In the North there were no such hampering conditions to development, therefore there was progress in all social matters. Society, as generally termed, became re-formed and settled down to its old pursuits and ambitions; but there had come a great difference in its conditions. The era of centralization which had dawned with the close of the Revolution had again passed away. Never again, as far as we can see and foresee, was Washington to be the social centre of the country. The traditions of the White House had been overthrown, and the leadership of the social world was not to be looked for from that quarter as of old. For the future, the mistress of the White House might be in theory "the first lady of the land," but she was no longer to be at the head of a court or even a coterie. The social glory of Washington had departed. Society resumed its ways all over our country; but when American women were spoken of there was no longer in the mind of speaker or listener the inevitable suggestion of the social world as generally recognized. The term had emerged from its narrowness of meaning and had resumed all its old inclusiveness; North and South, East and West, it was recognized that American womanhood includes society, and not society American womanhood. And this recognition of a great truth helped the coming of a new era which was hard at hand.
Meanwhile, America was two countries, joined in a force-born alliance but with no true union, far less unity. And of all the manifestations of this deplorable fact, none was so convincing as the bearing of our womankind in their attitude toward those of the opposite section. The women of the South steadfastly refused to be "reconstructed." The same feeling was prevalent among the men of that section; but it was at its height among the women, who utterly refused to pretend to any feeling of loyalty to the Union, and, worse yet, did not affect to conceal their hatred of all things Northern. Among the evils which Reconstruction had brought in its train was the advent in the South of a type of Northern woman, entirely honest in her enthusiasm in the cause of the negro and entirely ignorant of the true methods to further that cause. She came armed with a thousand ill-founded prejudices, and she calmly proceeded to work upon the lines suggested by those prejudices, with utter disregard of the real conditions which she desired to ameliorate and with dense ignorance of the true tendencies and nature of the people, white and black, among whom she worked. Lacking the long line of racial traditions and experiences which alone could give grasp of the situation, she took council of her preconceived ideas only, and from her darkness of ignorance and prejudice believed that she could shed light into benighted souls. She was honest to a fault; but her honesty was based in the supreme folly which believes that it can better see into the nature of things than they to whom those things have been life-long conditions. Seeing her, the Southern woman naturally believed that she was a type of the womanhood of the North,--which she was not. Hearing her reports, written from a standpoint utterly fatal to their truth or even fairness, of the existent culture in the conquered country, the Northern woman believed that her accounts gave a true picture of the conditions of civilization and thought prevailing in the South,--which they did not. So increased the poison of misunderstanding in the veins of both sections.