Year: 1878

From the New Orleans Times, Nov. 10.


Whether or not we have ever again to
face visitation such as has just passed
over us, whether or not we go onward
to the ful6llment of our destiny in free
dom from all affiiction and distress, it is
certain that we can not for q moment
while we live forget the splendid exhibi-
ton of sympathy which the North and
West, by one common and spontaneous
impulse, has lavished upon US in our
desolation. No grander spectacle than
this has embellished the history of man.
kind. There has been nothing in it of
half-hearted fervor or halting earnest
ness, nothing of display or calculation.
1t has been eager, loving, warm,
unselfish, unstinted as the winds
of heaven, cordial as the kiss
of love. No one can think of it
moment without feeling his heart melt


within him and throb to quicker and
truer measure than it ever knew be-
fore. There is no way to tell the story
as it should be told, no means of pay
ing tribute as it should be paid. No
tome that human hands have fashioned
could hold the divine record, no monu-
ment that human hands might rear
would fifty celebrate the unutterable
splendor OF the act. What we can do,
and what we all should glory in doing,
is to keep alive the sweet and sacred
memory, with all its kindred growth of
gratitude and affection, as the first and
dearest duty of our lives. 1t should be
our proudest consciousness ten years
hence to feel that the sentiment is as
fresh and living as it was when we cried
out in our sorrow, and the North,
/ . ,to Ion orfh nd hroadth cont
back the thunder of her magnificent re-
sponse. 1t should be our sorest shame
to feel that we had ever once forgotten


or been unfaithful to the lesson of that
apotheosis of fraternal love and kind
ness.


In all thi, we refer especially to the


North and West. Our own people in
the South have BEEN full of sympathy
and good works. The Town of Mont


gomery, Ala, alone subscribed and sent
to the sufferers the splendid sum of


$40, 900, and yet Montgomery is small


and struggling, and hardly able to hold


its own All such things as these, how


ever, were to be expected. We are


brethren among ourselves, in the fullest


sense of the word, and have always


taken that for granted. 1t is the glad


ness and the surprise and the gratitude


of finding that the North claims broth


erhood also that makes the pleasantest


and most acceptable feature of the


thing we are discussing. That every


where throughout the borders of the
great and bustling and busy North there


should be so quick and hearty and spon-


taneous an outburst of good, furnishes


the dearest and most memorably ingre-


dent in our present thought. The


knowledge that we are once again


united people and that fellowship and
fraternity have swept in a great and
, loving flood over the dissensions of the
past, is the most precious possession we
have to-day.


We wish, if it were possible, that
some acknowledgement might be made
i from us which should be as eloquent as
the thing to be acknowledged. That, OF


course, can not be until the North shall
fall into as evil strait as ours has been
, and we shall come as eagerly and low


inolv to the rescue We can not bring
t ourselves to hope for that, and so must
, be content with declaring that in our
3 hearts we feel, what language can not
) frame or pen express, the full meaning
l and significance of the North's superb
, manifestations in our behalf. More
3 than that, we shall keep that feeling


warm in our breasts as long as the life
/, blood pulses there, and teach our chi,-
dren to hand the story down the com
/ ing years. Words seem poor and al
inadequate in treating such theme as
} this; yet we know that if the Nortf
I could see clearly into the hearts OF theil
l brethren here it would understand that
D the seed has been sown in fertile soil
, and that the harvest will be blessing
: and a olory to mankind.