If it is indeed true
that such things did not occur in the Civil War--and I believe
confidently that it is true--then we have occasion, in the light of the
European War, to revise the popular belief that of all wars civil war is
the most horrible.
The attitude of the modern South (the "New South" which, by the way, one
Southerner described to me as meaning "northern capital and smoke")
toward its own "unreconstructed" citizens, for all its sympathy and
tenderness, is not without a glint of gentle humor. More than once, when
my companion and I were received in southern homes with a cordiality
that precluded any thought of sectional feeling, we were nevertheless
warned by members of the younger generation--and their eyes would
twinkle as they said it--to "look out for mother; she's
unreconstructed." And you may be sure that when we were so warned we did
"look out." It was well to do so! For though the mother might be a frail
old lady, past seventy, with the face of an angel and the normal
demeanor of a saint, we could see her bridle, as we were presented to
her, over the thought there here were two Yankees in her
home--Yankees!--we could see the light come flashing up into her eyes
as they encountered ours, and could feel beneath the veil of her austere
civility the dagger points of an eternal enmity.
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