Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 17.
Reverend J. William Jones, Ed.

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The South in the Union at home.

As we are not of the North, but of the South, and are now, like all Americans, both of and for the Union, bound up in its destinies, contributing [151] to its support and seeking its welfare, I feel that as he was the hero in war who fought the bravest, so he is the hero now who puts the past in its truest light, does justice to all, and knows no foe but him who revives the hates of a bygone generation.

If we lost by war a Southern union of thirteen States, we have yet a common part in a continental union of forty-two, to which our fathers gave their blood, and upon which they shed their blessings; and a people who could survive four years of such experience as we had in 1861-‘65 can work out their own salvation on any spot of earth that God intended for man's habitation. We are, in fact, in our father's home, and it should be, as it is, our highest aim to develop its magnificent possibilities, and make it the happiest dwelling-place of the children of men.