Staunton Spectator

The Future of the South.

There is a hopeful future for the South, but it is not to be found in the counsels of those time servers and submissionists who are for yielding unconditional obedience to every behest of a political party in power, and are anxious that those in authority may spit upon them that they may give evidence of their docility. The South has nothing of good to expect from its timid and mercenary press. It has nothing of good to expect from misrepresentatives in Congress, who claim as a decisive qualification, and a peculiar merit, that they can swear that in a war which invaded the homes of the South they were the heartless creatures who stood mute and neutral in the face of the grand tragedy that ran with blood and tears, without aid, comfort or countenance to their countrymen dying before their eyes, reaching their hands for bread, fighting and starving beneath the glorious banners of Lee, and Jackson, and Johnston, and Pickett, and Gordon!

Counsels obtained from such sources are not what the South needs, or what she should accept. She should take a new lesson of courage and self-respect. She should re-assert some of her former spirit. She should rest her hopes in some brave organization of public opinion, resolved to concede nothing to the North but what was decided in the issues of the war; determined to resist every encroachment upon her constitutional rights; prompt to claim the benefit of the Constitution as of old, and steadily and even defiantly, asserting the ancient landmarks in the Union. Such a party may restore the fallen fortunes of the South; it will, at least, erect again the self respect and pride--those high standards of personal character --which formerly distinguished this part of the Union. Nothing is to be gained by the people of the South regarding themselves as ticket-of-leave men or any other kind of probationary vagabonds; such behavior invites insult and oppression.--Edward A. Pollard.