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all true patriots now assert that there must be no Eastern, no Western, no Northern, no Southern supremacy of any kind, but a Union of One People of the many States, equally and honestly governed, without favoritism for special States, sections, classes or conditions. That was the burning question as the South saw it, and all contention focused there. Upon that vital issue, involving the good character of the Union, the honor of the States, and the individual liberties of the people, peaceable secession was sought as the right way of relief and coercion by arms confronted the plan. We withstood the bloody Mortmain with all our might, at the cost of all we had, and literally bled to death.

The fealty of the Southern people to the Union is ever self-respecting, as it should be, and is as sincere as the flawless virtues of a vestal. It is right to have it understood that the South is stung to the quick by the insult which pretends to suspect its honorable devotion to the Union, the Constitution and the flag. Its proud lip curls in scornful contempt for the man whose soul is so paupered of sentiment and leprous with prejudice that he cannot trust the honor of the South. The Southern people meet their Northern countrymen not half way, but all the way. In the use and occupation of this realm, dedicated to freedom, we hold per my et per tout, where each is for all and all is for each. We are ready for a full and equal division of the gravest duties and the highest privileges including our part of all civil, military and naval advantages, together with a fair share of National offices, from postmaster to President. We have come back, as Senator Hill said, to our father's house, and I may be allowed to add, we are ready to break merrily into the fatted ring and kill the golden calf.

V.

CONTRIBUTIONS TO INDUSTRIAL GREATNESS.

I have reserved for conclusion a restricted glance at the industrial history of the South, and its present brightening promise of future additions to all those things which will increase our Country's greatness. True as this section has been to the original ideas of the forefathers, its record does not consist alone of mere chivalric sentiment. Its footprints are well marked in the pathway of the world's progress, and it as willingly unfolds its old career as its present resourceful prospects to the scrutiny of the age. In the infancy of the Union, after a hundred years of competition, it stood foremost in industrial and commercial power, and then saw without envy the material wealth of the wide and rich territory it had donated to the general estate turning away from its own ports, and Norfolk, the natural entrepot of commerce, surpassed by New York. The Northern section grew rapidly because the Northeast became the Merchant, the Banker, the Transportation agent, and at lengh the Manufacturer of the Country, by which adjustment of business relations it turned its money over every day and profited by every turn of the incoming and outging trade, while the South made one annual deal. Immigration forced through its ports poured by special inducements upon the territory of the West, and the immigrants became customers of the East. The sale of its slaves brought no small amount of ready money to those who bargained them to the South, and early emancipation of its Negroes freed from the North from bonds which the South was obliged longer to wear. Great governmental aids followed each other thick and fast in the form of bounties, tariffs, contracts and the like, in the disbursement of which the large percentage went away from the South. Grants to build railroads with public lands which Southern cessions and policy had secured to the National wealth exceeded the area of European empires, and of which the South received not one-fifth of its share. The Southern people make no unfair complaint at the energy with which these and other unnamed advantages were seized, but they do rebuke all unjust sneers which stigmatize them as an unprogressive race, and the whole South makes a powerful protest against this injustice by the evidence of its old thrift in maintaining a prosperous existence in the Union for nearly a century by the use of only one-tenth of its resources, and the still more significant display of its rapid rise in recent years from utter prostration through the masterful spirit of its own people. The transformation of the Southern wilds into fruitful fields, from which have gone Northward in sixty-five years two hundred and fifty millions cotton bales, worth forty dollars per bale, beside cereals and fruits, tobacco, lumber and other products of fourfold greater value, should be accredited to the enterprise of the diligent Southerner. It is strange that a people who hibernate nearly half the year in enforced idleness, while the workingman of the genial South is out with the morning lark and pursues his calling through the months of winter as well as summer, can think of such a worker as indolent. When we survey the deep repose of many Eastern towns which slumber in unprogressive if not "innocuous desuetude," we rationally inquire why Southern cities are so specially characterized as sleepy boroughs"? We will not forget that the

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first railroad was built in Carolina, the first steamship that crossed the ocean weighed anchor from a Southern port, and the cotton gin originated in the cotton belt. The Old South was in truth a vast hive of small industries. It was dotted with domestic factories, tanned its own leather, made its shoes in every county and its hats in every section; wove its cloth in domestic looms, wrought its iron in its own shops, milled its corn and wheat, and lived at home in peace, plenty and hospitality.

I will take the ten years between 1850 and 1860 in illustration of the energies of the Old South to show its enterprise, and to remove the errror that it had the cotton monomania, and was not keeping pace with the nascent industrial spirit of the times.

With only one-third the population of the Union during that decade, the South raised one-third the corn of the country, onefourth the wheat, three-fourths of the tobacco, nearly all the rice and sugar, one-third of the live stock, made large sales of lumber and naval stores, besides producing in unascertained quantities that remarkable variety of cereals, fruits and vegetables for which it was now more than ever famous. Nor was it then a laggard in manufacturing and other individual enterprise, as will appear by its gain during that one decade of one hundred per cent. in grain mills, exceeding the percentage of the entire country; its increase by two hundred per cent. in machinery and engine construction; its great growth in cotton mills and in hundreds of minor industries which occupied its people. In those ten years it doubled its lumber trade, doubled the output from iron foundaries and nearly quadrupled its railroad mileage. The South increased its railroad miles in that decade above the percentage increase of all other sections of the United States combined. It had in 1860 a mile of rail to every seven hundred of its white population, while the other States all united had one mile to every one thousand people. An exposition of the industrial status in 1860 would have shown the world that the Dixie of that day was not merely “the land of cotton, cinnamon seed and sandy bottom," but in the range and value of its products from the soil, and in the diversity and elevation of its industries of every kind, it was measuring up to the stature of the most progressive nations.

The recovery of the South from its stunned condition in 1865, after the war which exhausted its resources, challenges the generous admiration of mankind. The returning soldiers of the Confederate army made heroic efforts to recuperate their country, and although these brave endeavors were repressed awhile by the errors of reconstruction and hindered by panics which they did not cause, yet through the wisdom, the courage, and the enterprise of these soldiers and their sons, their wives and their daughters, this irrepressible land is now waking up the world to gaze upon the sunrise of the Southern day, and calling it to participate in that coming splendor which another census will reveal. The wayfaring man must be more than a fool who will not see the signs at the cross roads of prosperity pointing Southward. The bounty of Almighty God has endowed this land of the South with all the resources which a great people require. Arable soil, stately forests, water powers, climate salubrious and soft; marble, stone, coal and mineral ores; great rivers, ample harbors, ocean shores and gulf coasts; mountain ranges, hills and valleys. It lies in broad beauty upon that middle belt of the Northern Hemisphere, along which the brightest star of human achievement has moved since the earliest historic age, and its richness exactly meets the demand for those elements by which man may attain to his highest estate of liberty, enlightenment and religion.

It is not a New South that has thus burst into sight like some freshly found planet, which has been formed with regravitated fragments which lately wandered in the skies. Not a New South-but it is truly the Greater South flowering forth under new conditions from the stem of the old plant and out of the rich original soil. THE GREATER SOUTH! May it be matched by a Greater East, a Greater West, a Greater North, and all these in the Union of their graces display to the world the greater glory of our matchless CountryTHE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!

THE SOUTH AND THE FUTURE.

The South is now newly girded with strength and purpose to increase in all respects the true greatness of the American Union. It enjoys at this day a mediatory position which will enable it to remove political asperity and to bring all differences to the fair plane of conservative, patriotic discussion. The South has its views, but they are in the Bill of Rights as taught by the old and new patriots of all States. It will stand firmly by those sacred original ideas. It will continue to ask for an uncorrupted preservation of the cardinal principles of the old Revolution and the strict observance of constitutional law. It will still maintain that our system of government is

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not like the magnificent planet Saturn, girt by a combination of concentric rings and surrounded by subordinate orbs which sattelite a central sovereign, whose name was taken from a god who devoured his children; but more like a constellation of co-equal solar stars which move through the heavens in radiant agreement and inseparable order. Carefully, therefore, will it cherish the citizen's loyal devotion to the State where he lives as well as his fidelity to the Constitution and his passionate love for the Union. The freeman of Vermont, wherever he roams on land or sea, shall be encouraged in memory of the Green Mountains of his State to fondly affirm, “I am a Vermonter!" The Virginia citizen, bursting with proud recollections of his State's traditions and present glory, may without suspicion of his loyalty to the Union exclaim, “I am a Virginian!" And the son of my noble Georgia—although nicknamed “goober-grabber" in Confederate times by the brave cohesive tarheels of Carolinawill proudly announce, “I am a Georgian!" The patriot from well watered Michigan, emerging from his lovely lakes and claiming the right by his feathers to flock with the American eagle, shall say with unhindered enthusiam, “I am a Michigander!" And the mightiest man from Maine, glorying in a State whose ancient mountain spurs once fretted the British lion, may strike his broad palm upon his ample chest and bravely cry, "I am a Maniac!" But we all, whether cracker, hoosier, tarheel, Michigander or Maniac, while maintaining devotion to our several States will declare with one common voice to the nations of the earth, “We are all Americans!"

The South further believes that under the Constitution there can be solidarity of popular action without centrality of official power, Union without fusion, co-supremacy of State and Federal authority without conflict, and the blessing of co-equality among the people under impartial statutes without the bane of unnatural equalism contrary to law. It will beg for fairness and fullness of the ballot right, the undiminished boon of individual liberty, and for statutory guards to be set over the interests of the unsophisticated people to protect them against the experienced shrewdness and rapid greed of the monopalist who seeks to despoil them. It stands ready to umpire and adjust our financial perplexities fairly, because it has no brokerage in gold imperilled, no silver to sell, and nothing to demand but the emancipation of intelligent and honest enterprise. With threads of gold and silver and natural wealth it will make the financial cables

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