The Aberdeen examiner., 1883-06-07

or gave its impress to the foreign
policy of the Republic regulated its
finances ;dictated its territorial bounds;
made its wars and to large extent
fought them dictated its treaties;
drafted its fundamental laws and to a
large extent construed them from the
Bench of the Court of last resort, and
in nearly all things that tended to
the elevation and advancement of the
country as a whole, exercised lead
ership that won the admiration of the
world and gave to Republican insti-
tutions the firm anchorage that neith-
er the heat of civil war or the age of
misrule that succeeded it could iostle
or disturb. But strange as it may
seem, those Southern statesmen while
welded then as now to the theory of
States rights in the pure acceptation
Of the term, managed the Govern
nent in the interest of the whole and
without reference to the immediate
demands or necessities of their re-
spective States. On the other hand,
from the earliest days of the Repub-
lie, thrifty spirit was manifested by
the statesmen from the Northern and
Eastern States, and even before the
war of 1912 the Union had come to
be regarded by many in the light of
a source of supply from which each
Congressman was expected to wrest
what he could in the way of appro
priations for his own district. So it
happened that while we held the reins
and guided the steeds our Northern
friends lolled in the cushioned seats
and rode luxuriously, and when the
war came it found them rich in facto-
ries and ships that protective tariffs
and navigation laws and bounties had
supplied; and rich in harbors and
navigable rivers that had been i'm
proved at Federal outlay; and rich in
numerous railroads that had been
built from the profits the tillers of
the soil were compelled to pay the
owners of the mills, while here in the
South we plowed and hoed and dug
along through our ever expanding
fields, oblivious to the fact that our
only strength for war consisted in the
courage and muscle transmitted by
God through toll, habits and climate;
without the means of concentration
that railroads give, and with almost
as many Southern men in the field
confronting us as we were able to
muster against foe that outnumber-
ed us fully three to one if every man
in the Southern and bordered States
stood with us.
We indulge in this skeleton of re-
trospection without intent to vaunt
the patriotism of one section or dis
parage that of the other, but only to
call attention to the fact that North
ern and Western craftsmanship still
pursues the hard beaten ancestral
pathway--the man of Maine, the man
Of Kansas, the man of Michigan, the
man of New York and all the rest
who assembled from those sections
beneath the dome of the Capitol, comes
up to Congress like the farmers wife
goes to the city on a shopping visit,
each with a schedule of demands
each with memorandum
Of the "things"needed by his district;
each with a plan for disbursing public
money upon the rivers, Or harbors or
public buildings in that portion of
his State that contains the voters who |
accredited him to the councils of the |
Republic.
We have drawn faithful picture
but there is not tinge or vestige of
malice or detraction in the spirit that |
dictated it: We only desire to
emphasize the fact that the states
manship of the South has always been
broad in its scope, and has looked to
and cared for the Republic as an en-
tirety, while that of the East and
West is as methodical and business
like as the dealings of their mer-
chants and millers.
The practical craftsmanship of the
North and East has been a winning
policy ; it has made their States rich,
and strong, and populous, and there
is not the slightest reason to believe
that it will ever be tempered or
abandoned, and now the question
that suggests itself is simply this
Shall we pursue the even tenor of
our way, looking alone to the gran
deur and wealth of the country as a
whole, or shall we insist that every
who goes up to Wash
ington from Mississippi shall regard
himself as commissioned to do the
best thing possible for the material
advantage and Advancement of his
own constituents; the best thing pos
sible for his own State, and then,
uniting with the delegation from other
Commonwealths endeavor to recon-