Tazewell Republican. [volume] (Tazewell, Va.) 1892-1919, 1900-12-20
"SECTlONALlSM."
Rich nond News, Dem.

Rich nond News Dem.
We have a letter, too long for publica'
ton, written by an evidently intelligent
citizen of this city on the subject of 'Sec'
tionalism." Our correspondent under
takes to prove that sectional feelings and
hatfeds will never die out in this country.
He carries US over the familiar ground of
the early settlements in this country and
assures us that the differences between
the peoples of the two sections are newt
able and everlasting. The South, he
argues, was settled by cavaliers-people OF
broad culture and wealth, accustomed to
easy living and the gentle gTaces. New
England, on the other hand, was settled
and created by narrow, poor, envious,
bigotcd and narrow people who created
the slave trade and sold the slaves to the
South and later freed them with crcum-
stances of peculiar attrocity. The idea
and purpose Of the North, our correspou-
dent urges, is to bumliate, degrade and
lniure the South because two hundred
years ago the South was rich and powerful
while the New England States were COM
paratively poor and weak.
All of this has been said so many times,
some of us believe it so firmly, the facts
are so remorselessIy against it.
We may not know what would have
happened if Grant instead OF Lee had sur
rendered at Appomattox. We have some
crazy fanatics, adventures, crank enthusi-
asts and naturally venomous people on
our side of the line. Perhaps such eie-
ments might have combined, overthrow
reason and suppressed humanity and con.
Quoted the reconstruction of the North on
the came lines on which the North con-
Quoted the reconstruction of the South.
Who knows? However that may be, and
however different the process OF recon-
structon might lave been if Lincoln had
lived, we must remember certain facts
which cannot be disputed.
The South has been restored to political
independence by Northern votes, has
been made commercially prosperous large
ly by Northern money. Without the help
of Northern-Yankee, if our friend pre-
fers the word-voters we could not have
risen to our feet politically, without the
help of Northern money we could not
have built our cities and mills. Can we
argue that tie whole people who stood to
us in our weakest and darkest times and
who have invested their money among us
by the millions, have inveterate hatred
against us ?
Has any stricken Southern community
ever appealed for help in vain to Chicago,
Philadelphia, Boston or New York ? Sure.
ly it is a queer manifestation of hatred and
malice to lavish gifts upon us, strange
evidence of prejudice and wrath when the
North with hands wide open pours its
bounty upon New Orleans, Charleston,
Jacksonville and Galveston and the flood.
ed districts along the Mississippi. If we
hate these people and believe they hate us
we desecrate our manhood and are guilty
of ignoble treachery when we accept their
money in our times of distress and solicit
it for our schools and churches and chart.
ties.
The truth is, there are but few people in
each section who refuse to learn, who bark
back to old issues and dwell amid bygone
conditions. These rehearse over and over
again the same old quarrels and cling to
the same old prejudices There are peo-
pie in back districts of New England who
honestly believe that Southern men are all
idle and bloodthirsty swash-
bucklefs who do not pay their debts; and
there are people in the South who believe
New England to be inhabited exclusively
by illiterate and INSCRIPTIONS clock ped
dlers envious of our superior culture and
blue blood. These people in each section
Judge the other by its belated extremists.
Our correspondent in his letter gives Gu
rious illustration of this. He cities the
objection to the placing of General Lees
name in the Hall of Fame as an instance
Of Northern hatred for the South. He
Overlooks the eight-tenths who voted for
and approved the acceptance of Lee as
one of the proper objects of the country's
pride and fixes his attention on the utter
ance of one discredited newspaper-the
same, by the way, that was most virulent
and unrelenting in assaulting Gen. Grant
Thanks be to Heaven, sectionaism is
lying-is practically dead and will in a
ew years be forgotten. Its doom was
liked when slavery was abolished. The
ime has come when men are estimated
md awarded according 10 their merits,
when people of culture meet and mingle
With no thought of section, when men of
ction from New England to Florida work
boulder to shoulder and are friends and
omrades. We have learned to know and
aspect each other. We have come to