"Then I would free them from that curse, that degradation. If the
negro asks, 'Am I not a man and a brother?' have they no right to ask
it also? Shall I, pretending to love my country, venture on any rash
step which may shut out the whole Southern white population from their
share in my country's future glory? No; have but patience with us, you
comfortable liberals of the Old World, who find freedom ready made to
your hands, and we will pay you all. Remember, we are but children
yet; our sins are the sins of youth,--greediness, intemperance,
petulance, self-conceit. When we are purged from our youthful sins,
England will not be ashamed of her child."

"Ashamed of you? I often wish I could make Americans understand the
feeling of England to you--the honest pride, as of a mother who has
brought into the world the biggest baby that ever this earth beheld,
and is rather proud of its stamping about and beating her in its
pretty pets. Only the old lady does get a little cross when she hears
you talk of the wrongs which you have endured from her, and teaching
your children to hate us as their ancient oppressors, on the ground of
a foolish war, of which every Englishman is utterly ashamed, and in
the result of which he glories really as much as you do."

"Don't talk of 'you,' Claude! You know well what I think on that
point. Never did one nation make the _amende honorable_ to another
more fully and nobly than you have to us; and those who try to keep up
the quarrel are--I won't say what. But the truth is, Claude, we
have had no real sorrows; and therefore we can afford to play with
imaginary ones. God grant that we may not have our real ones--that we
may not have to drink of the cup of which our great mother drank two
years ago!"