d comfort for its present
poverty and lack of progress in a backward look at the greatness of the
state in the past and the achievements of its sons in the Civil War.
Though Page believed that the Confederacy had been a ghastly error, and
though he abhorred the institution of slavery and attributed to it all
the woes, economic and social, from which his section suffered, he
rendered that homage to the soldiers of the South which is the due of
brave, self-sacrificing and conscientious men; yet he taught that
progress lay in regarding the four dreadful years of the Civil War as
the closed chapter of an unhappy and mistaken history and in hastening
the day when the South should resume its place as a living part of the
great American democracy. All manifestations of a contrary spirit he
ridiculed in language which was extremely readable but which at times
outraged the good conservative people whom he was attempting to convert.
He did not even spare the one figure which was almost a part of the
Southerner's religion, the Confederate general, especially that
particular type who used his war record as a stepping stone to public
office, and whose oratory, colourful and turgid in its celebrations of
the past, Page regarded as somewhat unrelated, in style and matter, to
the realities of the present. The image-breaking editor even asserted
that the Daughters of the Confederacy were not entirely a helpful
influence in Southern regeneration; for they, too, were harping always
upon the old times and keeping alive sectional antagonisms and hatreds.
This he regarded as an unworthy occupation for high-minded Southern
women, and he said so, sometimes in language that made him very
unpopular in certain circles.

Altogether it was a piquant period in Page's life. He found that he had
suddenly become a "traitor" to his country and that his experiences in
the North had completely "Yankeeized" him. Even in more mature days,
Page's pen had its javelin-like quality; and in 1884, possessed as he
was of all the fury of youth, he never hesitated to return every blow
that was rained upon his head. As a matter of fact he had a highly
enjoyable time. The _State Chronicle_ during his editorship is one of
the most cherished recollections of older North Carolinians to-day. Even
those who hurled the liveliest epithets in his direction have long since
accepted the ideas for which Page was then contending; "the only trouble
with him," they now ruefully adm