Page:The leopard's spots - a romance of the white man's burden-1865-1900 (IA leopardsspotsrom00dixo).pdf/54



VERY morning before the Preacher could finish his breakfast, callers were knocking at the door—the negro, the poor white, the widow, the orphan, the wounded, the hungry, an endless procession.

The spirit of the returned soldiers was all that he could ask. There was nowhere a slumbering spark of war. There was not the slightest effort to continue the lawless habits of four years of strife. Everywhere the spirit of patience, self-restraint and hope marked the life of the men who had made the most terrible soldiery. They were glad to be done with war, and have the opportunity to rebuild their broken fortunes. They were glad, too, that the everlasting question of a divided Union was settled and settled forever. There was now to be one country and one flag, and deep down in their souls they were content with it.

The spectacle of this terrible army of the Confederacy, the memory of whose battle cry yet thrills the world, transformed in a month into patient and hopeful workmen, has never been paralleled in history.

Who destroyed this scene of peaceful rehabilitation? Hell has no pit dark enough, and no damnation deep enough for these conspirators when once history has fixed their guilt.

The task before the people of the South was one to tax the genius of the Anglo-Saxon race as never in its his-