Finally, by the vote of the North, there came into the Chief Magistracy one who gloried in the circumstance that on the maternal side he came of fighting Southern stock; who, amid universal applause, declared that no Southerner could be prouder than he of Robert E.Lee and Stonewall Jackson, apotheosizing an uncle, his mother's brother, who had stood at the head of the Confederate naval establishment in Europe and had fitted out the Confederate cruisers, as the noblest and purest man he had ever known, a composite of Colonel Newcome and Henry Esmond.
Meanwhile the process of oblivion had gone on.

The graven effigy of Jefferson Davis at length appeared upon the silver service of an American battleship.

This told the Mississippi's guests, wherever and whenever they might meet round her hospitable board, of national unification and peace, giving the lie to sectional malignancy.

In the most famous and conspicuous of the national cemeteries now stands the monument of a Confederate general not only placed there by consent of the Government, but dedicated with fitting ceremonies supervised by the Department of War, which sent as its official representative the son of Grant, himself an army officer of rank and distinction.
The world has looked on, incredulous and amazed, whilst our country has risen to each successive act in the drama of reconciliation with increasing enthusiasm.
I have been all my life a Constitutional Nationalist; first the nation and then the state.

The episode of the Confederacy seems already far away.