FLAG OF OUR FATHERS BY BENJAMIN HARVEY HILL See page 48. Fellow citizens, this system of government, this American union, I have always said has no parallel in history. I say here today that it is the best, the wisest, the grandest system of government the world ever saw. One mistake our statesmen have made has consisted in trying to judge this government by previous systems. There is nothing in history like it. The Solons of Greece had as little comprehension of this American system of government as the soldier with his javelin at Marathon had of our modern fourteen-inch guns, or the sailor with his galley at Salamis had of our modern dreadnaughts. The Catos and Ciceros of Rome had as little comprehension of the grandeur and wisdom and beauty of our American systems, as the dwellers upon the banks of the sluggish Tiber had of the length, depth, and power of the Mississippi. No, my American friends, you are the heirs under providence of the greatest system of government the world ever saw. If you destroy it there is no hope beyond. The greatest enemy this union has hitherto had, has been sectionalism. This sectionalism has assumed its most dangerous form whenever it has been organized into geographical parties and distinctions. Thousands who have no sympathy with secession went into the service of the sectional party of the South against the sectional party of the North, but they did not go into it to strike at a single principle represented by that flag. Each side did what it thought right in standing up for its own side in the sectional war. Thousands in both armies, while slaying each other in sectional fight would have given their lives for a true, common, American union. But my fellow citizens, it is with no ordinary pride that I who have opposed all these sectional parties, can stand here in the city of Atlanta, in the very center of all our sorrows, raising my voice, fearing no sucessful contradiction when I affirm that the Union never made war on the South. It was not the Union, my countrymen, that slew your children; it was not the Union that laid waste your fields; it was not the Union that burned your cities, invaded your homes, and mocked at your calamity; it was not the Union that reconstructed your states; it was not the Union that disfranchised intelligent citizens and denied them participation in their own governments. No, no! charge not these wrongs upon the Union of our fathers. Every one of these wrongs was inflicted by a diabolical sectionalism in the very teeth of every principle of the American Union. So equally I say the South never made war upon the Union. There has never been an hour when nine out of ten of us would not have given our lives for the Union. We did not leave the Union because we were dissatisfied with it; we did not leave the Union to make war on it; we left the Union because a sectional party had seized it, and we hoped thereby to avoid a conflict. But if war must come, we intended to fight a sectional party, not the Union. Therefore, the last war, with all its disastrous consequences is the direct result of sectionalism in the North and of sectionalism in the South, and none, I repeat, of these disasters are chargeable on the Union. There was nothing in slavery which could justify the North in forming a sectional party to cripple or destroy it, and there was nothing in slavery which could justify the South in leaving the Union to maintain it. But extreme men in both sections insisted upon settling the issue of slavery by force, and in this fell spirit both the sectional parties were organized. And upon this line of force so contrary to every principle of our constitutional system, the issues have been settled, but at what a fearful cost! We have wasted in money and the destruction of property fifteen billions of dollars. We have slain one million of our own sons, brothers and fellow citizens. We have made one million of sorrowing widows and two millions of weeping orphans, and still the rage of sectional hate and passion goes on! Fellow citizens, I have stated, but I cannot too often repeat, that all the curses that we have suffered originated, not in adherence to the principles of our Union, but in departure from those principles. With what a noble impulse of patriotism our fathers came together from different states and joined their council to perfect this system, thenceforward to be known as the "American System of Free Constitutional Government." The snows that fall on Mount Washington are not purer than the motives which begot it. The fresh, dew-laden zephyrs from the orange groves of the South are not sweeter than the hopes its advent inspired. The flight of our own symbolic eagle, though he blow his breath on the sun, cannot be higher than its expected destiny. Have the motives which so inspired our fathers become all corrupt in their children? Are the hopes that sustained them all poisoned to us? Is that high, expected destiny all eclipsed and before its noon? No, no, forever no! patriots North, patriots South, patriots everywhere, let us hallow this year of jubilee by burying all our sectional animosities. Let us close our ears to the men and parties that teach us to hate each other! Raise high the flag of our fathers! Let southern breezes kiss it! Let southern skies reflect it. Southern patriots will love it. Southern sons will defend it, and southern heroes will die for it! And as its folds unfurl beneath the heavens, let our voices unite and swell the loud invocation: Flag of our Union! Wave on! Wave ever! But wave over free men, not over subjects! Wave over states, not over provinces! And now let the voices of the patriots from the North and from the East and from the West, join our voices from the South and send to heaven one universal accordion chorus! Wave forever! Not over a despotism of lords and vassals but over a union of equals; not over a land of anarchy, oppression, and strife, but over a land of law, of liberty and of peace. THE GOVERNOR AND THE MOB Adapted from an article by an anonymous writer in the It was late in the morning of Jan. 10, 1917. A mob had just broken up the session of the circuit court at the little town of Murray, Ky. "Give us the nigger, or we'll hang the judge!" howled the crowd that thronged the street in front of the principal hotel and even filled the lobby and corridors near the room occupied by the presiding judge. "Give us the nigger, or we'll hang the judge!" was the blood cry. But they didn't hang the judge. That was because the judge, after being besieged in his hotel room for two hours, gave the order to bring back the nigger. And they didn't hang the nigger. That was because the governor of the state sent the mob word that he would give them the opportunity to hang the governor first and then wreak their vengeance on the negro later, and made good the promise. Lube Martin had committed an offense which, in the opinion of some of the citizens of Calloway County, could be adequately atoned for only when Lube was swung on a rope from a tree in the courthouse yard and when his body had been made the receptacle for a few hundred bullets, more or less. When the town |