Eastern Colorado times., 1912-11-29
An Epoch-Makins Speech.

A
Address Of President Taft at the
opening session Of convention Of the |
United Daughters Of the Confederacy,
at Continental Memorial Hall, Wash
ington, D. G. November IL, 1912:
Ladies of the United Daughters Of
the Confederacy-I beg to welcome
you to Washington. You have cap
tured this city beautiful aud made 1t
moro lovely by your presencs. AS its
temporary head, give you the free
dom of the city, and recognize that in
what you have done, you have found
ed q shrine and an altar here which
will be visited in the future by many
9 faithful pilgrim.
If the occasion which brings you
here were the mourning at the bier of
q lost cause, know that the nice
sense of propriety of fine old social
school would have prevented you
from inviting me, rs the president OF
the United States, to he present. You
are not here to mourn or support .
cause. You are here to celebrate, and
justly to celebrate, the heroism, the
courage and the sacrifices to the utter
most of your fathers and your broth
ers and your mothers and your sisters,
and to all of your kin, in cause
which they believed in their hearts to
he right, and for which they were will
ling to lay down their lives. That
cause ceased to be, except in history,
now more than q half century ago.
It was one which could elicit from
half a nation, and brave and war
like race, four years. struggle in
which lives, property, and everything
save honor were willingly parted with
for its sake. So great was the genius
for military leadership of many of
your generals. so adaptable was the
individual of your race to effective
warlike training, so full of patriotic
sacrifice were your people that now
when all the bitterness of the struggle
on our part of the north has passed
away, we are able to share with you
Of the south your just pride>in your
men and women who carried on the
unexanpled contest to an exhaustion
that few countries ever suffered. The
calm observer and historian, whatever
his origin, may now rejoice in his
heart that the Lord ordained 1t as
it is. But no son of the south and no
son of the north, with any spark in
him of pride OF race, can tail to rejoice
in that common heritage of courage
glorious sacrifice that we have in the
story OF the civil war and of both sides
in the civil war.
1t has naturally taken long time
for tho spirit of hostility that such an
internecine struggle develops complete
ly to die away. OF course it lasted a
less time with those who were the
victors and into whose homes and do
lncstic laves the horrors of war were
not directly thrust. The physical
evidences of war were traceable in the
south for decades after they had utterly
disappeared in the north in the few
places in which they existed. Then
there are conditions in the south which
are a constant reminder of tho history
of the past. Until within recent de-
cades, prosperity has not shed her
boon of comfort upon the south with
as generous hand as upon the north.
Hence those of us ut the north who
have sometimes been impatient at u
little flash now and then of the sec
tional antagonism are unreasonable
In our failure 70 allow for these mar
ked differences.
For years after the war, the republi-
can party, which had carried the na-
ion through the war to the successful
conclusion, was iu control of the ad-
ininistration of the government, and
it was impossible for the southerner
to escape the feeling that he was linked
in his allegiance to an alien nation
and one with whose destiny he found
it difficult to identify himself. Time,
however, cures much, and after awhile
there came q democratic administra-
ton OF four years, and then another
one of four years. Southerners were
called to federal Office, they came to
have more influence in the halls of
congress and in the senate, and the
responsibility of the government