Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 20.djvu/234

 228 Southern Historical Society Papers.

the general Federal government power to protect us as to all eternal but general matters, and- as against all external and foreign foes. The element that is predominant in the development is the great principle which our Teutonic fathers brought with them a federated repre- sentative government, in which alone resides the hope of universal peace. The problem how diverse-speaking people, with different traditions and separate religions, can by representative government so unite themselves that their local interests, being protected by themselves, will not find hostility but friendship in the powers of the Federal government, remains to be solved by our children hereafter. Let us not add to the labors of our children by handicapping them with improper reverence for us by teaching them that the war settled that question in any of its aspects.

Now, what light does the last twenty seven years cast upon what we tried to do in the preceding four years ; especially what is its value historically ? What we have done in the past twenty-seven years is of value in casting up the account upon which the verdict is to be rendered upon what we tried to do during that war. I will say that in one aspect of it the personal aspect the answer lies upon the surface, that whatever else may be involved in the question what was undertaken by the Confederates and what will be the verdict of history upon that undertaking, one element will always stand out, the high personal character of the men who were involved in it. It may be that history may decide that what we did was not only unwise, but criminal. There is many a man whose heart is touched and whose eyes are made to overflow as he thinks upon the lives of such men as Claverhouse, and yet be steeled against all that Claverhouse tried to do. It is one of the paradoxes of God's deal- ing with mankind that he who causes the martyr to be led to the scaffold is as honest, as earnest, as intelligent as the martyr himself. Why it is that men may be so good and yet so criminal remains an unanswered question. * * * It is something to know, how- ever that the men who advocated our cause were not only men who charged inflmchingly where the whizzing minie-ball made death meet them, who bore the hardships of the camp and submitted to the sacrifices of disastrous war, but they were men who after as before the war bore unblemished civic characters, adorning the communities in which they lived, 'and would with their lives give radiance to the noblest community whose history could be written. It is something when your children come around you and ask you of your com-