mountains, where the genuine speckled trout plays hide and seek with the sunshine in the shoals, or sleeps in the darkening eddies, under the fragrant bloom of the overhanging honeysuckles. To the overworked public servant upon whose head the snows that never melt have too soon fallen, these bright, leaping, laughing, dashing, buoyant mountain rivers are the symbols of youth and the synonyms of happiness. On their grassy brinks he may sit and listen to the singing of his reel and the swish of his line, and watch the game black bass as he leaps up out of the middle of the stream, with the hook in his mouth, and flashes in the sunlight, and then darts back to make the reel sing and the line swish again. Or, if he wishes a diversity of sport and pleasure, I will lend him one of my shotguns and a pair of my leggings, and we will leave the trout and bass in the brook and brimming river and follow my brace of beautiful Llewellyn bird dogs, “Fiddle” and “Bow,” into the fields, and serenade the vanishing coveys with chilled shot and smokeless powder. In such a life, in such a land there is no snow upon the heart; ’tis always summer there.
We are the product of the labor and sacrifice of age—labor and sacrifice which unknowingly worked out its own destiny in shaping ours. In our turn we toil to-day that future generations may have such heritage as we will to bequeath to them. Shall we permeate their lives with the dreariness of drudgery, the weariness of eternal struggle, the unworthiness of our fellow men and the hopelessness of reward? Or shall we live each day in joyousness of spirit, in happy accomplishment of duty, in serene confidence in the worth of mankind, believing that “God’s in his heaven, all’s right with the world,” attracting to ourselves the happiness and sunshine we radiate?
Which is the better legacy to our posterity?