Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 18.djvu/400

 400 Occasionally one of them has picked up a handsome, dashing and gallant Yankee officer. The temptation to get even was too strong for even a Confederate woman; but she has ever since held his misfortune at having been a Yankee over his head, and has made a better man and a better soldier of him every time.

By race characteristics and geographical environment the civilization of the North and South had development on different lines. The North, invigorated by a constant struggle with the forces of nature, had naturally adopted the philosophy of materialism, and had come to believe that the highest duty of man was to accumulate power; and as money in our modern civilization had come to be a source of all material power the pursuit of wealth had got to be considered the highest aim of human effort. Embracing with enthusiasm the philosophy of Adam Smith, that every man should be for himself and the devil could, would and should take the hindmost, supreme selfishness had become the all-pervading sentiment and directing force of that society.

The South, with a more generous climate, had developed a more sentimental society. In a sparsely settled country the ties of blood kept their hold. Husband and wife, parent and child, all the ramified relations of kinship, retained their binding force. Devotion to veracity and honor in man, chastity and fidelity in women, were the ideals which formed character. The forms and sentiments of Southern society were the primitive forms and sentiments of the older civilization.

They belonged to that state of development which the modern social philosophers call militarism. The principles and organization of the North belong to the later development, known as industrialism.

No man can foretell the hour when the volcano will burst in Europe and overwhelm Church and State, Czar and President in one common ruin. In the North, where the industrial system has had its freest and fullest development, organized labor and agricultural discontent are the all-pervading symptoms of social disorder and the precurser of political ruin. It is certain that the present condition is only temporary. When all the property and means of living are