The Pulaski citizen. [volume] (Pulaski, Tenn.) 1866-current, 1886-09-16

waste, her wealth consumed, her
cities battered and burnt and ruin
ed and her thousands of once hap
pY homes made desolate and
mournful by the rage and wrath of
armies and the cruel raYages of civ
il war. The angel of death had
crossed almost every threshold and
100000 of the flower of the land
were in bloody graves. Every sigh
ing breeze that swept her dreary
wastes from the bloody grounds of
the wilderness to the smouldering
embers of ruined Atlanta bore the
walls of weeping women. She was
land of sorrowing mothers, heart
broken widows and orphaned chill
dren. She was a land full of griefs
more poignant than the sword that
made them. They sat disconsolate
on the fresh made graves of all that
was sweetest and dearest on earth,
and there in silence and in tears
expressed sorrow too mighty for
the poverty of words. My country
men, since Christ and Calvary there
was no grarter anguish, no holier
scene of woman's love. The men
of the south, survivors of that de-
vastating deluge of fire and blood,
contemplating the wreck and ruiz
of their blighted country, dropped
their heads and folded their arms
in the full and first realization of
hopeless despair.
But the big, brave hearts and
braWny arms of those bronzed vete-
rams of hundred battles were not
to thus remain in the stupor and
paralysis of lost hope. 1t did not
become a brave people to thus yield
up their courage and passively
await the finishing stroke of adj
verse fate. In the misfortune and
restitution which the war had
brought upon their innocent and
helpless families they heard the
stern command of new and ardu-
Gus duty; in the destruction of
their homes and the desolation of
their country they saw a new field
of noble strife. They said The
storm is past and We survive; while
life remains the star of hope will
not be quenched, though often
times obscured by the passing
shadows. We cannot give back life
to those who fell; we cannot bring
back the fallen fortunes and de-
parted glories of the old south, but
we can build a new south, and by
the blessings of almighty God we
will do 1t. We will build it on new
foundations in which shall be in
corporated the great constitutional
principles Now settled and estab-
lished by the arbitrameut of the
sword. They brushed away the
tears of their weeping women and
pledged them brighter day, when
the shadows should vanish and the
clouds roll by. They turned their
backs upon the dead past and
bravely faced the future. They
were standing on the outposts of
new field of warfare and, their vete-
ran eyes kindling with the light of
reviving hope, saw the welcome ap-
proach of other and nobler conflicts,
not of carnage and death, bat the
glorious battles of peace. Behold
the transformation! The armies of
Lee and jackson, Johnson and
Cheatham have grounded their arms
and forever furled the torn and tat
tered banners of the lost cause.
Their serried columns no longer
OF q nd lilo vErollo 81 fhn
ties forefront, but dlsbanded and
restored to their shattered homes,
they have laid aside their swords
aud muskets and re- entered and re-
sumed the arts and occupations of
peace. Farmers, mechanics, en-
gineers, artisans, manufacturers,
statesmen, lawyers, teachers, physi-
clans and divines, they begin the
grand structure of the new south.
The debris and wreckage of wars
destruction are cleared away and
the foundations are built upon the
enduring principles of free thought.
free action, free labor, tree ballot,
justice, law, order, the education of !
the masses, the autonomy of the |
states, constitutional government,
one flag and reunited public.
These, my countrymen, are the |
of the progressive demo
cracy of the new south. They in
spire the energy, the push, the grit |
snap which are rapidly rearing the
southern half of the grandest struc-
ture of advanced ciVlliZ alton the |
world ever saw.
Only twenty years have passed |
since the firing of the last gun, and
we witness to day a progress in the
achievements of brain and muscle
in the sciences, arts and industries
and unheard of in
the history of nations. Under the
methods of free and en-
Iightened labor our sunny southland
blooms like the rose.
From the banks of the Potomac
10 the fiower-wreathed peninsula of
the Gulf, where orange blossoms
breathe and sweet magnolia bloom,
Her fields are green or white as snow,
Or golden the sunset glow,
With bleaching cotton, emerald cans,
Or yellow seas Of waving grain,
Called forth as by the touch of
her new and magnifi-
cent cities have sprung from the
ashes ard ruins of these that went
Town by the shot and shell and
lanes of civil war. Atlanta, bright
est gem in the coronet OF the new
south, Birmingham, with her glow
ng furnaces born of the brain and
,rawn of the Iron God. Chatta-
looga on the rolling Tennessee
parking as a diamond with the
White heat of her industries and set
n the midst of her green historic
Hills. Knoxville, fsirest city of our
mountain girt, Switzerland en-
hroned on her everlasting hills,
md shadowing her splendors in the '
beautiful stream that flows at her
eet. Nashville, proud mistress of
he volunteer state, looking down {
N the broad Cumberland. Mem {