Wichita eagle., 1888-07-04

Thousands of new industries, mining
manufacturing, commercial and agricul
tural, arise as in a newly settled or lately
discovered land. To facilitate every en-
terFetse railroads, thoroughly appointed
courses are richly burdened with freight
hitherto unknown, and with new indus
tries greater skill satisfies more various
demands, opens wider commercial connec-
lions and more intimate social relations,
and establishes higher and more opulent
rama the happiest incident is due directly
to the war. 1t is the blending of the CAPT
tai, the people, the energy, tho experience,
the skill and conviction, of other states
with those of the southern states, which
has produced this great result. Before the
war this was impossible. Ever deepening
doubt and angrier divergence had con-
sumed the heart of union and only its form
remained. This universal confidence and
cooperation, therefore, are in the truest
| sense the fruits of union. But fairer
| than all these, as this smile of prosperity
broadens over the awakening states, is the
| fact that labor itself becomes free, and
slaves transformed to citizens. Free Ia
Dor produces the great southern staples as
amply as before, and is welcomed to the
| new industries. 1t pays taxes on property
| of its own valued at nearly hundred mil
| lions OF dollars, while for the children OF
| former slaves there are nearly twenty thou
rollment of more than million Of pupils,
and everywhere a demand for education
and public disposition to crafty it hith-
erto unprecedented. This new birth of
freedom is the noblest aspect of the specta-
Gle. The splendor of material progress
may easily delude and betray with its fond
and fiattering caress. But it is not in
such details alone that the promise of any
people is to be discerned. 1t is not great
| mine only, and factories and farms, that
make great nations. The patriot looks to
see churches, and schools, and libraries. he
studies the decreasing records Of crime. he
marks the growing respect for common
| moral qualities, the progressive political
tendencies, and higher standards OF life
| among a people, before he counts the
spindles and the cotton bales, if he would
| cast Alright their horoscope and fOreteil
their future. The appearance of such
signs under complicated and unpreceden-
ted conditions, conditions which no other
states in history ever knew, he sees with
hope and pride amid this vast industrial
revival. The full truitiOn. indeed, Is not
yet. But if some impatient observer. eager
that the surely ripening harvest shall be
reaped before its golden prime, exciaims
angrily that nothing has been done be-
answer be that Of the wise general to his
young lieutenant who burned for victory
and thought the troops to slow, '"Tis an
awfully rough road my boy, give them
time, give them timer
Not easily nor rapidly can the passions
sprsng from bitter local differences, and
cherished and strengthened for a genera
prote stations those dying emotions will
break forth like the distant muttering
thunder of a retiring storm. But the cen
trail fact is bright as a fixed star. The
line across the union drawn by the flaming
sword of hostile social and industrial
institutions. and irreconcileable theories
of the nature and powers OF the govern
ment itself, the latent revolution and
nascent civil war have disappeared for
ever. At the end of hundred years the
union is the sacred seamless garment of
equal rights, of harmonious institutions,
of accordant views of the government in
which sixty millions of people in thirty
eight states are invincibiy arrayed.
The great question is settled. Other
sternly try our patriotism and our VS.
dom. But they will be appealed to the
ordeal of battle no longer. They will be
settled in those peaceful, popular and
parliamentary contentious which befit
patriotic and intelligent republican peo-
pie do not mean only that party poll
tics and measures will be so discussed. l
mean that great fundamental questions
like slavery in the last generation. ques-
lions of immigration, of citizenship, of
administrative reform, of the SUFFRAGE
questions of a local bearing and inter
est, but national import and conse-
guence, can be, and henceforth will be,
discussed everywhere in the union. Let
me mention as illustrations two of these
questions, which are in the highest sense
questions of the country and not of party.
The dazzling statistics to which l have
alluded, outstip all precedent, but
they are not limited to one part of the
country. While new Ohios and Pennsyl-
XaniaS arise in the south, larger, more fer
tile, more marvellous New Englands ap-
pear beyond the Mississippi. The old
poets described teeming Sicily as the gran
airy of the world, and it was so for the
world they knew. But now for that old
world and the boundless new world that
we know combined, nothing less than our
mighty northwest can be the granary
Eighty years ago Lewis and Clark toiled
through the western wilderness from the
mouth of the Missouri to the Great Falls
in thirteen months. Now that wilderness
is transformed into farms. Distance and
time are conquered by endless rail
roads. the channels of ceasless
torrents of trade and inter
of fabulous fertility. The spectacle
amazes and fascnates the world. The
fables of FL Dorado are told once more,
and the new Atlantis seems to rise from
the sea. That this land of boundless oppor-
tunities is also the home of universal free
dom, and that the blessing is to be enjoyed
by every conner, begets in every land a
hunger for America, and the annals of
American immigration almost recall the
migration OF ancient races.
The first settlement of the country two
centuries and half ago, was made in gen
eral and tried by worthy pioheers. New
England proudly quotes the words of the
old puritan divine, William Stoughton:
God sifted whole nation that he might
send grain over into the Wilderness" and
the great commonwealth in which we
are now assembled, with equal pride vene-
rates its founder who won his domain by
the arts of peace and not Of war. But,
after the settlement of the country, the
current of immigration almost stopped
until recent years. Its flood is now greater
than ever, but no longer pours sifted grain
upon this continent, but grain mixed with
noxious weeds and brambles. Our
population is already more het-
orogeneous than that of any
July. 1t is our national holiday. Yet
half the population Of our greatest city,
and vast numbers of the people elsewhere,
will have no knowledge Of the sublime
significance of the day. no kindllng pride.
no answering enthusiasm. as the stars and
stripes greet the suspicious morning Ihls
is a fact of profound significance Only
the magic power of the lotus could dull
the longing of the Greek heart for Greece.
The soul OF the German thrills everywhere
to the music OF his fatheriand, The irish
man is still the exile of Erin. The wall