North that the people of
the South had long since accepted the arbitrament of the sword to which
they had appealed. And likewise the oft-repeated message has come back
from the North that peace and good will reigned, and that the wounds of
civil dissension were but as sacred memories. Good fellowship was wafted
on the wings of commerce and development from those who had worn the
blue to those who had worn the gray. Nor were these messages delivered
in vain, for they served to pave the way for the complete and absolute
elimination of the line of sectional differences by the only process by
which such a result was possible. The sentiment of the great majority of
the people of the South was rightly spoken in the message of the
immortal Hill, and in the burning eloquence of Henry Grady--both
Georgians--the record of whose blessed work for the restoration of peace
between the sections becomes a national heritage, and whose names are
stamped in enduring impress upon the affection of the people of the
Republic.

And yet there were still those among us who believed your course was
polite, but insincere, and those among you who assumed that our
professed attitude was sentimental and unreal. Bitterness had departed,
and sectional hate was no more, but there were those who feared, even if
they did not believe, that between the great sections of our greater
government there was not the perfect faith and trust and love that both
professed; that there was want of the faith that made the American
Revolution a successful possibility; that there was want of the trust
that crystallized our States into the original Union; that there was
lack of the love that bound in unassailable strength the united
sisterhood of States that withstood the shock of Civil War. It is true
this doubt existed to a greater degree abroad than at home. But to-day
the mist of uncertainty has been swept away by the sunlight of events,
and there, where doubt obscured before stands in bold relief, commanding
the admiration of the whole world, the most glorious type of united
strength and sentiment and loyalty known to the history of nations.

Out of the chaos of that civil war had risen a new nation, mighty in the
vastness of its limitless resources, the realities within its reach
surpassing the dreams of fiction, and eclipsing the fancy of fable--a
new nation, yet rosy in the flesh, with the bloom of youth upon its
cheeks and the gleam of morning in its eyes. No on