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and the Latin races from the South-I say that under such circumstances it is a supreme satisfaction to belong to a race that has such potential drawing power as is true of my race.

If there is one class of our citizens that has a right to rejoice more than another over the outcome of our recent war, it is the American negro. You knew he could clear your forests, mine your coal, build your railroads and raise your rice, sugar-cane, and cottonyes, more cotton than the world can consume, but you doubted whether or not he could be depended upon to fight for liberty, to defend the honor and safety of this Republic. At Santiago and El Caney you trusted the negro with the highest interests of this country. Did he disappoint you in enduring the heat and fever? Did he disappoint you in the use of the bullet or the sword? As we measured up to the highest test of manhood at every point where we were trusted in connection with the Spanish-American War, in the same degree we can be depended upon to defend and preserve the highest interests of this country whether in war or peace.

During the last six months you have been testing us as if by fire, and you have it from the lips of Shafter, Roosevelt, and Wheeler, from the lips of Northern soldier and Southern soldier, that we did not fail you. Now we are going to turn the tables. We are going to put you on trial. We are going to prepare ourselves in property, thrift, economy, education, and character for the highest duties of citizenship. When we have so prepared ourselves as a race, we are going to ask that in every part of this country you accord us the same business and civil opportunities that you now extend to all classes and conditions who here find shelter and a home from foreign lands.

My friends, as we celebrate peace, let us learn this, that God has been teaching the Spanish nation a terrible lesson. What is it? Simply this, that no nation

can disregard the interest of any portion of its members without that nation growing weak and corrupt. Though the penalty may have been long delayed, God has been teaching Spain that for every one of her subjects that she has left in ignorance, poverty, and crime, the price must be paid; and if it has not been paid with the very heart of the nation, it has been paid with the proudest and bluest blood of her sons and with treasure that is beyond computation. From this spectacle, I pray God that America will learn a lesson in respect to the eight million negroes in the South. Amidst the excitement, the glamour, the interest, the deeds of heroism that have clustered around our war, let us not forget that there is a condition in the southern part of our country that will demand our deepest thought and most generous help for years to come.

The close of the Spanish-American War brings us new problems which, I believe, we will be able to solve. There is one supreme element of danger. The further we go as a nation in the direction of engrafting into our system of government the ignorant and irresponsible inhabitants of foreign islands, the more will we be tempted to depart from those principles which have made us great as a nation. There are some things too great, too precious to be measured by any standard of values. It seems to me that the highest duty which this nation owes to itself and its traditions is to put the negro in the South on that plane of intelligence and civilization where no man will be tempted to degrade himself by interpreting the Constitution as meaning one thing when applied to a black man, and another thing when applied to a white man. If we permit the ignorance and poverty of the negro in the South to warp and corrupt our laws and degrade the public conscience the result will soon be felt in all parts of the North, and the same hurtful influence will extend to our newly acquired territory.

To be willing to defend one's country with his life, you say, is the highest test of patriotism and usefulness. Here you have a race but thirty-five years out of slavery, but a few hundred years removed from savagery. You place the negro soldiers of this race, on the one hand, by the side of the wealth and culture of New England and New York, on the other side of him you place the chivalry and intelligence of the South. In front of him you place the soldiery of one of the oldest and most renowned countries of Europe. In this position, with the highest type of Caucasian civilization on his right, on his left, and in front, you say to him, "Now, son of Africa, prove your right to be called a man, prove your claim to the title of American citizen!" For answer, with a bravery and an impetuosity that shall ever live in song and story, with his country's national song, "My country, 'tis of thee," flowing from his lips, he scales the heights of San Juan and the battle is won for his country-but is it won for himself?

HENRY WATTERSON

THE BIRTH OF GREATNESS

[From a speech delivered at Louisville, Ky., Decoration Day, 1899.]

THE duty which draws us together and the day— although appointed by law-come to us laden by a deeper meaning than they have ever borne before, and the place which witnesses our coming invests the occasion with increased solemnity and significance. Within the precincts of this dread but beautiful city-consecrated in all our hearts and all our homes-for here lie our loved ones-two plots of ground, with but a hillock between, have been set aside to mark the resting-place of the dead of two armies that in life were called hostile the army of the Union, the army of the Confederacy. We come to decorate the graves of those who died fighting for the Union. Presently others shall come to decorate the graves of those who died fighting for the Confederacy.

Yet, if these flower-covered mounds could open and the brave men who inhabit them could rise, not as disembodied spirits, but in the sentient flesh and blood which they wore when they went hence, they would rejoice as we do that the hopes of both have been at last fulfilled, and that the Confederacy, swallowed up by the Union, lives again in American manhood and brotherhood, such as were contemplated by the makers of the Republic.

To those of us who were the comrades and contemporaries of the dead that are buried here, who survived the ordeal of battle and who live to bless the day, there is nothing either strange or unnatural in this, because we have seen it coming for a long time; we have seen it coming in the kinship of ties even as close as those of a common country; in the robust intercourse of the forum and the market-place; in the sacred interchanges of the domestic affections; but, above all, in the prattle of children who cannot distinguish between the grandfather who wore the blue and the grandfather who wore the gray. It is required of no man-whichever flag he served under-that he make any renunciation shameful to himself, and therefore, dishonoring to these grandchildren, and each may safely leave to history the casting of the balance between antagonistic schools of thought and opposing camps in action, where the essentials of fidelity and courage were so amply

met.

Nor is it the part of wisdom to regret a tale that is told. The issues that evoked the strife of sections are dead issues. The conflict, which was thought to be irreconcilable, and was certainly inevitable, ended more than thirty years ago. To some the result was logical -to others it was disappointing-to all it was final. As no man disputes it, let no man deplore it. Let us rather believe that it was needful to make us a nation. Let us rather look upon it as into a mirror, seeing not the desolation of the past, but the radiance of the future; and in the heroes of the new North and the new South who contested in generous rivalry up the fire-swept steep of El Caney, and side by side reemblazoned the national character in the waters about Corregidor Island and under the walls of Cavite, let us behold hostages for the old North and the old South blent together in a Union that knows neither point of the compass and has flung its geography into the sea.

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