Bloomington High School, The Gothic, 1914, Page 47

Description:	ORATIO de BELLO--Continueddoah, a living landscape of green fields and prosperous villages; sosoon to become desolate by the ravages of cruel war.Still farther in the distance is the stern Sherman winding his waybetween rice fields and dismal swamps. Now he is burning the beau-tiful city of Atlanta, and now sad ruin and desolation lie in his wakeas he marches to the sea.Here at our very feet before the impregnable walls of Fort Don-aldson lie whole regiments of the Boys in Blue. But let sable nightbrood over such scenes as these; it is well to see what has causedsuch a dire and dreadful struggle. In the year 1620 there were plantedon this continent two ideas irreconcilably hostile to each other. Thetwo ideas were landed, one at Plymouth Rock from the Mayflower, theother from a Dutch brig at Jamestown. The first idea was that privatejudgment in politics as well as in religion was the right of every man.The second, that capital shall own labor, that the negro has no rights,that a white man may justly buy, own, and sell him and his offspring,forever. This was the one great cause-human slavery.Another was the question of the right of state. For, although ourconstitution gave the states the right to regulate their own domesticaffairs, nevertheless when the states abuse these privileges, as theSouthern states did, then general government must cease to be.The wonderful changes that have come over the country in thelast fifty years can hardly be conceived. Before the war we had thefugitive slave law. The cruel slave owner hunted the slave with dogand gun and even dared to cross the line into our own free North andcompel the citizens to retake the trembling fugitive. It was degrad-ing, demoralizing and inhuman, but just these things educated thepeople to a manly resistance of the great iniquity. Not only wasslavery injurious to the master, but to the son of the master as well.He grew up to be idle, improvident, and tyrannical. Indeed, everyinstitution was injured and corrupted by it. But all evils must havean end, and this, like others, met its fate.The South may not yet be as we would have her, yet she is pro-gressing. New civilizations do not spring up nor great revolutionsoccur in a day-they grow slowly. Times change and men sometimeschange with them-but principles, never.The useful lesson of the war can never be forgotten. It is wortha lifetime of indifference or discord to know that down beneath alldifferences of party or sect, and deeper than selfish interest or personalprejudice, there was a pure patriotism and a love of country thatmade us a nation. If there was any good accomplished by the war, ifthere was any fact established by those four long years of fighting, itwas the fact that the people of the United States constituted a nation.We came out of the war showing the world that we were a nation,indivisible in constituency, indivisible in interest and indivisible indestiny.In order again to grow a happy and a prosperous nation, it wasnecessary for all the people of the North, South, East and West torealize the fact that, for good or bad, for rich or poor, for prosperityor failure, they constituted one nation and that they were to live andgrow and prosper and suffer together, united by bonds that cannot besundered.Natures Spring SongHomer Carnes, 14“To my water courses speaking,Cold and ice then come acreaking;Creaking, oh, so very steadly,With a music that is friendly,As they flow-.“From a weary winters worries;From its snow flakes and its flurriesI am breaking, surely breaking,Happiness on earth am making,There below.Now the robin comes ahopping,Buds and flowers, nothing stopping;All my spare time, now I spend it,Into grasses green I bend it;Breezes blow.In her glory now she meets you;Sweetly lifts her head and greets you;While she lives, she lives for others,All her pain and grief she smothers.Do you so?Page Forty-seven
Source:	http://cdm17129.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/hs-bloom/id/1359
Collection:	Bloomington High School

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