Helena weekly herald. [volume] (Helena, Mont.) 1867-1900, 1872-10-31
Helena, Montana, Thursday, October 81, 1879.
Reconciliation With tnc south.


from on Address BY Geo W. Curtiss, at the Dedca-
1871 Tl1l'T ''~,1's"-' - N''' - ~>r" : >
For many and many year there must be
bitterness of feeling in the Southern states.
Slowly the false political and social theories
from which the war sprang will disappear.
They will not be renounced, but they will be
outgrown. Often and often there will be
outbreaks of lawlessness like sudden light
nings from a. spent stornl-cloud. AS the
nobeman of the old French regime could
never be rcconciled to the Revolution, as the
English Jacobite fervently pledged the king
over the water, and prayed with tears for his
return, so to many of the present generation
in the Southern States, the lost cause will
long be fond and despairing ideal l know
that the air rings with the cry of reconcilia-
ton, but let us not deceive ourselves; "thc
South" OF the past will never be recontaled or
forgive its defeat. But the South of the
future is already reconcied with equality and
justice. Amid the generous influences of the
new union, the old "South" will hold itself
apart like a glacier in the ocean, cold, tower
ing, apparently as eternal as the see itself
That glittcring mountain, floating icily aloof,
at last touching the gulf stream, begins to
dlssolve.s Down come flashing pinnacle and
peak, frosty spire and shining cliff. Like
living monster of shifting tints, Il huge
chameleon of the sea, the vast mass silently
rolls and plunges and shrinks, and at last ut
terly disappears in that incxorable warmth of
water. That is the spectacle which we be-
hold The icy mountain is melting away.
We cannot indeed trust it.. We cannot build
upon it. But before our eyes it disappears.
Patience, then, patience; we have only to be
firm, with malice toward none, with charity
for all, doing justice and maintaining equal
ity, and the children of the grey-coats will at
last agree that defeat was victory. They will
see and own that nothing is, so American as
the equal union of all for the equal liberty of
all. Il At last they will see and agree that
great nation, founded upon the equal rights
of all its people, constantly enlarging and
aspiring, reaching from the, coast to the
mountains, running over the mountains and
across the plains of sunset to the Pacific sea,
bound in one vast brotherhood of justice and
intelligence and industry, is better for them,
for the world, than puny group of States
whose bond is human slavery, and which
stands alone and hapless amid the contempt
and horror of mankind. On some bright
day hereafter, in some soft September sun
shine that We shall never see, some Georgian
or CarOlinian youth strOiling beneath these
trees with a new England comrade, win
pause before this statue and gaze long and
tenderly upon the manly face of that young
hero. And not forgetting his own kindred
who fell upon the other side and who sleep
beneath the Southern sun, 81 see it now,"
that generous youth will say, 1.-The men of
whom this figure is the fit memorial fought
and died for me rs we'll as for you. They
saved Carolina as well as Massachusetts, for
what would Carolina have been, what would
the Union be, without equal liberty Sol
diers in blue! you were not the soldiers of
the North, of a section, of a party, you were
the soldiers of the whole American people,
of it's deepest instinct, of its highest hope.
And Florida and Georgia, Carolina and Vir-
ginia, lift up their free hands to Heaven and
bless God for the victory you won" l.,...,