(1899); Life of Abraham Lincoln (1899); and The Compromises of Life (1904). THE BLUE AND THE GRAY. That promissory note, executed by me, subject to the endorsement of the city of Louisville, and discounted by you in the city of Pittsburg a year ago—it has matured and we are here to cancel it! You, who were SO prompt and so generous about it, will not be displeased to learn that it puts us to no inconvenience to pay it. On the contrary, it having been one of those obligations on which the interest compounding day by day was designed to eat up the principal, its discharge leaves us poor only in the regret that we may not repeat the transaction every twelve months and convert this central point of the universe into a permanent Encampment for the Grand Army of the Republic. Except that historic distinctions have long been obliterated here, it might be mentioned that I appear before you as the representative alike of those who wore the blue and of those who wore the gray in that great sectional combat, which, whatever else it did or did not, left no shadow upon American soldiership, no stain upon American manhood. But, in Kentucky, the war ended thirty years ago. Familiar intercommunication between those who fought in it upon opposing sides; marriage and giving in marriage; the rearing of a common progeny; the ministration of private friendship; the all-subduing influence of home and church and school, of wife and child, have culminated in such a closely knit web of interest and affections that none of us cares to disentangle the threads that compose it, and few of us could do so if we would. Here, at least, the lesson has been taught and learned that "You cannot chain the eagle, And you dare not harm the dove; But every gate Hate bars to hate Will open wide to love!" And the flag! God bless the flag! As the heart of McCallum More warmed to the tartan, do all hearts warm to the flag! Have you, upon your round of sight-seeing, missed it hereabout? Does it make itself on any hand conspicuous by its absence? Can you doubt the loyal sincerity of those who from house-top and roof-tree have thrown it to the breeze? Let some sacrilegious hand be raised to haul it down, and see how many gray beards who wore gray coats will rally to it! No, no, comrades; the people en masse do not deal in subterfuges; they do not stoop to conquer; they may be wrong; they may be perverse; but they never dissemble. These are honest flags, with honest hearts behind them. They are the symbols of a nationality as precious to us as to you. They fly at last as Webster would have had them fly, bearing no such mottoes as "What is all this worth?" or "Liberty first and union afterward," but blazing in letters of living light upon their ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land, those words dear to every American heart, "Union and Liberty, now and forever, one and inseparable." And why not? What is left for you and me to cavil about, far less to fight about? When Hamilton and Madison agreed in supporting a Constitution wholly acceptable to neither of them, they compromised some differences and they left some other differences open to double construction; and among these latter, was the exact relation of the States to the General Government. The institution of African slavery, with its irreconcilable conditions, got between the North and the South, and But I am not here to recite the history of the United States. You know what happened as well as I do, and we all know that there does not remain a shred of those old issues to divide us. There is not a Southern man to-day who would recall slavery if he could. There is not a Southern man to-day who would lightly brook the effort of a State to withdraw from the Union. Slavery is gone. Secession is dead. The Union, with its system of Statehood still intact, survives; and with a power and glory among men passing the dreams of the fathers of the Republic. You and I may fold our arms and go to sleep, leaving to younger men to hold and defend a property, tenfold greater than that received by us, its ownership unclouded and its title-deeds recorded in Heaven. vance It is, therefore, with a kind of exultation that I fling open the gates of this gateway to the South! I bid you welcome in the name of the people, whose voice is the voice of God. You came, and we resisted you; you come, and we greet you; for times change and men change with them. You will find here scarcely a sign of the battle; not a reminiscence of its passions. Grimvisaged war has smoothed his wrinkled front, and whichever way you turn on either side, deepening as you adacross the Chaplin Hills, where Jackson fell, to Stone's River, where Rosy fought and on to Chattanooga and Chickamauga and over Missionary Ridge, and down by Resaca and Kennesaw, and Allatoona, where Corse "held the fort," as a second time you marched to the sea pausing awhile about Atlanta to look with wonder on a scene risen as by the hand of enchantment thence returning by way of Franklin and Nashville you shall encounter, as you pass those mouldering heaps, which remind you of your valor and travail, only the magnanimous spirit of dead heroes, with Grant and Sherman, and Thomas and McPherson and Logan looking down from the happy stars as if repeating the words of the Master" Charity for all-malice toward none." We, too, have our graves, we too had our heroes! All, all are comrades now upon the other side, where you and I must shortly join them; blessed, thrice blessed, we who have lived to see fulfilled the Psalmist's prophecy of peace: "Peace in the quiet dales, Made rankly fertile by the blood of men; "Peace in the crowded town; Peace in a thousand fields of waving grain; Peace in the highway and the flow'ry lane, "Peace on the whirring marts, Peace where the scholar thinks, the hunter roams, - Speech Delivered at the National G. A. R. Encampment, at Louisville, Ky., in 1883. THE NEW SOUTH. It was not, however, to hear of banks and bankers and banking that you did me the honor to call me before you. I am told that to-day you are considering that problem which has so disturbed the politicians - the South -- and that you wish me to talk to you about the South. The South! The South! It is no problem at all. I thank God that at last we can say, with truth, it is simply a geographical expression. The whole story of the South may be summed up in a sentence: She was rich, and she lost her riches; she was poor and in bondage; she was set free and she had to go to work; she went to work, and she is richer than ever before. You see it was a ground-hog case. The soil was here, the climate was here, but along with them was a curse - the curse of slavery. God passed the rod across the land and smote the people. Then in his goodness and mercy, he waved the wand of enchantment and lo, like a flower, his blessing burst forth! Indeed may the South say, as in the experience of men it is rare for any to say with perfect sincerity: "Sweet are the uses of adversity." The South never knew what independence meant until she was taught by subjction to subdue herself. We lived from hand to mouth. We had our debts and our niggers. Under the old system we paid our debts and walloped our niggers. Under the new system we pay our niggers and wallop our debts. We have no longer any slaves, but we have no longer any debts, and can exclaim, with the old darkey at the camp-meeting, who whenever he got happy went about shouting, "Bless the Lord! I'm gittin' fatter an' fatter!" The truth is, that behind the great ruffle the South wore to its shirt there lay concealed a superb manhood. That this manhood was perverted there is no doubt. That it wasted its energies upon trifles is beyond dispute. That it took a pride in cultivating what are called "the vices of a gentleman," I am afraid must be admitted. But, at heart, it was sound; from that heart flowed honest Anglo-Saxon blood, and when it had to lay aside its "store-clothes" and put on the homespun, it was equal to the emergency; and the women of the South took their place by the side of the men of the South, and, with spinning-wheel and ploughshare, together they made a stand against the wolf at the door. That was fifteen years ago, and to-day there is not a reward offered in a single Southern State for wolf-skins. The fact is, the very wolves themselves have got ashamed and gone to work. I beg you to believe that, in saying this, my purpose is neither to amuse nor mislead you. Although my words may seem to carry with them an unbusiness-like levity, I assure you that my design is wholly business-like. You can see for yourselves what the South has done; what the South can do. If all this has been achieved without credit, and without your powerful aid - and I am now addressing myself to the North and East, which have feared to come South with their money - what might not be achieved if the vast aggregation of capital in the fiscal centres should add this land of wine, milk, and honey to their field of investment, and give us the same cheap rates which are enjoyed by nearer but not safer borrowers! The future of the South is not a whit less assured than the future of the West. Why should money which is freely loaned to Iowa and Illinois be refused to Alabama and Mississippi? I perfectly understand that business is business, and that capital is as unsectional as unsentimental. I am speaking from neither spirit. You have money to loan; we have a great country to develop. We need the money; you can make a profit off the |