I would not utter a word of bitterness against the men who wore the blue. They fought and died under the old flag to perpetuate the Union, and they were men worthy of Southern prowess and Southern valor. I would not, if I could, rob Grant, the great and noble chieftain, of his fame and glory. Every Southern soldier ought to stand with uncovered head when his name is spoken. For when all was lost, in the darkest and saddest moment of Southern history, he was magnanimous to Lee, and kind to his famished and shattered army. Along the blue lines of the triumphant foe, when the unhappy Confederates marched between them and laid down their guns, there was no shout of victory nor flourish of trumpets, but only silence and tears. When the conflict had ended the Confederate soldier proudly stood among the blackened walls of his ruined country, magnificent in the gloom of defeat, and still a hero. His sword was broken, his home was in ashes, the earth was red beneath him, the sky was black above him; he had placed all in the scales of war and had lost all save honor. But he did not sit down in despair to weep away the passing years. His slaves were gone but he was still a master. Too proud to pine, too strong to yield to adversity, he threw down his musket and laid his willing but unskilled hands upon the waiting plow. He put away the knapsack of war and turned his face toward the morning of peace. He abandoned the rebel yell to enter the forum and the court room and the hustings. He gave up the sword to enter the battles of industry and commerce, and now, in little more than a third of a century, the land of desolation and death, the land of monuments and memories, has reached the springtime of a grander destiny, and the sun shines bright on the domes and towers of new cities built upon the ashes of the old, and the cotton fields wave their white banners of peace and the fields of wheat wave back their banners of gold.