The commercial. (Union City, Tenn.) 190?-193?, 1911-06-23
Mr.. Stoves Address.

The speech made by DR.. Charles E.
Stowe at the Fisk University commence
ment was an utterance likely to attract
attention aside from any consideration
Of the speakers family association, but
it is the more-notable for that reason.
The son Of Harriet Beecher Stowe and
the nephew of Henry Ward Beecher
speaking in the South on the question
of slavery and the Civil War cannot be
readily disassociated from those ideas
and principles that his forebears so
strongly and conspicuously represented.
The speech that. DIR. Stowe delivered
suggests, in the calmer afterthought,
that the present generation of Ameri-
cans are not greatly divided on those
questions that produced the dire and
inevitable conflict Of the early sixties.
Among other things DIR. Stowe said
this much must be conceded: That
the Northern States were just as re-
sponsible for the existence Of slavery as
we're the Southern States, and that
slavery ceased to exist in the Northern
States because it was for them an eco
nomic failure, and it grew strong in the
Southern States after the invention Of
Eli Whitney's cotton gin simply be-
cause it was enormously profitable and
property and slaves correspondingly
valuable. AS a result the two sections
of the country grew up on two utterly
irreconcilable and hopelessly antagonis-
tic bases-that of slave and free labor. !"
That is historically accurate. In 1870
New York had 81 1924 slaves, and Ten
nessee only 8, All and kentucky II $3.50.
That was but little more than half a
century before Uncle Toms Cabin .
was written that so stirred the Northern
heart against Southern slavery
The profit Of the slavery institution
in the South prevented the same growth
of anti-slavery sentiment here that had
taken place in the rest Of the world, and
then, too, the large number of slaves in
the South, their untutored condition
and apparentlack of responsibility made
those of the South who were fully alive
to the moral obliquy Of slavery per Sc
dread the experiment of emancipation.
The extreme utterances and excerbated
TRADES OF the Northern Abolitionist
also did much to create a spirit OF
antagonism that brought the South
more strongly to the defense of slavery.
Another utterance from Mr.. Stowe is
still more notable. 1t might have come
from an unreconstructed Southerner,
though with the context of the speech
it did not violate the speakers prin-
ciples. Mr.. Stowe said the people OF
the South had the Constitution on their
side, and added:
so it is perfectly evident that there
was great rebellion, but that the
rebels were the Northerners, and that
those who defended the Constitution
as it was were the Southerners, for they
defended States rights and slavery,
which were distinctly entrenched within
the Constitution.
If this be generally admitted, the
North and South of to-day have no pos
sible cause Of quarrel. The Civil War,
according to this view, was revolution
and the South abides by its decision. 1t
abolished slavery, which the South for
no reason would restore, and it made
an indestructible Union which the South
readily acknowledges to be for the best.
History written from Mr.. Stoves
point of view is entirely acceptable to
the South. Let the story be told after
that manner, and the South will make
no complaint. The younger genera
tons of both sections have in Mr..
Stoves presentation Of the case reached
a common ground, and there should be
no further pickering either as to the
past eE present. Nashville Banner.