To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union, even by war, while the government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it.

Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with, or even before, the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph and a result less fundamental and astounding.

Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God; and each invokes His aid against the other.

It may seem strange that any man should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing his bread from the sweat of other men's faces; but let us judge not, that we be not judged.

The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes.

Woe unto the world because of offences, for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh."

If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offences, which in the providence of God must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offence came, shall we discern therein any departure from those Divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him?

Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn

with the lash shall be paid with another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago so still it must be said, "The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and orphans; to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

Compare the length and scope of this speech with that of other presidential inaugural addresses.

Did Lincoln do well to use biblical diction in this state paper? What was the emotional effect of Lincoln's showing in this speech that his work was merged with his religion?

Did the President in your opinion correctly state the cause of the war?

Did President Lincoln's address lose effectiveness in any degree because he failed to predict success for the Union armies?

What sentiments expressed by Lincoln in this speech finally convinced the Confederacy that the North had determined to prosecute the war vigorously to the end?

What attitude toward his enemies is shown by Lincoln in this speech?

How is the character of Lincoln reflected in his confidences, hopes, and aims?

To what sentiments and motives does Lincoln appeal?

Did Lincoln in this speech establish a precedent in the history of democratic government for toleration of opponents' views and respect for differing opinion, or can you point to similar sentiments expressed previously by some other orator?

THE NEW SOUTH

December 21, 1886

THE close of the war left the South impoverished and almost hopeless. Roads, bridges, and buildings were destroyed; and the land was desolated. The disbanded Confederate soldiers had to begin life over again without resources and often without health. Four million freedmen who owned no property were scattered throughout the country where few were able to employ them.

Improvement came very slowly. The former slaves lacked the training that would make them industrious. They were inclined to live in idleness. In bitter opposition to the will of the North, the Southern legislatures passed laws that tended to keep the negroes in a state of subjection and prevented the exercise of their newly gained rights. In retaliation Congress declined to receive the representatives and senators elected by the states that had seceded. Northern carpetbaggers and unprincipled adventurers attempted to gain political control in the South or deliver authority into the hands of the negroes. So slowly was progress made toward reconstruction and reconciliation that it was not until 1872 that Congress granted a fairly complete general amnesty to those who had fought for the Confederacy. Indeed not until many years later were the last remaining disabilities removed.

Chief among those who during this critical period were instrumental in producing a better understand

ing between the North and the South was Henry W. Grady. At a dinner of the New England. Society in New York on December 21, 1886, at a time when the country was ripe for the word, he delivered a speech which among the younger generation stimulated everywhere a resolve to end forever the prejudices and animosities that had survived the Civil War. This speech marks the climax of the reconciliation. The last echo of the strife was stilled in 1898 when the sons of the soldiers of the Blue and of the Gray fought together in the Spanish-American War.

THE NEW SOUTH

HENRY W. GRADY

1

"THERE was a South of slavery and secession-that South is dead. There is a South of union and freedomthat South, thank God, is living, breathing, growing every hour." These words, delivered from the immortal lips of Benjamin H. Hill, at Tammany Hall,2 in 1866, true then, and truer now, I shall make my text to-night. In speaking to the toast with which you have honored me, I accept the term, The New South," as in no sense disparaging to the old. Dear to me, sir, is the home of my childhood, and the traditions of my people. I would not, if I could, dim the glory they won in peace and war, or by word or deed take aught from the splendor and grace of their civilization, never equalled, and perhaps never to be equalled in its chivalric strength and grace. There is a new South, not through protest against the old, but because of new conditions, new adjustments, and, if you please, new ideas and aspirations.

Doctor Talmage has drawn for you, with a master's

hand, the picture of your returning armies. He has told you how, in the pomp and circumstance of war, they came back to you, marching with proud and victorious tread, reading their glory in a nation's eyes! Will you bear with me while I tell you of another army that sought its home at the close of the late war—an army that marched home in defeat and not in victory-in pathos and not in splendor, but in glory that equalled yours, and to hearts as loving as ever welcomed heroes home? Let me picture to you the foot-sore Confederate soldier, as, buttoning up in his faded gray jacket the parole which was to bear testimony to his children of his fidelity and faith, he turned his face southward from Appomattox in April, 1865.

Think of him as ragged, half-starved, heavy-hearted, enfeebled by want and wounds having fought to exhaustion, he surrenders his gun, wrings the hands of his comrades in silence, and lifting his tear-stained and pallid face for the last time to the graves that dot old Virginia hills, pulls his gray cap over his brow and begins the slow and faithful journey. What does he find―let me ask you who went to your homes eager to find, in the welcome you had justly earned, full payment for four years' sacrificewhat does he find when, having followed the battle stained cross against overwhelming odds, dreading death not half so much as surrender, he reaches the home he left so prosperous and beautiful?

He finds his home in ruins, his farm devastated, his slaves free, his stock killed, his barns empty, his trade destroyed, his money worthless, his social system, feudal in its magnificence, swept away; his people without law or legal status, his comrades slain, and the burdens of others. heavy on his shoulders. Crushed by defeat, his very traditions are gone. Without money, credit, employment, material, or training, and, besides all this, confronted with