ions are consistent with the Constitution of the United States,
is a nice question upon which I shall not attempt to enter. The
arguments used to reconcile this test of intelligence with Amendments
XIV. and XV. of the United States Constitution seem to me more ingenious
than convincing. But, constitutional or not, the compromise is
reasonable; and though people in the South still feel, as one of them
put it to me, that the Republican party "may yet wield the flail of the
negro over them," the flail has been laid aside long enough to permit
the South, in the main, to recover its peace of mind and its
self-respect. The negro problem is still difficult enough, as many
tragic evidences prove; but there is no reason to despair of its
ultimate solution.

Meanwhile material prosperity has been returning to the South;
agriculture has revived, and manufactures have increased. Social
intercourse and intermarriage have done much to promote mutual
comprehension between North and South, and to wipe out rankling
animosities. Each party has made a sincere effort to understand the
other's "case," and the war has come to seem a thing fated and
inevitable, or at any rate not to have been averted save by superhuman
wisdom and moderation on both sides. With mutual comprehension, mutual
admiration has gone hand in hand. The gallantry and tenacity of the
South are warmly appreciated in the North, and it is felt on both sides
that the very qualities which made the tussle so long and terrible are
the qualities which ensure the greatness of the reunited nation. But
changes of sentiment are naturally slow and, from moment to moment,
imperceptible. It needs some outside stimulus or shock to bring them
clearly home to the minds of men. Such a stimulus was provided by the
conflict with Spain. It did not create a new sense of solidarity between
the North and the South, but rather brought prominently to the surface
of the national consciousness a sense of solidarity that had for years
been growing and strengthening, more or less obscurely and
inarticulately, on both sides of Mason and Dixon's line. It consummated
a process of consolidation which had been going on for something like
twenty years.

Furthermore, the Spanish War deposed the Civil War from its position as
the last event of great external picturesqueness in the national
history. However sincere may be our love of peace, war remains
irresistibly fascinating to the imagination; and the ima