Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 10.
Reverend J. William Jones, Ed.

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[252] country at large, I would have the Southern Historical Society gather and preserve all that properly belongs to us, and transmit a true account to the generations that are to come. In the second place there are great principles underlying the struggle through which we have recently passed, which need to be expounded as held by both the combatants. It is a mistake to suppose that war is always the mere outburst of human passion. On the contrary the great wars of earth — those which have been projected upon the largest scale and protracted through the longest period, and especially occurring between members of the same race, have been the result of an antecedent conflict of opinions which seeking reconciliation in vain, appealed finally to the sword to settle the question of ascendency. Why! The thirty years war between Sparta and Attica was but the culmination of the struggle between the Doric and Ionic elements of the Grecian stock which emerged at the earliest dawn of authentic history; two nations struggled together like Jacob and Esau, even in the womb. So ancient was the feud that even the armed invasion of Persia scarcely composed it for a time, only to break forth in the war of the Peloponnesus, so fatal in its issue to the independence of both. From the outset these two were the exponents of two opposing systems of government and social discipline, Lacedaimon espousing a policy which may be defined as continental and oligarchic, while Athens represented the idea of commerce and democracy — Sparta seeking to consolidate the continental States under the supremacy of the few — Athens to weld the maritime States into a confederacy of which she should be the centre and the head. Or, take as a more modern example, the long struggle of 1648 to 1688 in English history, which was simply a contest between prerogative on the part of the Crown and privilege on the part of the people, the final issue of which was the establishment of the present English government, the freest and happiest empire on the globe. And can it be denied that great and fundamental principles lay at the heart of the civil war in which the two sections of this country were lately engaged? I am not here to discuss these principles upon the one side or the other, but it is due to historic truth that both should be set forth by the advocates who were willing to submit them to the gauge of battle. I would have the Southern expounder and the Northern expounder stand face to face, as did Lee and Grant at Appomattox, and argue the case before the nations of the earth. For this cause let the documents be preserved upon which the argument is to be founded, and the verdict is to be rendered. I assign as a third reason for the perpetuation of this Society, my conviction that the result of