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urfaces so unevenly mountainous that one wonders
how men could have been daring enough to think of making their homes
amid such wild scenes. . . . Beyond these counties stretches the chain
of the Unaka, running along the line of Tennessee, with the Roan
Mountain--famous for its extensive view over seven states--immediately
in our front. Through the passes and rugged chasms of this range, we
look across the entire valley of East Tennessee to where the blue
outlines of the Cumberland Mountains trend toward Kentucky, and we see
distinctly a marked depression which Eric says is Cumberland Gap.
Turning our gaze due westward, the view is, if possible, still more
grand. There the colossal masses of the Great Smoky stand, draped in a
mantle of clouds, while through Haywood and Transylvania, to the
borders of South Carolina, rise the peaks of the Balsam Mountains,
behind which are the Cullowhee and the Nantahala, with the Blue Ridge
making a majestic curve toward the point where Georgia touches the
Carolinas. . . . .

It is enough to sit and watch the inexpressible beauty of the vast
prospect us afternoon slowly wanes into evening. There is a sense of
isolation, of solemnity and majesty, in the scene which none of us are
likely to forget. So high are we elevated above the world that the
pure vault of ether over our heads seems nearer to us than the blue
rolling earth, with its wooded hills and smiling valleys below. No
sound comes up to us, no voice of water or note of bird breaks the
stillness. We are in the region of that eternal silence which wraps
the summits of the "everlasting hills." A repose that is full of awe
broods over this lofty peak, which still retains the last rays of the
sinking sun, while over the lower world twilight has fallen.

FOOTNOTE:

[44] By permission of the author, and publishers, D. Appleton & Co.,
N. Y.

HENRY WOODFEN GRADY.

~1851=1889.~

HENRY WOODFEN GRADY was born at Athens, Georgia, and educated at the
State University. He became an editor, and in 1880 purchased an
interest in the Atlanta "Constitution" on whose staff he remained till
his death. His articles, addresses, and editorials made his name well
known throughout the country, and contributed no little to the
development of Southern industries after the war. A monument has been
erected to him in Atlanta.

WORKS.

 The New South, [a series of articles].
 Editorials, addresses, &c.

THE SOUTH BEFORE THE WAR.

(_From The New South, 1889._[45])

[Illustration: ~Grady Monument, Atlanta, Ga.~]

_Master and Slave._--Perhaps no period of human history has been more
misjudged and less understood than the slaveholding era in the
South. Slavery as an institution cannot be defended; but its
administration was so nearly perfect among our forefathers as to
challenge and hold our loving respect. It is doubtful if the world has
seen a peasantry so happy and so well-to-do as the negro slaves in
America. The world was amazed at the fidelity with which these slaves
guarded, from 1861 to 1865, the homes and families of the masters who
were fighting with the army that barred their way to freedom. If
"Uncle Tom's Cabin" had portrayed the rule of slavery rather than the
rarest exception, not all the armies that went to the field could have
stayed the flood of rapine and arson and pillage that would have
started with the first gun of the civil war. Instead of that, witness
the miracle of the slave in loyalty to his master, closing the fetters
upon his own limbs--maintaining and defending the families of those
who fought against his freedom--and at night on the far-off
battle-field searching among the carnage for his young master, that he
might lift the dying head to his breast and bend to catch the last
words to the old folks at home, so wrestling the meantime in agony and
love that he would lay down his life in his master's stead.

History has no parallel to the faith kept by the negro in the South
during the war. Often five hundred negroes to a single white man, and
yet through these dusky throngs the women and children walked in
safety, and the unprotected homes rested in peace. Unmarshalled, the
black battalions moved patiently to the fields in the morning to feed
the armies their idleness would have starved, and at night gathered
anxiously at the "big house to hear the news from marster," though
conscious that his victory made their chains enduring. Everywhere
humble and kindly. The body-guard of the helpless. The rough companion
of the little ones. The observant friend. The silent sentry in his
lowly cabin. The shrewd counsellor. And when the dead came home, a
mourner at the open grave. A thousand torches would have disbanded
every Southern army, but not one was lighted. When the master, going
to a war in which slavery was involved, said to his slave, "I leave my
home and loved ones in your charge," the tenderness between man and
master stood disclosed.

The Northern man, dealing with casual servants, querulous, sensitive,
and lodged for a day in a sphere they resent, can hardly comprehend
the friendliness and sympathy that existed between the master and the
slave. He cannot understand how the negro stood in slavery days,
open-hearted and sympathetic, full of gossip and comradeship, the
companion of the hunt, frolic, furrow, and home, contented in the
kindly dependence that had been a habit of his blood, and never
lifting his eyes beyond the narrow horizon that shut him in with his
neighbors and friends. But this relation did exist in the days of
slavery. It was the rule of that _régime_. It has survived war, and
strife, and political campaigns in which the drum-beat inspired and
Federal bayonets fortified. It will never die until the last
slaveholder and slave has been gathered to rest. It is the glory of
our past in the South. It is the answer to abuse and slander. It is
the hope of our future.

_Ante-bellum Civilization._--The relations of the races in slavery
must be clearly understood to understand what has followed, and to
judge of what is yet to come. Not less important is it to have some
clear idea of the civilization of that period.

That was a peculiar society. Almost feudal in its splendor, it was
almost patriarchal in its simplicity. Leisure and wealth gave it
exquisite culture. Its wives and mothers, exempt from drudgery, and
almost from care, gave to their sons, through patient and constant
training, something of their own grace and gentleness and to their
homes beauty and light. Its people, homogeneous by necessity, held
straight and simple faith, and were religious to a marked degree along
the old lines of Christian belief. This same homogeneity bred a
hospitality that was as kinsmen to kinsmen, and that wasted at the
threshold of every home what the more frugal people of the North
conserved and invested in public charities.

The code duello furnished the highest appeal in dispute. An affront to
a lad was answered at the pistol's mouth. The sense of quick
responsibility tempered the tong

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