I will make inseparable cities with their arms about each other’s necks,
By the love of comrades—
By the manly love of comrades.
For you these from me, O Democracy, to serve you, ma femme!
For you, for you, I am trilling these songs.’”
For a moment they were silent. It was Hamilton who broke the silence.
“I’ve been feeling the same thing,” he said. “You know I’ve been brought up in the South. Ancestors lived in Georgia before Oglethorpe and all that.”
He waved his arm expressively. “And I suppose I’ve been something of a snob. All through the war I got to realizing it. But old ideas die hard. Take Williams, for instance, the nigger that saved my life. I wanted to thank him and yet I couldn’t. Something stuck in my throat. It was the same way when I saw him at the reception. I couldn’t stand seeing him there on a par with white men. It was the way I’d been brought up, I guess. Grandfather owned a hundred slaves.
“I don’t believe in social equality for the negro. I think the white man was destined to rule and the black to be ruled—don’t interrupt—still I’ve begun to see that the white man, we rulers, haven’t been doing the fair thing by the black. I wasn’t fair to Williams, and the South isn’t fair to its millions of Williams. We deprive them of an education, we don’t give them a fair trial in our courts. We don’t let them vote.
“It’s the same way with foreigners. I’ve been with them, slept with them, eaten with them, fought with them. Under the skin we’re all the same. The same elemental passions, the same hopes and fears. Not so much difference in culture as you’d think, except what’s due to difference in education.”