Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 16.djvu/40

 34 Southern Historical Society Papers.

Wonderful progress has the South already made in sharing the intel- lectual government of the country; within twenty years after a crush- ing defeat a defeat followed by ten years of alien misrule, she has already had the government of the country practically in her keeping for the last four years, and so wisely has she exercised it that not even in this year of a presidential election has it been said that she has abused her opportunities to the securing of spoils or the gratifica- tion of revenge.

Hampden led the English Commons in resistance to unjust taxa- tion, and to-day the great commoner of this country, Mr. Mills, who is a South Carolinian and a native of Fairfield, has carried success- fully through the House of Representatives the great measure of revenue reform. O

It is admitted throughout the world that in the late war the South proved itself a people of wonderful military capacity, resource and enterprise, as well as courage. But it remains especially to the rising generation to show that in its hands the pen is equal to, if not mightier than the sword.

Three or four years ago I saw in a northern journal a warning to the young men of the North that a review of the collegiate terms just then ended showed a wonderful advance in Southern scholar- ship ; that all over the North Southern boys were contending for the highest places in the educational institutions. The writer reminded the young men of the North that it was by the devotion to the edu- cation of her young men that the South had controlled the govern- ment for nearly eighty years from its commencement, and attributed its loss of control to the neglect of this means by which she had gained it, and warned the young men of the North that the renewed devotion of the South to education might again give to the South the government if the youths of the North should yield to the inertia of luxury. Since that article has appeared, South Carolina has had in the great national educational institution at West Point a con- testant for the first place in three out of four graduating classes. In one of them the youthful representative of this State outstripped all his competitors, graduating with next to the highest record ever reached in that institution.* Fairfield furnished the two others of the young men who have already done honor to the State. f

As Dr. Foote has written of the women of this section in earlier

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 * Henry Jervey, of Charleston.

t Henry C. Davis and David St. P. Gaillard.