Page 164 - The model orator, or, Young folks' speaker : containing the choicest recitations and readings from the best authors for schools, public entertainments, social gatherings, Sunday schools, etc. : including recitals in prose and verse ...

THH NEW SOUTH
[Response to a toast delivered at tke amii^il <.liim(jr of lln.' N l’ iv r?n gland Society, j

T H E R K was a South of secession and slaverv— that South is
dead. There is a South of Union and freedom.—that South
is living, breathing', growing every hour.1’
I accept the term, "T h e New South/’ as in no sense disparaging to
the Old. Dear to me is the home of my childhood and the traditions
of my people. 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. It is to this that I address mysdf.
Vo Li have just heard an eloquent description of the triumphant armies
of ihe North, and the grand review at Washington.
cr
o
I ask you, gentlemen, to picture, if you can, the foot-sore soidicr,
who, buttoning utj in ins laded gi'ay jacket the parole which was
taken, testimony to his children of his fidelity and faith, turned his fact;
southward from Appomattox in April, >805, Think of him as ragged,
half-starved, heavy-hearted, enfeebled by wants and wounds. Having
fought to exhaustion, he surrenders his gun, wrings the hands of his
comrades, and; Jiftip.g his tear-stained and pallid face for the last time
to the graves that cot the old Virginia hills, pulls his gray cap over
his brow and begins the slow and painful journey,
What does he find?.— let me ask you, who went to your homes
eager tn find all the welcome you bad justly earned, full payment for
your four years' sacrifice— what: doe- he find, when he teaches the
home he left four years before ? lie finds his house in ruins, his farm
devastated, his slaves freed, his stock killed, bis barns empty, his trade
destroyed, his money worthless, his social system, feudal in its magm-
licence, swept away, his people without law or irgal status, his com­
rades slain, a ad the burdens of others heavy on his shoulders. Crushed
by defeat, his very traditions gone, without money, credit, employment,
material or training—and, besides ail this, confronted with the gravest
problem that ever met human intdh^enee—the establishing of a. status
lor the vast body of his liberated slaves.