The Lost Cause. 241
history and preserve our self-respect in the same spirit in which we render true allegiance to our present government.
I will not be understood as counseling the cherishing of a feeling of bitterness to the government of the United States. Far from it. I affirm that the same principle which animated the ardent Confede- rate in expousing the cause of the Confederacy will inspire his devo- tion to any government of which he is a citizen. In both cases it is love of country an extension of the principle of self-love, born in every heart and going forth to family and country in its enlarging circle. A man loves his country, partly because it is his, partly from association, and partly from sentiment and duty in return for its bene- fits and protection. The government of the United States, in return for justice and kindness and trust, could find no truer, braver, more attached people than the late Confederates. If there has been back- wardness on the part of the people of the Southern States to accept in full the results it was because they involved a complete revolution of all their thoughts and feelings and sentiments that their traditional ideas were shocked, their pride mortified, their sentiments offended, their sense of propriety disregarded that their whole moral nature has been violently outraged in what they have been called to endure. No wonder they were not ready to sing paeans to the Union which called them to submit to so much that is distasteful, when the"y had so recently mourned the cause they loved so well and for which they had endured so much. Surely, enlightened statesmen can properly appreciate and tolerate a feeling like this! and can realize the truth that they who were faithful,' amid the terrible troubles of war, to the cause they espoused, will in time of trial prove equally faithful to another.
It was natural, after the war had ended, by triumph on one side and defeat and subjugation on the other, that the ecstasy of delight on the one side should produce corresponding depression and bitter- ness on the other side of those chafing under defeat and goaded by the harassing taunts of the victors, as well as suffering under their inflictions. It is hard for the human mind to forget or forgive inju- ries, and between North and South there were mutual crimination and recrimination of real or imaginary grievances. Each party con- sidered itself right and the other wrong, and had all the intensity of self-justification and condemnation of its adversary incident to such belief. The part of true wisdom and statesmanship is to accord to each a belief in the right, from its standpoint, and to do justice to
