sight of advancing civilization. Had Mr. Toombs said, which he did not say, that he would call the roll of his slaves at the foot of Bunker Hill, he would have been foolish, for he might have known that whenever slavery became entangled in war it must perish, and that the chattel in human flesh ended forever in New England when your fathers—not to be blamed for parting with what did not pay sold their slaves to our fathers, not to be praised for knowing a paying thing when they saw it.

The relations of the Southern people with the negro are close and cordial. We remember with what fidelity for four years he guarded our defenseless women and children, whose husbands and fathers were fighting against his freedom. To his credit be it said that whenever he struck a blow for his own liberty he fought in open battle, and when at last he raised his black and humble hands that the shackles might be struck off, those hands were innocent of wrong against his helpless charges, and worthy to be taken in loving grasp by every man who honors loyalty and devotion.

Ruffians have maltreated him, rascals have misled him, philanthropists established a bank for him, but the South with the North protest against injustice to this simple and sincere people. To liberty and enfranchisement is as far as the law can carry the negro. The rest must be left to conscience and common sense. It should be left to those among whom his lot is cast, with whom he is indissolubly connected and whose prosperity depends upon their possessing his intelligent sympathy and confidence. Faith has been kept with him in spite of calumnious assertions to the contrary by those who assume to speak for us, or by frank opponents. Faith will be kept with him in future if the South holds her reason and integrity.

But have we kept faith with you? In the fullest sense, yes. When Lee surrendered I don't say when Johnson surrendered, because I understand 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 Johnson quit, the South became, and has been, loyal to the 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 was 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 that 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 a 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 a 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.

ence.

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 presThe South has nothing to take back. In my native town of Athens is a monument that crowns its central hills a plain, white shaft. Deep cut into its shining side is a name dear to me above the names of men, that of a brave and simple man who died in brave and simple faith. Not for all the glories of New England - from Plymouth Rock all the way would I exchange the heritage he left me in his soldier's death. To the feet of that shaft I shall send my children's children to reverence him who ennobled their name with his heroic blood. But, sir, speaking from the shadow of that memory, which I honor as I do nothing else on earth, I say that the cause in which he suffered and for which he gave his life was adjudged by higher and fuller wisdom than his or mine, and I am glad that the omniscient God held the balance of battle in his Almighty hand, and that human slavery was swept forever from American soil the American Union saved from the wreck of war.

This message, Mr. President, comes to you from consecrated ground. Every foot of the soil about the city in which I live is as sacred as a battleground of the Republic. Every hill that invests it is hallowed by the blood. of your brothers who died for your victory, and doubly hallowed to us by the

blood of those who died hopeless, but undaunted, in defeat sacred soil to all of us, rich with memories that make us purer and stronger and better, silent but staunch witnesses in its red desolation of the matchless valor of American hearts and the deathless glory of American arms - speaking an eloquent witness in its white peace and prosperity to the indissoluble union of American States and the unperishable brotherhood of the American people.

Now, what answer has New England to this message? Will she permit the prejudice of war to remain in the hearts of the conquerors, when it has died in the hearts of the conquered? Will she transmit this prejudice to the next generation, that in their hearts, which never felt the generous ardor of conflict, it may perpetuate itself? Will she withhold, save in strained courtesy, the hand which, straight from the soldier's heart, Grant offered to Lee at Appomattox? Will she make the vision of a restored and happy people, which gathered above the couch of your dying captain, filling his heart with grace, touching his lips with praise and glorifying his path to the grave; will she make this vision on which the last sigh of his expiring soul breathed a benediction, a cheat and a delusion? If she does, the South, never abject in asking for comradeship, must accept with dignity its refusal; but if she does not if she accepts with frankness and sincerity this message of good-will and friendship, then will the prophecy of Webster, delivered in this very society forty years ago, amid tremendous applause, be verified in its fullest and final sense, when he said: "Standing hand to hand and clasping hands, we should remain united as we have been for sixty years, citizens of the same country, members of the same government, united, all united now and united forever." There have been difficulties, contentions, and controversies, but I tell you that in my judgment

"Those opposed eyes,

Which like the meteors of a troubled heaven,

All of one nature, of one substance bred,

Did lately meet in th' intestine shock,

Shall now in mutual well beseeming ranks

March all one way."

(Being the celebrated address before the New England Society at its annual banquet in New York on the night of December 22, 1886.)

The Maine Dead.

By ROBERT G. COUSINS, of Iowa.

R. SPEAKER, whether this measure shall prevail, either in the form in which it has come from the committee or in the form as proposed in the amendment, it is both appropriate and just; but hardly is it mentionable in contemplation of the great calamity to which it appertains. It will be an incidental legislative footnote to a page of history that shall be open to the eyes of this Republic and of the world for all time to come. No human speech can add anything to the silent gratitude, the speechless reverence, already given by a great and grateful nation to its dead defenders, and to their living kin. No act of Congress providing for their needs can be a restitution for their sacrifice. Human nature does, in many ways, its best, and still feels deep in debt.

Expressions of condolence have come from every country and from every clime, and every nerve of steel and ocean cable has carried on electric breath the sweetest and tenderest words of sympathy for that gallant crew who manned The Maine. But no human recompense can reach them. Humanity and time remain their everlasting debtors.

It was a brave and strong and splendid crew. They were a part of the blood and bone and sinew of our land. Two of them were from my native State of Iowa. Some were only recently at the United States Naval Academy, where they had so often heard the morning and the evening salutation to the flag - that flag which had been interwoven with the dearest memories of their lives, that had colored all their friendships with the lasting blue of true fidelity. But whether they came from naval school or civil life, from one State or another, they called each other comrade- that gem of human language which sometimes means but a little less than love and a little more than friendship, that gentle salutation of the human heart which lives in all the languages of man, that winds and turns and runs through all the joys and sorrows of the human race, through deed and thought and dream, through song and toil and battlefield.

No foe had ever challenged them. The world can never know how brave they were. They never knew defeat; they never shall. While at their posts