friends true as steel thronged around them, ready to enjoy their boundless hospitality and to return it on a lavish and open-handed scale.

In political affairs, the South was vastly better off than it is to-day, far happier in the Union, not only recognized, but trusted with leadership for several decades. Her statesmen had a prominent part in the conduct of the government, more than three-fourths of the presidents before 1860 being men of Southern birth or of Southern antecedents.

Opportunities being given, the South gave the Union many of its greatest soldiers. Still others were sprung from families that had recently migrated from her borders to found new commonwealths beyond the Ohio. Immediately you think of George Washington, Francis Marion, Light Horse Harry Lee, Daniel Morgan, William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, and Andrew Jackson, whose names will be ever famous in the military annals of our earlier periods.

"Before the war," no impassable gulf yawned between North and South. Of course there was some unpleasantness; indeed, at times, some bitterness. Various questions arose, and some of them made New England threaten at times to leave the Union, so as to get away from her Southern sisters. This, however, generally "blew over," as we say, and did not keep Southern men from being called to high and honorable places in the government. How is it now in this so-called "era of good feeling"? What high and honorable places does any president give your father or any of your relatives? What Southern gentlemen are sent to represent the United States at the courts of any great European

nation? How many Southern vice-presidents have been elected in your day? What party in your state wishes to push some eminent man of your state for the presidency, and thus blight his political career forever?

Why is this? Why is the South thus isolated, cut off from the rest of the Union? Why this "Solid South" that you read about so often in the newspapers? It is on account of "the war" and of the problems that have resulted from it. The causes of this war and the nature of some of these problems we shall talk over in the following pages. We regret that such talks are necessary. We regret that, after forty years of peace, the South's side is so generally misunderstood, is so inadequately treated in many books and in the schoolroom. Whatever the reasons for this, it is high time for Southern teachers to be up and doing. The youth of the South must be told the true story of Southern heroism, of Southern genius, of Southern fortitude, and must be taught, clearly and fully, why the South left the Union that she did so much to create and to make illustrious.

II

No "Solid South”

"The Solid South" is a phrase born within recent years. It is the child of war and bitterness. We love to think of the days when there was no such phrase in our language and no such fact in our history. Local jealousies and sectional animosities have, of course, existed from the earliest periods of our history, but they were not bounded by the Potomac

river. No surveyor's line, no river, separated two great unfriendly sections of our country; that is comparatively recent. The North voted enthusiastically for numerous Southern presidents. The North called Washington twice to the head of the American army and twice to the presidential office. She called Marshall to the Supreme Bench, and has put him among her idols. More recent alienation between the sections is unnatural and unnecessary. If Virginia and New England disliked each other during the early days of our history, so did New York and New England; Connecticut and Pennsylvania. To-day, however, the South is in many respects almost cut off from the Union, almost as little connected with the Federal government as Korea or Madagascar.

Not so was it in the revolutionary and ante-bellum eras. Did Adams and Ellery and Roger Sherman and Rush and Franklin go off in a corner and act without the advice of the Southern delegates? The answer rises to your lips: "No; they worked hand in hand with the great patriots of the South, and wrote their names alongside those of Carroll, Wythe, the Lees, Jefferson, Rutledge, Middleton, John Penn, George Walton, and other men whose fame can never perish."

Who was called to lead the armies of the young nation in its fight for independence? Did sectionalism place the sword in weak and impotent hands? No, those were better days than ours; for we have seen a Fitzhugh Lee, gallant chevalier and statesman, left to play soldier, clean camps, administer capsules, in the swamps of Florida, when he should have been leading the armies of his country to the