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 THE NEW SOUTH 
 
 A DISCOURSE 
 
 Delivered at the Annual Commencement of Hamp- 
 den Sidney College, June 15TH, 1882, 
 
 BEFORE THE PHILANTHROPIC AND 
 
 Union Literary Societies. 
 
 
 By Rev. R. L. DABNEY, D. D., LL. D., 
 
 Professor in Union Theological Seminary, Virginia. 
 
 MAR' 8 i 1884 
 
 
 RALEIGH, N. C: 
 
 EDWARDS, BROUGHTON & CO., STEAM PRINTERS AND BINDERS. 
 
 ~+ 
 
 •}- 
 
T2I5 
 ■ D.l'ZS 
 
ADDRESS. 
 
 Young Gentlemen of the Philanthropic and Union Societies, 
 
 And Ladies and Gentlemen of the Audience : 
 
 You will credit my expression of sincere embarrassment at this time when you 
 consider that I am attempting a species of discourse somewhat unwonted to a 
 preacher of the Gospel, and yet more, that I am placed here only as a species 
 of Dernier Ressort. We all had hopes that another gentleman would represent 
 the two Literary Societies, better fitted to entertain and instruct this assemblage. 
 But disappointment left the place, at a very late period, unfilled, and we were 
 threatened with having this important part of our literary anniversary left a 
 mere blank. I stand here, therefore, in the formula of your exercises very 
 much in the place of that " infinitesimal quantity," which the algebraist places 
 equal to zero in his equation, without appreciable error. 
 
 This fact might have led me to decline the untimely effort, but we who are- 
 passing off the stage of public action owe a sympathy to the young who are en- 
 tering on it, which should forbid our withholding any service or evidence of 
 affection they may ask of us. It is this which has forbidden my saying No to 
 your request. 
 
 In your case there is another weighty consideration which ought to reinforce 
 your claim on us for a deep sympathy. This is found in the momentous diffi- 
 culties of the ARENA on which the young men of the coming generation arc 
 called to act their part. And yet another thought crosses the mind. Ought 
 the knowledge of the difficulties which are before you to stimulate the expres- 
 sion of our interest, or ought it to dictate a modest)', which should silence us as 
 advisers of our young countrymen? For it is by our hands that these cruel 
 conditions of your life-problem have been transmitted to you. The heritage of 
 freedom which our fathers left us, we have not been able to bequeath to you. 
 As memory reverts to my youth, when I stood where you now stand, it pre- 
 sent- a contrast which might well seal my lips with grief and shame. Then my 
 honored father and grandfather were just going off the stage, the one a soldier 
 of the first war which won our independence, and the other of the second war 
 which confirmed it, both examples of that citizen-soldiery which had been the 
 glory of America, plain, simple, unpretending, but incorruptible. And Vir- 
 ginia then stood, with untarnished escutcheon, poor indeed from the burdens of 
 two wars, and the legislative exactions of her partners in the Union, clad mostly 
 in homespun, but still the "great and unterrified commonwealth" which ex- 
 torted this tribute from Cornwallis in his hour of victory: " mother of States- 
 men and States," whose humblest citizen knew no master except God and the 
 law of his own State's election, whose banner had never trailed before a con- 
 queror, by whom no federal obligation had ever been dishonored, and no cred- 
 
2 Address. 
 
 jtor ever defrauded oi one penny; with a cr Id in th inns 
 
 firm and prudent mediator between federal power and the two 
 
 impatient spirit of her si - I cm hers t ran sn to our 
 
 trrior-virgin, like the Pallas-Athene of Phidias, as she stood 
 
 i the Ww ' ihing the radiance of her golden helm and full-orbed 
 
 ■ and Salami s, to far off Msegara and 
 
 Lhit ou, not. How? a pallid, wofnl 
 
 i ! i iwered by subjugation, dismembered of her fair proportions, her 
 
 I erven by her own sons, virtually governed bj the votes of an 
 alien and rous 1 her bosom by her late pa ; .■ now her 
 
 nt protest ! 
 As I i I myself, should not men who have so failed 
 
 ichargc. who ha-. I itage of their fathers to be so marred 
 
 es and be silent ? 
 But our sons whom our weakness, or else our hard fate, has left disinh 
 [of us ! They ask", they encourage us to speak. 
 I ay to the " New i , . ■ ■ 
 New Soi Our other endeavi 
 
 I by our fathers, we did what we could. And in proof of this justi- 
 *•( can point to the forms prematurely bent, an whitened 
 
 by fatigues and camp diseases, to the empt nd to 
 
 hickl ovei the land. Our apol 
 
 while we wi e rights and interests of the civili 
 
 : ely arrayed itsel 
 
 was : issioi I I . that we, whil ' : cause ol 
 
 md misunderstood by all. But -A I I say this 
 
 fearful dispensation was strange? when we see that from the days of the chris- 
 
 nd sought to i >y its 
 
 I ors. So it w; ; v : had the world against us. There was, after all, 
 
 litth i ion'Hvhich the <.'• infei ! nary 
 
 Ridge, with the 1 i ggeration of his class, gave ol case. Said 
 
 d ever disturbed him until al 
 dawn of that dis: ing post on the advam 
 
 on Lookout Mountain, just when ginning to pale i 
 
 dawn, and all nature in expectancy of the coming kii 
 
 ken by the words of command, rolling from the 
 Vaii'. over the i in these terms: '"Attention World ! Na- 
 
 orward ! Wheel into lincol battle." Yes, we had 
 the wi n I : ;a in I us. 
 
 And this is i for that fact which completes our apol 
 
 failui [iien't events have shown we were attempting to defend and 
 
 tern of free government which had ble by reason 
 
 of the change and deg m of the age. We did not believe this at the time, 
 
 for we had not omniscience. Nay, it was, at that time, our duty not to know 
 U, or to believe it, even as it is the luty of the loyal son not to believe the dis- 
 
Address. 
 
 i i his venerable mother mortal, so long as hope - pi 
 the efforts of his love, and not to surrender her to death while love and tender- 
 ness can conte ' the pri e. We had received this fiee government from cur 
 fathers, baptized in their blood ; we had received from them the sacred injunc- 
 tion to preserve it. We had vvilm neficent results. Of all men. r 
 was o Ives most bound by the maxim of the Roman rep 
 
 i u /as est de fapublka disperar-e. Th< h n e had il ntly taken 
 place, which rendered our falhei ■ 
 
 cute i (ret il would have been, ti truth and right for us to despair 
 
 of the better possibility, until tl ibility stood sternly revealed. Thus 
 
 the ' i duty and Providence assigned us was, to demonstrate bj 
 
 own defeat, after inl i , the u»fitn< 
 
 we would fain have preserved for them. Hard I iny to at- 
 
 I but one which has often been exacted by a mysteri 
 Providence from the votaries of duty. Yet it gives us this harsh consolation, 
 that inasmuch as the i stem had become impractici 
 
 ure in the effort to preserve it might be incurred vvithou 
 
 ihere is thi if the 
 
 justification to wl 
 
 act i: drawn m the Be- 
 
 cause the old free system h ossible foi 
 
 will be justified in living and acting i . There will bean 
 
 trent paradox in this ; that yen shall applaud and revere your l 
 their < osition to form- e and 
 
 • sustain. But the paradox will be only in £ 
 be foui 
 
 duty to di fend, because they still r, be- 
 
 cause you have learned by our in no exist. 
 
 '■Anew Si inevitable, ; nil be right for you to ai 
 
 it, though it was our duty i prevent it. It may I to. 
 
 morrow to "bury the m it was the father's 
 
 ... keej alive. 
 
 The government our fathei left 
 As such they emerged from . 
 
 inch they mi . .... ei union." 
 
 ach they d d the term d therefor, 
 
 (for at first did 
 
 nev. union.) By then ral and si vereign rets the) entralfed- 
 
 iment, with limit* , and deputed to this 
 
 own citize I \er- 
 
 the equal behoof of all the pa 
 of judging and redressing vital infr; 
 
 I expressly reserved to or to theii 
 
 world they were to be one, ither the}- were to be still equr.ls and it 
 
 pendent partners. Each State must be a republic, as di 
 monarchy or oligarchy, but in all else it was to be mistress ol its own in 
 
4 Address. 
 
 forms and regulations. The functions of the general government were to he 
 few and defined, its expenditures modest, and its burdens in time of peace light. 
 Such was the form of government instituted for themselves by our free fore- 
 fathers; and well fitted to their genius and circumstances, as communities of 
 farmers, inhabiting their own home-,, approaching an equality of condition, and 
 having upon the whole continent no one city of controlling magnitude or wealth. 
 
 But this century has seen all this reversed ; and conditions of human society 
 have grown up, which make the system of our free forefathers obviously im- 
 practicable in the future. And this is so, not because the old forms were not 
 good enough for this day, but because they were too good for it. 
 
 I. I would place as the first of these adverse conditions the silent substitu- 
 tion, under the same nomenclature, of another theory of human rights, in con- 
 trast with, and hostile to, that of our fathers. Those wise men did indeed be- 
 lieve in a certain equality of all men ; but it was that which the British consti- 
 tution (whose principles they inherited) was wont to express by the maxim : that 
 every British citizen " was equal before the law." The particular franchises of 
 the peer and the peasant were very unequal, but in this important respect the 
 two men were "equal before the law," that the peasant's smaller franchises 
 were protected by die same law which shielded the peer's larger one. This is 
 the equality of the golden rule, the equality of that Bible which ordained the 
 constitution of human society out of superiors, inferiors and equals ; the equal- 
 it}- of the inspired Job (ch. 31 : 13-15) who in the very act of asserting his right 
 to his slave, added : " Did not he that made me make him ? If I did despise 
 the cause of my man-servant or my maid-servant when they contended with 
 me, what then shall I do when God risethup?" This is the equality which is 
 thoroughly consistent with that wide diversity of natural capacities, virtues, 
 station, sex, inherited possession-, which inexorable fact discloses everywhere 
 and by means of which social organization is possible. But in place of this, 
 the equality taught by Hampden, Vane, Pym, Melville, and the Whigs of 1776, 
 our modern politician now teaches, under the same name, the equality of the 
 jacobin, of the '"Sansculotte,"' which absurdly claims for every human the 
 same specific powers and rights. Yes, your Greeley teaches, as the equality of 
 Republicanism, the very doctrine of the frantic Leveller Lilbum, whose book 
 these great English Republicans caused (not your tyrannical Stuart but the 
 commonwealth's-men) to be burned in London by the common hangman ! 
 
 Our fathers valued liberty, but the liberty for which they contended was 
 each person's privilege to do those things and those only to which God's law 
 and Providence gave him a moral right. The liberty of nature which your 
 modern asserts is absolute license ; the privilege of doing whatever a corrupt 
 will craves, except as this license is curbed by a voluntary "social contract." 
 The fathers of our country could have adopted the sublime words of Melville : 
 Lex: Rex. The Law is king. Or have said with Sir Win. Jones : 
 Men constitute a State : 
 And sovereign LAW', that State's collected will, 
 
 O'er thrones and globes elate, 
 Sits Empress, ci owning good, repressing ill. 
 
Address. 5 
 
 Smit by her sacred frown, 
 The fiend (Construction) Discretion like a vapour sinks. 
 
 And even the all-dazzling crown, 
 Hides his faint rays, and at her bidding shrinks. 
 
 But now, by this new Republicanism, the supreme law is the will or caprice 
 of what happens to ho. ike major mob, the suggestion of the demagogue who is 
 most artful to seduce. 
 
 These are a few items of the new creed, which lias stolen the nomenclature 
 of the old. Since it is a theory at all essential points antagonistic to the old, 
 its prevalence cannot but supplant those sound institutions which were the nat- 
 ural outgrowth of the orthordox doctrine. 
 
 2. When our former constitution was adopted, America contained no metn >p- 
 i >lis, not even any city of note ; there were a few trading towns, of which each 
 State had oaie or more, and of which neither had any effectual ascendancy over 
 the others. Hence State equality was practicable, and could be effectively 
 something more than a name. But now, the great empotium of this continent 
 has made herself, by virtue of natural advantages co-operating with partial 
 legislation, commercial mistress of all, and asserts a financial ascendancy which 
 brings the business and the welfare of the whole country to her feet. It used 
 to be said that in England " all roads lead to London." So, in this vast con- 
 tinent, all railroads tend to New York, or those which vainly attempt to reject 
 her dominion soon feel it in the form of empty trains and vanished revenues. 
 Now, in view of that truth announced by Solomon, that " money answereth 
 all things," can a sensible man persuade himself that political independence 
 and equality can permanently remain in a land where financial -despotism has 
 become established? " The borrower is servant to the lender." The political 
 subjection must, sooner or later, follow the financial. 
 
 3. Our century has witnessed a general change of social conditions by means 
 of the marvelous applications of science and mechanic art to cheapen trans- 
 portation and production. Once the commonwealth owned all the highways 
 by water and by land, and each private citizen might become a carrier if he 
 chose. Now the highway's are the property of great carrying corporations, who 
 command more men as their disciplined employes than the government's own 
 standing army, before whose revenues the whole incoanes of commonwealths 
 are paltry trifles ; to whose will legislatures hasten to bow. Each of these 
 roads point virtually to New York. To that city, yes, to one corner of Wall 
 street in that city, centre all their debts, their loans, their revenues, their chief 
 management. 
 
 This centralization is as remarkable also in the producing arts. The lime was 
 when manufactures were literally domestic — the occupations of Jhe people in 
 their homes. The industrious producing citizen was a " free-holder, " a name 
 whose vital significance to British liberty our times have almost forgotten. He 
 dwelt under his own roof-tree. He was his own man ; he was the fee-simple 
 owner of the homestead where his productions were created by the skill and 
 labor of himself and his children, apprentices and servants. Now all this is 
 
6 Address. 
 
 fed ; the loom is no tongci heanS in the home ; vast -factories, owned 
 monopolists for whom the cant of the age lias already found their appropriate 
 " kings of industry,'" now undersell the home products everywhere. 
 The a hoe which the husbandman wields, on.ee made at th 
 
 :, theshoe placed on hi set, the plow with which he turns the < 
 
 the very helve in his tool, all come from the factory. The home irxl 
 the house ing h c ov n y isl can hardly survive, but is su 
 
 ; yo n i. i tory ' baking powders," in which che have 
 
 full play. Thus production is centralized. Capital is collected in com 
 
 al s-ho i riding the free-hdlding citizen is sunk into the nmltiti 
 hit I tic pi iletariat. Conditions of social organization are ag | iced, 
 parallel to the worst results of feudalism, in their incompatibility with 
 republican insl Ltu 
 
 4. From the 1 1 n have ultecl the extreme in ol forti 
 
 litures and luxury which now deform American society. When our late 
 constitution was. enacted, American citizens en' 1 ;ral equality of for- 
 
 ort, which made a real republic m equality of rights practicable. 
 1 11 onl] aristoi a* ■' was that of intelligence and merit. The 1 idl- 
 
 est citizen was only a farmer, somewhat more abounding than his neighboi 
 the breadth of his fields. A British writer, endeavoring to trace in lire n 
 ii ,n society the existence of a gen try 1 could, rind no greater incomes than th 
 W; d'i., ;ton, of Alt. Vernon, and Carroll, of Can I pos- 
 
 $20,000 per annum. And the Mt. Vernon mansion red in! 
 
 d< -t that he spoke of itas "the cottage," in!: bitedl proprii tor. But 
 
 1 1 , ■ "king oi kudu 1[ . " count their incom :s by almost as many 
 <- day. Set the more than regal luxury of a Vanderbilt, in bis g 
 palace b : the hireling laborer ift bis sordid tenemei I I in 
 theoretical equal"! Vest] ' hence 
 
 the pauper dinner of his cagg :d children, 
 shall count for precisely as much as the vote 1 if a Vande rl kilt. This is the tneory. 
 And this v\ by his 1 ahood suffrage, is he ? as to be thoroughly 
 ith the mon Lrou i equalit\ of en and to hearken to no crav- 
 mr, when he sees this rampant luxury flaunted before his mis- 
 ery? And this lordl) milliot | pel dbyhisimmea m ble abi id: , will 
 
 eel no lust of power, no ambition to add civic dominion to the plutocratic 
 h he already po id he will be satisfi I to have the ignorant vote oi 
 
 his hireling weigh precisely as much as his own in every legislative act touching 
 'enure of his millions? He who know human nature sees that to expect this 
 i-~ mere craziness. This enormous inequality in wealth will seel t, to 
 
 assert itself in politics. But our new-fangled Republicanism asserts that, polit- 
 ically, the Vanderbilt shall be the precise equivalent of the pauper. It leave 
 rich man 1 rl ion of his superior weight or the pro- 
 
 iperioi i" (he State. Wealth, then, must seek for 
 
 itself illegitimate forms. And in obeying the inevitable impulse through tl 
 illegal ways, it must corrupt itself, and the institutions of the land. 
 
 5. The press has been looked to as the safe guardian of popular institutions. 
 
Address. 7 
 
 It has been called by an English Whig "the fourth estate of the Realm." But 
 the influences under wbich the political press in America operates con 
 this also one of the fatal hindrances to the subsistence <>!' wise, free institu- 
 tions. The powerful journals must be also the creatures of money. The con- 
 ditions of journalism are such that only a vast capital can float a journal into a 
 safe and permanent haven of success. Literature is a commodity, money buys 
 and sells it. Let the genius of an Addison, a Bolingbrooke, a Junius, a Ma- 
 caulay, all be combined on the one side, \ ilh all the richest resources of histori- 
 cal learn ilisb the political truths which ha: unpopular without 
 a great capi md let commercial capital give its support to the pen of the 
 propagate the cm hich capital 
 and corrupt interest, you shall see the wisdom of true 
 statesmanship, embellished by ali the graces of scholarship consigned to an 
 !:i. I obscurity it Lhe vulgar stupidities of error shall visit 
 every table and cl [at Us it so and Mammon rules. 
 The rea on is bc< tuse the leading presses of the commercial centres are either 
 Is of parties and used for exclusive partisan purposes, or else thi 
 he calico mills, mere joint-stock concerns for money making. Either 
 way, the result is the same. The content - of tie journal are not dictated at ail 
 ]>v truth or right, hut solely by self-interest What doctrine shall it 
 Only that which advances the strength ■ f the faction, or which attracts the 
 Thus the < f being the guile, be- 
 ophant of misguided t ublic opinion. Let only any \ 
 heresy begin to be current enough to become an element of danger to sound 
 
 tions, and ard it is i il t.and 
 
 journals to give it their support. To resist and explode it "would not pay." 
 
 6. One more change only, my tii mits me in state, which con 
 
 render the system of our fathers a thing of the past. This is the invariable ex- 
 
 , which has attended every politi 
 This ti I racterized not only the violent revolution through which we 
 
 but every modification of constitution made by the States. We 
 e it working with equal certainty in the reform measures of on< 
 servative England. In every state Constitution has been opened 
 
 ge, that change lias been towards universal suffrage, unless this i 
 had be< i ahead; reached; and in I case has a restriction of . 
 
 been even attempted. There is at foi this fated law of pr< 
 
 in the nature of the demagogue, and it may be said in passing, that this 
 presents us the fatal weak point in the theory of popular government. The 
 selfish calculations and instincts of these com rob, always prompt 
 
 them to advocate every extension, no matter how unwise or destructive, and 
 seal their lips from opposing it. Their calculation runs thus: Here is a new 
 .horn some one has proposed to enfranchise. I know, as does every sen- 
 sible man, that it is a folly. But perhaps the proposal may prevail. Hence, 
 I cannot afford to oppose it, for should it prevail, the newly enfranchised 
 they come to the polls, will remember my action against me. But if I am a 
 forward advocate of it, their gratitude will make them vote for me. Thus the 
 
8 Address. 
 
 craziest and most ruinous proposition to create a new class of voters, always has 
 zealous assertors. and for the same reason it meets with no opposers who are 
 effective. 
 
 Such were the avowed motives [with sectional hatred and revenge] which 
 prompted our conquerors to fix on the Southern half of the country that last 
 extreme of political madness, the universal and unqualified suffrage of the slaves. 
 And how deadly in their potency these motives of self-seeking are, we may see 
 in this fact, that they even silence the protest of our own politicians ! There 
 is not one of them who does not know that this measure is inevitably pregnant 
 with the corruption and overthrow of honest, popular government; yet there is 
 not one of them, who is a candidate for votes, who has the nerve to say what he 
 thinks, or to demand a reversal of the criminal blunder. But when the leaders 
 of the very people who are the first victims of this wrong, are too much intimi- 
 dated to lift a finger for its correction, whence shall deliverance from the fatal 
 incubus come ? There will be no deliverance until suffrage shall have been so 
 foully corrupted by this and its other perversions, that a despairing and mined 
 people take refuge from its intolerable tyrannies in the will of an autocrat, and 
 the ignorant and venal cease to vote only when and because all will be forbid- 
 den to vote. 
 
 Whether just and free institutions can co-exist in such a country as this, with 
 its vast population and inequalities of condition, along with this extravagance 
 of universal suffrage, needs no debate. Do you remember the prophetic letter 
 of Lord Macanlay to Mr. Randall, of New York ? Do you remember the 
 homely instance by which a greater than Macanlay, and a more prophetic states- 
 man, was wont to close his arguments in favor of that sheet anchor of liberty, 
 free-hold suffrage? Mr. Randolph used to exclaim: "Sirs, the empty sack 
 does not stand upright." In an advanced material civilization like ours, every 
 political action touches property somewhere. If the vote which represents no 
 property is made of equal weight with the vote which represents large proj^erty, 
 then, with such inequalities of wealth, with such ostentatious displays of the 
 luxury of the few piquing the envy of the impoverished many, just so surely 
 as men are men, greedy in desire, selfish and unrighteous, and the more un- 
 righteous where their crime is wrapped up from the eye of conscience in the 
 folds of associated action, two results must follow, are already following. The 
 attempt of the proletariat and their demagogues to use their irresponsible suf- 
 frage for plunder; the resistance of the capital-holding minority to this plunder. 
 But for this resistance, though it be as inevitable as the instincts of self-preser- 
 vation, your radical theory offers no recognized, legitimate mode. Radicalism 
 ordains that the small shall be equal to the large; the dependent shall counter- 
 weigh the independent; the vote which has nothing to lose, shall dispose of the 
 vote of him who has all to lose. The result is, that self-defence invents ille- 
 gitimate modes, and the unrighteous assault on property is met by the illegal 
 use of property to protect itself and to inflate itself until the moral corruptions 
 wrought in our politics fester to putrescence and dissolve the body. 
 
 As we thus look back upon the social revolution which had established itself 
 in our century, we see that political revolution had become unavoidable. The 
 
Address. 
 
 assault on our rights and institutions was but the first wave of the cataclysm. 
 It swept over our best resistance, because there were other waves behind it 
 which are destined in turn to conquer our conquerors. He is a shallow man, 
 indeed, who supposes that the revolution will pause at its present stage, leaving 
 the conquering section ascendant, and rendering this unstable equilibrium of 
 the moment peimanent. No, we have now seen but the first act of the drama, 
 and it has been a tragedy. The curtain has fallen for the time to the music of 
 a miserere, whose jarring chords have fretted the heartstrings of such as Lee and 
 his comrades into death. It may well happen that after the fashion of the 
 mimic stage, the next rise of the curtain may be accompanied by the garish 
 lights of a deceitful joy, the blood stains of the recent tragedy covered with 
 fresh saw dust, and the new actors ushered in with a burst of gay melody. But 
 the other acts are to follow. .May they not be tragic also? 
 
 That popular suffrage does not now really govern this country, that it is no- 
 toriously a marketable commodity, that the United States have really ceased 
 already to be what they pretend, a federation of republican States, no clear 
 sighted man doubts. Under a thin veil of radical democracy, the government 
 has already become an oligarchy. Are not State conventions traded off by the 
 magnates as openly as blocks of railroad bonds ? Are not legislatures bought 
 as really and almost as openly as cargoes of corn? Are not "corners" made 
 in politics by which the weaker capitalists are sold cut, as really as in 
 the pork market? It is Washington or Wall Street which really dictates 
 what platforms shall be set forth, and what candidates elected and what 
 appointments made, not the people of the States. Some of you may have 
 heard of the incident which happened in our neighboring town, in that 
 year when our Southern conservatives, in their wisdom, made Horace Gree- 
 ley their standard-bearer, hoping, it seems, like the superstitious Jews, to 
 "cast out devils through Beelzebub, the chief of the devils;" to retrieve 
 the cause of order and right through the arch incendiary and agitator of the 
 country. Several hopeful souls were arguing his success from the many signs 
 of his acceptance with the people. It was said, whole radical towns, whole 
 Union Leagues in the northwest were coming over to Greeley. A sagacious 
 banker standing by quietly shook his head. Our friends, ah d at his 
 
 skepticism, asked : " Why? do not all these accessions, with the Southern sup- 
 port, promise him success ?" His answer was: "Gentlemen, I do business in 
 Wall Street, and Wall Street does not want Greeley." And so the country did 
 not have Greeley, and Greeley did not have the presidency he coveted, but went 
 aside to die of chagrin. 
 
 So Wall street saw in the third term imperialism thinly masked, and as its 
 oligarchs preferred to be masters themselves, rather than have Grant their mas- 
 ter and ours, Wall street sent to Chicago and nominated Garfield as its conve- 
 nient lay-figure. But having carried its main point it really cared very little 
 about the choice between him and Hancock, and for a time did not trouble 
 itself. So the people were about to elect Hancock. But one fine morning 
 this simple minded "beefeater" perpetrated the faux pas of endorsing the 
 greenback victory in Maine. And now that Wall street saw that the Hancock 
 
io Address. 
 
 regime was committed to " soft money," it did trouble its if, and woke up and 
 put it:, hand to the canvass. It would none "1 Hancock and his soft money, and 
 so the people could not have Hancock nor he have the presidency. 
 
 msly the government now ascendant in the country while "Repul 
 m nam; and ultra-democratic in theory, is an oligarchy in 'fact. Exti 
 often thus meet. Nothing can be more fallacious than that view, advanced by 
 oi our conciliatory statesmen, jvhich i - the recent revolutions as 
 
 only a temporal)' excitement and \ rlial fit of excess from which the institutions 
 of the country will re-act under prudent management and regain their old consti- 
 tutional status. There will he no re-action in that sense. The morbid causes which 
 were | verthrow will ) moi : certainly be powerful enough to resist 
 
 and suppress the weak efforts of a crippled, prostrate constitution, The obsta- 
 i les 1 Jtween a- and a return in p is preced :nts are too mountainou . ( m ider 
 for!; 1 " poil.s system," now strong with a generation's growth. If 
 
 it is to he perpetrated, this of itself makes popular constitutional government 
 For every intelligent man sees that it converts.office -holders from 
 servants of the people to paid agents for circumventing the people's will at the 
 polls, paid with the money of the people they help to enslave. This is the 
 very signature of de potism, that the citizen's money is taken to bribe agents 
 for suppressing the citizen's will. Under this sy -tern the office-holders are the 
 pretorian cohorts of the usurper. 
 
 But let one think out now the conditions essential to the realizing of that 
 "civil n i," ,vhich i cl p.artj | i > nds to promise, but which neither 
 
 par;; b appropi i for the spoils system. One of the re- 
 
 quisite conditions is that one of these ] ai tij i n ousting the other from power 
 shall exercise the self-denial and magnanimity to leave all their rival's appi iin 
 except those expressly punishable lor official malfeasance, undisturbed in their 
 offices and salaiies. For if the victorious party is to signalize its a ion, 
 
 won, we wil iosc, on service reform, by expelling all 
 
 the • ' :-hokl :rs of the opposite an ! d :feated part}-, this will not he to inaug- 
 the wholesome remedy, but only to repeat the abuse. And thus they 
 re than ever ensure at the next turn of the wheel of fortune that their 
 reinstated rivals would imitate their vindictive example, turn out all their new 
 appointees and again he happy change. Let us sup xam- 
 
 ple, that the people should again elect a conservative President ami that he 
 should not, like poor .Mr. Tilden, submit at the bidding of Wall street to the 
 robbery of himself and the people of America, but should be inaugurated ; 
 shall he magnanimously leave every appointee, though an agent or a tool of the 
 present sp I m, tun isturbed ? Then there is no official reward for his 
 
 supporters who have toiled for his election. They must have worked for 
 naught but an i mpting of (Hire patriotism. Whence is the money to 
 
 come to wage the campaign when all will 'nave been notified in advance that 
 there will be no way for them to repay themselves out of die public crib? It 
 is well known that a national political campaign now costs as much as a mili- 
 tary one, and that money is to it as essential as ," the sinew's oi war." Does 
 any party in America possess this lofty patriotism? W ill either party thus 
 
Address. ii 
 
 ! for nothing: But let us i the incoming conservative shall 
 
 make a pretext that the office-holders he finds in place have been there as 
 
 oils-men," and turn them oul to make room for his supporters ; then the 
 
 inevitable result is that the o] posing party will denounce him as a traitor to his 
 
 civil service reform, and devote themselves to retaliation. Such are the 
 
 which beset the abatement of this peril in America. " Canst thon 
 
 draw, out Leviathan with a hook, or hi a corrl which thou lettest 
 
 down ? Canst thou put a hook into his nose?" 
 
 ire the fatal influ i itruct all return md ensuie the pn 
 
 of the revolution. There is a new era and hence there must be a " New 
 South." 
 
 WHAT MANNER OF THING SI!. M.I, IT BE? To pi iiesyis 
 
 in.' the proper part for us to ] lay who fell with the old South. For us a more 
 appropriate. We shall claim our .■tid- 
 
 ing our own principles, wh rated 
 
 for it to to 1 of consulting our own self-respect. Justice to you re- 
 
 quires thai leave you l< rour- own destiny in that new and un- 
 
 tried sea into which you are launching. 
 
 Hut there are some principles which we may safely inculcate on you, because 
 whatever else may change these cannot change. The glory of our old inde- 
 [ence and its history, the beneficence of the con!. les of our 
 
 old on, concurred to teach us an exalted, perhaps an overweaning ap- 
 
 preciation of the value of such political 5. Hut we do not forget 
 
 that other people have had other forms of government, aristocratic or regal, 
 and under them have had their share of the domestic virtues, of patriotism, of 
 civilization, of Christianity. (But unci :r the illicit and dirty oligarchy of which 
 nt regime is a virtual has ever had or can ever 
 
 have anything but corruption, ignominy and vice.) Our best prayei 
 that out of the present foul transition, a good Providence may i new 
 
 to arise tolerable for honest men. The changes implied in the introduction 
 of this new order may be accepted by the old confederates as old a rmity, 
 
 a not distant death. They must Lie accepted by me as the inevitable. 
 Bu the principles of truth and righteousne ternal : divin 
 
 must be upheld under all Here, in one 
 
 1, is the safe pole-star for the " New South ; " let them adopt the scriptu- 
 ral | .red that they will ever be as true and just under any new regime 
 ie that has passed away: " That righ calteth a nation, 
 but sin is a reproach to a-y people. That "wisdom and knowledge shall be 
 the stability of thy times, and strength of salvation ; the fear of the Lord i-> 
 His treasure." That "he that walkelh righteously and speaketh uprightly ; he 
 that despiseth the gain of oppressions, that shaketh his hands from holding of 
 bribes, that stoppeth his ears from hearing of blood, and shutteth his eyes from 
 beholding evil; he shall dwell on high: his place of defence shall be the muni- 
 tion, of rocks." 
 
 Some of the applications of these unchanging principles are obvious to expe- 
 rience guided by truth. Permit me briefly to unfold three of these to you, 
 
12 Address. 
 
 which are shown to be timely and momentous by the special temptations to 
 which a subjugated people are exposed while passing of necessity under a new 
 and conquering system. One of these plausible temptations is to conclude 
 that the surest way to retrieve your prosperity will be to become like the 
 CONQUERERS. This is an inference as false as it is specious ; the fact that your 
 fathers are conquered may ground a good inference perhaps, that you should 
 seek to be in some respects UNLIKE US. May you be unlike us in being more 
 fortunate ! But a very brief observation of history will teach you that violent 
 aggressors, in overthrowing their rivals, also usually prepare their own over- 
 throw. Their calamities are only postponed to the second place. The Jaco- 
 bins overthrew Louis XVI, but Bonaparte crushed the Jacobins, and Europe 
 crushed Napoleon. Shall this lie the best reparation for the miseries of the 
 fall of the Confederacy ; that you shall share, for a few deceitful days, the victors' 
 gains of oppression, to be overwhelmed along with him in his approaching retri- 
 bution? Be sure of one thing, " his curses will come home to roost." In order 
 to escape the fearful reckoning, you must not only make yourselves unlike us 
 but unlike them. 
 
 " The North triumphed by its wealth," Here is the temptation to the New 
 South, to which I already see ominous symptoms of yielding, to make wealth 
 the idol, the all in all of sectional greatness. I hear our young men quote to 
 each other the advice of the wily diplomat Gorstchacoff, to the beaten French: 
 " Be strong." They exclaim : Let us develope ! develope ! develope ! 
 Let us have, like, our conquerors, great cities, great capitalists, great factories 
 and commerce and great populations ; then we shall cope with them. 
 
 Now here is a path which will require of you the nicest discrimination, 
 and the most perspicacious virtue and self-denial. On the one hand it is indis- 
 putable that under our modem, material civilization, wealth is an essential ele- 
 ment of national greatness. The commonwealth which presents a sparse and 
 impoverished population, in competition with a rich and populous rival, wdl 
 come by the worse in spite of her martial virtues ; and may make her account 
 to be dependent and subordinate. Hence to develope the South is one of the 
 plainest duties of patriotism. To increase its riches is one way to increase its 
 power of self-protection. And a knowledge, and hardy, diligent practice of 
 the industries of production are among the civic virtues which it behooves the 
 New South to cultivate. So much is to be asserted on that side. . 
 
 But on the other side the deduction that all our section has to do is to imi- 
 tate the conquering section in that one of its qualities by which it got wealth; 
 to make the appliances of production the all in all; to exclaim as so many do 
 of factories, and mines, and banks, and stock boards, and horse-powers of 
 steam, and patent machines, "These be thy gods, O Israel !" This would be a 
 deadly mistake. Does not history teach that " wealth is the sinews of war?" 
 yes, not seldom ; but it teaches at least as often that wealth and material civili- 
 zation have been the emasculators of nations and the incitements of their ene- 
 mies at once, only ensuring the deeper destruction for the rich and cultivated 
 people. Our own overthrow is near at hand to teach us this lesson, for we 
 were the richer section subjugated by the poorer, which was shrewd enough to 
 
Addless. 13 
 
 hie on the pauper proletaries of a hungry world upon our wealth as their prey. 
 Do some of you exclaim: " What, the South the richer section ?" Very likely 
 many of you are already so indoctrinated in that tuition of lies, against which 
 I shall have to caution you anon, that this will be news to you. Nevertheless 
 is it true; the South was by one-quarter if not one-third, the richer section, as 
 was proved by the stubborn evidence of the census returns of the government 
 itself, as managed by our enemies. 
 
 The wisdom of the New South, then, must be in pursuing the sharp line 
 which divides the neglect from the idolatry of riches. If they be pursued as 
 an end instead of a means, they become your ruin instead of your deliverance. 
 If riches when acquired are employed to enervate your manhood with costly 
 pomps and luxuries instead of being consecrated to the noble uses of charity 
 and public spirit, the richer the New South becomes the weaker she will be. 
 The problem you have to learn is how to combine the possession of great 
 wealth with the personal practice of simplicity, hardihood and self-sacrifice. 
 That people which makes selfish, material good its God, is doomed. In this 
 world of sin the spirit of heroic self-sacrifice is the essential condition of na- 
 tional greatness and happiness. The only sure wealth of the State is in cul- 
 tured, heroic men, who intelligently know their duty and are calmly prepared 
 to sacrifice all else, including life, to maintain the right. Well then did the 
 President of the Confederacy utter these golden words, that " the spirit of self- 
 sacrifice is the crown of the civic virtues." I know that there is a generation, 
 " O, how lofty are their eyes and their eyelids lifted up," who boast that their 
 cuteness is in pursuing the "main chance," and who flout this virtue of disin- 
 terestedness as a weak folly ; and yet for lack of this virtue their prosperity is 
 ever perishing and their material civilization is ever, like the tawdry pyrotech- 
 nics of some popular feast, burning out its own splendors into ashes, darkness 
 and a villainous stench of brimstone. The New South then needs wealth, but 
 it also needs men, high-minded men, undebauched by wealth, who, like the 
 "high privates" of the Confederate ranks, shall know how to postpone ease 
 and the delights of culture for the invincible endurance of hardship and danger. 
 
 2. Subjugation presents to the honorable conquered man another alternative 
 of temptations. The one is that of moral disgust, prompting him to turn with 
 proud disdain from all concern with, public affairs, and wrap himself like a her- 
 mit in the folds of his own self-respect. It is to the best natures that this is 
 most alluring ; how attractive is the thought of thus easing one's infinite dis- 
 gust-.? How plausible the argument which says: Let those who have by 
 fraud or force usurped the helm bear the responsibility of wrecking the ship, 
 but the error of this resort is that it neglects the claims of patriotism and 
 roll- the State, in the moment of her need, of the virtues and faculties most 
 essential to her deliverance. These unbending spirits who cannot be recon- 
 ciled to disgrace are the very ones that can now be least spared. To conquer 
 the burning repugnance to all the loathsome incidents of misconception, slimy 
 slander, corruption and ingratitude with which one must meet in serving a State 
 under the eclipse of subjugation, this may be a cross as bitter as death. But 
 
14 Address. 
 
 how many of our noblest and best have already borne the cross of death in the 
 .^anie cause ? 
 
 The al i is yet more seductive to the more suple tempera- 
 
 ment. This is to exaggerate and pervert the plea of acquiescence in the inev- 
 itable; to cry, "Oh there is no use nor sense in contending against fate," and 
 on this argument to act the trin I turncoat. How much this 
 
 to the pliable temper? .'...: i be, how profitable to tl [t 
 
 sweet a relief ti r.cli a mind experiences at being ever in the 
 
 ius and the unsuccessful minority. Ah, how 
 ;- it to such a man to hold up the standard of principle when it is unsustained 
 by the breeze of popularity ! Poor soul, how his arms ache, and how do 
 crave rest in the arms 'if th con A maj >ritv. 
 
 But even by the light of that policy, which such men make their pole-star, 
 it would be better, while recognizing the inevitable, still to cleave to moral 
 ■ i:cy and principle. Fur I surmise that when you seek a market for . 
 icities in die forum of the new regime, i rs will tell you that 
 
 turncoats are decidedly a drug in that market. 'Ike demand is utterly over- 
 id, the market glutted. It is the men who have convictions and who 
 cleave to them, who are the artii le in demand ; in demand even will 
 adversaries, who, themselves, have no principles. For such men, however 
 venal, soon learn the truth that the turncoat who could not be tru ted to cleave 
 to his principles, can as littl Led to i the ma tei who h 
 
 him. 
 
 3. It behooves the New South, in dismissing the anin 
 see to it that they retain ail that was true in its prim ipl or 1 nnobling in its 
 example . I here are those pi 
 ' Let us 1 ics arc all anti 
 
 tical significance. Let u.s [orgi ; tons of the past. We are in a new 
 
 world. Its ncv csrnus." I rejoin: Be sure that the former 
 
 id before yoi There arc : 
 
 die without the death of th 1 ol I their 
 
 Take care that you do not bury too muc ■ 
 m do not i mi y the 
 . whether successful 01 lor of your race and 
 
 the i. ; their vii \\ aid bisloi tes. W'ilj 
 
 you i ' : sad their noble army 
 
 . . f the God of 
 
 h? 
 The: which is vital I 
 
 citizens of the South. This i-. be shall no party to 
 
 h hire, a perverted hist.: , 1 Phis is a mistake of which 
 
 . peril. Willi ail the astute activity of their race, 0111 
 rain every nerve to pie-.i ccupy tl I America v. ith the I 
 
 rs which suits the ol th ii a urpation. With a gigantic 
 
 >weep of mendacity, this literature aims to falsify or misrepresent everything ; 
 the very facts of history, the principles of the f inner Constitution as admitted 
 
Address. 15 
 
 in the days oi freedom by a]] statesmen of all parlies ; the characters and n 
 tives ol ourpatriots; the purpos the very essential nann 
 
 and virtues and vices. Th I nmercial and political ascen- 
 
 dancy is exerted lo fill th with this false literature. come up, 
 
 like the Egypt, into oui hou ;, our bed chambci ding 
 
 troughs. Now, against thi I ms ] solemnly warn young men 
 
 (if the South, not for our -. a. Even if the mi m ■ of the 
 
 defeated had no rights; if historical truth had no prerogatives; if it were the 
 same to von that the sires wl ins, and \vh - you 
 
 bear, be written down as traitors by the pen of slan li roi hi ill it i- 
 
 itial to youi own futt re tl a shall lea; i . ay of the past truly. 
 
 the institutions which are to be, how like those which have been, 
 
 must have a causal relation to them: mu 
 
 1. The chrysali i , none the less its traits de- 
 
 termine those of the gorgeous il like a tree, yet its 
 
 termines the shape and a est. '1 1 - 
 
 configm ilar from tliat i 
 
 I ill. : ■ ■ i rois- 
 
 . . : misstates the position rr in 
 
 his prediction of thei So if pub] ratify 
 
 their spite, or revenge, or lust ■ .. er by misi 
 
 nts, they therebj n 
 
 i ating that future which can oni; I to ihis. If you 
 
 would not be mere blliridi rcrs i 1 nder- 
 
 tm si found 
 You will < i, ot from a G a Henry 
 
 Wilson, but from a Si While you do ; our judg- 
 
 ment hoodwinked 
 
 still i he mal I i :ans 
 
 ho tl as a political ring. Our 
 
 its the stran ;e party, who think they can cir- 
 
 ; facts and fal- 
 vately buddii g a wl l of i I itu- 
 
 tion of light for dark] I and evil for 
 
 lling tha%ma as servant, that patri 
 
 i rue, law-pi I ^m, 
 
 i I i ai wish to 1" i 
 thrii n ried Troy ben< ith th< final mountains of I and 
 
 ; i with these irch They are but . them- 
 
 ainst that unchan d who has said: "Tin 
 
 but the lip of truth shall h 
 I ii:'\ : adniitl ed, yi mi ! and laws m 
 
 but ' i ice and i i Be loyal ; 
 
 rgencies, and you will a 
 exists in you, it will, it must manifest itself most plainly in reverence and en- 
 thusiasm for the heroic and the self-sacrificing of your own people and State. 
 
16 Aderess. 
 
 Their actions have placed the right before you incorporate, with all the definite- 
 > of outline and vividness of coloring which belong to concrete realities. 
 Their actions concern your hearts by virtue of all the ties of neighborhood and 
 patriotism. As long as the hearts of the New South thrill with the generous 
 though defeated endurance of the men of 1S61; as long as they cherish these 
 martyrs of constitutional liberty as the glory of their State and its history, you 
 will be safe from any base decadence. If the generation that is to come ever 
 learns to be ashamed of these men because they were overpowered by fate, that 
 will be the moral death of Virginia, a death on which there will wait no resur- 
 rection. But I do not fear this. 
 
 I recall what my own eyes witnessed at the last great civic pomp in which I 
 was present. This was the installment of that statuti of Jackson near our State 
 capitol, which Virginia received as the tribute of British statesmanship and 
 culture to her illustrious dead. At this ceremonial there were gathered almost the 
 whole intelligence and beauty of what was left of the old commonwealth. As 
 the long procession wound through the streets marshaled and headed by General 
 Joseph E. Johnston, under the mild glory of our October sun, while the atmos- 
 phere was palpitating with military music and the whole city was gone upon its 
 house-lops, it was easy to perceive that all eyes and all hearts were centering upon 
 one sole part of the pageant, and this was not the illustrious figure that headed it 
 the commander in so many historical battles, bestriding his charger with his inimi- 
 table martial grace ; nor was it the cluster containing the remnant of Jackson's 
 staff. \Ye might have supposed that we would receive some reflected distinc- 
 tion from the luminary to which we had been satellites so near, and that some 
 romantic curiosity might direct itself to those who had habitually seen him un- 
 der fire, heard, and borne those orders which had decided memorable victories, 
 and bivouacked under the same blanket with him; but no eye sought us. Then 
 came hobbling a company of two hundred and thirty grizzled men with empty 
 sleeves, and wooden legs, and scarred faces, and hands twisted into every dis- 
 tortion which the fiery fancy of tire rifle-ball could invent, clad in the rough 
 garbcf a laboring yoemanry, their faces bronzed with homely toil; this was 
 the company for which every eye waited, and as it passed the mighty throng 
 was moved as the trees of the forest are moved by the wind, the multitudinous 
 white arms waved their superb welcome, and the thundering cheer rolled with 
 the column from end to end of the great city. It was the remnant of the 
 Stonewall Brigade ? That was the explanation. This was the tribute which 
 the son^, the daughters, the mothers of Virginia paid to sturdy heroism in defeat. 
 And as I saw this my heart said with an exultant bound, " There is life in the 
 old land yet ! " 
 
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