The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1903-04-14
THE DECLINE OF sECTIoNALIsM.

NN SANSNO0 'C4S ~ III C"C N0OD N"O
close at Appomattox Court House. General Rob
ert L. Lee conceded that the unequal struggle
between North and South could continue no Ion
ger, and the men who had followed him for four
long years turned sadly homeward to beat their
swords into plowshares and to give a second and
equally notable exhibition of their valor in the re-
building of their ruined Southland.
The Union Armies had ~riumphed indeed, but
one might well have doubted that day whether the
Union had really been preserved. Was there not,
on the contrary, reason to believe that the Union
was a house hopelessly divided against itself and
that the sentence of ruin pronounced in the very
nature of things against all such houses) would
sooner or later be carried out?
Such a belief, we say, would not have been I'M
reasonable then. But to-day no one doubts that
the confederation of American States is a union
in fact as we'll as in name. The South accepted
the changed conditions in good faith and the
North has come to acknowledge the bravery and
the honesty of the men who fought under the Con-
federate banner. Lincoln and Lee are names to
conjure with, North or South.
Nc one questions these assertions, yet it is
gratifying to look around us on the anniversary
of The Surrender, as we Southern folk still call
it, and examine the notable evidences of the
decay of sectionalism.
Here, for example, is the President of the
United States, the head of the reunited country.
Some of our people have fooIishly and stubbornly
tried to persuade themselves that he is unjust to
the Confederate soldier, yet there is only a single
unfortunate phrase, twisted out of its natural
meaning, as a basis for this belief, while to offset
it there are numberless expressions of admiration
for the men who wore the gray. Hear him in his
Life of Benton:
UTbo world hos ,,ovor coo, bo++or ro1J;oru, tho,
those who followed Lee; and their leader will,
undoubtedly, rank as without an exception the
very greatest of all the great captains that the
English speaking peoples have brought forth
and this, although the last and chief of his an
tagonists, may himself claim to stand as the full
equal of Marlborough and Wellington"
And again in a letter to a citizen of Georgia:
81 am extremely proud of the fact that one of
my uncles was an admiral in the Confederate
Navy and that another fired the last gun fired
aboard the Alabama. I think the time has come
when we can all of us be proud of the valor
shown on both sides of the Civil War"
Nor does President Roosevelt stand alone. His
predecessor proposed a National appropriation
to care for Confederate graves. The National
Government is even now preparing to publish side
by side in one undiscriminating edition the COM
plete rosters of the Union and Confederate
Armies. And the latest official records do not
speak of the "War of the Rebellion" but of the
"Civil War"
Moreover, Mr.. Charles Francis Adams, a de-
scendant of the only two Presidents Massachu-
setts has ever given the Nation, and himself a
brevet brigadier-genera for services in the Union
Army, has lately delivered a notable address justi-
flying the secession of the South. Here are his
words:
GVV1o, +bo FoJo-,1 To,u4:L-4.
and adopted-'an ndestructible Union of imper-
ishable States'-what was the law of treason-to
what or to whom, in case of final issue, did the
aVeranR citizen QUO allnn;nnno0 NJ