“Whatever may have been the sins of New England, secession was not one,” says our correspondent. In proving that our friend is mistaken in his facts, I take the liberty also of defending New England as to his assertion that this was a sin. It certainly was not a sin. The New England States had this right, as did every State up to its final settlement by arms in 1861-5. It were no more a sin then than for New England to vote for McKinley and the gold standard in 1896, or for the South to vote for Bryan and silver. There can be no sin in a mere question of national policy by any people or peoples. “Not all of New England favored the War of 1812, but that is not secession,” he adds, as the gist of his argument. That is true—neither did all the South favor secession in 1860-61. Perhaps it may be interesting to relate here that Tennessee, on the only vote taken by her as to whether it should be secession or not, voted by nearly 60,000 majority against secession. Afterwards, Governor Harris and the Legislature declared her out of the Union. Perhaps it may be still more of interest when I say that although the South sent fully 600,000 troops into the war to battle for States’ rights, she sent nearly 400,000 to fight on the other side. But everybody knows that a majority of the Southern people were for seceding and the foundation of our esteemed correspondent’s argument is gone when I assert, as I can prove, that from the election of Jefferson to the Battle of New Orleans, the majority of the people of New England, as voiced in the Federalist vote, were opposed to the policy of Jefferson, to War of 1812, and but for the Treaty of Ghent and the Battle of New Orleans would have voted to secede. In conclusion, let me say, those questions are all settled—“those far-off, old, unhappy days.” But the truth, at all times, should be precious, for among its many crowning glories, it teaches us that man is not very different from his neighbor after all. In 1898, at the outbreak of the Spanish War, and when the United States troops had rendezvoused on Chickamauga battlefield, before marching into Cuba, Tennessee unveiled her statue erected to both her soldiers of the Blue and the Gray who died there. The writer was asked to read the dedicatory poem. On the stage were General Wheeler, General Stewart and many distinguished soldiers of both armies. And thus was the poem read: REUNITED. By steel-sheathed ship and iron gun And forts that frown on a crouching sea, Like a reef-split wave in the mad ebb’s run, Like the foam, rock stopped, from the driven lea, They have halted their butchering lines of red, For a star-flung banner has published a ban: Let the Past be past, let the dead be dead— Now and forever, American.