gentlemen, on the establishment of this
"Southern Society of New York." After the long season of strife and
discontent this is one of the many signs which mark the vernal equinox,
and foretell the coming summer. I believe, notwithstanding the infinite
disasters of the war, the overthrow of slavery, and with it all the
industrial system of the South, and the needless loss and the
humiliations of reconstruction--I believe that there is to-day a kinder
and more cordial fraternity between the North and South than ever
existed since the agitation of the slavery question sixty or seventy
years ago. This society formed, and meeting here in this great centre of
American political and business life, can do much to promote that peace.
We need more social intercourse between the Northern and Southern men,
and we need, above all, a clearer and manlier understanding of each
other, in order that the recollections of the war may cease to check the
growing accord between us.

Gentlemen, the North craves a living and lasting peace with the South;
it asks no humiliating conditions; it recognizes the fact that the
proximate cause of the war was the constitutional question of the right
of secession--a question which, until it was settled by the war, had
neither a right nor wrong side to it. Our forefathers, in framing the
Constitution purposely left the question unsettled; to have settled it
distinctly in the Constitution would have been to prevent the formation
of the union of the Thirteen States. They, therefore, committed that
question to the future and the war came on and settled it forever. Now,
the Northern people are not so mean, fanatical or foolish as to blame
the South because it believed then and believes now that it had the
right side of that question. How could we respect the South if it were
to say now that it was insincere then, or if it were to pretend that its
convictions on a question of constitutional construction had been
changed by the cuffs and blows of the war? It is enough that the North
and South alike agree that the war settled that question in favor of the
Northern construction finally and forever.

The North does ask that the settlement of the war as embodied in the
constitutional amendments shall be accepted, and obeyed in the letter
and spirit, as good faith and good citizenship require. There have been
undoubtedly very many instances of violation of the spirit of the
amendments and there will be in the futu