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he find when, having followed the battlestained cross against overwhelming odds, dreading death not half so much as surrender, he reaches the home he left so prosperous and beautiful? He finds his house in ruins, his farm devastated, his slaves free, his stock killed, his barns empty, his trade destroyed, his money worthless, his social system, feudal in its magnificence, swept away; his people with- 10 out law or legal status; his comrades slain, and the burdens of others heavy on his shoulders. Crushed by defeat, his very traditions are gone. Without money, credit, employment, material, or training; and besides all this, confronted with the gravest problems that ever met human intelligence the establishment of a status for the vast body of his liberated slaves.

But what is the sum of our work? We have found out that in the summing up the free negro counts more than he did as a slave. We have planted the school5 house on the hilltop and made it free to white and black. We have sowed towns and cities in the place of theories, and put business above politics. We have challenged your spinners in Massachusetts and your ironmakers in Pennsylvania. We have learned that the $400,000,000 annually received from our cotton crop will make us rich when the supplies that make it are home-raised. We have reduced the 15 commercial rate of interest from 24 to 6 per cent., and are floating 4 per cent. bonds. We have learned that one Northern immigrant is worth fifty foreigners and have smoothed the path to Southward, wiped out the place where Mason and Dixon's line used to be, and hung out the latchstring to you and yours.

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What does he do this hero in gray with a heart of gold? Does he sit down in sullenness and despair? Not for a day. Surely God, who had stripped him of his prosperity, inspired him in his adversity. As ruin was never before so overwhelm- 25 ing, never was restoration swifter.

The soldier stepped from the trenches into the furrow; horses that had charged Federal guns marched before the plow, and fields that ran red with human blood 30 in April were green with the harvest in June; women reared in luxury cut up their dresses and made breeches for their husbands, and, with a patience and heroism that fit women always as a garment, 35 gave their hands to work. There was little bitterness in all this. Cheerfulness and frankness prevailed. Bill Arp' struck the key-note when he said: Well, I killed as many of them as they did of me, 40 and now I'm going to work.' So did the soldier returning home after defeat and roasting some corn on the roadside who made the remark to his comrades: 'You may leave the South if you want to, but 45 I'm going to Sandersville, kiss my wife and raise a crop, and if the Yankees fool with me any more, I'll whip 'em again.'

I want to say to General Sherman, who is considered an able man in our parts, 50 though some people think he is a kind of careless man about fire, that from the ashes he left us in 1864 we have raised a brave and beautiful city; that somehow or other we have caught the sunshine in 55 the bricks and mortar of our homes, and have builded therein not one ignoble prejudice or memory.

We have reached the point that marks perfect harmony in every household, when the husband confesses that the pies which his wife cooks are as good as those his mother used to bake; and we admit that the sun shines as brightly and the moon as softly as it did before the war. We have established thrift,in city and country. We have fallen in love with work. We have restored comfort to homes from which culture and elegance never departed. We have let economy take root and spread among us as rank as the crabgrass which sprung from Sherman's cavalry camps, until we are ready to lay odds on the Georgia Yankee as he manufactures relics of the battlefield in a one-story shanty and squeezes pure olive-oil out of. his cottonseed, against any down-easter that ever swapped wooden nutmegs for flannel sausage in the valleys of Vermont. Above all, we know that we have achieved in these piping times of peace' a fuller independence for the South than that which our fathers sought to win in the forum by their eloquence or compel in the field by their swords.

It is a rare privilege, sir, to have had part, however humble, in this work. Never was nobler duty confided to human hands than the uplifting and upbuilding of the prostrate and bleeding South-misguided, perhaps, but beautiful in her suffering, and honest, brave, and generous always. In the record of her social, industrial, and political illustration we

await with confidence the verdict of the world.

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But what of the negro? Have we solved the problem he presents or progressed in honor and equity toward solution? Let the record speak to the point. No section shows a more prosperous laboring population than the negroes of the South, none in fuller sympathy with the employing and land-owning class. He shares our school fund, has the fullest protection of our laws and the friendship of our people. Self-interest, as well as honor, demand that he should have this. Our future, our very existence depend 15 upon our working out this problem in full and exact justice. We understand that when Lincoln signed the emancipation proclamation, your victory was assured. for he then committed you to the cause of 20 human liberty, against which the arms of man cannot prevail while those of our statesmen who trusted to make slavery the cornerstone of the Confederacy doomed us to defeat as far as they could, committing us to a cause that reason could not defend or the sword maintain in sight of advancing civilization.

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against injustice to this simple and sincere people.

To liberty and enfranchisement is as far as law can carry the negro. The rest 5 must be left to conscience and common sense. It must be left to those among whom his lot is cast, with whom he is indissolubly connected, and whose prosperity depends upon their possessing his intelligent sympathy and confidence. Faith has been kept with him, in spite of calumnious assertions to the contrary by those who assume to speak for us or by frank opponents. Faith will be kept with him in the future, if the South holds her reason and integrity.

But have we kept faith with you? In the fullest sense, yes. When Lee surrendered I don't say when Johnston surrendered, because I understand he still alludes to the time when he met General Sherman last as the time when he determined to abandon any further prosecution of the struggle when Lee surrendered, I say, and Johnston quit, the South became and has since been, loyal to this Union. We fought hard enough to know that we were whipped, and in perfect frankness accept as final the arbitrament of the sword to which we had appealed. The South found her jewel in the toad's head of defeat. The shackles that had held her in narrow limitations fell forever when the shackles of the ne

Had Mr. Toombs said, which he did not say, that he would call the roll of his slaves at the foot of Bunker Hill,' he would have been foolish, for he might have known that whenever slavery became entangled in war it must perish, and that the chattel in human flesh ended for- 35 gro slave were broken. Under the old ever in New England when your fathers

- not to be blamed for parting with what did n't pay sold their slaves to our fathers not to be praised for knowing a paying thing when they saw it. The 40 relations of the Southern people with the negro are close and cordial. We remember with what fidelity for four years he guarded our defenseless women and children, whose husbands and fathers were 45 fighting against his freedom. To his eternal credit be it said that whenever he struck a blow for his own liberty he fought in open battle, and when at last he raised his black and humble hands that 50 the shackles might be struck off, those hands were innocent of wrong against his helpless charges, and worthy to be taken. in loving grasp by every man who honors loyalty and devotion. Ruffians have mal-55 treated him, rascals have misled him, philanthropists established a bank for him, but the South, with the North, protests

régime the negroes were slaves to the South; the South was a slave to the system. The old plantation, with its simple police regulations and feudal habit, was the only type possible under slavery. Thus was gathered in the hands of a splendid and chivalric oligarchy the substance that should have been diffused among the people, as the rich blood, under certain artificial conditions is gathered at the heart, filling that with affluent rapture but leaving the body chill and colorless.

The old South rested everything on slavery and agriculture, unconscious that these could neither give nor maintain healthy growth. The new South presents a perfect democracy, the oligarchs leading in the popular movement - a social system compact and closely knitted, less splendid on the surface, but stronger at the core a hundred farms for every plantation, fifty homes for every palace - and a

diversified industry that meets the complex needs of this complex age.

The new South is enamored of her new work. Her soul is stirred with the breath of a new life. The light of a grander day is falling fair on her face. She is thrilling with the consciousness of growing power and prosperity. As she stands upright, full-statured and equal among the people of the earth, breathing the keen air 1o and looking out upon the expanded horizon, she understands that her emancipation came because through the inscrutable wisdom of God her honest purpose was crossed, and her brave armies were beaten. 15 This is said in no spirit of time-serving or apology. The South has nothing for which to apologize. She believes that the late struggle between the States was war and not rebellion; revolution and not con- 20 spiracy, and that her convictions were as honest as yours. I should be unjust to the dauntless spirit of the South and to my own convictions if I did not make this plain in this presence. The South has 25 nothing to take back.

In my native town of Athens is a monument that crowns its central hill-a plain, white shaft. Deep cut into its shining side is a name dear to me above the names 30 of men that of a brave and simple man who died in brave and simple faith. Not for all the glories of New England, from Plymouth Rock all the way, would I exchange the heritage he left me in his 35 soldier's death. To the foot of that I shall send my children's children to reverence him who ennobled their name with his heroic blood. But, sir, speaking from the shadow of that memory which I honor as I do nothing else on earth, I say that the cause in which he suffered and for which he gave his life was adjudged by higher and fuller wisdom than his or mine, and I am glad that the omniscient God 45 held the balance of battle in His Almighty hand and that human slavery was swept forever from American soil - that the American Union was saved from the wreck of war.

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This message, Mr. President, comes to you from consecrated ground. Every foot of soil about the city in which I live is sacred as a battle-ground of the republic. Every hill that invests it is hallowed to 55 you by the blood of your brothers who died for your victory, and doubly hallowed

to us by the blood of those who died hopeless, but undaunted, in defeat - sacred soil to all of us-rich with memories that make us purer and stronger and better5 silent but staunch witnesses in its red desolation of the matchless valor of American hearts and the deathless glory of American arms speaking an eloquent witness in its white peace and prosperity to the indissoluble union of American States and the imperishable brotherhood of the American people.

Now, what answer has New England to this message? Will she permit the prejudice of war to remain in the hearts of the conquerors, when it has died in the hearts of the conquered? Will she transmit this prejudice to the next generation, that in their hearts which never felt the generous ardor of conflict it may perpetuate itself? Will she withhold, save in strained courtesy, the hand which straight from his soldier's heart Grant offered to Lee at Appomattox? Will she make the vision of a restored and happy people, which gathered above the couch of your dying captain, filling his heart with grace, touching his lips with praise, and glorifying his path to the grave will she make this vision on which the last sigh of his expiring soul breathed a benediction, a cheat and delusion?

If she does, the South, never abject in asking for comradeship, must accept with dignity its refusal; but if she does not refuse to accept in frankness and sincerity this message of good will and friendship, then will the prophecy of Webster, delivered in this very society forty years ago amid tremendous applause, become true, be verified in its fullest sense, when he said: 'Standing hand to hand and clasping hands, we should remain united as we have been for sixty years, citizens of the same country, members of the same government, united, all united now and united forever.' There have been difficulties. contentions, and controversies, but I tell you that in my judgment,

'Those opened eyes,

Which like the meteors of a troubled heaven,
All of one nature, of one substance bred,
Did lately meet in th' intestine shock,
Shall now, in mutual well beseeming ranks,
March all one way.'

December 21, 1886.

JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS (1848–1908)

The most spontaneous and in many ways the most original literary creator of the period was Joel Chandler Harris of Georgia. Reared in a country town amid surroundings as bare of culture as those about the youthful Mark Twain, he went at twelve to live for four years on an isolated plantation where existed all the better elements of the patriarchal system of slavery, with unspoiled negroes and ideal old régime master and mistress. Here the boy learned -unique accomplishment to acquire on a Southern plantation - the art of type-setting and all the technique of newspaper production, for the owner was a man of culture who amused himself by issuing a paper of his own, The Countryman, the only plantation newspaper that has ever been published.' In the office of this journal and in the owner's large library, where his reading was carefully supervised, the serious-minded lad received his education. In the four years he learned much of the old-régime negro, the product of the ideal side of slavery. and he learned, too, practical printing and journalism. When the war broke up his employer's establishment, he found work in various places, finally, in 1876, settling in Atlanta on the staff of the Constitution, with which paper he was connected the rest of his life. He was first of all a journalist: unto the very last literary production was only one phase of his journalistic activities.

The Uncle Remus papers came almost by accident: as the paragrapher of the newspaper, he was called upon suddenly one day to take the place of a department editor who had failed to furnish material, and the improvised substitute was so satisfactory that he was placed permanently in charge of the column. Soon the stories were copied in northern papers and their author awoke in amazement one morning to find himself famous. The first Uncle Remus collection appeared in 1880.

The strength of Harris lies in his artlessness, his perfect naturalness, and his unlabored truth to nature. No one has succeeded like him in depicting the childish simplicity, the pathos, the duplicity, the suavity, the elemental cunning, the loyalty and dog-like faithfulness of the Southern slave. His negro is a stroke of genius. It is the negro type plus the personal equation of an individual Uncle Remus, one of the few original characters which America has added to the world's gallery. The work of many of the writers of the period will be superseded by more inspired and stronger creations: Harris can never have a successor. His studies of the old régime negro can never be done over again: the old plantation which he knew so well has disappeared forever.

HOW A WITCH WAS CAUGHT1

The little boy sat in a high chair and used his legs as drumsticks, much to the confusion of Uncle Remus, as it appeared. After a while the old man exclaimed:

Well, my goodness en de gracious! how you ever in de roun' worl' er anvwheres else speck me fer ter make any headway in tellin' a tale wiles all dish 10 yer racket gwine on? I don't want ter call nobody's na, kase he mos' allers talks too loud, en if I call der ma 't won't make so mighty much difference. kase she done got so usen ter it dat she dunner w'en dey 15 er makin' any fuss. I believe dat ef

1 This selection and the two following are from Daddy Jake the Runaway, copyright by the Century Company.

everything wuz ter git right good en still on deze premises des one time, you' ma would in about die wid de headache. Anyway, she'd be mighty sick, bekase she 5 ain't usen ter not havin' no fuss, en she des could n't git 'long widout it.

'I tell you right now, I'd be afeard fer ter tell any tale roun' yer, kase de fust news I know'd I'd git my eyes put out, er my leg broke, er sump'n' n'er. I knows deze yer w'ite chillun, mon! dat I does; I knows um. Dey '11 git de upper hand er de niggers ef de Lord spar's um. En he mos' inginner'lly spar's um.

'Well, now, ef you want ter hear dish yer tale w'at I bin tu'nin' over in my min' you des got ter come en set right yer in front er me, whar I kin keep my two eyes on you; kaze I ain't gwine ter take

no resks er no foolishness. Now, den, you des better behave, bekaze hit don't cost me nothin' fer ter cut dis tale right short off.

showed de preacher man how ter git in de house en had 'im a great big fier built. En atter de miller man wuz done gone, de preacher man drawed a cheer up 5 ter de fier en waited fer de ha'nts, but dey ain't no ha'nts come. Den w'en dey ain't no ha'nts come, de preacher man tuck 'n open up he satchel en got 'im out some spar'ribs en sot um by de fier fer ter cook, en den he got down en said he pra'rs, en den he got up en read he Bible. He wuz a mighty good man, mon, en he prayed en read a long time. Bimeby, w'en his spar' ribs git done, he got some bread 15 out'n he satchel, en fixed fer ter eat his supper.

'One time der wuz a miller man w'at live by a river en had a mill. He wuz a mighty smart man. He tuck so much toll dat he tuck 'n buyed 'im a house, en' he want ter rent dat 'ar house out ter folks, but de folks dey 'lowed dat de house wuz 10 ha'nted. Dey'd come en rent de house, dey would, en move in dar, en den go upsta'rs en go ter bed. Dey'd go ter bed, dey would, but dey could n't sleep, en time it got day dey 'd git out er dat house.

De miller man, he ax'd um w'at de matter wuz, but dey des shuck der head en' 'low de house wuz ha'nted. Den he tuck 'n try ter fine out w'at kind er ha'nt she wuz dat skeer folks. He sleep in de 20 house, but he ain't see nothin', en de mos' w'at he year wuz a big ole gray cat a-promenadin' roun' en hollerin'. Bimeby hit got so dat dey want no fun in havin' de ha'nted house, en w'en folks 'd come 25 'long de miller man, he 'd des up en tell um dat de house 'uz ha'nted. Some 'ud go up en some would n't, but dem w'at went up did n't stay, kaze des 'bout bedtime dey 'd fetch a yell en des come a-rushin' 30 down, en all de money in de Nunited States er Georgy would n't git um fer ter go back up dar.

'Hit went on dis away twel one time a preacher man com' 'long dar en say he 35 wanted some'rs ter stay. He was a great big man, en he look like he wuz good accordin'. De miller man say he hate mighty bad for to discommerdate 'im, but he des pintedly ain't got no place whar he 40 kin put im cep' dat 'ar ha'nted house. De preacher man say he des soon stay dar ez anywhar's, kase he bin livin' in deze low-groun's er sorrer too long fer ter be sot back by any one-hoss ha'nts. De 45 miller man 'lowed dat he wuz afeard de ha'nts 'ud worry 'im might'ly, but de preacher man 'low, he did, dat he use ter bein' worried, en he up en tell de miller man dat he'd a heap rather stay in de 50 house wid de ha'nt, no matter how big she is, dan ter stay out doors in de rain.

So de miller man, he 'low he ain't got no mo' 'pology fer ter make, bekaze ef de preacher man wuz ready fer ter face de 55 ha'nts and set up dar en out blink um, dey would n't be nobody in de roun' worl' no gladder dan 'im. Den de miller man

By de time he got all de meat off'n one er de ribs, de preacher man listened, en he year'd a monst'us scramblin' en scratchin' on de wall. He look aroun', he did, en dar wuz a great big black cat a-sharpenin' 'er claws on de door facin'. Folks, don't talk! dat 'ar cat wuz er sight! Great long w'ite toofs en great big yaller eyeballs a-shinin' like dey wuz lit up way back in 'er head. She stood dar a minit, dat ole black cat did, en den she 'gun ter sidle up like she wuz gwine ter mount dat preacher man right dar en den. But de preacher man, he des shoo'd at 'er, en it seem like dis sorter skeer'd 'er, kaze she went off.

'But de preacher man, he kep' his eye open, en helt on ter his spar' rib. Present'y he year de ole black cat comin' back, en dis time she fotch wid 'er a great big gang er cats. Dey wuz all black des like she wuz, en der eye-balls shineded en der lashes wuz long en w'ite. Hit look like de preacher man wuz a-gwine ter git surrounded.

'Dey come a-sidlin' up, dey did, en de ole black cat made a pass at de preacher man like she wuz a-gwine ter t'ar he eyes out. De preacher man dodged, but de nex' pass she made de preacher man fotch 'er wipe with his spar' rib en cut off one er 'er toes. Wid dat de old black cat fotch a yell dat you might a yeard a mile, en den she gin 'erself a sort er a twis' en made her disappearance up de chimbley, en w'en she do dat all de yuther cats made der disappearance up de chimbley. De preacher man he got up, he did, en looked und' de bed fer ter see ef he kin fine any mo' cats, but dey wuz all done gone.

Den he tuck 'n pick up de cat toe w'at he done knock off wid de spar' rib, en wrop it up in a piece er paper en put it in

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