Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 40.djvu/39

Rh we may add, that not only was progress thus retarded, but that a new and dangerous element has been introduced into the body politic—the spirit of evasion of the fundamental law. If you doubt it, see how certain provisions of the fourteenth amendment to the federal constitution have become practically a dead letter, and by well-nigh universal consent. This fourteenth amendment is one of the "War amendments," as they are called.

But Fate, we hear it said, had decreed the downfall of the Southern Confederacy. The very stars in their courses, we are told, fought against the South, even as they fought against Sisera of yore. That assertion I shall not here stop to dispute, beyond remarking that the final outcome of the War was extremely doubtful until within less than eight months of Gen. Lee's surrender—probably so, that is, until Atlanta fell a few weeks before the date of the Presidential election of 1864 in the United States. But—what is meant by "the stars in their courses"?

Come with me, on a clear, moonless night, and scan that part of the heavens that encircles the Pole star and in which the entire course of a given star is above the horizon. Watch with me some bright stellar sun which, having left the zenith, gradually descends the western sky, appears to stand still awhile at the extreme westernmost point, then swings slowly but surely eastward again on the return sweep around the pole, yet still descending until it reaches the nadir, whence it gradually ascends again as it swings ever on toward the east. Other stars, farther south, not thus visible throughout their entire orbits, appear to the eye of the observer to set, and are blotted out of sight a long while before they rise again.

Yes, the stars indeed march resistlessly on, in their courses; but those courses are in circles.

There are signs in the political heavens, that Dixie's guiding star, her glorious constellation the Southern Cross of battle, which set blood red at Appomattox, is now appearing in the east, a pure, glistening white, the day-star of hope and happiness, for the Southland and for the world.