While unlading, it had become dark. But an hour more through the forest brought us to the outlying slums of Savannah, and then to the “red-light district” where were music and dancing, and open doors and windows, and the red glow of the lamp luring colored youth to lowest pleasures; then to the grandeur and spaciousness of modern Savannah, and the white man’s civilization, up out of Georgia, up out of the pit, through the veil of the forest and of Nature to the serene heights of world civilization once more. VII AFTER THE WAR: THE VOTE The march to the sea, like John Brown’s soul marching to eternity, was a moving symbol of the faith of the war. Men saw in it the march of the cause of humanity as a whole. Sherman offered Savannah as a Christmas gift to Abraham Lincoln, and the star of Bethlehem shone anew over a ravaged land and ravaged hearts. The news when it came was a signal for great popular rejoicing and a prophetic belief in the end of the war. Four months afterward there was a general capitulation of the South. It is true America’s most innocent and Christian man was destroyed by hate—another Golgotha day in history, when on Good Friday in a theatre in Washington Lincoln was assassinated—but the fight had been fought and the victory won. It became possible to ratify the abolition of slavery by the re-establishment of the Union and the common consent of all the States. “In Sixty Three the slaves were free; In Sixty Four the war was o’er,” says a rhyme, but in truth the Negroes were not free in the South till the South had been conquered by the United States, and the war was not o’er till April, 1865. It was on the 24th of May, 1865, that the army marched past the White House in its final grand review, bearing aloft its battle-riven flags festooned with flowers. There was glory in the North; the twilight of confusion in the South; and the Negroes were free. Peace came once more, though not peace in men’s hearts. War hate still bred hate, and the lust of cruelty called into being its monster progeny of revenge.