The Complete Works of Brann, the Iconoclast — Volume 01Brann, William Cowper
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The Complete Works of Brann, the Iconoclast — Volume 01
Brann, William Cowper
Brann, William Cowper, 1855-1898; Essays; Reformers
I cannot imagine where President Winston absorbed the
idea that lack of organization has been the curse of the
South. It may surprise him to be told that in ante-bellum
days it was not only the chief repository of culture, but
possessed a fair proportion of the nation's wealth. The
South has ever been chiefly an agricultural country, and will
so remain despite the frantic efforts of enthusiasts to
subvert natural laws. Not until the resources of our soil are
in great measure exhausted, or increase of population
forces people from the fields, can the South become a
great manufacturing country. Such is the lesson of history,
which we can only ignore to our loss. Wealth accumulates
at large manufacturing and trade centers as it cannot
elsewhere, and naturally seeks to further its interest by
organization. The concentration of forces, intellectual and
industrial, on that stupendous scale which has won
President Winston's admiration, is a post-bellum
development both North and South. The greatest of
American organizers have been Southern men.
Washington and Jefferson were types of the individualism
which is supposed to have been our bane; yet one
organized the Continental Army which won our
independence, the other organized the Federal
Government. It is not true that the Southern Confederacy
was crushed by superior organization. Better disciplined
troops than the veterans of Lee and Jackson never faced a
battery. "Hardee's Tactics," one of the most highly
esteemed of military manuals, was the work of a
Confederate general. The assault on the heights of
Gettysburg has become historic as much because of the
wonderful organization displayed by the Confederate troops
as because it marked the supreme hour of a nation's
agony. It was the only time in the history of this world
when an assaulting column was greeted with cheers of
admiration by the soldiers who stood to receive the shock.
That fact alone should suffice to make an American
college president proud of his country--should purge him of
every atribilarious taint of Anglomaniacism. Only once have
the sons of men in any age or clime displayed a grander
heroism than did those who hurled themselves against the
heights of Gettysburg, and that when the Federals silenced
their guns to cheer the dauntless courage of their foe. It is
not my present purpose to refight the Civil War, and trace
every effect to its efficient cause; I have simply undertaken
to make good my original proposition--that President
Winston is, as Thersites says of Patroclus, "a fool
positive," and should, therefore, hold his peace.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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