Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 36.djvu/363

Rh mark, and brought away from the field in a bloody blanket. I would not make them a substitute for industry, energy, integrity and capacity; but where industry, energy, integrity and capacity exist, in my opinion a good Confederate record glorifies the whole." It is hard to be popular and pure; yet Payne was popular and he was pure. The fact survives for me as a memory and a monument; as a credible witness that the world, even the sordid, venal, rocking world of this time and land, still falls at the feet of him who will not swerve from calling and conviction, for a world. No man had warmer friends; no man was more deserving of them. Ingrained thoughtfulness of others, the natural courtesy of high breeding, was stamped upon him. He lived among us like an echo of the olden time. How true he was, how he tied to his heart the cause for which he fought, disdaining to desert the rent banner of his faith: holding aloft to the last the glorified symbol of his heart's devotion, that dying he might fall upon it, and be buried in it. With the withdrawal of that "consent of the governed"' which bayonets procure, carpet bag government fell; as if consumed to ashes in the blaze of an Almighty scorn. The fabric of fraud and falsehood crumbled at a touch. The rubbish lies behind us; image of the facts of false appearance before firm reality. Constitutions of freedom worthy the name spring from hearts that will break rather than forsake them. They who mistake the hue and cry of the moment for the voice of ages, find it easy to put fanatical hyperbole into statutes; not so easy to obtain obedience thereto or respect therefor. Fiction will not do the work of fact. Ernest Crosby, in his life of Garrison, writes: "The slaves were finally freed, as a war measure to assist the armies in the field. The war was not desired to help emancipation, but emancipation to help the war. * * * The practical element in the union spirit was the desire to preserve the size of the country: it was devotion to the idea of bigness, and the belief that bigness is a matter of latitude and longitude. * * * Money was needed to pay the enormous expenses of destruction and the tariff began to grow, and behind it monopoly ensconced itself. * * * We