Raftsman's journal. [volume] (Clearfield, Pa.) 1854-1948, 1867-11-27
Speech of Gen. Sherman.

DAY, NOV. lotn, 1901, from WHICH we e3-
tract the 70 lowing passages:
| have often been asked by my fellow sol
diers, when troubled by the reports of the
disturbed condition of things at the South,
whether after all our labors had not been III
vain? Whether we might not again be cal
led on to repeat the scenes OF 1868 and
| 1864. ? Or whether the rebels, defeated in
battle, might not in the hurry -burly of time
and politics, regain their lost cause and
! lost pride ?
On these points I feel no great solicitude,
but whether | can convey to your minds
the same conviction [ will not say. Histo
| ry rarely goes backward, and events in the
past are usually as real as the granite
rock on which we stand. Surely no men
ever had more glorious cause than we.
And never, in my judgment, did war so
completely fulfil its natural Office.
As early as l761, an hundred years before
our civil war, Virginia, under the influence
of Richard Henry Lee, attempted to stop
the importation of slaves by prohibitory
duty, but her action was vetoed in Eng
| land. In South Carolina similar attempt
was made, with like result. In Georgia
General Oglethorpe began his colony for
the express purpose of limiting the exten-
sion of slavery In that direction. Still la
ter, at the time of our revolutionary war, the
! sentiment opposed to the institution of sla-
very was nearly universal, so much SO that
the slave trade was prohibited after 1908,
| and the word slave was not written at all
in our Constitution.
! Slavery would surely have been extin-
guished in this country by gradual and
natural process, and we might have been
spared our civil war, had not other causes
come into play. 1t was found that the soil
and climate of the Southern States were ad-
mirably adapted to the growth of cotton
and had much to do in fastening slavery up
on us as people, and should have a just
share in the responsibility for its baneful
result Under these influences cotton be-
came power in the land. Itwas proud,
arrogant and claimed to be king. 1t dicta-
| ted its terms and threatend war unless its
| lmperious demands We're granted 1t claim
ed the right to go where it pleased, and to-
extend itself over lands, such as Kansas and
| California, not adapted to it or slave labor
at all and at last it rebelled and set up
government of its own, whose very corner
stones were cotton and slavery. Nothing on
earth could Justify such rebellion, and |
only mention these facts in the past to show
that others than the people of the South
were partially responsible, and should share
the natural consequences of their owr acts.
If slavery was the real cause of our civil
war, or even the pretext for it, and if chill
dren must inherit the sin of their fathers,
even to the third and fourth generation,
| then none of us who trace our rights back
| to the earlier days of this Republic, can es-
cape this mathen atical and philosophical
| conclusion.
| We of the North have to mourn the loss
of fathers, brothers, sons and friends, and
| are burdened with a.vast National debt,
| binding on us in fact, in law and in honor,
| neceT, hope, to be questioned by any nom
| orable man in America till every cent is
paid.
Look to the South, and you who went
with me through that land can best say if
| they too have not been tearfully punished.
Mourning in every house hold, dcsolation
written in broad characters across the whole
face of their country, cities in ashes and
| helds laid waste, their commerce gone, their
! system of labor annhilated and destroyed
| Ruin, poverty and distress everywhere, and
now pestllence adding the very cap-sheaf to
their stock of misery her proud men beg
glng tor pardon and appealing for permis-
| sion to raise food for their children, her five
millions of slaves free, and their value lost
to their former masters forever. How any
| Southern gentleman, with these facts plain
and palpable, everywhere staring him in the
face, and recorded forever in the book of
| history can still boast of his Lost Cause"
or speak of it in language other than of
shame and sorrow, passes my understand
ing, and instead of being revived | know
that their Lost Cause will sink deeper and
deeper into lnfamy as time more keenly
probes its hidden mysteries and reveals
them to the light of the day.
| Now that slavery is gone, and gone forev-
er,with Its unhappy wrecks left behind, and
all danger is past, if any set of men again
appeal to war when thev have courts to Sc
| cure their rights and redress their wrongs, |
would trust our national destiny again to
those grand old national laws which raised
our country through the long tedious vassa-
lage of colonization which carried us safely
through the ordeal of our Revolutionary war;
led our conquering army TO the gates OF
Mexico In lS4l, and has borne us glori-
ously through four years of as hard war as
ever tested the manhood of any people,
With our population increasing thirty
three per cent every ten years, with our ma
tional wealth developing in even greater
ratio; with our frontiers pushing back in ev
cry direction; with farms and villages and
cities rapidly covering our vast national do
main with mines of gold and silver and iron
and coal pouring out wealth faster than ever
did the cotton fields of the South, with forty
thousand miles of railroads-can any one
| doubt our present strength, or calculate our
future destiny?
If our friends at the South will heartily
and cheertully join with us in our future
course, [, for one, would welcome them back,
cur equals, but not our superiors, and lend
them helping hand. But, if like spoiled
children, they will cling to the dead past
and shut their eyes to the coming future,
would only call their attention to the wave
of emigration that has swept over our land