THE NEW SOUTH A master's hand has drawn for you the picture of your returning armies. You have been told how, in the pomp and circumstances of war, they came back to you, marching with proud and victorious tread, reading their glory in a nation's eyes. Will you bear with me while I tell you of another army that sought its home at the close of the late war, an army that marched home in defeat and not in victory, in pathos and not in splendor, but in glory that equalled yours, and to hearts as loving as ever welcomed heroes home! Let me picture to you the footsore Confederate soldier, as, buttoning up in his faded gray jacket the parole which was to bear testimony to his children of his fidelity and faith, he turned his face southward from Appomattox in April, 1865. Think of him as ragged, half-starved, heavy-hearted, enfeebled by want and wounds, having fought to exhaustion, he surrenders his gun, wrings the hands of his comrades in silence, and lifting his tearstained and pallid face for the last time to the graves that dot old Virginia hills, pulls his gray cap over his eyes and begins his slow and painful journey. What does he find let me ask you what does he find when, having followed the battle-stained cross against overwhelming odds, dreading death not half so much as surrender, he reaches the home he left so prosperous and beautiful? He finds his home in ruins, his house devastated, his slaves free, his stock killed, his barn empty, his trade destroyed, his money worthless, his social system, feudal in its magnificence, swept away, his people without law or legal status, his comrades slain, and the burdens of others heavy on his shoulders. Crushed by defeat, his very traditions are gone. Without money, credit, employment, material, or training, and besides all this, confronted with the gravest problem that ever met human intelligence, the establishing of a status for the vast body of his liberated slaves. What does he do, this hero in gray with a heart of gold? Does he sit down in sullenness and despair? Not for a day. Surely God, who had stripped him of his prosperity, inspired him in his adversity. As ruin was never before so overwhelming, never was restoration swifter. The soldier stepped from the trenches into the furrow; horses that had charged federal guns marched before the plow; and fields that ran red with human blood in April were green with the harvest in June. But what is the sum of our work? We have found out that the free negro counts more than he did as a slave. We have planted the schoolhouse on the hilltop, and made it free to white and black. We have sowed towns and cities in the place of theories, and put business above politics. The new South is enamored of her new work. Her soul is stirred with the breath of a new life. The light of a grander day is falling fair on her face. She is thrilling with consciousness of growing power and prosperity. As she stands upright, full statured and equal among the people of the earth, breathing the keen air and looking out upon the expanded horizon, she understands that her emancipation came because, through the inscrutable wisdom of God, her honest purpose was crossed and her brave armies were beaten. The South has nothing for which to apologize. I should be unjust to the dauntless spirit of the South and to my own connections if I did not make this plain in this presence. The South has nothing to take back. In my native town of Athens is a monument that crowns its central hill, a plain white shaft. Deep cut into its shining sides is a name dear to me above the names of men, that of a brave and simple man who died in brave and simple faith. Not for all the glories of New England, from Plymouth Rock all the way, would I exchange the heritage he left me in his soldier's death. To the foot of that I shall send my children children's to reverence him who enobled their name with his heroic blood. But, sir, speaking from the shadow of that memory which I honor as I do nothing else on earth, I say that the cause in which he suffered, and for which he gave his life, was adjudged by higher and fuller wisdom than his or mine, and I am glad the omniscient God held the balance of battle in his almighty hands, and that human slavery was swept forever from American soil, and the American Union was saved from the wreck of war. Now, what answer has New England to this message? Will she withhold, save in strange courtesy, the hand which straight from his soldier's heart Grant offered to Lee at Appomattox? Will she make the vision of a restored and happy people which gathered above the couch of your dying captain, filling his heart with grace, touching his lips with praise, and glorifying his path to the grave will she make this vision, on which the last sigh of his expiring soul breathed a benediction, a cheat and delusion? If she does, the South, never abject in asking for comradeship, must accept with dignity its refusal, but if she does not refuse to accept in frankness and sincerity this message of good will and friendship, then will the prophecy of Webster, delivered in this very society forty years ago amid tremendous applause, be verified in its fullest sense when he said, "Standing face to face and clasping hands, we should remain united as we have been for sixty years, citizens of the same country, members of the same government, united, all united now and united forever." HENRY W. Grady. DECORATION DAY Do you know what it means, you boys and girls Who hail from the North and South? Do you know what it means This twining of greens Round the silent cannon's mouth; This strewing with flowers the grassgrown grave; This decking with garlands the statues brave; This flaunting of flags, All in tatters and rags; |