The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1877-06-14

hostages to the nation at large. Instead
of sti gmatizing it, the victor in the fight
should throw over the South the flag OF
the republic; should place in front of it
the emblematic eagles of the State;
should fold it round from the dark and
the light with the instinct of maternity,
tenderest of its crippled offspring. To
the young men of the South the country
must look for the resurrection of the
South. They should carry no dead
weights either in their hearts or on their
backs. The work of physical liberation,
which is happily ended, is to be followed
by q greater, grander work-the work
of moral emancipation. A sagacious
craftsmanship, even more than a generous
magnanimity, points to this as the hope
of the white man and the black man;
the real restoration of the Union; the
true solution of the problems of life and
labor raised up by the mighty vicissitudes
of the last fifteen years.
It is not my purpose to speak of current
political issues, except those which are
always current, which are above all par
ties-our whole country, our whole
people-the glory of the one, the integrity
of the other. Those of US who stood in
front of the battle, who suffered and
endured, settled the account between
ourselves long ago. We may quarrel
never so much, as honest men will and
as honest men ought, about the things of
today. That is republicanism which
gives each man the right, as it imposes
upon each the duty, to speak his mind
out freely, to make his wants known
subject neither to bayonet nor ban
limited only by the injunctions set by
God upon the sincerity, no less than the
courage, of all mems conviction. In the
party sense, we may quarrel to-day and
fraternize tomorrow what boots it?
There is no one of US who does not know
in the core of his heart that, us matters of
fact and truth, such quarrels have no
bottom to them. They make us angry,
abusive, ungenerous. As rule, the
warmest and truest natures are, for the
moment, most intolerant. The most
charitable, the most magnanimous of
men, believing themselves in the right,
believing all who do not agree with them
in the wrong, become unyielding, and
even bitter. It is an attribute of simple
earnestness. Those who possess. it should
prize it., and, after the event, weigh its
conclusions with discrimination. Let a
counter-interest come between, let
common grief, and 10! the mist rises.
Those who worship the same God, who
kneel at the same shrine, who breathe to
Heaven the same prayers, who sing the
same songs, in whose mouths the inspira-
tions of holy writ and the precepts of
Anglo-Saxon freedom are as familiar as
household words, can afford no impassa-
BILE gulfs,' cannot seriously and perma-
nently be estranged. The dead who lie
here; the dead of all the battle Fields,
the dead of the South and the North,
comrades at lasti in the Immortality ofthe
soul, can leave US, do leave us, this lesson
only: That we are Americans; that we
are republicans; that we are blessed
in our condition; that we should cherish
it and one another, for Gods sake and
for the honor of the flag! The poet put
it inversely when he wrote:
81 think in the lives of most women and men
There's time when all might so smooth
and even,
If only the dead could find out when
To come back and be forgiven"
Alas, it is the living who must 60 to the
dead for Instructions. The brave hearts
that lie about us here have nothing to
ask of us. They are everlasting, now.
They know all. They are moved no
longer by the fever, the worry and the
fret, the error and the folly, the laughter
and the tears of this poor world. They
need seek the forgiveness of none of U.s..
They earned their title of the everything
God on the field of battle. [ would put
upon their graves the inscription which
marks the resting-place of two brothers
in Virginia, who fell on opposing sides,
(Which was right, God knows" | care
not to know. do know that all of us
thought we we're right; and, feeling as [
do, would visit, and revisit, these burial
places, not to illumine the torches of the
past, but, by humiliation and prayer, to
draw from those mystic forces OF faith,
which move us we know not how, some
token, some guiding light. for the future.
hope, my friends, tba.. though speak
ing in the general, and making no effort
at display, I put the case with plainness'
All of us here are neighbors. We know
each other fairly we'll; we are moved by
the everyday promptings of our lot
some good, some i'll. We ou~ht not to
desire ceremony like this to be impos'
ing, or grand, or in any way ostentatlous
He would be poor maker of phrases
| who could not turn it to account.
come to you, come back to you, VIII:
went hence boy, but who has preserved
the instincts, with the traditions, of
youth which, as you will remember, can
not be brought to contradict what, IN my
mature manhood, I have tried to say.
hoped, when you called me hither, that
might contribute little to the era o
goodwill. concciving that its only value
would be its sincerity for | need but re
peat myself-evcr since you knew me
to do honor to the patriotism and valo
of those who died to save the Union
gratitude and respect to those who hav'
lived to save it. War or no war, we ar
all countrymen, fellow-citizens; and 1t l
no mawkish sentiment or idle rhapsod.
which seeks to bring us nearer together
The day of the sectionalist is over. In
day of the nationalist has come. 1t ha
come, and it will grow brighter ant