The farmer and mechanic. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 18??-19??, 1911-09-05
DIR, STOWE ON
ORIGIN OF WAR
Remarkable Utterances By the
Son Of the Autiioress of Uncle
Toms Cabin
Confederate Neteran.)

of fiction, made an address IN NdSh-
Vile both remarkable and interesting.
He admitted some wholesome 1actS 10
a great gathering of negroes at FISK
University. Prominent on the plat
form was Booker Washington. He
said in part:
abraham Lincoln in his celebra-
ted Gettysburg address spoke Of our
nation as conceived in liberty and ded-
Gated to the proposition, All men are
created equal This is the great
vague, central, germinant idea Whlcn
lies at the very heart OF our natlonal
institutions. h fathers Of our re-
public, who propounded this great
principle. were neither Utopians nor
Socialists. but men of profound polt-
zeal wisdom acting under a sober
sense of political responsibility. lnes
did not mean to obliterate the past
nor to abolish human nature. Ihey
simply meant to declare that IN our
nation there should be a fair chance
for every man to develop the best that
there is in him. irrespective OF race,
color or nationality. The idea was
new and untried. 1t was an expert
ment, it was not something that
could be realized at once, but must
be the slow growth Of ages
'This much must be conceded. that
the Northern States were just as re-
sIonsible for the existence of slavery
as were the Southern States, and that
slavery ceased to exist in the North
ern States because it was to them an
economic failure. and it grew strong
er in the Southern States after the
invention Of Eli Whitney's cotton gin
simply because it was enormously
profitable and property and slaves cor
respOndingly valuable. AS a result the
two sections of the country grew up
on VIZ ,,ftnr1V ir~rncnnpi1a h1a and home
1essly antagonistic economic bases,
that Of slave and free labor.
The North with free labor was in
harmony with the most enlightened
intelligence Of the G as to slavery,
and advanced rapidly toward a con-
ception of a national democratic re-
public in which the individual should
be the unit. while the South holding
to the institution of slavery hen 1t
had become an anachronism, and the
whole enlightened intelligence OF the
world was armed against it, was put
upo the defensive, shut up within
itself, and was hopelessIy isolated
from the rest of the world as is China
today.
Nov as slaves were property &C
cording to law any attack upon this
form Of property was an attack indi-
rectly upOn all forms of property and
attack also upon the Constitution of
the United States. In the minds there
fore, of the pious church-going, ortho-
dox Shareholders. and many such there
were, the abcationists Of the North
were looked upon as we today regard
the mountaineering anarchists of Chi
ago or the most radical wing Of the
Socialist party-as the enemies Of So
ciety and the enemies Of God and His
holy word, the Bible. in which the
pious Shareholder of the South found
- h~,- lox - - - -
stitution.
s. along these two points the con-
f1ict ragged. and lavery, when it was
attacked. intrenched itself more and
more within the doctrine of State
rights, so that at the last the two be-
came Identical, and to attack one was
to attack the other. to defend one was
to defend the other. Consequently
when it came to the outbreak of the
Civil W%. many patriotic Southern
men who cared little or nothing about
slavery were stirred with the deepest
indignation at the suggestion Of the
national government a SOW
ereign State by force of arms. and
said that a Union tina could only be
held together by bayonets had better
be dissolved and for the principle of
State rights and State sovereignty the
southern men fought. with a holy ar
dor and self-denying patriotism that
nave covered even defeat with imper-
ishable glory.
"And let us look at the matter from
the Southern standpoint. The party
that elected Abraham Lincoln was a
party avowedly hostile to the %institu-
ton of slavery, apd elected a man to
the presidency who also avowed his
hostility to the institution of slavery.
who had been known to say that the
Union could not exist both slave and
free was bound ultimately to become
all slave Or all free. and who in his
Cooper Union address said that the
anti-slavery sentiment had already
caused more than a million votes
which could have seemed to the
southern States nothing more nor less
than a danger and a menace. Conse-
ouentiy, when they drew the sword to
defend the doctrine of State rights
and that institution of slavery they
certainly had on their side the Con: