Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 34.djvu/351

 Advance from Appomattox. 343

placed in their hands, by majority rule, protected and encouraged by Federal bayonets. Neither the Persians, after Alexander's conquest of the East, nor Rome, after the Goths and Vandals had laid waste the Eternal city, nor the countries of Europe after the Napoleonic conquest, were called upon to face the appalling burden of government by former slaves, so recently, so very recently emerged from absolute barbarism. We are told that there are still in the South old black men and women whose memory takes them back to their early life in the jungle, and I have heard my father tell of an old slave of his grandfather's plantation who knew the choice cuts of the human carcass, as a result of her early cannibal life on the African coast. Mighty Rome did not recover in a thousand years from the blow when struck down and ravaged by Alaric and his Northern barbarians. Yet, it is now scarcely forty years from Appomattox, and the South has regained all her losses and has forced her way triumphantly forward to the very foremost rank among the nations.

Nothing is needed, surely, to convince the world that the land that can yield restoration, growth, power, prosperity and supremacy of the world's markets from such conditions, is beyond the possi- bility of exhaustion. No evidence is needed to give assurance for our race. It came through two centuries and a half of enervating influences of slavery, of pastoral prosperity and kindly feudalism, through four years of desperate and devastating war; through ten years of sorrow, inexpressible poverty, humiliation, doubt and oppression, with work to do such as no people ever had to do and no help in doing it. It came through all these varying tests and trials, tempting and assailing every possibility of human weakness, with manhood maintained, with standards and ideals held high above all the rack and strain of long indolence, of carnage and affliction and fearful dangers, with civilization untainted, patriotism pure and strong, courage never faltering. In the blood of these people the seeds of cowardice, treason or decadence never have been sown. Each new burden was carried bravely, with smiling lip and fearless eye and faces turned ever to the roads leading upward how steep and how far they seemed and towards the light of the morning how wan and distant it gleamed then ! Each new horror and danger was faced dauntlessly as became the begotten by lions of lions' mates. Sturdily, steadily, patiently and fear-' lessly as Lee's people pressed up the hill and broke through