The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1903-10-18
THE CIVIL WAR

plow to provide food for the children
of the absent: and at f1resides where
eyes, dimmed with tears, guided the
needle through garments that were be-
ing fashioned for the brave boys who
battled beyond the Potomac: and in
counting rooms where Prudence turned
aside her face while trembling fingers
wrote the checks which Capital gave
to country. Everywhere on land and
sea, on mountain and in valley, in
street and shop amid the fire of FORCES
and the hum of factories. in the hos
pitfalls of sorrow, by the midnight
watch-fire and amid the roar OF bat
tle," wherever the heart of the nation
throbbed, wherever the sword of the
nation CLEANED. there upon the parch-
ment of the Eternal Ages million
armed men wrote irrevocable judgment
and decree, that slavery should
die, that freedom should live. and
that government Of the people, by the
people and for the people, should not
perish from the earth.
AAA
Four years of war, and appalling
sacrifice Of blood and treasure. -Four
years of a conflict convulsing the earth
with its consequences. and the repre-
sentatives of the foreign powers again
gathered, this time at the great stand
in front of the White House. to wit
ness the Grand Review. The Army of
the Potomac, the Army of Tennessee,
the Army Of the West. and all the
legions which the bugIe call of en-
dangered liberty had summoned. filed
in grand procession in the nations
N ,-sn tot hut kv{,
plant banners, and bronzed faces, and
jubilant hearts, past the places where
the foreign ministers gazed. There
was food for foreign meditation in the
sight. The Confederacy was dead and
these were it's executioners. Jeffer-
son Davis paced his cell at Fortress
Monroe, and his armies were scatter
ed to the winds. The American ex-
pertinent of self-government was an
established success. What Europe
deemed to be its dying struggles. were
only the throes of a mighty second
birth. 1t had sloughed its viler attri-
butes and though the pangs of par
turition were mighty, it was a giant
that arose purified from the pain,
giant who today stretches his
mighty limbs from the Arctic to
the Equator, from the Atlantic west
ward to within sight of the shores Of
Asia, and rules nation of eighty
millions; a nation great in letters,
arts, arms, commerce, prosperity, free
dom and power.
AAA
Reconstruction began as soon as war
ceaSed-even before war ceased, for
the first task of the first federal regi-
nents which marched into Richmond
was to extinguish the flames which
retiring Confederates had kindled The
conquerors refrained from pilIage and
shared their rations with the con-
quered. The destroyers. of armies be-
came the preservers Of property. The
vanguard of victory became the pio-
neers OF reconstruction. The South
had fought from an earnest, passion
ate, mistaken standard of loyalty to
the State, the North had fought from
loyalty to the Union, and the losing of
the lost cause was to the South the
greatest of gains, for she is more pros
porous without slavery than she ever
was with it.
The men of the South would, in my
opinion, have been wiser, if, after
they had accepted the sit
uation, and sought to influence the
negro vote in place of attempting to
coerce it. The former slaves were, as
rule, attached to their masters and