naturally and necessarily gravitated back to the old feeling for the Union.

[Pg 51]

It is not less remarkable that, notwithstanding all the humiliation they had to endure during the period of Negro domination, they should still have retained their feeling of kindliness for the race. The fact, however, was that they did not charge against the race in general the enormities which were committed by them during that period. However they might be outraged by their insolence and their acts, they charged it rather against the leaders than against the followers. The Southerners knew the Negroes; knew their weaknesses and their merits, and knew how easily they were misled. And it was always significant that though the Negroes universally followed their leaders and, when they felt themselves in power, conducted themselves with intolerable insolence, at other times they exhibited their old kindliness, and no sooner was the instigation removed than they were ready to resume their old relation of dependence and affection.

Indeed, those who had been the worst and most revolutionary had no sooner sunk back into their former position of civility than they[Pg 52] were forgiven and treated with good-natured tolerance.[25]

[Pg 52]

With the overthrow of the carpet-bag governments, and the destruction of Negro domination at the South, the South began to shoot up into the light of a new prosperity. Burdened as she was by debt; staggering under disasters that had well-nigh destroyed her; scarred by the struggle through which she had gone, and scorched by the passions of that fearful time, she set herself with all her energies to recovering through the arts of peace her old place in the path of progress. The burden she has borne has been heavy, but she has carried it bravely and triumphantly.

Her property values have steadily increased. Mills have been started and manufactories established, and this not only by Southern investors, but, to a considerable extent, by Northern[Pg 53] capital, until the South has become one of the recognized fields for investment. This, among other causes, has made the South restive under an electorate which has confined her to one political party, shut her off from ability to divide on economic questions, and which, to a certain extent, withdrew her from her due participation in the National Government. With this, another cause is the change of the relation between the two races. It is useless to blink the question. The old relation of intimacy and affection that survived to 

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