Nashville union and American. [volume] (Nashville, Tenn.) 1868-1875, 1870-08-19
sOUTHERN PaTTENCE.

y
just tribute to the Southern character:
Patience was not once esteemed South
ern virtue, but Affections sometimes re-
veal heroic attributes that prosperity and
success cannot develop. Our Southern
brethren were thought to be brave and
passionate, but the ow-burning furnace
they have been subjected to ferufiye years
past has shown that, without being less
brave and passionate than we esteemed
them, they possess profounder properties
of heroism than they have been credited
with. Their condition at the close of a
four years exhaustive and unsuccessful
war, in which absolute failure had fol-
lowed the expenditure of all their re-
sources, was pitiable to degree that has
seldom been witnessed. Defeated, dis
armed and utterly impoverished would
appear to make up the full measure of
misery to people; but in the case of our
Southern countrymen there was added to
this the rare humiliation of being placed
In political subsection to their own ex-,
slsyes-an ignominy which none but
themselves can fully comprehend. For a
time the accumulated burdens seemed
more than they could bear, and the COM
mencement of respondent migration to
Brazil was apprehenslVely regarded as the
| initiative of a movement that might pos
sibly make the South the desolate, exclu-
| sive home of semi barbarie Africans. But
| fortunately for the Southern people them
selves, fortunately for their Northern
kinsmen, and fortunately for the govern
ment that seemed resolved to drive them
to despair, the Southern leaders came for
ward and exerted the personal authority
which had demonstrated such potency in
the war. They condemned the Brazil
movement, and advised their people to re-
main at home and accept what might
come Their counsel was obeyed, and
they thus became the instruments OF saw
ing to the country an element which that
country appeared anxious to get rid of,
but which it viii yet learn to appreciate:
Beaten in the war, disarmed, deprived of
the political rights which were part of
themselves, harrsssed by constant military
interference, and annoyed by the often
| sive conduct of the ignorant masses into
whose hands had been entrusted the au-
thority they once welded, there was
nothing left them but to seek a partial
| oblivion of their Affections in hard labor in
| their mortgaged cotton fields, while their
ex-slayes wallowed in franchises they
knew not the value of, and an unfriendly
party in Congress spent year after year in
| passing measures to perpetuate the sub
| lection of four million Americans to four
million Africans. II was this weary or
| deal of five years, in which Southern
heads were smitten down whenever they
dare to lift themselves up, that has added
to the Southern character fortitude that
1t was not supposed to possess, and such
as few peoples have ever exhibited. Had
this people been brave and passionate only,
they would have broken ont in repested
futile resistance to the Federal authority.
But they made no such resistance. Their
Submission at Appomattox was absolute,
| and has been maintained unbroken every
day and every hour since then. They
recognized that it was their duty to suffer
and they have endured their suffer
ings, not with apathy and despair, but
with an unmurmuring patience thoroughly
heroic. They have added their valuable
cotton crops, produced by theirown labor,
to the wealth of the country; they have
assisted to pay debt that represents the
cost of their defeat; they have submitted
without opposition to orders and process
es issued by those who were once their
servitors; they have seen their hardly
earned substance devoured by greedy and
characterless adventures from distant
States, and they have done and borne all
this without either resentment or indiffer-
ence. In view of the spectacle they have
thus presented, and are still presenting, it
may be asked in their behalf, if it is not
time that their expressions should cease9
Has the government of the United States,
this day, more valuable and virtuous cit-
zens in any part of its entire domain than
those prescribed white people of the
Southl And can any government, with
justice to itself, persist in expressing and
disabling people whose only answer to
the infliction is the mute eloquence of
fortitude tbst has scarcely PARALLEL" -,