Annual Beunion of the Association of A, N. V, 109
WHO WERE THE VICTORS
in our civil war ? It is true that the Federal government overthrew secession and abolished slavery ; but has that relieved it from the danger of revolution and internal dissension in other forms and from other causes ? All history will belie itself if the future furnish no such causes. What say our political seers to the vast accumulation of wealth in a few hands, the most prolific source of social and politi- cal corruption and national decay to be found in history ? What of the unceasing and ever-growing conflict between capital and labor which is shaking every civilized country, as well as our own, to its centre? What of anarchism and its terrible hand-maid, dynamite, the direct offspring of the other two? All these conditions were abnormally developed by the war, and are confined to that section of the Union which seemed twenty-five years ago to have reaped all the rewards of success.
But say our optimistic solons, the war gave us also a strong, cen- tralized government which is a safeguard against all these possible perils. Let them beware lest they repeat Nebuchadnezzar's dream of his tree of power, and find no Danie! to give the interpretation thereof. The tendency of all centralism in any form of government under the sun is to despotism, and anarchy is the last and most ter rible offspring of despotism.
But how fares it with our own Southland since the dark days of ** de- struction and reconstruction " ? It is no less true of her than of other sections that she has dangers to confront in the present and in the future. The race problem, a legacy of the war, even now looms up ominously before us, and its final settlement must and will remain with the States of the South. But relieved of the incubus of slavery, and disciplined in the stern school of poverty and adversity, she has not for a moment halted or turned back in the great race of progress. With firm and elastic tread she is springing forward on the highway of material prosperity, and bids fair to realize her fondest dreams of wealth and power. As descriptive of these conditions, we sometimes hear of the ** New South'* in contradistinction to the old. Thank God, it is one South, neither new nor old, but always glorious. But for its record in the past it could never have been what it is to-day. Material prosperity alone never yet made a people great. Cherish- ing the great traditions, the chivalric character and the splendid
