The Birmingham age-herald., 1922-07-20
LETTERS TO EDITOR
INJURIOUS TO THE SOUTH
To the Editor of The Age-Herald:

TO the Edltor of The Age-Herald:
 Permit me to commend most heartily your editorial comment on the unfortunate adoption of those resolutions by the United Confeder- ate Veterans charging Lincoln with responsi- bility for the Civil war.
 We had thought up this way that those old sectional animosities were about forgotten. We at least though they did not come from the Confederate Veterans, but from those whom Gen. Ben" Hill of Georgia characterized as the invisible in war and invincible in peace" I have lived and travelled in the south consid- erably. Last year I travelled several hundred miles in your state. I have never heard any real bitterness expressed by any Confederate veteran who fought any considerable time at the front. Last year, when heard a sermon in one of the leading churches of Birmingham on the Sunday following Lincoln's birthday, laudatory to this great man whose life and character now honored by democrats and republicans alike in the north, l believed that at least sectionalsm buried, at least in Alabama. Entirely of southern extraction, ed ucated in part at the University of Virginia, of family which in Indiana, the only north ern state containing any of my name, has not a single republican in it, an editor of demo- cratic newspapers a considerable part of my life and friend of the south always, be- lieve these unfortunate resolutions to be most harmful to the true interests of the south. No other even of my recollection has proven such bitter disappointment to those who have be- lieved we now have an reunited country.
 In south central Alabama last year I saw the greatest body of fine land that ever came to my view at such ridiculously low prices talked with the gentleman in Montgomery who had charge of the $100,000 fund raised to in- duce northern colonization The land bar gains of Alabama exceed anything ever saw elsewhere. Thousands of people of Indiana have gone to the Pacific coast, many of them people of southern extraction, who would have preferred the south had they been confident that the old sectional bitterness was ended.
 In Indiana the southern plan of avoiding race friction by separation of the white and the colored race in public places has been so gaining ground, following separation in the schools that there is now big agitation for separation on street cars. The war on non- combatants of Shermans army from Atlanta to the sea" is generally deplored now in the north. We are all willing to admit that, had the average Yankee soldier lived in the for mer Confederate states, he probably would have followed the Stars and Bars instead of the Stars and Stripes
 l do not know one of my own family who ever voted for Lincoln. The revised history which we have generally accepted in the north is that John Wilkes Booth, in killing MT. Lin- coin, had the mistaken idea that Mir Lincoln had broken a promise to pardon friend of his (Booth's). The horrors of reconstruction resulted from the erroneous view in the north that Booths act was condoned and applauded in the south, although General Lee remarked, ''The south has lost her best friend" We had thought that the whole nation now revered the memory of Lincoln. Never since the Civil war has there been greater act of folly, seve
 stab at the industrial progress of the south than the passage of this resolution. The fact that in Alabama during the past year there was not single act of mob violence has cre- ated feeling of confidence in manufacturers seeking relocations xox their plants, investors