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 IS THE SOUTH HEADY 
 FOE, RESTORATION? 
 
 After four years of costly and triumphant war, the question is now before 
 the people whether we shall throw away or secure the results for which 
 that war was waged unto its bitter end. A majority of Congress, as the 
 legislative branch of the government, has pronounced in favor of requiring 
 such guarantees for the future as may be necessary to insure to our chil- 
 dren the blessings for which we have made such painful and weary sacri- 
 fices. In this, Congress has believed that it was responding to the wishes- 
 of its constituency, and it is for that constituency to declare through the 
 ballot-box whether or not Congress has been mistaken. A weightier deci- 
 sion never was in the hands of a free people, and it behooves them to pon- 
 der well the facts of the case before they give their verdict. 
 
 The Question at Issue. 
 
 Stripped of irrelevant externals, the question to be decided is simply 
 whether or not the States lately in rebellion shall be at once and without 
 further probation admitted to the enjoyment of full political rights as equal 
 members in the common government. As, in such case, they would hold 
 the balauce of power between the Union and Democratic parties, they would 
 exercise not only a share of power proportioned to their numbers, but 
 an absolute controlling influence which would determine the character of 
 of our legislation and our institutions for the future, until some niisgov- 
 ernment should lead to another catastrophe as awful as that fronj which 
 we are just emerging. It is therefore of the last importance th#t we 
 should ascertain, as correctly as possible, the spirit which now animates 
 them, that we may estimate the manner in which would be exerted the 
 control over the destinies of the Republic, which we should be thus en- 
 trusting to those who have scarcely as yet desisted from their desperate 
 efforts to destroy it. 
 
.185 
 
 The Position of the President. 
 
 Fortunately, Mr. Johnson has so frankly defined his position and purposes 
 that neither his former friends nor his former enemies can mistake or 
 misrepresent them. 
 
 In the Democratic celebration held at Dayton, Ohio, in honor of the 
 
 veto of the Freedmen's Bureau Bill, Mr. Yallandigham, in praising the 
 
 President, remarked that — 
 
 " He had a slight suspicion that just now a political draft on the White 
 House bearing his (Mr. V.'s) name would be as readily honored as one bearing 
 the name of Stevens, Sumner or Schenck." Of the President's speech of the 
 22d, lie said it was a most timely speech, showing not only that he " meant to 
 fight the infernal Thugs who have arrayed themselves against his policy," but 
 that " he was one of the half dozen men in the United States who understood 
 that the devil of fanaticism is to be fought with fire. He had a firm hope that 
 the President would go on as he had begun." 
 
 With equally unerring instinct, the Philadelphia Age, a consistent apo- 
 logist for Southern treason, in its issue of Feb. 21st, stated — 
 
 " We have not abandoned or modified a single honest opinion that it might 
 be made to harmonize with a declaration of the Executive. We have not 
 applauded him merely because his policy was calculated to vindicate the wis- 
 dom of the constitutional and conservative views held by the Democratic party. 
 He has not acted as a partizan, nor have we sought to appropriate him as one. 
 We have been no swifter to speak his praiso than he has been to do deeds which 
 justify it." 
 
 And in the South his name is coupled with that of Jefferson Davis, as 
 
 a leader, to be honored and revered. In the Mobile Daily Times, of 
 
 April 25th, there is a report of a dinner of the Mobile Cadets, at which 
 
 " The second regular toast was ' The President of the United States.' This 
 was received with deafening cheers, three times three, and every lo3'al breast 
 glowed with pride, as the glorious name of Andrew Johnson was re-echoed 
 throughout the vast assemblage. When this first explos on had subsided, Col. 
 John Forsyth rose to respond to the toast These remarks were re- 
 ceived with unanimous applause, and the third regular toast was then read: 
 'Jefferson Davis and his Speedy Liberation.' 
 
 "Admiral Kaphael Semmes, the guest of the sad, yet pleasant feast, was 
 called on in answer to the toast, 'Our Honored Guest.' 
 
 " The Admiral, in felicitous terms, and with a dubious smile on his lips, 
 spoke of the flattering but rather pressing invitation he had received to visit 
 Washington on 'private business.' .... He said that, conscious of having at 
 no time violated the usages of war, he felt strong in his innocence, but as a 
 resigned Christian, was submissively bowing his head under the passing storm. 
 
 "He was soon encouraged by his counsel, who had almost daily access to 
 the President, and from him came words of hope which soothed his mental 
 torments at being separated from his beloved family and devoted friends. 
 
 " He dwelt on the liberality of the President, on the difficulties which assail- 
 ed him, of the perils of hid situation, surrounded by the hostile array of radi- 
 cals and demagogues, but yet expressed undying faith in his firmness, his 
 courage, his talent, and his final triumph over the enemies of the country and 
 constitutional freedom. 
 
 " To the President, and to him alone, had the Admiral appealed for justice, 
 and to him alone was he indebted for that tardy justice which, however, the 
 momentous events of the last period could not allow to be rendered him 
 sooner." 
 
Neither Democrats nor Rebels are wasting their praise and their sup- 
 port. Oq the 22d of February, a motley crowd of Democrats and recon- 
 structed rebels assembled iuGrover's Theatre, in Washington, and adopted 
 a series of resolutions which embodied the most advanced doctrines of the 
 Copperheads : 
 
 " Resolved, That .... any delinquent State, from the moment it returns 
 to its allegiance, and resumes its rightful position as a member of the Federal 
 Government, becomes entitled to the exercise of all its rights under the Con- 
 stitution, including that of being represented in each branch of Congress, 
 which it enjoyed before the commission of its offence. 
 
 " I? soloed, That the only lawful ground on which any member of either 
 House of Congress can be prevented from taking his seat on an equal footing 
 with any other member, must be that his election, or the returns thereof, have 
 not been in accordance with law, and that in deciding upon such qualifications 
 none other can be considered than those prescribed in the Constitution of the 
 United States." 
 
 The meeting adjourned in a body to lay these resolutions before Mr. 
 
 Johnson, who accepted them as "complimentary to the policy which has 
 
 been adopted by the administration, and has been steadily pursued since 
 
 it came into power;" and he proceeded to define his position still more 
 
 clearly : 
 
 " When those who rebelled comply with the Constitution ; when they give 
 sufficient evidence of loyalty ; when they show they can be trusted ; when they 
 yield obedience to the law that you and I acknowledge obedience to, I say ex- 
 tend to them the right hand of fellowship, and let peace and union be restored. 
 .... I am for admitting into the councils all the representatives who are 
 unmistakably and unquestionably loyal. A man who acknowledges allegiance 
 to the Government, and who swears to support the Constitution, must necessarily 
 be loyal. A man cannot take that oath in goodjailh unless he is loyal." 
 
 The oath of allegiance which was the sport of every guerilla in Virginia 
 and Kentucky and Missouri; the oath of allegiance which, a dozen times 
 repeated, had never caused Davis and Cobb and Breckenridge and Floyd 
 and Slidell to shrink from the work of overturning a government of which 
 they formed part; the oath of allegiance from which they hold that they 
 may at any time be released by the action of their states ; the oath of alle- 
 giance which sits so lightly on the conscience of a Southern gentleman that 
 General Lee could not recollect whether he had ever taken it to the Con- 
 federacy or not — this oath of allegiance is the sole guarantee to be exacted 
 of unrepentant rebels claiming a right to control the Government which 
 they had failed to subvert in arms. 
 
 And Mr. Johnston thus proceeds to argue the question : 
 
 ''The Constitution expressly provides that no State without its consent shall 
 be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate ; and it also provides that each 
 State shall have at least one representative in the House of Representatives. 
 But yet the position is taken that certain States shall not be represented. We 
 impose taxes upon them ; we send our tax-gatherers into every region and por- 
 tion of the States. These people are fit subjects of government for the collec- 
 tion of taxes, but when they ask to participate in the legislation of the country, 
 they are met at the door and told no, you must pay taxes, you must bear bur- 
 dens of government, but you cannot participate in its legislation which is to 
 affect you through all time to come. Is this justice ? Is it fair 1" 
 
In bis veto of the Freedmen's Bureau Bill,, he had already asserted that 
 the authority of each House to determine the qualifications of its own 
 members " cannot be construed as including the right to shut out, in time 
 of peace, any State to the representation to which it is entitled by the Con- 
 stitution at present," and he proceeded to declare that most, if not all, of the 
 States lately in rebellion, " have already been fully restored and are to be 
 deemed as entitled to enjoy their constitutional rights as members of the 
 Union." 
 
 These are the views avowed by the President, the Democrats and the 
 reconstructed rebels. They have thus far been successfully withstood by 
 the Union majority of Congress, supported by the loyal masses who car- 
 ried the war to a triumphant issue. It is for the people to say whether 
 that resistance shall be withdrawn or not. 
 
 The Duty of the North. 
 
 In considering this momentous question, it is idle to speculate on the 
 Various theories as to the exact legal status of the States lately in revolt. 
 Whether they are still in the Union as States, or whether they have ever 
 been out, or whether they are reduced to the condition of territories, may 
 be an interesting subject of debate for constitutional lawyers, but is of lit- 
 tle practical importance. Mr. Lincoln, with his rare natural sagacity, 
 wisely brushed all such cobwebs aside when he pronounced that they were 
 out of their practical relations to the Union, and that the problem was 
 how to get them back with due regard to the common safety. 
 
 In considering this, the sole question should be whether those States are 
 in a temper to permit them to exercise, for the advantage of the whole 
 country, the enormous power which the state of parties would place in their 
 hands. No feelings of enmity provoked by a causeless rebellion should 
 be allowed to sway our judgment. They are our brethren ; fate has indis- 
 solubly united our destinies by planting us in a territory which admits of 
 no natural division. For good or for evil we must dwell together, and he 
 who would wantonly create or maintain ill-feelings towards those who have 
 been so fearfully punished for the crime of ISO I, is an enemy to his race. If 
 they repent ; if they turn for forgiveness to the Government whose ruin they 
 madly sought ; if they abjure the heresies which precipitated such miseries 
 upon us all ; if they frankly accept the situation, burn their false idols and 
 resolve to be as energetic and persistent in upholding as they were in de- 
 stroying ; if they transfer their allegiance from the narrow boundaries of 
 particular States to the wider claims of a glorious nationality ; if they ad- 
 mit past errors ; if they are willing to cultivate the kindly and fraternal 
 feelings for us which are so confidently claimed of us for them — then we 
 will joyfully bury the hatchet, welcome them back to their places in the 
 capitol of the nation, and allow no memory of the past to sully the bright 
 prospect of the future. 
 
5 
 
 This is then the point on which hinges everything else. The President, 
 the Democracy and the leaders of the late Confederacy affirm vehemently 
 that the lately rebel states are in That fraternal and loyal frame of mind 
 that renders longer exclusion both unjust and impolitic. Congress, which 
 has laboriously examined the subject, feels much less confident. Let us 
 endeavor to ascertain from Southern organs of opinion which is most 
 nearly right. 
 
 Tennessee. 
 
 If we can conceive President Johnson to be familiar with the condition 
 of any portion of the South, it must be with that of his own State, which 
 he ruled as military governor for two years ; and if there is any portion of 
 the South which can be trusted it is Tennessee, where unionism never 
 ceased to struggle against treason, and where long possession by the Federal 
 forces apparently gave time to stamp oul the embers of rebellion. In his 
 Freedmen's Bureau veto message, the President thus pleaded the cause of 
 his State : 
 
 "The State of Tennessee, for instance, whose authorities engaged in rebellion, 
 was restored to all her constitutional relations to the Union by the patriotism 
 and energy of her injured and betrayed people. Before the war was brought 
 to a termination, they had placed themselves in relation with the general 
 government, had established a state government of their own, and as they were 
 not included in the Emancipation Proclamation, they, by their own act, had 
 amended their constitution so as to abolish slaver}* within the limits of their 
 State. I know no reason, for example, why the State of Tennessee should not 
 fully enjoy all her constitutional relations to the United States." 
 
 To deprive ourselves of the cooperation of such a community would 
 surely seem to be a wrong, and yet when we hear of the authorities of 
 Memphis siding with a bloodthirsty mob in the indiscriminate slaughter of 
 unarmed negroes, and the conflagration of schoolhouses and churches, we 
 begin to doubt whether the people of Tennessee are yet in a frame of mind 
 to govern themselves or to take part in governing us. These doubts are 
 not lessened on finding that Governor Brownlow, but a few weeks before 
 Mr. Johnson penned his veto message, remarked in a speech at Nashville, 
 on the occasion of opening a colored school there: 
 
 " I advise the teachers, male and female, to be exceedingly prudent and 
 eautious, and do nothing offensive to the predominant party here. 
 
 " You may think it a little strange that I give 6uch counsel. I do it because 
 if Gen. Thomas were to take away his soldiers, and pull up stakes and leave 
 here, you would not be allowed to occupy this schoolroom a week; not a week! 
 and if Gen. Thomas and his military lorees were to go away and leave us, this 
 Legislature, at the head of which I am placed, would be broken up by a mob in 
 forty-eight hours. 
 
 "Our high civil and military functionaries may travel through the South 
 hurriedly and otherwise, and go back to Washington and report that all is well 
 and reconstructed ; and those of you who are green enough to believe it, can 
 believe it, but pardon me when I tell you that I don't believe a word of it. 
 
 "Had a man been placed here of less prudence, less goodness of temper, less 
 sense, and less sense of justice than Gen. Fisk, this institution and this Bureau 
 
6 
 
 ■would have failed ; and he may console himself to-day, that, if our blessed 
 Savi'iur were to come to Davidson County, with shoulder-straps on, and three 
 or four stars on his shoulders, and bring with him a military staff" of the old 
 apostles, he could not give satisfaction to the rebels of Davidson County." 
 
 Possibly, Governor Brownlow's rugged unionism may be too uncom- 
 promising. Let us then see what are the opinions of the Hon. B. "W. 
 Stokes, one of the Tennessee members elect, the unconstitutional denial 
 of whose seats is so deplored by Mr. Johnson and the Democracy. In a 
 speech made during the Connecticut canvass, after stating that at one 
 time Congress bad been on the point of admitting Tennessee, he proceeded : 
 
 " Then one branch of the Legislature was disorganized, and the rebel element, 
 not being willing to submit to the rule of the majority, sought to break up and 
 destroy the Government. They left the house without a quorum, and it is still 
 without a quorum. And I say that while the Government was in that condition, 
 there is not a man of you who would think that State should be recognized. 
 We therefore do not complain of the delay. We know that admission now 
 ■would destroy the Union element of those States. Congress is doing right in 
 holding them back. When the rebel armies first surrendered there was every- 
 where a disposition toward loyalty, but I stand here to-night to say there is 
 now a feeling as deep and bitter toward the Union men of the South, as there 
 ever was in 18G0 or 1861. And the facts have proved that Congress, in its 
 cool and deliberate treatment of the matter, deserves the thanks of all Union 
 men in giving opportunity for these rebels to show their hands. Time will 
 show that Congress was right. But all these things will be settled wisely and 
 safely ; and when loyal men get control of these governments, there will then 
 be no difficulty, and all these questions will be satisfactorily settled/' 
 
 Jf this, then, is the condition of Tennessee, what must be that of States 
 which were defiantly rebellious to the last ? It would be easy to adduce 
 similar testimony with regard to each one in its turn, but perhaps the best 
 mode of proceeding in our investigation will be to take up the subject 
 systematically, and consider the temper of the South with respect to the 
 various conditions precedent to restoration. 
 
 Repentance. 
 
 In all systems of morals and ethics it is a universal rule that absolution 
 must be earned by repentance. A rebellion which Mr. Vice-President 
 Stephens had assured them was utterly without cause, against a govern- 
 ment which had never made itself felt except by its benefits; a wanton, 
 rebellion which had cost both sides half a million of lives and nearly ten 
 thousand millions of dollars — this was surely a crime to be repented of in 
 sackcloth and ashes. In the name of humanity, it should be stigmatized 
 as the foulest crime in history, and the future peace of the nation demands 
 that the depth of its guilt should know no attempt at palliation. Those 
 who regard it as merely a venial political error should have no place in the 
 councils of the nation. 
 
 Among the few South Carolinians who called themselves Union men, 
 the Hon. B. F. Perry was conspicuous, and Mr. Johnson could find none 
 so trustworthy to carry out his reconstruction policy, when he appointed 
 
him Provisional Governor of South Carolina. Mr. Perry, under date of 
 April 15th, has printed a letter to Horace Greeley, in which he pleads the 
 cause of his section. Let us see what view he takes of the secession which 
 he condemned from the first, and we can then judge how it is regarded 
 by those who hailed it as the most promising of blessings : 
 
 " And what great unpardonable crime have the Secessionists themselves been 
 guilty of? They believed in that sacred principle set forth in our Declaration 
 of Independence, that every people have the right of self-government, and the 
 right to change and alter their form of government as they may see proper. 
 This was the head and front of their offending, nothing more. They expressed 
 their purpose of living separately from the Northern States! That was all! 
 They did not seek to invade the North or govern the North. It was not their 
 purpose to wage war against the Northern States, but to live quietly and peace- 
 ably by them as neighbors and friends. They had been taught by their greatest 
 statesmen for half a century past that they had the right to peaceably secede 
 from the Federal Government. And they attempted to exercise this right. 
 That is all ! Tor this attempt they have been conquered and 6ubdued, their 
 property taken from them, and their country desolated? Is this not punish- 
 ment enough for a simple error of judgment ?" 
 
 Neither Congress nor the loyal people of the North desire the further 
 punishment of the South, but it is for us a simple matter of prudence to 
 consider the safety of lodging a controlling political power with those 
 whose "Union" men deem secession "a simple error of judgment." 
 
 If, however, we want to know what are the views still held by original 
 secessionists, we may find them in the Jackson (Miss.) Clarion, which, 
 in an article commending President Johnson and his policy to the support 
 of the South, remarks : 
 
 " We do not repent of the course which, four years ago, we entered upon ; 
 we leave it to posterity to say that we did right. Why Providence denied us 
 success we know not now, but we shall know hereafter : and even now we 
 watch with interest, from day to day, the unfolding of the divine purposes con- 
 cerning the country which he has decreed shall be one, though many wise and 
 good men thought different. How singular the turn that affairs have taken, 
 and how completely providential ! The good-natured buffoon whom the good 
 people of the North chose to place in the chair of Washington and Jackson, was 
 removed when his mission was accomplished, and the hearts of Southern men, 
 already depressed by the great misfortune that was fresh upon them, sank 
 deeper at the thought that a ruler was then set over them whose little finger 
 
 would be thicker than his predecessor's loins If Southern men 
 
 do not admire and applaud such a man as this, it is because the God that made 
 them has reconstructed them in a manner hitherto unheard of — taking away 
 their old heart, and giving them instead a heart of dirt. They are not the 
 people to give a half-hearted approval, nor if they were, are these the times fur 
 it, or is Andrew Johnson the man to whom it is due." 
 
 Secession. 
 
 So far, indeed, from secession being regarded as a cause for repentance, 
 it is still clung to as a political truth, made holy by the blood of its martyrs ; 
 and the want of success in the forcible attempt to establish it is looked 
 upon merely as a reason why peaceful legislative means should be resorted 
 to in future in the effort to dismember the Union. Mr. Stephens was no 
 
8 
 
 original secessionist, and Georgia thought, perhaps, that therefore she was 
 earning restoration in electing Lim to represent her in the United States 
 Senate. Yet Mr. Stephens could not refrain, in his speech of Feb. 22d, 
 before the Legislature of his State, from asserting that the South hid been 
 consistently loyal to the Constitution of the United States, and that having 
 failed in establishing by arms their interpretation of it, there only remained 
 to continue the effort in the halls of legislation : 
 
 "Whatever may be said of the loyalty or disloyalty of any in the late most 
 lamentable conflict of arms, I think I may venture safely to say that there was, 
 on the part of the great mass of the people of Georgia, and of the entire South, 
 
 no disloyalty to the principles of the Constitution of the United States 
 
 With us, it was simply a question of where our allegiance was due in the main- 
 tenance of those principles ; which authority was paramount in the last resort, 
 
 State or Federal Our only alternative now is to give up all hopes of 
 
 constitutional liberty, or retrace our steps and to look for its vindication and 
 maintenance in the forums of reason and justice, instead of on the arena of 
 arms ; in the courts and halls of legislation, instead of on the fields of battle. 
 I am frank and candid in setting you right here. Our surest hopes, in my 
 judgment, of these ends are in the restoration policy of the President of the 
 United States." 
 
 The ideas, rather cautiously insinuated than openly expressed by Mr. 
 Stephens, are more boldly enunciated by the Galveston News : 
 
 "We are not ashamed to confess that we expected the doctrine of peaceable 
 secession to be admitted on the basis of professions which we publish elsewhere 
 in this issue ; that we believed the age of conquest to have passed away. Mis- 
 taken as we were, it yet remains to be determined whether the South has not suf- 
 fered for having fallen behind the time, and whether the parties on the other side, 
 both actors and interested spectators, will not finally be compelled to reach 
 through many throes the political idea involved in the course of the seceding 
 States. The time will come when political issues as fundamental as those 
 raised by the South must be decided without war, and the worst judgment 
 then passed upon her will embody nothing more than the charge of having been 
 'premature." 
 
 It can thus be understood why the conventions of the Southern States 
 drew so careful a distinction between repealing the ordinances of secession 
 and declaring them null and void ah initio, and why President Johnson 
 was unable, in so many instances, to obtain from them more than the simple 
 repeal. To understand the full significance of this fact, it should be 
 borne in mind that those conventions were chosen by a constituency from 
 which the "disloyal" element had been as far as possible excluded, and 
 that they represented the most advanced Unionism that could be practi- 
 cally got together to work the machinery of their respective States. 
 
 Submission. 
 
 Had the South accepted the situation in good faith, the unexampled 
 magnanimity with which it was treated in the helplessness of its surrender 
 would have prompted it to make atonement for the past by a prompt and 
 ungrudging acquiescence in the requirements which the nation demanded, 
 not in anger nor for vengeance, but for security. The conventions, how- 
 
9 
 
 ever, haggled aud bargained 'with Mr. Johnston. -Some of his very mode- 
 rate conditions he was obliged to force upon them; others he unfortunately 
 permitted himself to abandon. The South was not slow to take advantage 
 of his weakness. Its old bullying spirit revived, and the curious spectacle 
 is presented of the conquered prescribing the terms on which it will con- 
 descend to share the government of the conqueror. Thus, tho Mobile 
 Register declares : 
 
 " The South will not purchase political privileges to which it is entitled by 
 tho Constitution of the country, at the price of dishonor. Indeed, the South 
 has made all the concessions it means to make to restoration. First, because 
 it has done enough ; and second, because faith has not been kept with it in what 
 it has done. We -were promised amnesty for the past and cordial political 
 brotherhood for the future, if "\ve would submit to certain conditions, which 
 were hard, because they were opposed to traditional habits and instincts. We 
 kept our part of the bargain, but it has been broken to the hope and insult paid 
 down instead in the other. We have no other bargains to make." 
 
 And the Richmond Enquirer of May 4th : 
 
 " If the powers that be are resolved to visit outrage upon us, let it, at least, 
 be without our further sanction. Let us stand in our tracks, and upon our rights, 
 a:id throw upon those who may deny them all the odium and infamy. Such, 
 we believe, is the temper of the Southern people at this time. We have followed 
 the ignis fatuus. of reconstruction until we are weary of floundering in morats 
 and mire. The representation which would be accorded us, even by those who 
 would allow us representation at all, is really no representation. The test oath 
 makes of it a mere mockery ; nay, worse, for it makes it ?nisrepresentation. 
 Think of Botts or Underwood as a representative of Virginia ! Infinitely do we 
 prefer none to such as they. Then surely we have no need further to pros- 
 trate ourselves in the dust in tedious and doubtful pursuit of a privilego like 
 that." 
 
 So the Augusta Constitutionalist, in ridiculing Senator Stewart's 
 plan of reconstruction : 
 
 "We have said this was Esau's bargain. It is hardly so much. For his 
 birthright the Ishmaelite got at least a mess of pottage, and we are to have not 
 even that. Out upon the hackneyed swindle. We have been promised and been 
 promised. We have done this and done that, and we are no nearer Congress 
 10-day than when we began. The resolutions do not offer us, even in exchange 
 for negro suffrage, congressional representation. Nothing but amnesty, an 
 amnesty — if there be one particle of dependence to be placed in the hereto- 
 fore pledged word of the Federal Government — that not one man in ten thou- 
 sand of us requires. «* 
 
 " But enough for the present, fur we write in haste. The trick is so shallow 
 that it strikes us with fully as much amazement as wrath. Sumner approves 
 it, and so does AVilson ; but the one is a tumid ass, and the other a hustings 
 statesman. We do not wonder at them ; but there are men of real and genuine 
 ability in the Radical ranks, and that they should permit it is proof they are 
 playing the stake of the gambler when he puts his all upon the throw. 
 
 " Shoulder to shoulder, men of the South, and no following after Esau. If 
 these men can force this thing upon us, God help us. If they cannot, don't let 
 us do it ourselves." 
 
 The Goldsborough, (N. C.) Daily News : 
 
 " As a people, we have done all that a noble adversary would have required 
 of us, even if we have not gone beyond, and we are not prepared to yield more 
 than we Lave done. The Congress of the United States asks more; the Presi- 
 dent doo| not, and, therefore, the entire South, with rare exceptions, favor the 
 1* 
 
10 
 
 President, and arc opposed to the schemes of Congress, which arc clearly in- 
 tended, not for the good of the country, North or South, but to perpetuate 
 their own political power. If, then, we are rapidly drifting into the vortex of 
 another bloody revolution, as man;/ suppose, let us do such little steering as wc 
 are permitted, in such manner, as to avoid, if possible, impending evil." 
 
 And the Charlottesville Chronicle : 
 
 " It has been suggested that it would be politic for the South to make a com- 
 promise with the Radicals by consenting to accord to the negroes a qualified 
 right of suffrage. This is in reality accepting the bill of Senator Stewart. It 
 is urged that we might as well yield the point as to have it forced upon us, and 
 perhaps in a worse form. 
 
 " For ourselves we have nothing more to yield, and nothing farther to offer. 
 Wo do not see what more the South can do than has been done. There is a 
 determination to quarrel with us, and our observation is that when it is seen 
 that a person is determined to quarrel, it is unwise to attemp to conciliate 
 him. 
 
 "We would not make one additional overture to Congress. We are opposed 
 to the South's adding one word to what has been said. AVe would not yield the 
 negro suffrage in any form. Let us stay out of Congress, and make the best 
 of it." 
 
 Increase of Representation. 
 
 ^By the emancipation of their slaves, the rebel States expect in future to 
 have them counted in the basis of representation as though they were white 
 men, instead of the three-fifths computation heretofore in use. As a re- 
 ward for rebellion, they would thus obtain an increase of sixteen votes in 
 Congress and the Electoral College, and this they seriously insist upon as 
 a right, while absolutely refusing the privilege of voting to those whom 
 they thus claim as fully worthy of representation— so that the vote of a 
 white man in South Carolina would be more than equivalent to the votes 
 of two white men in Pennsylvania. Governor Perry, in his letter quoted 
 above, thus assumes to argue the point : 
 
 " There is no more injustice in counting them, although they are not voters, 
 than there is in counting the children and women and foreigners not allowed to 
 vote in New York. They may contribute as much to the defense and prosperity 
 of the United States as any other class of non-voters Who shall be al- 
 lowed to exercise the right of suffrage, has been, very properly, left for each 
 State to determine for herself, as it is to make her own laws, and regulate her 
 judiciary and police." 
 
 And Alexander II. Stephens, in his testimony before the Pecoustructiou 
 Committee, April 11th, thus arrogantly expresses the determination of 
 Georgia: 
 
 " Q. If a proposition were made to amend the Constitution so as to have the 
 representation in Congress based upon voters, substantially, would Georgia 
 ratify such a proposed amendment if it were made a condition precedent to the 
 restoration of the State to political power in the Government? 
 
 " A. I do not think they would. The people of Georgia, in my judgment, as 
 far as I can reflect or represent their opinions, feel that they are entitled, under 
 the Constitution of the United States, to representation without any further 
 condition precedent. They would not object to entertain, discuss, and exchange 
 views in the common councils of the country, with the other States upon such a 
 proposition, or any proposition to amend the Constitution or change it in any of 
 
11 
 
 its features, and they would abide by any change if made as the Constitution 
 provides; but they feel that they are constitutionally entitled to be heard by 
 their Senators and members in the Houses of Congress, upon this or any other 
 proposed amendment. I do not, therefore, think that they would ratify that 
 amendment suggested as a condition precedent to her being admitted to repre- 
 sentation in Congress. Such, at least, is my opinion." 
 
 The Test Oath. 
 
 The Test Oath is not to the taste of these gentlemen ; they will not even 
 agree to its modification, and will listen to nothing but its repeal. Thus the 
 Augusta Transcript : 
 
 "We say it must be repealed; for the modification proposed by the Post- 
 master General, the insertion of the word ' voluntarily' before the word ' sought' 
 in the oath, would not make it less odious, People who have been engaged in 
 the war, or held any office under the Confederacy, cannot honestly take any 
 oath of the sort, and cannot therefore retain any social respect if they do so. 
 The only course that would serve the purpose of the Government is the abroga- 
 tion of the oath." 
 
 Agitation. 
 
 It is keenly remembered how all the energies of the Southern press were 
 exerted to "fire the Southern heart" and to persuade the most independent 
 communities on earth that they were the victims of a crushing and re- 
 morseless despotism that could only be escaped by disunion and war. We 
 looked on blindly at the time, with a languid curiosity and astonishment, 
 little dreaming of the settled purpose and untiring agencies at work to af- 
 fect a predetermined result. The same process may now be observed, with 
 what object we may not divine, but we can safely assure ourselves that the 
 temper which is being so carefully fanned into flame is not that which we 
 would select for association in our common government. 
 
 Thus the Richmond Times : 
 
 " The Radical carnival at "Washington, during the past week, was marked 
 by acts of lawless and utterly unscrupulous wickedness which brand the domi- 
 nant party as open, avowed and shameless revolutionists. They outraged indi- 
 vidual rights with the fierce audacity with which the sans culottes of Paris once 
 hurried their victims to the scaffold without the formality of arraignment or 
 trial. They trampled upon the Constitution with the glee with which the 
 Japanese arc said to defile the Holy Scriptures." 
 
 The Charlottesville Chronicle thus characterizes the Civil Rights 
 Rill : 
 
 " Under the guise of protecting the negro, they have come in and seized our 
 Legislatures and our Courts of Justice. The Civil Rights Bill is a ring in the nose 
 of every white man at the South — with the string in the hand of any unprinci- 
 pled Yankee who chooses to pull it." 
 
 And the Newberu Commercial : 
 
 "Friday, April G, 1866, will be a memorable day in history. On that day 
 the Senate of the United States, at Washington, perpetrated an outrage, in its 
 broadest sense, upon the people of eleven of the States (if the Union, in the pas- 
 sage of the 'Civil Rights' bill over the veto of President Johnson." 
 
12 
 
 In fact, reconstructed rebels, with loyal blood scarcely dry upon their 
 swords, are openly hinting that all legislation by the present Congress is 
 unconstitutional and of no legal validity, whence the corollary is drawn 
 that resistance to it is lawful. Thus the Richmond WniG : 
 
 " Are the bodies now sitting in Washington, claiming to be a Senate and 
 House of Representatives, composed of two Senators 'from each State,' and 
 members chosen by the people of ' the several States?' Certainly not ! 
 
 "It follows, with irresistible force and undeniable certainty, that the Congress 
 into which they are denied admission, is not the Congress created by the Consti- 
 tution and endowed with the ])oicer of legislation. Such a body is clearly with- 
 out authority, audits acts must be held to be of no binding force." 
 
 And the Richmond Dispatch : 
 
 ""When the resolution for communicating to the Executive Department the 
 Civil Rights bill as passed by the two Houses of Congress over the 'veto, was 
 pending in the Senate, Mr. McDougall suggested that the bill was not legally 
 pasted, because all the States were not represented in Congress. He was not 
 replied to ; but the resolution was passed. 
 
 " The question was very pertinent. It teas not settled by passing the resolu- 
 tion. It is still open, and icill ring again to unwilling ears, in times to come." 
 
 And what all this is meant to bring about may perhaps be guessed from 
 a remark of the Petersburg Index : 
 
 " The present Radical Congress has done more to satisfy the Southern mind 
 of the abstract right and the political propriety of secession, than all the fanatics 
 that ever made a speech or edited a newspaper in the South sinco the founda- 
 tion of the Government." 
 
 While it is vaguely indicated in a recent speech of Ex-governor Wise. 
 
 "You call the cause lost; it is not lost. If it is lost, the cause of civil liberty 
 is doomed, for it, too, is lost. There was a Paradise lost and a Paradise re- 
 gained, and there will be a Paradise regained in this country. The blood that 
 has been spilled is too precious. I should not believe in God if I did not be- 
 lieve that a special providence would yet give victory to and secure the triumph 
 
 of civil liberty in this country But I tell you, Old Virginia is not at 
 
 home. She will come back some of these days, and then the devil take the 
 hindmost. I am watching, and will tell her, when she comes, what has been 
 done in her absence. I'll say, ' Mamma, your children did not do that. It 
 was done by impostors and pretenders.' Again, I say, there is but one Vir- 
 ginia. They have taken and are wielding her powers. If I am a traitor, let 
 them make the most of it. If I am a traitor, why don't they try and hang me? 
 I have lost my lands and property, but I would clean boots on your streets 
 sooner than bow to usurpation. If I had triumphed, I should have favored 
 stripping them naked, [Laughter.] Pardon! They might have appealed for 
 pardon — but I would have seen them damned before I would have granted it. 
 For myself, the boot being on tho other leg, I take no oaths ! I ask no par- 
 dons! [Prolonged cheers.]" 
 
 Revolution. 
 Some of these agitators, however, are not willing to await tho slow pro- 
 cess of reconstructed legislation which will enable them finally to obtain 
 their objects in a peaceful manner. The prospect of a collision between 
 the President and Congress excited their hopes, and they eagerly urged 
 him to take the most extreme measures, which would have plunged the 
 
13 
 
 country in blood, and created a confusion during which they would either 
 have seized supreme power or have consummated their unforgotten scheme 
 of disunion. From these suggestions we may guess the policy that would 
 receive the support of the men whom the President and the Democrats 
 are now endeavoring to force into Congress. 
 Thus, the Danville (Ya.) Times : 
 
 " It was telegraphed here last Saturday that the President had ordered to 
 Washington 10,000 troops, to put the Rump Congress under arrest, and see 
 that Southern members took their seats. But it all proved false. We think he 
 ought to put the radicals under arrest as traitors, and order the Sontliem dele- 
 gales to take their seats with the conservative men of the North. The radicals are 
 a faction, keeping eleven States out of Congress that have as much right in it 
 as they have. Shall these corrupt wretches be permitted to keep the South out 
 forever? 
 
 " The radicals in and out of Congress, who deserve a calf rope for their treason, 
 are talking about impeaching the President. He ought to impeach them by 
 hanging them." 
 
 The Richmond Whig : 
 
 " Long before we saw it hinted or heard it whispered that the misunderstand- 
 ings between Congress and the Presideut would find their probable culmination 
 in armed collision, we had, in our minds, followed it out by ratiocination to that 
 logical sequence. We saw, or thought we saw, by the continued divergence 
 between the President and Congress, by the contumacious refusal of the latter to 
 admit to their 6eats the competent and legitimate representatives elect from 
 eleven States, and from an obstinate and defiant persistence in unconstitutional 
 measures, it might become the bounden duty of the Executive to interpose. 
 We saw, or thought we saw, how a mere party in Congress, unlawfully consti- 
 tuting itself Congress, by excluding the representatives of a whole section of 
 the Union ia a body, who, if present and voting, would, by the union with them 
 of Northern Conservatives, constitute a majority, and throw the present domi- 
 nant party in Congress into a minority — we say we saw, or thought we saw, 
 how such party usupation might well be regarded by the President in the 
 light of a conspiracy against the Government, the Constitution aud public liberty ; 
 and how, with his old-fashioned fidelity to the Constitution, he might feel it to 
 be his duty to deny that body, thus self-constituted, the Executive recognition 
 as the Congress of the United States. We 6aw, or thought we saw, how that 
 body, still persisting in its sessions, claiming the Capitol, and legislating for 
 a whole country, when only half was represented in it, should, by its violence 
 and usurpations, impose upon the President the necessity of doing what the 
 great Lord Protector of England did. We almost fancied that we heard a 
 deep hoarse voice exclaiming, ' For shame — get you gone. Give place to 
 honester men — to those who will more faithfully discharge their trust. You 
 are no longer a Congress. Take away that bauble.' 
 
 "All this occurring, we could very naturally look for the President to call 
 together a Congress composed of members elect from all the States of the Union, 
 as well those of the South as those of the North ; and that if the radical mem- 
 bers should refuse to attend that he would recognize the Northern conservative 
 members and the Southern members, as the lawful Congress to sit in the Capi- 
 tol and to legislate for the country. Nor did we see how T all this would happen 
 peacefully. We supposed that the radical and sectional Congress would con- 
 tinue its sessions, appeal to the people .and proceed to muster an army, if the 
 United States army should not side with it. We also supposed that the Presi- 
 dent would be prepared to meet force with force." 
 
 The Richmond Enquirer : 
 
 '" It is evident, indeed, that a violent collision between the Congress and the 
 President is inevitable, and is imminent, if the true spirit and intent of the 
 
14 
 
 Constitution shall remain despised, and its forms abused for the usurpation of 
 power* In this issue the President has thus far been altogether in the right, 
 and has evinced all the moderation. The Congress has been wholly in the 
 wrong, and has displayed a corresponding violence. That the public peace is 
 yet unbroken, is due to the President. It depends on Congress whether it can 
 be permanently maintained ; for we take it for granted that tli3 President will 
 not yield himself an unresisting victim to revolutionary violence, whatever garb 
 it may wear, or allow the Constitution, to defend which the sword has been 
 given him, to be overturned and destroyed. A Congress coup d' etat can be 
 met by a Presidential coup d' etat, and in the collision the hardest must fend 
 off." 
 
 The Charleston News . 
 
 "One obvious step to the more firm establishment cf his Government would 
 be in the call of a Congress, to be composed of the members of the Southern 
 States and such members of the present Congress as are ready to sustain his 
 policy. In such a Congress there would be as large a Senate and nearly as 
 large a House, while with such a body to sustain him, he can even more justly 
 represent the Government, and throw the Radicals who shall accept the issue 
 into the defensive attitude of an adversary faction." 
 
 The Richmond Enquirer, referring more particularly to the Hon. 
 Tkaddeus Stevens : 
 
 " The Satanic puddler of the national foundry grins as he sees the sparks fly 
 off from the mass of metal, that he is manipulating with devilish glee in his 
 fiery furnace. He knows that they will fall cold and lifeless, mere flakes of 
 inert iron. But, Mr. Stevens, God helping us, we do not intend to pass through 
 your rolling : and the day may not be distant when the fires of your forge will be 
 put out by a thunderbolt from the red right hand of Cozsar." 
 
 The Macon, Georgia, Telegraph : 
 
 " The ballot box is too slow a process as a remedy for existing grievances. — 
 Let the President put down the rebellion in Congress and appeal to the ballot box 
 to sustain that." 
 
 And the same journal, on another occasion, says of the Southern appli- 
 cants for seats : 
 
 " If refused admittance, a regiment of United States troops should be sent to 
 put the Southern members in their places over them ; though a small minority, 
 radicalism combined could not put them out." 
 
 The Atlanta Intelligencer : 
 
 " May not a majority of the Senators or Representatives duly elected by the 
 people, and who have their certificates of election from the Governors of their 
 respective States, meet at the Capitol, and, under the provisions of the Consti- 
 tution, organize themselves into a legislative body? In other words, may not 
 the Senators now denied their seats, and the Senators who desire that the 
 Southern members should have their seats, meet, organize, and proceed to 
 business as the 'Senate of the United States?' They would have the majority, 
 the President the power to enforce the possession of the Capitol, and the people, 
 we have no doubt, would sustain the measure, desperate though it might at 
 first seem. 
 
 " True, this would be a bold measure, but Andrew Johnson is a bold man ; 
 and if noted for one thing more than another, it is his great tenacity of purpose. 
 He well knows that the people of the United States are with him in this con- 
 troversy, and that they will sustain him in his efforts to restore constitutional 
 government. Sectional monopolies must be put down, else the President's 
 policy of restoration is a failure, and the dissolution of the Union an accom- 
 plished fact." 
 
15 
 
 And the Augusta Constitutionalist : 
 
 " Cold steel has been evoked before by legislative bodies, and the saints are 
 well enough read to remember how Pride's pikemen purged the Parliament 
 House as they would winnow the Capitol — how the Commons set up a scaffold 
 at Whitehall as they would erect a gibbet in Pennsylvania Avenue — how the 
 National Assembly worked the guillotine and robbed the rich as they, too, 
 would play Jack Ketch at the gallows and Captain Macheath with each honest 
 man's purse. Patience has its limits, and these gentry had better beware." 
 
 It is for the people to decide whether the unsubdued temper which 
 dictates these incendiary calls for revolutionary violence is such as to 
 deserve pardon for the past and admission to control the Government in 
 the future. 
 
 Loyalty. 
 
 The sentiment of loyalty which is encouraged throughout the South 
 may perhaps be estimated by the following regular toasts at the anniversary 
 celebration of the " Richmond Blues," as recently as May 10, 1866. 
 
 " 1. The 10th of May, 1793 : The natal day of the R. L. I. Blues ; we hail its 
 return with the social greeting of old and active members. 
 
 "2. The brave who have fallen in a cause they believed to be just: While 
 their bodies are committed to the grave and their spirits to God, we will en- 
 shrine them in our hearts. 
 
 "3. Virginia: Right or wrong. 
 
 "4. General Robert E. Lee: Soldier, patriot, citizen, Christian. 
 
 "5. Stonewall Jackson : The only unconquered general — the Christian hero 
 whom even his enemies revere. 
 
 "6. The Lost Cause. [Drunk standing and in silence.] 
 
 " 7. The Conquered Banner : Fold it up tenderly. 
 
 " 8. The illustrious prisoner now bearing in his own person the imputed 
 crimes of his people : Every true Southern heart would suffer in his stead. The 
 God of Truth and Justice judge him. 
 
 " 9. The Old Captains : Dear are the living ; dearer the dead. 
 
 u 10. Henry A. Wise, Prisoner of War : Unforgiven, unforgotten. 
 
 The practical forms which these sentiments assume may be guessed 
 from the following extract from the testimony of a Virginian, General 
 George H. Thomas, who proved his devotion to his country at Mill Springs, 
 Chickamauga and Nashville. 
 
 "Q. Do you know anything, from information or report, of secret organizations 
 in the South, said to be hostile to the Government? 
 
 " A. I have received several communications to that effect, but persons who 
 have given me this information have desired that their names should not be 
 mentioned, and as yet no direct accusations have been made in regard to one 
 person or any class of persons. There have been steps taken to ascertain the 
 truth of the matter. The persons who communicate with me are reliable and 
 truthful, and I believe their statements are correct in the main, but how far 
 this disaffection extends I am yet unable to say. It does exist to a certain 
 extent, and I am taking measures to obtain as much information on the subject 
 as I can. 
 
 "Q. To what States does this information relate? 
 
 "A. It relates to all the States lately in rebellion. I think there is no real 
 danger to be apprehended, because the military authority and power of the 
 Government is not only feared in those States, but I think there it is ample to 
 put down any serious demonstration. 
 
16 
 
 " Q. Is tliis information from different sources, each entirely independent 
 from the other * 
 
 " A. Yes, sir. 
 
 " Q. So far as you are informed, what are the nature and objects of this 
 organization? 
 
 "A. To embarrass the Government of the United States in the proper ad- 
 ministration of the affairs of the country, by endeavouring or making strong 
 efforts to gain very important concessions to the people of the South, if possible 
 to repudiate the national debt, incurred in consequence of the rebellion, or to 
 gain 6uch an ascendancy in Congress as to make provision for the assumption 
 by Congress of the debt incurred by the Rebel Government; also, in case the 
 United States Government can be involved in a foreign war, to watch, and take 
 advantage of the first opportunity that occurs to strike for the independence of 
 the States lately in rebellion. 
 
 " Q. Do you know of any persons of influence being implicated in this 
 movement ? 
 
 " A. As yet I have not ascertained that any persons of influence are impli- 
 cated in it: and I will further state, in justice to the people of the South, that 
 I know of some men who were prominent in the rebel army who I believe are 
 honestly trying to become good citizens of the United States. They have been 
 paroled by military authority, and have applied to the President for pardon 
 and are awaiting his decision. They have set themselves to work quietly to 
 earn an honest livelihood in some practical and peaceful manner, setting a good 
 example to other people of the South. 
 
 Sharing the Burdens. 
 It will be observed that one of the objects of the secret organizations 
 throughout the South, as described by General Thomas, is the repudiation 
 of the national obligations. It would, perhaps, be expecting too much of 
 human nature to anticipate that the South would cheerfully assume its 
 share of the expenses incurred in its subjugation, though justice might 
 dictate that the whole burden ought to be borne by those who had caused 
 that expenditure. Those who feel a pride in the national honor, or whose 
 interests might suffer by the repudiation of the national currency or loans, 
 may well ponder as to the wisdom of entrusting the national honor and credit 
 to the keeping of those who entertain a natural and undisguised hostility to 
 them. In what spirit the South may be expected to assume its share of 
 the common burden may be guessed by the exhortations of the Augusta 
 Constitutionalist advising the planters of Georgia to plow up their 
 cotton fields because Congress proposes to levy a tax on cotton, just as every- 
 thing else that we eat and drink and wear is taxed to meet the obligations 
 piled upon us by the madness of these " sons of gallant Oglethorpe." 
 
 "To the extent of full three hundred millions of greenback dollars has the 
 cotton we had at the close of the war helped the federal credit — and sorely did 
 it need it. That same sum this year would be a further god-send ; but are you 
 willing to bolster up a government which, as per estimate, only leaves you for 
 all extra-crop expenses but one twenty-third part of your gross receipts ? If 60, 
 planters of Ge irgia, you are indeed fit to be ridden, boot and spur. But if, 
 like the true sons of gallant Oglethorpe, you declare you are no bondmen 
 Hebrews to make bricks without straw; if you say by act and deed you will 
 not give lime, labor and money only that the full profit of all shall go, half to 
 the negroes of whom you were robbed, and half to the debt incurred for the 
 halls that killed your kinsmen, you wiil bring about such an earthquake iu 
 
17 
 
 Wall Street and in Lowell, in the national bank system and the credit of federal 
 bonds, as will speedily work tyranny's downfall. The great mass of the North 
 are willing to let you prosper if you can, but they are blind to the devilment 
 plotted against you, and need an earthquake to open their eyes. Onco wake 
 them, and the Five Cent Tax will sleep with Hector. They will learn that 
 first lesson in political economy that tyranny don't pay, and will demand 
 politically what we again and again financially advise, beseech, adjure — Let 
 Cotton Alone. 
 
 Reconciliation. 
 
 President Johnson and the Democrats assure us so earnestly that the 
 South is brimming over with kindly feeling towards us, that we would 
 seem to be more or less than men to eye with continued suspicion those 
 who are so fondly asking for reconciliation and oblivion of mutual injuries. 
 "When, however, we turn to facts, we find them to hardly correspond with 
 the roseate pictures seen through the Johnsonian-Democratic spectacles. 
 It would seem as though those who are clamoring for the restoration of 
 their forfeited constitutional rights should begin by setting the example of 
 according to their conquerors the plain constitutional right which guaran- 
 tees to a citizen of Pennsylvania or Ohio all the privileges in Virginia or 
 Mississippi which he enjoys in his native state. Simple justice and good 
 faith, to say nothing of policy and common sense, demand this, and yet 
 the uniform testimony of almost every man who has visited the South, 
 since the inauguration of Mr. Johnson's process of reconstruction, tells the 
 same tale of warning to those who might think of settling there, and 
 of bringing their strong arms and intelligent industry to aid in rebuild- 
 ing her shattered fortunes. What treatment a Northern man may expect, 
 who will not abdicate his right to his own opinions, may be gathered from 
 the Memphis Avalanche, which thus holds up to public execration the 
 " Yankee Merchants," who dared to think favorably of the Civil Eights 
 Bill. 
 
 "We warn our friends and our people against them. Buy nothing of them. 
 Seli nothing to them. They would disfranchise the very people among whom 
 they hope to flourish. Their association is contamination; their presence but 
 moral leprosy and death. Let them feel this, and feel it now and forever. An 
 eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. They would disfranchise, insult and 
 degrade us. Let us cause them to feel that we cannot patronize the hand raised 
 to chastise us. If any planter or any one else would like to know the names of 
 these radical one-horse Yankees, who rejoice every time the South has an insult 
 heaped upon her, let them call at the Avalanche office. They will be given at 
 once. So long as we can wield a pen, such haters of the land and people where 
 they reside shall not insult us with impunity. They are nuisances, and we 
 shall report them as such on all occasions. We intend they shall have an in- 
 famous notoriety, which will stick to them as the shirt of Nessus." 
 
 In a recent letter, John Minor Botts informs us how much fraterniza- 
 tion we may expect in Virginia. 
 
 " Now, if this feeling does exist, why is it that every Union man is sacrificed 
 and every one who was in the Rebel service taken care of? Why is it that if 
 young ladies, who modestly and instinctively shriuk from the appearance of 
 
13 
 
 their names in the public prints, and •who attend a social party given by United 
 States officers, find their attendance on the occasion referred to, in the next 
 day's papers in such terms as to bring odium upon them among their former 
 friends 1" 
 
 This is an allusion to a case which occurred in Richmond. Some 
 "Yankee" officers, in a praiseworthy effort at reconciliation, gave a ball, 
 which was attended by some Virginia ladies. To associate with Northern 
 gentlemen was unpardonable, and even the chivalrous instincts of Vir- 
 ginians could not prevent the public punishment of those ladies by the 
 publication of their names in the Richmond Examiner, whose editor 
 remarked, in vouching for the accuracy of his information : 
 
 " It is enough for us to know that we obtained it accurately, and that, too, 
 without getting our foot within the circle where any Southern man, however 
 weak his antecedents, should blush scarlet to be found, no matter how Yankeeized 
 and galvanized he be now." 
 
 For this base invasion of the sanctities of social life, the Examiner 
 
 received the thanks " of a large majority of the ladies of Richmond," and 
 
 the ladies whom it had held up to obloquy were insulted and persecuted. 
 
 General Terry, believing that such acts were not calculated to promote a 
 
 restoration of harmony and fraternal feeling, suppressed the Examiner. 
 
 An application for its resumption was referred to General Grant, who 
 
 returned it with the endorsement : 
 
 " Reply to Application of H. Rives Pollard, Praying a Revocation of the 
 Order Suppressing the Richmond Examiner. — The course of the Examiner in 
 every number which I have seen has been such as to foster and increase the 
 ill feeling towards the Government of the United States by the discontented 
 portion of the Southern people. I believe it to be for the best interests of the 
 whole people, North and South, to suppress such utterances wherever the 
 power exists to do so. The power certainly does exist where martial law pre- 
 vails, and will be exercised. Reluctant as I was to pursue this course, I have 
 felt it my duty to pursue it in this instance ; and as much as I dislike to inter- 
 fere with the interests of individuals, I would deem it improper and mischiev- 
 ous in tendency to revoke the order for the suppression of the Richmond Exam- 
 iner at this time. (Signed) U. S. Grant, Lieut. -Gen." 
 
 In spite of the Lieutenant General, however, the order was revoked by 
 President Johnson, on Mr. Pollard signing the following pledge : 
 
 "If the publication of the Examiner shall be permitted, I solemnly pledge 
 my honor that it shall be devoted to the support of the Union, the Constitution 
 and the laws, and that journal will continue heartily to support the President s 
 policy.' 
 
 Thus the era of good feeling and fraternity does not yet seem to have 
 dawned among our Southern brethren. 
 
 The Future Leaders of the South. 
 
 But we might pass all this with comparative indifference if we could 
 believe that the South would in the future entrust its political destinies to 
 wiser and truer men than those whose mad ambition has inflicted so much 
 misery upon us all. As the Southern representatives, when admitted, are 
 
I 
 
 19 
 
 to hold the balance of power, it becomes to the last degree important for 
 us to know what kind of representatives they are likely to send us for the 
 future. On this vital question we have ample materials to form a judg- 
 ment. When Mississippi elected as her first reconstructed Governor, 
 General Humphreys, of the rebel army, who had to have a pardon tele, 
 craphed to him before he could take the oaths of office; when South Car- 
 olina came within a few hundred votes of conferring the same important 
 position upon Wade Hampton, in spite of his persistent refusal to be a can- 
 didate ; when New Orleans chose Munroe, her most violent secessionist, 
 as Mayor; when Mobile selects the pirate Semmes as her Probate Judge, 
 we have evidence which the blindest cannot overlook as to the character of 
 those who, for the future, are to be the leaders of Southern opinion, the 
 moulders of Southern policy and the mediums of Southern demands. This 
 purpose is frankly avowed. As the Columbia South Carolinian says : 
 
 " We vote for the late confederate soldiers because they represent the valor, 
 honor and intelligence of the people." 
 
 And the Macon Journal : 
 
 " We have a right to elect our military heroes to office. Ought we to give up 
 our cherished notions of policy to swallow a plum 1" 
 
 The New Orleans correspondent of the New York World, May 21, 
 1866, boasts of this and shows us how the old alliance between rebellion 
 and Democracy is rapidly becoming aguin cemented : 
 
 "The election on Monday resulted in the success of the National Democratic 
 Ticket. All of the Democratic candidates were elected, except a justice of the 
 peace, a constable, and the clerk of the Second District Court. This latter 
 office is supposed to be, next to that of sheriff, the most valuable in the parish. 
 The successful candidate is Captain O'Rourke, who had been defeated in the 
 Democratic convention by one of the stay-at-home gentry. Captain O'Rourke 
 had been a gallant officer in the confederate army, and had lost an arm in the 
 service. These circumstances made him invincible. All the other candidates 
 on the general ticket of National Democracy are elected ; and all of them had 
 been in the confederate service, in one army or another. I suppose that this 
 will be taken as conclusive evidence of ' disloyalty,' especially as their vote is 
 about two to one over that of their opponents, except where ex-confederates 
 run against them. 
 
 " We, however, view it differently. We vote for the men who sympathized 
 with us, and were of us, in the bitter struggle of the past, and we organize our- 
 selves as the Democratic party, because we find in that party the only support 
 of justice, of liberty and of true Democracy. The fact that the old Confederate 
 sentiment — which is the people of the South — allies itself willingly and sponta- 
 neously with a great national organization, shows conclusively that a national 
 feeling is restored, or is, at least, in the way of restoration." 
 
 In what temper these men would exercise their controlling influence 
 when once admitted is not left to conjecture. Senator Garrett Davis, of 
 Kentucky, and Senator Saulsbury, of Delaware, are "conservative" Demo- 
 crats, enthusiastic for the " President's policy," and have never gon / " 
 length of openly justifying rebellion or joining in armed resist" 
 Government. Yet, in the debate in the Senate on the Civil 
 
 I: 
 
20 
 
 April 5, 18G6, Mr. Davis declared that, in the event of the passage of that 
 measure, 
 
 " I nra henceforth the enemy of your Government, and will devote the feeble 
 remnants of my life in efforts to overthrow it." 
 
 Mr. Saulsbury was not to be outdone, and openly prophesied and 
 threatened resistance. 
 
 " I rise to say, sir, that in my judgment the passage of this bill is an inau- 
 guration of revolution. It is well, sir, that the American people should take 
 warning and set their house in order, for it is impossible that the people will 
 patiently submit to it. Heaven knows we have had enough of bloodshed, 
 enough of mourning in every household. There are too many newly made 
 graves for any one to wish to see more. Attempt to execute this laiv within the 
 limits of any State of this Union, and in my judgment this country ivi/l again 
 be plunged into all the horrors of civil ivar. In my own State — an humble 
 State in point of numbers, but a State of gallant sons — your law will never be 
 observed by the judiciary." 
 
 Thus, like the Bourbons, the South has learned nothing and forgotten 
 nothing. Unabashed, unhumiliated, unrepentant, it comes up to us with 
 its old swagger, yielding nothing and demanding everything, listening to 
 no reason and threatening revolution and confusion. It acknowledges only 
 the empire of force. While we exerted our power, it respected us. When 
 we laid aside our weapons and prepared to welcome it, it mistook humanity 
 and good feeling for fear, and it at once resumes its old attitude and its old 
 policy, which the Democratic alliance hud always rendered so successful. 
 The Democracy, hungering for the spoils of place and power, is eager to 
 renew that alliance and to sell the country for its miserable mess of pottage. 
 It rests with the people to say whether these schemes shall be baffled, or 
 whether we shall supinely permit the renewal of an agitation which will 
 convulse the country for a generation. 
 
 On the one hand are the President and the Democratic party clamor- 
 ing for the immediate restoration of the South. On the other is Congress, 
 patiently investigating the temper of the South, and planning to obtain 
 guarantees that may protect our institutions and our interests from the 
 evil consequences that would ensue if the Southern members should be 
 disposed to abuse their power. Both parties appeal to the people to sus- 
 tain these widely divergent lines of policy. Perhaps the evidence adduced 
 above may aid the people in rendering their judgment on this most mo- 
 mentous question. 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
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