Studies in the South and West, with Comments on CanadaWarner, Charles Dudley
History
Studies in the South and West, with Comments on Canada
Warner, Charles Dudley
Canada -- Description and travel; United States -- Description and travel
A lady, whose family sustained all the losses that were possible in
the war, said to me—and she said only what several others said in
substance—“We are going to get more out of this war than you at the
North, because we suffered more. We were drawn out of ourselves in
sacrifices, and were drawn together in a tenderer feeling of humanity; I
do believe we were chastened into a higher and purer spirit.”
Let me not be misunderstood. The people who thus recognize the moral
training of adversity and its effects upon character, and who are glad
that slavery is gone, and believe that a new and better era for the
South is at hand, would not for a moment put themselves in an attitude
of apology for the part they took in the war, nor confess that they
were wrong, nor join in any denunciation of the leaders they followed
to their sorrow. They simply put the past behind them, so far as the
conduct of the present life is concerned. They do not propose to stamp
upon memories that are tender and sacred, and they cherish certain
sentiments whieh are to them loyalty to their past and to the great
passionate experiences of their lives. When a woman, who enlisted by
the consent of Jeff Davis, whose name appeared for four years upon the
rolls, and who endured all the perils and hardships of the conflict as a
field-nurse, speaks of “President” Davis, what does it mean? It is
only a sentiment. This heroine of the war on the wrong side had in the
Exposition a tent, where the veterans of the Confederacy recorded their
names. On one side, at the back of the tent, was a table piled with
touching relics of the war, and above it a portrait of Robert E. Lee,
wreathed in immortelles. It was surely a harmless shrine.
On the other side was also a table, piled with fruit and cereals—not
relics, but signs of prosperity and peace—and above it a portrait of
Ulysses S. Grant. Here was the sentiment, cherished with an aching heart
maybe, and here was the fact of the Union and the future.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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