tions will come finally in the common recognition, as a lesson for all future time, that between the social and industrial systems of equal opportunity and of race subjection, each ambitious of expansion in a confederated Republic like ours, there is a fatal antagonism.
I have now reached the ultimate goal proposed in these historical labors. I have told my tale; I have finished my task; and the story of reconstruction and of a broader national existence I willingly leave to other pens. Whatever may have been my imperfections as a narrator of events, and no one, I am sure, whose aims are high, can be unconscious of his own shortcomings, I trust it may
be said of me that I have written with a constant purpose to be just and truthful.