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It is emphatically a Southern book, designed for Southern youth, and made of selections from Southern authors. And yet the charge that it is so sectional as to keep alive the bitter memories of the war, and sow seed which may ripen into a future “rebellion,” is utterly false, as any candid man may see by reference to the book itself. It does teach that the men who fought for Southern independence were not “rebels” or “traitors,” but as pure patriots as the world ever saw. Yet on the other hand, it teaches a full “acceptance of the situation” and of all the “logical results” of the war, and that henceforth the people of the South must meet all of their obligations as citizens of our common country. Mr. Blaine interprets “loyalty to the Union” to mean obedience to the behests of the ultra wing of the Republican party. The whole spirit of the selections of this book teaches obedience to the constitution and laws of the land.
If we find here and there a selection which a more rigid standard of excellence would have excluded, and miss some which we would have expected to find, yet it is due to Colonel James to say that he has performed his delicate task with sound judgment, rare discretion and fine literary taste, and has produced a book which deserves, as it will no doubt have, a wide circulation.
The type, paper, binding and general make up are in the usual good style of the great publishing house of A. S. Barnes & Co.
