free
from its paralyzing touch. Old prejudices, the remembrance of past
grievances, and antipathies long cherished now and then assert
themselves in the most unexpected fashion. The Southerner, no matter how
much he may pride himself upon being liberal and broad, is likely to
make certain reservations and limitations in his attitude. There are
some questions upon which he is not open to argument, certain subjects
which he cannot discuss freely and dispassionately. Some Southerners
have so many of these reservations that conversation with them is
difficult unless one instinctively understands their psychology and is
willing to avoid certain subjects. The past has made so powerful an
impression upon them that it has affected their whole attitude of mind.

Time, travel, association, engrossing work, and economic prosperity have
weakened many of these prejudices and antipathies, however, and the
Southerner is becoming free. There are individuals who will always be
bound by the past; there are some men, and more women, who are yet
"unreconstructed"; there are neighborhoods and villages where men and
women yet live in the past and absolutely refuse to attempt to adjust
themselves cheerfully to changed and changing conditions. This is not
true of the Southern people as a whole. In fact there is danger that the
younger generation will think too little of the past. Much of the Old
South is worthy of preservation, and it is never safe for a country or a
section to break too abruptly with its older life.

Economically the South has prospered in proportion as the new spirit has
ruled. The question of secession is dead, and the man who refuses today
to treat it as past history but grows excited in discussing it is not
likely to be successful in his business or profession. The men of the
New South spend little time in discussing the relative wisdom of
Jefferson Davis and Robert Toombs or the reasons for the failure of the
Confederacy. The Southerners accept the results of the War, and all except
a negligible minority are convinced that the preservation of the Union was
for the best. To be sure they believe, partly through knowledge but more
largely through absorption, that the Confederate soldier was the best
fighting man ever known and that the War might have been won if the
civil government had been wiser, but on the whole they are not sorry that
secession failed. They thrill even today to _Dixie,_ and _The Bonnie Blue
Flag,_ but