Bob Taylor's Magazine, Vol. I, No. 1, April 1905Various
History
Bob Taylor's Magazine, Vol. I, No. 1, April 1905
Various
Agriculture -- Southern States -- Periodicals; Southern States -- Periodicals
SENATOR JOHN T. MORGAN.
]
Not very long ago, during the Spanish-American War, there was commotion
in a far Southern town, caused by a coterie of young men bitterly
protesting against the sons of Confederate veterans wearing the blue and
fighting under the old flag. An elderly man with “crow’s feet” at the
comers of his eyes and silver in his hair, listened for a while in
silence, but finally arose from his chair and said: “Young men, you are
wrong. I followed the stars and bars for four long, weary years! I saw
its colors go down at last and I straggled back to my native state,
barefooted and in rags, only to find my home in ashes. I swore eternal
enmity to the stars and stripes and to the blue. But one day, after the
battle of Manila Bay had been fought, a Mississippi regiment went
marching up the main street of my town and lo! my boy was in the ranks
dressed in the Federal uniform. In my rage I rushed to the Colonel and
shouted, “Take that blue uniform off these young men and let them put on
the gray and show the world how the sons of Confederate veterans can
fight!” but the Colonel smiled and shook his head and the regiment
marched on eager for the fray. I went home in my fury more bitter
against the North than ever before. But when one day they brought my boy
home in his coffin and I looked down upon him pale and motionless, in
his blue uniform and wrapped in the old flag, my animosity vanished in a
moment and in my tears I said: ‘Henceforth that uniform is my uniform,
that flag is my flag and this whole country is my country.’” This
sentiment is not incompatible with loyalty to the gray nor to the folded
stars and bars, but it is the expression of the only feeling that will
ever unite all the sections of the Union.
[Illustration:
SENATOR B. F. PETTUS.
]
We must recognize the fact that a new civilization has arisen in the
South from the ashes of the old, and while her people cherish the past
for its precious memories, their faces are turned toward the morning.
They are not only producing more cotton than ever before, but building
gigantic plants among its snow-white fields, and with the magic of
modern machinery are transforming the raw material into finished
fabrics; they are pulling down the hills and dragging forth their
treasures of coal and iron, of marble, zinc and lead, and are converting
them into all the finished implements of peace; they are harnessing
their beautiful rivers to the thunder-clad steeds of the storm and
turning the myriad wheels of industry with electric power; and they will
some day out-herod Herod in the marts of the world.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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