Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 12.djvu/354

338 wealth. New towns like Birmingham, Anniston, Roanoke, Dallas, have sprung up as if by magic. The inauguration of President Cleveland in 1885, when the South was making its great effort to restore its prosperity, gave good heart to the Southern people everywhere. His administration brought about the first genuine confidence between the people of the North and the South. He led the Southern people away from the traditions and many of the prejudices of the great war. He revived in them the spark of national patriotism, which needed some master spirit to ignite and cause it to glow with the spirit of their ancestors, who had defended the national honor when other sections were slow to do so. He called Southern men to offices of trust and honor. His was the happy privilege of doing more to bind up sectional wounds than any other president. He did it, too, without sacrifice of any vital principle established by the victory of the Union armies. The South owes Mr. Cleveland a debt of gratitude.

It is proper to state that while the South did by far the most in the great industrial upheaval in the decade of 1880 to 1890, she did this with her own resources, capital and manhood; that when the great revolution was apparent in 1885, Northern men began to notice it, and to lend their helping hands and capital But the capitalists of the North did not fully realize the situation till the latter part of the decade, and now Northern capital and energies are mingling with those of the South in the development of wealth in the South, which beyond doubt now presents the safest field for investment of capital in all the Union. She is but at the very threshold of her industrial development.

The whole Southern people in the decade of 1880 to 1890 exerted themselves in every way to develop their resources, by State agricultural and mechanical exhibitions, by interstate farmers' conventions, by public meetings in various cities. To foster commerce between the