They professed to come to liberate the slave, and they uniformly robbed or swindled him of every valuable he might possess—­even little children were stripped of their garments, as trophies of war, to be forwarded home for the wear of embryo Puritans, as an example for them in future.  Such are the Yankees of 1863-4, and ’67.  They now hold control of the nation; but her mighty heart is sore under their oppression.  She is beginning to writhe.  It will not be long, before with a mighty effort she will burst the bonds these people have tied about her limbs, will reassert the freedom of her children, and scourge their oppressors with a whip of scorpions.

Such men as Talmadge, Humphries, and Wolcott are no more to be found in New England.  The animus of these men is no longer with these people.  The work of change is complete.  Nothing remains of their religion but its semblance—­the fanaticism of Cotton Mather, without his sincerity—­the persecuting spirit of Cotton, without the sincerity of his motives.  Every tie that once united the descendants of the Norman with those of the Saxon is broken.  They are two in interest, two in feeling, two in blood, and two in hatred.  For a time they may dwell together, but not in unison; for they have nothing in common but hatred.  Its fruit is discord, and the day is not distant, when these irreconcilable elements must be ruled with a power despotic as independent, whose will must be law unto both.  It is painful to look back fifty years and contrast the harmony then pervading every class of every section with the discord and bitterness of hate which substitutes it to day.  Then, the national airs of “Hail Columbia” and “Yankee Doodle” thrilled home to the heart of every American.  To-day, they are only heard in one half of the Union to be cursed and execrated.  To ask a lady to play one of these airs upon the harp or piano, from the Rio Grande to the Potomac, would be resented as an insult.  The fame of Washington and John Hancock mingled as the united nations; but the conduct of the sons of the Puritan fathers has stolen the respect for them from the heart of half of the nation; and now, even the once glorious name of Daniel Webster stirs no enthusiasm in the bosoms which once beat joyfully to his praise, as it came to them from New England.  Those who from party purposes proclaim peace and good will, only deceive the world, not themselves, or the people of the South.  Peace there is; but good will, none.  When asked to be given, memory turns to the battle-fields upon Southern soil, the bloody graves where the chosen spirits of the South are sleeping, and the heart burns with indignant hatred.  Generations may come and pass away, but this hatred, this cursed memory of oppressive wrong will live on.  The mothers of to-day make for their infants a tradition of these memories, and it will be transmitted as the highlander’s cross of fire, from clan to clan, in burning brightness, for a thousand years.  The graveyards will no more perish than the legends of the war that made them.  They are in our midst, our children, the kindred of all are there—­and those who are to come will go there—­and their mothers, as Hamilcar did, will make them upon these green graves swear eternal hatred to those who with their vengeance filled these sacred vaults.