"
On the other hand, the leading public men of the North,
while protesting their love of the Union and naturally believing in the Union,
which Northern armies had saved, had little of the spirit
of a sympathetic realization of the South's problem and her condition.
Only in a few large-minded publicists, and in editors like Godkin
and poets like Lowell and Walt Whitman, did the national spirit prevail.
Lanier came forward, therefore, at a critical time to express
his passionate faith in the future of the American Union.
He was not the only Southerner, however, who felt this way. His two friends,
Senators Morgan of Alabama and Lamar of Mississippi (formerly of Georgia),
had been stout upholders of the national idea in Congress.
As early as 1873 Lamar had paid a notable tribute to Charles Sumner.
He had risen to the point where he could see the whole struggle
against slavery and against secession from Sumner's standpoint.
At the conclusion of his remarkable address he said: "Bound to each other
by a common constitution, destined to live together under a common government,
shall we not now at last endeavor to grow TOWARD each other once more
in heart, as we are already indissolubly linked in fortunes? . . .
Would that the spirit of the illustrious dead whom we lament to-day
could speak from the grave to both parties to this deplorable discord
in tones which should reach every heart throughout this broad territory:
My countrymen! KNOW one another, and you will LOVE one another.
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