F RECONSTRUCTION

In July, 1868, the people of Georgia made the first determined stand
against the Republican party. John B. Gordon was nominated for Governor,
and Seymour and Blair had been named in New York as National Democratic
standard-bearers. A memorable meeting was held in Atlanta. It was the
first real rally of the white people under the new order of things.
Robert Toombs, Howell Cobb, and Benjamin H. Hill addressed the
multitude. There was much enthusiasm, and crowds gathered from every
part of Georgia. This was the great "Bush Arbor meeting" of that year,
and old men and boys speak of it to-day with kindling ardor. "Few
people," said Toombs in that speech, "had escaped the horrors of war,
and fewer still the stern and bitter curse of civil war. The histories
of the greatest peoples of earth have been filled with defeats as well
as victories, suffering as well as happiness, shame and reproach as well
as honor and glory. The struggles of the great and good are the noblest
legacies left by the past to the present generation, trophies worthy to
be laid at the feet of Jehovah himself. Those whose blades glittered in
the foremost ranks of the Northern army on the battlefield, with a yet
higher and nobler purpose denounce the base uses to which the victory
has been applied. The old shibboleths of victory are proclaimed as
living principles. Whatever else may be lost, the principles of Magna
Charta have survived the conflict of arms. The edicts of the enemy
abolish all securities of life, liberty, and property; defeat all the
rightful purposes of government, and renounce all remedies, all laws.["]

General Toombs denounced the incompetency of the dominant party in
Georgia--"In its tyranny, its corruption, its treachery to the Caucasian
race, its patronage of vice, of fraud, of crime and criminals, its crime
against humanity and in its efforts to subordinate the safeguards of
public security and to uproot the foundations of free government it has
forfeited all claims upon a free people."

Alluding to General Longstreet, who had been a member of the Republican
party, General Toombs said: "I would not have him tarnish his own
laurels. I respect his courage, honor his devotion to his cause, and
regret his errors." He denounced the ruling party of Georgia as a mass
of floating putrescence, "which rises as it rots and rots as it rises."
He declared that the Reconstruction Acts "stared out in their naked
deformity, open