nderstand
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 accepted 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 negro slave
were broken. Under the old _regime_ the negroes were slaves to the
South, the South was a slave to the system. The old plantation, with its
simple police regulation and its feudal habit, was the only type
possible under slavery. Thus we 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 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 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 and looking out upon the
expanding horizon, she understands that her emancipation came because in
the inscrutable wisdom of God her honest purpose was crossed and her
brave armies were beaten.

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
conspiracy, 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 prese