ANNUAL ORATION

DELIVERED BY

GENERAL GATES P. THRUSTON.

Comrades, Ladies and Gentlemen :

So many momentous events are recalled upon an occasion like this, that I have found it difficult to select a sub-1 ject for my remarks.

Patriotic congratulations seem sufficient for the time, rather than more serious considerations. The past thirty years have furnished a theme for centuries of history, story, and song. Many of the living actors in its great tragedies are still with us-some of its honored leaders. We look back into the hot crater of war, yet we breathe the atmosphere of profound peace.

The soldiers of the Union builded better than they knew. Their work has proved the event of the century. It was so complete, so far-reaching in its good results, that it has revived the better impulses of humanity throughout the nations. It has marked an epoch in the progress of mankind and in the history of civil government. Even our late enemies have learned to realize the necessity and glory of the Union of the States, and are ready to show their devotion to the emblem of its authority-the national flag. Its blessings belong alike to them and to us. Notwithstanding our sharp political antagonisms, our millions of population, our vast material domain, since the fathers formed the "more perfect union," so far as human foresight

may know, our republic, purified in the furnace of revolution, has never been more free from the germs of disease and danger.

Through the rough experiences of the war and the enforced change in her system of labor, the South has learned the intrinsic value of her own natural powers and possessions. She is emulating the industrial spirit of the North. Activities and energies born of necessity and poverty have quickened every avenue of commerce. Magical cities have sprung into existence in a single decade, to herald the new era. A silent, steady wave of emigration and capital is flowing southward. Industries heretofore unknown are unlocking the forces of nature and developing a new wealth, until it seems as if Virginia, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, and other states may yet rival the great industrial states of the North. In coming years they will support a dense population of free laborers; homogeneous in their social system, their products and surroundings with the people of the North, and of necessity growing into unanimity with them in political sentiment.

The old agricultural and political South, the traditional South, is sometimes inclined to be jealous of the term "New South," but it is no reflection upon the old. The old and the new are the land of the same people. The new South of diversified industries, of commerical prosperity, of free labor, of practical methods, the new fraternal South is at hand. It is coming by the natural evolution of events. Its progress can not be stayed either by tradition or partisanship.

At the close of the war, an accident, a matrimonial accident I may say, led me to become a citizen of Tennessee. A young man sometimes, unexpectedly, finds himself in a state of mind and heart where he is apt to become ex

uberant in promises (the young ladies will understand this). I thus became a Tennesseean. And, by the way, I may say that the man who leaves the State of Ohio for a new home, North or South, should be very careful in its selection. He will find it difficult to improve his condition by any change, and if he be an old soldier he may lose the benefit of the Ohio idea, which is said to include an office.

I have lived for a quarter of a century in the heart of the South, and in an atmosphere largely of Southern sentiment and sympathy upon the special political and social questions growing out of the war. I need not say to my old army comrades that my own views have not always been in accord with these sentiments; at the same time I would be recreant to the truth, and to my friends and neighbors in Tennessee, if I failed to state that I have personally received every kindness and consideration at their hands, that a self-respecting gentleman of my antecedents and political sentiments could ask or expect.

I have lived in Nashville, a beautiful and prosperous city, a city of churches and colleges, of good order and good citizenship, a city, I may say, representing, along with others. of its class, the best educational and progressive forces of the South, and well representing also the industrial, commercial, and fraternal spirit of the new order of things. No considerable city, North or South, has a larger scholastic population in proportion to the number of its inhabitants. Nearly two thousand students come from other states to be educated there. It has occurred to me that as I have the honor to be the first comrade of Southern citizenship selected to address this Society, it may not be inappropriate to present a brief retrospect of the Southern situation from a Southern standpoint.

Absence from the comradeship of the North does not.

dull the convictions of the Union soldier. Perhaps occasional antagonisms may sharpen them. Amid new surroundings he does not fail to recollect his individual share in the glory of a restored Union. Wherever he may be, its memories are as dear to him as the friends of his youth. They "rise from the heart;" they "gather in the eyes;" they are never forgotten.

The Federal soldiers whose lots have been cast with the people of the South, since the war, especially those who have not been mere partisans in sentiment, and who have not engaged in politics as a profession, have proved a useful class of citizens. People who differ radically as to the causes and issues of the war, reach a better understanding at close quarters than at long range, or through a war of

newspapers.

Acquaintance and frank discussion bring out the truth. The very war itself resulted from a series of stupendous misunderstandings and miscalculations.

If thirty years ago the material power of the North, or its vast reserve of force and courage, could by possibility have been realized by the South, we might both have been saved some lessons of rough experience. Mutual knowledge begets mutual respect; it prevents friction and distrust; it forms the very basis of political friendship.

If there be material differences in the inherited blood and tendencies of the people of the North and South, I have not been able to discover them. The popular impression upon the subject is not correct. The same ancestries are represented by both. The Americanized Anglo-Saxon, the Scotchman, the sturdy Welshman, the easily inflamed Huguenot, a few Germans, were all in the South thirty years ago. Scotch-Irishmen in great numbers-tough in fiber of mind and body, the very heart, soul, brains, and