The Laurens advertiser. (Laurens, S.C.) 1885-1973, 1901-11-13


ment, new and safe starting-point
On May %, following the surrender c
Johnston, May IL, the Index had Al
article entitled Southern Reslstanc
in Texas in which it announced tha
'such war will be fierce, ferociou
and of long duration.' In word
such an expiring struggle as we ar
today witnessing in South Africa. Onl
in its issue of June j, when Presiden
Davis had been captured and Kilb
Smith had surrendered did it raise th
wailing-cry, Fuit Iium Th
South has fallen.'
"Comparing the situation which thel
existed in the Confederacy with tha
now in South Africa, it must be alst
remembered that General Lee assumed
the responsibility he did assume, and
decided the policy to be pursued in the
way it was decided. under no amelior
ating conditions. Politically, uncondi
tional surrender was insisted upon
and Lees surrender was, politically
unconditional. Even moro so was
Johnston's. Nor that alone. The EN-.
ancipation proclamation of January,
1863, which confscated the valuable
chattel property of the Confederacy
remained the irreverslble law of the
land. The inhabitants Of the South,
were, moreover, as one man disfran-
chised. When they laid down their
arms, they had before them, first a
military government, and after that
the supremacy Of the former slaves. A
harder fate for the proud people TO ac-
cept could not be imagined. The bit
terness of feeling, the hatred was too
extreme.
I" 1t may possibly be argued that the
conditions i'll this country then were
different from those now in South
Africa. Inasmuch as here it was
civil war, conflict between communi.
ties of the same race and speech, in
volving the vital question of the supre-
macy of law. This argument, however,
seems to imply that in case of strife
of this description general severity
may fairly be resorted to in excess of
that permissible between nations. In
other words, that we are justified in
treating our brethren with greater
harsbness than we would treat aliens
in blood and speech. Obviously this
is question of contention. 1t might
possibly also be claimed that the Bit
terness of civil war is not so insur
as that Of one involving
question of race dominance. Yet it
is difficult to conceive bitterness of
greater intensity than existed between
the sections at the close of our civil
war.
indeed, recalling the circumstances
of that time, it is fairly appalling to
consider what in 1865 must have oc-
Cured had Robert e. Lee then been
OF the same turn of mind as Jefferson
Davis, or as implacable and unyielding
in disposition as Kruger or Botha hay Q
more recently proved. The national
government had IN arms million men,
Injured to the hardships and accustom-
ed to the bru,alitles of war Lincoln
had been freshly assassinated the
temper of the North was thoroughly
aroused, while its patience was ex-
hausted. An irregular warfare would
inevitably have resulted, warfare
without quarter. The Confederacy
would have been reduced to smoul-
dering wilderness to what South Africa
today is. In such death. grapple the
North, both in morale and in means
would have suffered only less than the
South. From, both sections that fate
was averte,l.
And again say that, as we look
today upon Kruger and Botha and De-
Wet, and the situation existing in the
Transvaal and the Orange Free States,
doubt If one single man in the United
States, North or South-whether he
in the civil war or was
born sinco that war ended, would not
have to acknowledge an infinite debt of
gratitude to the Confederate leader
who, on April 8, 1865, decided as he
did decide, that the United States,
whether Confederate or Union, was a
Christian community, and that his
duty was to accept the responsibility
which the fate of war had imposed
upon him-to decide in favor of new
national life, even if slowly and pain
fully to be built up by his own people
under conditions arbitrarily and by
force imposed on Them"