Much of the Old South is worthy of preservation, and it is never safe for a country or a section to break too abruptly with its older life.
Economically the South has prospered in proportion as the new spirit has ruled.

The question of secession is dead, and the man who refuses today to treat it as past history but grows excited in discussing it is not likely to be successful in his business or profession.

The men of the New South spend little time in discussing the relative wisdom of Jefferson Davis and Robert Toombs or the reasons for the failure of the Confederacy.

The Southerners accept the results of the War, and all except a negligible minority are convinced that the preservation of the Union was for the best.

To be sure they believe, partly through knowledge but more largely through absorption, that the Confederate soldier was the best fighting man ever known and that the War might have been won if the civil government had been wiser, but on the whole they are not sorry that secession failed.