To his mind, _honor_--that honor which he accounted
the dearest birthright his native South had given--required that
from and after the day of his surrender he should seek and desire,
not the gratification of revenge nor the display of prejudice,
but the success and glory of the great republic. He felt that the
American Nation had become greater and more glorious by the very
act of overcoming rebellion. He recognized that the initial right
or wrong of that struggle, whatever it might have been, should be
subordinated in all minds to the result--an individual Nation. It
was a greater and a grander thing to be an American than to have
been a Confederate! It was more honorable and knightly to be true
in letter and in spirit to every law of his reunited land than to
make the woes of the past an excuse for the wrongs of the present.
He felt all the more scrupulous in regard to this, because those
measures were not altogether such as he would have adopted, nor
such as he could yet believe would prove immediately successful. He
thought that every Southern man should see to it especially that,
if any element of reconstruction failed, it should not be on account
of any lack of honest, sincere and hearty co-operation on his part.
It was for this reason that he had taken such interest in the
experiment that was going on at Red Wing in educating the colored
people.
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