AMERICA TO-DAY
read, the young man handed it back to him, saying, "All this is a sealed book to me. I cannot feel these things as you do."
More important, perhaps, than the sentiment of the veterans is the feeling, which has been pretty generally expressed, that the South was slighted in the actual conduct of the late war—that Southern regiments and Southern soldiers (notably General Fitzhugh Lee) were unduly kept in the background. Still, there is every reason to believe that the general effect of the war has been one of conciliation and consolidation. From the ultra-Southern point of view, the North seems merely to have seized the opportunity of making honourable amends for the "horrors of reconstruction"; but even those who take this view admit that the North has seized the opportunity, and that gladly. As a matter of fact the goodwill of the North, and its desire to let bygones be bygones, are probably very little influenced by any such recondite motive. It is in most cases quite simple and instinctive. "There are no rebels now," said the commandant of the Brooklyn Navy Yard when he gave orders to delete the fourth word of the inscription "Taken from the rebel ram Mississippi" over a trophy of the Civil War displayed outside his quarters. Admiral Philips had probably no thought of "reconstruction" or of "making amends"; he simply obeyed a spontaneous and general sentiment. The Southern heroes of the Civil War, moreover, are freely admitted, and enthusiastically welcomed,
122
