THE PRIVATE SOLDIER 
 OF m^ CONFEDERACY 
 
 JOSEPH R LAMAR 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION l!Y 
 
 ALBERT SHAW 
 
"'Patriotism is but onn of the viaiiy names of duty."' 
 
 ADDRESS 
 
 HON. JOSEPH R. LAMAR 
 
 OF 
 
 AUGUSTA, GEORGIA 
 
 DELIVERED ON 
 
 MEMORIAL DAY, APRIL, 1902 
 
 AT 
 
 ATHENS, GEORGIA 
 
 NOW REPRINTED BY REQUEST OF NEW YORK CITY FRIENDS 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 
 
 ALBERT SHAW ^ 
 
 1908 
 
//4^sz^y 
 
 Eagle Press, Brooklyn-New York 
 
Introduction. 
 
 The address herewith published was delivered 
 at Athens, Georgia, in April of the present year, 
 1902. The day was one set apart in memory 
 of the soldiers of the Confederacy. The occasion 
 was a memorial service held under the auspices 
 of the Daughters of the Confederacy, and the 
 speaker was a man who bears a name distin- 
 guished in the annals of the South and of the 
 Nation, who is also himself eminent at the bar 
 of his State, — Hon. Joseph R. Lamar, of Augusta, 
 Georgia. It so happened that there were present 
 at Athens a considerable number of people from 
 other States who were spending several days at- 
 tending the Conference on Southern Education, 
 and among these were several scores of people 
 from the Northern States. The Educational Con- 
 ference adjourned in recognition of Memorial Day, 
 and many of its members attended the services 
 and heard Mr. Lamar's address. The Northern 
 visitors were especially impressed, — not more by 
 
the rare felicity of its diction, the philosophical 
 quality of mind it displayed, and its thoughtful 
 interpretations of history, than by its timely char- 
 acter and practical usefulness. They felt that it 
 ought to be printed for the enlightenment of the 
 North and the incitement of the South. As a con- 
 sequence, the address appears in the present form. 
 
 The surviving soldiers on both sides of the great 
 civil conflict of forty years ago have long since 
 learned respect and admiration for their brave op- 
 ponents ; and the whole country will in future times 
 ever more deeply cherish the records and traditions 
 of American heroism as evinced in that great 
 period, irrespective of the color of the uniform. Mr. 
 Lamar shows us in this address wherein and why 
 the common soldier of the Confederacy was so re- 
 markable a type of manhood. Having done this 
 in well-weighed words wholly free from rhetorical 
 exaggeration, Mr. Lamar proceeds to show that 
 his purpose is not that of a mere eulogy. He 
 has analyzed the quality of American heroism 
 as typified in the common soldier of the Confed- 
 eracy in order to ask and answer the question, 
 
What now belongs to the part that should be played 
 by the successors of those men of the sixties, who 
 would wish to be equally true to the demands of 
 patriotism ? 
 
 His spirit in dealing with this question is well ex- 
 pressed in his motto, " Patriotism is but one of the 
 many names of duty." Whereupon, he takes up 
 courageously the race question of the South, and 
 every word he utters is a golden word of wisdom. 
 It is not that within the compass of this brief 
 address Mr. Lamar could develop his ideas in 
 detail. But he views the race question seriously 
 yet without pessimism, and in its true perspective. 
 He is philosopher enough to see that there has 
 been remarkable progress in the adjustment of 
 relations between the races since emancipation, in 
 view of the shortness of the period that has elapsed ; 
 and he touches the very root of remedial policy when 
 he points out the duty of the South to improve the 
 status of the negro race on the agricultural and in- 
 dustrial side as preliminary to the ultimate success 
 of universal education and effective school training:. 
 He would have the Southern landowner take pride 
 
in being a good landlord, and would have him 
 render his negro tenantry the best and kindest ser- 
 vice by enforcing upon it the proper cultivation of 
 the soil. To approach our great problems of Ameri- 
 can life and society, — whether Northern or South- 
 ern, Eastern or Western, urban or rural, — ^in the 
 light of patriotic duty, and in the broad-minded 
 spirit of this address of Mr. Lamar's, is to do our 
 share toward the fulfillment of a true national 
 destiny. 
 
 ALBERT SHAW. 
 
The Private Soldier of the 
 Confederacy. 
 
 Members of the Memorial Association, Confederate 
 Survivors, Ladies and Gentlemen : 
 
 " It is an irrepressible conflict" * * * 
 " It is an indestructible union of indestruc- 
 tible States." The saying of Seward was 
 prophecy; that of Chase, history. In these 
 two phrases are compressed the cause and 
 the result of the War. 
 
 There is nothing more exact than the 
 movement of time ; yet nothing is more 
 misleading than to measure the progress of a 
 people by the flight of years. In the twenty 
 centuries between Abraham and Christ, 
 the human race stood still ; in the forty 
 years between the War and this hour, rev- 
 olutions, social and industrial, have so 
 
crowded one upon another that the mind 
 is staggered in its effort to comprehend the 
 marvelous changes which have been made. 
 It is an anomaly that the nation is further 
 advanced than the individuals who compose 
 it. The body politic lives in the wholly 
 modern atmosphere created by these revo- 
 lutions, but the individual retains the im- 
 press received in his youth. While, rela- 
 tively speaking, we are further from the 
 War than our ancestors had come since 
 Columbus, yet the struggle of i860 sur- 
 vives in our memories to-day as the great 
 and distinct event of our life. 
 
 Before me are those who fought and 
 suffered in that Titanic contest ; with them 
 sit their children, and nearby their grand- 
 children. In these three generations there 
 must, of necessity, be differences in the 
 points of view. While it is asking too 
 much to think that those who took part in 
 
the conflict can view it from ihe placid seat 
 of impersonal criticism, yet never before 
 have the actors in a great and bloody 
 drama so speedily approached the plane 
 from which calm and dispassionate judg- 
 ment may be pronounced upon the tre- 
 mendous events in which they participated. 
 War at the best is a horror. Civil War is 
 a hell. But even Civil War comes finally 
 to be judged at the bar of History, and the 
 passions and resentments of even such a 
 strife yield finally to the touch of time. 
 Every true American must long for the 
 day when the man of the North and the 
 man of the South can sit down together, 
 and in frankness and candor, discuss this 
 stupendous event in our history. 
 
 We come of a blood that is not ignorant 
 of civil strife. The Wars of the Roses 
 rent and tore the vitals of English society 
 for fifty years, but rare indeed is the man 
 
in that cultured country who can even tell 
 the names of those who wore the blossom 
 of York, or those who fought for the flower 
 of Lancaster. All its bitterness, its hate, 
 its cruelty, have vanished with the vanish- 
 ing years. It is now poetry, and the story 
 is known almost exclusively from the pages 
 of the great Dramatist. 
 
 The Civil War in which Cromwell and 
 Charles waged a sanguinary struggle is 
 history, and judged as any other historical 
 event. The veriest English Tory, the 
 most radical non-conformist, is able dispas- 
 sionately to consider the claims of Crom- 
 well as leader, — the folly of Charles as 
 King. Every act of valor, every heroic 
 charge, every sacrifice in that struggle has 
 been gathered into the casket of England's 
 jewels. Liberal and Conservative alike 
 honor the historic names, whether Whig 
 or Tory, Cavalier or Roundhead. 
 
Long before a half century had passed 
 it was possible for an American and a 
 Briton to discuss in kindhness and frank- 
 ness the Declaration of Independence, the 
 Stamp Act, Valley Forge and Yorktown, — 
 the Mother Country glorying in our Wash- 
 ington and claiming her full share of the 
 honor reflected by our Continental troops. 
 
 And I think the day has come in which 
 we, too, whether from the North or from 
 the South, may begin to view our War as 
 the treasury of American manhood, as a 
 mine in which can be found priceless and 
 inexhaustible stores, illustrating the hero- 
 ism of the American people, and shedding 
 resplendent honor upon the Nation. Can 
 we not in that spirit observe this day, and 
 from the vista of forty years study "The 
 Private Soldier of the Confederacy" and 
 appropriate to ourselves the lesson he 
 teaches ? 
 
It is one of the tricks of language to re- 
 verse the standard of age. We call the 
 early years of a people old, while the early 
 years of a man are his youth. We speak 
 of that as the old South, and of this as the 
 new South ; and yet, in reality, it was the 
 young South that entered the War. It was 
 the young North with which she grappled. 
 Not half the land had been cleared ; the 
 forests were untouched; the railroads had 
 only begun their transforming work ; we 
 had not ceased to indulge in hilarious re- 
 joicing as each Fourth of July reminded us 
 of our recent birth as a Nation ; we still 
 writhed under the criticism and irony of for- 
 eign travelers recounting our crudities; the 
 exuberance of youth manifested itself in all 
 we did and said, and in nothing more than 
 in the fact that "this conflict was irrepress- 
 ible." Had we been older in wisdom and 
 experience ; had we known what War was 
 
and its cost; had we known the price of 
 even victory; had we ever imagined the 
 bitterness of defeat, — the War would not 
 have been. Both sides would have en- 
 deavored to find some honorable escape 
 from a struggle so colossal. 
 
 But America came of age when Sum- 
 ter's gun was fired. That brought us to 
 our majority — to a sudden realization of 
 the burdens and responsibilities of organ- 
 ized society. Till then, we had known 
 only the blessings of a prosperous and 
 peaceful democracy, removed from the strife 
 and dangers encompassing all other civi- 
 lized States. War has been the greatest 
 factor in History. Every people has felt 
 the hand of the invader. Upon every land 
 conquering hosts have marched. And the 
 suffering, the passion, the victory, the de- 
 feat, have entered into the very bone and 
 sinew of the human family. Until i860. 
 
we knew nothing of it. Peace or victory 
 had been our only portion — the Indian 
 Wars, the Revolutionary War, that of 
 1 812, and that with Mexico, were mere 
 skirmishes in which individual prowess had 
 manifested itself, and where the victories 
 which crowned our arms had but served to 
 intensify our self-confidence. They left 
 neither scar nor burden ; they had not taxed 
 our power, but only fed our pride. 
 
 Every other people had paid the cost and 
 felt the agony of War. To most of the 
 tribes of men it had been almost a thing 
 of course to live in sound and sight of bat- 
 tle; from cradle to grave to witness smok- 
 ing ruins, and see the desolation which lies 
 in the wake of armies. Even yet, the North 
 knows nothing of the real horrors of War. 
 It has countless millions hving in a bound- 
 less prosperity who have never thrilled at 
 the deep roar of cannon threatening their 
 
homes; its highways have never trembled 
 with the tread of martial hosts, except as 
 they marched to the tune of airs befitting the 
 pomp and circumstances of victors. On this 
 Continent it is only in the South that the 
 sober and sombre effects of War have been 
 felt, and worked their way into the warp 
 and woof of our life. But in i860 we 
 knew none of these things, and men of the 
 same blood, speech and religion girt them- 
 selves for the greatest struggle of the great- 
 est age the world has seen. 
 
 It was the tremendous, overshadowing 
 event in our history. It rises as a moun- 
 tain out of the plain of national life. It 
 must ever be the great historic fact among 
 us. It will always be " The " War, with- 
 out adjective, — without word of explana- 
 tion. 
 
 It will not do simply to indulge in ex- 
 travagances. Let us see wherein it was 
 
so great. The South was purely agricul- 
 tural. She had no manufactories ; she had 
 no foundries ; she had no mines ; no ship- 
 yards, no navy; no taste or experience for 
 the sea, for no stories are told of a South- 
 ern boy leaving home for a life on the wave. 
 She had no army ; her militia served only 
 as a butt of ridicule for the pen of Long- 
 street and other humorists, — and yet, within 
 weeks, she had organized a central gov- 
 ernment, swept the seas, created an army ; 
 with raw and untrained troops fought battles 
 and won victories. The nations of the 
 earth had been training men for centuries. 
 Europe was one immense camp ; it had 
 standing armies ; it had levies and reserves ; 
 and yet she had never been able to organize 
 and mobilize so fast as these untrained 
 farmers, who, within ninety days, had fought 
 a series of battles that amazed the soldiers 
 of the earth. It was no mere wild abandon 
 
 x6 
 
of enthusiasm. The spirit of these men 
 was such as not only to carry them through 
 the thrill and excitement of the charge, but 
 when reverses came, and defeat hung round 
 their banner, even greater heroism was 
 shown. The spirit lasted not for weeks, 
 but for years, and expired at last in the 
 throes that come from hunger and absolute 
 exhaustion. 
 
 War is the supremest test to which a peo- 
 can be subjected. Cruel it may be, — full 
 of suffering it must be. But it tries as by 
 fire the endurance, the courage, the forti- 
 tude, the self-denial of a nation. In no 
 spirit of boastfulness, but with tears for the 
 brave men who stood the test, let us make 
 a brief comparison between the great strug- 
 gle upon this Continent and those else- 
 where. 
 
 Of the twenty decisive battles of the 
 world, four were fought in the 19th 
 
Century. Waterloo in 1815; Gettysburg 
 in 1863; Sadowa in 1866; Sedan in 1871. 
 Of all battles, Waterloo is perhaps the most 
 famous. Whole libraries have been written 
 about it, and yet the combined losses of the 
 English, Prussian and French armies in that 
 tremendous conflict did not exceed the losses 
 at Gettysburg, where also 70,000 men were 
 engaged on both sides. Three years after 
 Gettysburg, Sadowa was fought between 
 the Austrians and Prussians — a quarter of 
 a million men on each side — each army 
 greater than the combined forces of Fed- 
 erals and Confederates at Gettysburg, but 
 the comparative casualties were far, far less. 
 Five years later, Sedan was fought. The 
 size of the armies was vastly greater than 
 at Gettysburg, but again the casualties 
 were incomparably less. 
 
 The great wars of the past were between 
 compact States, having narrow frontiers. 
 
easily patrolled ; but the Confederacy faced 
 for a thousand miles on the North, the 
 most prosperous people on earth; in the 
 rear was an exposed coast of two thousand 
 miles without a ship for its defense; be- 
 tween these threatening dangers, ran, from 
 Richmond to New Orleans, the longest 
 battle-line of the ages. The South had a 
 population of five million whites, and sum- 
 moning them all to a view of what con- 
 fronted her, one in every five, — not one in 
 every five men, but one in every five of 
 men, women and helpless infants, devoted 
 himself, his all and his sacred honor to the 
 God of Battle. Those who remained at 
 home were not less consecrated. They 
 stripped themselves and the lean land to 
 the bone — even to the marrow of poverty, 
 so that the four years challenge the saying 
 that money is the sinew of war, for, with- 
 out money, without credit, and solely by 
 
the magic of devoted sacrifice, armies were 
 maintained and the struggle continued. 
 And, when it ended, they had not even the 
 widow's mite with which to buy in the mar- 
 kets of the world, but only trunks and 
 baskets full of sleazy paper as vouchers for 
 a small part of the money losses. 
 
 In whatever aspect we consider it, the 
 bigness, the incomparable bigness of this 
 War, overtops every other in History. 
 Never before had three and a half million 
 soldiers been in battle array, — and if we 
 turn to the battle fields and realize that the 
 killed in both armies amounted to a half 
 million; that besides, a million men were 
 wounded or disabled; that only one of 
 every three that went from the South re- 
 turned home sound in limb and body, we 
 are tempted to weep that they poured forth 
 so lavish a libation of courageous en- 
 durance, — not once, but in innumerable 
 
instances surpassing that most famous and 
 reckless charge of the Light Brigade, where 
 forty-nine out of every hundred were left 
 on the field. For in our War, 75 Regi- 
 ments of the Confederacy, and an equal 
 number in the Federal army, showed 
 heavier losses than that of the Six Hun- 
 dred at Balaklava. And thirty regiments 
 left sixty per cent. — no, let us not say per 
 cent., but rather that out of each hundred, 
 sixty dead and wounded heroes were left 
 upon a soil sanctified by their blood. And, 
 as in the retort of battle, we continue to 
 test manhood by the power to do and to 
 dare, to execute and to die, the ascending 
 mountain of our War's superiority over all 
 others lifts its cliff-like head at Cold Har- 
 bor, where occurred the most stupendous 
 and appalling loss of any battle on earth ; 
 and where, in the space of eight minutes, 
 ten thousand Federal soldiers lay dead or 
 
wounded before the Confederate fire; 20 
 to the second, 1,200 to the minute. 
 
 A striking comparison between Gettys- 
 burg and the other three battles is that 
 Waterloo, Sadowa and Sedan were, in fact, 
 decisive; Waterloo ended the Hundred 
 Days and the Campaigns of Bonaparte; 
 Sadowa ended the Seven Weeks War be- 
 tween Austria and Prussia; Sedan prac- 
 tically terminated the Franco- Prussian War 
 of five months, and allowed the Germans 
 to march from the Rhine to Paris. But 
 Gettysburg, while in a sense decisive, was 
 more than two years from Appomatox. 
 Within the same week, Gettysburg was 
 lost on the North and Vicksburg on the 
 South. According to all the rules of War, 
 this foretold the end, and by any other 
 people would have been treated as final, 
 and yet, with an unparalleled tenacity of 
 purpose and a spirit wholly unconquered, 
 
the fight was kept up with undiminished 
 vigor. Against odds daily increasing, and 
 with the certainty of ultimate defeat staring 
 them in the face, the struggle was main- 
 tained. Hopeless but determined, hungry 
 but cheerful ; ragged but undismayed, the 
 Confederates fought on. 
 
 It was here that their greatest triumph was 
 won. Many men fight gallantly when the 
 reward seems certain ; most men are heroes 
 when flushed and giddy with the wine of 
 success, but to follow a forlorn hope, to face 
 certain defeat, this, after all is said, is the 
 final test of heroism. When we remember 
 the brave deeds of old, it is not of victories 
 we think. It is the retreat of the Ten 
 Thousand ; the Spartans at Thermopylae ; 
 the Charge of the Light Brigade ; the Battle 
 of Bunker Hill ; Pickett's Charge at Gettys- 
 burg, — that stir the blood and make us 
 proud that our humanity is capable of such 
 heroic sacrifice. 
 
Cold indeed must be the nature that can 
 study the story of these four years and read 
 the Hst of terrific and awful battles following 
 the defeat of Gettysburg, which does not 
 thrill with pride at the indomitable courage 
 displayed by these tattered and hungry 
 Americans. It is only the element of pa- 
 triotic courage and noble sacrifice that 
 relieve war from being mere butchery and 
 degradation. If anything can light up a 
 field strewn with dead and dying ; if any- 
 thing can still the horror of the moans of 
 the wounded and gasps of the expiring it 
 is the contemplation of the lofty spirit that 
 filled those who fell. The cold and dispas- 
 sionate historian of the future will find his 
 nerves tingle and his pen kindle with un- 
 wonted fire, as he describes the heroism and 
 devotion of these four years. Those who 
 fought against these men must feel that 
 it is their supremest triumph that they 
 
overcame such foes, — for no louder paean 
 can be heralded for the victor than that he 
 was able to defeat those of his own race, 
 exhibiting such qualities of heroic manhood 
 as the Southern soldier of 1860-65. Great 
 as was the skill in battle of those who com- 
 manded, it vvas not that which protracted 
 the struggle, but the stern and unswerving 
 courage of those who carried the musket, 
 stormed the breastworks, repelled the charge, 
 and endured the privations of those awful 
 days. But they who died were not the 
 only heroes. Those who survived and took 
 up the burden of defeat exhibited the same 
 characteristics. When they returned to the 
 upheaval and disorder left as an aftermath 
 of the War, and faced the new and untried 
 conditions, there was room to manifest the 
 same spirit of courageous endurance as on 
 the tented field. Once before, when an army 
 of our blood had disbanded, it had been 
 
said that wherever you found a man noted 
 above his fellows and inquired who he was, 
 the answer always came back that he was 
 one of Cromwell's Ironsides, — and para- 
 phrasing what Macauley has written, we 
 too may say that, as we look back over the 
 intervening years of peace, the prominent 
 figures on both sides are Survivors. The 
 most successful farmers, the best mechan- 
 ics, the leaders in commerce and trade, at 
 the Bar and on the Bench, the leaders in 
 every vocation, had been trained in that 
 marvelous school of War, — and if, at one 
 time, it happened that the Confederate Col- 
 onel was noted for numbers in the Halls of 
 Congress, it was not an accident, nor the 
 mere favoritism of politics. Leaders in 
 public and in private life come from those 
 best trained. 
 
 All of our theories of education would 
 fail if we concluded that the type of men 
 
who first won the victories, and were then 
 even more victorous in defeat, were an acci- 
 dent. Exceptional in their achievements, 
 they must have been the product of excep- 
 tional causes. Trained in an unusual school, 
 they were the product of special conditions, 
 obtaining partly at the North, but to a 
 greater degree at the South. For a gen- 
 eration before the War, great issues had 
 been discussed. Upon the hustings and 
 around every man's fireside, men probed to 
 the bottom the rights of the central Govern- 
 ment, the rights of the States, the rights of 
 property, and the rights of man. High 
 thinking had unconsciously been fitting 
 them for high living. The greatness of 
 the questions discussed enlarged the mind 
 and stimulated the spirit; it elevated 
 that generation above the condition of 
 those who only think on small things ; it 
 gave them a moral fibre stronger than can 
 
come to those who Hve only in prosper- 
 ous and piping times of peace. 
 
 Another pecuHarity of the Confederate 
 soldier, as also of the Revolutionary soldier, 
 is that, in the main, he was the product of 
 life in the Country. The South had no 
 great cities. The army of the Confederacy 
 was recruited from the ranks of men who 
 had lived the independent, self-centered, re- 
 sourceful life of the Southern planter. He 
 was an autocrat and knew how to com- 
 mand, but in learning that lesson, he had 
 learned also how to obey. He demon- 
 strated the value of the individual, and 
 showed that a man trained in such a school 
 can almost at a moment's notice be conver- 
 ted into a soldier, without the necessity for 
 long enhstment, and the tedious training in 
 a standing army. It was the trained man- 
 hood which made the soldier, and not the 
 manual of arms. 
 
It is in unconscious recognition of this 
 fact that the private soldier lives as the 
 Hero of the Confederacy. Many of them 
 rose from the ranks to become Generals; 
 many of them, without previous training, 
 went from peaceful homes to gloriously 
 command large bodies ; and while no army 
 ever had greater officers, no officers ever 
 led better men. While there are monu- 
 ments rich and precious to the leaders, and 
 here and there one to mark a battle-field, 
 everywhere is the shaft to commemorate 
 the private soldier. Sometimes those from 
 a particular village; sometimes those from 
 a county ; sometimes those from a special 
 city ; sometimes one with your own pathetic 
 inscription, "To the Unknown Dead" — 
 still everywhere they rise to the memory 
 and the fame of the Private Soldier. 
 
 We desire to preserve the memory 
 of their devotion, sacrifice and bravery. 
 
 a» 
 
Erecting monuments and hallowing these 
 Memorial Days, is meet and proper. It is 
 honorable to the living, and honoring to 
 the dead. But we must not stop with 
 marble shafts, nor with wreaths of flowers. 
 Our truest tribute to the Confederate Soldier 
 is to follow his example in performing the 
 duty that lies next to us in the public serv- 
 ice. We hear to-day no blast trumpeting 
 us to arms; but we are confronted with 
 social dangers and deep problems calling 
 for our best endeavors; problems with 
 which Legislatures are powerless to deal, 
 and which can only be solved by the long 
 drawn out patience of years and the har- 
 monious action of our people. 
 
 The Cause for which the Confederate 
 fought is lost. No War ever settled 
 weightier or more tremendous issues than 
 those decided at Appomatox. With a pen 
 dipped in blood, it was written that never 
 
again in this land shall human beings be 
 bought and sold; and, as irrevocably, it 
 was decreed that this is an indestructible 
 union of indestructible States. To a rec- 
 ognition of these decrees the Confederate 
 soldier gave his parol, and pledged himself 
 by every rule of law and honor to abide by 
 the results of the appeal to arms. Faith- 
 fully has he kept it. Faithfully have the 
 Southern people lived up to that plighted 
 word, — so faithfully indeed that it borders 
 on impropriety to discuss it. In England 
 the rancors of the Wars of the Roses, the 
 feeling between Cavalier and Roundhead, 
 had not died out in a hundred years; the 
 animosity engendered by the Revolution of 
 1688 was followed by more than fifty years 
 of plottings, insurrections and warlike ef- 
 forts to restore the Pretenders, — while here 
 the greatest triumph which the Southern 
 people have made is the manner in which 
 
they have kept the pledge. Completely 
 have they put behind them the issues set- 
 tled by the War, and with a "cordial and 
 self-respecting loyalty" taken again their 
 place in the family of States. Perhaps 
 never before, in the history of any people, 
 has the bitterness of a great struggle been 
 so nearly obliterated and so speedy an ad- 
 justment to new conditions made. 
 
 The War settled the extreme and out- 
 lying boundaries of great doctrines, but it 
 left undetermined many problems within 
 those limits. It adjudged against the right 
 of Secession, but it left undefined the 
 boundary line between centralization and 
 States Rights. The centripetal and centrif- 
 ugal forces are still operative, and the pen- 
 dulum still oscillates back and forth. 
 
 It settled the matter of Slavery, but it 
 did not adjust the question of Race. It 
 modified that problem, but did not solve it. 
 
What that question lost in intensity, it 
 gained in complexity. 
 
 Neither the North nor the South were 
 responsible for this problem. The Slave 
 trade began under the auspices of the Brit- 
 ish Government at a time when it was a 
 matter of course. Men at the North bought 
 and sold; men at the South bought and 
 used. So feebly had Slavery taken root 
 at the North, where conditions were un- 
 favorable for its spread, that the issue could 
 be easily dealt with when the Race Problem 
 began to loom dark and threatening. In 
 the language of Mr. Beecher they could 
 "pull up their poisonous weeds," but so 
 numerous were the slaves in the South 
 that we could not separate the tares from 
 the wheat, and the problem remained to 
 grow, — and to vex as it grew. 
 
 In nothing is the fastness of this age 
 better illustrated than in the rapidity with 
 
which we have travelled away from ancient 
 orders of things. We think of Slavery in 
 modern times as peculiar to the South, but 
 the first speech Gladstone ever made in 
 Parliament was in the interest of his father 
 and other Englishmen who owned slaves 
 in the West Indies. There are, no doubt, 
 old men living to-day in Austria who were 
 born in slavery, — white slavery ; and mil- 
 lions in Russia, with blue eyes and yellow 
 hair, started for the goal of freedom in 
 1 86 1, abreast of the dark-skinned slave in 
 America. These things were but as yes- 
 terday. In the order of time, a few men 
 will be living on this Continent in the year 
 1950 who were slave-owners, and nearby 
 will dwell those who were born in slavery. 
 How short, then, in the life of a nation, is 
 it back to the Proclamation of Emancipa- 
 tion, — less than forty years, less than the 
 span of a life, barely half of four score years 
 
and ten. In a period so short, how im- 
 possible to expect the hereditary tenden- 
 cies and influences of centuries to be 
 reversed. 
 
 The serfs of Austria and Russia were of 
 one blood with their masters. By a ty- 
 rant's hand they had been held down, and 
 in the years following their emancipation 
 they had to outgrow the degradation which 
 slavery entailed, notwithstanding which the 
 hopes of those who secured the freedom of 
 the Russian serf have failed of fruition, and 
 his uplift is still a prophecy and not a ful- 
 fillment. 
 
 But how essentially different is the Amer- 
 ican question. When the ancestor of the 
 Russian serf had reached a point where he 
 was entitled to the rights of a civilized free- 
 man, the African was a wild and untutored 
 savage. As savages, under the express 
 provision of the Constitution of the United 
 
States, they could be brought from the 
 Dark Continent to these free shores as late 
 as 1808. He reached our land a savage, 
 and the slavery that was for the serf a deg- 
 radation, was for him an education. How 
 well those who trained him in this school 
 discharged their task, I can best describe 
 in the language of a gifted woman of South 
 Carolina: 
 
 "They had to train and teach a race of 
 ' savages who had never known even the 
 
 * rudiments of decency, civilization or re- 
 
 * ligion ; a race which, despite the labors of 
 ' colonists and missionaries, remains in 
 ' Africa to-day as it was a thousand years 
 ' ago ; but a race, which, influenced by 
 ' these lives, taught by these Southern 
 
 * people for six generations, proved in the 
 ' day of trial the most faithful, the most 
 'devoted of servants;" and in 1863, 
 
 over our remonstrances and protests, was 
 
declared by others to be even worthy of 
 full civil and political rights. 
 
 The effect of emancipation upon the 
 slave seems to have been rarely considered 
 before the War. In reading the utterances 
 of the leaders on both sides, one is im- 
 pressed with their lack of forecast as to 
 this question. The Southerner regarded 
 emancipation as a dream, and hardly ever 
 alluded to its effect upon the negro or upon 
 society. On the other hand, those who 
 stood for abolition, seemed to think that 
 Freedom was a cure-all and that as soon 
 as slavery was abolished, the African would 
 not only be the white man's peer before the 
 law, but his equal in attainments and pos- 
 sibilities. 
 
 And so he was freed from his master, 
 without being freed from the burdens of 
 heredity, ignorance and racial disabilities. 
 What an appalling problem to have such a 
 
stream injected into the current of our 
 national life ! Among us, not of us. For- 
 eign in race and origin. Here against his 
 choice and without our responsibility. 
 Would that the War, in settling other mo- 
 mentous issues, had likewise settled this. 
 
 It is the fate of the South to face the 
 same social and political questions that con- 
 front every other section of the country. It 
 is her supreme misfortune to have, in ad- 
 dition, this race problem, which confronts 
 no other section. But the issue is here, — 
 the task has been imposed, and it is for 
 this generation to contribute, as far as it 
 may, to its wise and humane settlement. 
 
 Enough of the feeling engendered by 
 the War remains to make it impossible for 
 us to be perfectly understood in this mat- 
 ter. But the time must come, — I think it is 
 rapidly coming, — when we shall receive the 
 sympathy of the entire nation in our effort 
 
 38 
 
to deal with this issue. How remote the 
 apparent connection between our problem 
 and Porto Rico, the PhiHppines and Ha- 
 waii. And yet, just there lie the facts which 
 make the Race question National instead 
 of Sectional. History is quickly repeating 
 itself. Without realizing it, Northern men 
 charged with the duty of dealing with these 
 newly acquired and alien races, find them- 
 selves confronted with the identical diffi- 
 culty existing here in the South. Their 
 speeches justifying their policy read as 
 though uttered by Southern lips, and fore- 
 tell the day when our fellow citizens of the 
 North will be able to take a more sympa- 
 thetic view of the Race question at the 
 South. 
 
 In nothing have the principles of self- 
 government inculcated in the American 
 people manifested themselves better than 
 this adjustment of the relations between the 
 
Whites and Blacks. Similar cases else- 
 where have resulted not in sporadic cases 
 of cruelty and riot and disorder, such as 
 occasionally manifest themselves here, to 
 the mortification of every good citizen, — 
 but where conditions like these have existed 
 between other people, it has meant war to 
 the knife, revolution and extermination. 
 Look at the Haytian Revolution, the Ex- 
 clusion of the Chinese, the almost complete 
 extermination of the Indians, the absolute 
 extermination of the Moors by the Span- 
 iards. The percentage of violence against 
 the negro on account of race is less in the 
 South than it is in the North, and the Con- 
 federate soldier fought as much in vindica- 
 tion of his treatment of the negro, as for 
 any other of the many nameless factors 
 which brought on the War. The South 
 was accused of being a cruel and relentless 
 slave-owner. He answered Uncle Tom's 
 
Cabin with the frank admission that there 
 were, here and there, cruel masters, as there 
 were in every nation cruel employers, but 
 that, while it might be an anachronism, as 
 a whole, the South rendered the institution 
 of slavery patriarchal. And now, such is 
 the general kindliness that the problem is 
 is not so much the relation between the 
 Whites and the Blacks, — although that is 
 not without its difficulties and dangers, — 
 but, rather, what is to be the effect of the 
 negro upon our civilization ? How is he to 
 be uplifted to a point where he can proper- 
 ly discharge the duties of citizenship? How 
 are his racial disabilities to be overcome, 
 so that he may not always be a weight 
 upon the body politic? 
 
 We think that education is a cause. We 
 forget that cause and effect in this regard 
 are not at the opposite ends of a straight 
 line, but that they lie in a circle, so that it 
 
is often impossible to tell where cause ends 
 and effect begins. The most cultured peo- 
 ple have the best schools, but the best 
 schools do not always produce the most 
 cultured people. Illiteracy is both an effect 
 and a cause ; it feeds upon its own products. 
 Illiterates. do not estabhsh schools, nor are 
 they willing to attend them ; the illiterate 
 must first be trained up to the point where 
 he is prepared for schools ; he must be 
 trained in industry, in agriculture, and in 
 intelhgent cultivation of the soil. If there 
 is any one particular in which the South 
 must plead guilty, it is not that she has re- 
 sisted its enforcement, but the Proclamation 
 of Emancipation has been taken too literally. 
 The negro has been given not only free- 
 dom but license. He can only be elevated 
 by education, — not the mere education of 
 books, but the education that comes from 
 contact with the superior mind, that 
 
comes from direction in the affairs of life. 
 Being free to go he has gone to himself 
 and we have not hindered him. 
 
 And just here is the point at which we 
 are wanting, both to our ancestors and to 
 our posterity. In many parts of the coun- 
 try, the land, to a large extent, has been 
 turned over to the freedman. He is allowed 
 to farm as he sees fit ; to waste the resources 
 of the soil ; to skim over large areas, instead 
 of being required by the owner to plant the 
 proper crop, to improve the land, and to 
 till in a husband-Hke manner, as is demand- 
 ed of every tenant in England, Scotland, 
 and Germany, and in the Northern and 
 Western States. No landowner on the 
 face of the earth would permit an ignorant 
 tenant the destructive and awful license the 
 Southern landowner gives to the negro. 
 
 There is a much abused word which the 
 story-teller has made odious. The "land- 
 
lord" has become the synonym of heart- 
 lessness. But what a splendid word it is 
 in its real meaning. " Lord of the Land," 
 and, as lord, noblesse oblige, charged with 
 the duty of direction as well as of collec- 
 tion; bound to assist his tenant with in- 
 structions and kindly advice; bound to see 
 that the land which he received as an in- 
 heritance from his father, shall be trans- 
 mitted as a heritage of equal value to his 
 children. The relation between tenant and 
 such a lord of the land is mutually advan- 
 tageous, — the tenant improving his own 
 condition and that of the land, increasing 
 his crops, helped by the advice and strength- 
 ened by the kindness of the owner, and the 
 landlord receiving the rents, improving the 
 land, to the benefit of himself and his chil- 
 dren after him. 
 
 Here lies a homely solution of the Race 
 problem. In its successful application will 
 UOFG. 44 
 
be found the solution of many social troub- 
 les. It will elevate the negro and multiply 
 the resources of the land. It will tend to 
 wipe out the stain of illiteracy. It will en- 
 able us to appear better in the great math- 
 ematical and statistical standards by which 
 everything is measured, to our present dis- 
 advantage. It will make our percentage 
 appear better. As it is, the injection of the 
 negro as a divisor in long division con- 
 stantly reduces our average, for he is a 
 divisor, but not an equal multiplicand. He 
 makes us appear in all the tables, worse 
 than we are. In the eyes of the world, we 
 share his poverty. In the eyes of the 
 world, he makes us appear iUiterate. If we 
 would direct his labor, it will be the better- 
 ment of all concerned. 
 
 It was the tremendous and weighty say- 
 ing of Michelet that '' History is the resur- 
 rection of the dead." And if, in the spirit 
 
we have invoked, we can reverently imagine 
 our dead, as clothing themselves with the 
 gray, shouldering again the musket, gath- 
 ering under their immortal leaders, and 
 marching through the land for which they 
 died, and if, with uncovered heads, we 
 should stand before them to render an ac- 
 count of our stewardship, I can imagine 
 they would hold us responsible before the 
 Bar of Patriotism for what we have done 
 to the land which they had enriched with 
 their blood and consecrated with their 
 lives. They would ask: Where are the 
 stately mansions and the smiling fields ; 
 where are the forests and the clear running 
 streams? And if, with pride, we pointed to 
 cities more magnificent than any they had 
 left, to palaces crowding the streets, and 
 to buildings challenging the sky, to busy 
 factories and to glowing furnaces, they 
 would make answer that these we ought to 
 
 46 
 
have done, and not to have left the other 
 undone; they would not accept our excuse 
 that their defeat had made forever perma- 
 nent the bleakness throughout the country; 
 they would tell us that a generation is a 
 time within which, even as to the industrial 
 effects of War, the bar of the Statute of 
 Limitations must be interposed; that no 
 people could be prosperous or happy if the 
 soil be neglected ; and as a normal country 
 life made them, the lack of it might un- 
 make us. 
 
 With beat of drum and blare of trumpet, 
 they do not call us to march from our 
 homes to battle against distant forces, but, 
 with silent and impressive finger, they point 
 to the more intangible, more difficult, the 
 more continuous and persistent dangers that 
 lie at our very door. With imperious voice, 
 they summon us to fight against ignorance, 
 and to beat back the rising tide of illiteracy. 
 
They charge us to diversify our products 
 and to keep step to the great industrial 
 march of the age. 
 
 Can we not heed their lesson? Can we 
 not see that not only in the midst of shot 
 and shell, but in shop and store, in school 
 or at home, in the field white with cotton, 
 or rank with rustling corn, we can serve 
 our day and Country? For always and 
 everywhere, Patriotism is but one of the 
 many names of Duty. 
 
 48