SOUTHERNERS AND THE WAR.
[To Tee EDITOR OF vss " BPSCTATOR."1 SIR,—If the people of Briteiu think that in the West or South, or anywhere else in America, there is apathy toward the war, they are deceived. The West and the South are leading in enlistments for the Regular Service. If a voluntary policy bad been pro- claimed, they would hove offered millions of recruits. But both sections have devoted faith in the President. Mentally and spiritually they have accepted the system of policies of which con- scription is the head. Each man will assume his place when it is assigned, and do so most heartily. Why should they be blamed because they uwuit their assignments in quiet?
Permit me to make a suggestion. The Spectator and many other British publications constantly imply that there is an analogy between the cause of the North in the Civil War and the cause of the Allies. The further implication is inevitable that there is believed to be an analogy between the cause of the South and the mute of Germany. It is hard for you to realize how warmly such things are resented by the Southern people, end how practical would be the harmful results if they should serve to shake the historic friefidship of the South for Great Britain. Only a few days ago, the Confederate veterans met in this city. It was a time of wonderful good feeling. The only trace of bitterness in their utterances was directed at just this thing. Possibly you will recall that President Wilson finds in the hot resentment of the Southern people against the imputation of moral guilt in con- nexion with slavery the full explanation for the amazing fierce- ness and tenacity of their battle a half-century ago.
The truth is that, in its final results, the Civil War was a draw—in its best sense, a " peace without victory "—and upon that fact is based the fulness of the reconciliation which has taken place. The South would never have fought for slavery, for that section gave more support to the anti-slavery movement than the North until it fell into (lie hands of the Abolitionists who preached not only emancipation but "equal rights, equal suffrage, equal marriage." That theory realized a temporary ascendancy in reconstruction, and its shuddering horrors nothing else has equalled. It must also be remembered that the South faced the immediate triumph of a sectionally organized party, founded upon hostility to the South, embracing all the elements of hitter Aboli- tionism, and having behind it a permanent majority which would have reduced the South to unending political servitude, under which its interests would hare no appeal whatever and its ruin would be certain, 'even if (possible) temporary. As God willed it, the North won for emancipation and union. The South won for white supremacy, marred only by lynching and other evils originating in the remnants of Abolition legislation. It bids fair to win, in time, a new political alignment which will give the n ation a truly national government. And both North and South rejoice that each won and each rallied. •
Aside from that, there is, just now, a reason why the utterances to which I have referred are impolitic. The South is " in the saddle" by virtue of the sectional alignment which precipitated the Civil War and was the greatest of its evil legacies. The Presi- dent is Southern, typically no and devotedly so. Every important chairmanship in the House end Senate is Southern, except one. A number of Cabinet officers are Southern. And these people are traditionally pro-British. They are the only group of Americans who are of pure " Anglo-Saxon " blood, and their political hostility to the masses of immigration of the past generation has made this the foundation for a real and active feeling of kinship with the British people. Their institutions are strikingly akin to those from which present British institutions have evolved. During the present mar, when cotton was at starvation prices, and some British merchants were at bast strpposed to be profiting thereby, and perhaps even selling to a trade prohibited by the British blockade, nvme Southern demagogues attempted to agitate against the British position. And not one spark of resentment could they strike from the Southern populace. But even since the entry of America into the war the writer has himself heard men high in the
n ation's affairs, and men most friendly to England, express strong feeling of irritation because of Civil War references in the English Press which were considered invidious.
This letter is long, perhaps ungracious, and certainly unasked. But I, too, am not only an allied national, but an ardent friend of your country. I write because of that fact.—I am, Sir, Ac., [We can well understand the resentment of Southerners at being compared with the Germans, if such a comparison was ever made. It was certainly never hinted at in our articles or eomments. The analogies tint we drew from the war of North and S outh were confined to Lincoln's use of conscription and his policy in regard to blockade. Whatever may have been their views on the maintenance of slavery as a domestic institution, Generals Robert Lee and Stonewall Jackson were great-hearted gentlemen, whom it would be an insult to speak of in the some breath with the Prussian slave-drivers of to-day. We cannot, however, assent to our correspondent's description of the conclusion of the American Civil War as a peace without victory.—En. Spectator.]
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