We find the South, near half a century after Appomattox, risen phœnix like from the ashes of War and Reconstruction and pushing forward in all fields of endeavor. Agriculture, commerce, manufactures, education, literature, good roads, adjustment of her race problem without undue outside interference (hence, as more of a sociological, less of a partisan, sectional question)—in all these the peoples of the Southern States were making splendid progress and were rapidly recovering the lost ground in political leadership. But, in the midst of all this it was that, by separate but similar acts, three Southern States, for themselves and for the South at large, linked the present with the past for the future in a way most significant.
In the first decade of the twentieth century the South placed among the officially designated immortals of the several United States in Statuary Hall at the Capitol building in Washington city the effigies of John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, and Robert E. Lee of Virginia, and on the sterling plate service of the battleship Mississippi the likeness of Jefferson Davis of Mississippi and Kentucky. There they remained, fitly typifying the South's own contribution to the cause of true Liberty as against over-weening Power, her chosen champions of the two phases of constitutional home rule through State sovereignty, viz: Nullification or State veto subject to federal referendum, and Secession or resumption of full powers by the State; and only when these are scorned by her oppressors and all constitutional redress denied, then the stainless sword of defensive war. (f)
Calhoun, Davis, Lee—men with private lives as spotless as their political principles are true, exemplars of the Southland's past, guides for her future.
Yes, our constellation was only obscured, it did not really set at Appomattox; the Southern Cross of Minority Rights, Home Rule and Arbitration once more flames in the morning sky, and it shall shine more and more unto the perfect day, if the South—America—the world, is to have true progress with Peace.
