" But, then, I have always heard it from persons who are to day
good-tempered, conciliatory, and hopeful, and desirous of
cultivating good relations with Northerners; from which the
inference, which so many Northern politicians find it so hard to
swallow, is easy--viz., that time produces on Southerners its usual
effects. What Mr. Boutwell and Mr. Blaine would have us believe is
that Southerners are a peculiar breed of men, on whom time produces
no effect whatever, and who feel about things that happened twenty
years ago just as they feel about things which happened a month ago.
The fact is, however, that they are in this respect like the rest of
the human race. Time has done for their hearts and heads what it has
done for the old Virginia battle-fields. There was not in 1865 a
fence standing between the Potomac and Gordonsville, and but few, if
any, undamaged houses. When I passed Manassas Junction the other day
there was a hospitable-looking tavern and several houses at the
station; the flowers were blooming in the yard, and crowds of young
men and women in their Sunday clothes were gathered from the country
around to see a base-ball match, and a well-tilled and well-fenced
and smiling farming country stretched before my eyes in every
direction.
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