The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1903-08-15

Then came that awful crisis and or
deal in the life OF the sunny Southern
land, when its future was black with
uncertainty. One by one her ideals had
been shattered, until there was left of
that beautiful olden time My the sad,
sweet memory. Poverty, cold and relent-
less, took her people III its grasp and
the son of the Southern planter who
had been reared to think that labor was
the badge OF degradation, was compelled
to grasp the pillow handle and to WELD
the scytheA There is no sublimer picture
of the high courage of the Southern SOL
der than this. 1t was expected that he
should walk with unfaltering step into
the mouth of blazing cannon; he had
been taught through hundreds of years
to despise death. The world knew that
these young men who went out from the
South in the early sixties to offer their
lives upon the altar Of the country were
only living their traditions as they smil-
ingly rode to battle and, singing love
songs, went gaily down to death. These
were things they could not help; they
had been bred into them for genera
tions.
But after the war was over and pow
erty drove the remnant of these same
men to manual labor, the. fact that they
bent then necks unmurmuringly 10 what
they falsely but sincerely thought was
degrading-this was a courage of diyin.
er sort
Reflect for a moment, if you please,
uron the gigantic task these men had to
undertake. Their institutions were in
ruins, their traditions uprooted all the
ancient polity in which they lived and
moved and had their being was wiped
from the face of the earth, land out of
the ruins 1T became the task of these
men to erect a new system and build
up new government. No man can tell
the thoughts and hopes, the fears and
anXieties that disturbed the lives of the
men who were unfortunate enough to
live to surrender. The red scourge of
war was as nothing to what was to be
in the awful days of so-called recon
struction The negro slave, drank with
power and reveling in the license that
his sudden freedom brought, became the
master and set his heel hard upon the
necks of the men who were his former
masters. Negroes who could not read or
write sat in Judgment upon the property
ancestry back to the Stuart kings of
England.
The State was one reeking hotbed of
infamy and vice, and the bitterest drop
i'll the cup that these men had TO drink
was the reflection hat not only were
they conquered but that, in the hour of
their calamity their enemies laughed them
to scorn. Deprived of the right of bal
lot. without any hand in the government,
they were compelled to sit idly by and
see the States credit debauched and her
fair name dragged in the dust and mire.
The steady courage of these great men
did not fail. Patiently they suffered and
patiently endured, until at last. by sheer
force OF innate manhood, they rose to
their feet. cast out the usurpers and took
the government again into their own
hands.
THE surest evidence of the greatness
of the men of whom l speak is that they
never in these dark days grew dlscour-
aged, and never quit the fight When at
last the negro and the carpet Dagger were
driven out, it was from among the llv
ing remnant of Lees army, the men who
surrendered that we found the statesmen
who framed and built up our government
ana brought order out OF chaos. Where
had these men learned statecratt, that
they could 50 easily assume the burden of
building up a State, OF organizing lnstltu-
tions and OF developing resources as they
did? Where had they studied political
economy, that they were able TO solve
so thoroughly and so we'll the questions
of economy that came to them? That they
~ nj
the fact that for twenty years after the
white man had come to his own again In
North Carolina, these men that had sur
rendered ut AppomattoX held the States
destinies in their keeping and no breath
of scandal touched it, and no one of It's
officers was defaulter. Traly, they
were giants.
In the upheaval following hard upon
the war, in the terrible struggle for
meat and bread and the necessarics OF
life we had no chance Tor growth OF eX-
penson There IS on record no parallel
to the conditions obtaining at the South
at the close of and as result of the
war. Eight millions of bigoted, selfish,
cruel and nsolent voters dumped INTO the
body polite, clothed with power, given
the plenary right of the ballot without
the first idea of how to use it or what It's
RESPONSIBILITIES were-thls of itself would
have made the task that Lees surren-
dered soldicry had to assume, gigantic.
But when you couple with that the furth-
er fact that almost an equal number of
tho States pest and most cultured citl-
zens were contemporaneously deprived OF
the ballot, taken out OF the body polite
the only marvel is that the excuses were
not greater than they were. There must
have becn-there was a conserving influ
ence about those men that kept the State
safe even in her moments of greatest
Peril. = 3 .
.In fifteen years after the flag was
furlcd at Appomattox, with no basis Of
credit except the growing crop each year,
which. by virtue of a statute ade for
that purpose IN order to cultivate and
produce it. was mortgagCd ahead, we had
doubled the number of bales of cotton
that the South had ever grown in any
ono wear. All over the South factories
were Swinging into existence and, taking
orr own raw material growing at our
very doors. we spun it into coarser fab
rios and so forced New England to the
sninn,ne and weaving of The finer fabrics
that correspondingly increased the value