ns, 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 without 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 problem that
ever met human intelligence--the establishing of a status for the vast
body of his liberated slaves.

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 overwhelming, 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 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, gave their hands to work. There was little bitterness in all
this. Cheerfulness and frankness prevailed. "Bill Arp" struck the
keynote when he said: "Well, I killed as many of them as they did of me,
and now I am going to work." Or 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 I am going to
Sandersville, kiss my wife and raise a crop, and if the Yankees fool
with me any more I will whip 'em again." I want to say to General
Sherman--who is considered an able man in our part, 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 the bricks and mortar of our
homes, and have builded therein not one ignoble prejudice or memory.

But in all this what have we accomplished? What is the sum of our work?
We have found out that in the general summary the free negro counts more
than he did as a slave. We have planted the schoolhouse 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 Mas