All the while never a people more eager to get together than the people of
the United States after the War of Sections, as never a people so averse to
getting into that war. A very small group of extremists and doctrinaires
had in the beginning made a War of Sections possible. Enough of these
survived in the days of Cleveland and McKinley to keep sectionalism alive.
It was mainly sectional clamor out for partisan advantage. But it made
the presidential campaigns lurid in certain quarters. There was no end of
objurgation, though it would seem that even the most embittered Northerner
and ultra Republican who could couple the names of Robert E. Lee and
Benedict Arnold, as was often done in campaign lingo, would not hesitate,
if his passions were roused or if he fancied he saw in it some profit to
himself or his party, to liken George Washington to Judas Iscariot.
The placing of Lee's statue in the Capitol at Washington made the occasion
for this.
It is true that long before Confederate officers had sat in both Houses of
Congress and in Republican and Democratic cabinets and upon the bench of
the Supreme Court, and had served as ambassadors and envoys extraordinary
in foreign lands. But McKinley's doing was the crowning stroke of union and
peace.
There had been a weary and varied interim. Sectionalism proved a sturdy
plant. It died hard. We may waive the reconstruction period as ancient
history. There followed it intense party spirit.
Pages:
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91