The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1873-06-12
Turning of the Tide-Justice to the South

Turning Of the Tide-Justice to the South
Henry Ward Beecher editor of the Christian
Union, makes noble plea in behalf of doing
justice to the Southern people, and with glow.
ing eulogism upon the valor, endurance and
honest devotion to the Confederate cause, re-
Dukes the illiberal and ungenerous spirit alto
gether too common in the North, in the follow
ing remarkable article, which deserves 10 be
read by every citizen of this broad land:
1t was announced from Washington, week
ago, that on Decoration Day the friends of all
soldiers, Union or Confederate, lying buried al
Arlington, might visit their graves and adorn
them with flowers 1t seemed that the era OF
good feeling had really dawned, and all wise
and tender spirits said "Amen." But next day
it was reported that a committee of the Grand
Army of the Republic had straightway hasten
ed to the war department. to inquire who is to
beg that the "insult" might be averted. Vari-
Gus journals fastening also to condemn this
intended kindliness, it seems worth while to
inquire whether there is any excuse for with
holding so simple courtesy.
We recognize, of course, in the protest OF
these gentlemen staunch loyalty to their no.
ton of patriotism which is in itself admira-
BILE. Their mistake, as it seems to us, is mis-
apprehension of the conditions of the case
both past and present They assert, and with
truth, that after victory so dearly bought as
ours there must be no tampering with the
spirit which so nearly overcame us. They
also assert, and with error, that honor offered
to our enemy's dead, or Cancellation extended
to them living, is such tampering. And here
we take issue.
There are two aspects of our late melancholy
war which we of the North ought never to
forget, and which, practically, we hardly ever
remember. One is the fact that, as commu-
croachments of slavery, of which war was the
logical and inevitable end. Ours was baser
sin than that of the South. For the South had
taught itself to believe that slavery derived its
strength from the Bible, and it planted itself
on the abstract right of the patriarchal insti-
tuition. Supple doctors of divinity supplied it
with scriptural arguments. The churches, most
of them at least, did not hesitate to fellowship
it. The whole South, religiously, was as solid
ly orthodox as it was solidly slave-holding. In
an enormous agricultural country, where the
masses could neither read nor write, and where,
naturally, the newspapers had almost no part
in the education of the people, it was inevita-
BILE that few orators and political managers
should control the community. So that slave
ry and the consequent secession were, to re-
markable degree, the honest cause of the whole
people. And with q splendid courage and en-
durance they followed their disunion flag to
wounds and death, as simply and bravely as if
it had been the banner of the Cross and they
the old Crusaders. They were very ignorant
and wholly wrong, but they died for the best
cause they knew-their idea of patriotism.
But we who believed slavery to be wrong,
who could not lure our consciences to justify 1t,
still accepted and encouraged it through love OF
gold and desire of an ignoble peace. We taught
the South that it could not demand what we
should not be found ready to give. And when,
at last, slavery threatened our national life, it
was the instinct of self representation rather than
any nobler sentiment which prompted resist
ance. In that golden summer of 1860, we went
on gathering and spending, and living luxurl-
Gus lives, careless of the portents IN the sky.
In the early spring of 1861, it was not alone
the enemies of the Union who doubted its
power to preserve its own integrity. 1t was its
friends; the Secretary of State, the comman-
der-in-chef of its army, the great merchants
and great lawyers, alas, too often the great
preachers of the great cities! There was moth
ing in the attitude Of the North, almost up to
the moment of the firing on Fort Sumter, to
check the menace of the South. There was
everything to indicate that the Union would
quietly fall apart.
Because we are by no means innocent of the
war; therefore it behooves us to speak temper
ately of our fellow-sinners, however we abhor
our common sin. And we ought never to have
forgotten that, sharing their guilt, we could not
shut them out from that redemption for which
we fought. If the object of the war were not
restored and regenerated Union, but only the
triumph of late-roused North over an inso-
lent and defiant South, then their cause was as
much better than ours as honest devotion to an
ideal. however mistaken, is better than pure
yindictiveness We have no moral ground to
stand upon, but are guilty of our brothers
blood, unless we meant to make an offering to
God of our national sin, and to free them, with
ourselves, from the body of that death.
! We lose, then, the only harvest worth the
rcaping from the tears and blood that both
sides so plentifully sowed, if We will not see
our brother in our enemy, and a common coun-
try in the alien sections. Sober and discreet
travellers in the South, men like Bryant and
the great chief Justice not easily deceived, tes-
tify that they have found everywhere kindli-
ness of feeling which would be brotherliness If
any answering kindliness encouraged it. If we
are not vet lofty enough to forgive the living
who themselves have something to forgive IN
us, let us at least respect the heroism and the
honesty of the dead. They were of our race
and of our kindred. They were not greatly
different from ourselves. Remembering that
we invited, through cowardice or greed, the
war that they plunged US into through a mad
fanaticism; remembering that only reunited
and noble Union can justify the awful cost of
blood and agony, shall we refuse to lay flowers
of kindness on the turf that eight years OF
peace have nourished7 Let US rather heap it
high with blossoms, and if we bring rue for
bitter mourning, let us not forget rosemary for
sweet remembrance, and pansies for generous
thoughts.
We know not the author of the apotbegm,
"Shrouds have no pockets" but its truth is so