Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 13.
Reverend J. William Jones, Ed.

[355] resistance of that weaker section when assailed by arms, invaded and wasted, he will find that it was subdued, not by military skill or superior valor, not by statesmanship or magnanimity, but mainly by superior wealth and overpowering numbers; and when he finds that the power, when once obtained, was administered with neither justice nor magnanimity, but in a spirit of cruelty and persecution, he will turn from that narrative with loathing and shame; and where shall he find balm for the feelings of a patriotism thus wounded, unless it shall be in a subsequent history of the united career of sections once discordant and warring, which union was obtained by a spirit of justice and peace, of equity and equality, without reference to past differences, and signalized by an administration which accorded opportunity to energy, the rewards of discovery to intelligent enterprise, and attained an honorable primacy in the grand competition of nations even by ability and force—a force accumulated by union, education, intelligence and energy, stimulated by an honorable and wise ambition. Then, when conscious of a power sufficient for self-defence, and so regulated by honor and honesty as to be innocuous to others, he may feel that the past is atoned for and condoned when his country in its outward seemings and inner developments is so presented to the world that to say, I am an American citizen, is enough to win the respect of any people in the civilized world.