Conclusion

    In the last work of fiction published during Chesnutt's life, The Colonel's Dream, Colonel Henry French has a dream in which there is

... a regenerated South, filled with thriving industries, thronged with a prosperous people where every man, having enough for his needs, was willing that every other man should have the same; where law and order should prevail unquestioned, and where every man could enter, through the golden gate of hope, the field of opportunity, where lay the prizes of life, which all might have an equal chance to win or lose.

    As the narrator continues:

...even in his dreams the colonel's sober mind did not stray beyond the bounds of reason and experience. That all men would ever be equal he did not even dream; there would always be the strong and the weak, the wise and the foolish. But that each man, in his little life in this our little world might be able to make the most of himself, was an ideal which even the colonel's waking hours would not have repudiated. (280-81)

This dream invites comparison between the South as Chesnutt's character dreamed about it nearly a century ago and the South as it is today. Certainly there are many "thriving industries" and "prosperous people" in the South today. And yet, though great strides have been made in ensuring equality of opportunity for all people, we are still far from fully realizing the colonel's dream. The challenge to fulfill this dream and to realize these ideals is perhaps for the people of Fayetteville, the South, and the nation, the most important legacy of the fiction of Charles W. Chesnutt.

Bibliography and Thanks

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