Let me say here that I yield to no man in my love for this Union. I was taught from my cradle to love it, and my father, loving it to the last, nevertheless gave his life for Georgia when she asked it at his hands. Loving the Union as he did, yet would I do unto Georgia even as he did. I said once in New York, and I repeat it here, honoring his memory as I do nothing on this earth, I still thank God that the American conflict was adjudged by higher wisdom than his or mine, that the honest purposes of the South were crossed, her brave armies beaten, and the American Union saved from the storm of war. I love this Union because I am an American citizen. I love it because it stands in the light while other nations are groping in the dark. I love it because here, in this republic of a homogeneous people, must be worked out the great problems that perplex the world and established the axioms that must uplift and regenerate humanity. I love it because it is my country, and my State stood by when its flag was once unfurled, and uplifted her stainless sword, and pledged “her life, her property and her sacred honor,” and when the last star glittered from the silken folds, and with her precious blood wrote her loyalty in its crimson bars. I love it, because I know that its flag, fluttering from the misty heights of the future, followed by a devoted people once estranged and thereby closer bound, shall blaze out the way, and make clear the path up which all the nations of the earth shall come in God’s appointed time. I know the ideal status is that every State should vote without regard to sectional lines. The reconciliation of the people will never be complete until Iowa and Georgia, Texas and Massachusetts may stand side by side without surprise. I would to God that status could be reached! If any man can define a path on which the whites of the South, though divided, can walk in honor and peace, I shall take that path, though I walk down it alone—for at the end of that path, and nowhere else, lies the full emancipation of my section and the full restoration of this Union.