It was probably admitted that the passions following the rebellion and particularly provoked by the assassination of President Lincoln, served as warrant for a severity in dealing with the Southern States which was far beyond the boundaries of justice. There was a Draconian rigidity about the laws which the losers were compelled to obey; a perhaps needless austerity in impressing the fact of conquest. Sectional passions were aroused, sectional jealousies and animosities were inflamed until unthinking men both North and South had achieved the bad success of creating a religion of hate. In the years when Major McKinley was acting the citizen-soldier part—putting away his sword and devoting himself to the activities of peace—many less patriotic and wise than he were teaching their children to hate the South. As the Swiss youth imbibed hatred of Austria with their mother’s milk, so these children in the North were filled with a bitter rage against the children who sat in the Southland, under the shadow of the stars and stripes. And the generation grew up in that enmity for brothers in the Republic, and many men profited by making the propagation of strife their one profession—the division of their country their one occupation. The poets say that love begets love. It is certainly as true that hatred begets hate. And if the youth of the North approached public questions always with the poison of sectional prejudice rankling in their hearts and warping their judgments, be sure the people of the South most cordially reciprocated. To thousands above the Ohio river, the states below that stream were still “rebel.” To thousands below the people of the North were brutal and murderous invaders. Through all the period when the nation was gathering material strength the effort of wise men was to heal that hurt, to reunite the nation, to erase forever that bitter dividing sectional line. But they could not succeed. Throughout Major McKinley’s public speeches, dating from that first debate, when he was scarcely out of uniform, clear to the end of his career, one finds to-day no word of anger against the South; one finds unnumbered expressions of fraternal love and good will. Others followed his example, and swelled the rising chorus of a newer Union. But it was from 1865 to 1898, a mere mockery. The fabric of fraternity was but a gossamer web. The bridge that spanned the chasm was a network of fancy, and men knew they could not cross. The very brotherhood in which men from the two sections met in public and private life was the sheerest superficiality, and each was ready to fly to arms at a moment’s notice. What, above all things, was needed as an absolute condition precedent to national advance? Why, national unity! And no man had been able to effect it. But when William McKinley heard that rising demand for stern measures with Spain, he heard as well the pledge of a new and everlasting bond of union.