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about a vast improvement and a desire on the part of each race to live and to let live. Each race is beginning to learn the true status of separate and race livelihood. Each race is beginning to understand that there are inherent and social antagonisms which cannot be overstepped. This makes a vast advance. When this has been understood the relationship has been in every way improved. In addition to this our Northern friends no longer concern themselves with interfering with social affairs between the two races in the South. They understand that these matters the South will settle for herself. From the situation she is better able to settle them. This is redounding to the better relations of the two races. The idea of non-interference with the social status of the South will be vigorously insisted upon by the South, and this is being understood thoroughly in the North. I would be bold and arrogant and indeed foolish did I presumptuously suggest the plan which I have outlined as the only solution of the Race Question. Any man may seem presumptuous when he discusses the future of the Negro Question. With the lights before me it seems in the present state of evolution the most feasible plan. I do, however, know this with all my heart, that the education of the Negro, the making him better and more intelligent, and withholding the ballot from him until he has evolved himself into an intelligent citizen, is certainly the best plan for the present. Without looking into the future we know what is best for the present.

This plan seems less attended with difficulties than any other. With this general idea it will take years of patience and mutual forbearance. This is the greatest social question which has confronted any nation, and will not be settled without much travail, without many discouragements, and only by a long process of time. Neither the white man nor the negro is perfect, but I earnestly believe that the evolution of this great question and its full and complete settlement under the Providence of God will come in its own time and will conclude to the ultimate glory of our country.

III

THE ATTITUDE OF THE PROGRESSIVE

W

SOUTH

HEN your courteous note of invitation to address this splendid assembly of workers for

our country came to my home in the South, my first impulse, after making full obeisance to you, was to continue in the shadow of my mountains as one not fitted by education or opportunity to discuss commerce with the Masters of Trade. Yet, sir, the significance of the event hurried my memory to other days long past, and whispered that in this day of coming change no good man, however humble, should turn his face away from the rising sun or withhold his hand from the plough. The son of a Southern soldier conferring with the men of the North as to what is best for the Republic, with naught of unkindness for the North, with naught of selfishness for the South, but only with love and kindness for each, and the welfare of the Republic crowning and glorifying all, fills me with emotions too sacred for expression, and well assures me that, amidst the grave imaginings of harm and hurtful change, the Republic is founded on eternal foundations and that its glory and permanence are secure. Ah, sir, when citizens hold before my eyes

that which they anxiously believe to be the hem of the Imperial Robe, my mind, for its inspiration for steady belief in the Republic, flies swiftly back to Old Virginia, my boyhood home. There rise before me the Blue Mountains of the Great Valley, crowned with the autumn sunlight and reflecting from their broad shoulders their kaleidoscopic glory of orange and green and flame over hill, river, and town.

Sir, it is God's own footstool. Amidst its mountains and in its valleys live a high-spirited people who have always prized liberty above other blessings. They are God-fearing, and from the mountain cliffs and the shades of the valley the evening prayer arises from happy homes, and only Freedom's call to arms can stop their songs of praise. It is a land of fatness, of rich meadow, of noble homes, with schools and colleges to crown the work.

Yet, on this beautiful day, there is no fatness in the land. The sun falls lovingly on the broad, winding river and beautiful valley, but the homes are blackened desolations, and from their sightless windows and broken walls stare want and grisly despair. The torch has marked its fiery way across the broad valley, and the smoking ruins are the sentinels standing guard over the desolate fields. The schoolhouses and colleges have disappeared with the homes, and the government is in the hands of aliens. The widow's weeds cast a shadow over every household, and the cry of the fatherless is as frequent as the whispering of the winds.

The little mounds are in every valley and on every hillside, and the Gods of the Household, with sighs and sobbings, covering their sorrowing eyes, have taken flight to happier scenes.

On this far away autumn day in the South, after the war, was the real danger time to the Republic. If the South, in despair and insidious hate, more dangerous to the Republic than its armed legions, had permanently fallen away from its love of its traditions of the Republic, and had instilled this feeling in the hearts of the coming generation, surely within time we would have seen the disintegration of this government. Sir, it did not. On the day when in the little town nestling in the mountains we buried Robert E. Lee, we turned our faces towards the open day and gave our lives and our souls towards re-creating the broken homes, building up the desolated places, and tying together with hearts of love this great republican government. Then, Mr. Chairman, if the South can forget her woes and sorrows and desolation, and if the North and South, casting behind them the old days and the old enmities, can, in one short life, heal up the last trace of the greatest conflict the world ever witnessed, how idle does it appear to me, how infinitely idle, to see the destruction of free government and the ruin of the nation in the enlarging of our commerce and the extending of the civilization of our Republic!

The times are changing, must change. The isolation which is not alone the result of the policy inaugurated

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