Year: 1870




this just tribute to the Southern
character patience was not
once esteemed a Southern virtue,
but Affections sometime reveal
heroic attributes that prosperity
and success cannot develope.-
Our Southern brethren were
thought to be brave and passion
ate, but the slow-burning furnace
they have been subjected to oforfve
years past has shown that, with
out being less brave andpassionato
than we esteemed them, they pos
sess profounder properties of he
roism than they have been credi-
tod with. Thoir condition at the
close of four years exhaustive
and unsuccessful war, in which
absolute failure had followed the
expenditure Of all their resources,
was pltiable to degree that has
seldom been witnessed. Defeated,
disarmed, and utterly impover-
ished, would appear to make up
the full measure of misery to a
people; but in the case Of our
Southern countrymen there was
added to this the rare humiliation
Of being placed in political suhjec-
ton to their own slavcs-an igno-
miny which none but themselves
can fully comprehend.


For time the accumulated
burdens seemed moro than they
could bear, and the commence
ment Of a despo.dent migration
to Brazil, was apprehensively re-
gardod as the initiative Of a
movement that might possibly
make the South the desolate, ex-
elusive home Of somi. .barbaric At
ricans. But fortunately for the
Southern people themselves, for
tunately for their Northern kins-
men. and fortunately for the Gov
ernment that seemed resolved to
drive thcu to despair, tho South
ern leaders came forward and ex-
erted the personal authority which
had demonstrated such potency IN
the war. They condemned tho Bra
zil movement, and advised their
people to remain at homo and ac-
ccpt what might come. Their
counsel was obey cd, and they thus
became the instruments of saving
to the country an element which
that country appeared anxious to
get rid of, but which it will yot
learn to appreciate.


Beaten in the war, disarmed,
deprived Of the political rights
which were a part of themselves,
harrasscd by constant military
interference, and annoyed by the
offensive conduct Of the ignorant
masses into whose hands had been
entrusted the authority they once
welded, there was nothing left
them but to seek q partial oblivion
of their Affections in hard labor in
their mortgaged cotton field, while
their ex-slavcs wallowed in fran
chises they knew not the value of,
and an unfriendly party in. Con-
gress spent year after year in
passing measures to perpetuate
the subsection of four million
Americans to four million Afri-
cans. 1t was this weary ordeal
Of five years, in which Southern
heads were smitten down When-
ever they dare to lift themselves
up, that has added to tho South
ern character a fortitude that it
was not supposed to possess, and
such as few peoples have ever ex-
hibited. Had this people been
brave and passionate only, they
would have broken out in repeated
futile resistance to the Federal
authority.


But thoy made no such resist
ance. Their submission at Appo-
matox was absolute, and has been
maintained and unbroken every
day and every hour since then.-
They recognized that it was their
duty to suffer, and they have en-
dured their suferings, not with
apathy and despair, but with an
unmurmuring patience thoroughly
heroic. They have added their
valuable little cotton crops, pro-
duced by their own labor, to the
wealth Of the country they havo
assisted to pay a debt that repre-
sents the cost Of their defeat they
have submitted without opposi-
ton to orders and processes issued
by those who were once their SER
vitors they have seen their hard
" earned substance devoured by
greedy and characterless adven-
turers from distant States, and
they have done and borne all this
without either resentment or in
difference.


In view Of the spectacle they
have thus presented, and are still
presenting, it may bo asked in
their behalf, if it is not timo that
their expressions should cease p
Has tho Government of tho Uni
ted States, this day, more valuable
and virtuous citizens in any part
Of its entire domain than those
prescribed white people Of the
South2 And can any govern