The sight of the Goddess of Liberty standing there in New York harbor night and day, bathing her feet in the rippling sea, is a good thing. It is first-rate. It may also be productive of good in a direction that many have not thought of. As she stands there day after day, bathing her feet in the broad Atlantic, perhaps some moss-grown alien landing on our shore and moving toward the Far West may fix the bright picture in his so-called mind, and, remembering how, on his arrival in New York, he saw Liberty bathing her feet with impunity, he may be led in after-years to try it on himself.
More citizens and less voters will some day be adopted as the motto of the Republic.
One reference to the late war, and I will close. I want to refer especially to the chronic reconciler who when war was declared was not involved in it, but who now improves every opportunity, especially near election-time, to get out a tired olive-branch and make a tableau of himself. He is worse than the man who cannot forgive or forget.
The growth of reconciliation between the North and the South is the slow growth of years, and the work of generations. When any man, North or South, in a public place takes occasion to talk in a mellow and mawkish way of the great love he now has for his old enemy, watch him. He is getting ready to ask a favor. There is a beautiful, poetic idea in the reunion of two contending and shattered elements of a great nation.
There is something beautifully pathetic in the picture of the North and the South clasped in each other's arms and shedding a torrent of hot tears down each other's backs as it is done in a play, but do you believe that the aged mothers on either side have learned to love the foe with much violence yet? Do you believe that the crippled veteran, North or South, now passionately loves the adversary who robbed him of his glorious youth, made him a feeble ruin, and mowed down his comrades with swift death? Do you believe that either warrior is so fickle that he has entirely deserted the cause for which he fought? Even the victor cannot ask that.
"Let the gentle finger of time undo, so far as may be, the devastation wrought by the war, and let succeeding generations seek through natural methods to reunite the business and the traffic that were interrupted by the war. Let the South guarantee to the Northern investor security to himself and his investment, and he will not ask for the love which we read of in speeches but do not expect and do not find in the South.
"Two warring parents on the verge of divorce have been saved the disgrace of separation and agreed to maintain their household for the sake of their children. Their love has been questioned by the world, and their relations strained. Is it not bad taste for them to pose in public and make a cheap Romeo and Juliet tableau of themselves?
"Let time and merciful silence obliterate the scars of war, and succeeding generations, fostered by the smiles of national prosperity, soften the bitterness of the past and mellow the memory of a mighty struggle in which each contending host called upon Almighty God to sustain the cause which it honestly believed to be just."
Let us be contented during this generation with the assurance that geographically the Union has been preserved, and that each contending warrior has once more taken up the peaceful struggle for bettering and beautifying the home so bravely fought for.
CHAPTER XXX.
RECONSTRUCTION WITHOUT PAIN ADMINISTRATIONS OF JOHNSON AND GRANT.
It was feared that the return of a million Federal soldiers to their homes after the four years of war would make serious trouble in the North, but they were very shortly adjusted to their new lives and attending to the duties which peace imposed upon them.
The war of the Rebellion was disastrous to nearly every branch of trade, but those who remained at home to write the war-songs of the North did well. Some of these efforts were worthy, and, buoyed up by a general feeling of robust patriotism, they floated on to success; but few have stood the test of years and monotonous peace. The author of "Mother, I am hollow to the ground" is just depositing his profits from its sale in the picture given on next page. The second one, wearing the cape-overcoat tragedy air, wrote "Who will be my laundress now?"
Andrew Johnson succeeded to Mr. Lincoln's seat, having acted before as his vice.
A great review of the army, lasting twelve hours, was arranged to take place in Washington, consisting of the armies of Grant and Sherman. It was reviewed by the President and Cabinet; it extended over thirty miles twenty men deep, and constituted about one-fifth of the Northern army at the time peace was declared.