Let us begin by noting the ambiguity of the word "right." Something may be right in expediency, policy, or reason, and yet wrong ethically. Likewise something may be a mistake and wrong in policy while it is right in morals. General Sherman was a conspicuous example of the almost universal proneness to confound right in the sense first mentioned above with it in the other. The two are widely different--not merely in degree, but in kind. That which is right or wrong in expediency is decided by the understanding--by the head; that which is right or wrong ethically is decided for every human being by his own conscience--by his heart. To try with all my might to do a particular thing may be my highest moral duty; to try with all your might to keep me from doing it may be yours. The brothers who set up the southern confederacy and defended it, the brothers who warred upon it and overturned it--they were on each side sublimely conscientious; for every one--to use the high word of Lincoln--was doing the right as God gave him to see it. No people ever waged a war with deeper and more solemn conviction of duty than did our northern brothers. Rome, rising unvanquished from every great victory of Hannibal, much as she has been most justly lauded by foremost historians, fell behind them in supreme effort--in undaunted perseverance in spite of disaster after disaster until the difficulty insuperable was overcome. We of the south should be proud of this unparalleled achievement of our brothers. Most of all should we be proud of the complete self-abnegation and unwavering obedience to conscience with which they waded a sea of blood, for the welfare of future generations rather than their own. I am glad to observe that many who most affectionately remember the lost cause have come at last to concede without qualification that the restoration of the union by force of arms was morally right. But I note that as yet only a few at the north--men like Dr. Lyman Abbott, Mr. Charles F. Adams, and Professor Wendell--have learned that the south, in all that she did in "The Great War,"[144] was likewise morally right. To show that the confederates were exemplary champions of a legitimate government, I need not repeat what I have said above when I told how southern nationalization had given them a country of their own as dear to them and as much mistress of their consciences as the union was to the northern people. If there are those who cannot bring themselves to allow the all-potent coercion of the nationalization mentioned as justification, and who still think of us as traitors and rebels, I beg them to give due consideration to the feelings with which the southerner now looks back upon his life in the confederate army. I call a most convincing witness to testify. I do not know a man who ever followed what his conscience pronounced right more faithfully, who was truer to the better traditions of the old south, and who was a more