the severity of the lesson taught by the Civil War as to the physical
superiority of the North, or the necessity of peace and quiet to enable
the new generation of Southerners to restore their fortunes, or even
gain a livelihood. Nor was it easy to impress them with the
inconsistency of arguing that it was slavery which made Southerners what
they were before they went to war, and maintaining at the same time that
the disappearance of slavery would produce no change in their manners,
ideas, or opinions. All this they answered by pointing to speeches
delivered by some fiery adorer of "the lost cause," to the Ku-Klux
outrages, to political murders, like that of Chisholm, to the building
of monuments to the Confederate dead, or to some newspaper expression of
reverence for Confederate nationality. In fact, for fully ten years
after the close of the war the collection of Southern "outrages" and
their display before Northern audiences, was the chief work of
Republican politicians. In 1876, during the Hayes-Tilden canvass, the
opening speech which furnished what is called "the key-note of the
campaign" was made by Mr. Wheeler, the Republican candidate for the
Vice-Presidency, and his advice to the Vermonters, to whom it was
delivered, was "to vote as they shot," that is, to go to the polls with
the same feelings and aims as those with which they enlisted in the war.

I need hardly tell English readers how all this has ended. The
withdrawal of the Federal troops from the South by President Hayes, and
the consequent complete restoration of the State governments to the
discontented whites, have fully justified the expectations of those who
maintained that it is no less true in politics than in physics, that if
you remove what you see to be the cause, the effect will surely
disappear. It is true, at least in the Western world, that if you give
communities in a reasonable degree the management of their own affairs,
the love of material comfort and prosperity which is now so strong among