Present:
Judge George L. Christian, President.Sergeant Ro. S. Bosher, Treasurer.
Captain Thomas Ellett, Secretary.
Executive Committee.—Captain John Cussons, Captain E. P. Reeve, Captain W. Gordon McCabe and Private James T. Gray.
Also a large assemblage of veterans, and of ladies and influential citizens.
The president called the meeting to order, and at his request Rev. J. Wm. Jones, D. D., offered a fervent prayer. The president then in a few eloquent remarks introduced the orator of the occasion, General Clement A. Evans, of Atlanta, Georgia, the subject being ‘Contributions of the South to the Greatness of the American Union.’
The history of the war for Southern Independence, by Prof. Joseph T. Derry, of Georgia, recently issued by the B. F. Johnson Publishing Company, of this city, has an introduction by General Evans, whose reputation as a scholar and orator is national. [2]
The address, which was a cogent presentation of the claims of the South as a factor in the moral and material progress of the nation and held the audience in rapt attention, was replete with eloquent flashes, which constantly elicited warm applause.
At the close of the address, on motion of Rev. J. William Jones, the thanks of the Association was tendered General Evans for his able and eloquent address, and a copy of the same was requested for publication.
On the motion of Hon. J. Taylor Ellyson, a committee of five was appointed to nominate the Officers and Executive Committee for the ensuing year.
The committee, Hon. J. Taylor Ellyson, Colonel W. A. Smoot, General Stith Bolling, General T. T. Munford and Colonel R. L. Maury, having retired, during their absence, in response to their repeated call, Captain W. Gordon McCabe briefly addressed the audience.
His remarks were in the happiest vein, and ‘in a flash of inspiration,’ he earnestly pressed the claims of the noble women of our Southland to an enduring monumental shaft in testimony to their devotion and sacrifices.
The committee returning, made the following report:
Judge George L. Christian, President.
General Eppa Hunton, 1st Vice-President.
General D. A. Weisiger, 2d Vice-President.
General Clement A. Evans, 3d Vice-President.
Sergeant Robert S. Bosher, Treasurer.
Captain Thomas Ellett, Secretary.
Executive Committee.—Colonel W. E. Cutshaw, Captain John Cussons, Captain E. P. Reeve, Captain W. Gordon McCabe and Private James T. Gray.
On the question being put, they were unanimously elected for the ensuing year.
The President, with characteristic modesty, would have demurred against being continued in the office, which he has so satisfactorily filled, but the audience was clamorous that he accept. In expressing his compliance with their wish, he eloquently urged the claims of the Association to support, declaring the annual meetings to be occasions of delight and inspiration, and that he felt assured that the hearts of all participating in them imbibed fresh inspiration, and that [3] all were strengthened in patriotic resolve and effort for the public good.
The members of the Association, with their invited guests, then repaired to Murphy's Hotel to a banquet prepared under the direction of the Executive Committee.
The enjoyment of the occasion was here enhanced by brief and warming addresses by Generals Dabney H. Maury, Eppa Hunton, Thomas T. Munford, Rev. J. William Jones, D. D., Hon. William A. Anderson and General Clement A. Evans, whose graceful ‘Adieu’ was received with a delight scarcely less than that with which his masterly plea for the South had been greeted. The words of the ‘oldest Confederate,’ General Maury, in the dedication of the closing years of his life to the cause of the history of his native State, were touching.
This most recent banquet has been published as the ‘most pleasant’ ever held. The leaven of the devoted President is working, as it has been proposed to publish in a becoming volume all of the addresses heretofore delivered before the Association.
The address.
I am honored by the request to speak during a convention of men whose occupation deserves the first and chiefest consideration as the corner-stone of popular welfare, whose success makes all things prosper, and whose cry for relief is never made until the pain is too great to be borne. Labor that converts human energies into cities, railroads, ships, factories and foundries; into churches, school-houses, asylums and homes; into munitions of war for the country's defence, and implements of industry for times of peace; labor that makes and spends money by billions per annum, is entitled to the honest solicitude of statesmen.Dear to my heart are you my comrades of the Army of Northern Virginia, with whom I followed Jackson and Lee to the last charge at Appomattox. There are events in my life, as in the lives of others, which are remembered with regret; but the part I bore with you in the assertion of the original ideas of our forefathers upon the battle-fields of Virginia is a rich memory, which I shall cherish with patriotic pride forever.
By your cordial invitation I stand upon the soil of a State which in the travails of nearly three centuries has uniformly affirmed the [4] axiomatic truths of human freedom, and produced eight generations of manly freemen willing to defend them. Virginia! every Heroic Age salutes you; all free peoples hail you as the historic mother of American Independence, and this exalted era applauds your American spirit! I speak by your courtesy also within the gates of a revered city, planted by the enterprise and bravery of liberty-loving men amidst their conquered obstacles, nurtured into stalwart strength by the acrid sap of trial, lathed into lithe grace in the whirl of sharp vicissitudes, polished into untarnished brilliance by the rub of rude conflicts, and withal steadfast in sustaining the most vital human convictions!—a city that has reversed the dread decisions of the unfriendly fates which decreed its destruction, and wrought superb success out of the debris of its ruins! Richmond! The epochs of human struggles cluster around you in a proud homage, such as the sheaves of the patriarchs gave to the sheaf of princely Joseph in his prophetic dream! In the inspiring presence of the sons and daughters of this illustrious State,—every one worthy of a place in the house of our fathers,—I may have liberty to discuss with the ardor of a Southernor and in the soberness of matured reason a patriotic question that concerns our whole country and admits of no partisan treatment; a theme as broad as our expansive land and uplifted above the stature of partisan political motive. Although to the Southern manner born, I will speak without sectional bias, and in vivid consciousness of possessing at this moment the broadest and truest American spirit! Southern Honor maintains with chivalric fealty that agreement which the sword's arbitrament lately required, when Americans surrendered to Americans, and not by deed or word or thought, will the terms of that settlement, sanctioned by the peerless Lee, be avoided in letter or in spirit. The South possesses in affluence the true American spirit,—that pride in the grandeur of our country, that hospitality which keeps open house for the worthies of all the world, that glorying in our free institutions, that faith in our Nation's power to maintain its place among the earth's greatest governments, and the profound conviction that in the constitutional union of all the States, we shall achieve a national greatness never equalled in the history of the world. The South says let the decayed corpse of long gone, lurid, sectional strife lie like John Brown's body mouldering in the grave, while the American soul shall go marching on-marching on forever,—under the flag of the Union, keeping step to the music of [5] Hail Columbia, Yankee Doodle and Dixie, harmonized into one national air.
A true peace among the people of these United States is now a fact accomplished,—not a thing to be sought for, but a blessed reality, of which domestic disturbers, as well as all the outside world, will take due notice and govern themselves accordingly. The peacemakers have fulfilled their mission, and may now enter into their reward, for theirs is this kingdom of heaven. The fury of civil war is gone. The fitful fever of sectional passion is over, and it sleeps its last sleep in dreamless death. The North said let us have peace, and they won it; the South said let us have it also, and thus we met the enemy and they are ours. There is no more any bloody chasm across which old foes are called to clasp their hands. That gaping horror has been closed by the patriotic spirit of a mutual reconciliation more sublime than the harmony of the white and red roses of England, or the agreement by Ephraim and Judah to vex each other no more, for all such restorations to fraternity but pre-figured this far-nobler sacrifice of internecine resentments upon the altar of our re-united country.
We may not be of one mind on all questions which admit of fair discussion in this land of free speech, but we will have one heart when we contemplate the fiery ordeals through which we have been safely borne. Our attitude toward the great issues, events and people of that militant, political and social upheaval must be reverential, indeed, whenever the scenes, the events and the actors of the Confederate era pass before us in solemn and sublime review. Behold the armies as they pass! On one side mustered into the Union service 2,778,304 arms-bearing men; on the Confederate side 600,000 men with arms; united they make a force three and a half millions strong! Witness more than a score of great and hard-fought battles, every one a Waterloo, and half a thousand others with fewer battalions but equally brilliant in bravery. Survey the theatre of war broader than all Europe; the casualties nearly half the numbers engaged; expenditures of treasure and destruction of wealth more than the taxable values of many States; a mighty nation in lethal throes that writhed its whole social system with an awful pain; the most masterly minds of a noted age stretched to an agony of tension in thought of the ways, means and measures of protracted war; heroic men by tens of thousands braving danger and death on crimsoned fields, and paired by devoted women enduring [6] the pangs of suspense at home; and these Americans all! brothers by blood and heirs alike to the inheritance of this undivided country! My God! are not men worse than brutish beasts who talk in trivial phrase of men and times and events like these, and who are unawed by the amplitudes of the ideas, the convictions, the patriotism and the heroism which distinguished the actors in that ever-illustrious epoch of American history! Every one who lived amidst those scenes, every one whose memory recalls those events, every one who in any respect mingled among those historic men, must be conscious, sometimes, of a strong fascination drawing his spirit back to those times whose scenes, events and heroes are rapidly dissolving into the refining empyrean of history. And every one whose post-bellum birth makes him but a listener to the epic story of that focal period, must also feel the kindlings of a proud American spirit since all these men were his heroic countrymen, all these events are in his country's history, and all these scenes were on his country's soil. The hour then has come and now is for mutual honors to be awarded to all true defenders of their respective convictions, for fair statement of the law and the facts governing that one great disagreement among Americans which issued in bloody conflict, and to build still broader, deeper, higher and grander our national fabric of popular government.
Under the influence of this American spirit, I desire to show the contributions of the South to the greatness of the American Union.
It is the just complaint of the South that the general literature of all nations has not dealt fairly with the motives of its men, the history which they made, the customs and institutions which they fostered, or the sunny land where they dwell. We must, however, share the blame with all who have shown us this discourtesy, because we have been careless concerning the publication of Southern worth. We have trusted to the ‘truth of history’ without giving that truth a tongue to proclaim the inmost principles, the lofty purpose, and the patriotic deeds of the Southern people, as a part of this American nation. Ours is a treasury of things new and old, whence all sections are entitled to draw those riches of political precept and action which make nations great. That treasure belongs to the whole country, and in opening the cabinet for the display of the rare jewels it contains, our countrymen from every quarter are bidden to come, behold and use the riches which belong alike to all.
With my subject in view I name five cardinal co-ordinative causes [7] which contributed to the greatness of our republic. They are: 1. The extent and richness of its eminent domain. 2. The martial spirit ready on sea and land for the country's sure defence. 3. A people enlightened, industrious, progressive and religious, possessing qualities which fit them for citizenship. 4. The jealous maintenance of all the first principles of human right against all power at home or abroad arrayed to destroy them. 5. Last and not least, the integrity of the Constitutional Union, whose dissolution is to be unthinkable until the martial spirit become extinct, the people lose their virtues, and the principles of liberty are dead; and then may
The stars be old, and the sun grow cold,
And the leaves of the judgment book unfold.
I.
Contribution to territorial greatness.
Our countrymen feel a proper pride in this broad land, covered by forty-four contiguous sovereign States,—every State a nation,— shorelining the two greatest oceans of the globe, capped by lakes that have the magnitude of seas, and pedestled on a gulf that duplicates the Mediterranean of the old world. We say to our sister Nations, behold the land where popular government is sacredly templed and its principles are bravely guarded. See the landed estate of a free American people which provides home and happiness for its seventy millions, with room to spare for four-fold more! Now, in view of the political truth that in the century at hand no nation, however free, can be truly great without having jurisdiction over expansive and expanding territory, it is pertinent for all Americans to enquire into the history of a policy which within a century gave a growth to our country from thirteen States to nearly fifty, and from a fringe of settlements to the present vast enlargements of eminent domain. Will not a fraternal acknowledgement be won from our countrymen of every section when their memory is refreshed concerning the contributions to this territorial greatness made by that South which sought once to divide the estate and now in honor and contentment remains integral, harmonious and happy in the unsevered possession of the entire magnificent area? I trust it will. I believe that even while they pronounce our attempt at secession a mistake, they will frankly say to the South, ‘Your policy of territorial aggrandizement on this continent was right.’Let us see in a sheer summary how much this country is indebted [8] to the South for actual land. We commence with the fact that in the beginning the Southern Colonies brought into the common property largely the greatest landed wealth. Take the munificent grant of your own Virginia by its cession of territory to which jurists said and say it had a valid title; look at the gift made by Maryland, North Carolina's donation of Tennessee, and Georgia's cession from the Chattahoochee to the Mississippi; then examine that outlying range of northwestern territory won and held by the backwoods' boys, from Virginia and Kentucky, of which a northern first-rank historian frankly says, ‘All our territory lying beyond the Alleghanies north and south was first won for us by Southwesterners fighting for their land.’ Survey also the regal possessions of the French, then called Louisiana, broadening out from the delta of the Mississippi along the right bank of that mighty river, in shape like an eagle's wing whose tip touched the British possessions on the north line of the present Dakotas, and covering ground nearly one-third the United States! That imperial region was seized in peace from Napoleon by the statesmanship of Southern men against the resentment of Great Britain and over the protesting fears of our timid countrymen who opposed the aggrandizement of our nation by territorial extension. Next came the acquisition of Florida from Spain, by which the same Southern policy secured that inviting realm of beauty, where the gentle climate invites the shivering Northerners to flee the wrath to come and revel in the luscious lures of orange groves. Will they not, while breathing the balm of Indian river and Tampa's strand—will they not bless the valor of Andrew Jackson and the acquisitive statesmanship of his Southern compeers which delivered this glorious peninsula from the oppression of Spain and committed it to the keeping of the American Union? And next in order, great Texas won by annexation and consequent Mexican war, followed by victory, peace and purchase, that brought us for a trifle in money the ownership of New Mexico, the garden fields of all the Californias and a Pacific shore line whose harbors now open to the trade of the Orient. Everybody knows that this magnificent gain was the result of the South's aggressive policy and occurred through the administration of a Southern President. Last comes Arizona, known in the annals of acquisition as the Gadsden purchase, achieved, as is conceded, by the skill of the South Carolina Senator, who by special mission contrived the trade. Now, take your map of these United States and territories. Survey with all your American pride the broad domain of the American Union in the best portion of the [9] earth: then draw a line along the northern boundary of Maryland and due west toward the Mississippi river, then northward to the Canada line, then along our northern limits to the Pacific Ocean, and from thence down the Pacific coast to the southern part of California, where you will turn eastward to the mouth of the Rio Grande and follow the islands of the Gulf around the Florida keys, and still on in the course of the Gulf stream sweep up the Atlantic shores by Georgia, the Carolinas, Virginia and Maryland, to the beginning point! Look, my countrymen, at that wondrous imperium in imperio, containing two-thirds of the nation's land, one-half its population, and destined to be the home of two hundred millions of free people—that land came into the Union by the munificence of Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia; it was won from the crowns of England, Spain, France and Mexico by the blood of the brave, or bought by the taxes of the people; it was all brought into the family of the free and sovereign States of this American Republic through a consistent, persistent, far-seeing Southern policy! But lest this historical statement shall seem to be a sectional boast, I bid you as patriots to cast your eyes proudly upon your country's territorial greatness and see it as it begins to appear in the eyes of the nations. Reflect on the common achievements of your countrymen in war and peace, and then nobly stand in your place with all States and people in the Union to repeat the words of the President: ‘We have built a magnificent fabric of popular government whose grand proportions are seen throughout the world.’
Ii.
The South in our country's wars.
We will enter next into brief and cold statistics which only vaguely show the martial patriotism of the South in the wars of the Republic. A country's fame is made great in part by the heroism of its people in times of wars. We have a heroic history, in which the patriotic valor and sacrifices of our people were so evenly balanced as to leave all sections wondrously rich in fame. Our ‘forefathers’ were New Englanders as well as Virginians, and there are names that can never be made sectional: Ethan Allen and Francis Marion; John Starke and Harry Lee; Nathaniel Greene and George Washington—who divides these martial heroes into North and South! Jefferson and Franklin—twin sages; Madison and Adams—twin statesmen; Henry and Otis—twin storms in debate: who can separate these civic chiefs [10] of the Revolution into sectional classes? I shall not recite the historic chivalry of the South in the slightest disparagement of Northern courage. Rather would I be silent and await the coming of the years of dispassionate consideration if I believed any people of the Union felt that applause of the South dispraised any part of Republic. May I not briefly reveal the recorded acts of Southern patriots and make that record another reason why we are one people? I will trust the answer to the great heart of Americans everywhere.Passing the Indian troubles which antedated the Revolution, and beginning with the call to arms to win American Independence, what was the part borne by the Southern States in that Revolutionary struggle? I will answer that it is the glory of North Carolina to have shed the first blood for colonial liberty at Alamance in 1771, and having given her sons to the common cause, she fought on to the finish. Maryland furnished twenty thousand men, South Carolina thirty-one thousand, Georgia nearly as many, and Virginia fifty-six thousand. South Carolina doubled New Hampshire, South Carolina and Georgia outnumbered New York, Virginia sent sixteen thousand more men than Pennsylvania. Massachusetts did the noblest of all the Northern States, yet South Carolina sent thirty-seven out of forty-two of its arms-bearing men, and Massachusetts thirty-two out of forty-two. From official report it is gleaned that the States in the Northern division sent one hundred men for every two hundred and twenty-seven arms-bearing population, and the South sent one hundred out of every two hundred and nine. In the account of suffering by invasion, it appears that Norfolk was burned, Charleston and Savannah captured, and the Southern States invaded with British armies for years, while Washington drove Howe from Boston in March, 1776, and from that date all Massachusetts was free from the presence of the enemy to the end of the war. The next test of the military fealty of the people was by the war of 1812. That was the second war for Independence caused by English arrogance, and was urged by the South against the protest of the East. In that contest, which was mainly naval, there were notable victories won under Northern leaders, but the greatest injury to British shipping was done by privateers, chiefly sent from Baltimore, which captured nearly three hundred ships and many thousand prisoners. Wingfield Scott made himself and his regiments famous at Chippewa and Lundy's Lane, while Andrew Jackson whipped Packenham at New Orleans with men from Louisiana, Mississippi, Kentucky and Tennessee. Next the Mexican war, preceded by the [11] adventurous help for Texas rendered by Lamar, Houston, Fannin, Crockett and other like spirits from Tennessee and Georgia, when the blood of the South crimsoned the Alamo, and afterward freely flowed in all battles from Palo Alto to the ancient city of the Montezumas, and in which the troops of the American Union were led to victory by such men as Pierce, Butler, Zachary Taylor, Wingfield Scott, Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee. In that war of so much importance to the Republic the reports show: Northern volunteers, twenty-three thousand and eighty-four, and Southern volunteers, forty-four thousand six hundred and forty. Thus, while the South has multiplied the stars on the flag of the Nation, it has deepened the crimson of the stripes with its blood. Having done its best in every battle, having given its Washington to lead the armies of the Colonies, its Jackson to win the second victory over England, its Taylor and Scott to bring Mexico to terms, and having shown in all wars that the chivalry of the South means in part the readiness of its natural born soldiery to fight, we may say to our countrymen and the world that no legions truer or more gallant than the sons of the South will ever follow the starry flag into battle at the call of our country to arms.
Iii.
Contributions to the principles of freedom.
I will ask for the South a just and generous concession of its full share in the successful Colonial efforts which established on this continent the fundamental principles of individual liberty, and put them in operation through a government of republican-democratic form. It will not be claimed that political virtues were all centered in Southern Colonies and descended from Southern sources alone. North of the dividing line drawn by King James, in 1606, there lived a host of men in whose own brave hearts burned the inextinguishable flame of civil and religious freedom. I know from the record that in 1630 the spirit of home rule stirred the soul of Plymouth men, and Massachusetts resolved to hold a Legislature for its Settlements. It is in happy memory that in 1639 the Connecticut settlers adopted the ‘fundamental orders’ for their self government, said to be the first written constitution of America. With pride we read in the records of New Jersey for 1680, its brave resolutions against illegal and tyrannous taxation. We recall with delight the heroism of John Peter Zenger, of New York, who bravely printed in his paper the demands of his people for political rights, and went to prison [12] rather than debase his press. Not one ray would I withdraw from the radiant glory which floods our historic fields from the colonial stars that constituted the old Plymouth Colony. The appeal of this hour of fraternal graces is rather to that broad and just national spirit which will award to the old original South of the Colonies the largest of pride and praise for its contributive proportion of the wisdom, heroism and all other political virtues by which our free government was founded.With the country-loving spirit moving most powerfully my whole nature at this moment, I will collate in very brief historical statement some of those acts which place my queenly South on an illumined eminence as a panoplied and inflexible vindicator of man's political rights in a government of his intelligent choice. Examining the record, I find that before 1613, within ten years after the feudal charters of King James were granted, the outspoken demands of the Southern English colonists caused the changing of those charters into free democratic form, and that in 1619 the first representative Legislature in America selected by ballot met in this Southern Virginia to make laws for its people. The gray dawn of selfgovern-ment began at that hour to break out of a long night of hereditary misrule, and it was on the land of the South fell the first white beams of the splendid day of popular self-government in America. There is a principle of liberty expressed by the terse phrase, ‘no taxation without representation,’ which is firmly embedded in our common political faith, and the star which stood over the birth of that great American maxim shed its first light, in 1623, down upon the capital city of your illustrious Virginia. Following along the logical line of its first step, in 1619, the Colony of Virginia acquired in 1652 the right to trade with all nations without hindrance, to exercise general suffrage of all freemen, to levy its own taxes, and to be ruled by Governors of its own choosing. The perfidy of royalty brought on a period of oppression, bravely but vainly resisted by petition, remonstrance and non-intercourse, until at length the South, by representative Virginia, made the first armed resistance to foreign oppression by the patriotic rebellion of Nathaniel Bacon, one century before the War of the Revolution. The earliest establishment of freedom in conscience, or the free exercise of religious worship, was in the organic law of Maryland. The Carolinas, North and South, in 1670 made a bold fight for home and established representative governments. From the public expression of Southern views during these early days on the general doctrines of human [13] liberty, I could make a volume of quotations; but I will repeat only this, that in 1689 the amplest bill of rights ever drafted was written by George Mason, a Southern farmer, containing these principles: the rule of the majority ascertained by honest elections; all political power is vested in and derived from the people; the executive, legislative and judicial functions shall be separate; free institutions, free enjoyment of life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness; free ballots, free press, free conscience and the equal rights of all men under the law. These grand principles, so familiar to us now, were large additions to Magna Charta, and they advanced the theory of human government to that summit from which amid the conditions of the rebellion of our fathers nearly a century later shone the bold resolutions at Mecklenburg, the Declaration of Independence which Jefferson drew and the Constitution of these United States.
Iv.
Growth of the Union sentiment.
The idea of a Union of the several Colonies was of slow and painful growth. There were instinctive thoughts of intrinsic and eternal value melting in the minds of noble men, like precious metals in heated ladles, which were cast into a model form of government upon this wild, wooded continent, far away from the Old World's theater, where bad rulers had debauched and debased humanity for centuries. The installation of a new system of inter-state and intersocial regulations, where democracy would mean the rule of the people by representation, and republicanism should signify that public affairs are conducted with single care for the people's rights-this new fashion formed in the political processes of Colonial development, and which all royal and aristocratic Europe derided as a madcap scheme, was the priceless product of prolonged conflicts which bestrewed the field of our heroic history with the wrecks of many patriotic endeavors, but emblazoned it at last by the triumphs of sound principles and the establishment of our novel, potent and rythmical system of government. The English Colonies deployed along the Atlantic coast for a thousand miles from Buzzard's Bay, the outpost of the Plymouth Settlement, to Brunswick harbor, where Oglethorpe fought, rocked the infant Union in the cradle of those recurring political storms which beat upon it in varying fury for one hundred and fifty years. There was such a growing appreciation of the common interest that wherever the British Crown [14] asserted the claim to hold the Colonies dependent for laws and liberties upon the royal will, the American discussions had the same fire, the protests showed the same spirit and the resolutions of Assemblies assumed the same form. The idea of Colonial association grew. Franklin formed a ‘New England Confederacy,’ and made the fatal mistake of confining the Union to the States of the East, in memory whereof, I may here take courage to suggest that the word ‘Confederacy’ as applied to a compact among States can never hold an unwelcome place in the American lexicon since the use of the term was born in the brain of Franklin, and that the sound thereof should be as sweet to New England ears as the cooing of a babe, because the first political child of that name was baptized in the waters of Massachusetts Bay.Now in those old times, when the Union idea was struggling upward into life and light, what aid came from that Southern section which this generation has been taught to think were ever the restless and inveterate opposers of the Union? I proceed, by your leave, to state as a fact which shines forth in cloudless evidence, that the Southern Colonies were the foremost to nurse the earliest hope of Colonial alliance, and when troubles increased, when Franklin's Confederacy (limited) had been ditched in the sectional mire, when patriots were trying to devise nearer and broader relations—the first practical step toward our present organized American Union was taken when Dabney Carr, in 1773, proposed in the Legislature of Virginia to provide a plan of concerted action, and the State having adopted the first scheme of inter-Colonial correspondence, as a great Northern historian justly says, ‘laid down the foundation of the Union.’ A crisis was reached in 1774, upon the passage by Parliament of the bill to close the port of Boston, but this attempt to coerce a sister Colony by armed invasion fired the Southern heart, and then the fraternal cry that ‘the cause of Massachusetts is the cause of all’ rang like a liberty bell from Maryland to Georgia. Virginia in the lead, called for a Congress of Deputies to consider the common defense, and in June following Massachusetts agreed to the proposal. Other Colonies clustered to a center, and the first Continental Congress assembled in Philadelphia. Concerning this advance toward Union, Bancroft quotes the words of Gadsden: ‘Had it not been for South Carolina no Congress would have happened.’ To that first Congress, Georgia, having broken over the opposition of the royal governor, sent a representative one thousand miles by land to make known its people's espousal of the common [15] cause; and North Carolina, having met in a voluntary provincial assembly, against the angry protest of its governor, hurried its ambassador to the General Congress. Thus the South, although not yet threatened with invasion, demonstrated its fraternal spirit. A long stride of the Union sentiment was made by this event; but it soon felt, pending the stress of the Revolutionary war, that yet another step must be taken, and in this, also, the South led the advance. At its instance a committee was appointed to draft the Articles of Confederation under which the alliance of the Colonies grew into the stronger form, and by which general Confederacy of States the war for American liberty was successfully fought. May I not take courage again from this memorial further to say that the title, ‘Confederate States of America,’ can never represent anything but an honorable nation to any honorable mind.
But there was still another step necessary to a ‘more perfect union.’ The Revolutionary war separated the States from England but did not establish a perfect Union among themselves. Difficulties concerning inter-State relations arose, especially involving Massachusetts, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey to such extent as to make disunion and anarchy imminent. What was the voice of the Southern States at that critical juncture? I am happy in being made able to answer that amidst these portentous perplexities the first suggestion on record of ‘the more perfect Union’ was made by Madison, and that Virginia, as the spokesman of Southern sentiment, arose to the political zenith and drew after her all the stars of the Confederation into that inspired convention which adopted the Constitution of the United States of America. So it appears that your South nourished the earliest idea of Union among the endangered ‘settlements’; called the deputies of the Colonies to assemble in general committee of correspondence; suggested the Continental Congress of States; devised the Articles of Confederation, and moving on with the love of Union in its warm heart, advanced the great idea step by step until the loftiest distinction was reached, when it proposed to create this present United States Government by a written Constitution. Your Union, my countrymen, developed into its present form, your Constitution, which is the palladium of your rights as States or as people, and all the privileges you enjoy in this free Commonwealth are due at least in equal measure to the energy, the valor, the wisdom and the patriotism of Southern men.
In order to make this demonstration still more distinct, I will note [16] in hurried review the origin and progress of the idea of Disunion, indulging the hope that the sweet spirit of charity will prevail while we consider any sins for which all sections may be brought to confession. It is true, indeed, that signs of sectional strife and threats of disunion were made during even the administration of Washington, but these sentiments did not come from the South. In 1796, while the Presidential election was pending, a lieutenant-governor, referring to the probable election of Jefferson, said: ‘I sincerely declare that I wish the Northern States would separate from the Southern the moment that event shall take place’; but it was not the governor of any Southern State who first declared that the election of a President was a cause of secession. There was a secret junto formed within less than twenty years after the Union was organized, composed in part of eminent men pledged to bring about the dissolution of the Union, but that junto did not have one Southern member. There was a convention of prominent leaders held during the war of 1812, to consider a plan for withdrawing all the East from the Union, but that convention was held at Hartford, not at Richmond, and had not one Southern supporter. There was one attempt at nullification in one Southern State in 1832, on the debatable plea that certain measures of General Government violated the Constitution, and that attempt was promptly suppressed by a Southern President; but there were many actual nullifications of Federal law by Legislatures of Northern States after 1850, without pretense of sustaining the Constitution, which no President seriously tried to forbid. There were open threats to disrupt the ties that bind the States together on account of the annexation of Texas, which the Southern people so much desired; but the Union-loving South went on to greaten the Nation with new and rich territory, and then arrested the cry of secession by concessions to Northern opinion. There were some fanatical disunionists who said that the Constitution of our happy country was ‘an agreement with hell;’ but that profanity did not fall from Southern lips. Some madmen called our starry flag ‘a flaunting lie;’ but it was no Southern fire-eater who blistered Old Glory with that lurid insult. Disunion was somewhat rampant in 1848, but its fires burned in the bosoms of fanatics about slavery who did not care enough for the negro to buy him back into freedom with the money they had sold him for into slavery. Meanwhile, let it be frankly admitted that the disunion spirit began to grow in the South after 1850. The example of threatened secession had been set before it, and new agitations, invasions and other irritations [17] wearied the Southern people into the final adoption in practice of the theory they had been taught. The South had learned much from the intelligence and thrift of its Northern co-patriots, and while imbibing some errors, had profited by many of their valuable views; but it now appears that secession by States which these, our brothers, so persistently taught us to regard as a final but friendly and legal remedy for wrongs must be rebuked as the least defensible and most immoral of all measures a sovereign people can adopt.
Why secession?
It was no small sacrifice for the Southern section to yield all the vast empire of the East, the North and the West, reserving only the area of a dozen States; to give up the Union which our forefathers planned and formed; to surrender that flag of stars and stripes which Washington designed, and under which our heroes had fought on land and sea; to give up the national name, the domain, the wealth, the prestige of our country, and begin anew the experiment of self-government. It will never be fully told how the great heart of the South yearned for a settlement of the issue without the shedding of blood and the severance of the States.It is, therefore, well asked why then did secession occur? Let the answer be honorably made, that in 1860 the Southern States despaired of maintaining the original principles of that Union which they had helped to form. They saw sectional ascendancy become imminent and portentious of evil. They saw the hard hand of impatient fanaticism uplifted against their prosperity, With unspeakable sadness they beheld centralization tightening its coils to crush out the Statehood of the States. With dismay they read upon the banners of a victorious host the old British and Federalistic device, ‘The States are provincial and the Union Imperial.’ The South did not secede from its proud place among the States to maintain the abstract theory of secession. That theory was not the issue and the Union was not the enemy. It did not suppose that under the law as interpreted by every State in the original Union the legal right of secession could be disputed or coercion justified. When the States withdrew they dissolved no Union, broke no law and formed no conspiracy. They left the Union intact, the President, the Congress, the Judiciary—all unharmed; the army and navy undisturbed, and all public property scheduled for account and settlement. Their ordinances simply maintained the principles which [18] all true patriots now assert that there must be no Eastern, no Western, no Northern, no Southern supremacy of any kind, but a Union of One People of the many States, equally and honestly governed, without favoritism for special States, sections, classes or conditions. That was the burning question as the South saw it, and all contention focused there. Upon that vital issue, involving the good character of the Union, the honor of the States, and the individual liberties of the people, peaceable secession was sought as the right way of relief and coercion by arms confronted the plan. We withstood the bloody Mortmain with all our might, at the cost of all we had, and literally bled to death.
The fealty of the Southern people to the Union is ever selfrespect-ing, as it should be, and is as sincere as the flawless virtues of a vestal. It is right to have it understood that the South is stung to the quick by the insult which pretends to suspect its honorable devotion to the Union, the Constitution and the flag. Its proud lip curls in scornful contempt for the man whose soul is so paupered of sentiment and leprous with prejudice that he cannot trust the honor of the South. The Southern people meet their Northern countrymen not half way, but all the way. In the use and occupation of this realm, dedicated to freedom, we hold per my eper foul, where each is for all and all is for each. We are ready for a full and equal division of the gravest duties and the highest privileges including our part of all civil, military and naval advantages, together with a fair share of National offices, from postmaster to President. We have come back, as Senator Hill said, to our father's house, and I may be allowed to add, we are ready to break merrily into the fatted ring and kill the golden calf.
V.
Contributions to industrial greatness.
I have reserved for conclusion a restricted glance at the industrial history of the South, and its present brightening promise of future additions to all those things which will increase our Country's greatness. True as this section has been to the original ideas of the forefathers, its record does not consist alone of mere chivalric sentiment. Its footprints are well marked in the pathway of the world's progress, and it as willingly unfolds its old career as its present resourceful prospects to the scrutiny of the age. In the infancy of the Union, after a hundred years of competition, it stood foremost in industrial and commercial power, and then saw without envy the [19] material wealth of the wide and rich territory it had donated to the general estate turning away from its own ports, and Norfolk, the natural entrepot of commerce, surpassed by New York. The Northern section grew rapidly because the Northeast became the Merchant, the Banker, the Transportation agent, and at lengh the Manufacturer of the Country, by which adjustment of business relations it turned its money over every day and profited by every turn of the incoming and outging trade, while the South made one annual deal. Immigration forced through its ports poured by special inducements upon the territory of the West, and the immigrants became customers of the East. The sale of its slaves brought no small amount of ready money to those who bargained them to the South, and early emancipation of its Negroes freed from the North from bonds which the South was obliged longer to wear. Great governmental aids followed each other thick and fast in the form of bounties, tariffs, contracts and the like, in the disbursement of which the large percentage went away from the South. Grants to build railroads with public lands which Southern cessions and policy had secured to the National wealth exceeded the area of European empires, and of which the South received not one-fifth of its share. The Southern people make no unfair complaint at the energy with which these and other unnamed advantages were seized, but they do rebuke all unjust sneers which stigmatize them as an unprogressive race, and the whole South makes a powerful protest against this injustice by the evidence of its old thrift in maintaining a prosperous existence in the Union for nearly a century by the use of only one-tenth of its resources, and the still more significant display of its rapid rise in recent years from utter prostration through the masterful spirit of its own people. The transformation of the Southern wilds into fruitful fields, from which have gone Northward in sixty-five years two hundred and fifty millions cotton bales, worth forty dollars per bale, beside cereals and fruits, tobacco, lumber and other products of fourfold greater value, should be accredited to the enterprise of the diligent Southerner. It is strange that a people who hibernate nearly half the year in enforced idleness, while the workingman of the genial South is out with the morning lark and pursues his calling through the months of winter as well as summer, can think of such a worker as indolent. When we survey the deep repose of many Eastern towns which slumber in unprogressive if not ‘innocuous desuetude,’ we rationally inquire why Southern cities are so specially characterized as ‘sleepy boroughs’? We will not forget that the [20] first railroad was built in Carolina, the first steamship that crossed the ocean weighed anchor from a Southern port, and the cotton gin originated in the cotton belt. The Old South was in truth a vast hive of small industries. It was dotted with domestic factories, tanned its own leather, made its shoes in every county and its hats in every section; wove its cloth in domestic looms, wrought its iron in its own shops, milled its corn and wheat, and lived at home in peace, plenty and hospitality.I will take the ten years between 1850 and 1860 in illustration of the energies of the Old South to show its enterprise, and to remove the errror that it had the cotton monomania, and was not keeping pace with the nascent industrial spirit of the times.
With only one-third the population of the Union during that decade, the South raised one-third the corn of the country, one-fourth the wheat, three-fourths of the tobacco, nearly all the rice and sugar, one-third of the live stock, made large sales of lumber and naval stores, besides producing in unascertained quantities that remarkable variety of cereals, fruits and vegetables for which it was now more than ever famous. Nor was it then a laggard in manufacturing and other individual enterprise, as will appear by its gain during that one decade of one hundred per cent. in grain mills, exceeding the percentage of the entire country; its increase by two hundred per cent. in machinery and engine construction; its great growth in cotton mills and in hundreds of minor industries which occupied its people. In those ten years it doubled its lumber trade, doubled the output from iron foundaries and nearly quadrupled its railroad mileage. The South increased its railroad miles in that decade above the percentage increase of all other sections of the United States combined. It had in 1860 a mile of rail to every seven hundred of its white population, while the other States all united had one mile to every one thousand people. An exposition of the industrial status in 1860 would have shown the world that the Dixie of that day was not merely ‘the land of cotton, cinnamon seed and sandy bottom,’ but in the range and value of its products from the soil, and in the diversity and elevation of its industries of every kind, it was measuring up to the stature of the most progressive nations.
The recovery of the South from its stunned condition in 1865, after the war which exhausted its resources, challenges the generous admiration of mankind. The returning soldiers of the Confederate army made heroic efforts to recuperate their country, and although [21] these brave endeavors were repressed awhile by the errors of reconstruction and hindered by panics which they did not cause, yet through the wisdom, the courage, and the enterprise of these soldiers and their sons, their wives and their daughters, this irrepressible land is now waking up the world to gaze upon the sunrise of the Southern day, and calling it to participate in that coming splendor which another census will reveal. The wayfaring man must be more than a fool who will not see the signs at the cross roads of prosperity pointing Southward. The bounty of Almighty God has endowed this land of the South with all the resources which a great people require. Arable soil, stately forests, water powers, climate salubrious and soft; marble, stone, coal and mineral ores; great rivers, ample harbors, ocean shores and gulf coasts; mountain ranges, hills and valleys. It lies in broad beauty upon that middle belt of the Northern Hemisphere, along which the brightest star of human achievement has moved since the earliest historic age, and its richness exactly meets the demand for those elements by which man may attain to his highest estate of liberty, enlightenment and religion.
It is not a New South that has thus burst into sight like some freshly found planet, which has been formed with regravitated fragments which lately wandered in the skies. Not a New South—but it is truly the Greater South flowering forth under new conditions from the stem of the old plant and out of the rich original soil. The Greater South! May it be matched by a Greater East, a Greater West, a Greater North, and all these in the Union of their graces display to the world the greater glory of our matchless Country— the United States of America!
The South and the future.
The South is now newly girded with strength and purpose to increase in all respects the true greatness of the American Union. It enjoys at this day a mediatory position which will enable it to remove political asperity and to bring all differences to the fair plane of conservative, patriotic discussion. The South has its views, but they are in the Bill of Rights as taught by the old and new patriots of all States. It will stand firmly by those sacred original ideas. It will continue to ask for an uncorrupted preservation of the cardinal principles of the old Revolution and the strict observance of constitutional law. It will still maintain that our system of government is [22] not like the magnificent planet Saturn, girt by a combination of concentric rings and surrounded by subordinate orbs which sattelite a central sovereign, whose name was taken from a god who devoured his children; but more like a constellation of co-equal solar stars which move through the heavens in radiant agreement and inseparable order. Carefully, therefore, will it cherish the citizen's loyal devotion to the State where he lives as well as his fidelity to the Constitution and his passionate love for the Union. The freeman of Vermont, wherever he roams on land or sea, shall be encouraged in memory of the Green Mountains of his State to fondly affirm, ‘I am a Vermonter!’ The Virginia citizen, bursting with proud recollections of his State's traditions and present glory, may without suspicion of his loyalty to the Union exclaim, ‘I am a Virginian!’ And the son of my noble Georgia—although nicknamed ‘goober-grabber’ in Confederate times by the brave cohesive tarheels of Carolina—will proudly announce, ‘I am a Georgian!’ The patriot from well watered Michigan, emerging from his lovely lakes and claiming the right by his feathers to flock with the American eagle, shall say with unhindered enthusiam, ‘I am a Michigander!’ And the mightiest man from Maine, glorying in a State whose ancient mountain spurs once fretted the British lion, may strike his broad palm upon his ample chest and bravely cry, ‘I am a Maniac!’ But we all, whether cracker, hoosier, tarheel, Michigander or Maniac, while maintaining devotion to our several States will declare with one common voice to the nations of the earth, ‘We are all Americans!’The South further believes that under the Constitution there can be solidarity of popular action without centrality of official power, Union without fusion, co-supremacy of State and Federal authority without conflict, and the blessing of co-equality among the people under impartial statutes without the bane of unnatural equalism contrary to law. It will beg for fairness and fullness of the ballot right, the undiminished boon of individual liberty, and for statutory guards to be set over the interests of the unsophisticated people to protect them against the experienced shrewdness and rapid greed of the monopalist who seeks to despoil them. It stands ready to umpire and adjust our financial perplexities fairly, because it has no brokerage in gold imperilled, no silver to sell, and nothing to demand but the emancipation of intelligent and honest enterprise. With threads of gold and silver and natural wealth it will make the financial cables [23] and cordage of the Ship of State strong, flexible and sufficient to anchor it securely in any harbor, and sail it safely on any sea. Believing in the ability of this Union to maintain its own greatness, the Southern counsel will urge the Government to heed the advice of Washington and make no entangling alliance with, or dangerous concession to, any foreign power. The Monroe doctrine is understood to be a settled policy as to improper European aggression on this hemisphere, and the South is now listening with boundless sympathy to the cry of Cuba, and on hearing the wail of this oppressed neighbor it inquires, Why shall all America be free and the beautiful Queen of the Antilles be alone a slave? In short, you will allow the statement to be made that your South, like the Goddess of Justice, can weigh the issues of this day in unbiased scales, and with unselfish patriotism join the true men of all the States in protecting the political axioms of our people, and contributing with all its increasing resources to the future unexampled greatness of the American Union.
The American spirit.
In consideration of all our traditions and our present vantage ground as a Nation, let us cherish a strong American spirit. Not a proscriptive or prejudiced, but a characteristic Americanism in both the native and the naturalized citizen. Our country is not isolated from other nations, but it is indeed differentiated from them by its form, its policy, its people and probable destiny. It was not born great and had no greatness thrust upon it; but it has achieved a greatness that is not European, nor Oriental, but purely American. The blood of all European tribes has been pouring into our National body, and we have feared the development of foreign traits; but the predominance of the American spirit will secure the American character. The laws, the institutions, the ideas and even the language of this country will be distinctively American. A peculiar people, bearing in character, manners and views the impress of strong American individuality, has risen, and will reign in this country from sea to sea. The type is not in process of formation; it is already formed and the development cannot be arrested. The typical American has unbounded faith in the wisdom of his country to devise its own policy, in its power to execute its own will, and in its goodness to preserve the liberties of its people.My Southern Comrades: When the victorious veterans of the [24] Northern armies formed their great association I was charmed by the modesty with which they adopted the title of the Grand Army of the Republic, for I supposed they felt that a people could be grander in defeat than in triumph, and therefore left the survivors of the Southern side the privilege to be called the Grander Army of the Republic! But when both armies are found united as they now are in the fellowship of the American spirit, and emulating each other in eulogy of the American soldier, they present a sublime spectacle while passing in review before the American people, and win for themselves the right to be called the grandest army of the Republic! I feel sure, therefore, by this fraternal regard for each other's valor, patriotism and convictions, you will not be asked to strike no more the resonant, tuneful chords of memory in proud recall of marches, bivouacs and battles where the columns in gray added new martial glory to American chivalry. Your battle banner, stripped of all gory significance and meaning only the memory of a comradeship in arms, although radiant yet with stars that bejewel the red cross, signifies the luster shed upon the whole American name by the intrepid courage of the brave young Southerners who bore it aloft through storms of fire. That emblem need not be furled, for it has no honorable foe who demands its disgrace; shows no stain upon its bullet-riven folds, means no fight, frightens no man of sense, and only inspires the Southern patriot to love, follow and defend the star-spangled banner of his country.
My Southern Countrymen, your fathers gave our nation much of its territorial greatness; they evolved into chrystallized beauty the elements of human liberty under constitutional safeguards; they bore their part in the material uplift of this land to the present crest; they shed their warm, rich blood freely in all wars for your country's sake, and therefore, by all well acknowledged reasons and rights, your voice will be potent in the councils of your countrymen, and your influence felt in the future achievements of the American people.
May God speed you on your patriotic way, my native South! May our whole country trust you, my noble Southern Land, and millions yet unborn rise up and call you blessed!
