ative of American
patriotism, says, "The citizen of the republic to-day is prouder of
being an American than he is of being a native of any State in the
country." What it is to be a native of any State in the country,
especially an old State with an ancient and honorable history, is
something that Mr. Carnegie cannot possibly understand. But the "to-day"
is superfluous. The Union was a word of power in 1861 as it is in 1891.
Before the secession of Virginia a Virginian Breckinridge asked: "If
exiled in a foreign land, would the heart turn back to Virginia, or
South Carolina, or New York, or to any one State as the cherished home
of its pride? No. We would remember only that we were Americans." Surely
this seems quite as patriotic as Mr. Carnegie's utterance; and yet, to
the native Virginian just quoted, so much stronger was the State than
the central government that, a few weeks after this bold speech, he went
into the war, and finally perished in the war. "A Union man," says his
biographer, "fighting for the rights of his old mother, Virginia." And
there were many men of his mind, noted generals, valiant soldiers. The
University Memorial, which records the names and lives of the alumni of
the University of Virginia who fell in the Confederate war, two hundred
in number,--this volume, full "of memories and of sighs" to every
Southern man of my age, lies open before me as I write, and some of the
noblest men who figure in its pages were Union men; and the Memorial of
the Virginia Military Institute tells the same story with the same
eloquence. The State was imperilled, and parties disappeared; and of the
combatants in the field, some of the bravest and the most conspicuous
belonged to those whose love of the old Union was warm and strong, to
whom the severance of the tie that bound the States together was a
personal grief. But even those who prophesied the worst, who predicted a
long and bloody struggle and a doubtful result, had no question about
the duty of the citizen; shared the common burden and submitted to the
individual sacrifice as readily as the veriest fire-eater,--nay, as they
claimed, more readily. The most intimate friend I ever had, who fell
after heroic services, was known by all our circle to be utterly at
variance with the prevalent Southern view of the quarrel, and died
upholding a right which was not a right to him except so far as the
mandate of his State made it a right; and while he would have prefer