The Memories of Fifty Years: Containing Brief Biographical Notices of Distinguished Americans, and Anecdotes of Remarkable Men; Interspersed with Scenes and Incidents Occurring during a Long Life of Observation Chiefly Spent in the SouthwestSparks, W. H. (William Henry)
History
The Memories of Fifty Years: Containing Brief Biographical Notices of Distinguished Americans, and Anecdotes of Remarkable Men; Interspersed with Scenes and Incidents Occurring during a Long Life of Observation Chiefly Spent in the Southwest
Sparks, W. H. (William Henry)
Georgia -- History -- 1775-1865; Southwest, Old -- History; United States -- Biography
They professed to come to liberate the slave, and they uniformly robbed
or swindled him of every valuable he might possess--even little
children were stripped of their garments, as trophies of war, to be
forwarded home for the wear of embryo Puritans, as an example for them
in future. Such are the Yankees of 1863-4, and '67. They now hold
control of the nation; but her mighty heart is sore under their
oppression. She is beginning to writhe. It will not be long, before
with a mighty effort she will burst the bonds these people have tied
about her limbs, will reassert the freedom of her children, and scourge
their oppressors with a whip of scorpions.
Such men as Talmadge, Humphries, and Wolcott are no more to be found in
New England. The animus of these men is no longer with these people.
The work of change is complete. Nothing remains of their religion but
its semblance--the fanaticism of Cotton Mather, without his
sincerity--the persecuting spirit of Cotton, without the sincerity of
his motives. Every tie that once united the descendants of the Norman
with those of the Saxon is broken. They are two in interest, two in
feeling, two in blood, and two in hatred. For a time they may dwell
together, but not in unison; for they have nothing in common but
hatred. Its fruit is discord, and the day is not distant, when these
irreconcilable elements must be ruled with a power despotic as
independent, whose will must be law unto both. It is painful to look
back fifty years and contrast the harmony then pervading every class of
every section with the discord and bitterness of hate which substitutes
it to day. Then, the national airs of "Hail Columbia" and "Yankee
Doodle" thrilled home to the heart of every American. To-day, they are
only heard in one half of the Union to be cursed and execrated. To ask
a lady to play one of these airs upon the harp or piano, from the Rio
Grande to the Potomac, would be resented as an insult. The fame of
Washington and John Hancock mingled as the united nations; but the
conduct of the sons of the Puritan fathers has stolen the respect for
them from the heart of half of the nation; and now, even the once
glorious name of Daniel Webster stirs no enthusiasm in the bosoms which
once beat joyfully to his praise, as it came to them from New England.
Those who from party purposes proclaim peace and good will, only
deceive the world, not themselves, or the people of the South. Peace
there is; but good will, none. When asked to be given, memory turns to
the battle-fields upon Southern soil, the bloody graves where the
chosen spirits of the South are sleeping, and the heart burns with
indignant hatred. Generations may come and pass away, but this hatred,
this cursed memory of oppressive wrong will live on. The mothers of
to-day make for their infants a tradition of these memories, and it
will be transmitted as the highlander's cross of fire, from clan to
clan, in burning brightness, for a thousand years. The graveyards will
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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