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IN NOVEMBER, 1887, AT THE AUGUSTA EXPOSITION, MR. GRADY DELIVERED THE
FOLLOWING ADDRESS:
“When my eyes for the last time behold the sun in the heavens,
may they rest upon the glorious ensign of this republic, still
full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in original
lustre, not a star obscured or a stripe effaced, but everywhere
blazing in characters of living light all over its ample folds
as they wave over land and sea, and in every wind under heaven,
that sentiment dear to every American heart, liberty and union
now and forever, one and inseparable!”
These words of Daniel Webster, whose brain was the temple of wisdom and
whose soul the temple of liberty, inspire my heart as I speak to you
to-day.
Ladies and gentlemen: This day is auspicious. Set apart by governor and
president for universal thanksgiving, our grateful hearts confirm the
consecration. Though we have not been permitted to parade our democratic
roosters in jubilant print, we may now lead them from their innocuous
desuetude, and making them the basis of this day’s feast, gather about
them a company that in cordial grace shall be excelled by none—not even
that which invests the republican turkey, whose steaming thighs shall be
slipped to-day in Indianapolis, and attacking them with an appetite that
comes from abounding health, consign them to that digestion that waits
on a conscience void of offense.
We give thanks to-day that the Lord God Almighty, having led us from
desolation into plenty, from poverty into substance, from passion into
reason, and from estrangement into love—having brought the harvests from
the ashes, and raised us homes from our ruins, and touched our scarred
land all over with beauty and with peace—permits us to assemble here
to-day and rejoice amid the garnered heaps of our treasure. Your
visitors give thanks because, coming to a city that from deep disaster
has risen with energy and courage unequaled, and witnessing an
exposition that in the sweep of its mighty arms and the splendor of its
gathered riches surpasses all we have attempted, they find all sense of
rivalry blotted out in wondering admiration, and from hearts that know
not envy or criticism, bid you God-speed to even higher achievement, and
to full and swift harvesting of the prosperity to gain which you have
builded so bravely and so wisely.
I am thankful, if you will pardon this personal digression, because I
now meet face to face, and can render service to a people whose generous
words on a late occasion touched my heart more deeply than I shall
attempt here to express. I simply say to you now, and I would that my
voice could reach every man in Georgia to whom I am in like indebted,
that your kindness left no room for resentment or regret; but a heart
filled with gratitude and love steadier in its resolution to deserve the
approval you so unstintingly gave, and more deeply consecrated to the
service of the people, that in giving me their love have given all that
I have dared to hope for, and more than I had dared to ask. I know not
what the future may hold for the life that recent events have jostled
from its accustomed path. It would be affectation to say that I am
careless—for, in touching it with your loving confidence, you have
kindled inspirations that cherished without guile, may be confessed in
frankness. But if it be given to man to read the human heart, and plumb
the quicksands of human ambition, I know that I speak the truth when I
say that if ever I hold in my grasp any honor, in the winning or wearing
of which my State is disadvantaged, and my hand refuses to surrender it,
I pray God that in remembrance of this hour He will strike it from me
forever; and if my ambitious heart rebels, that He will lead it, even
through sorrow and humiliation, to know that unworthy laurels will fade
on the brow, and that no honor can ennoble, no triumph advance, and no
victory satisfy that is not won and worn in the weal of the people and
the prosperity of the State.
It gives us pleasure to meet to-day our neighbors from Carolina, and by
the banks of this river, more bond than boundary, give them cordial
welcome to Georgia. The people of these States, sir, are ancient and
honorable friends. When the infant colony that settled Georgia landed
from its long voyage it was the hands of Carolinians that helped them
ashore, and Carolina’s hospitality that gave them food and shelter. A
banquet was served at Beaufort, the details of which proved our
ancestors to have been doughty trenchermen, and at which we are not
surprised to learn a goodly quantity of most excellent wine was served,
nor to learn—for scribes extenuated then as now—that, though the affair
was conducted in the most agreeable manner, no one became intoxicated.
When the Georgians took up their march to Savannah they carried with
them herds from the Carolinians’ folds, and food from their granaries,
and an offer from Mr. Whitaker—blessed be his memory!—of a silver spoon
for the first male child born on Georgia soil, the first instance, I
believe, of a bounty offered or protection guaranteed to an infant
industry on this continent. When they settled, it was Carolina gentlemen
with their servants that builded the huts and sheltered them, and
Carolina captains with their picket men that guarded them from the
Indians. As from your slender and pitiful store you gave then
bountifully to us, we invite you to-day to share with us our plenty and
rejoice with us that what you planted in neighborly kindness hath grown
into such greatness.
I am stirred with the profoundest emotion when I reflect upon what the
peoples of these two States have endured together. Shoulder to shoulder
they have fought through two revolutions. Side by side they have fallen
on the field of battle, and, brothers even in death, have rested in
common graves. Hand clasped in hand, they enjoyed victory together, and
together reaped in honor and dignity the fruits of their triumph. Heart
locked in heart, they have stood undaunted in the desolation of defeat
and, fortified by unfailing comradeship, have wrought gladness and peace
from the tumult and bitterness of despair. Of them it may be truly said,
they have known no rivalry save that emulation which inspires each, and
embitters neither. If we match your Calhoun, one of that trinity that
hath most been and shall not be equaled in political record, with our
Stephens, who was as acute in expounding, and as devoted in defending
the constitution as he; your Hayne, who maintained himself valiantly
against the great mastodon in American politics, with our Hill (would
that he might be given back to us to-day), who took the ablest debater
of the age by the throat and shook him until his eager tongue was
stilled and the lips that had slandered the South were livid in shame
and confusion; if against McDuffie, eloquent and immortal tribune, we
put our Toombs, the Mirabeau of his day, surpassing the Frenchman in
eloquence, and stainless of his crimes; if against Legare, both scholar
and statesman, we put our Wilde, not surpassed as either; if we proffer
Lanier, Barick and Harris, when the praises of Sims, and Hayne, and
Timrod are sung, it is only because we rejoice in the strength of each
which has honored both, and glorified our great republic. Let the glory
of our past history incite us to the future; let the trials we have
endured nerve us for trials yet to come, and let Georgia and Carolina,
that in prosperity united, in adversity have not been divided, strike
hands here to-day in a new compact that shall hold them bound together
in comradeship and love as long as the Savannah, laying its lips on the
cheeks of either, runs down to the sea.
The South is now confronted by two dangers.
First, that by remaining solid it will force a permanent sectional
alignment, under which being in minority it has nothing to gain, and
everything to lose.
Second, that by dividing it will debauch its political system, destroy
the defenses of its social integrity, and put the balance of power in
the hands of an ignorant and dangerous class.
Let us discuss these dangers for a moment.
As to the first. I do not doubt that every day the South remains solid,
the drift toward a solid North is deepening. The South is solid now in a
sense not dreamed of in ante-bellum days. Then we divided on every
question save one, that of preserving equal representation in the
Senate. Clay championed the protective tariff. Jackson flew at Calhoun’s
throat when Carolina threatened to nullify. Polk, of Tennessee, was made
president over Clay, of Kentucky. In 1852, Pierce received the vote of
twenty-seven States out of thirty-one, though this period marked the
height of slavery disturbance. The South was solid then on one thing
alone. On all other questions national suffrage knew no sectional lines.
To-day the South is a mass of States merged into one; every issue fused
in the ardor of one great question, and our 153 electoral votes hurled
as a rifle-ball into the electoral college. The tendency of this must be
to solidify the North. Indeed, this is already being done. Seymour and
Blair, in 1868, on a platform declaring the amendments null and void,
were beaten in the North by Grant, the hero of the war, by less than
100,000 votes. Mr. Harrison, twenty years later, beat Cleveland with a
flawless record and a careful platform, over 450,000 votes in the
northern States. The solid South invites the solid North. From this
status the South has little to hope. The North is already in the
majority. More than five million immigrants have poured into her States
in the past ten years, and will be declared in the next census. Four new
States will give her eight new senators and twelve electoral votes. In
the South but one State has kept pace with the West—and that one, Texas,
has largely gained at the expense of the Atlantic States. The South had
thirty-eight per cent. of the electoral vote in 1880. It is doubtful if
she will have over twenty-five per cent. in 1890. To remain solid,
therefore, is to incur the danger of being placed in perpetual minority,
and practically shut out from participation in the government, into
which Georgia and Massachusetts came as equals—that was fashioned in
their common wisdom, defended in their common blood, and bought of their
common treasure.
But what of the other danger? Can we risk that to avoid the first? I am
sure we cannot. The very worst thing that could happen to the South is
to have her white vote divided into factions, and each faction bidding
for the negro who holds the balance of power. What is this negro vote?
In every southern State it is considerable, and I fear it is increasing.
It is alien, being separated by racial differences that are deep and
permanent. It is ignorant—easily deluded or betrayed. It is
impulsive—lashed by a word into violence. It is purchasable, having the
incentive of poverty and cupidity, and the restraint of neither pride
nor conviction. It can never be merged through logical or orderly
currents into either of two parties, if two should present themselves.
We cannot be rid of it. There it is, a vast mass of impulsive, ignorant
and purchasable votes. With no factions between which to swing it has no
play or dislocation; but thrown from one faction to another it is the
loosed cannon on the storm-tossed ship. There is no community that would
deliberately tempt this danger; no social or political fabric that could
stand its strain. The Tweed ring, backed by a similar and less
irresponsible following than a shrewd clique could rally and control in
every southern State, and daring less of plunder and insolence than that
following would sanction or support, blotted out party lines in New
York, and made its intelligence and integrity as solid as the South ever
was. Party lines were promptly recast because New York had to deal with
the vicious, who once punished may be trusted to sulk in quiet while
their wounds heal. We deal with the ignorant, that scourged from power
to-day, may be deluded to-morrow into assaulting the very position from
which they have been lashed. Never did robbers find followers more to
their mind than the emancipated slaves of reconstruction days. Ignorant
and confiding, they could be committed to any excess, led to any
outrage. Deep as was the degradation to which these sovereign States
were carried, and heavy as is the burden they left on this impoverished
people, it was only when the white race, rallying from the graves of its
dead and the ashes of its homes, closed its decimated ranks, and
fronting federal bayonets, and defying federal power, stood like a stone
wall before the uttermost temples of its liberty and credit, and the
hideous drama closed, that the miserable assault was checked.
Shall those ranks be broken while the danger still threatens?
Let the whites divide, what happens? Here is this dangerous and alien
influence that holds the balance of power. It cannot be won by argument,
for it is without information, understanding or traditions—hence without
convictions. It must be bought by race privileges granted as such, or by
money paid outright. Let us follow this in its twofold aspect. One
faction gives the negro certain privileges and wins. The other offers
more. The first bids under, and so the sickening work goes on until the
barriers that now protect the social integrity and peace of both races
are swept away. The negro gains nothing, for he secures these spoils and
privileges not by deserving them, or qualifying himself for them, but as
the plunder of an irritating struggle in which he loses that largeness
of sympathy and tolerance that is at last essential to his well-being
and advancement. The other aspect is as bad. One side puts up five
thousand dollars for the purchase of the negro vote and wins. The other,
declining at first to corrupt the suffrage, but realizing at last that
the administration on which his life and property depends is at stake,
doubles this, and so the debauching deepens until at last such enormous
sums are spent that they must be recouped from the public treasuries.
Good men disgusted go to the rear. The shrewd and unscrupulous are put
to the front, and the negro, carrying with him the balance of power,
falls at last into the grasp of the faction which is most cunning and
conscienceless. National parties, finding here their cheapest market and
widest field, will pour millions into the South, adding to the
corruption funds of municipal and State factions until the ballot-box
will be hopelessly debauched, all the approaches thereto corrupt, and
all the results therefrom tainted.
I understand perfectly that this is not the largest view of this
question to take. The larger interests of this section and of the Union
do not rest here. I deplore this fact. I would that the South, fettered
by no circumstances and embarrassed by no problem, could take her place
by the side of her sister States, making alliance as her interest or
patriotism suggested.
Let me say here that I yield to no man in my love for this Union. I was
taught from my cradle to love it, and my father, loving it to the last,
nevertheless gave his life for Georgia when she asked it at his hands.
Loving the Union as he did, yet would I do unto Georgia even as he did.
I said once in New York, and I repeat it here, honoring his memory as I
do nothing on this earth, I still thank God that the American conflict
was adjudged by higher wisdom than his or mine, that the honest purposes
of the South were crossed, her brave armies beaten, and the American
Union saved from the storm of war. I love this Union because I am an
American citizen. I love it because it stands in the light while other
nations are groping in the dark. I love it because here, in this
republic of a homogeneous people, must be worked out the great problems
that perplex the world and established the axioms that must uplift and
regenerate humanity. I love it because it is my country, and my State
stood by when its flag was once unfurled, and uplifted her stainless
sword, and pledged “her life, her property and her sacred honor,” and
when the last star glittered from the silken folds, and with her
precious blood wrote her loyalty in its crimson bars. I love it, because
I know that its flag, fluttering from the misty heights of the future,
followed by a devoted people once estranged and thereby closer bound,
shall blaze out the way, and make clear the path up which all the
nations of the earth shall come in God’s appointed time.
I know the ideal status is that every State should vote without regard
to sectional lines. The reconciliation of the people will never be
complete until Iowa and Georgia, Texas and Massachusetts may stand side
by side without surprise. I would to God that status could be reached!
If any man can define a path on which the whites of the South, though
divided, can walk in honor and peace, I shall take that path, though I
walk down it alone—for at the end of that path, and nowhere else, lies
the full emancipation of my section and the full restoration of this
Union.
But it cannot be. When the negro was enfranchised, the South was
condemned to solidity as surely as self-preservation is the first law of
nature. A State here or there may drift away, but it will come back
assuredly—and come through such travail, and bearing such burden, as
neither war nor pestilence can bring. This problem is not of our
seeking. It was thrust upon us not in the orderly unfolding of a
preordained plan, but in hot impulse and passion, against the judgment
of the world and the lessons of history, and to the peril of popular
government, which rests at last on a pure and unsullied suffrage as a
building rests on its cornerstone. If it be urged that it was the
inexorable result of our course in 1860, we reply that we took that
course in deliberation, maintained it in sincerity, sealed it with the
blood of our best and bravest—and we accept without complaint, and abide
in dignity, its direct and ultimate results, and shall hold it to be, in
spite of defeat, forever honorable and sacred. This much I add. No king
that ever sat on a throne, though backed by autocratic power, would have
dared to subject his kingdom to the strain, and his people to the burden
that the North put on the prostrate, impoverished, and helpless South
when it enfranchised the body of our late slaves. We would not undo this
if we could. We know that this step, though taken in haste, shall never
be retraced. Posterity will judge of the wisdom and patriotism in which
it was ordered, and the order and equity in which it was worked out.
To that judgment we appeal with confidence. From that judgment Mr.
Blaine has already appealed by shrewdly urging in his written history,
that the North did not intend to enfranchise the negro, but was forced
to do it by the stubborn attitude of the South. Be that as it may, it is
our problem now, and with resolute hands and unfailing hearts we must
carry it to the end. It dominates, and will dominate, all other issues
with us. Political spoils are not to be considered. The administration
of our affairs is secondary, and patronage is less. Economic issues are
as naught, and even great moral reforms must wait on the settlement of
this question. To quarrel over other issues while this is impending is
to imitate the mother quail that thrums the leaves afar from her nest,
or recall the finesse of the Spartan boy who smiled in his mother’s face
while he hid the fox that was gnawing at his vitals.
What then is the duty of the South? Simply this. To maintain the
political as well as the social integrity of her white race, and to
appeal to the world for patience and justice. Let us show that it is not
sectional prejudice, but a sectional problem that keeps us compacted;
that it is not the hope of dominion or power, but an abiding
necessity—not spoils or patronage, but plain self-preservation that
holds the white race together in the South. Let us make this so plain
that a community anywhere, searching its own heart, would say: “The
necessity that binds our brothers in the South would bind us as closely
were the necessity here.” Let us invite immigrants and meet them with
such cordial welcome that they will abide with us in brotherhood, and so
enlarge the body of intelligence and integrity, that divided it may
carry the burden of ignorance without danger. Let us be loyal to the
Union, and not only loyal but loving. Let the republic know that in
peace it hath nowhere better citizens, nor in war braver soldiers, than
in these States. Though set apart by this problem which God permits to
rest upon us, and which therefore is right, let us garner our sheaves
gladly into the harvest of the Union, and find joy in our work and
progress, because it makes broader the glory and deeper the majesty of
this republic that is cemented with our blood. Let us love the flag that
waved over Marion and Jasper, that waves over us, and which when we are
gathered to our fathers shall be a guarantee of liberty and prosperity
to our children, and our children’s children, and know that what we do
in honor shall deepen, and what we do in dishonor shall dim, the luster
of its fixed and glittering stars.
As for the negro, let us impress upon him what he already knows, that
his best friends are the people among whom he lives, whose interests are
one with his, and whose prosperity depends on his perfect contentment.
Let us give him his uttermost rights, and measure out justice to him in
that fullness the strong should always give to the weak. Let us educate
him that he may be a better, a broader, and more enlightened man. Let us
lead him in steadfast ways of citizenship, that he may not longer be the
sport of the thoughtless, and the prey of the unscrupulous. Let us
inspire him to follow the example of the worthy and upright of his race,
who may be found in every community, and who increase steadily in
numbers and influence. Let us strike hands with him as friends—and as in
slavery we led him to heights which his race in Africa had never
reached, so in freedom let us lead him to a prosperity of which his
friends in the North have not dreamed. Let us make him know that he,
depending more than any other on the protection and bounty of
government, shall find in alliance with the best elements of the whites
the pledge of safe and impartial administration. And let us remember
this—that whatever wrong we put on him shall return to punish us.
Whatever we take from him in violence, that is unworthy and shall not
endure. What we steal from him in fraud, that is worse. But what we win
from him in sympathy and affection, what we gain in his confiding
alliance and confirm in his awakening judgment, that is precious and
shall endure—and out of it shall come healing and peace.
What is the attitude of the North on this issue? Two propositions appear
to be universally declared by the Republicans. First, that the negro
vote of the South is suppressed by violence, or miscounted by fraud.
Second, that it shall be freely cast and fairly counted. While
Republicans agree on these declarations, there are those who hold them
sincerely, but would be glad to see the first disapproved, and the
second thereby wiped out—and those who hold them in malignity, and who
will maintain the first that they may justify the storm that lies hid in
the second.
Let us send to-day a few words to the fair-minded Republicans of the
North. Here is a fundamental assertion—the negroes of the South can
never be kept in antagonism with their white neighbors—for the intimacy
and friendliness of the relation forbids. This friendliness, the most
important factor of the problem—the saving factor now as always—the
North has never, and it appears will never, take account of. It explains
that otherwise inexplicable thing—the fidelity and loyalty of the negro
during the war to the women and children left in his care. Had Uncle
Tom’s Cabin portrayed the habit rather than the exception of slavery,
the return of the Confederate armies could not have stayed the horrors
of arson and murder their departure would have invited. Instead of that,
witness the miracle of the slave in loyalty closing the fetters about
his own limbs—maintaining the families of those who fought against his
freedom—and at night on the far-off battle-field searching among the
carnage for his young master, that he might lift the dying head to his
humble breast and with rough hands wipe the blood away, and bend his
tender ear to catch the last words for the old ones at home, wrestling
meanwhile in agony and love, that in vicarious sacrifice he would have
laid down his life in his master’s stead. This friendliness, thank God,
has survived the lapse of years, the interruption of factions, and the
violence of campaigns, in which the bayonet fortified, and the drum-beat
inspired. Though unsuspected in slavery, it explains the miracle of
’64—though not yet confessed, it must explain the miracle of 1888.
Can a Northern man dealing with casual servants, querulous, sensitive,
and lodged for a day in a sphere they resent, understand the close
relations of the races of the South? Can he comprehend the open-hearted,
sympathetic negro, contented in his place, full of gossip and
comradeship, the companion of the hunt, the frolic, the furrow, and the
home, standing in kindly dependence that is the habit of his blood, and
lifting not his eyes beyond the narrow horizon that shuts him in with
his neighbors? This relation may be interrupted, but permanent
estrangement can never come between these two races. It is upon this
that the South depends. By fair dealing and by sympathy to deepen this
friendship and add thereto the moral effect of the better elements
compacted, with the wealth and intelligence and influence lodged
therein—it is this upon which the South has relied for years, and upon
which she will rest in future.
Against this no outside power can prevail. That there has been violence
is admitted. There has also been brutality in the North. But I do not
believe there was a negro voter in the South kept away from the polls by
fear of violence in the late election. I believe there were fewer votes
miscounted in the South than in the North. Even in those localities
where violence once occurred, wiser counsels have prevailed, and
reliance is placed on those higher and legitimate and inexorable methods
by which the superior race always dominates, and by which intelligence
and integrity always resist the domination of ignorance and corruption.
If the honest Republicans of the North permit a scheme of federal
supervision, based on the assumption of intimidated voters and a false
count, they will blunder from the start, for, beginning in error, they
will end in worse. This whole matter should be left now with the people,
with whom it must be left at last—that people most interested in its
honorable settlement. External pressure but irritates and delays. The
South has voluntarily laid down the certainty of power which dividing
her States would bring, that she might solve this problem in the
deliberation and the calmness it demands. She turns away from spoils,
knowing that to struggle for them would bring irritation to endanger
greater things. She postpones reforms and surrenders economic
convictions, that unembarrassed she may deal with this great issue. And
she pledges her sacred honor—by all that she has won, and all that she
has suffered—that she will settle this problem in such full and exact
justice as the finite mind can measure, or finite hands administer. On
this pledge she asks the patience and waiting judgment of the world, and
especially of the people—her brothers and her kindred—that in passion
forced this problem into the keeping of her helpless hands.
Shall she have it?
Let us see. Was there a pistol shot through the South on election day?
Was there a riot? Was there anything to equal the disturbance and
arrests in President Harrison’s own city? If so, diligent search has not
found it. Where then was the vote suppressed through violence? In the
12,000 election precincts of the South, where was a ballot-box rifled,
or a registry list altered? Thirteen Republican congressmen were
elected, many of them by majorities so slender that the vote of a single
precinct would have changed the result. In West Virginia, with its wild
and lawless districts, the governorship hangs on less than three hundred
votes, and this very day the governor of Tennessee and his cabinet are
passing on a legal question in the casting of twenty-three votes that
elects or defeats a congressman. In West Virginia and in Tennessee the
law will be applied as impartially and the official vote held as sacred
as in New York or Ohio. Where, then, is the wholesale fraud of which
complaint is made?
In the face of this showing, let me quote from an editorial in the
_Chicago Tribune_, one of the most powerful and a usually conservative
journal, charging that the negro vote is suppressed and miscounted. It
says:
“The trouble is, the blacks will not fight for themselves. White
men, or Indians, situated as the negroes, would have made the
rivers of the South run red with blood before they would submit
to the usurpations and wrongs with which the black passively
endure. Oppressed by generations of slavery, the negroes are
non-combatants. They will not shoot and burn for their rights.”
Mark the unspeakable infamy of this suggestion. The “trouble” is that
the negroes will not rise and shoot and burn. Not the “mercy” is that
they do not—but the “mercy” is that they will not massacre and begin the
strife that would repeat the horrors of Hayti in the various States of
this Republic. Burn and shoot for what? That they may vote in Georgia,
where in front of me in the line stood a negro, whose place was as
sacred as mine, and whose vote as safely counted? That they may vote in
the thirteen districts in which they have elected their congressmen?—in
the 320 counties in which they have elected their representatives, and
in old Virginia, where they came within 1400 votes of carrying the
State?
As the 60,000 Virginia negroes who did vote did so in admitted peace and
safety, where was the violence that prevented the needed 1400 from
leaving their fields, coming to the ballot-box, and giving the State to
the Republicans? And yet slavery itself, in which the selling of a child
from its mother’s arms and a wife from her husband was permitted, never
brought into reputable print so villainous a suggestion as this, leveled
by a knave at a political condition which he views from afar, and which
it is proved does not exist. To pass by the man who wrote these words,
how shall we judge the temper of a community in which they are
applauded? Are these men blood of our blood that they permit such things
to go unchallenged? Better that they had refused us parole at Appomattox
and had confiscated the ruins of our homes, than twenty years later to
bring us under the dominion of such passion as this. Hear another
witness, General Sherman, not in hot speech but in cold print:
“The negro must be allowed to vote, and his vote must be
counted, otherwise, so sure as there is a God in heaven, you
will have another war, more cruel than the last, when the torch
and dagger will take the place of the muskets of well-ordered
battalions. Should the negro strike that blow, in seeming
justice, there will be millions to assist them.”
And this is the greatest living soldier of the Union army. He covered
the desolation he sowed in city and country through these States with
the maxim that “cruelty in war, is mercy”—and no one lifted the cloak.
But when he insults the men he conquered, and endangers the renewing
growth of the country he wasted, with this unmanly threat, he puts a
stain on his name the maxims of philosophy and fable from Socrates all
the way cannot cover, and the glory of Marlborough, were it added to his
own, could not efface.
No answer can be made in passion to these men. If the temper of the
North is expressed in their words, the South can do nothing but rally
her sons for their last defense and await in silence what the future may
bring forth. This much should be said: The negro can never be
established in dominion over the white race of the South. The sword of
Grant and the bayonets of his army could not maintain them in the
supremacy they had won from the helplessness of our people. No sword
drawn by mortal man, no army martialed by mortal hand, can replace them
in the supremacy from which they were cast down by our people, for the
Lord God Almighty decreed otherwise when he created these races, and the
flaming sword of his archangel will enforce his decree and work out his
plan of unchangeable wisdom.
I do not believe the people of the North will be committed to a violent
policy. I believe in the good faith and fair play of the American
people. These noisy insects of the hour will perish with the heat that
warmed them into life, and when their pestilent cries have ceased, the
great clock of the Republic will strike the slow-moving and tranquil
hours, and the watchmen from the streets will cry, “All’s well—all’s
well!” I thank God that through the mists of passion that already cloud
our northern horizon comes the clear, strong voice of President Harrison
declaring that the South shall not suffer, but shall prosper, in his
election. Happy will it be for us—happy for this country, and happy for
his name and fame, if he has the courage to withstand the demagogues who
clamor for our crucifixion, and the wisdom to establish a path in which
voters of all parties and of all sections may walk together in peace and
prosperity.
Should the President yield to the demands of the pestilent, the country
will appeal from his decision. In Indiana and New York more than two
million votes were cast. By less than 16,000 majority these States were
given to Harrison, and his election thereby secured. A change of less
than ten thousand in this enormous poll would restore the Democratic
party to power. If President Harrison permits this unrighteous crusade
on the peace of the South, and the prosperity of the people, this change
and more will be made, and the Democratic party restored to power.
In her industrial growth the South is daily making new friends. Every
dollar of Northern money invested in the South gives us a new friend in
that section. Every settler among us raises up new witnesses to our
fairness, sincerity and loyalty. We shall secure from the North more
friendliness and sympathy, more champions and friends, through the
influence of our industrial growth, than through political aspiration or
achievement. Few men can comprehend—would that I had the time to dwell
on this point to-day—how vast has been the development, how swift the
growth, and how deep and enduring is laid the basis of even greater
growth in the future. Companies of immigrants sent down from the sturdy
settlers of the North will solve the Southern problem, and bring this
section into full and harmonious relations with the North quicker than
all the battalions that could be armed and martialed could do.
The tide of immigration is already springing this way. Let us encourage
it. But let us see that these immigrants come in well-ordered
procession, and not pell-mell. That they come as friends and
neighbors—to mingle their blood with ours, to build their homes on our
fields, to plant their Christian faith on these red hills, and not
seeking to plant strange heresies of government and faith, but, honoring
our constitution and reverencing our God, to confirm, and not estrange,
the simple faith in which we have been reared, and which we should
transmit unsullied to our children.
It may be that the last hope of saving the old-fashioned on this
continent will be lodged in the South. Strange admixtures have brought
strange results in the North. The anarchist and atheist walk abroad in
the cities, and, defying government, deny God. Culture has refined for
itself new and strange religions from the strong old creeds.
The old-time South is fading from observance, and the mellow
church-bells that called the people to the temples of God are being
tabooed and silenced. Let us, my countrymen, here to-day—yet a
homogeneous and God-fearing people—let us highly resolve that we will
carry untainted the straight and simple faith—that we will give
ourselves to the saving of the old-fashioned, that we will wear in our
hearts the prayers we learned at our mother’s knee, and seek no better
faith than that which fortified her life through adversity, and led her
serene and smiling through the valley of the shadow.
Let us keep sacred the Sabbath of God in its purity, and have no city so
great, or village so small, that every Sunday morning shall not stream
forth over towns and meadows the golden benediction of the bells, as
they summon the people to the churches of their fathers, and ring out in
praise of God and the power of His might. Though other people are led
into the bitterness of unbelief, or into the stagnation of apathy and
neglect—let us keep these two States in the current of the sweet
old-fashioned, that the sweet rushing waters may lap their sides, and
everywhere from their soil grow the tree, the leaf whereof shall not
fade and the fruit whereof shall not die, but the fruit whereof shall be
meat, and the leaf whereof shall be healing.
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.
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