This brings us to the sad fact that the war did not settle the race question, but merely aggravated it. Slavery was wrong and should have come to an end, but we ended it in the wrong way. The real trouble with the South at present is that the question of slavery was settled over the heads of the inhabitants by a hostile and hated power. No people could at heart accept such a settlement with good grace, and it is not to be expected of human nature. We stabbed the South to the quick, and during all the years of reconstruction turned the dagger round in the festering wound. The spirit of war and imperialism has never yet properly settled any question, except the question as to which side is the stronger; and now, after forty years, we are beginning to learn that the Negro has yet to be emancipated. If the South had been permitted to secede, slavery would have died a natural death, the Southerners
