And what of our beautiful, our historic southland about which the halo
of poesy so lovingly lingers? Nature and man have wrought a mighty
restoration. Through the grand old States of Virginia and South
Carolina, whose annals contain names which will ever adorn the pages
of history, down into the prosperous States of Georgia, Alabama, and
Mississippi, through Louisiana, unrivaled in fertility, on to the vast
expanse of Texas, whose coming wealth and power may not be measured,
there arise prophetic voices from field, forest, mine, and workshop,
fortelling the grand stirring into life of extended commerce,
enterprise, and capital. Her products have increased and multiplied in
kind and in variety, till we hear in the Senate chamber of Congress
an eloquent plea for the protection of her interests in the country's
political economy. We hear from the lips of the Kentucky Senator
a full recognition of our worth, our greatness and alas! the tardy
acknowledgement of our _rights_.
These beautiful States are swept by the ocean and mountain winds,
and nurtured by the glowing sun and gentle rains. The palmetto and the
cypress and the lordly live oak, stand above the glowing orange grove
and fragrant magnolia bloom, and the grey moss on the trees, wearing the
uniform of the men in grey, wafts a solemn requiem above their narrow
beds. The light of prosperity spreads transcendent radiance over the
land. The throb of commercial triumph pulsates in the hum of the
factory, in the smelting furnace, and ascends in the soft twilight from
the rich furrows of her incomparable fields; while the salt sea billows,
as they rock her shipping, and dash against pier and wharf, add their
exultant voices in prophecy of still greater prosperity.
May advancing wealth rebuild her mansions and fill her coffers, and
fittingly crown the efforts of her ambition, and of her genius. May she
never lose the aspirations that have made her people through sunshine
and storm, a lofty and noble race.
E.D. POTTS.
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Historic Papers on the Causes of the
Civil War, by Mrs. Eugenia Dunlap Potts
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