"*
--
* `Retrospects and Prospects', p. 31.
--
He recognized the need of some great man.
A pilot, God, a pilot! for the helm is left awry.
Years later, when the end of the reconstruction period had come,
he described a type of man that was needed for this emergency:
whether he realized it or not, it was a wish that Abraham Lincoln
might have been spared to meet the situation. "I have been wondering
where we are going to get a GREAT MAN, that will be tall enough
to see over the whole country, and to direct that vast undoing of things
which has got to be accomplished in a few years. It is a situation
in which mere cleverness will not begin to work. The horizon of cleverness
is too limited; it does not embrace enough of the heart of man,
to enable a merely clever politician, such as those in which we abound,
to lead matters properly in this juncture. The vast generosities
which whirl a small revenge out of the way, as the winds whirl a leaf;
the awful integrities which will pay a debt twice rather than allow
the faintest flicker of suspicion about it; the splendid indignations
which are also tender compassions, and will in one moment
be hustling the money-changers out of the Temple, and in the next
be preaching Love to them from the steps of it, -- where are we to find these?
It is time for a man to arise who is a man."*
--
* Letter to Judge Logan E. Bleckley, Nov. 15, 1874.
--
This state of affairs here set forth in Lanier's words
caused many to leave the South in absolute despair of its future.
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