The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1892-04-22
THE CONFEDERATE REUNION.

The Confederate veterans had an en-
second week in April Longstreet and
General Gordon were present and were
the subject of boisterous congratulations
from the Confederate rank and file. The
Lost Cause" was eulogized; there was
the usual apothecsis of its dead heroes"
the customary Lodge of Sorrow" was
held over the corpse of the Confederacy,
and the stock expressions of regret for
the failure of an attempt to found "a re-
public" with human slavery for corner
stone were repeated on this occasion. A
resolution was adopted calling upon each
of the states of the late Confederacy to
grant an annual pension of 500 to Mrs.
Jefferson Davis during the remainder of
her life
This Confederate Reunion with its re-
grets for the failure of foolish cause that
deserved death may not be very eneour-
aging spectacle, but it is, at least, manly
performance compared with the Blue and
the Gray" reunions, redolent with rancid
sentimental rhetoric that no sincere stout
soldier on either side hears without dis
gust. Before the common-sense logic of
the primitive right of national self-preser-
walton the logic of Confederate and copper
head is absolutely worthless In vindica-
ton of the right Of national self-preserva-
ton the North bridged the gulf between
the sections with its dead, and the annual
invocation of the ghost of the Lost
Cause" squeaking and gibbering through
the cities of the South, is harmless to ex-
cite alarm or even anger. Poor old Jeff
Davis, chanting his old dogmas that died
under the Union bayonets, was subject
for compassion rather than contempt, in
common with all old men who do not
know when ii is time to be silent; to take
off the togs and order the shroud
These absurd annual speeches and the
demonstrations for the glorifcation of the
long defunct Confederacy do not revive
any of the issues practically that were in
volved in it. Many of US don't like as
matter of taste to near the sheeted dead of
the Lost Cause" squeak and gibber in the
streets, but We are not greatly disturbed
by this annual expectoration of Confeder-
ate sentimentalisin and exhumation of a
dead state that knows no hope of resur-
rection. These emotions on the whole DO
the South no harm, good rather, because
such memories run back to battle that
in spite of the error for which il was
fought was the most ennobling hour in its
old time influence and inspiration and in
its present recall that Southern civiliza-
ton has known since Eutaw Springs. To
the South the war was from this point a
gain, because it lifted their purposeless,
indolent youth to higher level
than cards. billiards, horse rae
ing, choppIng straw at corner
groceries and calling it politics The
knowledge that they did fight splendidly
for their error makes the South through
its memory higher and manlier civlliza-
ton than il ever was before the war. The
war taught the North that the South was
not only boastful but resolute to the very
gates of death. and it taught the South
that there were thousands of peaceful
Northern men, who, despising barroom
brawl or street fight, could nevertheless
face the dreadful; music of battle with
frmness and die decently for their flag.
Behind all the -hodomontade of their
drunken, braggart demagogues and can
kcred boureons who never faced bullets
for the Confederaey there are nobler and
better voices heard than we're heard before
the war began.
Military glory was always a passion
with the old South, and gallant military
exploits always counted for more with
her people than with those of the North.
The South before The war was an oligarchv
of planters, politicians, lawyers and SOL
diers, among whom the first requisite TO
decent social standing was an unsullied
reputation for personal courage and a
willingness TO fight promptly on the
slightest proyocatson. Among such peo-
pie gallan; soldier was easily popular
compared with the North, a nation of
shopkeepers, manufacturers and conserva-
tive farmers, who tolerated a soldier but
rated him as one Of the vulgar necessities
of an imperfect civilization tina, was really
at war with the commercial and indus
trial prosperity of a country.
The South, too. before the war, was a
less busy people than the North. Her in
teIligent and wealthy classes led lives OF
comparative leisare, unless they were
deeply absorbed IL law and politics, There
we're no diversified manufactures, there
was no large class of respectable free white
labor, corresponding with the great white
working classes OF the North. The slaves
did all the work. The great mass of POOR
whites despised work As only fit for slaves,
and led lives of comparative Incidence,
fishing and hunting more days than they
expended in their rude, shiftless. ram
shaokle farming Such a people, with
time TO brood, would be sure to be u peop,e
OF more sentiment and feeling than the