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Rh that his fort should be the headquarters of an insurrection of the negroes, and purposed that his pikes should be driven into the breasts of Virginia men and women. All of us remember the platform and pulpit denunciation of our people, the parading, the bell-tolling, and other clamorous manifestations of approval and sympathy which went through the North and convinced the people of Virginia that the long-threatened war of the North against the South had at last begun. In this sense, perhaps, it was not of the causes of the war; it was the war. I myself saw the demonstration of the Northern people on that occasion. Happening to be at that time living in Philadelphia, it was instantly plain to me that I was in an enemy's country. The southern students around me saw it as plainly as I did. It took but a dozen sentences to open the eyes of the least intelligent. It was only to say, "Come on, boys! Let's go!" and three hundred of us marched over on our side of the line. The war for us was on, and I know that the State of Virginia knew that was what the North meant. Just how Mr. Fiske enables himself to make the statement quoted, we cannot understand. We only see another proof that his point of view distorts the picture in his mind, to such an extent that he ought not to be employed as a painter for us or our children.

Much has been said of Mr. Fiske's elegant style. We will only observe that the sugar-coating of a pill does not justify our administering poison. The Trojan horse may have been a shapely structure, but in its belly were concealed the enemies of the city. It has been said, perhaps untruly, that the rounded period marks the unreliable historian. There have been notable examples of it. And it is certainly true that an inconvenient fact does sometimes give pain to a writer who is in the habit of testing his sentences by his ear. This is the apparent explanation of some of Mr. Fiske's observations as to slave-breeding in Virginia.

One other point remains. The statement has been made, and denied, that this book was adopted on the recommendation of the Citizens' Committee of 1898, endorsed by the Grand Camp