e war has been one of conciliation and consolidation. From
the ultra-Southern point of view, the North seems merely to have seized
the opportunity of making honourable amends for the "horrors of
reconstruction;" but even those who take this view admit that the North
_has_ seized the opportunity, and that gladly. As a matter of fact the
good-will of the North, and its desire to let bygones be bygones, are
probably very little influenced by any such recondite motive. It is in
most cases quite simple and instinctive. "There are no rebels now," said
the commandant of the Brooklyn Navy Yard when he gave orders to delete
the fourth word of the inscription "Taken from the rebel ram
_Mississippi_" over a trophy of the Civil War displayed outside of his
quarters. Admiral Philips had probably no thought of "reconstruction" or
of "making amends;" he simply obeyed a spontaneous and general
sentiment. The Southern heroes of the Civil War, moreover, are freely
admitted, and enthusiastically welcomed, into the national Pantheon.

When the thirty-fourth anniversary of "Appomattox Day," which brought
the war to an end, was celebrated in Chicago on April 10 last (Governor
Roosevelt being the guest of honour), the memory of Lee was eulogised
along with that of Grant, and the oration in his honour was received
with equal applause. Finally, it is admitted even by those who are most
inclined to make light of the sentiment elicited by the late war, that
all the States of the Atlantic seaboard are instinctively drawing
together to counterpoise the growing predominance of the West. This
substitution of a new line of cleavage for the old one may seem a
questionable matter for rejoicing. But in any great community, conflicts
of interest must always arise. The recognition of the problems which
await the Republic in the near future does not imply any doubt of her
ability to arrive at a wise and just solution of them.

III

The most loyal of the Southern veterans, I have said, recognise that the
cause of the South is irrevocably lost. By the cause of the South I do
not, of course, mean slavery. There is probably no one in the South who
would advocate the reinstatement of that "peculiar institution," even if
it could be effected by the lifting of a finger. "The cause we fought
for and our brothers died for," says Professor Gildersleeve of
Baltimore, "was the cause of civil liberty, not the cause of human
slavery.... If the secrets of all he