Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 23.
Reverend J. William Jones, Ed.

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[21] these brave endeavors were repressed awhile by the errors of reconstruction and hindered by panics which they did not cause, yet through the wisdom, the courage, and the enterprise of these soldiers and their sons, their wives and their daughters, this irrepressible land is now waking up the world to gaze upon the sunrise of the Southern day, and calling it to participate in that coming splendor which another census will reveal. The wayfaring man must be more than a fool who will not see the signs at the cross roads of prosperity pointing Southward. The bounty of Almighty God has endowed this land of the South with all the resources which a great people require. Arable soil, stately forests, water powers, climate salubrious and soft; marble, stone, coal and mineral ores; great rivers, ample harbors, ocean shores and gulf coasts; mountain ranges, hills and valleys. It lies in broad beauty upon that middle belt of the Northern Hemisphere, along which the brightest star of human achievement has moved since the earliest historic age, and its richness exactly meets the demand for those elements by which man may attain to his highest estate of liberty, enlightenment and religion.

It is not a New South that has thus burst into sight like some freshly found planet, which has been formed with regravitated fragments which lately wandered in the skies. Not a New South—but it is truly the Greater South flowering forth under new conditions from the stem of the old plant and out of the rich original soil. The Greater South! May it be matched by a Greater East, a Greater West, a Greater North, and all these in the Union of their graces display to the world the greater glory of our matchless Country— the United States of America!