Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 12.djvu/356

340 enabled him to understand the surroundings at the time better than any one else. At an opportune moment he did befriend the people of the South in procuring additional legislation expediting reconstruction, and he did this at as early a moment as would have been prudent. He also foreshadowed the removal of troops from the South. He became impatient at the frequent calls for troops to hold up the rotten carpet-bag governments, and prepared public opinion at the North for the removal of troops from the South by his successor.

At his funeral, the president and his cabinet, composed in part of several eminent Southerners, many Southern statesmen and surviving Confederate soldiers, took part, and marched side by side with the mourning North in doing honor to the great dead. All over the South flags were lowered at halfmast in his honor, and legislatures passed suitable resolutions of respect.

These two circumstances first evoked a display of national patriotism by the South. The people were then intensely considering the happy restoration of local self-government in their respective States. The national -government, by its' severe and radical treatment, had partially destroyed local self-government everywhere. Under its policy enormous debts had been piled upon them while they were facing the bayonet in the hands of the military power. To them local self-government and a stoppage of corrupt government were the great present boon, and the growth of national feeling was slow but steady, as the two sections better understood each other. Their time was taken up in undoing the false legislation then in force, and when necessary, in constructing new constitutions, in steering between Scylla and Charybdis by keeping within the new amendments, and at the same time in holding the political power in the hands of the white people; also in prevent-