I








T I L
LOST CAUSE REGAINED.
BY EDWARD  A. POLLARD
Author of" THE LOST CAUSE," &c.
NEW YORK:
G. W. CARLETON & CO., Publishers,
London: S. Low, SON & Co.
MDCCCLXVIII.




Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1868, by
G. W. CARLETON & CO.
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States, for the Southern Distret
of New-York.
Stereotype of
Sunnyside Prea




" Much ostentation vain of fleshly arm
And fragile arms, much instrument of war,
Long in preparing, soon to nothing brought
Before mine eyes thou hast set; and in my ear
Vented much policy, and projects deep
Of enemies, of aids, battles and leagues,
Plausible to the world, to me worth naught,
Means I must use, thou say'st, prediction else
Will unpredict and fail me of the throne:
My time I told thee (and that time for thee
Were better farthest off) is not yet come;
When that comes, think not thou to find me slack
On my part aught endeavouring, or to need
Thy politic maxims, or that cumbersome
Luggage of war there shown me, argument
Of human weakness rather than of strength
# * * # * * * #
More humane, more heavenly first
By winning words to conquer willing hearts,
And make persuasion do the work of fear.
At least to try and teach the erring soul
Not wilfully misdoing, but unware,
Misled; the stubborn only to subdue."
Milton's "Paradise Regained."








CONTENTS.
PAGD
INTRODUCTION,..13
I. —REVIEW OF THE LATE WAR.-STATESMANSHIP OF
THE SOUTH,......17
A question at the front of the Historical review-How far President
Davis' mal-administration was responsible for the results of the
War-Lack of a distinct inspiration in the South~-Puerilities of Mr.
Davis-His first design to take personal command of the armiesHow it was defeated-An incident of Manassas-Resignation of
Mr. Hunter from the Confederate Cabinet-Richmond, a Chinese
copy of Washington-Mr. Seward, the arch-intelligence of the
war-European opinions of Mr. Davis and his Administration-A
glance at Senator Benjamin-Mr. Davis in the prophet's robeHow he betrayed and lost public confidence-The Emancipation
Proclamation not an  act of statesmanship-The two notable
triumphs of Northern statesmanship-Inattention of the South to
the Anti-Slavery  measures  at Washington-Peculiar crime of
Negro  enlistments-A reflection  on the Confederate finances
Errour of the Impressment law-Analysis of the opposition to Mr.
Davis-Mr. Toombs' explanation-Wreck of  the  Confederate
transportation-Private  design of Mr. Davis —John M. Daniel's
commentary on Yankees-His suspicion of Mr. Davis-Curious
mitigation of animosity towards the North-Mr. Stephens' suppres.
sion of a proposition from Abraham Lincoln —Par obile of Georgia
demagogues-Curious delusion of the South as to the recovery of
Slavery-The African Church " revivals"-A  remark  of Mr.
Hughes of Virginia-Historical value of the fact that the South
expected generous terms of restoration-What Reconstruction has
revealed.




8                               CONTENTS.
PAGE
II.-RECONSTRUCTION.
1.-THE     DESTRUCTION  OF THE WAR,.     *..  53
Realization of its losses in the South-Political "vivisection"The material civilization of the North, the conqueror-Its characteristic warfare-A  curious reminiscence of B. F. Butler-The
"problem" of Reconstruction-President Lincoln in RichmondAfterthought of the Republican party.
2. —HISTORY OF RECONSTRUCTION,...  61
Need of a popular history of Reconstruction-Declaration of the
objects of the war in 1861-Practice of the war as to "existing
State institutions "-Cases of Tennessee and Louisiana-Three conditions of restoration-President Lincoln on the  "white basis"Extraordinary proposition of Congress to disfranchise the NegroReconstruction policy of President Johnson-Happy condition of the
country under it-Gen. Grant's testimony-Necessity of the Republican party-Its revolutionary sentiment and education-Six months
of fruitless debate in Congress-Violent premise of ReconstructionDogma of forfeited  rights-Constitutional Amendment, No 14Hidden designs of this measure-Trap of Thaddeus Stevens on
universal suffrage-A trick on Southern opinion-President Johnson's
re-assurances to the South-Reconstruction law of March 2d, 1867President's veto-Gen. Grant's interpretation of ReconstructionHistory of the Convention elections in the South-Remarkable frauds
in the registration-The attempt of Congress upon the President,
as part of the Reconstruction scheme-Analysis of this attemptThree violent measures-A historical remark on the Tenure-of-office
law-The significance of impeachment of the President-Its logical
identity with Reconstruction.
3.-THREE NOTABLE ARGUMENTS,....  85
The three arguments for the Reconstruction scheme of CongressSenator Sumner's early discovery of "dead States"-A clear and
fundamental proposition-Decision of Justice Sprague of Massachusetts-Estoppel of Congress from the doctrine of State forfeitureImportant decision of Chief Justice Chase on the North Carolina
circuit-The argument of a "conquered country "-Extract from an
English statesman-" Occupatio bellica" —The Constitutional guaranty of  a republican form  of government-Senator Sumner's
ignorance of history-Analysis of the Constitution with respect
to suffrage-The general argument for universal suffrage-Recent




CONTENTS.                                    9
PAGE
declamations of Thaddeus Stevens-A  logical reply to themUniversal suffrage, as meaning Negro suffrage for the South-A
brutal mockery of republicanism.
4.-A  SPECIAL CONSOLATION,..              102
The Radical party vindicating the action of the South in the late
war-A new interpretation of "Copperheads"-Speech of George
H. Pendleton-Two wars since 1860: one for the Union, the other for
the Constitution-President Lincoln's plea of necessity-Precedents
of 1776 and 1812-Reasons for the war on the Constitution-Extract
from an English publicist-Identity of the Two Rebellions, 1776 and
1861-Extraordinary declaration of President Johnson-Prophecy of
the " lost cause regained."
III.-THE NEGRO QUESTION.
1. —RETROSPECT OF SLAVERY,...                        12
The political question of the Negro resolved to one of natural
history-Value of the fact of the specific inferiourity of the NegroIts importance in a retrospect of the sectional controversy and warThe tribute of history to Negro Slavery in the South-The equality
doctrine of the Declaration of Independence, so far from condemning
Slavery, obtained from the contact and influence of it-The true and
only defence of Slavery-Mistakes of Southern politicians-Their
appeal to the Constitution in behalf of Slavery, a mean and infamous
one-The important premise of the entire Slavery Question, the
inferiourity of the Negro.
2.-~INFERIOURITY OF THE NeGRO,..   118
The Scientific Argument-Divisions of the organic world-Qualities
of a " Species "-The law of hybridity-The Negro, the base of the
generic column of Man-No genus without species-Limits of interunion between Negroes and Whites-The Octoroon absolutely sterile
-Uniformity of the type of the Negro-The excavations of Champollion-The Religious Argument-Hypothesis of a Divine miracle
with reference to the Negro-The Historic Argument-The Negro in
Africa-Former civilization of the Nile-A glance at Liberia-The
idea of the inferiourity of the Negro, one of benevolence.
1*




10                             CONTENTS.
PAGE
IV.-THE TRUE HOPE OF THE SOUTH.
1.-CONDITION  AND TEMPER OF THE SOUTHERN PEOPLE,   129
The black thread of the Negro in the web of party-Division of the
Anti-Slavery party into Abolitionists and Negrophilists-Union of
these two parties in Reconstruction-A new and enlarged edition of
the "Irrepressible Conflict "-The proposition of Negro Suffrage
scouted in the North-Elections of 1867 in Ohio, Minnesota, Kansas
and New Jersey-The homogeneousness and political identity of the
nation risked by the Negro-A curious comparison by B. F. Butler
between the Negro and an unfortunate beast-The ballot, a fatal gift
for the Negro-The "school"' of Slavery-Extravagant tribute of the
Republican party to the beneficence of Slavery-The Negro obtained
his maximum of civilization as a slave-Temper of the Southern
people on Negro suffrage-The theatrical machinery of " the League "
-Solidity of the Negro organizations in the South-The elections of
1867 in Virginia-A war of races imminent-The prayer of the South
for peace-Interesting statement of Ex-Governor Perry of South
Carolina-The feeling of desperation in the South-Danger of another
and peculiar rebellion there-The recent farce of Restoration-The
lesson of Fenianism-A warning, and not a threat, to the North.
2.-" ALBA STELLA,".. 154
What is the true hope of the South t-The new cause, or'the "lost
cause" revived-Abolition destroyed the barrier of races, the true
value of Slavery-The war, as merely developing the ultimate issue
of constitutional liberty and of our political traditions-" The South
Victorious"-The lesson of patience-Pessimists in Congress-B. F.
Butler and Thaddeus Stevens-Can the Constitution be recovered?Survey of our departure from it-Peculiar conditions for judging
American history-An incident of the Philadelphia Convention-The
elections of 1867-Power of public opinion in our political system"White," the winning word-Declaration of Gen. Ewing-Congress
translates the political controversy into a war for liberty-Two parties
left by the war-The fundamental idea of President Johnson's
Administration-Review of it-Horace Greeley and a New Jersey
correspondent-Character of President Johnson-His extraordinary
saerifices of power and patronage-His heroic attitude in Impeachment-A bold and thrilling avowal-Value of his example to the
South-The nobility of Hope.




CONTENTS.                                 11
PAGB
3. —IMPPEACHMENT.....                                           177
The true revolutionary sense of the proceeding against the PresidentIts relations to Reconstruction-Errour of the Radical party-Growth
of public interest in Impeachment-Anticipations of "the future
historian"-Value of Impeachment as a moral exhibition.
V.-DUTY OF THE WHOLE COUNTRY.
1.-THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY,.... 185
Three duties of the country-Summary of the virtues of the Demo.
cratio party-Singular attempt of the Republican party, in 1861,
to appropriate Democratic principles-Its return to ConsolidationRenewed appeal of the Democrati- party to  "time-honoured
principles."
2.-THEB GROWTH AND GREATNESS OF AMERICA,..190
Curious prophecies of Adams and Jefferson-America in 1776Retrospect of Mr. Jefferson's Goqernment-Two pictures at Washington-Three visions of an empire in America-The Alleghanies,
the Mississippi River and the Pacific Ocean-Summary of the present
resources of the country-A lesson of the late war-Value of the
physical greatness of America, as a source of patriotic inspirationA new interpretation of the Union-The peculiar danger of a revolution against the Constitution-A remarkable fact about European
Emigration-The problem of America, territorial consolidation (not
political consolidation)-President Johnson's tribute to the Union.
3. -TH  TRUE NATURE AND SERVICE OF THE UNION,. 203
The political novelty of the American Union-No mission apart
from the States-A curious reflection on political science-Thomas
Jefferson's idea of "ward republics "-Political decentralization in'
America-"The Union as it was," the logical expression of the
"Lost Cause "-The Union, as an object of idolatry-Necessity of an,
element of reverence in our political system-Consolidation more'
odious than Secession-Power and certainty of public opinion arising)
out of the nature of the Union-A new value of State institutionsPublic opinion, the supreme ruler and the last arbiter,








INTRODUCTION.
The author of the present work wrote a history of the recent
war under the title of "The Lost Cause."  The fitness of the
title was singularly complimented, and the words have since
been permanently incorporated in the common language of the
people. The author now proposes a title yet more fit and
happy for the continuation of his historical work: "The Lost
Cause Regained."  He does not hesitate to confess that a prolonged and mature reflection has given him larger and perhaps
better views of the true nature of the recent war, and especially
of its consequences; and he has risen from that reflection profoundly convinced that the true cause fought for in the late
war has not been " lost " immeasurably or irrevocably, but is
yet in a condition to be "regained " by the South on ultimate
issues of the political contest.
It is scarcely possible in any introduction to recite the
whole design of a literary work. But the meaning of a title,
which perhaps piques curiosity, may be fixed at once in the
mind of the reader by the following brief summary of propositions:
That the late war was much misunderstood in the South, and
its true inspiration thereby lost or diminished, through the
fallacy that Slavery was defended as a property tenure, or as a
peculiar institution of labour; when the true ground of defence
was as of a barrier against a contention and war of races.
That the greatest value of Slavery was as such a barrier.
That the war has done nothing more than destroy this barrier, and liberate and throw upon the country the ultimate
question of the Negro.




14                    INTRODUCTION.
That the question of the Negro practically couples or associates a revolutionary design upon the Constitution; and that
the true question which the war involved, and which it merely
liberated for greater breadth of controversy was the supremacy
of the white race, and along with it the preservation of the political traditions of the country.
That in contesting this cause the South is far stronger than
in any former contest, and is supplied with new aids and
inspirations.
That if she succeeds to the extent of securing the supremacy
of the white man, and the traditional liberties of the country
-in short, to the extent of defeating the Radical party-she
really triumphs in the true cause of the war, with respect to
all its fundamental and vital issues.
That this triumph is at the loss only of so many dollars and
cents in the property tenure of Slavery-the South still retaining the Negro as a labourer, and keeping him in a condition
where his political influence is as indifferent as when he was a
slave;-and that the pecuniary loss is utterly insignificant, as
the price of " the lost cause regained."
These propositions, we believe, sum  a novel, and even
sublime philosophy on the political questions of the day.
They contain the true hope of the South; they suggest a new
animation of a contest which lingers too much on mere partial
and contracted issues.  The great difficulty of the Southern
mind is, and always has been, its extreme narrowness on the
Negro question. This intellectual defect, in a concern so important and peculiar, is especially remarkable, when we consider what renown the South has obtained for her schools of
statesmanship, that she has contributed the laigest and best
part of the political literature of the country; nevertheless it
is a fact.  We  shall see further on in these pages that the
best of Southern statesmen had no clear ideas, either of the
nature or the object of the defence of Negro Slavery; that they
were incapable of conveying distinct inspirations to the people




INTRODUCTION.                     15
in the past war, which failed on the side of the South for this
reason as well as from material causes; and that in the political controversy which has followed, they have exhibited a
pitiful want of due conception of the nature and magnitude of
the contest. It is indeed mortifying to witness the present
superficiality of the Southern mind, and to read the commentaries of its statesmanship on the political situation. The
reigning Radicalism  at Washington is lightly treated as a
wanton and ephemeral display of party, or, in the most serious
mood of the Southern " statesman," is described after the
words of Emerson: "the spirit of our American radicalism
is. destructive and aimless-it is not loving-it has no ultimate
ends-but is destructive only out of hatred and selfishness."
The common mistake is in regarding as a wanton and aimless
excitement, without "ultimate ends, " as an extravagant episode of party, what has really the depth and significance of a
great revolution-a revolution of unbroken tenour and resolution, proceeding by distinct and firm steps from the time the
Anti-Slavery party erected its first starting-post in the theory
of Consolidation, and made its first movement upon the Constitution of the United States.
We are living not in the excitement of party, but in the
solemnity of a Revolution.  We are aware that it has often
happened that a people has shown but little cotemporary realization of the events of a Revolution; history is full of pictures
of men buying and selling, and perplexed with the paltry cares
of every-day life in the midst of great political changes; and it
seems indeed to be an unvarying law of the progress of human
opinion, that the true proportions of the crisis through which
it passes become visible only on retrospect. But in the case
we are considering, this popular dullness, especially in the
South, is unusually remarkable and excessively curious. The
imperfect appreciation of current events, and the degraded
estimate of them are so extreme as to claim a particular notice
and merit a signal rebuke.




16                   INTRODUCTION.
It is to develope the significance of the present revolution in
the political affairs of America; to pass in brief review its
history; to show its coherent and dramatic design on the twin
subjects of Reconstruction and Negrophilism; to deduce from
all a new and animating hope for the South, and to point the
path to the victory of the Constitution, that we have designed
this work.
If we may claim any particular merit for it, it will be found
rather in the suggestive than in the exhaustive treatment of
the subject.  It is not a modest claim we make. We shall
consider, indeed, that we have attained some literary excellence, when we have accomplished what is really the superiour
office of the writer-to suggest rather than to convey all the
thoughts which attach to his subject.
May, 1868.




I.
REVIEW OF THE LATE WAR.
STATESMANSHIP OF THE SOUTH.
A question at the front of the Historical review-How far President Davis' mal-adminis*
tration was responsible for the results of the War-Lack of a distinct inspiration in the
South-Puerilities of Mr. Davis-His first design to take personal command of the
armies —How it was defeated-An incident of Manassas-Resignation of Mr. Hunter
from the Confederate Cabinet-Richmond, a Chinese copy of Washington-MrSeward, the arch-intelligence of the War-European opinions of Mr. Davis and his
Administration-A glance at Senator Benjamin-Mr. Davis in the prophet's robeHow he betrayed and lost public confidence-The Emancipation Proclamation not
an act of statesmanship-The two notable triumphs of Northern statesmanship-Inattention of the South to the Anti-Slavery measures at Washington-Peculiar crime
of Negro enlistments-A reflection on the Confederate finances-Errour of the Im'
pressment law-Analysis of the opposition to Mr. Davis-Mr. Toombs' explanation-Wreck of the Confederate transportation-Private design of Mr. Davis
-John M. Daniel's commentary on Yankees-His suspicion of Mr. Davis-Curious
mitigation of animosity towards the North-Mr. Stephens' suppression of a proposition from Abraham Lincoln-Par nobile of Georgia demagogues-Curious delusion of the South as to the recovery of Slavery-The African Church " revivals "A remark of Mr. Hughes of Virginia-Historical value of the fact that the South
expected generous terms of restoration-What Reconstruction has revealed.
He who justly and intelligently reviews the  late  war from
the eminence of History finds at the front the serious and interesting question:-how far its results are to be ascribed to
the relative personal administrations of the two Governments.
The author has an opinion, strengthened and assured by time,
and  of which he will probably  never  be  divested, that the
South  should have  won in the past contest by  every  rule  of
historical  experience, and  according  to  every  method  of a




18             REVIEW OF THE LATE WAR.
priori argument, if the administration of her affairs had been
good, or even equal to her enemy's; and that she essentially
failed for want of a statesmanship competent to energize her
resources, and especially to furnish her people a distinct and
well-defined inspiration to sustain their arms. The test of
such belief is obviously this: that at the time of the surrender
of the Confederate armies, the South was still capable of defensive warfare, if there had been a strong popular will to employ
all her resources-the want being, not of material, but of animation. There was still population enough  to furnish an
army of several hundred thousand men; there were accumulations of subsistence, remote and unavailable only through mismanagement, which, by proper exertions, might have been
brought into use; there were parts of the country immensely
defended by nature, where armies had not yet penetrated; and
yet, in direct view of these resources, we find a war tamely expiring, without either of those final experiences almost uniform
in history-a last convulsive effort or a resort from the open
field to such strong-holds as nature or art have supplied. We
know of no other instance in modern history where more than
one hundred thousand men have laid down their arms in open
fields to an enemy, and have ceased from war with a resolution
so sudden and complete.
Those who have known Mr. Davis well-some of them companions of his retreat from Richmond-testify that his last,
bitterest thought was that the South was abandoning the war
without having exhausted her resources.  The unhappy fugitive President saw plainly means to continue the war; but it
was the vision of Tantalus. He could not command these
means; his power to animate was gone; he could no longer
communicate inspiration to the people, and in this moment of




REVIEW OF THE LATE WAR.                 19
anguish-this moral paralysis-he doubtless realized how his
misgovernment had squandered public confidence, and how
terribly he was repaid. It is said his pale lips writhed and his
steps tottered, when, at Abbeville, South Carolina, he made
his last appeal to the five brigade commanders left with him,
and they received it in such silence as told him there was only
a response of pity in their breast. His faculty of inspiration
was gone. He might have known it when, two months before
this, his speech at the African Church, in Richmond, adopting
the Rev. Dr. Burroughs' evangel, that " God had put a hook
in Sherman's nose, and was leading him to destruction," fell
still-born on the multitude, and was so neglected that but a
single newspaper in Richmond reported it, and that only to
make it the text of reproof. He might have known it when,
fleeing the Confederate capital in a haste so indecent as to
leave no souvenir of his departure-not a word of farewell-he
published a proclamation at Danville that no one noticed, and
that was never even read, after a respectful custom, for the
information of the army. If Mr. Davis had not been blinded
by vanity, if his eyes had not been sealed by the crudest conceits, he would have realized long before he did, that his power
to console and animate the people was utterly gone, and with it
every essential and logical hope of the war.
It was, as we believe, on account of a deficiency of statesmanship in the South that the inspiration of the war was completely lost in its last stages, and that it expired with such remarkable tameness.  It is notorious that the people of the
South never understood exactly for what they were fighting,
and that on this subject they received only the most confused
instruction from their leaders. Some declared that the contention was for slavery; others that it was for independence; and




20             REVIEW OF THE LATE WAR.
others again that it was for constitutional liberty, in which the
South did nothing more than represent the traditions of the old
Government. All these explanations were given at various
times, and Mr. Davis exchanged them as convenience served.
If, indeed, he had believed (as was his last confession) that the
prize was not slavery, but independence and liberty, it would
have been severely logical to have sacrificed the former-to.
have fought the war on the basis of the emancipation of the
Negro-and thus have assured one of the most splendid successes of statesmanship that the world has ever seen. But Mr
Davis had neither the prescience nor nerve for such a magnificent stroke of genius; and the war suffering for a distinct
object necessarily lost that inspiration which was the condition
of endurance and the vital element of success.
This, coupled with another notable cause of demoralization,
we believe to be the true and profound explanation of the war
on the Southern side. The other cause (to be noticed hereafter with some detail) was an undue expectation of generosity
from the enemy, that obviously hastened the act of submission,
and contributed to the tameness with which that act was ultimately performed. But our present reflection is on that loose
conduct of affairs in the South, which not only brought the
Administration of Mr. Davis into contempt, which not only
gave occasions of personal recrimination, but slowly and sadly
reduced the spirit of the people until it sunk to an almost
abject submission.
The eztreme exhibition of misgovernment which the South
made in the contest, and her woeful lack of statesmanship, are
curious in consideration of the fact that this part of the country had hitherto been so much renowned for political science.
But there is really no inconsistency here.  The excellence of




REVIEW OF THE LATE WAR.                 21
the Southern mind was in the abstract science of politicsrather a philosophical accomplishment than a practical virtue.
The character of Jefferson Davis illustrates the difference
with singular exactness. No man spoke in the United States
Senate with greater weight than he on questions of constitutional
law and all our political traditions; he was ready and exact in
historical illustration; he showed both learning and acumen in
debate; he was incontestably one of the best political scholars
of his time; and yet, when he came to be President of the Southern Confederacy, it was found that in many matters of practical judgment he was as ignorant as a child, and there might be
gathered from his administration a stock of puerilities to
amuse the world.
What shall we say of those legislative licences recommended by Mr. Davis, which nearly disbanded the Confederate
armies at the conclusion of the first year of the war; of that
financial acuteness which, on a particular day, repudiated one
third of the currency; of that astute policy which refused to
trade cotton for bread and meat, and hugged it to the bosom
of the South as the merest stuffing of vanity; of those orders
of the commissariat not to bring supplies into the cities, but
to leave them in the open country, inviting the enemy's rapacity; of those subscriptions of scrap-iron to build gun-boats,
and of silver plate to relieve the distress of the Treasury? In
the endeavours of the Government to meet great public necessities there were sometimes exhibitions of stark, innocent puerility almost surpassing belief. John M. Daniel used to laugh
over pious Secretary Memminger's idea of replenishing the
Treasury by collection bags suspended from  poles in the
churches; but the expedient was scarcely more trifling than a
public call of the Government for the people to cast their jew



22              REVIEW OF TIE LATE WAR.
elry into the Treasury, to assist in the payment of the public
debt. What ever became of these contributions we wonder.
There were regularly published lists of them to serve as incentives to patriotism; but whether the spoons, butter-dishes,
finger-rings, and various baubles of female vanity ever found a
market, and for what sort of money, is one of the historical
mysteries of the " Lost Cause."
We do not believe it is generally known that in the early part
of the war Mr. Davis designed turning over his civil authority to Vice President Stephens, and taking a military command in the field. His first intention was to take personal
command of the forces west of the Alleghanies. The advent of
General A. S. Johnston, in September 1861,afterwards supplied
an able and popular commander for the great western wing of
the war.  But the chief difficulty that defeated Mr. Davis'
intention of taking the field  was want of confidence in
Alexander H. Stephens as his substitute in the civil administration, and a remarkable backwardness of this person to
accept any of the responsibilities of the war.
This political indisposition of Mr. Stephens was afterwards
the subject of much remark, and there were many who considered him a masked and suspicious figure in the war. He
shunned Richmond; and his proper post of duty as presiding
officer of the Senate was constantly filled by substitutes.
This dereliction was severely commented upon; and Mr.
Stephens' formet habits of excessive loquacity were said to
have been exchanged for a cold, sullen silence, which he maintained for a long time in his retreat in Georgia. The explanation of his appointment as a commissioner to meet Lincoln and Seward at Fortress Monroe in 1865, was the belief
of certain members of Congress that his equivocal charac



REVIEW OP THE LATE WAR.                23
ter in the war would make him useful as an instrument of
pacification, and recommend him  to Northern confidence.
He was by no means the choice of Mr. Davis for the. mission; and when he was imposed upon the President by the
pressure of a delegation from Congress, the two were scarcely
on speaking terms, and the necessary interview was of the
most cavalier description. " I know of no person more fit for
the mission," said Mr. Davis as he extended the appointment to
Stephens; but as the Confederate President had been very
free to say before that it was a shameful, cowardly experiment
on Northern sentiment, in which he only sought to satisfy popular clamour, the compliment could scarcely be taken without
a perception of its sarcasm. When Mr. Stephens returned, a
most earnest effort was made to reanimate the people in view
of the results of the mission; delegations and particular persons
sought him, entreating him to take part in the famous African
Church " revival."  " Only speak ten words to let the people
know where you are," they pleaded; but Mr. Stephens only
replied with a wan smile and areference to his bodily infirmities, though, despite the latter, he considered himself able to
travel over all the ruins of broken railroads and burnt bridges
to Georgia, slipping away from Richmond between two days,
and avoiding its catastrophe.
We must consider it unfortunate that Mr. Davis did not execute his intention of taking the field, provided his civil authority could have been bestowed upon a worthy person. We
have conjectured that his genius (using the word in its low
sense of any disposition of mind) was rather military than political; and in any event the country would have had the ad.
vantage of an experiment in one direction, where the other
was only assured and complete failure. Mr. Davis had through.




24             REVIEW OF THE LATE WAR.
out the war a remarkable ambition to be considered as the di.
rector of its arms rather than its statesman; and hence much
of his military pragmatism. It was understood that he would
have commanded at Manassas and that he hastened to the field
for that purpose, arriving, however, only in time to witness the
complete discomfiture of the enemy. Every newspaper in the
South had it from the agent of the Associated Press that he
"commanded the centre " on that day, and Mr. Davis never
contradicted the pleasant report, although returning to Richmond, and speaking from the balcony of the Spotswood House,
he gave otherwise detailed and correct information of the engagment.
Of this imperfect military adventure of the ConfederatePresident, there is an incident that should be related to his credit.
When he had reached Manassas Junction, and was galloping
from the railroad station towards the volume of fire, a swarm
of stragglers gave the idea of defeat, he was told that his army
was beaten, and some one suggested that he should consult his
own personal safety.
" No," replied the President, speaking to his brother, who
rode by his side; "if it is so, the greater necessity that we should
be at the front and share with pur brave fellows the misfortune
of the day."
It was a spirited, generous remark, characteristic of Mr.
Davis; for whatever his faults, no one ever doubted that he
was the most courageous of men, prompt to assume any personal peril-a true son in this respect, of "the soldier State of
Mississippi." A few days before this he had promised to lead
the Hampton Legion into battle, and, hinting at his intention
of taking the field, had declared he would be where " the last
line of bayonets was leveled." The war had no such drama



REVIEW OF THE LATE WAR.                 25
tic conclusion; but we believe that Mr. Davis would have been
in the foreground and in heroic attitude, if he had persuaded
the remnants of the army left him at Abbeville, South Carolina,
in April, 1865, to make that last effort which he implored almost to the point of tears.
The first serious wound to public confidence in Mr. Davis'
administration was the resignation of Mr. Hunter from his
Cabinet.  This latter gentleman was by far the most powerful
and popular intellect that had been called to the counsel and
support of the new administration.  He had a national reputation; his rough, seamed face, yet lighted up with splendid
eyes, had long been familiar in public life; he had measured
his sturdy intellect with the most famous statesmen of his day;
he was singularly unostentatious, and yet a man of profound
and extensive learning, comprehending accomplishments the
most elegant and scholarly. He was an excellent type of the
plain, personal figure of the old Virginia politician, united
with erudition surprising the casual observer and confounding
the critic who ventured upon a flippant treatment of the man
who appeared so simple and ordinary. Indeed we know of no
living man in the South who yet compares with Mr. Hunter in
illustrating the old and honoured race of Southern statesmen.
IIe was placed in ]Ir. Davis' Cabinet as a compliment to
Virginia, and was the only man who brought to it any remarkable reputation.
Memminger was a curiosity-a weak example of the pious
statesman; Mallory had not even the dignity of private life to
support him, and the name of " the old wharf rat " was suggestive of predatory excursions; Reagan had some ability,
but all the faults in coarseness and conceit of "self-educated
men," a Texan lawyer who had read Blackstone when he was
2




26              REVIEW OF THE LATE WAR.
a wagon-master, spelling out the difficult words by camp-fires
and the illumination of pine-knots; Benjamin, who ultimately
took Mr. Hunter's place, was facile, a rapid and adroit underclerk, despatching vast amounts of routine business, but utterly incapable in the higher administration of public affairs.
This company was not very pleasant or honourable to Mr. Hunter; but the immediate occasion of his resignation from the Cabinet was a breach with Mr. Davis.
It was in one of the consultations of the Cabinet, just after
the battle of Manassas, that Mr. Hunter ventured to express
an opinion on the conduct of the war.  Mr. Davis turned
sharply upon  him  and remarked: "Mr. Hunter, you are
Secretary of State, and when information is wanted of that
particular department, it will be time for you to speak."
Probably the Confederate President quickly regretted the
remark, for he immediately attempted to take the edge off it
by a smiling and jocose allusion.  But Mr. Hunter showed
his resentment on the spot, and the next day sent in his resignation.  It was the first advertisement to the public of Mr.
Davis' autocratic temper, and his characteristic, fatal disposition to repel, as from a position of rivalry, the company and
support of other leading men in the country.
He had, at first, a very servile aid in the Provisional
Congress, a miserable creature of "conventions " brought to
Richmond from Montgomery, a legislative burlesque.  But in
the Congresses that succeeded under the "regular" Government, Mr. Davis gradually lost their confidence, and offended
the few personal friendships that he had in the legislative body.
He did this particularly by refusing his confidence to Congress in
the most unprecedented way; and we are assured of the actual
fact that he refused, even in secret session, to communicate




REVIEW OF THE LATE WAR.                  27
what had been done in the foreign relations of the Confederacy.
He considered the subject of such exclusive, delicate confidence,
that he would not have Congress to participate in it; he claimed the field of diplomacy as entirely his own; he sent off the
Clay-Thompson commission without Congress knowing a word
about it; and the fruits of the, diplomacy that affected such
severe and grand secrecy were all failures and absurdities
without end.  In the last periods of the war the President
had got to be so entirely without influence, such an obvious
failure, that his administration was almost taken out of his
hands, unwillingly by Gen. Lee, but readily enough by Congress,
which at last assumed the task of negotiation with the enemy,
or drove the President, in this respect at least, to be the instrument of its will.
A strong characteristic, running through the whole Government of the Southern Confederacy, and pervading all its legislation, was a feeble but persistent echo to Washington.  History will remark this as one of the most curious circumstances
of the war.  A Government in the position of a seceder, if not
of a rebel, was so utterly destitute of statesmanship, so devoid
of intellectual force and originality, as to follow with halting
and apish imitations upon the Government it had forsaken and
denounced.  The whole course of Mr. Davis' administration
was to borrow examples from Washington, and even to import
the men from there to assist in the various departments.  Richmond was a Chinese copy of Washington, with all its patches
of departments and bureaus, with all its stripes of " red tape,"
with all its traditions of official circumlocution, with all its
ancient stenches of the lobby and back-stairs.  We are aware
that an attempt has been made to explain this conformity as
an ingenious design of Mr. Davis to conciliate public opinion




28             REVIEW OF THE LATE WAR.
in the North; but the true explanation is intellectual poverty.
It is an unquestionable fact that when Mr. Davis commenced
the war from the Montgomery Convention, he entertained the
hope of the accession of some of the Northern States, and,
therefore, the new government was made so exact a copy of the
old, to solicit all possible prejudices in its favour. But when
this hope disappeared, as-it soon did, what excuse was there,
not only for continuing the servile copy to the lowest details
in the form of the government, but for conducting the practical
administration of all affairs as a low and feeble counterpart to
whatever was done in Washington?  It is notorious that all
the suggestions of legislation in the Provisional Congress,
which was easily ruled by Mr. Davis, were borrowed from
Washington, and yet reproduced with a faintness that made
the imitation contemptible.
The Federal Government multiplied calls for volunteers
after the battle of Manassas; the Richmond Congress replied
by increasing the Confederate army to "four hundred thousand
men," whose only existence was on paper.  The Federal
*Government tried the rigour of confiscations; the echo in Richmond was a " sequestration " law that did not actually produce
two milions of dollars. The Federal Government issued immense volumes of paper money; the Richmond Government
replied by reckless issues, (Mr. Davis assuring Congress there
was not a particle of risk, as the eight per cent bonds would
absorb them,) and produced an immitation of the Northern
financial system, with the fatal exception that the Treasury
notes were not made "legal tenders."
It was a subject of frequent painful remark how basely the
Confederate Government followed on the heels of that at Washington. It was a standing subject of reproach in the columns




REVIEW OF THE LATE WAR.                 29
of the Richmond Examiner, and the whole intelligence of the
South severely but ineffectually resented it. Even the forms
of all proceedings in the departments were imported from Washington, and not a single original military text-book was used
to any extent in the Southern armies. Mr. Davis was incrusted
with the old prejudices he had obtained in the War Office at
Washington, and plodded in all the worn routines that had been
customary in his former political life. He invented nothing,
not even in the least ceremony or detail of the Government,
satisfied with a mechanical, barren imitation of what he had
learned in Washington.
We shall, hearafter, remark on the relative statesmanship
of the North, and shall proceed, after a certain method, to
dispose of our subject. But it is not inconvenient here to
notice the estimates entertained in the South of the various
leading men in the North, and in what proportions were
ascribed the statesmanship that directed the war. In this
respect Mr. Seward was considered beyond all comparison the
arch-intelligence of the war, the man most feared by the
people of the South, and hence, perhaps, most abused by them.
The names even of the other members of Mr. Lincoln's
Cabinet were scarcely known in the South.  The Northern
President himself was considered only as an instrument in the
hands of the wily Secretary of State, who became the impersonation to the people of the South of all the bad wisdom and
baffling ingenuities to defeat and plague their cause. Intelligent men in Richmond were very ready to admit that Mr.
Seward's vulgar prophecy of a "sixty days' war" was not a
sincere conviction of his able mind, but was ingeniously designed
to belittle the war in European estimation and to entice
volunteers. Thus while the newspapers, for popular effect,




30             REVIEW OF THE LATE WAR.
ridiculed the prophecy, discerning men were vexed at the
success of the game, and saw the ground of" foreign recognition"
steadily undermined and cut from under their feet. It is now
plain enough that in the single part of preventing European
recognition of the Confederacy, Mr. Seward made a contribution to the success of the North far greater than "emancipation proclamations " or any other act of statesmanship, and administered a vital blow to the hopes of the South. The Richmond newspapers always affected to be careless of recognition;
but it was a thorough affectation; and to the last Mr. Davis did
not cease his'anxiety or quit his hopes of interference in some
shape from the European powers. There was iwas an intelligent
argument and a strong belief that these Powers had abstained
from interference only on conviction that the South was able
to accomplish her independence unaided and without complicating them, and that when they were rid of this conviction, and
the war had plainly progressed-to extremity, they would be
prompt to intervene to save a conclusion supposed to be so
disastrous to their interests as the recovery of the American
Union, with enlarged prestige and power to enforce its demands
against the foreign nations and to prosecute  its mission
against European monarchy.  The argument was plausible
and captivating; and on the fall of Richmond there was a
common report that the sudden conclusion of the war had taken
England, and especially France, by surprise, and that the
latter was prepared to intervene, had she known the desperation
of the case. This belief of a contretemps still resides in many
minds, and has, for a long time, been a subject of melancholy
gossip among those who mourn the defeat of the South.
It is curious what undue and flattering opinions Mr. Davis
obtained from European countries, and especially from England.




REVIEW OF THE LATE WAR.                  31
Those to whom he ever confided his personal feelings testify
that he was especially pleased and inflated by this foreign praise,
and that he valued it more than the affections of his countrymen.  He is said to have written his most ambitious State
papers for European effect, and to have taken especial delight
in that singular delusion of the English and French journals
which long persisted in regarding him as the military hero of
the war, the inspirer of campaigns, the Great Captain as well
as the civil ruler of the Confederacy-a delusion which he constantly encouraged and absurdly misled in his official references to the conduct of the war. This was not the only mistake of these journals in their distant admiration of Mr. Davis.
Impressed by his literary accomplishments, and comparing
the decorous and cultivated style of his State papers with the
coarse taagled English of Mr. Lincoln, they fell into the not
uncommon errour of accepting as a profound statesman a man
who was only an elegant scholar.
This European misjudgment of Mr. Davis sometimes proceed.
ed to absurdities of praise, which were curious and amusing,
when read in Richmond.  People who had a close and interiour
view of the slattern government of the Confederacy were surprised to find it represented abroad as a model of energy, and
Mr. Davis raised to a historical figure comparable with
Cromwell, Garibaldi and such famous leaders of revolutions. It
was common, too, in this European estimate, to represent him
as surrounded by the most skilled statesmen of the South, in
face of the fact that his Cabinet of dummies was one of the.
greatest curiosities of the war and that the Confederate President was peculiar among rulers for constantly repelling from
his counsels all men of any note in the country, and choosing
an eminence as naked as possible. As an evidence of this ex



32             REVIEW OF THE LATE WAR.
cess of eulogy, the author recollects to have copied the following
from one of the British Quarterlies, with reference to the least
deserving member of Mr. Davis' Cabinet:-" Mr. Benjamin
is not one of those grave, weighty, and self-contained natures which, when illuminated by brightness of intellect, never
fail to impress their work deeply on all around them. Easily
accessible, voluble, good-natured, with a memory like Macaulay's, and singular grace and facility of expression, Mr.
Benjamin has failed to win from his countrymen, and especially
from the journalists of Richmond, one tithe of the respect and
admiration which they who know him best conceive to be his
due. As a speaker, though not as a statesman, he has probably,
since the death of Webster, had no equal in the old United
States Senate! 
If such was Mr. Benjamin's fame in the "old United States
Senate, " he greatly descended from it in Richmond, where in
point of abilities, he was known only as an expert subordinate,
a dapper under-clerk in the sinecure of Confederate diplomacy.
He was Secretary of the War Department for some time, but
was driven from it for his excessive freedom in granting passports through the military lines, especially to the Jews who
flocked in wonderful numbers from all points of the compass to
the official patronage of one of their own religion in so high a
place of government. Like all the other members of Mr. Davis'
Cabinet, Mr. Benjamin did only the duties of a clerk, exerted
no political influence, and made no impression whatever on the
war. No one ever heard in Richmond of a Cabinet-meeting
in the usual sense of a political council, or of the heads of the
Departments having any peculiar ideas of the war. This negative character of Mr. Davis' Cabinet was fully known in the
South; and it may be remarked, in passing, that any attempt




REVIEW OF THE LATE WAR.                  33
to excuse his mal-administration is singularly baffled by this
fact, and that it is but just to make his autocracy the measure.
of his responsibility.
If statesmanship is to be regarded as prescience, then Mr.
Davis had least of this gift. He went about at all times of the
war, frequently in the unnecessary character of a public speaker, prophesying the speedy and easy accomplishment of Southern Independence.  He commenced these announcements as
early as 1862, when in a speech in Mississippi, he declared in
his rhetorical way, that the evening of peace was already spreading its mild radiance on the horizon. Some of these prophetic
words, so often renewed and re-dated,are very curious. They
are evidences of such puerility of mind, of such levity and insolence and ignorance all combined, that future sober history
will be perplexed to account for them. As an instance we may
take Mr. Davis' " Address to the Soldiers " in the last year of
the war, made on a most elevated occasion and intended to inspire them against those grand campaigns of Grant and Sherman which were already being prepared on the borders of Virginia and Georgia. It is well known that this year was that
of supreme, most elaborate trial on the part of the North; the
vastest materials were accumulated; the Federal armies were
greatly increased; tens of thousands of men were brought out
by additional drafts, or lashed into the fields by golden thongs
of bounties; all along the front of the war was spread the busy
and effulgent preparation. In the face of this imposing display
of the enemy, what shall we say of this silly speech of the Confederate President:  " The enemy's campaign of 1864 must,
from the exhaustion of his resources of men and money, be far less
formidable than those of the last two years, when unimpaired
means were used with boundless prodigality, and with results
2*




34             REVIEW OP THE LATE WAR.
which are suggested by the mention of the names of Shiloh,
Perryville, Murfreesboro, and the Chickahominy, Manassas,
Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville!"
These flippant prophecies of speedy success were doubtless
intended to animate the South. But in this respect it was the
thought of a small mind, a shallow trick; and it had the fault,
too, of being calculated without reference to a peculiar temper
of the Southern people in the war. That temper was one of
impatience, almost of mutiny, under peculiar hardships; and
thoughtful men remarked it more than once in the exhibitions
of the war. It grew out of the very elements of Southern
society. Here was a people of singularly high spirit, who had
enjoyed a previous prosperity perhaps greater than that of any
other community of equal numbers on earth, who had lived,
although perhaps sometimes without cultivation, yet always in
ease, and who had their due share of republican indisposition
to submit to severe exercises of authority. A people so sensitive should have been lightly taxed with disappointments, and
the policy of amusing them with promises was essentially a
delicate and dangerous one. It would have been the task of a
true statesman to have moderated their expectations, and to
have educated them  to just conceptions of the trials of the
war.  Instead of such prudent cultivations of strength, Mr.
Davis went to the opposite extreme of inflaming the army and
people with promises, and while foolishly congratulating himself on the momentary excitements that flared out under such
appeals, he did not perceive that the heart of the country was
being steadily consumed by this policy and that with each false
appeal to public confidence he lessened his hold upon it. IIe
was at last, however, to see that hold utterly broken and despised and to find no other response to those promises, with which




REVIEW OF THE LATE WAR.                  35
he had formerly kindled public spirit than contempt or pity for
him as a deluded man.  His last promise ventured afew weeks
before the evacuation of Richmond, was "that before the summer solstice of 1865 the South would be dictating terms of
peace "; but that solstice found him a lone prisoner who had
been degrad3d by fetters, within thQ walls of Fortress Monroe!
In a former paragraph we made a slight reference to the statesmanship of the North, and suggested a comparison in this respect between the Government at Washington and at Richmond.
Referring again to this subject we have to correct an errour that
has very extensively prevailed in the North. This errour is
that the Anti-Slavery measures of Mr. Lincoln's Administration were great elements of statesmanship, and that they exerted considerable influence to terminate the war, and secure the
success of the North. These laws in this respect have been
most unduly valued by a party in the North.  They were
properly notable triumphs of partisanship; but they were certainly not acts of statesmanship, and their influence was, indeed, utterly inconsiderable in affecting the mind of the South,
one way or the other, and determining the practical course of
the war.
The true points of statesmanship on which the North triumphed were two: the prevention of European interference and
the wonderful success of the Federal finances. The great and
even prime anxiety of the South was directed to the financial
question and its most intelligent hope of success looked constantly and eagerly to the breaking down of the finances at
Washington, since it was argued that this would have the double
effect of diminishing the means of war and of turning public
attention in the North to an internal concern and breaking it




36              REVIEW OF THE LATE WAR.
up into new parties.  In the Richmond journals it was usual
to put the gold quotations at the head of Northern news, as
the most important item of intelligence.  Mr. Davis appears
to have appreciated the importance of this topic, and to have
shared the common popular anxiety for the latest financial
news from the North.  But we may judge how small and narrow were his views on this subject, when we learn that he
hoped to break down the Federal finances by withholding cotton,
and actually gave this as his reason against certain propositions,
to trade cotton through the lines for meat and bread for the
army.  It was shown to him that if he accepted these propositions, so wide-spread was the venality of the enemy, he might
trade at various points in the Mississippi Valley for supplies to
support the Confederate armies for years to come. But with
his singular fatality to delusion he rejected a scheme of such
vital benefits, because he was persuaded that without cotton to
export, the Washington Government would be unable to pay
the January interest of 1863 on its bonds! This sage opinion
we have in black and white from Mr. Davis' hand; else such
a display of contraction and credulity of judgment might well
be doubted.
While foreign relations and finances were thus the leading
cares of statesmanship in the war, the Anti-Slavery measures
at Washington fell upon the South almost without attention.
From  the commencement of the war the South had assured
itself of the enemy's design to free the slaves; it suffered no
surprise or shock in this respect; and as the Federals had already practically freed the Negroes within their military lines,
the Emancipation Proclamation did not really amount to any
difference in the estimation of the Southern people, or give
them any new cause of alarm.  It excited no political interest




REVIEW  OF THE LATE WAR.                   37
whatever. Mr. Davis referred to it in a few historical phrases
in one of his messages; and ninety-eight clergymen in the South
signed " an address to Christians throughout the world " unmasking the hypocrisy of the measure, and indicating its immorality.
The moral interest of the Emancipation Proclamation was,
indeed, quite apart from any regard for it as a State paper; and
on this aspect of the question, the Southern journals made repeated and lively commentaries.   The point was to show that
the measure did not really originate out of benevolence for the
Negro, that it was a false pretence in this respect; and for this,
evidences, mostly derived from Northern sources, were constantly accumulated.   The writer recollects to have published
in a Richmond paper, with great effect, the following yet memorable statement of Rev. Mr. Fiske, an army chaplain:" Out of an average number of 4,000 blacks under my charge at
Memphis during the months of February, March, and April, 1863,
there died during that time 1200. Three-fourths of them had no
change of raiment; probably one-fourth of the women had but one garment between them and utter nakedness. Many children were kept,
night and day, rolled in the poor blanket of a family-its sole apparel.
Multitudes had no beds. There were no floors in their leaky tents,
and no chance for fires. The wonder is not that so many died, but
that so many lived. The suffering of this people is our national dishonour. If they are not rescued, History will run thus:-' The
American people enticed within their lines tens of thousands of slaves,
alluring them with promises of liberty. They proceeded to pick out
all the able-bodied men, to re-inforce their armies, huddled the rest
together in great camps, and left them to perish of hunger and nakedness, by the hundred!'"
It is precisely thus that History does run.   There is an
interest of the late war yet undeveloped in the crime done the
Negro under the professions of Emancipation, and especially
in the price of liberty extorted from him in military service.
He was driven into the army by rhetorical flourishes.  In a




38             REVIEW OF THE LATE WAR.
contribution to a literary periodical the author has taken
occasion thus to comment on the use of the Negro by the
North: "' There are some pages of the history of the past war
yet unwritten, wherein, some day, will be justly described the
cruel and inhuman use of the Negro as a soldier, of which Mr.
Wilson of Massachusetts was one of the legislative instruments.
He was regarded  only  as'food  for powder'; he was
substituted for the recreant white patriotism of the North;
he was driven to slaughter where white troops refused to go;
he was made a shield for their cowardice, and used throughout
the war as a contemned ally and stipendiary, always bearing
an undue share of its burdens and dangers. This is historical
fact.  Precisely the same use that was made of them  as
military allies is now designed of them as political followers.
Their employment is to be one of subserviency, by which
white politicians of the Wilson stamp are to ascend and profit.
He is one of that Radical council at Washington which has
lately been advising the Negroes most illogically, not to elect
men of their own colour to office, but to help the wandering
carpet-bag men of New England to fame and profit. He has
no sentiment or mania about the son of Ham; he finds him a
convenient creature, a useful ally, a serviceable yoke-fellow in
certain places, but in nb sense an equal and fraternal companion. Of all hypocrisies of these political times, this is
the blackest and cruellest. It would work the Negro to the
bone in its own selfish service; pat him, and pet him, and
palter with him, and eventually leave him to die on the dunghill. Despite all the affectations of Radicalism, the fact is
beyond dispute and of daily growth and obviousness that there
is a great, crying want of a large, adequate, intelligent
benevolence for the Negro.  The Radical party does not




REVIEW'OF THE LATE WAR.                 39
supply this want; no political organization does; and we shall
probably not see one of the greatest problems of modern tinmes
practically solved until there shall arise some scheme of
benevolence for the Negro, wholly apart from political parties,
and much more deeply founded in humanity."
We return to the rival statesmanship of the parties to the
war. While the unbroken finances of the North enabled it to
keep immense armies in the field, and to spread a factitious
prosperity through  the country, the utter failure of the
Confederate currency did more perhaps to demoralize the war
than any other single cause, and hurried the final catastrophe.
It must be admitted in the comparison that there were
peculiar difficulties attending the financial system of the
Confederacy, especially those growing out of the isolation of
the blockade.  Capital in the South was at first freely and
generously invested in the Confederate bonds; but there was
a peculiar limit to this aid. It was drawn principally from
banks, from merchants driven out of business, and from trust
estates and charitable institutions. Such sources were limited
and soon exhausted; and nothing remained but to flood the
country with paper money.  The evils of a depreciated
currency are of the most various description; they pervade
all the channels of public life and are felt in every daily care
of the people. In the South they produced universal distress
and penetrated every home; they were named as the prime
cause of desertion from the army; and they at last forced the
Government to that unpopular measure of "impressment"
which ultimately recoiled upon it, and furnished a powerful
argument to an opposition party that was fast becoming
formidable.
It should be noticed that in the Confederacy was a party




40             REVIEW OF THE LATE WAR.
somewhat analogous to that which, in Washington, admitting
the legitimacy of the war and professing a desire for its
success, was yet constantly interposing objections to assumptions
of unconstitutional power. In the Confederacy, however, this
party of opposition was singularly pure and enlightened; its
sincerity was above suspicion; and so far from opposing the
errours of Mr. Davis" Administration factiously, it did so only
because these errours were bringing the Confederate cause into
hatred and contempt.  Its spirit is well illustrated in the
passage of a speech of one of its most elevated leaders-Mr.
Toombs of Georgia-opposing the Impressment law.  "I
have,"  said  Mr. Toombs, speaking  in November, 1863,
"heard it frequently stated, and it has been maintained in
some of the newspapers in Richmond, that we should not
sacrifice liberty to independence; but I tell you, my countrymen, the two are inseparable.  If we lose our liberty we shall
lose our independence; and when our Congress determined to
support our armies by impressment, gathering  supplies
wherever they found them most convenient, and forcing them
from those from whom their agents might choose to take them,
in violation of the fundamental principles of our Constitution,
which requires all burdens to be uniform and just, and paying
for them such prices as they choose, they made a fatal blunder
which cannot be persisted in, without endangering our cause,
and probably working ruin to our Government."  Yet Mr.
Toombs although thus protesting against an unconstitutional
resource was zealous for every act of devotion and sacrifice to
the war, without the pressure of violent and unequal laws;
there was no more ardent Southern patriot; and in the same
speech from which we have quoted, referring to the enemy's
hope of subjugation, he said, " I would rather see this whole




REVIEW OF THE LATE WAR.                  41
country the cemetery of freemen than the habitation  of
slaves."
The results of Impressment were meagre, and by no means
repaid the hostility it caused the Government.  In vain Mr.
Davis appealed to the generosity of the people, and said, with
his usual extravagance, in April, 1863, that there was " but
one danger, the failure of provisions." There were many
other dangers; and even when supplies were accumulated,
they rotted in the depots, for want of transportation.  The
railroads that were available were few; and, indeed, when
these modes of transportation are in the best condition, it is
an enormous task to convey on a single line all that is
requisite for a great army. In Virginia, the railroads were
already so worn and of such little worth, that speed on them
was reduced to ten miles an hour, and tonnage from twentyfive to fifty per cent. The scarcity of food, the wreck of
transportation, and other material difficulties and hardships
added to a general distress in the South already multiplied by
the extreme unpopularity of Mr. Davis' political measures.
The fact is the Southern people had no true idea of the trials
to which they were to be subjected, until the fall of Fort
Donelson in the West and the simultaneous commencement of
McClellan's advance on Richmond in the East unveiled the
extended front of the war, and revealed the magnitude of the
task which still lay before.them. But it was too late then, in
the second year of hostilities, to repair many fatal omissions;
to send the cotton out of the country, to obtain a basis for the
currency, to import large stocks of supplies.  And so from
this period of sober afterthought, the South may be said to
have lost its former perfect and almost insolent confidence in
the war and to have lived in a feverish anxiety varying with




42             REVIEW OF THE LATE WAR.
the fortunes of its arms, at one time mounting to hope, and
again sinking to depths of despondency and discontent.
The last desperate attempt of the Confederate Government
to re-animate the war and inflame anew the resentment of the
people was on the occasion of the famous Fortress Monroe
commission. In the minds of some leading persons in the
South, the interview with President Lincoln and Mr. Seward
was a sincere experiment on the sentiment and temper of the
Northern Government; but Mr. Davis had consented to it
with the especial view of obtaining an ultimatum from the
enemy so harsh as to exasperate the people of the South, and
to put before them a plain alternative, which he calculated
would be a continuation of the war, or an unconditional
submission too absolute to be entertained. The secret thought
in Richmond of the Fortress Monroe commission was thus,
strangely enough, to kill off the "peace conferences" rather
than to improve the growing tendency to negotiation.  In
some respects Mr. Davis calculated aright; but the scheme of
re-animation utterly failed for peculiar reasons, and the
speeches at the African Church on the choice of "liberty or
death " were the most inglorious fizzles of an expiring contest.
The official report or the Confederate Commissioners was
carefully prepared, so as to exclude all hopes of further
negotiations for peace, and to summon the South to new and
desperate resolution; it was a very scant document, and made
the impression that the interview with the Federal represen4atives was singularly harsh and formal.  But, unfortunately for
the object of Mr. Davis, there leaked out some private versions
of the conference which showed the official report to be partial
and sinister, and suggested a friendly and generous disposition of
President Lincoln quite at variance with the spirit in which




REVIEW OP THE LATE WAR.                  43
he was officially represented to have replied to the Commissioners.
In private accounts of the conference, Mr. Seward was especially represented as kindly, and very much disposed to
enter into a general amicable conversation with the Confederate
Commissioners.  He asked Mr. Hunter with amiable  solicitude of many of those they had mutually known in former days
in Washington, and inquired particularly of the health of MrDavis.  There were no marks of harshness in the conference,
and no attendance of ceremonies and forms. At parting Mr.
Seward shook Mr. Hunter by the hand very warmly, and said,
with effusion, " God bless you, Hunter! "
The author recollects to have made some reference to this
and other incidents of personal amiability in this famous conference, and to have designed publishing it in the Richmond
Examiner; but Mr. Daniel ruled it out sharply, and for a
special reason. He always forbade the publication of any of
the amenities of the war; he -thought they were likely to
mislead as to the true character and conduct of the enemy, and
to soften the resolution of the South. It was necessary, he
thought, to paint the Yankee very black and to introduce him
constantly in circumstances of atrocity; and the excursionsT
and whiskey bouts under flags of truce, and all amiable episodes
of the war was the peculiar detestation of the Examiner. Mr.
Daniel was naturally atrabilious, a dark fierce man with a
hard, electric glitter in his eyes; satire and invective were the
habits of his genius; but he had a hatred of the Yankee that
was positively savage.  Once he said, " sentimentalism is as
much out of place  in destroying Yankees, as in killing
chinches!"
He had an inveterate complaint against Mr. Davis for his




44              REVIEW OF THE LATE WAR.
apparent tenderness in abstaining from retaliation for the numerous murders committed by the enemy outside the pale of war;
but it is fair to say that he did not altogether attribute the
hesitation of the Confederate President compel to justice in
these cases to a false sentimentalism, although that was commpnly supposed to be a weakness of his character. He had a
deeper explanation for it in his private conversations. On his
intimate friends he repeatedly urged the idea that Mr. Davis
was studious to extricate himself from  all personal consequences in case of failure of the war, that he carefully provided for his own safety in such event, and that he therefore
feared to exact any retribution from  the public enemy, for
which he might hereafter be called personally to account.
Whatever the value of this opinion, it is a little curious that
in not one single case Mr. Davis ever took life on the plea of
retaliation, although he published numerous orders to that effect
(as in the case of the Palmyra Massacre).  He always recoiled
at the last moment, and the backward movement was sometimes so plain as to excite such explanations as Mr. Daniel has
given.
In the last stages of the war, and contributing to its termination, there was a marked decline of hostility to the Yankee,
a softening of that fierce animosity which the newspapers had
cultivated as a stimulant in the contest. The wonder is that
this should have been so, when the outrages of Sherman were
fresh, and when the enemy was really in his fiercest and most
destructive moods, and the atrocity of his arms at its height.
The explanation is very peculiar, and one must have closely
studied public sentiment in the South to understand its curious
condition on this particular subject towards the end of the war.
It was an effect produced entirely by politicians who had had




REVIEW OF THE LATE WAR.                  45
frequent opportunities in various conferences, regular or
irregular, with Northern men to inform and mitigate public
opinion as to the real designs of the enemy. The idea was
spread, sometimes insidiously, that although the North was
violent in the war, its excesses in this might be forgiven, as
proceeding not so much from cruelty as from a false notion of
military necessity, and that its political design was really of
the most moderate and indifferent description, meaning only the
re-establishment of the Union, and the restoration of the
status quo in every other particular. The reports brought
back from the conferences referred to were generally those of
the most polite and pleasant personal intercourse, of hearty
fellowship and kind entertainment on the enemy's part. Many
of the politicians who had enjoyed such interviews, or who
had Northern correspondence, had heard in a confused way of
the most liberal propositions, and were ready to assure their
weary countrymen of almost any terms of peace, on the single
condition of laying down their arms, and trusting themselves
to the generosity of the North.
Under these representations, generally made privately and
insidiously, and never venturing in the columns of the press,
where the death's head of " Subjugation" was constantly displayed, the idea grew in the Southern mind that the Yankee was
not such a terrible monster after all, that the newspapers had
been practising scare-crows on the people, and that the government had only for its own selfish purposes exaggerated the
demands of the enemy and painted the terrours of submission.
The extent of this delusion in the last days of the Confederacy can scarcely be conceived by one not admitted to those
under-currents of opinion which make the secret history of
governments in great wars. It was a whispered thought, an




46             REVIEW OF THE LATE WAR.
adroit suggestion, rather than a declared idea making its appearance in the press, or circulated in open debate. While
the newspapers'displayed the horrours of submission, and John
Mitchel wrote in serial articles the parallel between Ireland
and the conquered South, and President Davis continued the
stereotype of "death preferable to defeat," the idea went secretly and steadily abroad in the South that the Yankee was
not as black as he was painted, and that surrender was not
the chief of evils.
Of this delusion towards the end of the war (so inconsistent
with the public tone of the South and especially with the defiance of Mr. Davis) the author ventures to make this curious
remark: that many men in the South were even led to doubt
of the loss of Slavery in the final adjustment with the enemy,
and on this particular account were induced to relinquish the
contest.  This supposition may appear very extravagant at
this day; but it should be remembered that at the time referred to, the South had very imperfect communications with the
North, that she was a prey to rumours, and that politicians
were busy with the story of the generous temper of the ene.
my.  People were told in whispered conversations that it was
not impossible that, at some time after the surrender of their
arms, Slavery might be recovered from the yielding disposition
of the North; a second supposition was yet more probable, to
the effect that they might expect pecuniary compensation, if
they  promptly and gracefully accepted emancipation, and
rumours were already flying in the air that President Lincoln
had intimated such a proposition to Alexander H. Stephens
in the conference at Fortress Monroe.
Mr. Stephens has since confessed (if we are to believe a Georgia newspaper) that in that conference Mr. Lincoln said to him:




REVIEW OF THE LATE WAR.                  47
"Your people might after all get four hundred thousand dol.
lars for the slaves, and you would be surprised if I should call
the names of some of those who favour such a proposition."
But this important disclosure has been so severely suppressed
since the death of Mr. Lincoln, as an injury to his memory in
Northern estimation, that the public even to this day is scarcely aware of it, or is unprepared to credit it. Certainly, it
would have been more manly for Mr. Stephens to have made
this disclosure in his public report of the conference, instead
of submitting the bald statement he did and locking in his
breast so important a secret.
The difficulty of Mr. Stephens was that of duplicity, a
common vice of politicians, and of which the South had some
very painful illustrations in the war. Probably at this time
Mr. Stephens was really solicitous for negotiation with the
enemy, and disposed to make a clean breast of the Fortress
Monroe affair, an honest disclosure of all he knew. But he
was estopped by his former excessive speeches, in which in a
more hopeful period of the war he had courted public favour
by denouncing a reconstruction of the Union as the sum of
all shame, the completion at once of the ruin and disgrace of
the South.  There must have stuck in his memory some of
the words he had used in a speech in North Carolina in the
year 1863.  Then he said: "Subjugationwould be utter ruin
and eternal death to the Southern people, and all that they
hold most dear.  Rather than submit to anything short of
final and complete separation from the North, let us all resolve
to die like men worthy of freemen." Such was the language
of the man who subsequently went on the errand of Fortress
Monroe, to inquire the terms of re-admission into the Union,
and then took refuge in a fraudulent version of the interview.




48             REVIEW OF THE LATE WAR.
It is remarkable that of the most conspicuous men in the
Confederacy who coquetted for peace in 1864, they were those
who in former periods of the war had been most severe and
savage in denouncing any effort towards reunion with the
North, even in the last extremity.  So another Georgia politician, a competitor of Mr. Stephens in the games of popularity
-Herschel V. Johnson-was busy in 1864 with a scheme
of a convention of all the States to restore the Union; yet this
same man in the preceding year thus glowed in a public
harrangue:-" The bleaching bones of one hundred thousand
gallant soldiers, slain in battle, would be clothed in tongues of
fire to swear to everlasting infamy the man who whispers'yield.'" Something, to be sure, may be pardoned to the zeal and
inflation of the popular declaimer; and something must be allowed for modifications of opinion by the varying fortunes of
the Confederate arms; but changes of sentiment so excessive
as those we have noted are essentially the evidences of heartless demagogues, and should be remembered to condemn them
forever in the estimation of the honest and humane.
The author would occupy too much space, if he was to cite
even the leading examples within his knowledge of displays
of Southern demagogues touching peace negotiations within
the last two years of the war. He returns to the history of
public sentiment on that subject. -As far back as the last
months of the year 1863, a popular sentiment had commenced
in North Carolina looking to negotiations with the North, and
prepared to accept the restoration of the Union. The sentiment was timid, and not disposed to court discussion. It first
grew out of a distrust of the military fortunes of the South;
but it was wonderfully increased, as we have already noticed
in the last year of the war, by milder regards of the enemy




REVIEW OF THE LATE WAR.                  49
and the remarkable delusion that there might be obtained
from him terms of generosity, even embracing the fallen fortunes of Slavery. Many persons will be skeptical of the existence of such a hypothesis in the popular mind of the South,
because it was unperceived by them, or because the experience
of the present renders it absurd.
Those, however, are imperfect tests. President Davis appears
to have been made aware, some months before the close of the
war, of the existence of such a hope in the Southern mind,
and he considered it so dangerous to the Confederate cause, so
well calculated to diminish its energies in the war, that he
made special endeavours to expel it. He referredparticularly
to ft in a speech at Augusta, Georgia, in October, 1864. " Some
there are," he said, "who speak of Reconstruction with slavery
maintained; but are there any who would thus measure rights
by property! —God forbid."  He continued to explain that
the South was not in a revolution, that it was fighting for
"constitutional liberty," and he exhorted his audience that
the stake was not only Slavery but every right, interest and
hope attached to liberty and summed in the existence of
freemen.
These exhortations were made for the last time on the return of the Confederate Commistioners from Fortress Monroe;
and they were made ineffectually.  It is curious to notice how
the especial purpose of re-animating the war was served in
that famous meeting at the African Church, to accomodate
which all business was suspended in Richmond, and a day
taken for public orations, Mr. Hunter, one of the Commissioners, addressed the multitude, and gave them to understand
that Mr. Lincoln had turned from the propositions of peace
with cold insolence-an insolence which he described as mon3




50             REVIEW OF THE LATE WAR.
strous, since the Federal President "might have offered something to a people with two hundred thousand soldiers, and
such soldiers under arms."  The frightful apparition of Subjugation was next indroduced.  "I will not attempt," said
Mr. Hunter, "to draw a picture of Subjugation.  It would
require a pencil dipped in blood to paint its gloom." Mr.
Benjamin, Secretary of State, followed with yet more artful
appeals to the multitude.  He affected to witness the animation which he designed to produce, and spoke of it with exciting praises.  "How great the difference in one short week!
It seems an age, so magical has been the change! Hope
beams in every countenance! We now know in our hearts
that this people must conquer its freedom or die!" The Confederate Congress continued the same adroit style of taking
for granted a change of popular sentiment. In an address to
the people, it declared: " Thanks be to God, who controls and
overrules the counsels of men, the haughty insolence of our
enemies which they hoped would intimidate and break the
spirit of our people is producing the very contrary effect."
The effect of these rhetorical stimulants could scarcely have
been less than some momentary excitement; but after all that
was publicly said, the thought still resided in the public mind
that the Richmond Government was dealing unfairly with it, and
that the enemy was not as inaccessible or as harsh as he was
represented. This opinion progressed to the day of the surrender. It was this peculiar trust in the generosity of the North,
this mollification of hatred of the Yankee and of the passions
with which the war commenced, coupled with an entire want
of confidence in the Davis Administration and a certain resentment towards it, that brought the Southern Confederacy to such
a sudden and almost abrupt conclusion of the war. The au



REVIEW OF THE LATE WAR.                  51
thor is veryfirm in this conviction, and is prepared to defend it
against all proper and seasonable criticism. The popular mind
of the South, all official protestations to the contrary, expected
a generous treatment after the war, and had lost its faith in the
conventional terrours of Subjugation, so long maintained in the
newspapers and in the public demonstrations of the Richmond
Government.  As evidence of this disposition, the people of the
South accepted the famous Johnson-Sherman Convention, as a
natural event; there were no transports of surprise when it
was first announced to the people of the South; they considered it only as the declaration of the status quo, in which they
were to resume their equal and accustomed places in the Union, as
they expected when they had laid down their arms. This was the
common thought in the act of surrender, and which, indeed, hast.
ened the termination of the war. It was not disturbed until the
Northern Congress commenced its "problem  of Reconstruction," awoke the people of the South from their delusions and
confirmed the worst prophecies of. Subjugation to which they
had sealed their ears in the last periods of the war.
A few weeks before Lee's surrender, one of the most accomplished and thoughtful men in the South (Robert W. Hughes, of
Virginia,) said to the author: " The war will fail because the
people of the South never had to the, time of taking up arms
that actual experience of hardship and oppression sufficient to
justify a rebellion, and calculated to furnish moral animation
enough to sustain it."
It has been curiously reserved for the South to obtain after
the war the actual experience of oppression, and of that measure of despotism which would have amply justified the commencement of hostilities. If it fought, in 1860, for principles
too abstract, it has superabundant causes for rebellion now,




62             REVIEW OF THE LATE WAR.
which although they may not, and need not produce another
war, yet have the effect to justify, in a remarkable way, the first
appeal to arms. It is a justification on retrospect, but none
the less striking on that account. The author has been particular to describe that delusive faith in Northern moderation,
that reaction from the first passions of the war which hastened
the submission of the South, and made it an easy descent from
her original aspiration of independence, because he believes
that this discovery of motive is one of great historical importance and furnishes some very interesting reflections on the
present political situation at Washington. those reflections
he may pursue in another chapter. It is sufficient to conclude
here that the South has been the victim of delusive hopes, and
that she abandoned the war, not so much under the compulsion
of military necessities, as from the persuasions of a false political hypothesis.




63.1
RECONSTRUCTION.
THE DESTRUCTION OF THE WAR.
Realization of its losses in the South-Political "vivisection "-The material civilization
of the North, the conqueror-Its characteristic warfare-A curious reminiscence of
B. F. Butler-The "problem" of Reconstruction-President Lincoln in RichmondAfterthought of the Republican party.
The sun of another Austerlitz rose in Virginia. The green
banners of the spring of 1865 hung thick about the Capitol
mound in Richmond, when a hundred cannon on the brow  of
that historic hill celebrated the surrender of Lee's Army, and
thundered the message of peace. There was then discovered
by the people of the South what had hitherto been put behind
convenient curtains by their rulers, or been concealed by
ornaments of their own vanity and hopes-the vast ruin of the
war; the pool of blood and the withered corpses around it;
the back-ground with its piles of dead and monuments of woe.
The illuminated curtain was drawn up; the atmosphere of
glory was darkened and subdued, the garish lights turned
down, and realized for the first time by the people of the
South was the wan picture of the ruins of their country. The
embroidery of war, the cloth of gold was lifted-and the stark
corpse was beneath it, the  chilled  flesh  and  the'dumb
wounds



54                        RECONSTRUCTION.
" Woe to the hand that shed this costly blood!
Over the wounds do now I prophesyWhich, like dumb mouths, doope their ruby lips,
To beg the voice and utterance of my tongueA curse shall light upon the limbs of men;
Domestic fury and fierce civil strife
Shall cumber all the parts of Italy."
As long  as the war was active, and the South possessed the
animation of glory and the inspiration of her passions, there
was no count of the cost, and but little realization of losses. The
Government suppressed the details of disasters; the press was
vain and effulgent to the last. But with the end of the war
came the discovery and calculation of its losses.
Its total sum was the most enormous of modern convulsions.
It has been calculated thus: three thousand millions of dollars
lost in the slaves, two thousand millions in ravages of the
country and acts of destruction, and, at least, two thousand
millions more in the sacrifices of credits and in the depreciation
of property consequent upon the war-seven thousand millions
in all!*    Of all this wealth the South was disemboweled by
the sword-so much cut out of her vitals; and the danger was
that of utter collapse in the shrunken body politic, death of a
community from  which had been carved so much of flesh and
blood.  We have heard of those terrible medical dissectionsvivisections they are called-which experiment upon animal
* The losses of the South in the war have recently been stated at a larger figure.
The following estimate of them is from a late speech of Senator Doolittle-one of the
most moderate and judicious members of the United States Senate:-" The people of
the South have been punished already by the sacrifice of all their slave property,
valued at three to four thodsand million dollars; by the sacrifice of more than threefourths of all other personal property, probably two thousand millions more; by the
sacrifice of their public and private credits-at least a thousand millions more; by the
depreciation of the value of all their real estate at least seventy-five per centamounting probably to more than two thousand million dollars more-making in all a
sacrifice of property, credits, and values in the Southern States alone of at least nine
thousand million dollars."




RECONSTRUCTION.                       55
existence, and see what parts can be taken from the body, and
yet leave an imperfect, hideous life.  The South lived after
the operation, survived the loss and torture; but surely the
penalty was enough, and devils only might have thought of
taking further vengeance upon the torn and mutilated victim.
The exhibition of the past war was a conflict of two schools
of opinion, long contestant but most unequally supplied' with
physical instruments and resources.  It was a profound and
long-continued conflict between the political and social systems
of North and South, with which Negro Slavery had a conspicuous connection; a conflict on which was ranged on one
side the party that professed the doctrines of consolidation
and numerical majorities;  that represented -the material
civilization of America; that had the commerce and the
manufactures, the ships, the workshops, the war-material of
the country-on the other side the party that maintained the
doctrines of State-rights, studied government as a system of
checks and balances, and cultivated the highest schools of
statesmanship in America; that represented a civilization
scanty in shows and luxuries, but infinitely superiour in the
moral and  sentimental elements; that devoted  itself to
agriculture, and had nothing but its fields and brave men to
oppose to a people that whitened  every  sea with  their
commerce, and by the power of their wealth, and under the
license of "legitimacy," put the whole world under tribute for
troops and munitions.*
In this unequal match of force, aggravated, as we have
seen, by a disproportion of statesmanship and other causes,
* And yet notwithstanding this inequality of material resources, a recent New York
Herald (of March 21, 1868) describes the past war as "an attempt that came nearer
success than ever did such revolt before I "




56                  RECONSTRUCTION.
the material civilization. of the North  conquered, and
impressed itself upon the entire history of the struggle. It
originated a coarse characteristic warfare, destitute of those
ingenious methods and fine emotions, which have made of
modern war an intellectual game and a moral inspiration, and
thus dignified and adorned it-a cruel mechanical warfare of
/numbers and visanertie, disdaining all sentimentalism, and
justifying all means that might most certainly accomplish the
end of subjugation. It was a war which ravaged the country,
not to disable the enemy, but to "strike terrour" into the
general population; which spared no age, sex, or conditions;
which burnt two thousand churches; which sacked the homes
of the helpless and afflicted; which violated every humanity,
and brought before the startled attention of the civilized
world the picture of a conflict devoided of all the heroic and
chivalric sentiments which were thought to attend modern
arms, and repeating some of the worst atrocities of a past and
barbarous age.
When Gen. Benjamin F. Butler marched into Maryland in
the first year of the war, at the head of Massachusetts troops, he
issued an order to his command that "any unauthorized interference with private property will be most signally punished."
He only wished to march to Washington, "peaceably, quietly,
and civilly, in obedience to the request of the President."
He tendered to Governor Hicks the assistance of his trops to
suppress a threatened servile insurrection. When Governor
Andrew of Massachusetts ventured to reprove him for this act
as one of "unmerited grace," Butler replied: "It was simply
a question of good faith and honesty of purpose."  He
declared that to use the Negro in the war would be to repeat
that legend of infamy in the Revolution, when the British




RECONSTRUCTION.                    57
ministry, in availing themselves of the alliance of the red
man, asked, " May we not use all the means which God and
nature have put into our hands to subjugate the colonies? "and growing warmer in the argument, he proceeded to declare,
in the face of Governor Andrew's displeasure: "When any
community in the United States who have met me in honourable warfare, or even in the prosecution of a rebellious war in
an honourable manner, shall call upon me for protection against
the nameless horrours of a servile insurrection, they shall
have it."
The reader may well ask with surprise if these humane and
refined sentiments-and especially the protest against the
"legend of infamy" in arming the Negro-were uttered by
the same man who now demands the most extravagant rewards
for the Negro for his assistance in the war and has tendered
the reminiscences of his own beastly and ferocious cruelty to
the South as his only title-papers to fame.  Unhappily our
political history abounds in these enormous self-contradictions
of our public men; they have ceased to attract attention;
although the intelligent must regard as the worst sign of the
moral depravity of a people that condition of public sentiment,
in which the inconsistencies of leading men are not only
tolerated but actually and positively rewarded.  The conversion of such men as Butler to the worst and cruellest
purposes of the war is otherwise interesting than in a personal
sense; it shows the force and direction of the public sentiment
on which such creatures instinctively fastened to save their
popularity and on which they rode easily to fame and fortune.
The protest we have quoted from Butler might have been a
boundary of public opinion in the North, at the time it was
written, in the exact and emphatic language we have quoted;
3*gewhaeqoe




68                  RECONSTRUCTION.
but that opinion soon marched across it and developed a
ferocity which the Massachusetts adventurer found it convenient to adopt, and in the increase of which he has acquired
all the popularity he possesses to-day. The Negro was first
armed; then forcibly emancipated; then used as a partisan
instrument; then made a political master, where he had
formerly been slave, soldier, freedman; then and now held up
as a standing threat, not only of insurrection in the South,
but of a war of races, the most terrible exhibition that could
possibly be made in the living age.  These ascents in cruelty
were watched in the progress of the war by the people of the
South with increasing anxiety; but they supposed that the
summit had been attained at the close of hostilities, and that
the list of penalties for the past was complete.
What especially sustained the South in her grief and agony
at the end of the war was the instant, lively hope of the
restoration  of the  Union, and the comfort of a speedy
re-organization in it.  It is remarkable that to the last
moment of the war, no one sanely doubted that a reconstruction of the Union would be immediately consequent upon
it, while many people in the South had peculiar hopes not only
of a speedy, but a generous restoration of rights.  Recovery
of the Union was the logical conclusion of the contest;
it was the professed immediate object of the arms of the government; Congress had proclaimed it, as early as July, 1861-on the
eve of the battle of Manassas; and Mr. Lincoln had declared,
almost up to the time of the surrender of the Confederate
armies, that the war was for the sole purpose of "restoring
the Union."  It is curious that the only anxiety of Abraham
Lincoln was that this restoration might not be expeditious
enough after the war, and that it might be necessary to amend




RECONSTRUCTION.                          59
the Constitution so as to compel the Southern States to send
their  Senators  and  Representatives  to  the  Congress  at
Washington.  It is a historical recollection  that should  be
carefully  preserved; it is found  in  a  conversation  which
President Lincoln had with Andrew Johnson, when the latter
came to Washington to be inaugurated as Vice-President.*
It shows the urgent desire  of the former-the "lamented
Lincoln "-for a speedy restoration of the Union, even to the
point of compulsion  of the  South  to  participate  again  in
the common government of the country.  Expedition in this
matter was shown at his prominent desire, when  after the
Federal occupation of Richmond, he rode in an open barouche
through the streets of that city, scattering smiles and compliments, giving-audience and assurance to Richmond editors,
pronouncing peace and good-will everywhere, and even on the
point of convoking the Virginia Legislature to dispatch the
ceremony of restoration.
Surely no one then anticipated the "problem" of Reconstruction-that the very object and end of the war was to be
constructed into a devious, intricate problem to serve the
purposes of a political party, and to defer the hopes of all true
patriots. The spectacle and situation to-day is: the constitiitional re-union of the States delayed by a political controversy
which threatens to last longer than the war itself, and is quite
as dangerous!  There must be some explanation of a condition
so unnatural and illogical; this cheat of the intellect and
* The conversation referred to is reported in a speech of President Johnson made on the
22d February, 1866. He testifies that Mr. Lincoln said, speaking of the Southern States:
" My great and sole desire has been to preserve these States intact under the Constitution, as they were before; and there should be an amendment to the Constitution which
would compel the States to send their Senators and Representatives to the Congress of
the United States."




60                  RECONSTRUCTION.
common sense of the country that considered the war ended
three years ago; this huge intricate afterthought of Reconstruction, on which the South is daily tortured and the whole
country hung in suspense.
It is plainly, essentially the afterthought of party; the
destructive device of " confusion worse confounded," in which
a sinister faction may hide and accomplish their ends; an
artificial necessity  created  for revolutionary  and deadly
designs.  It is thus intelligent men of the South esteem the
problem of Reconstruction.   They remember how slowly it
was invented by Congress; how many delays and changes
took place from December, 1865, when the South first presented the issue by sending representatives to Congress, until the
Radical plan was finally evolved in its present shape of subjecting the South to the probation of military rule, and the
cardinal condition of Negro supremacy; how  in this long
interval of time there were changes of programme and
shiftings of policy and altered devices to the present date of
the latest scheme  of Reconstruction  and its accessories.
These, of themselves, are marks of party  industry and
machinery: not evidences of a straightforward disposition to
deal with a plain and obvious necessity.  The history of
Reconstruction in Congress has been that of the halting and
hesitating plot of faction; surely not that of a plain consultation of remedies for a simple, avowed evil.
But for this history we must ask the separate and close
attention of the reader before we relate further the condition
and temper of the Soutb,




RECONSTRUCTION                                 61
HISTORY OF RECONSTRUCTION.
Need of a popular history of Reconstruction-Declaration of the objects of the war in
1861-Practice of the war as to " existing State institutions "-Cases of Tennessee
and Louisiana-Three conditions of restoration-President Lincoln on the " white
basis "-Extraordinary proposition of Congress to disfranchise the Negro-Reconstruction policy of President Johnson-Happy condition of the country under it-Gen.
Grant's testimony-Necessity of the Republican party- Its revolutionary sentiment and education-Six months of fruitless debate in Congress-Violent premise
of Reconstruction-Dogma of forfeited rights-Constitutional Amendment, No 14Hidden designs of this measure-Trap of Thaddeus Stevens on universal suffrageA trick on Southern opinion-President Johnson's re-assurances to the SouthReconstruction law of March 2nd, 1867-President's veto-Gen. Grant's interpretation of Reconstruction-History of the Convention elections in the South-Remarkable frauds in the registration-The attempt of Congress upon the President, as
part of the Reconstruction scheme-Analysis of this attempt-Three violent measures-A historical remark on the Tenure-of-office law-The significance of impeachment of the President-Its logical identity with Reconstruction.
We propose  to write a plain and popular history  of Reconstruction.   The subject needs such a treatment.   It has been
so complicated by the multitude of legislative measures, so
confused by debate that the public has, in fact, lost all clear
and consistent information of it. Scarcely one in a hundred
men, even among zealous partisans and those who talk busily
of Reconstruction can give an orderly and consecutive narrative of the measures comprised in the topic. We shall endeavour here to give such a narrative, and to disentangle the difficult web of party ingenuity and passion.
The narrative logically and justly commences with the resolution of Congress to which we have referred as adopted in the
first year of the war.  In  this resolution, passed  on the 19th
July, 1861, it was proclaimed to the world, and immediately
noticed to the South"That this war is not waged for any purpose of conquest or subjugation, or purpose of overthrowing the Constitutions of those States,
but to defend and maintain the supremacy of the Constitution, with




62                   RECONSTRUCTION.
all the rights of the several States unimpaired; and that as soon as
these objects are. accomplished the war ought to cease;"
The history of this resolution is remarkable for the delibera.
tion with which it was accomplished, and the peculiar emphasis
it obtained from circumstances.  It was the first sober thought
of the war, the first deliberate judgment that emerged from
the confusion and extravagance of passions in which hostilities had commenced.  It was also remarkable for its unanimity.  The resolution  was adopted unanimously by the
Senate, and there were only two dissenting voices in the House.
It was accepted by the country as expressing honestly and
truly the object of the war. It was fortified by the practices
of the government, and supplemented by other declarations in
the Executive department.  The announcement of the war, as
to foreign nations, made through Mr. Seward's dispatches,
disclaimed the intention of interfering with "existing State
institutions," carefully divested it of a single revolutionary
design and industriously represented it as a limited and incidental affair of arms that would in no way change the structure
of the government. As the war progressed, the practice of the
Government was that as its armies advanced overthe country
that country immediately reverted to its old condition, and
was entitled to civil government, and to be represented in
Congress.  Even when it captured Alexandria, and the flag
of the insurgents was actually within sight of the Capitol at
Washington, Congress received senators and representatives
from the State of Virginia, elected by the people within the
Federal lines. As the armies of the Government passed further
over the South, there was continued recognition of the legal
existence of the States; district attorneys and marshals were
appointed; revenue officers collected the'tax, and it is remark



RECONSTRUCTION.                     63
able that the Internal Revenue laws describe as States what
Congress for other purposes insists now as regarding as waste
and conquered territory-willing to recognize these States for
financial needs but not for political rights, although the two
are inseparable, and their union was consecrated by the blood
of 1776.
The first essay of Reconstruction, the first opportunity to test
and apply the truth of the declaration referred to, dates from
the appointment of Andrew Johnson as Military Governor of
Tennessee.  The situation then was that the Government had
generally resolved to except Slavery from the "institutions"
of the Southern States, but in no other respect to inpair or
diminish the resolution of July 1861.  The conditions which
then attached to restoration to the Union were only those
which implied the extinction of the war and of the measures
peculiar to it; this was the boundary, and beyond it no design
of interference was ever breathed to suspicion. The status quo
was to be disturbed only to the extent of abolishing slavery
and terminating the war in the sense of abandoningitspolitical measures as well as its arms. Thus the conditions of restoration were distinctly named: that the State should abolish
slavery, should repeal the ordinance of secession, and should repudiate the rebel debt. Congress never interfered with this
re-organization or reconstruction of the State of Tennessee.
The policy was sustained by the C onvention which renominated
Mr. Lincoln, and by the party which re-elected him in 1864.
The definition of the policy was very distinct: it entertained
no design upon the local affairs of the State, it did not assume
to fix the qualifications of voters or to form Constitutions, it
had no other care than that those, who voted and took part in
restoring the machinery of government under their Constitu



64                  RECONSTRUCTION.
tions, had fully, and to the extent of all logical incidents, renounced their rebellion.
The same policy was practically repeated in the case of
Louisiana; but it is remarkable  that at the time of Mr.
Lincoln's death it was suspended by a particular question that
had arisen between the President and Congress.
The head of controversy was first raised in the case of
Louisiana; it was the first assumption of Congress to take the
question of Reconstruction out of the hands of the President.
But it was an assumption of the most limited nature and of the
most curious effect. It is remarkable that whatever points of
difference there were between the President and Congress in
the case of Louisiana, there was then no question as to the policy of Reconstruction on the white basis; and that so far from
such being the case, Congress expressly excluded the Negro
from the right of suffrage in voting for the men who were to
frame the new constitutions necessary for admission into the
Union. Mr. Lincoln refused to sign the bill to this effect, for
other reasons than the exclusion of Negro suffrage; on this point
his policy was coincident with that of Congress; and had not
the latter been checked as it were by accidental circumstances,
it would have committed itself, even beyond the President,
to the policy of Reconstruction on the white basis and have
shut the door to all its later schemes of Negrophilism.
There was no solicitude for the Negro, beyond what had
already been accomplished by Congress in setting him free.
"If," confesses a leading Republican-Governor Morton of
Indiana — " Mr. Lincoln had not refused to sign that bill, there
would be to-day an act of Congress on the statute-books
absolutely prohibiting Negroes from participating in the work
of re-organization, and pledging the Government in advance to




RECONSTRUCTION.                    65
accept of the constitutions that might be formed under the bill,
although they made no provision for the Negro beyond the
fact of his personal liberty."
Had Mr. Lincoln lived, there is no doubt he would have easily
triumphed in his policy of Reconstruction and readily defeated
the small faction which Mr. Sumner excited against him in 1865.
He had already routed whatever there was of opposition in the
Cleveland Convention that had so pretentiously called upon
the people "in thunder tones to come to the rescue of impartial justice and universal freedom." He had already triumphed
over the protest of Wade and Davis. He was master of the
situation, and had he been left to command it, there is every
reason to believe that the faction which disturbed him a few
days before his death would have been crushed as a paltry
annoyance to his popularity-a faction which profiting by accident and the accretion of circumstances and the growth of
passions has since assumed the dimensions and the insolence
of a dominant party.
President Johnson directly inherited the policy of Mr.
Lincoln, and faithfully carried it out until December 1865.
He appointed Provisional Governors in the Southern States,
and held out inducements to the people to re-organize their
governments, and to restore as rapidly as possible their rightful relations to the Union. He even made an addition to Mr.
Lincoln's policy in the way of assuring the termination of the
war. Recognizing the cardinal idea of this policy to the effect
that the people should most fully renounce the ideas of the
rebellion and perfect the assurance, that when the -Federal
armies were withdrawn, the governments left behind should not
raise a new rebellion, he prescribed an oath of allegiance and
excepted certain persons who had been leading "rebels" from




66                  RECONSTRUCTION.
taking part in the re-organization. It was the limit of all real
solicitude on the subject; it was a constitutional discretion
of the President, both as the organ of clemency in granting
pardon and as the head of the army in judging and deciding
when it was proper to withdraw and disband it.  This new
measure of abundant caution was added to the three conditions
of restoration: the abolition of slavery, the repeal of the secession ordinance, and the repudiation of the rebel debt; and
it was accepted as a logical part of the scheme:of Reconstruction.
Under this plain scheme as proposed by President Johnson
the country was rapidly quieted; public confidence-and prosperity grew visibly under it; and a new animation was imparted to the people of the'South. The Provisional Governors
proceeded with the re-organization of the State governments
by calling Conventions to revise the State Constitutions; and
the inducement was held out to the people that a re-organization on this plan would result in a speedy resumption of
their electoral privileges, for the choice of State and local
officers, and for the election of representatives to Congress from
all the States. All the conditions of restoration were performed with singular alacrity and spirit. State after State
passed the required ordinances; and when on the 2nd of December; 1865, the legislature of Alabama ratified the AntiSlavery amendment, Secretary Seward announced with the
animation of a great public joy that the vote of this State,
"being the twenty-seventh, fills up the complement of two-thirds,
and gives the amendment finishing effect as a part of the organic law of the land."  The congratulations of the President
were conveyed by telegraph.  There were indications of the
happiest feeling; and it appeared at one time as if all injurious




RECONSTRUCTION.                     67
and hateful recollections of the war were about to disappear,
and a restoration of peace, the most admirable in history, was
to give to the world a crowning manifestation of the greatness
and generosity of the American people.
The South had already commenced the realization of an enduring peace; industry was renewed in it, capital sought new
fields and enterprises in it, and it was remarkable how all po.
litical questions had given way to the renewal and-ordinary conversations of commerce. It was a comparatively happy time for
the country. In addresses to delegations from the South and in
interviews with public men from all parts of the country, Pres.
ident Johnson had frequent occasion in the summer and autumn
of 1865 to testify the success of the policy he had inherited from
the last part of Mr. Lincoln's administration, and to impart his
confidence to the public that it would result in an easy, speedy,
and complete restoration of the Union.  This confidence was
strengthened by Gen. Grant. He made a tour of inspection thro'
the South, and the results were officially communicated -to the
effect, that he was " satisfied that the mass of thinking men of
the South accept the present situation of affairs in -good faith,"
and that his observations led him " to the conclusion that the
citizens of the Southern States are anxious to return to selfgovernment within the Union as soon as possible." Under this
assurance prosperity in all parts of the country improved: The
President could not be suspected of partiality for a people whom
he had been foremost to punish to the full extent of the war, or
of peculiar affection for a policy in which he could not claim the
merit of originality.  Gen. Grant could not be accused of dullness or of prejudice, since he was then the popular idol; and
beyond the cheap sneer of Senator Sumner that his report was
a "whitewashing " one, it obtained the unlimited credit of the




68                  RFCONSTRUCTION.
people, and crowned the vindication of the President's policy.
In this advanced and prosperous condition of public affairs,
the Thirty-ninth Congress met in December, 1865. The representatives elect from the Southern States were waiting with their
credentials at its doors. It is to be presumed that at this time
there occurred to the Republican party in Congress the evident
diminution of their political capital, and the obvious prospect of
their dissolution as a party, unless they could plant some new
controversy on the way of the admission of these Southern representatives and the easy restoration of the Union that would
be thereby effected.  The wounds of the war had been rapidly
healed, and were about being closed. Its animosities had greatly
given way to the return of public peace. An easy bridge had
by President Johnson's policy been thrown over the chaotic interval that had ensued upon the close of the war.  Those who
looked on the surface of affairs considered that the Republican
party had exhausted its demands; it had freed the Negro, It
had punished the " rebel, " and it had obtained a guaranty for
the continuance of the Union by the most solemn pledges by
which they could bind the conscience of the people.
But this view, just and obvious enough, in considering the
necessities of the country, misconceived the design of the Republicans, and did not calculate that strong instinct which resides in every political party to perpetuate itself, and to expand
its area of controversy. He who writes profoundly and philosophically of these critical times in American history will perceive beneath the surface of events the continuation of that
political revolution which had been carried on under cover of
the war, and examining closely the further action of the Republican party will detect by a thoughtful diagnosis that what is
apparently an unnatural fever is the steady impulses of a logical




RECONSTRUCTION.                     69
necessity. The thought repeatedly occurs to the common mind:
what was the necessity of this continued revolutionary movement
against the Constitution, since the Republican party had accomplished the abolition of Slavery?-is the Constitution naturally vicious?-has it not, apart from the subject of Slavery,
otherwise proved a beneficent system of government?  The
answer is that the necessity of this revolutionary movement is
the necessity of a party. When we thoughtfully contemplate
the political history of our country we find that the Anti-Slavery
party was necessarily the party of Consolidation; to accomplish
the abolition of Slavery, it was forced to accept the theory of a
consolidated government; but the special object accomplished,
the idea survives, the force of a revolutionary education conti-nues, and a party impelled by such influences and by the necessity, supreme to it, of continuing its organization, is not long in
finding new measures with which to engage public attention.
It was in this thoughtful attitude, meditating this necessity,
that the Republican party stood in December, 1865. It had
no idea of approving the President's policy; but the difficult
question was to invent measures of opposition, sufficiently plausible, to a plan of action that had progressed far in public
favour, and had already borne the most grateful fruits.  The
work was commenced at once; but we shall see how long and
laboured it was. The Southern representatives were rejected,
even at roll-call, when the House was organized.  A "Joint
Committee on Reconstruction " was raised, " to inquire into the
condition " of the Southern States, and various calls for information were made upon the Executive departments.
For six long, fruitless months this Committee sat, before it
relieved public curiosity or favoured Congress with a formal
report. Its sessions were secret; but we must suppose that




70                  RECONSTRUCTION.
its invention was severely taxed, and its counsels greatly confused, by the number of raw and unsatisfactory measures which,
from time to time, emanated from it before its final report was
made.  These measures were imperfect and conflicting; they
were scarcely more than sops to the curiosity which clamoured
at the door of the "star chamber " for information of its proceedings. First, Mr. Stevens reported from it an amendment
to the Constitution, to the effect of excluding from the basis of
representation all who were denied the elective franchise "on
account of race or colour."  The proposition was worried with
amendments and substitutes, and at last went back to the
Committee without instructions.  Mr. Bingham came forward
next, with another Constitutional amendment, proposing to give
Congress the power to'make certain laws for the government
of all the States. It was recommitted, reported again, postponed in the House and never again called up; " laid over " in
the Senate and not again considered. A remarkable hesitation
was evident in Congress; a hesitation which scarcely belongs
to the consultation of any plain public necessity and which is
irresistibly suggestive of the embarrassed counsels of party
expediency.
At last, on the 18th June, 1866, came the long-expected
birth; and on that day there was submitted in both Houses of
Congress the formal report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction. It is not necessary, here, to review this formidable
document and its long trains of argument; and it suffices for
our narrative to place here its conclusion. It was startling
enough: that the Southern States had "forfeited all civil and
political rights and privileges under the Constitution!"  It is
to be remarked that the report of the Committee recommended
no distinct policy, that it proposed no definite means, imme



RECONSTRUCTION.                     71
diate or prospective, for the re-aamission to representation of
the Southern States; but its importance was, that in the broad
proposition with which it concluded-and which was accepted
by a party vote in each branch of Congress-it furnished
sufficient basis for almost any extent of revolutionary action
with regard to the States so summarily and entirely condemned.
Congress had now put under its feet the ground of a dogma,
but it yet hesitated as to the policy and form of measure it
would construct upon it. A feeble minority had made no issue
as to the power of Congress to take the subject of " Reconstruction" out of the hands of the President; there was no
question of jurisdiction; and Mr. Reverdy Johnson who made
the minority report in the House from the Joint Committee
had " not thought it necessary to examine into the legality of
the measures adopted, either by the late or present President,"
and had been satisfied to relieve their motives from censure in
declaring that "the sole object of each was to effect a complete
and early union of all the States. "  The situation now was,
that Congress had not only reclaimed control, complete and
exclusive, of the subject of "Reconstruction," but had also,
by accepting the report of its Committee, thrown off the restraints of the Constitution, with respect to ten States, and
had taken a carte blanche for legislation!
The first distinct measure offered on this settlement of principles, and which, in point of time, preceded the formal report
on "Reconstruction" was Constitutional Amendment, No. 14.
We give it in the words, in which, after an extraordinary perplexity of verbal amendments, it finally passed Congress on
the 13th June, 1866;




72                    RECONSTRUCTION.
ARTICLE XIV
SECTION 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States,
and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United
States, and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make
or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities
of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, nor deny
to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
SEC. 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several
States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole
number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But
when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for
President and Vice-President of the United States, representatives
in Congress, the executive and judicial officers of a State, or the
members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male
inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age and citizens
of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation
in rebellion or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall
be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens
shall bear to the whole number of male citizens, twenty-one years of
age, in such State.
SEC. 3. No person shall be a senator or representative in Congress,
or elector of President or Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or
military, under the United States or under any State, who, having
previously taken an oath as a member of Congress, or as an officer
of the United States, or as a member of any State Legislature, or as
an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or giving aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.
But Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove
such disability.
SEC. 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions
and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion,




RECONSTRUCTION.                       73
shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any
State shall assume to pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of
insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for
the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations,
and claims shall be held illegal and void.
SEC. 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate
legislation, the provisions of this article.
We shall presently see what designs lurked in this plausible
law.  Indeed, Mr. Thaddeus Stevens has recently exposed the
fact that the first clause was designed to entrap Congress on the
subject of Negro suffrage; claiming that the declaration of the
citizenship of the Negro carried with it the right of suffrage as
among those "privileges and immunities" which the State was
prohibited from abridging.  Whatever may be.the merit of this
claim (and we shall elsewhere recur to it in a legal argument
with which we cannot now conveniently attend our narrative),
it is certain that it was studiously concealed in recommending
and perfecting the passage of the bill. It was well known to
the country that the original Constitution of the United States
did not define citizenship; questions in this respect had been
raised on it; and the object of the Amendment No. 14, was apparently, in its first clause, to supply an omission in the original instrument, to terminate a controversy, and to determine a
rule of citizenship in opposition to the decision of the Supreme
Court in the Dred Scott case, that the descendant of an African,
born within the United States, was not a citizen.  It was never
suspected at the time that the words of the Amendment had the
meaning or intention which Mr. Stevens now ascribes to them;
that they were designed thus readily to capture.the sense of the
country on a subject, which, so far from being an easy and foregone conclusion, we find in every form of public expression out"
4




74                 RECONSTRUCTION.
side the Amendment, occupied by the most eager and passion.
ate controversy.
But there was another trick, another legislative device in
this Amendment more remarkable. It went for ratification
to all the States as an undivided proposition. But there is certain evidence that the Republican party in Congress, while making an effort at sincerity, had secretly determined to effect and
to insure its rejection by the Southern States, with the view of
using such rejection for its own political purposes, and making
it the occasion and excuse for additional measures of severity
towards the people of the South. Such a rejection could not
have been better been insured than by the violent and impossible condition inserted in the third section, calling upon the people of the South to disfranchise and to dishonour all the men
in whom they had ever placed any public confidence-all who
had ever held any office, State or Federal. It was really no
test of the loyal sentiment of the South; for men, however loyal
to the Union, however converted to a political principle, could
not but see the staring injustice, the cowardly cruelty of betraying those men especially whom they had trusted in the past,
and of condemning them for simply doing what they themselves
had done. In this light the proposition was viewed in the
South with an unanimity, from which was excluded all debate
as to mere political concerns. It was a sentimentalism above
all questions of politics. The people were asked to strike the
bosoms of their friends with a serpent's tooth; to give up all the
tender and reverential memories of their dead; to put badges of
dishonour on the maimed bodies of their heroes, men who, no
matter that it was in a lost and mistaken cause, had bled and
suffered and toiled for the mass of their countrymen; to make
a vicarious sacrifice of their best and bravest; to pay the price




RECONSTRUCTION.                      75
of cowardly safety in the guilt of most unnatural treachery!
The Republican party in Congress had safely calculated that
the people of the South were infinitely above such a concession
of their affections. The very impossibility of the condition is
proof that there was no sincere design in offering it, that its acceptance was neither expected nor desired, that it was part of
a suspicious diplomacy.
There is other proof of this.  On the 8th June, in the
Senate, Mr. Doolittle made a motion to allow the several provisions of the Amendment to be separately submitted and voted
upon.  He explained that the 3d section would inevitably defeat the ratification in every Southern State; the division he
proposed was a fair one in a case where, indeed,, there was no logical connexion, and where the purpose should have been to obtain
as distinctly as possible the sense of the South, even at some
expense of legislative convenience. The motion was defeated;
an unyielding majority adhered to what had been plotted in
caucus; and the obnoxious section was left to drag down the
whole measure, and to entrap the South into what were to be
violently taken as declarations of disloyalty.
As thus foreseen, the Amendment was rejected by the Southern States; besides the ten included in the rebellion, Kentucky,
Delaware and Maryland voting against it. Tennessee was the
only geographically Southern State that voted for it. From
the other States, the two thirds vote necessary to ratify it was
obtained, and having become a part of the.Constitution it appeared to have passed from public attention. Indeed, after Tennessee was admitted into the Union (July 24, 1866,) the press appears to have given but little attention to the further course of
the Amendment, beyond a stray and naked telegram, now and
then, announcing the vote of each State.




76                 RECONSTRUCTION.
Meanwhile President Johnson, although obstructed in the
work he had assumed in reorganizing the Southern States, continued in other directions, wherever his jurisdiction applied, his
policy of conciliation and generosity. He re-assured the people
of the South by various proclamations. On the 30th August,
1866, he issued a proclamation declaring the state of war ended,
and civil authority existing throughout the United States. A
few weeks later, he issued an amnesty proclamation, modifying
the proclamation of May 29,1865, wherein " fourteen extensive
classes of persons were altogether excepted and excluded from
the benefits thereof," so that "the full and beneficent pardon
conceded " in that proclamation " should be opened and further
extended to a large number of the persons who, by its aforesaid
exceptions, have been hitherto. excluded from Executive clemency. 
The second session of the Thirty-ninth Congress commenced
on the 3d December, 1866.  The rejection by the Southern
States of "Constitutional Amendment", No. 14, had supplied
the step to a new scheme of "Reconstruction" to which might
be added a measure of revenge; and on the second day of the
session the Committee on Territories was set to work, on the
basis of a resolution describing the South as "several districts
of country" formerly occupied by "the once existing States."
Several schemes were proposed; but the general idea appears to
have been maintained that the Amendment or its equivalent
should be forced upon the Southern States; and the final result
was to put it in the aggravated form of the following general
law of Reconstruction, coupling it with the preliminary conditions of military rule, an'd the immediate concession of Negro
suffrage,-the most unconstitutional and violent compulsions of
the popular will that could be well imagined.




RECONSTRUCTION.                          77
An Act to provide efficient government for the insurrectionary States.
Whereas, No legal State government or adequate protection for life
or property now exist in the Rebel States of Virginia, North Carolina,
South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida,
Texas, and Arkansas; and whereas, it is necessary that peace and good
order should be enforced in said States until loyal and republican State
governments can be legally established; therefore
Be it enacted, etc., That said Rebel States shall be divided into
military districts and made subject to the military authority of the
United States, as hereinafter mentioned; and for that purpose Virginia
shall constitute the First District, North Carolina and South Carolina
the Second District, Georgia, Alabama, and Florida the Third District,
Mississippi and Arkansas the Fourth District, and Louisiana and Texas
the Fifth District.
SEC. 2. That it shall be the duty of the President to assign to the
command of each of said districts an officer of the army not below the
rank of Brigadier-General, and to detail a sufficient military force to
enable such officer to perform his duties and enforce his authority within the district to which he is assigned.
SEC. 3. That it shall be the duty of each officer assigned as aforesaid to protect all persons in their rights of person and property, to
suppress insurrection, disorder, and violence, and to punish or cause
to be punished all disturbers of the public peace and criminals; and to
this end he may allow local civil tribunals to take jurisdiction of and
try offenders, or, when in his judgment it may be necessary for the
trial of offenders, he shall have power to organize military committees
or tribunals for that purpose; and all interference under colour of State
authority with the exercise of military authority under this act shall
be null and void.
SEC. 4. That all persons put under military arrest by virtue of this
act shall be tried without unnecessary delay, and no cruel or unusual
punishment shall be inflicted, and no sentence of any military cor
mission or tribunal hereby authorized, affecting the life or liberty of
any person, shall'be executed until it is approved by the officer in corn.




78                    RECONSTRUCTION.
mand of the district; and the laws and regulations for the government
of the army shall not be effected by this act, except in so far as they
may conflict with its provisions. Provided, That no sentence of death
under this act shall be carried into execution without the approval of
the President.
SEC. 5. When the people of any one of said Rebel States shall have
formed a constitution and government in conformity with the Constitution of the United States in all respects, framed by a convention of
delegates elected by the male citizens of said State, 21 years old and
upward, of whatever race, colour, or previous condition, who have been
resident in said State for one year previous to the day of election, except such as may be disfranchised for participation in the Rebellion or
for felony at common law, and when such constitution shall provide
that the elective franchise shall be enjoyed by all such persons as have
the qualifications herein stated for electors of delegates, and when such
constitution shall be ratified by a majority of the persons voting on
the question of ratification who are qualified as electors for delegates,
and when such constitution shall have been submitted to Congress for
examination and approval, and Congress shall have approved the same,
and when said State by a vote of its Legislature elected under said
constitution shall have adopted the amendment to the Constitution of
the United States proposed by'the XXXIXth Congress, and known
as Article 14, and when said article shall have become part of the Constitution of the United States, said State shall be declared entitled to
representation in Congress, and Senators and Representatives shall
be admitted therefrom on their taking the oath prescribed by law, and
then and thereafter the preceding sections of this act shall be inoperative in said State. Provided, That no person excluded from the privilege of holding office by said proposed amendment to the Constitution
of the United States shall be eligible to election as a member of the convention to frame a constitution for any of said Rebel States, nor shall
any such person vote for members of such convention.
SEC. 6. Until the people of the said Rebel States shall by law be admitted to representation in the Congress of the United States, all civil
governments that may exist therein shall be deemed provisional only,
and shall be in all respects subject to the paramount authority of the
United States, at any time to abolish, modify, control, and supersede




RECONSTRUCTION.                      79
the same, and inm all elections to any office under such provisional
governments all persons shall be entitled to vote under the provisions
of the fifth section of.this act. And no person shall be eligible to any
office under such provisional governments who would be disqualified
from holding office under the provisions of the third article of said Constitutional Amendment.
This extraordinary law was passed on the 2nd March, 1867.
A second or Supplemental act, relating mainly to the registration of voters, referred to in the 5th section, was passed
March 23d, 1867, at the first session of the Fortieth Congress;
and a third or Explanatory act was passed July 19th, 1867, at
an extra session, in effect declaring that the military government over the ten States was to have unlimited authority over
the Courts, and over all the offices of the State, legislative,
executive and judicial.
There was thus absolutely erected in ten States a mode of
vice-royal rule outside of the Constitution. In a veto message of surpassing intellectual power the President pointed
out the despotism, the political purpose and the unconstitutionality of the law of the 2nd March. He summed his objections in this remarkable sentence: "I submit to Congress
whether this measure is not, in its whole character, scope
and object, without precedent and without authority, in palpable conflict with the plainest provisions of the Constitution,
and utterly destructive to those great principles of liberty and
humanity for which our ancestors on both sides of the Atlantic have shed so much blood and expended so much treasure."
The history of the execution of this law is as yet incomplete.  We may say, however, generally that it has afforded an
example of unlimited power, such as the modern world has
seldom  known.  "The law," says Gen. Grant, " makes the




80                  RECONSTRUCTION.
district commanders their own interpreters of their power or
duty under it; and, in my opinion, the Attorney General ot
myself can do no more than give our opinion of the meaning
of the law."  Each commander has placed his own construction upon the acts of Congress; and we may imagine how
illimitable is the assumption of authority, how petty and invasive is the tyranny when we find it carried tb the length of an
order forbidding the police of a city to wear gray uniform,
and another forbidding the distillation of grain.
But the most remarkable thing in the history of this viceroyal rule in the South is the manipulation of elections; the
frauds in registration; the injustice of the apportionment,
which, with a large white majority in all the States, so arranged the districts, as to insure a majority to the Negroes in
the Conventions called to frame the organic law. The general
nature of our narrative admits no more than a summary view
of the outrage. It is well known that there is a large preponderance of white population in all of the excluded States;
yet the registration process produced the result of the political
ascendancy of the Negro throughout most of them.  In Florida, where the whites by the last census were 77,747 to
62,637, the registering officers allowed 4,733 whites and 9,388
blacks to vote. In Georgia, notwithstanding forty thousand
whites, of that State had been disfranchised, it still had a registered majority of about two thousand whites; yet tke districts
were so laid out as to allow 93,417 blacks to elect 192 delegates and 95,303 whites to elect 65 delegates to the State
Convention. In Alabama, the majority of the blacks in the
registration was 15,561, and the number of blacks enrolled
showed an increase of over 90,000 since 1860.  In Texas
there was a black majority of T),000, though the censhs of




RECONSTRUCTION.                                81
1860 showed 420,891 whites to 183,021 blacks. In Louisiana,
where Gen. Banks at the close of the war reported the blacks
had fallen off one-fourth, the registers footed up 82, 907 blacks,
which taking the usual ratio of population to voters in that
State exhibits an increase of 193,000 blacks in seven years, or
fully fifty-five per cent. In Virginia, where the whites had
13,000 registered majority, the apportionment of districts was
so made that in 46 districts the whites had a majority and in
59 the blacks had a majority, giving a black majority in Convention of thirteen.   These facts  are important as a remarkable array of evidence of a steady and unscrupulous design to
Africanize the South, and after torturing it with military law
to pass it to the control of the Negro.   Military rule and Negro
supremacy become the short definition of " Reconstruction."*
* We may place here the proceedings of the Supreme Court properly episodical te
Reconstruction.
1. A petition on behalf of the States of Georgia and Mississippi for an injunction to
restrain the President and district commanders from carrying out the provisions of the
Reconstruction laws. Adverse decision April 15th, 1867; Chief Justice Chase delivering the opinion of the court, maintaining the impropriety of interference, and, generally,
that an injunction against the execution of an act of Congress by the incumbent of the
Presidential office cannot be received, whether it describes him as President, or simply
as a citizen of a State. Motion for leave to file a bill, therefore, dismissed.
2. A bill in which the State of Georgia is complainant against Edwin M. Stanton,
Ulysses S. Grant, and John Pope. ILave was granted to file the bill nem. con., and
subpoenas have been issued.
3. "The McCardle case." Appeal from the Circuit Court of Mississippi dismissing
habeas corpus and remanding the prisoner to the military authority. He had been originally arrested by a military order and tried by a military commission on specifications
of having obstructed the Reconstruction laws and slandered a military officer of the
United States, etc. in certain criticisms in a newspaper which the prisoner published: in
the town of Vicksburg. The case was brought before the Circuit Court on a writ of
habeas corpus; but the court decided it had no jurisdiction, and the prisoner was remanded. On these facts the case came before the Supreme Court, was elaborately
argued, but was finally ordered over to the next term. Whereupon the following protest was signed by Judge Grier, a member of the Court:-" The case was fully, argued in
the beginning of this month'! (March, 1868). " It is a case which not only involves the
liberty and rights of the appellant, but of millions of our fellow-citizens. The country
had a right to expect, it would receive the immediate and solemn attention of the court
By the postponement of this case, this court has subjected itself, whether justly or un4.




82                          RECONSTRUCTION.
But we are occupied in this place only with a narrative of the
events which fill in the scheme of Reconstruction; and to complete this narrative, we must pass to a new series of measures.
We refer to  that train  of acts of Congress by  which  it has
sought to fetter the  President of the United  States, to annul
all possible efforts at interference or obstruction by the Executive
authority with respect to ten States of the Union, and to impair
so far the constitutional functions of his office. This attempt
upon the President is a necessary part of the Congressional
scheme of Reconstruction; it has moved at equal pace with it;
and running with the measures already referred to, has been a
series of outrages and usurpations upon his authority. They
are summarily stated as follows1. A  bill, which  became  a la  in  January, 1867, repealing
the 13th section of the Act of July 17th, 1862, authorizing
the President by proclamation  "to extend to persons who may
have participated in the existing rebellion  *  * pardon and amnesty."
justly, to the imputation that it had evaded the performance of a duty imposed upon it
by the Constitution, and awaited for legal interposition to supersede its action, and
relieve it of respon sibility. I have only to say, Pudet hoc opprobrio, licet non potuisse
repelli, or literally translated,' I am ashamed such an opprobrium should be cast upon
the court, and that it cannot be refuted.'"
The common explanation of the postponement is that the Supreme Court was gener
ally supposed to have reached a decision in the McCardle case, prior to the Impeachment proceedings; and from the known inclination of a majority of the court it was be'
lieved that the decision, when promulgated, would be adverse to the constitutionality of
the military governments in the South. The Radicals contemplated the possibility of
such a result, and regarded it with great alarm. They viewed it with exclusive refer.
ence to its effect upon the coming Presidential election, and very justly with great apprehension. It would have been simply a condemnation of the policy of Congress-a
declaration from the highest legal authority that the whole system of Radical Recon.
struction was illegal and unconstitutional. A resort was, therefore, had to legislation,
ignoring the Supreme Court so far as its jurisdiction might affect Radical Reconstruction
The law was passed, vetoed, passed over the veto; and it was this enactment; the constitutionality of which was to have been argued. The McCardle case had been fully
argued and submitted for decision, and the delay in the promulgation of its ultimatum
is what Judge Grier pronounces the evasion of a duty imposed by the Constitution.




RECONSTRUCTION.                       83
2. An Act, March 2, 1867, virtually depriving thp President
of his constitutional functions as Commander-in-Chief of the
Army.  It provides that the head-quarters of the General of
the army shall be at Washington, and all orders and instructions relating to military operations issued by the President or
Secretary of War shall be issued through the General of the
army, and, in case of his inability, through the next in rank;
that the General of the army shall not be removed, suspended,
or relieved from command, or assigned to duty elsewhere than
at said head-quarters, except at his own request, without the
previous approval of the Senate; and any orders or instructions relating to military operations issued contrary to the requirements of this section shall be null and void; and any
officer who shall issue orders or instructions contrary to the
provisions of this section shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor in office; and any officer of the army who shall transmit, convey, or obey any orders or instructions so issued
contrary to the provisions of this section, knowing that such
orders were so issued, shall be liable to imprisonment for not less
than two nor more than twenty years, upon conviction thereof
in any court of competent jurisdiction.
3. What is popularly known as "the Tenure of Office Bill, "
passed March 2, 1867. By this law the President is forbidden
to remove from office those appointed by him, with the advice
and consent of the Senate, unless the Senate consent to such
removal, and it is made a high misdemeanor for him to appoint
others in their places, or for such others tQ accept said appoint.
ment.
It has been remarked especially of this last extraordinary
law that the question -of the power of removal had been settled,
as early as 1789, in the first Congress under the Constitution;




84                  RECONSTRUCTION.
that, when the Department of State was created, a declaratory
clause was inserted in the bill of affirmation that this power
was vested in the President; and that Congress repeated the
decision or legislative construction twice afterwards in creating
executive departments. The point was made in the unavailing
veto of the President; but we do not design to introduce ar.
gument here, and have merely mentioned it as a part of the
history of the law of 1867.
In looking at these three measures, the reflection at once occurs to the reader, that besides being a subordinate part of the
scheme of Reconstruction, they amount to a revolutionary design upon the cardinal and vital distribution of powers in our
system of government.  At a later date the attempt upon the
President traced in these measures-diminishing the prerogative of pardon, taking from him the control of the army, and
impairing his duty to see that the laws are "faithfully executed," by cutting off  the  power of removal  incidental to
that duty-has progressed to the extremity of Impeachment.
It is an unbroken  sequence; Impeachment, so far from  a
distinct incident, being the logical fruit of the whole tenour
and spirit of Reconstruction, that point to which a consistant
revolutionary purpose has steadily mounted.
We are aware that an attempt has been made to wrest Impeachment from its proper historical connection, to dissociate
it from Reconstruction, and to misrepresent it as an event of no
practical consequence, designing a mere change of Presidents,
after which the government might resume its routine, and the
country take up the thread of its daily cares as before. But
we abstain from argument here, reserving it for another place in
this work, where we shall have occasion to describe Impeachment as something more.thain  spe.ctaclar drama at Washing



RECONSTRUCTION.                               85
ton.  It is sufficient to say of it in this place, that the interest of
the revolutionary movement that has taken the name and pretences of Reconstruction has culminated at this point; and we
conveniently terminate here what was designed as a task of pure
narrative.  With patient detail we  have given over the history of  Reconstruction;-the abundant commentary on it we reserve for other places, and shall put under appropriate heads.
THREE NOTABLE ARGUMENTS.
The three arguments for the Reconstruction scheme of Congress-Senator Sumner's early
discovery of " dead States "-A clear and fundamental proposition-Decision of Jus
tice Sprague of Massachusetts-Estoppel of Congress from the doctrine of State forfeiture-Important decision of Chief Justice Chase on the North Carolina Circuit-The
argument of a " conquered country "-Extract from an English statesman-" Occu.
patio bellica "-The Constitutional guaranty of a Republican form of governmentSenator Sumner's ignorance of history-Analysis of the Constitution with respect to
suffrage-The general argument for universal suffrage-Recent declamations of
Thaddeus Stevens-A logical reply to them-Universal suffrage, as meaning Negro
suffrage for the South-A brutal mockery of republicanism.
The arguments to sustain that new political system, of which
we have already given the history, are scattered through debates
in Congress, through various proceedings in the Supreme Court,
and through daily expressions of a partisan press. We know
that the public mind has been strained and confused by this
multitude  of arguments, and the  diversity  of the  channels
through which they have found  expression.  We think it interesting, therefore, to collect them, to put them in order, and to
pass them in review. We propose to do so in a popular way.
We shall avoid the prolix methods of the mere lawyer; and we
shall take care not to annoy the reader by that puerile style of
numerical arguments, the ambition of which is to make of its
subject the largest number of divisions and subdivisions. There




86                 RFCONSTRUCTION.
are plainly not mote than three general heads of the argument
and when we have reviewed them, we have traversed the whole
field of the controversy.
1. We have the argument that the Southern States and their
people forfeited their rights by the rebellion.
2. We are entertained by the theory that these States have
been reduced by the war to conquered territory, and that Congress may govern them by the right of conquest.
3. We are told that the United States are bound to guarantee
a republican form of government to every State in the Union,
and are in the exercise of that power with respect to the Southern
States in the present scheme of " Reconstruction."
From these three points we may stake out the boundaries of
the whole field of discussion, and complete our popular survey
of the question. We believe that all that has been said or written on Reconstruction may be placed without violence under
the arguments we have noted, and that when we have completed
these we have arrived at a fair and sufficient conclusion on the
subject.
The first of these arguments is the earliest in the history of
the discussion, and, indeed, dates from the commencement of
the war. Its first appearance was in a loose passionate language
threatening the belligerent rebels, and scarcely attracting attention at the time but as a display of declamatory rhetoric. It
was of a piece with those avowals of vengeance growing out of
the heat of the war, and too readily supposed to be mere exclamations of passion. When during the war an intemperate Republican declared in Congress that the war should "make a
pathway of desolation fron the Potomac to the Gulf of Mexico; 
when another was for " crushing " his erring countrymen as
infernal, damnable fiends;" when another recommended that




RECONSTRUCTION.                      87
the " rebels " should be treated " as devils —ot only their personal goods, and their lives, but the fee simple of their lands
be taken from them;" and when yet another said that neither
South Carolina,, Georgia or Florida "should re-appear in the
Union; let these States be set apart as a home for the Negro!"but few of the public were disposed to accept these expressions
in a serious and literal sense, or to esteem them more than the
exaggerated utterances of hate. But in this frenzy lurked a
"method of madness," and from these wild expressions grew
the monstrous idea which the Republican party has since deliberately advanced, to the effect that the Southern States having
forfeited their rights in the war are left with no other government than the punitive will of Congress. It is interesting to
observe how this splutter of malice has at last arranged itself
into the serious form of argument.
We find it first reduced to an orderly proposition by Senator
Sumner and announced in a series of resolutions introduced by
him in the United States Senate, February, 1862, to this effect:
that a vote of secession from the Union, sustained by force,
"becomes a practical abdication by the State of all rights
under the Constitution; while the treason which it involves
still further works an instantforfeiture of all those functions
and powers essential to the continued existence of the State as
a body politic, so that from that time forward the territory
falls under the exclusive jurisdiction of Congress as other
territory, and the State, being, according to the language of
the law, felo-de-se, ceases to exist. "  Since this rhetorical
accumulation of Mr. Sumner, public attention has been diverted by a number of captious and convenient phrases to indicate
this singular decease of the "rebel" States.  We have had,
indeed, a plentiful supply of catch-words on the subject. Sen



88                  RECONSTRUCTION.
ator Wilson makes a short cut to the doctrine of his colleague
in the words "dead States. "  Further we are told of " State
abdication," "State forfeiture," "State suicide," "the lapsing.of States into territories," etc. Mr. Thaddeus Stevens, with
the unsightly effort of age at a brutal and malicious joke, thus
paraphrases Reconstruction: " Congress passed an act authorizing waste Territories of the United States to form Constitutions, if possible, so as to make them fit to be associated with
civilized communities."
The one argument on which all these conceits of language
are strung is that the Southern people are outlaws, having forfeited their rights, even those of local, government, by the act of
withdrawing from the United States. The argument is so violent and excessive as to carry its own refutation with it and to
destroy itself by the mere force of its declaration.  It is in fact
saying that because the "rebel "-States denied the right of the
Federal government to keep them in the Union, that therefore
that right did not exist, and that they have really and practically accomplished " Secession " in continuing out of the Union
despite the decision of the war and the virtue of the Federal
arms.  The mere statement of such a case in the form of a
question should be decisive of the answer. The supposition
of "dead States," "States out -of the Union, " is essentially
and unavoidably either the admission of the legal virtue of
Secession, or the claim that Congress has the right to expel
States from'the Union!
There is one thought which firmly fixed in the mind gives a
clear view of the whole subject of Reconstruction and rescues
from confusion its entire multitude of issues. It is simply
that the Government has acquired no tew political power by the
war, that in respect of its power and constitutional authority it




RECONSTRUCTION.                      89
is the same continuous government that it was before the war.
In such case says Mr. Justice Sprague of Massachusetts, " the
nation acquires no new sovereignty, but merely maintains its
previous rights.  Under our Government the right of sovereignty over any portion  of a State is given and limited by
the Constitution, and will be the same after the war as it was
before."*  The language of this judicial decision has the
merit of explicitness, and for this may please the reader; but
it is unnecessary as an addition by way of argument to what is
not only morally a truism, but is to be found in the very bodJ
of the Constitution of the United States.' We find that the
Constitution prohibits even the nation from  depriving any
State of its "equal suffrage in the Senate;"t and in view of
this provision, how can the assumption be held that Congress
may expel States from the Union, or even exercise an extraordinary and despotic rule over them!
Since, then, the Government has acquired no addition of sovereignty, no new political power by the war, and since furthermore its relations to the States and power over the States are
limited by the Constitution, we are safely left to the conclusion
that it can neither expel nor diminish a State, without violating the organic law or incurring the guilt of usurpation.
It is curious to notice what inconsistencies have been mixed
with the absurdities of this doctrine of the death or diminution
of the Southern States by forfeiture of their rights on account
of their rebellion. In various acts of Congress assuming these
States to be still within the Union, it has made a deliberate
and accumulated estoppel to the doctrine that they are excluded, or that they have not subsisting valid State governments.
*Case of Amy Warwick, 24 Law Rep. decided at one of the terms of 1862
t Article V.




90                  RECONSTRUCTION.
Even during the war Congress repeatedly legislated for them
as States still within the Union, and, in 1862, by the apportionment bill gave each of these States their proper proportion of
representatives in the national legislature. At the close of the
war it yet more strongly committed itself; and in receiving the
ratification of the Constituticnal Amendment abolishing Slavery by the legislatures of the Southern States, it recognized
them as exercising the very highest legislative functions in our
political system and performing an act of supreme importance.
Yet this act is invalid on the supposition that the Southern
States were not in the Union, for the ratifications of at least
three of them had to be counted to carry the amendment; and
the consequence is that Slavery has never been constitutionally
extinguished and that there is no guaranty that it may not be
reclaimed and re-established.  To such absurdities are we
forcedby the doctrine of dead or decayed States, having no right
of representation in the Union, and no political existence but
as the subject of despotid will.
We have thus rapidly gone over the first and capital ground
of the Republican party in the scheme of Reconstruction, with
the arguments suggesting themselves to a plain mind. These
arguments, however, are assisted from an unexpected quarter.
Happily, on the subject we have been considering, there is the
light of a distinct judicial decision, the force and importance of
which appear to have been but little appreciated in the political controversy, or in the popular discussion. A ruling made
by Chief Justice Chase, sitting at Raleigh, North Carolina, in
June, 1867, has, after a strange neglect, recently been brought
to public attention, and is found to be a clear and irrevocable
decision of the inviolability of the Union, and of the present
residence of all the States in it in their original character and




RECONSTRUCTION.                       91
condition.  The essential part of the opinion of the Chief
Justice is thus stated:
" There is no doubt that the State of North Carolina, by the acts
of the Convention of May, 1861, by the previous acts of the Governor
of the State, by subsequent acts of all the departments of the State
Government, and by the acts of the people at the election held after
May, 1861, set aside her State Government and Constitution, and
connected under the National. Constitution with the Government of
the United States, and established a Constitution, and Government,
connected with another pretended Government set up in hostility to
the United States, and entered upon a course of active warfare against
the National Government; nor is there any doubt that, by these acts,
the practical relations of North Carolina to the Union were suspended,
and very serious liabilities incurred by those who were engaged in
them.
" But these acts did not effect, even for a moment, the separation of
North Carolina from the Union, any more than the acts of an individual who commits grave offences against the State by resisting its officers and defying its authority, can separate himfrom the State."
It thus appears that the ordinances and other acts of secession on the part of the Southern States, in the words of the
Chief Justice, merely "suspended" "the practical relations"
of these States to the Union.   This "suspension," having
been caused by these ordinances and acts, ceases when they
are annulled by the war, and therefore the prior relations of
these States are restored, and they are entitled to all the
privileges of the Union and bound by all its obligations. In
addition to what is quoted above, the Chief Justice expressly
repudiates the doctrine that the "insurgent States, by the act
of rebellion, and by levying war against the nation, became
foreign States."  Then if not foreign States, they must have
been States of the Union; nothing has occurred since the
war to change their character; therefore they must be such




92                  RECONSTRUCTION.
States now. The whole argument at last is reduced to this
simple syllogism and the conclusion is as inviolable as it is
plain.
We advance to the second argument of the Republicans.
And the moment we confront it, an odious phrase seizes
attention and excites our suspicion.   The world has outlived
those convenient words of tyranny grown out of violent and
barbarous times-a " conquered country!"  It is remarkable
how  peculiarly  these words have been used&to justify
oppression, and to disguise the rod of the tyrant in the robe
of the conqferor.  It is memorable as the precise argument
which Great Britain used for the oppression of our fathers;
the pretence which the celebrated Blackstone, to the lasting
injury of his great legal reputation, furnished to Charles II.
for abusing and grinding the American Colonies.  America
was a "conquered country," and therefore at the merciful
disposition of the Crown!  The dishonour of this plea has
alone survived wherever it has been made.  It did not serve
to exculpate England in her oppression of the Colonies, or in
her later maltreatment of Ireland.  We are told by a recent
historian that, when  arbitrary government was planted in
Ireland, there were those in  the British  Parliament who
excused it because the Irish were a conquered nation; whereupon there was this exclamation on the part of a distinguished
statesman: "They were'a conquered nation!'"  cries Pym.




RECONSTRUCTION.                     93
"There cannot be a word more pregnant and fruitful in treason
than that is.  There are few nations in the world that have
not been conquered, and no doubt the conqueror may give
what law he pleases to those that are.conquered; but if the
succeeding acts and agreements do not limit and restrain that
right, what people can be secure?  England  hath  been
conquered, and Wales hath been conquered, and by this
reason will be in little better case than Ireland. If the king,
by the right of a conqueror, gives laws to'his people, shall
not the people by the same reason be restored to the right of
the conquered, to recover their liberty, if they can? "
The argument of the English statesman is full of sense and
humanity.  But the disgraced plea which the Congress at
Washington applies to its scheme of Reconstruction in the
South, even if it could be just in any circumstances, is wholly
inappropriate here; there is no case of the conqueror; and it
is impossible to force an analogy between one nation'overcoming another, and a government merely recovering its own
territory and re-asserting its authority over its own subjects.
The plea is so absurd  and incoherent that it is almost
impossible to engage it in serious argument.  The idea of
conquest by a Government of its own territory borders on the
ridiculous.  Again we quote from  that decision of Judge
Sprague, to which we have already referred: "No nation ever
makes conquest of its own territory.  If a hostile- power,
either from without or from within, takes and holds possession
and dominion over any portion of its territory, and the nation
by force of arms expels or overthrows the enemy and suppresses
hostilities, it acquires no new title, but merely regains the
possession of which it had been temporarily deprived."
Absurd as is the plea which applies the rule of conquest to




94                  RECONSTRUCTION.
a civil war, we are aware there is a legal refinement of it
which has obtained a certain attention.   The air of subtlety
is the natural one of absurdity, and nonsense readily takes
refuge in a confusion of ideas. Thus, we are told, that throwing
out the consideration of the rule of conquest, the Government
has yet the right of hostile  "occupation" in the Southern
States, and that Congress may therefore take their affairs into
its hands.  But this argument is really inferiour to that of
conquest, as the greater includes the less; for the " occupatio
bellica" contained in the right of conquest is the lesser right,
and they fall together.  If after the war the army of the
United States remains in the South, it is yet no hostile
occupation in a legal sense; and though we freely admit, that
it may quell insurrection and keep the peace in its neighbourhood, we utterly deny that even in a case of utter anarchy it
could force institutions upon the country.  The distinction is
obvious between an affair of police and a usurpation of power
to the extent of seizing the government of a country and
dictating its political institutions.   "What right," says a
distinguished advocate, speaking at the bar of the Supreme
Court, in a recent case of individual oppression under the
Reconstruction laws, "has the army of a sovereign occupying
his own territory, when every hostile force is subdued, to take
in its own hands the government of the country by a right
paramount to the antecedent right? "




RECONSTRUCTION.                     95
We come to the third argument: that the guaranty in the
Constitution of a republican form of government justifies the
claim of Congress and imposes upon it the duty to intervene
in the governments of the Southern States, and especially to
regulate the right of suffrage therein. This argument, if it
did not originate with Senator Sumner, has yet been most
industriously displayed by him, and in his hands has taken
the form of a-bill to;regulate suffrage in all the States,
without regard to property, race or colour.
It is strange, indeed, that a member of Congress, who claims
to represent peculiarly the cultivation and scholarship of his
party, and who prides himself on the abundance and accuracy
of his historical illustrations, should have fallen into an errour
especially deplorable for its ignorance of the commonest texts
in our political annals. The school-boy even knows that, at
the date of the Constitution, the States then existing were
considered  republican forms of government; and if Mr.
Sumner had turned to his dictionary, he might readily have
found that to "guarantee" means to warrant something
already existing.  The meaning of the clause was stated by
Mr. Madison, and, writing in one of the numbers of "The
Federalist," he distinctly explained that "it supposes a preexisting government of the form which is to be guaranteed."
It could have had no other meaning.  In the history of the
language in which it was prepared, the intent was yet more
manifest; one shape  of the  proposition  being-" that a
republican constitution and its existing laws ought to be
guaranteed to each State by the United States."   The words
were cut down or reduced, and with al mere verbal change
consulting brevity, the proposition was accepted as it now
stands-"that the United States shall guarantee to every
State a republican form  of government."  If any doubt




98                  RECONSTRUCTION
existed as to what was a " republican form of government,"
it was clearly, necessarily, to be decided by that form which
each State possessed at the date of the Constitution, and
which it was designed to secure as against all monarchical and
aristocratical innovations.
No one then supposed, no one for eighty years following the
Constitution supposed, that this clause was designed to give to
Congress power to-interfere with su;age in the States, and
that a restricted suffrage was to be taken for a negation of a
"republican form of government."  According to such a test,
the governments of Virginia and Massachusetts were not
republican when they came into the Union; and, indeed, all the
States at that time demanded "reconstruction," as it is a
remarkable fact that in all of them age, residence, sex and a
property qualification, were required of electors. Indeed,
according to this, even the Constitution of the United States
would not be a republican form  of government, since it
possesses no power over the elective franchise, and, on the
contrary, leaves it to be regulated by the governments
subordinate to itself-the States.  The only clause of the
Constitution which relates at all to the subject of suffrage is
that, in the choice of representatives, the electors shall have
"the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous
branch of the State Legislature."   The States were left to
regulate the franchise for themselves.
For eighty years the country has acquiesced in the opinion
that the State governments were republican, and Congress has
slept upon its supposed duty of providing for such change in
the government of each State as would make it republican in
the estimation of Mr. Sumner.  That person has suddenly interposed to contradict the assumption of our fathers that the




RECONSTRUCTION.                    97
States which formed the Union enjoyed republican forms of
government; and proposes to interrupt their continuance in that
enjoyment by admitting Congress to interfere with suffrage,
even to the extent of forming a Constitution for a State! The
true question, it is to be practically observed, is not whether
universal suffrage may or may not be a necessary element in
the republican form of government; but whether our fathers
thought so, since thei ssue is as to the meaning of a particular
clause in the Constitution and not as to the merit of a general
proposition. And on this point, we repeat, we have the decisive
rule that the design of this clause was to guarantee the existing governments of the States, none of which permitted universal suffrage.
But that question settled, the restriction of the Constitution
determined, we are even not unwilling to admit to general reasoning the proposition that universal suffrage is a necessary condition
of a republican government.  We know, that public attention
has been caught on this subject by some shallow platitudes,
some " glittering generalities, " about the natural rights of man
to defend himself in society, and the ballot being a necessity of
his political existence as a freeman.  But the question is
wholly mis-stated in these broad declamations of. the demagogue.
Some recent froth from the lips of Mr. Thaddeus Stevens is
an example of what extravagances and absurdities may pass
unrebuked in a senseless clamour of patriotism and vague appeals to history. In a speech in the House of Representatives,
March 19,1868, he declared: " We have reached a period when
we may speak of universal suffrage, not as a boon, not as a gift,
but as an inalienable right, which no man dares to take away,
and which no man can surrender.  His God has forbidden it;
the science of government has forbidden it, and henceforth let
5




98                  RECONSTRUCTION.
us understand that universal suffrage operating in favour
of every man who is to be governed by the votes cast, is one of
those doctrines planted deeper than the granite in which our
fathers laid the foundation of their immortal work-the work
of universal liberty which will last just as long as that im.
mortal doctrine shall last, and no longer"!!
The points of exclamation are our own, and are well deserved.
The mistake, the wretched nonsense of Mr. Stevens is in considering as a natural, inherent right, a privilege which grows
wholly out of the condition of society, and is governed by its
concerns. The suffrage is conceded to those who are adjudged
capable of exercising it, and this judgment is determined in the
discretion of the legislative power. Those who are incapable
by nature of fulfilling functions of citizenship cannot be forced
to exercise them without detriment to society as well as to themselves. This is the plain rule, and is of the very frame of society.
Republican governments may be more or less democratic; but
it is a singular fact, that no government has ever existed in
the world in which universal suffrage has prevailed! Such a
government would be simply the surrender of all its worth and
intelligence to an accident of numbers. In our political system,
the tendency has always been to the enlargement of suffragea tendency the effects of which have been the corruption of
elections, the lowering of the standards of public life and that
evil which one of the most popular and robust of modern thinkers
(John Stuart Mill) deplores as the especial affliction of America:
the raising of questions, for the purpose of founding parties upon
them. But decided as has been this tendency to extend the
elective franchise, our government has judged that there were
persons within the limits of its jurisdiction who were incapable
of exercising all the functions of citizenship; that women, that




RECONSTRUCTION.                     99
unnaturalized foreigners, that youths of undeveloped minds
should not assume as a right what from their very incapacity
would be detrimental to themselves as well as to the public interest. It is of very care of them that the government keeps
them in the condition of political minors. They are protected
by the general intelligence and humanity of the laws; and in
the case of the Negro, this protection has been assured and multiplied by special statutes, and even by a bureau solely designed
for his benefit.
We are not disposed to expend argument on a truism. But
there is a single consideration which cuts under the whole doctrine of universal suffrage, and which does not appear to have
obtained yet the attention of the disputants.  The right to vote
and the right to be voted for are equal and correlative. If we
admit the right of universal suffrage, we must annul all the qualifications to hold office. We must repeal all those various laws,
Federal, State, and Municipal which require age, residence,
property qualifications, etc., for public office.  We must either
involve ourselves in this general and ruinous license; or we
must require qualifications at both ends of the line-for the
voter as well as the officer. The alternative is severe, and cannot be avoided.
Upon the closest reflection, we can discover no flaw in this
argument. It is as neat as it is novel.  If we admit fully the
right of the Negro to vote, then we cannot diminish his right
to be voted for, or to ascend to any offices within the gift of
the ballot..More than this, if we are to take universal suffrage
as the test of "republicanism, " after the school of Mr. Sumner, then we must carry the reform to the extent of nullifying
all qualifications for office, such as age, residence, property, etc.,
and rooting from the State Constitutions an entire series c




100                 RECONSTRUCTION.
fundamental laws.  These qualifications are empirical and
unsound on the admission of universal suffrage, and must give
way in logical sequence. A reform to this extent has probably
not been practically contemplated by the Radicals in Congress;
but a party which prates so much of logical necessities, and
preaches the virtue of the sequitur, is under especial obligations
to follow its doctrines to their legitimate conclusions.
Leaders of the Radical party, with professions of Negro
suffrage hot in their mouths, have been sending advices to
Southern Conventions that Negroes should not run for Congress,
or aspire to any conspicuous office; that they should be satisfied
to fill the lowest seats in political synagogues. They are to vote
as much as they please, but not to be voted for.  It is an insult
even to the low intelligence of the Negro to abuse him thus,
and make him an unrewarded instrument of the ambition oi
white politicians. It is a unilateral citizenship, as offensive
to the instincts of justice as to the law of logic. If we are to
concede universal suffrage, we must perfect it by universal
license to office; it is only the first step of a reform that must
proceed to universal demoralization, to the cheapening of all
offices, to a wild, unrestrained, vehement competition in political
life that will leave nothing good or desirable in it.
But beyond the general considerations of this doctrine of
universal suffrage there is a peculiar excess in Mr. Sumner's
application of it to the Southern States. It is a mockery
added to absurdity, the former as arch and fiendish as the
latter is flagrant and flippant. Universal suffrage means foi
the South Negro suffrage; and the method of enforcing it,
with the preliminary conditions of martial law and  other ma.
chinery of Reconstruction, is of thevery essence of despotism.
Whatever doubt there may be as to the meaning of a " repub



RECONSTRUCTION                   101
lican form of government," it certainly and necessarily implies
self-government by the people of a State; and the most adventurous dealer in political fancies would scarcely venture
the assertion that the form of government dictated by Congress
to accomplish Negro suffrage in the South was republican or
self-government. The guaranty of a republican form of government is practically violated under pretext of its fulfillment,
and is made to mean a power in Congress to impose upon a
State a government that is not republican! The South is
mocked, by calling the attempt to institute tyranny over her
the guaranty of a republican government and by giving the
name of kindness to insult and injury. This derision might
at least been spared a suffering people. No device was needed.
The wrong might have been done with the bold and accustomed declarations of villainy-at least without the effrontery,
the brutal mockery of the highwayman who pretends a kindly
and protecting care for the effects of the traveler, while rifling
his pockets, and leaving him to misery and despair.




102                    RECONSTRUCTION,
A  SPECIAL CONSOLATION.
The Radical party vindicating the action of the South in the late war-A new interpretation of " Copperheads"-Speech of George H. Pendleton-Two wars since 1860:
one for the Union, the other for the Constitution-President Lincoln's plea of necessity-Precedents of 1776 and 1812-Reasons for the war on the Constitution-Extract
from an English publicist-Identity of the Two Rebellions, 1776 and 1861-Extraordinary declaration of President Johnson-Prophecy of the "lost cause regained."
Regarding the chain of unconstitutional acts which Congress
has accomplished since the war, there is one great consolatory
idea for the South, which scarcely appears to have been devel.
oped in the current commentaries of the  press.  It is the
logical, inevitable tendency of such proceedings to vindicate
the past war; to suggest that constitutional liberty was really
in issue in it, since the Republican party has made such use of
its success, and the victors have unmasked such opinions and
purposes; and, finally, to exhibit the South, instead of fighting in an odious rebellion, engaged in a noble and admirable
contest, not unlike that of 1776. This idea was imperfectly
apprehended in the war, but now  obtains fuller exposition, a
more complete developement in the political sequel.  There
were men during the war loosely called " Copperheads," whose
inclination to the South was much more intelligent than the
ordinary sympathies with that combatant; who had obtained
the idea that, independently of the issue of the Union, was a
great, underlying struggle of constitutional law and traditional
liberty, and that Robert E. Lee, in that sense, was fighting his
battles for the North, as well as for the South!  This idea
was far above the vulgar recriminations of party, the common
reproach of disloyality, " secession proclivities, etc.; " it was




RECONSTRUCTION.                        103
harboured by a few intelligent persons, who indignantly repelled the charge of community of sentiment with Secessionists and Southern sympathizers, and constantly asserted their
attachment to the Union, along with their dissent from the
Republican party.
These men were misunderstood by both sections; and the
author well recollects how confused were the regards of the
South for War Democrats of the McClellan and Pendleton
school.  But their idea has recently been enlightened; and
thoughtful men have already discovered that the past war had
the significance of a political revolution, as well as that of a
specific contest for the Union.  Every historical crisis has its
particular occasion, and the tendency of the common mind is
to dwell on this occasion, to occupy itself with the mere visible
outward event.  Thus in the late war there were many who
concerned themselves wholly for the Union, and sunk every
other consideration in anxiety for its restoration.  They did
not conceive that superiour significance of the contest, that is
now so apparent; they did not understand that the constitutional liberty  of the whole country was imperiled; they did
not understand that, going on under the forms of rebellious
arms, there was a continuation of the great political struggle
of 1776.
When George H..Pendleton* of Ohio stood in conspicuous
opposition in Congress to its series of war measures, he concluded one of his orations with this fine burst of eloquence:"When your work shall be accomplished, when our Constitu* With reference to this remarkable representative of the Democratic party during the
war, the author has nad recent occasion in a biographical article to describe his political
opinions.
"The chief historical interest of Mr. Pendleton's life attaches to his course in Congress
during the late war, wherein he was the conspicuous representative of a class or division




104                         RECONSTRUCTION.
tion is dead, when our liberties are gone, when our Government
is destroyed, when these States-no longer held secure in their
proper position by the power of our matchless Constitution, so
that they  emulate  in  accordant  action  the  stars, as  by  the
divine decree they encircle in their mysterious courses the
foot-stool of the eternal throne, and extract from the harmony
of conflicting elements the true music of the spheres-shall
have given place to States discordant, dissevered, belligerent,
to a land rent with civil feuds, and drenched in fratricidal
blood, history will hold its dread inquest, and in the presence'
of appalled  humanity  will render judgment, that  base  and
degenerate children, deserting the teachings of their fathers,
deserting the teaching of the past, departing from the ways of
pleasantness and peace, rebelling against the wisdom and beof opinion that has suffered much from misrepresentation, and that claims a peculiar and
searching review. It was then the convenient fashion of the Republican party to call all
who dissented from them, "Copperheads," and under this venomous term aggregate all
the elements of opposition. The classification was as illogical as it was violent; for it
cannot escape the candid judgment that the grounds of dissent from the policy of the
Republicans in the past war were of the most various character. There were those who
sympathized with the South in a sectional sense; there were others, who were merely
compassionate, and while admitting the South to be in errour thought her hardly and
cruelly punished; there were sentimentalists and humanitarians; but apart from all
these wag a distinct, firm, intelligent party, which, asserting the inviolability of the Union,
and voting men and means to vindicate it, was yet constantly for separating the war from
an attempt upon the Constitution, and drawiig the line between an appeal to arms for a
specific issue and a political revolution involving the laws and traditions of the country.
The ground of this party was very high; it suffered reproach, North and South, from
misrepresentation; but it is to be remarked that the intelligent men of the South during
the war, valued its dissent from the reigning policy at Washington much more than open
protestations of sympathy from  another class of " Copperheads," in proportion as it was
more intelligent, more permanent, and even more effective, because more moderate, in
vindication of the principles which rested at the bottom of the contest."
"' The Union' was serviceable, as the outward event or occasion usually is in any
historical crisis, to inspire the populace and seize its imagination. Mr. Pendleton acknowledged this inspiration; he knew and confessed the value of the Union; but he was unwilling in contesting it to assault the Constitution; he saw that Lincoln and his party were
"running the machine " in the double groove of a political revolution; and he proposed,
however ineffectually, to confine the war to its avowed objects, and to contain it as far
as possible within the limits of the Constitution. This is the whole explanation of his
course in Congress."




RECONSTRUCTION.                    105
neficence of the Almighty, with hearts filled with pride, and
souls stained with fanaticism and passion, struck the matricidal
blow, and at the same moment indignant and outraged Heaven
wreaked upon them the just retribution of their terrible and
nameless crime."
Briefly, there were those who had a realization of two wars
-the war against the Union and the  war against the Constitution.   The  attempt to  conceal  the  latter  was  this
~wretched argument: that the infringements on the Constitution were mere affairs of necessity in the war, that there was
no design upon that instrument, further than some temporary
violations, to impart an extraordinary vigour to hostilities.
We give this argument in its best shape in a notable declaration made by President Lincoln, in 1864:-" I felt that measures, otherwise  unconstitutional, might become lawful by
becoming indispensable to the preservation of the Constitution,
through the preservation of the nation."  The fallacy captivated the vulgar; but to the intelligent it was a dogma as
violent, as it was shallow. They recognized the " indispensable
means " suggested by the party in power as a sum of despotism: the extinction of liberty, of free speech, of free press, of
free ballot, of jury trial, of habeas corpus; the subjection of
private property to arbitrary seizure and confiscation; the
practice of arbitrary arrest and imprisonment, secret trial and
punishment; the violation of private contracts by " legal
tender " laws; the erection of a huge system of conscription;
the passage of ex post facto laws and bills of attainder; the
supremacy of the military over the civil power.
Was this despotic machinery necessary to carry on the war,
or was it something apart from it, a distinct concern? Happily, the American people had had two great wars preceding
5*




106                 RECONSTRUCTION.
that of 1861 —the war of 1776 and of 1812; and it could not
but occur to the recollections of those persons who had any
knowledge of history, that in neither of these had the Government found it necessary to adopt any of the measures
referred to by the modern Republican party as indispensable
in a state of war. Mr. Jefferson declared as the great merit
of Washington that he " scrupulously obeyed the laws during
his whole career, civil and military." An equal encomium is due
Madison. Both Presidents had conducted the nation through;
great and critical wars; but neither had ever suspended the
civil law, or claimed, under any supposed necessity, to exercise unconstitutional rights, or even attempted to punish, without the ordinary forms of law, a single citizen not attached to
the military service 
Against the dogma of Mr. Lincoln were here two high precedents-the highest in American history. Against this same
dogma was an unbroken current of judicial decisions, the compact authority of all lessons of ancestral wisdom.  "The spirit
of liberty," said Mr. Webster, " will not permit power to overstep its prescribed limits, though good intent, patriotic intent,
come along with it.  This is the nature of constitutional liberty.
This is our liberty."  Under this enlightenment it is not strange
that reflecting men should have pierced the fallacy of Abraham
Lincoln and his party, and apprehended in the disguise a new
and dangerous movement.  It was, in truth, a movement of a
second war, conducted under the cloak of the first, and aimed
at the-most vital parts of the Constitution.
The apprehension of this revolutionary design was strongly
felt from 1861 to 1865. But the particular thought we wish
to bring to the reader is, that since the war there has been in
the conduct of the Republican party such additional evidence of




RECONSTRUCTION.                    107
the truth of the apprehension as to confirm it, and to constitute
it a positive conviction. That conduct, indeed, reveals how
intelligent was the original opposition to this party; how just
and significant was the war, at least so far as it was directed
against its pretensions. It is the spectacle of a party furnishing, in the sequel, the conclusive evidence of its original concealed wickedness. If any doubt had lingered as to the extent
of that party's designs, if some. minds had been captivated by
its plea of necessity, the suspense or delusion no longer exists.
Now when there occur such new distinct evidences of unconstitutional and revolutionary purposes manifested by Congress,
taking place since the war has ceased, since its plea of necessity no longer operates, since there are no longer tolerable excuses or decent disguises, since a permanent policy has taken
the place of a professed expediency, and plain deliberation has
ensued upon passion, surely no judicious mind can longer be in
ignorance of the true character and meaning of the past war,
or fail to perceive that it contained a stake larger than that of
the Union.
We are left to the supposition that there was really a historical and logical necessity to operate on the Republican party,
and to continue after the war its display of hostility to the
Constitution; and it is in the discovery of this necessity, we are
persuaded, that we have a consistent explanation of the present
situation at Washington and of the real issues of the past war.
This party, on its original mission against Slavery, had started
on the theory of Consolidation; and having abolished Slavery,
we find it now obeying the force of a long political education,
and moved by the supreme concern of prolonging its existence
as a party, in maintaining a condition of general hostility to
the Constitution.  When a party has conceived a sentiment




108                 RECONSTRUCTION.
of revolution, it will easily find or make occasions through which
to develope it, and to renew its leases of power. The difficulty
of particular questions is soon supplied; and the common mistake of the popular mind is in limiting to these questions the
designs of party. It is thus a number of superficial and amiable
politicians of the South have mistaken the situation at Washington; have advised a policy of concessions, when every
concession has been the signal of a new demand; and have imagined that they have only to appease a temporary rage of party,
when the necessity is really to answer the demands of a persistent and fast-progressing revolution.
This revolution is older and broader than the war, that was
its recent incident. The rebellion of 1861 had its immediate
question in the preservation of the Union; but beyond there
might well reside a paramount issue of constitutional liberty.
There is no violence in such a supposition. The lesson of history is that, for whatever immediate objects rebellions have
been kindled, the ultimate fruit, in case of success, is a larger
share of public liberty. It has been observed that it is the
peculiar lot of the  Anglo-Saxon race to win their freedom
by rebellion, and to preserve it by rebellion.  No matter
what may first excite the popular revolt, it is remarked that it
obtains significance as it progresses, and that the movement
naturally ascends to a war for liberty.  The war of 1776
demanded ostensibly nothing more than separation from Great
Britain; that was its particular occasion and object; and if
confined to -that alone, as Alexander Hamilton and a large
party in the North insisted, its success would have been a very
inconsiderable affair, nothing more than the commonplace in
history of a change of rulers, the event of a dynasty. But
Mr. Jefferson, in the Declaration of Independence, dated even




RECONSTRUCTION.                      109
with it a political revolution; and it instantly possessed a new
significance, became a large and important contest for liberty.
We have referred to the continuation or renewal of that
contest, in 1861. It is a fruitful thought: the profound identity of the Two Rebellions, 1776 and 1861.  Such identities
are the discoveries and studies of the philosophic historian.
Indeed, the suggestions we have just made, have been quickened by a recent English author ( Mr. Morley) who, in a political study of Edmund Burke and his times, remarks that the
American Rebellion of 1776, so far from  involving only the
tenure of the colonies, was logically and historically a part of
the great constitutional struggle commenced in 1760, and
effectually decided it.  What he says of this is so parallel to
what we are considering, that we may introduce it here for the
benefit of the reader"It is almost demonstrably certain that the vindication of the
supremacy of popular interests over all other considerations would
have been bootless toil, and that the great constitutional struggle,
from 1760 to 1783, would have ended otherwise than it did, but for
the failure of the war against the insurgent colonies and the final
establishment of American independence. It was this portentous
transaction which finally routed the arbitrary and despotic pretensions of the House of Commons over the people, which put an end
to the hopes entertained by the sovereign of making his personal
will supreme in the chambers, and which established the principle
of Cabinet as distinguished from Departmental responsibility. Fox
might well talk of the early royalist victory in the war as the
terrible news from Rhode Island. The struggle which began successfully at Brentford, in Middlesex, was continued at Boston, in Massachusetts. The scene had changed, but the conflicting principles were
the same. The defeat and subjugation of the colonists would have
been followed by the final annihilation of the opposition in the mother
country. The War of Independence was virtually a second English
civil war. The ruin of the American cause would have been also the




110                  RECONSTRUCTION.
ruin of the constitutional cause in England; and a patriotic Englishman may revere the memory of Patrick Henry and George Washington
not less justly than the patriotic American."
So the time may come, when the patriotic American may
render his thanks to Davis and Lee for efforts which, once
disesteemed as the act of rebellion, may hereafter be enlightened as parts of a great constitutional struggle.  It is not a
strained thought in the light of what the Republican party is
now doing, in the imprudence of victory, to confess its real
idea and purpose in the war, and to execute its consequences.
There is a remarkable passage in a message of President Johnson to Congress, which comes in just here, fitting to the extract
from Mr. Morley, and completing the thought which we have
proposed for the meditation of the intelligent:" Those who advocated the right of Secession alleged in their own
justification that we had no regard for law, and that their rights of
property, life, and liberty would not be safe under the Constitution as
administered by us. If we now verify their assertion, we prove that
they were in truth and in fact fighting for their liberty, and, instead
of branding their leaders with the dishonouring names of traitors
against a righteous and legal Government, we elevate them in history
to the rank of self-sacrificing patriots, consecrate them to the admiration of the world, and place them by the side of Washington, Hampton
and Sydney!"
It is when this new illumination of the war shall take place
that we shall approach the full realization of " The Lost Cause
Regained;" when its leaders shall be raised to admiration, its
memories restored to honour, and its great names inscribed in
a new Pantheon of patriotic adoration. Every unconstitutional
act of Congress is logically and irreparably directed to such a
consummation.  It is a new thought; a new animation for the




BECONSTRUCTION.                   Ill
South; a new prophecy of " The Lost Cause Regained;" a new
meditation in the confused strife and turmoil of the day. Surely the people of the South will be better able to support the
oppression and outrage of their present rulers, when they reflect
that these are effectively, though unconsciously, working out
their vindication, and that the blind guide of party is steadily
conducting them to that bar of history where the past " rebels"
are to be proclaimed the true patriots.




112                       RECONSTRUCTION.
III.
THE NEGRO QUESTION.
RETROSPECT OF SLAVERY
The political question of the Negro resolved to one of natural history-Value of the fact
of the specific inferiourity of the Negro-Its importance in a retrospect of the sectional controversy and war-The tribute of history to Negro Slavery in the SouthThe equality doctrine of the Declaration of Independence, so far from condemning
Slavery, obtained from the contact and influence of it-The true and only defence
of Slavery-Mistakes of Southern politicians-Their appeal to the Constitution in behalf of Slavery, a mean and infamous one-The importantpremise of the entire Slavery
Question, the inferiourity of the Negro.
Congress appeared, some months ago, disposed to give some
attention to ethnological and scientific inquiries on the subject
of the Negro.   It could not have been  better  employed, for
after all, the whole political controversy about the son of
Ham  is contained in the question, whether he is a mere variety
of the human race, measurably  capable of equality  with  its
highest developments, or a distinct, inferiour species of man,
doomed by the inexorable laws of nature to certain limits and
conditions of existence. In short, the political question of the
Negro, resolved to its last elements, is simply and purely a
question of natural history, for it is at last by the the standards




THE NEGRO QUESTION.                   113
of nature that we are to determine, whether the Radical task
of Negro equality is practicable, or a violent and impossible experiment, sure as all experiments against nature are, to recoil
upon and punish itself.
We believe, indeed, that the specific, permanent inferiourity
of the Negro, so far from being a mere disputation of the learned, a scholastic entertainment, is, as discovered and eviscerated by the past war, the most important question of modern
times, and one vital to the whole body of American civilization.
This question once determined,we enlighten  the whole  past
controversy of Slavery; we occupy the one ultimate logical
foundation of the entire perplexed argument on this subject,
with all its forms, syllogisms and expressions; and we secure
for the future affairs of the country an intelligent rule of
action.  If, as it now  appears, we have the settled prospect
that the white man and the Negro, under certain circumstances,
which will be elsewhere discussed, shall exist in juxtaposition,
then a specific knowledge of this black rate, and its relations to
our own, may truly be declared a vital and transcendent consideration, connected with our national destiny, and involving
questions not second in importance to any that have ever been
presented to a civilized and Christian people.
The value of the fact of the Negro's inferiourity is very great.
We repeat that it furnishes the key to much that is past in the
sectional controversy of North and South. It is with respect
to this single fact that we design a brief retrospect of Slavery,
rather than to renew the "vexed question," the comparative
enumeration of virtues and vices. The intelligent Southerner
of this day is satisfied to leave this controversy to the future
historian; assured that whatever of vices and defects he may
ascribe to Slavery, he cannot omit its contributions in the past;




114               THE NECRO QUESTION.
that he cannot fail to write on the broad, judicial pages of the
nation's record in civilization and progress, that Slavery
developed the vast regions south of the Ohio, giving to the
world cheap cotton, sugar and rice; that it produced nearly all
the materials of foreign export; that furnishing two hundred
millions of annual exports from the South, it supplied the nutriment of national commerce, besides a bountiful market for
the reward of the commercial and manufacturing industry of
the North; that, whatever theorists may allege, it stimulated
the republican ideas of the white population, to the extent of
producing the most liberal statesmen in America, and contributing the larger portion of the great Democratic party; and
that it created that most curious party alliance in our political
history-the capital of the South and the labour of the North
-which has governed the country with peculiar honour and
most memorable renown.
These are historical facts of great breadth. We promised
to confine ourselves to the single question of the Negro's inferiourity. It really attaches to what we have just written;
and the value of the fact of that inferiourity is most apparent,
most striking in the last enumeration of the effects of Slavery.
The thoughtful historian of America will find that the obvious
visible inferiourity of the Negro was constantly, although unconsciously, educating the people of the South to a disregard
of the mere artificial distinctions of society, by the side of this
great natural difference of races-was, in fact, developing, by a
process of comparison) the idea of equality as among men of
the same race; and he may startle some convictions when he
announces the important political discovery that the equality
clause of the Declaration of Independence, so far from condemning Negro Slavery, was obtained from it, originated in its con



THE NEGRO QUESTION.                      115
tact and experience! It is a startling declaration in our politi.
cal history, a vivacious interjection; yet it is profoundly true.
Mr. Jefferson's doctrine of equality as of men of the same race
was merely the transfer to the domain of politics of that law of
natural history which teaches us that all the members of a species
are equal.  The varieties within the boundaries of a single species are of no account in comparison with the differences as between distinct species. The habitual observation of the South
was as between two species or races of men; and there was an
obvious mental necessity that as people regarded this great natural distinction, they should attach less importance to those
inferiour distinctions made by society in mere classes and
conditions of life, and thus progress to clearer perceptions of
the natural equality of their own species and race. It is thus that
the Negro Slavery of the South became the instructor of white
republicanism; that the inferiourity of the Negro is to be recognized as a fruitful and conservative principle in our system.
of politics; and that we claim a value for this fact, which we
suggested at the beginning of this article would exceed the or.
dinary estimates.
We add another view  of the importance of this fact.  The
permanent, natural inferiourity of the Negro was the true and
only defence of Slavery. The intelligence of the South has'at
last awaked: to this idea in the stimulating light of the recent
war and its consequences; but it is strange how in the past the
Southern mind wandered in its defences of Slavery, and chose
the narrowest and most imperfect grounds for a controversy
which it might have maintained on an impregnable principle
of natural law.* The question of races figured slightly in the
* Of the imperfect and confused notions of Negro Slavery on the part of the wisest politicians of the South, a striking example is afforded by Thomas Jefferson. He saw what
all candid and humane men aw, that Slavery was liable to abuses, and his compassion




116                     THE NEGRO QUESTION.
accustomed debate and was thought to be scarcely more than
a nice and curious philosophy. The argument aposteriori was
preferred to that a priori; and the advocates of Slavery were
generally content to point to its effects, to its maintenance
in profound peace without military machinery, to its fruits of
industry, to its evidences of benevolence.   Such reasoning was
more suggestive than convincing; but more imperfect yet was
the common  argument that the defence of Slavery was assured
by the guaranties of Constitutional law, and that, without reference to moral questions, it had a secure lodging in the Consti'
was moved by frequent incidents of cruelty to the Negro, committed with impunity,
through looseness of the law, or the licenses of public sentiment in particular neighbourhoods. A remedy.was needed.
Before the war the author had meditated a great missionary effort for the unification
of all laws touching the Negro; for a code which should exhibit all possible humanity,
and allow all possible liberty to the Negro, consistent with the single fact of compulsory
service; which should have the effect of enlightening the world as to the true nature of
the "peculiar institution" of the South, and especially vindicating it from the censure
attaching to the misnomer, "slavery"-a libel of party nomenclature. It was a large,
inspiring work, worthy of the greatest minds. The war interrupted it. Yet the author
cannot help believing to this day that the remedy proposed-ameliorating the condition
ot the Negro and advertising, in the form of public laws, his true condition to the world
-would have satisfied the sympathies of the intelligent, and answered all reasonable
demands oi the humane.
The mistake of Mr. Jefferson was in jumping to Emancipation, and seeing no remedy
for existing evils short of it. The design, the sentiment was good; but the remedy proposed was mistaken and excessive, and betrayed an ignorance of the fundamental idea
of Slavery, and a misconception of the true wants of the Negro scarcely to be expected
in a mind like that of Jefferson. Yet, however Mr. Jefferson was carried away by a
sentimental fervour, and desired for the Negro the gift of Emancipation, he was yet
thoroughly convinced that the released black could never live on terms qf equality with
the white man in the same political community. The Anti-Slavery party has quoted
fiom this great authority with ingenious partiality and unfairness, and has invariably
omitted the words which recoil on their policy. If Jefferson was an Emancipationist, he -
was yet far from being an Abolitionist in the modern sense of the term. We can, indeed,
add nothing to the perspicuity or emphasis of the following words of the Sage of Monticello: "Nothing is more clearly written in the book of destiny than the emancipation (.,
the blacks; and it is equally certain that the two races will never live in state of equal
freedom under the same government, so insurmountable are the barriers which nature,
habits and opinions have established between them."
We may add the remarkable fact that of all leading men in the South who ever at
any time desired Emancipation, not one failed to couple it with the condition that the
Negro should be colonized, or withdrawn from competition with the white man; and in
this respect they have been invariably misquoted by the Anti-Slavery party ot the North.
sSupressio veri, suggestiofalsi.




THE NEGRO QUESTION.                    17
tution of the United States.  Of what avail was this refuge
when the devotees of Anti-Slavery, in the language of one of
their eloquent leaders were prepared to " rend the Union to destroy Slavery, though hedged round by the triple bars of the
national compact, and though thirty-three crowned sovereigns
with arms in their hands stood around it! " How dull must have
been the statesmanship of the South that did not perceive the
lesson running through all history, that laws, whether organic
or statute, avail nothing against the steady encroachment of a
moral sentiment, and that where a people has once fully satisfied itself that an evil is to be corrected, it will move upon it
by whatever means are most direct and decisive!
The defence of Slavery by virtue of the Constitution was essentially narrow and infamously mean. It amounted to scarcely more than the plea so often made in criminal courts for the
ingenious villain: that a crime has been committed, but there
is no law to reach it, and the offence is to escape on a technicality. The true question in Negro Slavery was that of right
or wrong.  It was all wrong, if the Negro was really the equivalent of the white man enveloped in a black skin.  Admit this
and Slavery becomes a great crime; the breach of the Constitution to attack it, a sacrifice of virtue and patriotism; the war
to exterminate it, a rightful one; the consequent policy of
Negro equality, just; the gift of the suffrage, unavoidable;
and even rewards of the Negro above the white man and a
superiour solicitude for him, commendable in view of his deprivations and sufferings in, the past. We cannot stop in' the
argument; it runs irresistibly to every extremity of the governing Radical policy at Washington, and surrenders every question
in the present political controversy.  We must do-what the
South has never fairly done-meet the whole controversy at




118                  THE NEGRO  QUESTIONc
the minor premise, contending for the natural inferiourity of
the Negro. It is from this inferiourity that we deduce all the
benefits of Slavery in the past. It is from this inferiourity
that we draw all our arguments with respect to future experiments on the Negro.  The fact is important as a historical vindication of the past.  It is also important as a supreme instruction for the future.
It will be well now  to summon the evidences of a fact so
important and to secure at once what we esteem  the most pregnant and fruitful premise in all the political controversies of
our day.
INFERIOURITY  OP THE  NEGRO.
T1e Scientific Argument-Divisions of the organic world-Qualities of a" Species"The law of hybridity-The Negro, the base of the generic column of Man-No genus
without species-Limits of interunion between Negroes and Whites-The Octoroon
absolutely sterile-Uniformity of the type of the Negro-The excavations of Cham'
pollion-The Religious Argument-Hypothesis of a Divine miracle with reference to
the Negro-The Historic Argument-The Negro in Africa-Former civilization of the
Nile-A glance at Liberia-The idea of the inferiourity of the Negro, one of benevolence.
We propose to make a brief summary of the  evidences  of
the inferiourity of the Negro, as a distinct race of men.  The
subject has occupied many large volumes; but we  shall dispatch it here in a limited space, putting it in a form for easy
popular apprehension, and in a shape as orderly and compact
as possible.




THE NEGRO QUESTION.                   119
1. The Scientific Argument. We are taught by science that
the organic world consists of different forms and orders, subject
to many subdivisions; that those groups of beings are in a certain sense independent systems, worlds in themselves-such
being the grand economy of nature that one or more of them might
be utterly extinguished (as in fact we are informed by geologists
has been the case with many forms of animals, and perhaps
of man too) without interrupting the course and harmony of
the universe. The aggregate world would yet live and move
without them.  These divisions of being are founded on differences in form and character, at intervals which regularly diminish until they come down to " varieties" of the same creature.
The organic world is thus divided into classes, orders, genera,
species and varieties. The last are distinguished only by accidental circumstances and are more or less permanent, as
these circumstances operate. The quality of the species is that its
members, while equal to each other, differ from those of other
species, ascending or descending, to the extent that one degree
never passes into another; and its test is that the principle of
interunion is limited, that while different species may be capable
of interunion, it is only to a limited extent, the product ultimately perishing by the inexorable law of hybridity, by which
nature punishes the transgression of her laws.  The relations of
these species to each other is that of gradual improvement or
ascent; that is, taking the number of species of which a genus
is composed, we find the one next above the lowest with all the
qualities of the latter, but with fuller developement, more
elaborate organization, and with corresponding faculties of a
higher order.  In other words, there is a head and a base to
the generic column. It begins with the lowest or simplest formation, and rises in the scale of being until it is completed;




120              THE NEGRO QUESTION.
and while these formations generically considered resemble
each other, yet specifically considered, they are absolutely distinct, unlike each other in everything, to the minutest particle
of elementary matter.
In Man we find the Negro as the base of the generic column;
and ascending, in order, the different races above him-the Esquimaux, the Aboriginal American, the Malay or Oceanic, the
Mongolian-we at last reach in the Caucasian or the historic race
the perfection of the highest form of the human creation. The
Great Creator has impressed on all his works evidences of limitless conception and power. Everywhere in nature we discover the
principle of variety attesting the multitude, the infinity of creative design. It would be strange, indeed, if in Man alone, the
perfection of the Creator's works and His crowning glory, this
principle should be omitted; that in him of all other beings
there should be manifested poverty of creative design; that in
him, of the whole animal creation, there should be presented
the contradiction and anomaly of a genus without species! In
the entire world of animal existence there is no such fact as a
single species. Thus, those who insist that the human creation is composed of a single species contradict or ignore the
most constant, universal and uniform fact in organic life. They
violate the whole order and analogy of Nature in insisting that
Man is incapable of specific divisions of being; they deny the
great law of adaptation, signifying Divine Providence, in supposing that Man, who inhabits the whole range of organic and animal life, partakes of none of its relations and laws, and furnishes
in himself the single instance of but one type and capacity amid
so many changes.  Rightly estimating the power of different
evidences, there is none higher or nobler, none in closer converse
with the Divine intelligence than that drawn from Analogy. It




THE NEGRO QUESTION.                    121
is this, beyond all other arguments, which secures the proof of
different species of Man. He can be no exception to the designs of the Creator; and the law that distributes all created
being, and runs the lines of specific differences through the
whole animal world must apply to him.
But it has been said that the test of different species, as we
have designated it above, does not apply to the Negro-that the
principle of interunion between him and the white man is not
limited, and that therefore they are but "varieties" which may
approach and assimilate by the operation of circumstances. It
was seen that white men cohabited with Negro women and that
the offspring in turn reproduced itself; wherefore it was argued
that they were but varieties with all powers of virility as between themselves, for if they had been different species, the
mulatto would have been as incapable of reproduction, as the
mule, the offspring of the horse and ass, is.  But the argument
is short and deficient; for the fact is that although the mulatto
reproduces, this power is diminished in each generation where
he intermarries with other hybrids, until at last it is utterly lost
and the progeny becomes absolutely sterile. It has been asserted, as the result of some recent scientific investigations, that
this conclusion of sterility occurs in the fourth generation; but
wherever does occur the natural barrier of this exceptional form
of being, it is sufficient for the purposes of our argument to
know that it does occur somewhere; that at some period
absolute sterility intervenes, that the principle of interunion is limited, no matter to what degree of limitation. It
may be in the light of these facts that the difference between
the white man and the Negro is not as great as between some
other species of animals; but that this difference is specific is
sufficiently proved from the fact that the law of hybridity does
6




122               THE NEGRO QUESTION.
control the offspring, although it may be in a comparatively
distant generation, and that there is an ultimate and absolute
barrier beyond which "mulattoism" cannot exist.  The question is as to the degree, not as to the nature of the difference.
We know that the offspring of the white man and the Negro is
essentially hybrid; that "mulattoism" is absolutely confined
to a limited number of generations, its virile power decreasing
at each effort of reproduction; and the reason that we are not
familiar with the conclusion of this exceptional offspring in absolute sterility is, that its destruction is worked out through
constitutional fragility and limited longevity as much, perhaps,
as through imperfect capacity of reproduction.'But in addition to these arguments of science for the distinct
and inferiour race of the Negro-in addition to what Analogy
proclaims of the law of order, and to what investigation asserts
of the experiment of interunion-we have those visible and
tangible evidences of the difference between the white and
black man, which furnish the argument best suited for popular
appreciation, and determine the question by the irresistible
ioeg ^ tYe Berman. It X a Wil elm fat naturalits who lived
some centuries ago, and who scarcely knew anything of the
human creation beyond the two hundred millions of Caucasians
in Europe, to suppose that there was but one species of man,
and that those who inhabited distant and unexplored parts of
the world were like themselves, except in the operation and effect of' the circumstances which surrounded them. It is even
possible for those in modern times, who know nothing about
the Negro except that he has a black skin, to take hold of the
superficial imagination that he is merely "a coloured man,"
and raising the cry of "no distinction of colour " to dash at
once into the dogmas of equality. But those who have a clear




THE NEGRO QUESTION.                  123
and more intimate knowledge of the Negro; who know the
uniform facts attaching to his existence; who in their ordinary
experience have seen Negro parents having Negro offspring, as
Indians have Indian offspring, and whites have white offspring,
"each after its kind" regularly and invariably as in other
forms of existence; and who fortifying these common daily
observations by the lesson of history, that thus it has been in
all kinds of climate and all kinds of circumstances, without
change or symptom of change, regardless of the fact that the
Negro may have lived four thousand years ago or yesterday,
may have been "free or slave," may have basked on the sands
of Africa, or may have produced his offspring amid the snows
of Canada, can never be persuaded by any amount of reasoning that he is not a Negro as surely as the crow is a crow and
not a dove, that he is specifically different from themselves, and
that nothing short of a Divine miracle can assimilate him to
the lordly type of the Caucasian, the master-man of the
world 
It is not the mere, unimportant difference of colour. It is
a difference, as science teaches us, through the whole anatomical detail, including all the organs, tissues and systems
down to the minutest atom of the bodily structure. It is not
necessary to go through these details here; for there is enough
outwardly and obviously apparent of the specific differences of
the Negro to determine the judgment of any mind capable of
reasoning from cause to effect. We see these differences as
well as that of colour in the tout ensemble of the anatomical
formation of the Negro; in the small average of his brain; in
his inclination to the quadruped posture; in the shape of the
pelvis; in the hair, sui generis and triangular in shape; in the
features flat, shapeless and indistinct, the sunken nose, the




124                  THE NEGRO  QUESTION.
enormous lips, the receding  forehead, the  sodden  animal
aspect, with  its limited and  coarse  ranges  of expression.
Looking at these marks we have only to apply the natural law,
that the outward differences must have their counterparts in
the inward structure, to apprehend the conclusion that the
Negro differs from  the white man  in the minutest atom  of
elementary matter, and to believe, what the microscope of the
man of science reveals, that even a single globule of his blood
differs from that of the white man as widely as the colour,
hair, or other outward quality that confronts our daily observation.
And so it has been for four thousand yeats. It is within
comparatively recent times that a new aid has been summoned
to History, a  new  avenue of information  opened  into  the
mysteries of the past by the labours of the  excavator in the
scenes of ancient story. It is in the light of these astonishing
revelations-such as those of the  celebrated Champollionthat  we discover the  specific character of the Negro  forty
centuries ago with absolute and unmistakable certainty as the
same  displayed  to the  eyes of the present generation-the
same in structure and features, presenting the same marked
differences from the Caucasian race which we observe to-day
and which have accompanied  every  generation under every
condition  of circumstances,  of  climate,  social  condition,
education, time and accident.*   It is but one step more in the
argument-and that obvious and natural-to assert that what
* These facts, even putting aside the theory of the Negro as a distinct "species" of
man, yet show him such a "permanent variety " as to answer all the ends of the argument; that his inferiourity is such as to exclude the prospect of his advancement to
equality with the white man, and to assign him to the condition of a subordinate
creature. Indeed, in view of these facts, it is not necessary to assert the inferiourity of
the Negro as a quality of the species, if it attaches so permanently to him even as a
variety of the race of man. This observation, although sunk to the place of a foot-note,




THE NEGRO QUESTION.                              125
has  existed  uniform   and undeviating  in  the  course  of four
thousand years must have been  so  from   the beginning, and
have proceeded from  the hand of the Great Creator.    If the
Negro in this long  time, these  past ages, has preserved  his
integrity, and transmitted to each  succeeding  generation  the
exact and complete type of himself, we must suppose that thus
he existed in the anteriour period and that thus he will continue in future time-specifically and hopelessly inferiour to
the white man.
2. The Religious Argument.  But after all that science has
demonstrated on this subject, we have a certain Biblical argument, which it has become recently fashionable to interpose as
against the doctrine of distinct races, and which has frequently
silenced discussion by a dogma as arrogant in tone as it is
puerile in character. It is said that the inspired narration in
the book of Genesis, showing all men descended from a single
pair in the garden  of Eden, secures the doctrine of the unity
of races, and that it is forbidden and impious for science to
allege to the contrary. This argument may be dispatched by
a single consideration. Even if we are to accept the story in
Genesis as  literally  and  scientifically  correct, it  does  not
is very important, as it silences the advocates of Negro equality on either of the two
suppositions which the case admits.
Such discoveries as those of Champollion, at least, famish the visible evidence of a
permanence in the variety of the Negro, which, if it does not render naturally and absolutely impossible the doctrine of his equality with the white man, yet postpones it to a
period beyond all reasonable calculation in human legislation, and makes it a mere
phantom of the imagination. Four thousand years look down upon Congress I In al]
that time the Negro, whether a "species " or a "variety," has been marked, as he is
to-day, an inferiour man; and that, after forty centuries, in which the integrity of the
type has been faithfully preserved, itis to be instantly and radically changed, and the
Negro make a sudden apparition as the equal and rival of the Caucasian, is rather too
much for any human credulity. The interval is too vast, the "variety" too "permanent "
for any effect of equality within any appreciable time; it is an indefinite, if not an
infinite progression, ad astra, beyond the reach of mortal calculation.




126              THE NEGRO QUESTION.
exclude the possibility or even probability that God may not
have thereafter worked a miracle- as He did at Babel in the
division of tongues-and have separated the races of men. as
well by different natures as by different tongues and impossible
distances.  Every sincere believer in Christianity is estopped
from denying the supposition of such a miracle. The whole
Christian religion is founded on miracles; they are a machinery
which the true believer admits on even slight occasions-why
not then in this great matter of the Divine economy? If it
be contended that God at any time might not establish the
distinction of races, we limit His power and insult His
majesty; and no less crime of impiety than this is committed
by those who insist, that the Almighty Creator could have
regulated this matter of races at no other time than on " the
seventh day " of creation, and in no other place than in the
garden of Eden.  But the argument is not worth pursuit; it
runs at last into derogation of the Divine Power; and we are
satisfied to believe that, if as science and all human arguments
lead us to suppose, the creature Man has been divided into
different races, it was so by the will of the Almighty without
any limitations of time and place within which to perform the
greatest or the least of His works.
3. The Historic Argument. The little we know of the 1 egro
historically is fatal to his claim of similar nature and possible
equality with the white man.  We find him  in all known
records of the world incapable of improvement, alien to progress, an incorrigible straggler from the march of civilization;
if we may except what improvement he has obtained from the
condition of so called slavery in America, where his special
endowment of the imitative faculty has been called and con



THE NEGRO QUESTION.                  127
strained into unusual exercise by virtue of his inferiour position. But apart from this exceptional and limited civilization
he has obtained from  the contact of a white master, which
grows out of the narrow faculty of imitation, and exists only
within the boundaries of acertain association, the Negro remains in Africa a stationary barbarian, or exists in other
countries, a hopeless retrograde.  For four thousand years he
has remained within the prison-house of African barbarism;
and although great empires have been planted upon his borders
and the foci of enlightenment have been erected around him
-although countless myriads of white men have lived and
died on the soil of Africa, and vast populations and entire
nations have emigrated to that continent with the lights of
civilization-the Negro has never yet been permanently affected
by the contact, and the lights that has shone upon his condition
has only made the darkness more visible. The noble civilization in the valley of the Nile, which followed the Christian
era, and at one time boasted forty thousand inmates of religious houses within its boundaries, has perished and left not
a trace upon the Negro who lived in view of its splendid structures and came within the influences of its religious missions.
So, too, the modern experiment of Liberia has utterly failed in its
mission of civilization, and, by the candid confessions of those
who have made sincere and unwearied contributions to it, has
only succeeded in putting out a picket line of trading posts on
the borders of a hostile and repellant barbarism.  The Negro
within the Tropical dominion remains what he was many centuries ago; implacable to the advances of civilization, or susceptible only to the vices which follow in its train. As long
as he has been known to history, he has performed no part in
it.  He is incapable of transmitting knowledge; he has never




128               THE NEGRO QUESTION.
invented an alphabet, or even a system  of numerals; he is invariably found without any rudiments of cultivation originated
by himself, and therefore essays without effect the higher stages
of progress. Civilization finds no foundation to work upon
in him; and what he obtains, even temporarily or in the slightest
degree from its contact, is empirical and perishes with the surrounding circumstances.
A condition, such as this, must rest on permanent and welldefined causes. It fitly completes and closes the evidence of
the specific, permanent, irrevocable inferiourity of the Negro
-an inferiourity capable, it is true, of a degree of advance and
developement in exceptional circumstances (as in the condition
of servitude and its tendency to copy), but otherwise and ultimately hopeless, the only possible margin of improvement
existing within limits fixed and determinate, beyond which the
Negro can no more progress than he can alter the colour of his
skin or the form of his brain'
The value of this fact-which we shall take as proved by
the summary of arguments above-we have already referred to.
So far from being a barren speculation, we repeat, it involves
some of the most important problems of politics and society.
It establishes the true status of the Negro; it decides his proper
relations to the white man; it determines the measure of his
limited improvement or comparative civilization; it indicates
the proper schools of that civilization.  So far from being
offensive to humanity, it solicits for the Negro the truest
philanthropy, the most intelligent and effective kindness; for
the recognition of his inferiourity does not diminish, but multiplies his claims on an intelligent benevolence, and would take
him from a false condition to put him in the place that fits his
nature, suits his qualities, and therefore consults his happiness.




THH TRUE HOPE OF THE SOUTH.                              129
IV.
THE TRUE HOPE OF THE SOUTH
CONDITION AND TEMPER OF THE SOUTTERN PEOPLE.
The black thread of the Negro in the web of party-Division of the Anti-Slavery party
into Abolitionists and Negrophilists-Union of these two parties in ReconstructionA new and enlarged edition of the "Irrepressible Conflict "-The proposition of
Negro Suffrage scouted in the North-Elections of 1867 in Ohio, Minnesota, Kansas
and New Jersey-The homogeneousness and political identity of the nation risked
by the Negro-A curious comparison by B. F. Butler between the Negro and an
unfortunate beast-The ballot, a fatal gift for the Negro-The " school" of SlaveryExtravagant tribute of the Republican party to the beneficence of Slavery-The
Negro obtained his maximum of civilization as a slave-Temper of the Southern
people on Negro suffrage-The theatrical machinery of "the League "-Solidity of
the Negro organizations in the South-The elections of 1867 in Virginia-A war of
races imminent-The prayer of the South for peace-Interesting statement of
Ex-Governor Perry of South Carolina-The feeling of desperation in the SouthDanger of another and peculiar rebellion there-The recent farce of RestorationThe lesson of Fenianism-A warning, and not a threat, to the North.
The black thread of the Negro has been spun throughout
the scheme of Reconstruction.   A  design is betrayed  to give
to  him  the  political control of the  South; not so much as a
benefit to him, not so much  out of solicitude  for  him-for a
solicitude so large and disproportionate would  be  curious-as
to secure power to the Republican party in the North, and to
open  new  issues for it, since  what was  supposed  to  be  its
6*




130'THE TRUE HOPE OF THE SOUTH.
capital stock in controversy-the Slavery of the South-has
been extinguished in a conflict of arms.
There is a distinction, running through the Anti-Slavery
party, which has not generally been recognized, and which
claims here a particular notice.   The party contains two
distinct schools, which we may conveniently designate  as
Abolitionists and Negrophilists. We are aware that many of
those who made the most violent war upon Slavery sympathized
with the Negro under the general head of an oppressed human
creature, not out of any peculiar regard for his colour, or for
any supposed extravagant virtues in his African nature. They
adopted the cause of the Negro from  general motives  of
humanity; they desired to free him; they desired to do for
him  such kindly offices as they would do for any suffering
people; but they pretended to no special solicitude for the
black man, because he was a black man, nothing beyond a
natural sympathy for the cause'of the oppressed. The candour
of this portion of the Anti-Slavery party we may, and do
respect; there was a large generosity in it-Quixotic it may
be-but such as hunts the world for all instances of oppression,
and for all possible occasions of virtuous controversy.
On the other hand, we find in the Anti-Slavery party a
positive and most offensive disease-manifesting for the Negro
a singular affection, devising peculiar rewards and gratifications
for him, and intent upon making him the political pet and idol
of America.  We find this curious mania not only in white
men of mean and scurrilous blood, but in some of the most
cultivated ranks of Northern society-represented, for instance,
by such men as Charles H. Sumner.*  It is a diseased sym* The following reflection in a biographical sketch of Mr. Sumner contributed by the
author to the periodical press adds something for the curiosity of the reader:"To look upon Mr. Sumner. as he sits in the Senate of the United States, in his Eng.




THE TRUE HOPE OF THE SOUTH.                             131
pathy, probably growing out of the excessive and impassioned
contemplation of the Negro, as a victim of injustice. In some
cases,  it  proceeds  to the   most  offensive  and  abominable
excesses; the black skin' and the most unclean peculiarities of
the Negro become objects of endearment; his African nature
is endowed with romantic virtues; and the inevitable tendency
of the mania is to an amalgamation of races.
These two parties-the Abolitionists and the Negrophilistshave strangly united in the present upon the Negro, as exhibited
in the scheme of Reconstruction. The latter party needs no excuse for its zeal for the black man. The former would have, perhaps, been content with liberating the Negro, and showing him
lish cut of clothes and parliamentary shirt collars, and dainty linen, patting his mouth with
scented handkerchiefs, or stroking his body with his large white, well-scrubbed hands,
one would scarcely imagine him a victim of this loathsome disease. But strange as it
may appear, there are instances of men of the most fastidious appearance and of extreme
physical culture having morbid fancies for the Negro.  The maudlin language about an'infasion of warm tropical blood' into the cold Caucasian is not altogether that of the
coarse ignorant natures of the North; and many of our readers will remember a Northern
book on'miscegenation,' in which this beastly suggestion was dished up with the
garnish of a depraved philosophy, and horribly tricked out with tawdry flowers of
rhetoric. We are aware that we dissect a delicate subject; but we must cut down to the
tumour. We regard'miscegenation' as an extremity of the disease of Negrophilism;
yet an extremity more possible than is generally supposed even in minds apparently
cultivated and natures apparently clean.  To a fanatical philosophy like that of Mr.
Sumner it may happen that nothing is unclean; and a long habit of regarding the most
unsightly objects through the colours and prejudices of such a philosophy may even
beautify them, and lead at last to an unnatural affection and embrace. Briefly, there is
no appeal to old opinions or old tastes, when the disorder of'Negrophilism' is once
admitted into the mind; and there is no telling what transformations it may effect, or
what riots of blood it may kindle in the depraved constitution of the fanatic.  The distinctions between a moral mania on this subject and a positive physical disease, are alike
difficult to define or to keep; and we insist upon the danger of an excessive regard for
the Negro, no matter on what moral or sentimental grounds it may be first developed,
running at last into physical affections of the grossest kind.
"We are very well informed that Mr. Sumner has an excessive regard for the Negro.
We do not exactly know what are his opinions or practices dn'miscegenation' (which
Mr. Wendell Phillips has already declared the hope and elixir of our future national
life); we are not prepared to say what is the precise extent of his disease of Negrophilism; and yet the disease is so marked in him that we cannot well see where he can
hold up the doctrine of equality short of the sexual commerce of races, and how, with
his great solicitude for the African, he can deny him this bounty of the flesh."




132          THE TRUE HOPE OF THE SOUTH.
an ordinary humanity; but they were confronted by the necessity of continuing themselves in power, and they saw in the
Negro the instrument of their selfishness and ambition. It was
thus the Negro was elevated into an importance exceeding all
that he had ever claimed for himself, and new demands put
into his mouth by the emissaries of party.
Never was delusion more foolish than that we had washed our
hands of the Negro in the blood of the late war. The Republican party never entertained a thought of disbanding on the
conclusion of the war.  It found new occasions of controversy
in Reconstruction. The development was: the political power
accumulated and energized by the war continued in action,
with the addition of a violent extreme wing, which always grows
out of excessive party triumphs. The South did not see the
interminable question behind Slavery, when it most ignorantly
congratulated itself that the abolition of the latter had terminated dispute. The spectacle to-day is the Negro, who for more
than two generations has been the pest of American politics,
the conspicuous theme of legislation, the subject of new and
larger contentions-a more important instrument than he has
ever yet been in the hands of a radical and revolutionary party.
We are first struck by the inconsistencies involved by this
party in their exhibition of the Negro in the Reconstruction
scheme, Before the war, they were great sticklers for homo.
geneousness, North and South.  "You cannot," said Mr. Seward, in his famous eypngely of the " irrepressible conflict,"
"have one section free and the other slaveholding."  Is it any
more possible to have Negro supremacy in one section and white
supremacy in the other?-is not the difference, indeed, more
vast and conflicting, in proportion s -the Negro is elevated into
this new importance 2  The fact is the Republican party, in pre.




THE TRUE HOPEI OF THE SOUTH.             133
paring another and an enlarged edition of the " irrepressible
conflict," is drawing a yet3 deeper line of antagonism through
the country.
The proposition of Negro suffrage, imposed violently upon
the South, has been scouted by the North when applied to itself. Even the most radical members of Congress fly out against
it, when it is to be imposed upon their own States and eonstitu.
encies, and in the language of one of them (Mr. Spalding, ol
Ohio) declare that it "cuts directly across the Constitution."
Another member of the Republican party in Congress (Mr.
Lawrence, of Pennsylvania) adds the bold assertion that nine
out of every ten Republicans in his district sustain the decision
of Judge Agnew, that Negroes may be excluded from the company of white men in railroad cars and public conveyances.
In fact, on no modern question of politics have the people of
the North shown more sensitiveness than on that of entertaining
the Negro as an equal at the polls.
In 1865, Negro suffrage was voted down in Connecticut, Colorado, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. April 6,1867, a joint resolution was passed by the Legislature of Ohio to propose an amendment to the State Constitution, striking the word "white "
from the franchise law of the State. A popular vote on this
amendment was taken at the October election, when it was rejected by a majority of 50,269. In November, 1867, a special
vote was taken in Minnesota and Kansas on proposed amendments to the State Constitution, extending the elective franchise to persons irrespective of colour. In both States, the
amendments were rejected, by 1,248 majority in Minnesota
and 9,071 majority in Kansas. In New Jersey, the issue was
indirectly presented in the election of members of the Legislature, and the people returned a similar verdict; a majority of




134           THE TRUE HOPE OF THE- SOUTH.
16,354 against the proposition to enfranchise the Negro. The
four States' which made such an exhibition of popular sentiment
in the elections of last year, contained, according tQ the census
of 1860, fully two millions of whites and about thirty thousand
Negroes. If the Northern people could not permit this comparatively small number of Negroes within their borders to
vote-if they could not risk the experiment of Negro suffrage
to this very limited extent among themselves-on what principle of justice are we to account for the fact that so many of the
Republican party insist that Negroes, supposed to be inferiour
in capacity to the freed blacks in the North, should vote in
States of the South, where they are nearly equal in numbers to
the whites, and have, indeed, been made to exceed them by the
frauds of registration!
In view of the figures above, we apprehend two facts: first,
the hopelessness of imposing Negro suffrage on the North, and,
second, granting it to be imposed, the little effect it would have
on their politics and society, its incapability of qualifying the
irrepressible conflict between Negro supremacy in the South and
white supremacy in the North.  Admit Negro suffrage in the
North, and yet the supremacy of the white man is assured
there-the most permanent principle in their society. The
conflict is that of" enduring forces " between the reign of the
white man in the North and the domination of the Negro in
the South; the homogeneousness of the nation is gone; there
is no longer a political identity in America; and a conflict,
more vast and insuperable than any of the past, has taken
place in our history. The Negro is no longer a topic of division
between the two sections as a slave, but as a master and ruler,
* We may add the State of Michigan in 1868-rejecting Negro suffrage, although it
gave the Republican ticket a majority of over twenty-nine thousand in 1866




THE TRUE HOPE OF THE SOUTH.                 135
asserting his political individuality, impressing society with
his laws, and exhibiting his peculiarnature in acts of authority.
In view of this terrible sacrifice of the homogeneousness
and identity of the nation, we have only this oft repeated
argument of the Radicals: that there is a peculiar reason for
endowing the Negro in the South with the suffrage; that it is
necessary for his protection. We deny this necessity. The
Negro may be protected without the ballot fully as well as
other political minors in the community-unnaturalized foreigners, women, and persons not arrived at the age of twenty-one,
all of whom have their civil rights, without possessing the
elective franchise. But even admit the necessity of protection,
concede to the Radicals all they have ever asked out of their
peculiar tenderness for the Negro, and yet we are prepared
to say, it is a small consideration, an utterly inferiour consideration, in view of that vast conflict which it must cause in our
political system, a hiatus in our civilization, a surrender of the
great interests of American progress to solicitude for an inferiour race 
And here we must surprise the reader by a quotation from
one of the most remarkable of our living politicians.  The
extract is from a speech of the notorious Benjamin F. Butler,
delivered in Salem, Massachusetts, shortly after the John
Brown raid, and intended to re-assure the South.  It is
strange, indeed, to find this man of all others, supplying to
the South the thought of the infinite inferiourity of the Negro
by the side of the interests of the white man. The declarations
he made, in 1860, are so applicable to questions now in Congress,
and contain  such a clear and admirable doctrine for the
South in her present situation, that the reader is likely to pause
upon them with curious reflections.




136           THE TRUE HOPE OF THE SOUTH.
"The mistake is, we look at the South through the medium of the
Abolitionists-a very distorted picture.* ** These questions" [those
of freeing and enfranchising the Negro] " which to us, locally, are of so
little practical consequence as hardly to call our attention, are to
them the veryfoundations of society-ominous of rapine, murder and
all the horrours of civil war. And because the discussions of the
question about Negro emancipation do not disquiet us here, we should
be blind indeed not to see the wide difference of such discussions to them,
if the results are reduced to practice.* * * We have the right to form
our own domestic institutions, as we please, to our own liking, and
not to any other community's liking, and will exercise that right,
and under the Constitution must be protected in that right.' Every
other State has the same right, to please herself in her own institutions, and is not obliged toplease us in her selection of them; and
as in duty, and of right bound to do, we will protect her in that
right, whether we like them or not. ** * Human progress is not to
be set back a thousand years, because of the difference of opinion as to
the supposed rights and interests of a few Negroes. As well might
the peasant expect the Almighty to stay the thunder-storm  which
by its beneficent action clears the atmosphere of a nation from pestilence, lest the lightning bolt should in its flash kill his cow."
We nave not exnioitea tnis passage from the political life of
Butler as mere proof of the inconsistency of the man, astounding as it is.  No additions are neededto his infamy.  We have
quoted it in a higher interest; for the truth it contains, for its
real intellectual merit. We are not prepared, indeed, to go to
the length of the brutality which likens solicitude for the
Negro to care for a beast of the field.  But we do recognize
the plain, general truth that the interest of the Negro is in.
feriour to that of the white man, and that our civilization and
progress are not to be interrupted and surrendered on concessions to him.
It has remained for the Chicago Platform  to suggest yet
another argument, or semblance of argument, for Negro




THE TRUE HOPE OF THE SOUTH.               137
Suffrage, as in the South, and to make a somewhat novel
version of this article of the Radical creed, as will appear
from the following language:"The guaranty by Congress of equal suffrage to all loyal men at
the South was demanded by every consideration of public safety, of
gratitude, and of justice, and must be maintained; while the question
of suffrage in all the loyal States properly belongs to the people of
those States."
The idea of Negro Suffrage as a punishment of the South
logically admits that it is an odious and unnatural condition.
But apart from this consideration, to fasten a measure on one
section of the Union, for whatever motive, and to lift it from
the other section, not only creates, as we have seen, a social
chasm, but is of that inequality of laws, which is the prime
condition of despotism, and is utterly inconsistent with republican government.   It is the inequality, rather than the
severity of laws, that constitutes despotism. The most severe
laws have been tolerated, and have existed in republican forms
of government, as long as they have borne equally upon the
community, and have been fairly distributed over the surface
of society; but, no matter what the law, or what its merits in
the abstract, the moment it operates unequally, burdens one
portion of the community and exempts the other, it becomes a
hateful edict and a despotic oppression.  This is the first
lesson of constitutional liberty.
No party in the government at Washington, even if the
subject of suffrage is fully  admitted  to  be within  its
jurisdiction, has the right to propose one measure of it
for the South, even as a penalty of rebellion, and another
measure of it for the North, even as a reward for loyalty.
We state the proposition Ps the Radical party itself has put




138          THE TRUE HOPE OF THE SOUTH.
it, in the very best terms, admitting its pretensions on every
member of the argument, to  show most conclusively its
essential absurdity. But does not the antithesis of the propo.
sition read more truly in the words with which Thurlow Weed,
an eminent Republican, has paraphrased it:-" to declare that
in one part of the country, where coloured suffrage is likely to
prove ruinous, it may be established and enforced by superiour
power; while in another, where such suffrage would be too
inconsiderable to be noticed, it may be left to the people who
have declared against it!"  This is the true ground of distinction in the proposition, as between North and South; but
even without reference to it, rejecting everything ad captandum,
the division of so large a measure of legislation, the inequality
of a law at the very basis of political society, would be essentially despotic, inevitably disorganizing, strange to every
tradition of the country, and utterly inadmissable in " a
government of the people."
Those who ask the ballot for the Negro sink at every step
in the argument.  It involves a price too great, even if he
needed it; but we have argued that it was not necessary for
his safety or preservation; and now we advance to yet another
argument: that so far from the ballot being a benefit to him, it
would involve him in a competition with the white man, eventually ruinous to himself, and be a direct invitation to what he
has most to fear-a war of races. Let him  beware of the
poisoned gift.  The ballot precipitates the war of races, to
avoid which should be the highest effort of American statesmanship. It is the declaration of war between the Negro and
the white man.
There is an instinct of humanity, a great unwritten law of
nations, that one race only ought to have political power in




THE TRUE HOPE OF THE SOUTH.              139
the same country, each race in its own. It is a law that leads
to internal peace, and to the national development and prosperity which that peace insures.  The Negro has shown himself
sensible of it, and wherever he has had power as a race, he has
been unwilling to share it with the white ma —as in Spain,
in San Domingo, and in Liberia.  In the latter country the
white man is excluded by legislation from all political offices.
It is the result of a natural law. For centuries the Negro has
been known in both hemispheres as the enemy of the white
man; and it is remarkable that he has never lived in friendship with him except as a.slave. From Slavery he has derived'
all his civilization and benevolence.
The so-called Slavery of the South is properly defined as
the school of the Negro. Declaim, as men imay of the vices and
horrours of that institution, we yet have the unanswerable fact
that it carried the Negro to a higher civilization than any
other agency ever applied to him; and the Republican or
Radical party in claiming for him, that he is already qualified
for the suffrage, implies a higher tribute to Slavery than its
most zealous advocates ever urged-for it is Slavery that has
educated the Negro to the point where the Republicans claim
he is fit to vote and act equally with-the white citizen-Slavery,
which has thus returned him  from its bonds an intelligent
creature, fit at once for all the functions and trusts of the citizen! It is curious in what inconsistency the Republican party
involves itself, when in one breath of declamation, as that of
the rhetorical Mr. Bingham of Ohio, it describes the abolition
of Slavery as " taking off the chains that have bound down the
higher faculties of the Negro for more than two hundred years,"
and in another mood describes the same event as exhibiting the
black man so improved by his experience as a slave from his




140          THE TRUE HOPE OF THF SOUTH,
original pagan and savage condition, as to claim by his intelli.
gence and virtue all the privileges and immunities of the white
man.
But we do not go as far as this extraordinary tribute of the
Radicals to the beneficence of Slavery. It is extravagant
beyond all that Southern men ever claimed for it. Holding
that Slavery was a valuable school for the Negro, that by
acting on his peculiar and strong imitative capacities, it gave
him a certain reflected civilization, we yet do not believe that
that civilization comes up to anything like the point of equality
vith the white man, and we are convinced that its maximum
was obtained in the condition of subjection to the white race.
Slavery has improved and civilized the Negro to a certain extent, and has now left him the subject of a new experiment.
We would make that experiment kindly and tenderly, although
we think it vain, as we believe the Negro obtains his highest
development in the convenient position of a subordinate where
he copies and imitates.  This being the natural law of his inferiourity, we certainly would not force upon him the destructive
and deadly experiment of thrusting him into a violent equality
with the white man and substituting for the old and useful
instincts of Slavery the principles of competition and rivalry.
The Negro improved by copying the white man; Slavery made
these copies convenient; but he will surely die, when the copy
is broken, and competition becomes the new  experiment.  It
is the law of nature, and no human legislation can change. or
obstruct it.
It is then this experiment of the equality of races, which
must ultimately sacrifice the Negro; which offends nature's laws,
and thus provokes a sure penalty; which shuts up ten millions
of white people in the valley of humiliation and death; which




THE TRUE HOPE OF THE SOUTH.               141
wrenches all the laws and traditions of the country to a foreign
and violent purpose; which legislates outside the Constitution;
which engulphs the landmarks of our history and proclaims the
most terrible and hideous revolution of modern times, that the
Radical party of Congress has prescribed as the indispensable
condition of the reconstruction of the South and the restoration
of the Union.  The policy is put before our eyes; the black
cloud is hung up in the heavens; the prophetic signs draw
nigh.  In the North, the question of Negro reconstruction,
except so far as it carries with it pieces of the Constitution and
thus involves some ultimate questions of popular liberty, may
be a dull and distant speculation.  But the South is daily
crucified upon it. Capital and enterprise are banished by the
political commotion; men cultivate their fields as if they tilled
the crust of a volcano, anxious only for the one year's crop;
there is a daily terrour in every house; there is starvation in
the pale faces of women and children; and in the eyes of desperate men there is a gleam like a flash of swords.
The population of the South is peculiar.  Be it remembered
that it contains tens of thousands of men, who have been baptized in blood, trained in war; who have stood on the burning
edge of battle with their lives in their hands, and have feared
nothing.  They are a ready-made army.  They are the men
who count some things worse than the terrours of Death; more
terrible the dumb sufferings of those they love than the loud
agonies of battle; more terrible the wail of little children crying for bread than the blast of destruction in their ears.  Their
homes are ruined; their fields are black and sterile; their vines
are withered; and life has but little for them.  There are
lengths of suffering and of insult which these men will not endure.
Better death than the dregs of life; better convulsions than the




142          THE TRUE HOPE OF THE SOUTH.
Stygean calm of despair; better the hiss and the storm of the
red-winged battle than the dumb torment, the voiceless crucifixion of the soul.
The condition of the South is far different from what it was
in 1865; and a war of races, then treated only as a distant
speculation of scholars, has become an imminent danger to all
practical men. At the close of the war the relations between
the whites and the Negroes were kindly and amicable; there was
a general disposition to co-operate in repairing the prosperity of
the country and re-building on the ruins of the war. But this
happy condition has been changed; and chiefly through the
operation of those political organizations of the Negro masses
in the South, effected by emissaries and agents from the North
in preparation for the State Conventions and the Presidential
programme of 1868. "The League" has introduced a new theatricalmachinery in the politics of the South, the power of which
on the peculiarly strong imagination of the Negro is almost
incredible.  It is like the influence of religious superstition on
his African nature; its commands are superiour to all other
calls and necessities; he will stop from work " in the middle
of the row " to attend its meetings; he will slink away from
his employer, after all protestations to the contrary, to vote
the Radical ticket, at the secret command of this new political
society, which, indeed, entirely possesses and governs him.
No one can understand this peculiar condition of the Negro
population who has not recently visited the South. Intelligent people in Virginia were utterly surprised at the solid
array in which the Negroes lately moved to the polls in the
vote for the Convention.  They understand it better now,
since the black hand of the League has become visible in the
-work.




THE RLTHE HOPE OF THE SOUTH.             143
Since the election there have been counted in Virginia eight
hundred societies of the Negro, bound by oaths and holding
secret meetings.  From  these conclaves there issued a solid
organization of blacks at the memorable election of last year,
as completely under the control of their leaders as an army
under its General in time of war; not only marching to the
polls to vote down conservative intelligence, but to vote down
all moderate men, even those known as the prominent Union
men of the State.  Many persons of the latter class were
hunted down, pelted with stones; the very few Negroes who
attempted to vote the conservative ticket were threatened with
death; and the police were assaulted when they attempted to
protect the conservative blacks from the violence of men of
their own colour. These scenes of furious brutality, and the
evidence that ran through them  all of a powerful, permanent
organization, likely to repeat them at any time, have already
impressed thoughtful men in the South with the idea that a
condition, so monstrous, cannot be maintained, and that the
attempt of reprisal or correction is inevitable.
It is in view of the solidity of these Negro organizations
that Alexander H. Stephens, one of the tamest of Southern
politicians and the least subject to alarm, has recently declared
in Washington, with the utmost seriousness, that a war of races
is imminent, and absolutely unavoidable if the Radical programme be prosecuted to extremity. If the New Orleans riot
was repeated to-day, it probably could not be confined as it was
in 1866, but might inflame the whole South. One blow struck
now, and thousands of armed  men may spring from  the
ground, and unutterable scenes of horrour ensue. It is this
danger that disturbs the whole South; it is the daily peril of
the volcano on which the home stands; it is the constant




144               THF TRUE HOPE OF THE SOUTH.
strain upon the imagination-for who can tell when Destruction may lift its red torch in the troubled air, and proclaim the
conflict.
It is remarkable that the worst element of disorder in the
South  attaches  to  the  uncertainty  of  the  future  relations
between the Negroes and the Whites.   We see industry palsied
in all its branches from doubt of the security of its fruits; the
most productive fields in the world lie uncultivated, and are
shunned by capital; the great staples, cotton,* rice, sugar and
tobacco, are no longer produced in those quantities which for.
merly made  the  South  a  commercial empire; the  potential
wealth of those States, which once nerved the arm  of industry,
and enriched commerce  throughout the  country, is lost to  the
nation.   The  future  is observed through  disfiguring  mists of
uncertainty; and the immediate prospect of restoration to the
Union, under the Reconstruction laws, is only as Africanized
States.   From   these  scenes  of present  ruin  and  desolation
comes the unheeded prayer for peace-that peace  which  was
* The efforts of England to build up her cotton culture have found unexpected
assistance in the political radicalism of America.  In 1861, the supply of cotton derived
by England from the United States was seven out of eleven thousand millions of cwts.,
or seven-elevenths, while last year, out of a whole supply of eleven millions four hundred thousaud cwts., the United States furnished four million cwts., or four-elevenths
merely. The Reconstruction scheme of Congress operates as effectually as the was
itself to stimulate and encourage the efforts which England is making in the cotton
culture, and those efforts, through railroads in India, to which the British government
gives liberal aid, are of an imposing character:  India, where labour can be had for five
cents a day, is penetrated by railroads thousan"ds of miles in length, and lines of steamers
communicate weekly with the Indian ports.  The East Indies are now said to have
more miles of railroad in operation than Spain, Italy, Austria or Russia, and nearly
half as much as France. It is not deemed impossible that, when the home product of
England shall be deemed adequate to her supply, she may even impose conditions upon
the import of American cotton. Such are the lamentable results to our interests and
pride as the greatest cotton-producing country of the world, which have followed the
disorganizing policy of Congress, and which will be rendered still more ruinous by the
success of the schemes now in progress for the transfer of the whole political power oJ
the South to the hands of the blacks.




THE TRUE HOPE OF THE SOUTH.              145
promised the people of the South as the fruit of their suffering,
and the reward of their surrender in the war.  The prayer
comes to Congress in the most touching expressions. A late
petition from the people of Alabama declares the willingness
of the people to continue under military rule, rather than
accept restoration on the frightful condition of Negro domination, and pathetically entreats Congress by appeals to a common race, a common civilization, a common Christianity, to
save them from their tormentors. An address of the white citizens of South Carolina similarly invokes the justice and
humanity of their race.  They beg peace-nothing more than
peace to enable them to build on waste places " our temples of
worship, our sacred and ruined cities now lying in ashes, our
dismantled dwellings and our prostrate credit, for its holy
Christian influence, and for the civilization and refinement
which spring up in its path." And these noble and pathetic
prayers are unheeded by Congress, or burlesqued by a brutal
wit, while the insolent demand of the Negro, grown to a threat,
is treated with reverent regard and affectionate solicitude!
As evidence of the present condition of the South we have an
authority even more temperate and judicious than Alexander
H. Stephens.  We refer to Ex-Governor Perry, of South Carolina-a gentleman who was inclined to the cause of the Union
throughout the war, and who has obtained the respect of all
parties for the candour of his opinions.  Some of the results of
his personal observation in the South are so coincident with
the views we have already expressed, that. we may adopt them
in our narration.  He describes the Negro as " no longer that
industrious, useful and civil labourer which he once was, but an
idle drone and pest to society. ~ Inflated with his new and marvelous political importance, he has abandoned his former indus7




146          THE TRUE HOPE OF THE SOUTH.
trious habits, and spends his time in attending public meetings
and loyal-league gatherings by day and by night. The whole
race seem disposed to quit their work and resort to tire towns
and villages, where they may eke out an idle and wretched existence in pilfering and begging." The depreciation of realestate, consequent mainly on the disorganization of labour, Mr.
Perry calculates at one-half or two-thirds during the past year.
Property at forced sales brings the most absurd trifles.  He
cites the instance of a plantation, well-improved, containing two
thousand acres in Harry district, sold at public auction to the
highest bidder for five dollars! No one wants land when there
is no labour to put upon it. "A great many persons," says
Mr. Perry, "are moving from the lower country, where there
are so many Negroes, and that section of South Carolina is
destined to become a wilderness. The same thing must occur
in many portions of Mississippi and other States. A gentleman,
just returned from Mississippi, testifies that lands which rented,
in 1866, for fourteen dollars per acre were now offered at two
dollars per acre, and no one would take them." The condition
of affairs is summed in the following language: " our fields and
plantations are uncultivated, the country pauperized, at the
point of starvation and filled with every grade of crime." After
describing the condition and temper of the South in different
details, Mr. Perry concludes: "The present military force
will have to be kept up to maintain peace between the two races,
and there is no certainty of their ability to do this long. I
have for some time thought that when the Negro government
went into operation, it would be impossible to preserve the peace
of the country.  A war of races must ensue."
We have sufficiently traced some of the- most unhappy elements of disorder in the South to the demoralization of the Ne



THE TRUE HOPE OF THE SOUTH.              147
gro. We pass to another point in the same field of observation.
There is another danger than that of a war of races.
If we regard the lessons of history, the. condition of the South
is one of real alarm; because the people there are evidently
verging to desperation, and this condition of mind is precisely
that in which the worst and fiercest commotions take place.
True, the South is incapable of a large and organized contest of
arms; she has not the material or apparatus for another war,
and her spirit is, in a measure, constrained by her poverty of resources. But it is not improbable that her patience may break
at last, and that she may take that wild and desperate recourse
to arms, in which a people maddened under despotism have even
sought vengeance, where they could not accomplish relief. So
~ar her patience has been exemplary; with the cessation of the
war there was a cessation of all smaller essays of violence, almost
unparalleled in history; and those who had supposed that the
great contest could only terminate with a dissipation into the
adventures and outrages of guerillas, were agreeably surprised
at the solid and perfect peace which ensued almost immediately
on Lee's surrender.  For nearly three years thereafter the
South has kept a peace more profound than perhaps ever followed upon a war of such extent and violence.  Her people
have hitherto been patient even under the worst excesses of
Radical rule, because they have been fed with hopes and amused with prospects from one political season to another. But
there is now apparent danger that the Radical party may experiment on that patience too long.  They may plant too many
thorns in the path of' "reconstruction."  The people of the
South have waited upon the political "problem " at Washington only to find it become more abd more involved and painful;
we already hear the mutter of desperation; and before her




148          THE TRUE HOPE OF THE SOUTH,
white population is driven into the fatal angle of Negro supremacy, the last corner of their extremity, there is fear the ground
will be marked with the blood of a desperate and indiscriminate conflict.
It is proper that we should understand here that certain recent
proceedings of Congress, ostensibly admitting representatives
from Southern Sta es, so far from having advanced Reconstruction a single logical readth, have really turned back the problem
to its first premisfe and have accomplished nothing more than
an ostentatious fa,. e. Some thoughtless minds have leaped to
the congratulation that certain Southern States have at last
been re-admitted into the Union, when the fact is that they are
still excluded, in every true and logical sense, from the equal
benefits of the Union, and exist only as nondescript appendages
of territory under permanent disabilities, insulted by the farce
in which they have been marshaled as States restored to their
political rights.  Indeed, the prospect of restoration appears
further off than ever, and the problem of Reconstruction becomes
more confused and unmanageable, as new laws thicken around
it.
When some months ago Alabama* applied for admission into
the Union, the proceedings of Congress were tantamount to a
confession, that it was intellectually incompetent to deal with
the problem of the restoratioh of the South.  In this case the
whole matter of Reconstruction was remitted to a "provisional
government," returned, indeed, to that policy which was so violently and summarily condemned in the President. The alternative was to exclude Alabama or to require her to relinquish
her sovereignty, on coming into the Union.  The difficulty in
the mind of Mr. Thaddeus Stevens, which he freely confessed in
* The papers in the case of Alabama showed that only about 6,000 whites voted on
the new constitution.




THE TRUE HOPE OP THE SOUTH.               149
the course of debate, was not that the Constitution which this
State. tendered had not been adopted by the majority of regis-.
tered votes, but that it might afterwards be changed, and that,
therefore, a condition should be attached to the act of admission,
to the effect that the people of Alabama should not make what
laws they like, but only what Congress dictated —a singular
mode, truly, of guaranteeing a "republican form of government "!
It has, indeed, been in such delay and entanglement of Reconstruction; such broken promises; such "confusion worse
confounded," that the South has found her patience nearly
expended, her hopes tantalized, and her resolution, no longer
confined within the bounds of prudence, vaguely wandering to
meditations of violence.
The issue was again presented to Congress by the application
of Arkansas, and the condition, indicated by Mr. Stevens, was
renewed to the effect that she should part with her sovereignty
-that she should give an irrevocable pledge, never to change
or diminish the concession of unlimited and unqualified Negro
suffrage. In the case of five other Southern States (North Carolina, South Carolina, Louisiana, Georgia and Alabama-the
last making a second application for the admission of her representatives) this pledge has ultimately been exacted by the
House of Representatives, with some other conditions, in the
following verbose form" That the Constitutions of said States shall never be amended or
changed so as to discriminate in favour of or against any citizen, or
class of citizens, of the United States, in their right to vote, who are
now entitled to vote by said Constitutions respectively, except as a
punishment for such crimes as are now felonies at common law,
whereof they shall have been duly convicted; and no person shall
ever be held to service or labour as a punishment for crime in said




150           THE TRUE HOPE OF THE SOUTH.
States, except by public officers charged with the custody of convicts
by the laws thereof; and that so much of the seventeenth section of
the fifth article of the Constitution of the State of Georgia, as gives
authority to Legislatures or Courts to repudiate debts contracted
prior to the 1st day of June, 1865, and similar provisions in all the
other of the Constitutions mentioned in this bill, shall be null and
void as against all men who were loyal during the whole time of the
rebellion, and who during that time supported the Union, and they
shall have the same rights in the courts and elsewhere as if no
rebellion had ever existed."
The bill from which we have quoted was carried through the
House almost without debate; without effort to procure information as to the nature of these Constitutions, the vote upon
them in detail, or their practical workings with reference to the
ordinary interests of the communities upon which they were
enforced. In many of these Constitutions, apart from the topic
of the Negro, were singular excrescences of legislation; and to
all of them attached a story of fraud and corruption. A Southern correspondent, treating of these reconstructed Constitutions
says: " In South Carolina, Alabama, and Arkansas, the Legislature can keep up standing armies in time of peace, and in
North and South Carolina, and Arkansas, children, irrespective
of colour, are to be compelled to go to the public schools together,
unless privately educated by their parents. In the Mississippi
Convention, now [ May 15, 1868] in the 127th day of its session,
at a cost of a quarter of a million dollars already, there are but
five white native Mississippians out of the whole one hundred
delegates. In South Carolina, there are sixty-five Negroes in
the House and nine in the Senate, and these ignorant creatures,
who outnumber the whites on joint ballot, only pay $187 25
taxes, though their majority gives them  fullpower of taxing
all the property of the State. Fifty-seven of these Negroes pay




THE TRUE HOPE OF THE SOUTH.                151
no tax at all, and of the seventy white members thirty-six pay
no taxes either, and the balance of them only $368 80; so that
the whole South Carolina Legislature only pay $496 65 of the
taxes it is to impose."
This budget of curiosities comes in the vehicle of the press.
There was no disposition of the Radical party in Congress to
ventilate them, or to give any information on a subject on which
they proceeded to pass important and historical legislation.
Nor was there any explanation afforded even of the condition
proposed by Mr. Stevens, invading the relief sections of these
Constitutions in reference to debts contracted during the war,
and curiously giving pecuniary premiums to Union men. Even
this remarkable novelty was passed almost without debate; and
all efforts to criticise a body of legislation, so large and various,
were peremptorily suppressed.
But it is not of this haste of legislation that we design to
complain in this place, or of the customary suppression by an
unscrupulous party of all statements of the means by which it
obtains its ends. We have referred particularly to this pretended restoration of States to the Union as an insult to the
intelligence of the South, and a new provocation to its patience.
It is but a farce; a prolongation of the real problem of Reconstruction, which can never be completed, until the Southern
States are re-admitted on the terms only of the Constitution,
taking their equal and accustomed places in the Union. The
intelligence of the South so far from being pleased with these
recent proceedings of Congress, described in the extract of
legislation we have just quoted, resents them as a deception
and snare. Even the New-York Times, an organ, in many respects, of. the Radical party in Congress, is forced to confess that
it has yet done nothing to justly determine the essential ques



1b2          THE TRUE HOPE OF THE SOUTH.
tions of Reconstruction.  This journal says:' Has the fundamental condition of the Arkansas bill been wisely determined as
a precedent to be followed in admitting other States? Universal
suffrage has been made the corner-stone of Reconstruction, but
should it be so engrafted upon ten States that their own people
shall be deprived of the power to introduce modifications?
We say nothing now as to the difficulties inseparable from attempts to render partisan dogmas irreversible. We might ask,
how a tradition of the Medes and Persians can become vital in
self-governing communities, and how  Congress proposes to
enforce the condition, if the reconstructed States choose hereafter to disregard it. Viewed from a critical stand-point, the
whole subject is so beset with difficulties, constitutional and
logical, that we doubt the ability of any man to see his way
clearly to the end of the road on which the country has
entered."
Reconstruction, in its just constitutional sense is still far
off; it will probably never be accomplished by the present
party in power; the whole ground of legislation will have to be
traversed again; and the serious question is whether the South
may not be hurried to violence, as persecution presses, and
relief hangs in the distance.
If that violence does ensue, there will be no question of prudent trials of war, no calculation of armies and material. The
South is incapable of the grand duello of the past, but not incapable of the fierce and desultory rebellion of movable columns and raids; incapable of a war of calculation, but not
incapable of a war of vengeance. She may repeat on a much
larger scale the Fenianism of Ireland, and may even take a
lesson from the few Indian tribes which have sufficed to hold a
year's campaign against the military power of the United States.




THE TRUE HOPE OF THE SOUTHI.            153
Such vengeful rebellions, spread over the whole space of a
country, renewing themselves rather from desperation than
hope, and animated by the willingness of a people to die rather
than suffer longer, have sometimes, as we are assured by
history, been more difficult to quell than regular wars, and
have shaken to their foundations governments stronger than
that at Washington. Admitted that the South must ultimately go under in such a contest. What of that! There are
times when men find their lives intolerable, and will wear them
on their sleeves in any tilt at fortune.  Let Congress beware
of too much experiment on the temper of the South, for a rebellion may yet be kindled there, in which many men will be
satisfied to find a funeral pyre, provided it consumes with
themselves the structure of a hated and intolerable despotism........ But we are not advising the South.-We are simply
warning the North. We have stated what is the desperation of
the former; but against that desperation we set our faces, and
we write in these pages to counsel the true hope of the South.
If we have represented an extreme case, it is that the rebound
of the argument may be more striking and effective. There is
hope for the South. Our mind has steadily held it in all we
have written up to this point. From the condition we have
described,of ruin and terrour,we shall presently see emerge Hope,
pure and beautiful-like the white star, alba stella, rising after
the storms of the day have been spent, and the torn and purple
clouds have been gathered at the gates of Evening!
7*




154              THE TRUE HOPE OF THE SOUTH.
What is the true hope' of the South?-The new cause, or'the "lost cause" revived —
Abolition destroyed the barrier of races, the true value of Slavery-The war, as
merely developing the ultimate issue of constitutional liberty and of our political
traditions-" The South Victorious "-The lesson of patience-Pessimistt in Congress-B. F. Butler and Thaddeus Stevens-Can the Constitution be recovered? —
Survey of our departure from it-Peculiar conditions for judging American historyAn incident of the Philadelphia Convention-The elections of 1867-Power of public
opinion in our political system-" White," the winning word-Declaration of Gen.
Ewing-Congress translates the political controversy into a war for liberty Two
parties left by the war-The fundamental idea of President Johnson's Administration-Review of it-Horace Greeley and a New Jersey correspondent-Character
of President Johnson-His extraordinary sacrifices of power and-patronage-His
heroic attitude in Impeachment-A bold and thrilling avowal-Valuelf his example
to the South-The nobility of Hope.
What is that hope of the South, to which we have referred?
It is the hope of a new political conflict, in which the South
will stand stronger than she ever did before; in which she will
find occasion to repeat what were really the most important
issues'of the war; in which she will have the opportunity to
regain  her "lost cause."   She  may  have  to  endure  much
before she reaches the threshold and fruition of this new controversy; but the conclusion is sure to her. This new cause
-or rather the true question of the war revived-is the supremacy of the white race and along with it and strengthening
it, the re-assertion of our political traditions, and the protection of our ancient fabrics of government. This was the ultimate, logical problem of the war, although the people of the
South but dimly perceived it. They were the wise men in the
South  who understood  at the beginning, that Slavery  was a
most unimportant object in the war as a matter of property;
that the abolition of Slavery was not to be greatly regretted
as such-a small, incomplete event-but it was to be deplored




THE TRUE HOPE OF THE SOUTH.              155
as an introduction to the terrible and greater question of Negro
equality, and such political reconstruction as we see attempted
to day. They saw far ahead, who defended the condition of
Slavery and counted it in the war, and throughout its term of
existence as the barrier to the further and vaster question of
races in America. It was in Slavery as this barrier, that the
South had its most intelligent and valuable interest; and now,
when this barrier is broken down, there must be a certain regret
for that-a loss in itself considerable-yet a recognition that
the greater contest yet remains, and that the higher cause of
the political supremacy of the white man is not lost. Slavery
was an outwork of the controversy; but the great battle is yet
to be fought, The war has eviscerated and enlightened the
true question, and the South prepares to contest it with advantages she never had before. When she defended Slavery
by her arms, she was single-handed, and encountered the antipathies of the whole world; now, when she asserts the ultimate
supremacy of the white man, she has not lost her cause, but
merely developed its higher significance, and in the new contest she stands, with a firm political alliance in the North, with
the binding instincts of race in her favour, and with the sympathies of all generous and enlightened humanity drawn upon
her. Who will say, looking at the situation from this eminence
of true philosophy, that there are not some subjects of congratulation and hope for the suffering South?  It is this true hope
which the author would proclaim; summoning the South to the
appealed and sublime trial of a cause, diminished it may be in
respect of some subordinate questions, but not lost in the logical
and vital issue.  It is a new summons, a new inspiration; the
sound of the trumpets is beneath our windows, and the blood
in our veins sings as we go forth to the last and proudest contest of American liberty.




156          THF TRUE HOPE OP THE SOUTH.
"The South victorious" may yet be the ultimate conclusion,
as Wendell Phillips spoke the words at the: close of the war.
But it will be the victory of the white man; the victory of the
Constitution; the victory of law and of tradition-a victory
crowned with noblest fruits and flowers-and may God speedily
grant it!
But the people of the South must learn this sublime lesson
of life: that often the grandest achievements, the most glori.
ous of human endeavours and triumphs must commence' in a
term of suffering; that patience is the preliminary period of
the greatest deeds, the condition that foreruns the most perfect successes. He who learns to wait, says a French proverb,
is master of his fortune. The South must wait and suffer, be.
fore she can realize the true hope we have declared for her.
She must wear the crown of thorns before she can assume that
of victory.  She must endure much from  Congress; new insults, perhaps fresh devices of torture; treading the wine-press,
traversing a dreary and crooked routine; but the end comes
at last, and with it the assured triumph and reward.
The precepts of religion and the doctrines of philosophy
have united in the formula of Patience; and history illustrates
its conquests in the lives of nations as well as in the individual examples of virtue.  It is the jewel of Christianity.  It is
the ornament of a true manhood. It is the title to all great
and permanent success; and he has imperfectly apprehended
the meaning of life, who does not see its relations to human
achievements, to the restoration of man to whatever he has
forfeited or lost.  It is at once the consolation and lesson in
all afflictions, in all trials, from the time when man first worked out his spiritual redemption to that in which he regains any
lost cause of virtue and truth.




THE TRUE HOPE OF THE SOUTH.              157
"He in whose hands all times and seasons meet,
What if He hath decreed that I shall first
Be tried in humble state and things adverse,
By tribulations, injuries, insults,
Contempts, and scorns, and snares, and violence,
Suffering, abstaining, quietly expecting,
Without distrust or doubt, that He may know
What I can suffer, how obey? Who best
Can suffer, best can do.-"
Paradise Regained.
There are men in Congress-false and malicious prophetswho would persuade the South that there is no hope for her,
and that she might as well succumb to the fate they have prepared for her. They scoff the idea of any modification of their
terms, and they already show a determination, not only to disregard, but to defy whatever of change has already been apparent in the popular sentiment of the North. Have the last
year's elections, those great Democratic triumphs in the North,
been of any real, practical advantage to the South? They
have not been followed by any softening of the Reconstruction
policy; on the contrary, Congress hardens and exaggerates its
programme; and we see after these elections the unification of
military rule in the South, the dictatorship of Grant, the outrage of Stanton, the wound to the Supreme Court, a fresh list
of exactions and usurpations.  The South, says Butlerthat muddy bilious monster of the bloated face and the crooked
eyes-speaking to the Virginia Convention, should not hope
foi better terms; for whatever other changes may take place,
the Radical majority will be maintained in the Senate for six
years to come.  Then gets up Thaddeus Stevens, in his unclean old age, to expectorate, that the people of the South are
vagabonds and nondescripts "outside the Constitution," and




158          THE TRUE HOPE OF THE SOUTH.
that, so far from being assured ofthe end of their sufferings, the
list of penalties should be prolonged with "mild confiscation, 
and whatever else the ingenuity of their " conquerors " may
suggest.
There is a hideous significance about this old man, preparing
in the last moments of his own life new instruments of torture for
the South, and grinning over the work of his bony and unsightly
hands, at the very side of his own grave. It is an exhibition
of what hate and passions legislate for the South-a picture of
diabolism at which the heart shudders.
But we are not to be too much impressed by the weak and
wicked declarations of such men. True, Congress may be competent, during its official term of insolent power, to deal with
all the questions of Reconstruction, and the South may have
that stock of iniquity to endure, that path of thorns to tread;
but the people speaks at last, and although to retrace whatever
steps may have been taken, may be difficult, it will not be impossible.  The political slate will be wiped clean at last of
the scrawl and filth; and as the people, in our system of government, can never surrender its conscience to any permanent form
of legislation, the work of reform is never impossible.
We are not seriously disturbed by the rhetorical bravuras of
Ben. Butler, or the acerb expectorations of Thaddeus Stevens.
It will not be long before such men descend to the grave, or expire in the pillory of public contempt. Their expressions are
the splutter of malice.  But apart from their excess, we recognize a serious question, exciting the thoughtful anxieties of
men least disposed to take alarm, or to be moved by the threats
of mere personal animosity.
We are painfully aware, that some of the most intelligent
minds in the country have already entertained a question of




THE TRUE HOPE OF THE SOUTH.              159
the possibility of the restoration of the Constitution, and of
the recovery of the liberties it was designed to secure. They
doubt whether this can be ever accomplished by human means,
or otherwise than through some providential event recalling
the nation to its better senses, and giving it the opportunity to
disembarrass itself of party and to re-adjust and settle the Constitution in the spirit of a true patriotism. They argue that
the Republican party has already progressed too far in power
to be recalled; that they have already destroyed the integrity
and independence of the Executive Department; that they
are steadily encroaching upon the Supreme Court; that they
have already broken up the fundamental and vital distribution
of political powers in the Constitution; that at each stage of
this progress to despotism, they have disdained the challenges
of popular sentiment; and that in view of this insolent career
of usurpation, public interest has been so tame and impassive,
that it is unlikely to make any serious obstruction to the now
not distant consummation of the revolutionary design.
It is time to notice how far we have wandered from our
former political courses, and where the tides of controversy
have carried us. In the commencement of that great speech
of Daniel Webster, in 1830, which arrested the progress of Disunion, the orator and statesman said: "When the mariner has
been tossed for many days in thick weather, and on an unknown sea, he naturally avails himself of the first pause in the
storm, the earliest glance of the sun, to take his latitude, and
ascertain how far the elements have driven him from his true
course. Let us imitate this prudence, and before we float
farther on the waves of this debate, refer to the point from
which we departed, that we may at least be able to conjecture
where we now are.'




160           THE TRUE HOPE OF THE SOUTEH
The departure from the law of the Constitution, the original
standards of our political system, is, indeed, vast and alarming
on the retrospect,  It has taken place by stages so numerous
and so ingeniously calculated, that the public mind has not been
sensible of the distance accomplished; and now, on looking back
upon it in a single and inclusive view, the impression is that of
painful surprise.  The whole structure of the Government is
changed.  The President is no longer President, and Congress
claims nearly every power formerly exercised by him. By the
tenure-of-office law, it has really divided the Executive of the
nation into seven or eight different Presidents, independent of,
and superiour to the one elected by the people, whom he can
neither control nor remove.  Each Secretary is President
over the whole sphere of his Department, having the power, to
the exclusion of the President elected under the Constitution,
to order the army, to control the national funds, to manage
foreign relations, to regulate the postal service, to administer
the affairs of the internal revenue. JEach of these seven or
eight Presidents, again, is controlled by a branch of Congress,
and has no other limit to his authority, and no other rule of
responsibility. A right is taken from the President elected by
the people, without whichhe cannot perform the duty expressly
commanded of him, to take " care that the laws be faithfully
executed, " or fulfill the obligation of his official oath, to " preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United
States."  Other usurpations have taken place.  Congress has
almost practically destroyed the Executive office, and, at the
same time, has erected absolute military despotism in ten of
the States of the Union. It has done this in destruction of
every authority reserved to the States by the Constitution, as
well as every'individual right of life, liberty, and property,




THE TRUE HOPE OF THE SOUTH.              161
reserved in the same way to their people. It is quite clear
that if these usurpations receive for much longer time the
approval of the people, the hope of the recovery of the Constitution is gone, and ultimately with it the prospect of individual
freedom, and the vital idea of our institutions.
We state the argument in its full force. Unhappily, too, the
attempt at despotism  in America has taken the form  and
direction of Legislative usurpations; a form the most dangerous to liberty, and the most difficult of opposition.  We
recognize the force of this peculiar fact; and we are reminded
of the declaration of Chatham, when, choosing between the
arbitrary power of the Crown and that of a House of Commons,
that "tyranny in no shape is so formidable, as when it is
assumed and exercised by such a number of tyrants."  It is
obvious in our system  of government that the very worst
depository of unlimited power would be a large legislative
assembly, like Congress; where the very number diminishes
the responsibility of'individual members, and enlarges the
influence of popular passions.   We recognize  then  the
peculiarly powerful form which the revolutionary tendency in
our country has assumed; and we recognize, too, that other
dangerous element in the situation: —the comparative impassiveness with which the people have viewed the usurpations of
Congress, and its advance to the eminence of despotic
power.
Yet we do not despair of the republic.  It was to be
expected that the popular sensibilities with respect to liberty
should be greatly blunted by the late war; it was one of the
worst effects of the war; and the diminution since of the concern of the people in the conduct of their government is painfully apparent.  But that concern has not entirely ceased;




162          THE TRUE HOPE OF THE SOUTH.
and the peculiar intelligence of the American people is sure to
reproduce it. It is with respect to this intelligence and the
native generosity of Americans, that we claim  some exception from the precedents of history.  In America there are
unusual conditions.  The extraordinary intelligence of the
people enables them to recover quickly from errours and surprises; and their love of liberty is so traditional that it is not
likely to be seriously affected by any temporary causes. It is
remarkable that in no circumstances does an invocation to
liberty, even in the merest platitude of a Fourth-of-July speech,
ever fail to awake in the American heart a generous emotion,
or to obtain some response from the multitude.
An incident in the Philadelphia Convention, summoned to
consider the state of the country, in 1866, gives proof, so shortly
after the war, that the spirit of'76 was not entirely extinguished in the American heart.  The Convention adopted an
address which was read from the clerk's desk. It referred to
the usurpations already commenced by Congress, to-reduce the
Southern States to the condition of conquered provinces; and
in this connection it was declared:  "The ten millions of
Americans in the South would be unworthy citizens of a free
country, unfit ever to become guardians of the rights and liberties bequeathed to us by the founders of this republic, if they
accept with uncomplaining submissiveness the humiliations thus
sought to be imposed upon them!"  The preceding argumentative points of the address had been listened to with quiet and
deliberate attention; but when the words, just quoted, were
pronounced, there was a universal acclamation of the Convention and its audience; men rose to their feet to cheer the sentiment, and for a time the voice of the speaker was lost in the
volume of applause.   The loud shout that went forth from the
hall was a signal and a testimony to the country.




THE TRUE HOPE OF THE SOUTH.                                     163
It was a happy augury. Its promises have not been realized,
as rapidly as we could wish; yet there are evidences of progress,
and occasions of encouragement. The elections of the last year
in the Pacific, East, West and Middle States, show an awakening
of the people-a disposition to recall from the Republican party
all of that exceptional support which was given it during the
war for the specific purpose of saving the Union. The people
demand the fruits of the war; and the same motives that committed them to a party, especially sworn to save the integrity
of our institutions, now operate to recall the trust, and to punish
its abuse. Within one year, nearly a quarter of a million votes
have been gained by the Democratic party and measure the
change of public sentiment.* This is the significant exhibit of
* In a recent speech Senator Doolittle exhibited the following table of votes to show
the comparative strength of the conservative and radical parties in 1866 and 1867. It
includes all the States represented in Congress, except those which held no election in
1867. The table is as follows:
----— 1867. ~+,.           1866. ~
Staes               Dem.                 Dem.
Sttes.              and       Rad.       and       Rad.
Con.                 Con. 
California...............................    49,995    42,447    26,245    33,221
*Connecticut...............................    47,575    46,585    43,433    43,974
Iowa.........................          58,880    90,798    56,483    90,926
Kansas..................................   19,421    10,443  8,151    19,370
Kentucky..................................   103,392    33,939    95,979    58,035
Maine.....................................    45,644    57,462    41,947    69,637
Maryland.................................    63 739    22,110    40,264    27,351
Massachusetts..............................    70,360    98,306    25,671    91,980
Michigan.......................    55,865    80,819    67,708    96,746
Minnesota..................................    32 663    35,809    15,755    35,137
New Hampshire...........................    32,663    35,809    30,481    35.137
New Jersey.............................    67,468    51,114    64,336    67,525
New York.................................   373,029   335,099   352,526   366,315
Ohio.....................................   240,622   243,605   213,606   256.302
Pennsylvania.....................   267,751   266,824   290,096   307,274
Rhode Island...............................          5,340     7,554      2,816      8,197
Vermont..................         11,510    31,694    11.292    34,117
West Virginia........................    13,393    14,694    14,943    20,573
Wisconsin.........68,873    73, 637    55,414    79,318
Total............................... 1,628,183 1,578,748 1,457,146 1,741,135
* In the elections in Connecticut, April, 1868, the whole number of votes cast was
97,761. Of which the Democratic candidate for Governor received 49,666; and the
Republican candidate 48,095-a Democratic majority of 1,571.




164           THE TRUE HOPE OF THE SOUTH.
the elections of 1867. If the voice of these elections has not
been so commanding as to create a pause in the despotic and
reckless course of Congress, it at least assures that it will soon
summon to power those who will execute its will.
Our political system is singularly impressible by popular
sentiment; it has no permanent depositories of power; it admits
no life tenures of political office; it is emphatically a government of public opinion. The peculiarity of popular revolutions,
especially in America, is that the reactionary forces carry the
people further in opposite direction than those which previously impelled them.  When the reaction does occur from
the boundary of Radicalism, we may expect that it will go over
a wide ground and to a point even of extreme virtue.
The idea of Butler that an accidental Radical majority in
the Senate, for six years to come, can stand against whatever
contrary influences there may be in all other departments of
the Government, and in all other organs of public opinion, is
as preposterous as it is insolent. There are limits to human
effrontery; limits where even the vilest and most audacious
men cease to brave public opinion, and sink in their own shame.
In the case proposed by Butler, the Senate could not for a
week survive the storm of public opinion.
" There are times, " says an eloquent Senator, " when public
opinion is like a placid stream gently flowing within its banks,
when slight obstacles may for a time arrest, or change, or divert
its course. Then it may be saia, the voice of the people is the
voice of the politicians; the voice of the people is the will of
a party.  But there are other times when the heavens are
overcast, the rains have descended, ahd the floods have come,
that its majestic current rolls on, emblem of wrath and power,
when resistance maddens its fury and increases its strength.




THE TRUE HOPE 01' THE SOUTH.              165
Then it overflows its banks. The barriers of party caucusses
and politicians are all swept away, and become mere flood-wood
on the surface of the troubled waters. The voice of the people
is no longer then the voice of politicians; then it is that the
voice of the people is the voice of God. "
Let us come back to the true hope of the South.  It is to
enter bravely with new allies and new auspices the contest for
the supremacy of the white man, and with it the preservation
of the dearest political traditions of our country.  "WHITE"
is the winning word, says a North Carolina paper, and left us
never be done repeating it. The very word moves the instincts
of the voting population of the North; it is the irresistible sympathy of races, which willnot, cannot fail, when it comes to the
last hug of the conflict, and perhaps blood spots the arena. It
is this instinct which the South will at last summon to her aid,
when her extremity demands it.
We admire a recent exhibition of courage on the part of
South Carolina, a manly and hopeful protest which she has
sent up to Washington against the Constitution enforced upon
her in the farce of restoration.  "You may make us pass, "
say the protestants, ",under the yoke and we shall have to do
so, but by every means which God and Congress have left us
under the Constitution and laws, we will resist this domination
of an inferiour race by peaceful means, by political efforts, by
industrial agencies.  We will carry on this political contest
until we regain the control which of right belongs to the power
of mind and the influence of virtue. "  These words are as
sensible as they are noble; they contain the best and bravest
spirit of the South.
The appeal of the South to the natural affections of race is
one that essentially transcends all considerations of mere politi



166              THE TRUE HOPE OP THE SOUTH.
cal party.  It is an appeal reserved for the last extremity; the
power of which may not be  developed, when  the  question is
merely speculative, but which essentially and instantly developes
itself, when the issue becomes practical, and the contest grows
to one of force. The public has lately had an assurance from
a distinguished military officer, that, however the army of the
United States may be attached to General Grant, and obedient
to the orders of the political party in power, it would never
serve as an ally of the Negro in a war of races. "I earnestly
wish, " writes Gen. Thomas Ewing, " to be in accord with the
great party of my Kansas and army friends, and still hope to
unite with them  in supporting -General Grant for  President.
But I want first to know whether he approves the Reconstruction measures; for if he does, I cannot support him. I regard
them  as mischievous-begot of revenge, misdirected  philanthropy and lust of power. *  * * Such a government cannot long
have the heartfelt sympathy of any large body of white men
anywhere. Blood is thicker than water, and Northern whites
will sympathize with Southern whites in their struggle to shake
off the incubus of Negro rule. If there were no prejudice of
race to affect their action, the Northern people would still
refuse to reproduce in the States of the Union, Hayti or San
Domingo, * or any other government and civilization the Negro
race has established since the flood* "
* The allusion to the story of San Domingo is such a worn commonplace in recent
American speeches that the public appears, i'om the very triteness of the'reference, to
have lost distinct recollections of the event. Few know this terrible history, so commonly referred to. A glance at it in the pages of a single writer (Bryant Edwards) is
not out of place here.
"To detail," says the author, " the various conflicts, skirmishes, massacres, and scenes
of slaughter which this exterminating war produced, were to offer a disgusting and
fiightill picture-a combination of horrours wherein we should behold cruelties unexampled in the annals of mankind; human blood poured forth in torrents; the earth
blackened with ashes, and the air tainted with pestilence. It was computed that within
two months after the revolt first began, upward of two thousand white persons, of all




THE TRUE HOPE OF THE SOUTH.                              167
Meantime, while the affection of race  has not yet been fully
summoned in the contest, the great point of advantage with the
South is that the Radical party has necessarily identified its
scheme of Negro supremacy with revolutionary designs upon the
Constitution, and that the contest is thus broadly translated
into a war of liberty. To enforce its scheme of Reconstruction,
Congress has found it necessary to break through the restraints
of the Constitution; to bind and gag the South with military
rule; to besot the conscience of the Government; to buy the souls
of men; to drug Grant; to close its doors alike to the interference  of  Executive  authority  or  that of  public  opinion;
to erect itself into a revolutionary body. The issue is thus
widened, and the question of the Negro acquires all the significance of a second rebellion;-for, as President Johnson says:
"To attack and attempt the disruption  of the Government by
armed combinations and military force is no more dangerous to
conditions and ages, had been massacred; that one hundred and eighty sugar plantations
and about nine hundred coffee, cotton and indigo settlements had been destroyed (the
buildings thereon being consumed by fire), and one thousand two hundred Christian
families reduced from opulence to such a state of misery as to depend altogether for
their clothing and sustenance on public and private charity I Of the insurgents it was
reckoned that upwards of ten thousand had perished by the sword or by famine, and
some hundreds by the hands of the executioner I "
On one occasion, we are told, the standard of the insurgents was " the body of a white
infant which they had recently impaled on a stake.*    "A poor man, named Robert, a
carpenter by trade, endeavouring to conceal himself from the notice of the rebels, was
discovered in his hiding-place. The savages declared he should die in the way of his
occupation. Accordingly they bound him between two boards, and deliberately sawed
him asunder! * *
" All the white and even the mulatto children whose fathers had not joined in the
revolt were murdered without exception, frequently before the eyes or clinging to the
bosoms of their mothers." * * *
"In the neighbourhood of Jeremie a body of mulattoes attacked the house of Mons.
Lejourne and secured the persons both of him and his wife. This unfortunate womanmy hand trembles while I write-was far advanced in pregnancy. The monsters, whose
prisoner she was, having first murdered her husband in her presence, ripped her up alive
and threw the infant to the hogs. They then (how shall I relate it?) sewed up the head
of the murdered husband in!! Such are thy triumphs, philanthropy   And such
an act was committed by mulattoes, some of whom had received an education in France I
What may have been the deeds of the untaught Negroes I "




168          THE TRUE HOPE OF THE SOUTII.
the life of the nation than an attempt to revolutionize and undermine it by a disregard and destruction of the safeguards,
thrown around the liberties of the people in the Constitution."
This is the true breadth of the question-and the South
will do well to seize and hold it, for here on this ground will
be the dominant line and crest of the battle, here the point of
victory.  It is the august cause of the Constitution; and it is
the good fortune of the South to represent in this high and important contest not only the conservative, but the traditional
party of the country. It is the party which stands on the defensive, making its stronghold in the ancient fabrics of the
Government, uplifting the banner of the Constitution, appealing to all there is of veneration for the past, reviving the lessons of ancestral wisdom-those of Jefferson and Madisonand putting these grand and powerful appeals against a faction,
whose whole purpose is to interpret the past war as a political
revolution, and to make it the era of departure from the tried
and established standards of the past.
We come to ask: what is the true, historical significance of
the past war? And in the light of this question, we perceive
but two great parties: one contending that the war decided
only the certain special questions for which it was invoked,
and that the country is re-committed to the Constitution as
formerly, and must be recalled to the condition and law of the
past; the other violently construing the war as a pervading
revolution in the body politic, trying to establish upon it a
vital change. of polity, and prone to all the new and rash experiments of reformers. It is hardly necessary to say which
of these two parties is logically the stronger, and more_likely
to triumph in the end. The power of the first is its appeal to
the past, the engagement of all the emotions summed in the




THE TRUE HOPE OF THE SOUTH.               169
word" patriotism."  The true hope of the South, the excellent fortune of the South is, that in her peculiar contest for the
recovery of her liberties, and her protection against the revengeful and revolutionary design that would dedicate her to the
Negro, she not only appeals to the instincts of race, but she
embraces the great monuments of law and tradition in the
country, clinging to them-these sacred altars of safety-under
the banner of the Constitution, and beneath the pointed shields
of the fathers of the republic. Under this banner she is happily ranged in the contest; here is her strength, and hope,
and animation, and assurance of victory; in hoc signo vinces.
The political contest at Washington is at last resolved into
a re-assertion of the Constitution, on one side, and an open and
revolutionary defiance on the other, an experiment of disorder
and rebellion. It is in this sense that President Johnson has
acted, rather than in any lower sense of fealty to the Democratic party, or peculiar affection for the South. We must acquit
him of both these charges, when we find him in every conjuncture, and at every point of contact with Congress, proclaiming
the virtue of the Constitution, and disdaining every lower argument or appeal.  The sum of his administration so far is: an
anxious desire to restore the country to the condition of the
Constitution, to terminate the war at the boundary of the Constitution; hence his policy for an early restoration of the Union,
with a provisional government the only stepping-stone to ithence his opposition to all extra-constitutional terms imposed
upon the South, to Negro suffrage, to probationary periods of
military law, to all artifices of-delay-hence his vetoes of the
legislation of Congress to make an impossible problem of Reconstruction, and to involve with it an even greater element of
discord than that which the late war extinguished. This is the
8




170               THE TRUE HOPE OF THE SOUTH
extent of his offence to Congress-this the extent of those high
titles of fame he will hold in history, when the judgments of
mere party are humbled and forgotten.
But it is said the President has no jurisdiction, no constitutional care of the subject of Reconstruction; that his recommendations of policy thereon have been in derogation of the
rights  and  conscience  of Congress.   Now, whatever may  be
said in a technical point of view, it must be remembered that
the President as the constitutional head of the nation has the
right to  advise  and recommend on  all subjects;  that in  our
political systemhe is the source of all enlightenment and advice.*
* We notice that General Grant, in accepting the Radical nomination for President,
assumes a certain virtue in promising that, in case of his election, he will have no policy
of his own, but will obey "the will of the people" etc. It is perhaps the least happy of
the political brevities of a man not much given to words. As President of the United
States he can only know "the will of the people " through Congress, and in obeying that
body he becomes the servile representative of the dominant faction of Radicalism, taking
all of his policy from the propaganda of such men as Stevens, Butler, Bingham, etc.
But if he did not mean this, if he meant nothing practical, and only designed a demagog.
ical phrase, then the platitude is puerile and shallow enough to be characteristic of a
mind quite as much at loss for ideas as for words. " The will of the people" is the
catch-phrase of a poor intellect, and Grant has, no doubt, had recourse to the political
copy-book for an easy moral sentence.
Practically, the words cannot be taken as less than a servile subscription to the Radical
majority in Congress. But even independent of party sense, they contain a theory of the
President's office, so mean, that we fervently hope the utterer will never be permitted to
disgrace it. General Grant is mistaken in supposing that the office of the President of
the United States is mechanically to execute the laws, and that it is a virtue to have no
policy of his own. Here he has fallen into the errour of a low mind, and has shown an
utter want of appreciation of the dignity of the Presidential office. If his theory were
correct, then any stick might answer for President; and it would be impossible to explain
how an officer, who can originate nothing, who is incapable of any "policy" of his own,
who was simply to register the edicts and perform the bidding of other branches of the
Government, could yet be esteemed the first in honour and dignity, and stand at the
head of the nation.
The infelicitous speech of Grant gives occasion for a commentary on the true nature
of the Presidential office, confused as it has been by recent events. The President of
the United States is vastly more than an executor of the laws, and it is both legitimate
and proper for him to have a "policy " on all public questions. In our political system
the President is the fountain of advice, the source of all political enlightenment; in his
recommendations to Congress he is capable of advising and instructing on all subjects;
he is looked to by the nation for universal moral counsel. This is the true and lofty interpretation of the President's office; and to say that he shall have no " policy " on cer.




THE TRUE HOPE OF THE SOUTH.                             171
By the way, an anxious correspondent in New  Jersey has  recently put this neat and novel question to Mr. Greeley of the New
York Tribune:   If Congress has excluded  the representation
of the South in its body, how is it that it assumes to legislate
for it on the subject of Reconstruction-representation  being
the only and sole source and condition of Congressional authority; or  in  the  very  words  of the  correspondent:   "If  the
President be President of the whole country, the Supreme
Court the Supreme Court for the whole country, and Congress,
Congress only for the States represented, is it not evident that
the whole business of Reconstruction is entirely out of the
tain subjects, because Congress alone has the right to legislate upon them, is to belittle
his great office into a servile acquiescence, and to make it a matter of no account who
may dwell in the White House. We are aware that it has become recently fashionable
thus to speak of the President as a cypher; it is part, indeed, of an attempt to erect Congress into a despotic tribunal; and it has become critically important that we should re-adjust our notions oi the President's true position in the Government and restore it to its
traditional importance. The most eager contests in our political history have been as to
who shall be President; the nation has looked on him as its head, and the world has derived opinions of particular periods of our history from the character and conduct of the
men who have for the time filled what was considered the first office in the gift of their
countrymen. The President is thus something more than an "Executive Chair, " a
mechanical contrivance to carry out the laws; he is the prime political counselor of the
nation, dispensing his advice periodically through the country; and to be without a
"policy" in these circumstances would be simply to ignore his office and to neglect
his duties.
We want a President with a policy-an abundant policy-penetrating every concern
oi the country, embracing all its cares, ready to be questioned and challenged by every
interest in the lrnd. This is our idea of a President: a man ready to advise the country
in all respects, giving tone to its mind on all subjects, in sympathy with all its forms of
intelligence; not a creature of two words, skulking behind non-committals, insisting that
he has "no policy," which means in fact that he has no ideas. Save us from this inane
creature, shuffling his platitudes and catch-words about "the will of the people," and
insisting that there are no other elements to be considered than the pleasure of Congress,
or the breath of the multitude. The science of government is a large and intricate one:
there are other things beside "the will of the people "-laws, institutions, precedents,
traditions, intelligence. We might pardon General Grant's "no-policy" speech as a
piece of wretched tyroism in politics, the fault of ignorance, but for the meanness of the
sentiment, his willingness to degrade an office honoured by the most illustrious memories
in America to the position of an instrument of the Radical party in Congress. If he
hopes to purchase the office by advertising his willingness to degrade it, he has miscalculated the sentiment of the people, and the respect they have always insisted on bestowing
upon the first office in their gift




172          THE TRUE HOPE OF THE SOUTH.
province of Congress, and belongs exclusively to the President
and the Supreme Court?"  This New Jersey correspondent ig
evidently anxious, and a sincere inquirer after the truth. He
implores Mr. Greeley not to "beat around the bush," but to
"answer squarely and honestly," as then he will "hit the
right nail fairly on the head for thousands."
The New Jersey correspondent has made a neat and unanswerable argument.  Mr. Greeley is unable to reply to it;
so he tries the reductio ad absurdum, and declares the doctrine
of his correspondent a short cut to Secession and Revolution.
Suppose, he says, the little State of Delaware was to refuse to
send representatives to Congress, then by the correspondent's
logic, she might nullify the acts of Congress, defy the revenue
laws, land free goods to be distributed far and wide, and bankrupt the Government, while disintegrating and collapsing the
Union.  This is the reply of Mr. Greeley.  But it contains a
fallacy as plain as a pike-staff-letting alone the figure of the
correspondent about the nail and hammer. In the case supposed by Mr. Greeley, Delaware would be unrepresented by
her own wrong; to be sure, she must take the consequences ot
her own wicked election.  But the ten Southern States are
unrepresented, not by their own wrong; they have sent representatives to Congress; they have besieged its halls by all sorts
of application and argument for their admission; and when
Congress, by its own act, and deliberately, excludes them, and
denies representation to these States, it debars the right to
legislate for them, it cuts off "the sole source and condition of
Congressional authority."  Mr. Greeley cannot answer the
question of his correspondent; it is novel, incisive, and goes to
the very heart of the controversy.
A few words are appropriate here of the spirit which Presi



THE TRUE HOPE OF THE SOUTTH              173
dent Johnson has displayed in his collisions with Congress; for
we are persuaded it is precisely this spirit that should be communicated to the South-that contains whatever there is of
hope for her, and points the path to victory.
He has been patient, self-continent, profuse in sacrifice, and
firm and sovereign in his trust of the ultimate result. There
is one trait in the character of Mr. Johnson which has never
failed of the admiration of the Southern people, in any shape
or style of man, and which, even in the heats and resentments
of the late war, obtained respect for him from the most violent
Secessionists. It is his high, personal courage. No politician
in the country has a more abundant record of this virtue.
The man who on the threshold of the war could face the combination formed against him in the Senate by the most violent
representatives of the South there, making him their especial
target, converging their weapons upon him and say in front of
the audacious array: " these two eyes never looked upon any
being in the shape of mortal man that this heart of mine
feared;" the man who, in 1861, confronted a mob at a railroad station in Virginia and, by a gleam of high courage in
his face, overawed and disarmed them; the man who, when the
Confederate armies overran Tennessee, and the Federal Gen.
eral Buell was thought to exhibit signs of despair, could
declare in the capital of that State: " any one who talks of surrendering I will shoot; " the man who has firmly and conscientiously exercised the high office of President against the
clamours and threats of a faction, sworn to take his official life,
murder him politically and cast his flesh to the black images of
their idolatry, must, indeed, have a firm and mettlesome spirit
-possesses, indeed, that bravery of soul which is at once the
auxiliary and ornament of the highest virtues.




174.         THE TRUE HOPE OF THE SOUTH.
Let this, too, be observed to his honour. The course of his
administration has been to abdicate power and patronage; to
chastise personal ambition; to overcome temptations, greater
than ever assailed any predecessor in his office. Had he chosen
the part of a Cromwell or a Napoleon, a servile legislative assembly. would have been at hand to prompt and sustain him in the
character of usurper and to constitute him the greatest military despot of modern times.  Had he acquiesced in the
scheme of Reconstruction prepared by Congress, he would
have secured its bad alliance, and, through his office as commander in-chief, have found himself absolute master of the
lives and fortunes of ten millions of people residing in the military districts of the South. It was the spectacle of a legislative assembly, in order to gratify its political passions,
not only offering the executive chief despotic powers, but
prompting him to their assumption and eager for his accept.
ance.  Congress laid at his feet the absolute empire of nearly
one half of the country, a patronage the most enormous in
history; and had he accepted them, he might well have defied
the feeble discontent of the South, while Congress would have
been complaisant and he would have blazed in the encomiums
of the most numerous party in the North. What then con.
strained this man, thus tempted-the temptation safe, the
temptation even calculated on a balance of popularity for the
acceptance-to deny and spurn it; to mortify his ambition, to rejectthe counsels of the most numerous, to sacrifice power and
popularity together-what but the high, severe overruling
sense of duty, which absolves from his selfishness, and makes
him the sublime minister of the eternal laws of truth and
justice.
The opposition of President Johnson to Congress never re



THE TRUE HOPE OF THE SOUTH.               175
coiled at the threat of Impeachment. Thus, although it had been
possible for him to have been the idol of Congress, and to have
soared on its adulation, the country has lately seen him standing in uncertainty and submission, an accused man at its bar!
The sublime choice is all his own. We believe his brave heart
in that noble utterance to the Senate of the United States,
when the motion to impeach him was suspended over his head,
and the sword had not yet descended: "If I had been fully advised when I removed Mr. Stanton, that in thus defending the trust committed to my care my own removal was sure
to follow, I would not have hesitated. "
Looking back upon the administration of Mr. Johnson,
we are  struck  with its evidences of self-negation.  Yet,
these denials are the price' of true greatness, at once the
discipline and the policy  of the loftiest ambition.  He
has  chosen the  narrow  path-that path  which though
beset with difficulties and hunted and hounded by persecutions,
and planted with thorns, and lost in many parts to the world's
observation, ascends at last from the black and poisonous
shades and passes through fields of glory to the illuminated
portals of History.  Let the South emulate his course, his
self-sacrificing policy, his brave patience, his enduring resolution. There is nothing like a single, high, personal example to
animate and instruct a distressed and bewildered people; and
fortunately the South has it in Andrew Johnson. There is no
better, briefer lesson for the people of the South than that every
man of.them should practice this high example. Once this man,
in a crisis, not greater than that of to-day, standing in the
Senate of the United States'before a close array of hostile
faces said: "I have taken. my position; and when the tug
comes, when Greek shall meet Greek, and our rights are




~176     THE TRUE HOPE OF THE SOUTH.
refused, after all honourable means shall have been exhausted,
then it is that I will perish in the last breach; yes, in the
language of the patriot Emmet,'I will dispute every inch of
ground; I will burn every blade of grass; and the last
intrenchment of Freedom shall be my grave!' "
These are thrilling, memorable words.  They suit the present contest of liberty; they are fit for the inspiration of the
South.  Let us repeat them and breathe our souls into them,
and put them  as fire into our hearts.  No cause is ever lost
for the true and noble; the soul of the brave man defies the
accidents of fortune, and finds an ultimate inspiration in itself,
though fate wreaks its worst upon his life, and tortures, and
blackens it, and tears the very flesh from the immortal spirit.
What man  of the South will not repeat the words of
Richelieu:
(Richelieu)-" Old-childless-friendless-broken;-all forsakeAll-all-but-"
(Joseph)-" What?"
(Richelieu)-" The indomitable heart
Oi Armand Richelieu! 
Let us never despair.  Hope is beautiful; it is grand; it is
the property of noble souls, "the possession forever" of the
destitute and desolate. Only the weak and mean surrender to
despair.   Come trouble in the life of the brave man-come
falsehood and injustice and loss and scandal; come the finger
of scorn and the arrow of misfortune; come all the multitude
and baneful train of sorrows, and yet, yet he will hope. It is
God's  own  law, which  only the weakness and  crime ol
humanity pervert.  There are times when the heavens grow
dark, and when wild, bitter winds wail in the great hollowness
around us, and the heart of man sinks in contemplation of the




THE TRUE HOPE Of THE SOUTH.                   177
scene; but to the patient the cloud will break at last, the
glorious sun will ride into the golden gate, and the chambers
of peace and beauty will again be hung up in the sky.
IMPEACHMENT.
The true revolutionary sense of the proceeding against the President-Its relations to
Reconstruction-Errour of the Radical party-Growth of public interest in Impeachment-Anticipations of "the future historian"-Value of Impeachment as a moral
exhibition.
We have already referred to the late Impeachment of the
President as logically part'of the Reconstruction scheme, the
culmination of the effort to nullify the restraints of the Executive authority upon the will of Congress which designed to govern alone in the South, and to complete there an unqualified
despotism.  It is well known that the immediate question of
Mr. Johnson's attempt to remove Secretary Stanton from the
War Office was but the slight occasion of his arraignment, and
that the real difficulty in the mind of the Radical party was,
that the President was an impediment to their reckless and
revolutionary policy.
It was fortunate, however, for the country that Impeachment
was lodged on this particular issue and that personal resentments of the Radical party clouded their usual prudent
judgment.  In no part of the general scheme of the Radicals
could an issue have been made with more disadvantage to
them, or one better exhibiting the President to public sympathy, besides putting him on his strongest grounds.'It was
so complicated by additions of personal insult and outrage to
8*




178              THE TRUE HOPE OF THE SOUTH.
the  President; it contained  so  many  elements, was such  a
combination of injustice, that we may congratulate the country
that the Radical party, in its passion, fell into the errour of
making a decisive question where the aggravation of circumstances was all against themselves, and where, so to speak,
prejudices  to  their  disfavour necessarily accumulated on the
side issues. The question was thus multiplied in a remarkable
sentence  of a speech  of Mr. Eldridge, Democrat from  Wisconsin: "How  is it possible  for this Government of several
co.-equal departments to exist, when they are not only warring
with each other, but when one keeps a spy, a common informer
in the confidential councils of the other, and more than that a
known and determined enemy, holding his position against his
own professed convictions of constitutional right and duty!   *
*No better argument could have been devised for the President in the case of Impeachment-no more admirable vindication of his right to control the inferiour executive
offices of his Administration than that contained in the speech of Mr. Thaddeus Stevens,
before he had grown gray in the services of political iniquity. The extract is from a
speech of this man, in 1837, on the question of amending the State Constitution of
Pennsylvania, so as to deprive the Governor of powers similar to those lately wrested
from the President of the United States. If Mr. Stevens had only repeated the same
sentiments at the bar of the United States Senate, mutatis mutandis, he would have
gone to the extreme lengths of the Democratic party, and have even outbid the arguments of the President's counsel.  Such is the inconsistency of public men in our
unhappy country, wno sacrifice all the truth and principle of earlier days to schemes of
personal ambition and afterthoughts of party I
" Having reluctantly but inevitably come to the mournful conclusion, that all the vital
parts of this venerable and hitherto venerated Constitution of ours are given over to
immolation, as a sacrifice to the restless spirit of change which has taken possession of
this Convention, I do not address you on this occasion with the hope of staying the hand
of destruction which is raised against it; but simply to offer reasons which, to my mind,
are all-powerful for resisting the depredations which are making upon this article of the
great charter of our rights. * w Why take the appointment of the Heads of Departments, Surveyor General, Attorney General, Secretary of the Land Office, and Auditor
General, from the Governor?  They are essentially a part of his Cabinet.  His own
Comfort, and the comfort of each of them, as well as the public interest, require that
there should be perfect harmony and unity of views and action among them.
"But if you take the appointr.( nts from the Governor. it may, and probably often will
happen, that he will be of one party, and entertain one set of principles, and they be of
another party, and hold entirely opposite principles; discord and opposition must then
disturb their counsels, and injure the interests of the State. * * * The Governor and




THE TRUE HOPE OF THE SOUTH.                              179
Here was a whole bundle of questions; and each multiple of
the proposition was in favour of the President and the country,
as against Congress.    The latter, indeed, could not have tried
a weaker link in the  lengthened  chain  of. "Reconstruction."
It could  not have  made up a case  more  against  itself; nor
could  the  country  have  had a more  favourable  trial of its
liberties, nor the South a better test of its hopes than in this
proceeding against the President, in which the Radical party
clearly   admitted  personal malice  at  the  cost  of  political
prudence. The country had a large, visible stake in the trial;
the South had peculiar interests and hopes bound up in it;
while what might have been  the  immediate  personal  consequences to the President was of comparatively little concern,
even to himself, since we were well assured that he was equally
able to endure martyrdom sublimely, as to bear victory gracefully, in behalf of patriotism, and in vindication of truth.
the Senate would either be of the same political party or hostile parties. If of the same
party, the Senate would be no check upon the Governor, as there would be perfect concert before the nomination, and therefore this supervising power would be useless. If
they were of hostile pdrties, constant and bitter collisions would exist between them,
which would greatly disturb the faithful discharge of their other duties. * * * This
work of ruin seems not to be exclusively confined to. one party.  True, all the members
of the one party, whatever might have been their views when they came here, now act
in perfect concert in stabbing the Constitution.
" They cunningly enough suppose, that if this amendment prevails, they can always
secure the spoils of office, either through the Governor or the Senate, as they maw
always fairly calculate in having one of them in their favour. For, when the burdens
heaped upon the people by that party become so heavy that they can no longer be borne,
and their Governor is hurled from power, the Senate is not always also changed. Thus
patronage being their object, they act unitedly.  While many gentlemen of the other
party, with an ostentatious magnanimity and a childish simplicity, either from the mistaken dictates of conscience, or to show their perfect independence and freedom from
party trammels, join them in their headlong course. The struggle here, therefore, is a
vain one. But I have full confidence in a steady and disinterested people; disinterested
as to the fate of parties, but deeply interested in the welfare of the State, and the protection of the lives, the liberty, and the property of its citizens.  Send forth to them this
mangled, mutilated, and deformed Constitution, and they will put their seal of condemnation upon it; and they will still live and prosper under the well-tried charter which
their wise and honest fathers left-them."




180         THE TRUE HOPE OF THE SOUTH,
Happily, these proceedings have terminated substantially in
favour of the President, and the Radical party reels from the
bar of the Senate with a wound reaching to its vitals. There
is danger, however, that the country may value this success
too highly; it is certainly not a triumph to be reposed upon;
the wound to Radicalism is serious but not necessarily mortal;
and it is only under a shower of blows that we can dispatch
the monster.  Something has been gained for constitutional
liberty and for the " lost cause;" but it is rather new auspices
and hopes than perfected results.
In looking back upon Impeachment we must admit that, for
some time, there was a light and unbecoming display of public
attention, with regard to an event unparalleled in American
annals, that was one of the most serious and fearful signs of
the times. The lesson of history is, that popular impassiseness is that condition in which Despotism easily accomplishes
its purposes, and that levity is the frequent mood, the shallow
and hideous mask, of the worst and cruelest revolutions. The
question of Impeachment was so grossly misrepresented as one
of mere personal consequences, that it was astonishing how
such deception could be practiced even for the shortest time
upon the boasted intelligence of our people. The true impoltance of the proceeding was revolutionary; it was the question
of the integrity and independence of the Executive Department of the Government; the question whether we were to
have a President, as in past times, or a cypher, without power
even to regulate his political household; the question whether
Congress was at once to ascend to the eminence of Despotism,
and make the President of the United States its convenient
creature, under the constant threat of impeachment,
"The hangman's whip, to keep the wretch i order."




THE TRUE HOPE OF THE SOUTH.              181
As the trial of the President progressed, public opinion
seems to have gradually risen to the level of its importance;
and the spectacular curiosity at Washington was replaced by
a serious interest, until at last the vote was taken on the most
important article, on the 15th of May, at the height of one of
the most memorable excitements in  the history of our
country.
We rejoice that the ultimate effect of Impeachment has been
to betray the revolutionary design of Congress, and draw it
from the ambuscade of false and hollow pretenses.  These,
indeed, have been fortunate and timely revelations.  When
the country saw Congress proceeding to the last extremity to
destroy the independence of the Executive office, it was not
likely on due reflection to ascribe so important a movement to
any particular offenses of Mr. Johnson, especially since the
Radical party constantly endeavoured to sink the question of
his guilt or innocence in the proceedings; it perceived a
permanent design, a distinct revolutionary purpose; and it at
last appeared to be fully awakened to meet and to contest it.
The Radical party logically became by Impeachment a revolutionary party; its act, in this particular, connected with the
whole scheme of Reconstruction, was of a piece with military
domination and Negro suffrage and other misgovernment; and
the distinction of Impeachment, in the despotic series, was
only that the outrage was conspicuous and aggravated.
The future historian who will write on the subject of the
Impeachment of the President of the United States will be
impressed by the novelty of the event, and will naturally find
occasion in this cause celabre to measure the morals of political
life in America.  He will notice its dramatic accessories, and
produce a narrative varying between history and biography.




182         THE TRUE HOPE OF THE SOUTH.
IHe will be struck by the popular impassiveness in which the
Impeachment was commenced; but he will find that suct
impassiveness ensued from ignorance and misrepresentation.
and will discover the increase of public interest until it
mounted to the true importance of the event and apprehended
its revolutionary significance.  He will be surprised at the
levity and insolence with which the President's accusers conducted these grave proceedings. He will notice the twitting
debate in Congress, the jocose allusion, the amusement of the
House when Butler drew the picture of Johnson returning to
Tennessee at railroad speed, or when the bottled imp described
the lofty argument, in which the President made his last appeal
for the Constitution as " a plea of not guilty, with a stump
speech in the belly."  But what will most excite his attention
and employ his reflection will be the exhibition of moral
depravity in our public life, which attempted to make a purely
political speculation of the highest judicial proceeding known
to our laws. He will curiously notice in all the abundant
commentaries of the press, that the question of guilt or innocence was invariably subordinated to that of party expediency;
that the votes of Senators were calculated with reference to
the discipline of a party, or the prospect of a Presidential
nomination, or some concern of patronage; in short, with
reference to anything else than that issue of guilty or not
guilty, which has generally been supposed to be the end of a
judicial investigation. He will find that these vile calculations
of the trial were made every day in the newspapers without
exciting reproof or alarming the conscience of any one.  In
this single circumstance he will see the moral degradation to
which public life in this country tqnds; and his pen will
naturally pass to a broad commentary on the corruption of our




THE TRUE HOPE OF THE SOUTH.               1.83
politics which, commencing in the war, accumulated in the
recess of Impeachment and threatened to stagnate in the
chamber of the United States Senate.
Yet at the end there will be something to record of triumphant vindication of our people from these first reflections, of
noble satisfaction in the disproof of those vile calculations of
votes on the score of party policy. It will be seen that those
calculations were, at least to some extent, disappointed; and
indeed, in this moral display in our public life, the vote acquitting the President obtains an interest which vies with that of
immediate political consequences. By this vote, a victory of
law was proclaimed; a severe, if not a fatal wound, was given
to a party that had heretofore been as insolent as it was injurious; an exhibition of moral integrity was made in one of the
highest places in the land; and an event took place that for
once adorned the history of our whole people.
But a story of disgrace yet lingers.  There is a page in
history that cannot be expunged, that will keep in infamous
memory all the vile resorts of the Radical party, their appliances to procure conviction, their attempts to bring to bear
upon men sitting in a judicial capacity the force of the
organization, discipline, opinions and wishes of a political
party.  We give- the mildest historical phrase to the interference of the Radical party, the recollections of which are so
recent. It will rankle in the memory of Impeachment.  All
through the last week of the trial, the Radical journals teemed
with efforts to use the force of asserted local opinions on the
approaching judgment of the Senate; and it is notorious that
a deliberate appeal, signed by the Radical Executive Commit.
tee, went from Washington to procure from all parts of the
country the manifestoes of political party to affect the High
Court in its brief period of advisement.




184         THE TRUE HOPE OF THE SOUTH.
We have a peculiar satisfaction in the acquittal of the
President, when we contemplate the amount of influence
summoned from every extremity to procure a different result.
This reflection not only confirms the triumph of justice, and
gives additional pangs to the defeat of the Radicals, but it
exhibits an amount of virtue, of moral integrity in the highest
of public bodies known in America, that must be pleasing to
our national pride, and conspicuously honourable in the eyes
of the world.  It is in this exalted interest that the vote in
the Senate will be recorded in history.  It is, indeed, an
interest which no party can appropriate, which belongs to the
entire community, and which will at once be recognized by all
persons who have at heart the fame of the country, and
consider the moral vindication that Impeachment has afforded
even superiour to its justification of a political cause.




V.
DUTY OF THE WHOLE COUNTRY.
THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY.
Three duties of the country-Summary of the virtues of the Democratic party-Singular
attempt of the Republican party, in 1861, to appropriate Democratic principlesIts return to Consolidation-Renewed appeal of the Democratic party to " timehonoured principles."
There are three points to be considered in that political regeneration which is the true hope of the South-three great
duties of the country.
1. To return to the past, over the tract of the war, to re-assert the authority of the Constitution, to revive the political
traditions of the country, to consult anew the fathers of the
Republic, and draw  from these ancestral lessons  instruction
and inspiration meet for the occasion.
2. To let the Negro severely alone, as a subject of political
controversy, and, after properly providing for him in matters of
civil rights, and doing for him the common offices of humanity,
to leave him to gravitate to the condition which nature and experienoe shall assign him.




186          DUTY OF THE WHOLE COUNTRY.
3. To organize into some party that shall override all sectional questions, that shall be coincident with the Constitution,
and make no other test than fidelity to this instrument, developing the patriotism of the country within its limits and under
its standards.
If any other party fulfills this condition better than the
Democratic party, then let all patriots embrace it, whatever its
name, and devote to it their names and services and fortunes.
Here we have a party, brave and coherent; a remarkable party
-remarkable, because it, alone, in the history of political
opinions in this country, has maintained its organization since
the foundations of the Government; because, it has ruled the
country in long seasons of prosperity, and obtained the tests of
experience and the inspirations of victory; because, it has administered the Government for much the better half of its
existence; because, it is attended by the most glorious recollections in American history, and by the eclat of immortal
names; because, in all times and circumstances, it has avowed
the Constitution, and made it the paramount issue; because,
recognizing in the vital articles of its own existence the principle of decentralization, it is constantly capable of an expansion
limited only by the length and breadth of the American Union,
and attending with equal steps the growth and progress of the
country.  It is this principle of decentralization, peculiar at
once to the Democratic party, and-to what may be called the
political system of America, that manages and harmonizes the
diversity of interests in our great Union; that secures individual rights; and that supports the inestimable doctrines of local
independence and self-government.  Of these doctrines an eloquent Democrat has written:  " Without them the Union will
be forever endangered.  With them it will fulfill the hopes and




DUTY OF THE WHOLE COUNTRY.               187
prayers of all patriots. They furnish the key to unlock the
magic chambers of our future.  They are the safe and golden
mean between the extremes of faction ""The wisdom of a thousand years
Is in them.* * * * * *
Turning to scorn, with lips divine,
The falsehood of extremes."
The Democratic is the only existing party in the country
that boasts "time-honoured principles."  Judged by the resuits it has accomplished-and there is no juster test-it has
been one of the most beneficent parties in history. When Mr.
Seward boasted, in 1860, that the Republican party was about
to take control at Washington, Mr. Hammond, a distinguished
Senator from South Carolina, replied that the Democratic party
would surrender the country " without a stain upon her honour,
boundless in her prosperity, incalculable in her strength, the
wonder and admiration of the world."  He described the
achievements of that party, continuing his reply to Mr. Seward:
" We have kept the government conservative to the great purposes of government. We have placed her and kept her upon
the Constitution; and that has been the cause of your peace
and prosperity. Time will show what you will make of her;
but no time can ever diminish our glory or your responsibility.'
That the Democratic party should have maintained not only
its organization, but a distinct identity for so long a period and
through so many changes in our experience as a nation; and
that even it should have survived the mutations of the past war,
is a remarkable phenomenon and testifies to an extraordinary
virtue. The party appears to-day the only permanent thing
in our political history; a firm link to the past in the multitude




188          DUTY OF THE WHOLE COUNTRY.
of changes that have befallen us. The tribute of Martin Van
Buren in a posthumous work* is significant in this respect:
"The long continued support of a majority of the people-the
only test of political merit in a Republic-has secured a preference for its principles of which it may well be proud; and
the general fidelity of its members to the faith they profess is
creditably illustrated by the fact that after all the changes to
which its organization has been exposed, its ranks, whatever
may be the case as to some of its leaders, are mainly composed
of men with like dispositions with those by whom that organization was effected."  It is this identity of which the Democratic
party is especially proud; tracing the descent of its principles
from the fathers of the Republic, the same in defeat and in
victory, and even emerging from the changing and deforming
influences of the past war with undiminished similitude to what
it was in earlier and better days of the country.
The patriotic contributions of the Democratic party in the
past are historical, accomplished facts. However it may have
wandered on particular inferiour questions and thereby lost
power for a time, it is remarkable that the affections of the
people have recalled it, on all occasions when the general principles of the Government are to be decided.  Whenever the
question has been between the Constitution and the limitations
of authority in the general government, the Democratic party
has won on its favourite doctrine of a distribution of political
power.  A most curious evidence of the strength of popular
affection for this peculiar Democratic doctrine is the attempt
of the Republican party to appropriate it, in 1861, and to incorporate it into the immediate creed on which they came into
power. How the avowals of the latter party have been falsified,
* "History of Political Parties."




DUTY OF THE WHOLE COUNTRY.                 189
and they have reverted to the worst heresies of Consolidation, the
world knows and the present day bears testimony. But that
Mr. Lincoln and his party did, on their first concession to
power, attempt to conciliate the people by upholding a Democratic model of government, so far as questions of political
power were concerned, cannot be denied, in the face of the deliberate and official language of that occasion. In the platform
upon which Mr. Lincoln was elected President, and which he
repeated in his inaugural speech " the maintenance inviolate of
the rights of the States, and especially of the right of each State
to order and control its own domestic institutions, according
to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance of
power on which the perfection and endurance of our political
fabric depend." Again, before the hypocritical design of the
Republican party had been accomplished, it was declared by
Mr. Lincoln and his Attorney-General, Mr. Bates: "absolute,
despotic power over the lives, the liberties, or the property of
freemen, exists nowhere in a republic, not even in the largest
majority of the people."
These assertions are  interesting now.  They attest the
essential power of a principle belonging exclusively to the Democratic school, and they suggest how faithless and criminal has
been the party that attempted to appropriate it for a temporary
popularity.  The time has come when, again, a general
appeal is made against Consolidation, when all other political
concerns are sunk in comparison; and we may expect the
Democratic party again to march to victory on the supreme
field of controversy.  It is an appeal which, if made single and
dissembarrassed, has never failed of success. It comes to us
now with a peculiar force added by time and circumstances.
If the American peoole believe, as they have frequently testified




190             DUTY  OF THE WHOLE COUNTRY.
by their votes, that Consolidation leads to  despotism, that to
rule a territory so vast as theirs by a single free government, is
impossible, we may expect that the appeal against the experiment has strengthened from developements of the past, and
that the argument has increased with the growth and greatness
of the country. It is an argument which prevailed when we had
three millions of people. It is an argument which returns to
us now, when our limits extend from ocean to ocean, and when
our population is quite forty millions, with the prospect of being
eighty to one hundred millions before the end of the century!
THE GROWTH AND GREATNESS OF AMERICA.
Carious prophecies of Adams and Jefferson-America in 1776-Retrospect of Mr.
Jefferson's Government-Two pictures at Washington-Three visions ol an empire
in America-The Alleghanies, the Mississippi River and the Pacific Ocean-Summary of the present resources of the country-A lesson of the late war-Value of
the physical greatness of America, as a source of patriotic inspiration-A new
interpretation of the Union-The peculiar danger of a revolution against the Constitution-A remarkable fact about European  Emigration-The problem  of
America, territorial consolidation (not political consolidation)-President Johnson'i
tribute to the Union.
Two of the  most remarkable  men in  the early  times of
America were Thomas Jefferson and John  Adams.  Both of
these illustrious statesmen who  had commenced manhood in
colonial times, who had been co-adjutors in the cause of the
Revolution, who had occupied, in turn, the eminence of President of the United States, and who  had carried  into retirement the reputation of sages, renderingQuincy and Monticello
twin  names of the political oracles, had had remarkable visions of the future greatness of America. That of Mr. Adams




DUTY OF THE WHOLE COUNTRY.                191
was more wonderful, and accomplished a larger interval of
time.
As early as 1755, the future statesman of Massachusetts,
then only twenty years old, wrote to a friend from his meditations at Worcester: "Soon after the reformation, a few people
came over into this new world for conscience sake. Perhaps
this apparently trivial incident may transfer the great seat of
empire into America.  It looks likely to me; for, if we can
remove the turbulent Gallics, our people, according to the exactest computations, will in another century become more numerous than England itself. Should this be the case, since we
have, I may say, all the naval stores of the nation in our
hands, it will be easy to obtain a mastery of the seas; and the
united force of all Europe will not be able to subdue us!" It
was a bold prophecy, even to repeat, when Mr. Adams saw the
independence of America accomplished, and the new impetus
of enterprise, and new career of progress dated from this
great event.
At the Revolutionary period, America contained 230,000
white people, and was a ragged piece of territory between the
seaboard and the'mountain ranges, extending about a thousand
miles on the Atlantic coast from the Penobscot to the Altamaha, and averaging a width of not more than a hundred miles.
If one will take a pencil and trace on the map the course of
the American settlements of that day, he will mark out a thin
country, an irregular border upon the bays, harbours and inlets,
averaging a hundred miles inland from the coast, with here
and there a projection to the bases of the mountain ranges
and even some slight tendrils winding through the fertile valleys of these natural barriers. Without steam, without canals
and even without tolerable highways, the population of that




192           DUTY OF THE WHOLE COUNTRY.
day hugged the ocean, or clung to the banks of such rivers as
furnished convenient means for transporting heavy producte
to or from the seaboard. In Virginia, the settlements were
mainly in the river bottoms of the tide-water region. There
were already some efforts at migration westward; but although
they had penetrated the Alleghanies, and made some " clearings " in that part of Virginia which is now Kentucky, they
were but juts in the geographical outline, and had scarcely
more than blazed the pathways of adventure.  The great
Mississippi was unknown but as a distant landmark in the possessions of a foreign power; the valleys of the Illinois, Wabash, and the Ohio, were scarcely habitable for civilized men;
the Atlantic slopes even were yet contested by Indian tribes,
and Thomas Jefferson, the third President of the United
States,'had been born at Shadwell, a short distance from Monticello, when the trails of the hostile Monacans or Tuscaroras
were yet fresh on his lands and through the adjacent hills.
Yet Mr. Jefferson counted ten millions of freemen under
his authority as President; and people of those times, looking
at their expansion and increase, began to think that the vision
of Mr. Adams might be something more than the vagary of a
self-constituted wise-acre. But Mr.- Jefferson's government
was a small affair compared with the statistical standards of
the present; and it is curious to look back upon the anxieties
of his day, and measure them with the mighty concerns of the
present. Think of the annual expenditures of a government
averaging only six hundred thousand dollars, and yet a clamour
about economy; the entire standing army of the United
States a single brigade, consisting of two regiments of infantry and one of artillery, and yet a jealousy of the military
power; a public debt of fifty-four millions, twelve millions of




DUTY OF THE WHOLE COUNTRY.                 193
which were only owed abroad, and yet its management an occasion  of the  greatest alarm, and Hamilton's "treasury
schemes " denounced as the foundation of an overshadowing
plutocratic power in the United States! Put against these the
present annual expenditure, of which but a single item, that
of the War Offiee, and in time of peace, too, is $177,000,000;*
a military establishment numbering 56,000 men; and a public debt of $2,500,528,827, by the last monthly account of the
treasury, May 1868,-and we may have some idea of the vast
interval between the government of Jefferson and that of the
present imperial concern at Washington.  They are as far
apart as two different ages-pictures as unlike as if they were
brought in confront from the most distant quarters of the
earth; and although our progress is, of course, not measured
by these figures, which are to a large extent exceptional, yet
they sufficiently indicate how our ideas have expanded when
they can take into easy and undisturbed calculations such
standards of magnitude, which, sixty years ago, would have
been simply incredible.
The greatness of America seems to have first become a serious and practical thought with the great additions to its territory made by Mr. Jefferson.  These, including the purchase
of Louisiana and the treaties with the Kaskaskia Indians, the
latter acquiring a broad belt of territory extending from the
mouth of the Illinois River " to and up the Ohio, " actually
doubled the area of the United States, and opened startling
visions of empire. Mr. Jefferson had a prophetic mind with
reference to the Great Valley of the Mississippi, which was
* The expenses of the War Department for the month of March last are set down at
$13,960,000-a greater sum than the whole yearly expenses of the Government under
John Quinoy Adams.
9




194           DUTY OF THE WHOLE COUNTRY.
then almost terra incognita to his countrymen; he saw the
vital necessity of the use and outlet of the great river, when
he declared, " I would not give one inch of the waters of the
Mississippi to any nation." The value of the acquisition may
be estimated from the facts that this river is two thousand
miles in extent, with one of its tributaries doubling the parent
stream in its length; that it drains by its waters 1,200,000 square
miles; that it floats the internal commerce of twelve States,
and that the steamers thus employed were accounted, before
the late war, to be worth sixty millions of dollars. It is today the vast interests contained in this river, which, more than
any other natural cause, maintain the balance and integrity of
the American Union; it has contributed to the homogeneousness and unity of the nation; formed its character and civili.
zation; and put it in the precise position wherein to control
forever and indisputably the destinies of the western hemisphere.
On the acquisition of the Mississippi River, Mr. Jefferson
proposed: "When we shall be full on this side, we may lay
off a range of States on the western bank, from the head to the
mouth, and so, range after range, advancing compactly as we
multiply."  The advance of "range after range" has been
made beyond his expectations, and the third vision of empire
-the first bounded by the Alleghanies, the second embracing
the Mississippi-now unrolls to the shore of the Pacific Ocean.
Few persons, even of the present day, have comprehended the
extent of this last and most effulgent apparition of the greatness of our country. A new territorial phrase has come into
vogue, and we speak of "the Pacific slope" after the same
idea in which we spoke sixty years ago of " the Atlantic slope."
It is the new natural feature of our territorial empire. In a




DUTY OF THE WHOLE COUNTRY                195
recent report of the Land Commissioner at Washington, "the
Pacific slope " is described as 1,000 miles long and 680 miles
wide, with an area of over 831,000 square miles, or about
5,000,000,000 of acres-sufficient to inhabit 100,000,000 people,
that is, not only to give them room, but to afford, from its
varied and bountiful resources, all the subsistence of civilized
life. How much of this and our other vast Western possessions
is as yet uninhabited, even to the extent of not being " claimed "
by settlers, or appropriated to railroads, may be judged from
the fact that there is yet the immense amount of 1,400,000,000
acres of public land, including the lately acquired Russian
territory-a vast domain as yet unpartitioned to enterprise,
unvexed by grants, with the title of the Government slumbering
in it, awaiting the advance and solicitations of a civilization
that has not yet approached it.
The total area of our, country (not including Alaska) is
calculated at 3,250,000 square miles-larger than the whole
of Europe; exhibiting all the ranges of climate from St. Petersburg to Canton; and nearly one-third of this vast domain,
that is one million square miles, is gold-producing, stretching
from British Columbia to Mexico, containing two States and
four territories, and yielding minerals reckoned, since 1862, at
one hundred million dollars per annum.
It is thus not only the magnitude of spaces we have to deal
with.  Territorial expansion adds affluent fields of civilization
and industry and opens almost interminable avenues of enterprise. The animating prospect on the Pacific slope is not limited by the ocean, but reaches to the producing regions of Eastern Asia. The trade of the Indies, of China, of Japan, of all
the eastern world, must flow into this country, and throughout
this country to the rest of mankind. We are already 3,000




196          DUTY OF THE WHOLE COUNTRY.
miles ahead of England in our routes to China, Japan and
the Indies; and an official assurance is given from Washington that, by October, 1869, the main Pacific Railroad will be
finished, and the great steam horse will carry us from  New
York to San Francisco direct.
From the very base of the Rocky Mountains we have already
the intelligence that this Railroad has been completed to that
point, and that, five hundred miles from Omaha, the locomotive
is still pushing its way westward. It is a great and marvelous fact-an exhibition of American vigour-almost without a
parallel even in these progressive times. A few years ago
Omaha itself was an unknown spot, in a trackless wild, almost
unindicated in our geography; now five hundred miles west
of it to Cheyenne City, at the base of the Rocky Mountains,
we have a railroad completely equipped, aud so closely followed by population and industrial enterprise that its net earnings for one quarter of the past year have been nearly half a
million dollars; this amount being realized from its local business. When the road is completed, it will form a single line
of 1,830 miles, passing through Dakota, Utah and Nevada,
with feeders running from Colorado and Idaho, and with connections again branching east from Omaha to Chicago, running down to Cincinnati and St. Louis, and terminating in the
great Atlantic cities, New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore,
accomplishing a distance of over 3,000 miles across the continent, and forming a great connecting link between Europe
and Asia, opening to the Old World the shortest route to
China and Japan. It is a mighty picture, a grand diorama of
progress, a new age of commerce.  For one thousand years
the stream of Eastern trade and travel has flowed in one direction; now a new highway is designed for it, which wil'




DUTY OF THE WHOLE COUNTRY.                197
transport the commodities of Asia along with the treasures
pouring in from the mines of our new Territories, and stock
with homes and all the appliances of modern civilization a
wild country, hitherto a haunt for savages, and a dismal curiosity
in our geography
But one generation ago there was scarcely a railroad in
America.  Now we have 37,000 miles of completed railroad
in this country, which, since their commencement, is at the
rate of 1,000 miles a year; and there are in course of construction 17,880 miles of railroad.  For many years after
the revolution, manufactures was scarcely a recognized branch
of American industry. By the returns of the last census they
amounted in value to $1,900,000,000.  The first decennial
census estimated our annual exports at nineteen millions of
dollars. The census of 1860 showed them as more than four
hundred millions of dollars, whereof all but twenty-seven mil.
lions were of domestic production. Within the memory of the
present generation Great Britain was undisputed mistress of
the seas. In 1860 the United States had the largest fleet of
merchant vessels afloat, Great Britain second, France third,
and Germany fourth. In the same year the real and personal
estate of our people was estimated in round numbers as sixteen thousand millions of dollars; and "it is perfectly safe to
assume," says Mr. Horace Greeley, " that fifteen of the sixteen
thousand millions of property returned, in 1860, had been
created and added to the wealth of the world by the industry,
enterprise and thrift of our people, during the eighty preceding years."
These vast figures suffice to measure the growth and greatness of our country-to place the prospect and the retrospect
in their proper relations to each other-without descending to




198         DUTY OF THE WHOLE COUNTRY.
that multitude of statistical details, the effect of which is
rather to vex and dull the reader than to enlighten and impress him. It is easy to revamp pages of the census into a
chapter or article; but such statistical exhibits too often bewilder and distress the mind, instead of making the distinct and
deep impression that is desired. Indeed, it is much from this
unpleasant treatment of the subject, this burdening it. with
numbers past recollection, and from  excessive repetitions of
the theme, that the greatness of America does not impress
our people as it should, and sometimes fails of attention, as
the decantatum of demagogues; although it is, to-day, the
standing marvel of all intelligent curiosity in Europe, the
phenomenon of the age, the unequaled wonder of modern times,
the greatest practical problem of humanity. There is nothing
in history like the rapid growth of our country. The greatness of England since the day of the Stuarts, when as Macauldy declared she ascended from a fifth-rate power to the first
rank-the most prominent event in the modern history of
Europe-is an affair of centuries; while a few decades have
served to accomplish the present wonders of American progress. There were men in Europe, a few years ago, who
thought or hoped the greatness of America would expire or
much diminish in the convulsions of the recent war; but the
very revelations of our greatness which that war has made, not
only to the world but to ourselves, will yet prove morally more
valuable than all that has been lost or ravaged in the collisions
of our arms. Those revelations could have been made more
powerfully, more conspicuously in no other way; and it is remarkable that there never has been a period of time, or a
position of retrospect, wherein the united American people
have been more convinced of their greatness, or more awaken



DUTY OF THE WHOLE COUNTRY.                 199
ed to put forth their energies, and make conquests of the
future, than when contemplating the displays of the past war,
and surveying the monuments of power. which it has left us as
new standards and new inspirations of our national life.
One view naturally comes here to the mind, in which the
growth and greatness of our country is of sublime and surpassing interest. It is, that in the presence of this mighty picture all mere party controversies fall into insignificance; that
it is the vital inspiration of our patriotism, the constant appeal
to our loyalty, kindling the best sentiments of the citizen, and associating with his pride his duties to the Government. Every
one who dared to read his heart within the past few years must
recall how powerful was that argument against'the war, which
plead the united greatness and glory of the country, and appealed from that alone to the sentiment of patriotism. Almost
every nation has its traditional, peculiar appeal by which its
patriotism is excited, and its arms summoned to great trials.
With us it is traditional only to a limited extent; it is not so
much the inspiration coming from names and deeds numbered
in distant periods of history, as it is the present visible impression of the greatness of our country, engaging our pride and
hopes and curiosity, and inciting the resolution to keep intact the vast magnificent picture so admirable to the world.
Its very extent forbids its division or mutilation. It is like a
holy unity of art, not to be marred by the substitution of a
single part or circumstance. Our patriotism passes into poetry;
and as an artist pleads for the very fullness of his conception,
the American citizen, aroused and'strengthened by a new inspiration, contends for the completeness and integrity, the dramatic unity of the great picture of his country's power and
glory.




200          DUTY OF THE WHOLE COUNTRY.
But there is yet another reflection on this picture, and one
we have especially designed in its production to the reader.
It is to suggest enlarged solicitude for the future of the Government entrusted with concerns so vast and magnificent; to increase and animate the endeavours of the patriotic to preserve a
form of government which has been so beneficent, and which,
we shall presently see, is alone competent to deal with such an
extent and diversity of interests. In the presence of the picture
we have exhibited, we are entering a second great era of American history-the era of Re-union, ensuing after a fierce and
terrible war. It is a common disposition of political parties to
seize on all eras, all great convulsions in history, and convert
them to the purposes of a revolution in their peculiar interest.
It is this tendency we have been called upon to resist at the
conclusion of the late war; and.the great popular care is that
this second era of the nation may be a continuation of former
peace and prosperity and not a revolutionary succession, hazarding not only the abundant fruits and accumulations of the
past, but the future life of the nation.
A revolution as against the peculiar political system of the
Union is for the American people far more vital and important
than most of the revolutions, of which we have an account in
history, such as merely imply the change of a dynasty, or the
reform of an administration. We maintain this proposition on
the ground that the present government of America with its
peculiar distribution of political powers is the only possible
one for such an extent of country and such a character of population, and that thus the question of the government and the
question of the life of the nation, are, as does not often happen
in history, identified, and become one and inseparable.
There is nothing more remarkable in the'otemporary polit



DUTY OF THE WHOLE COUNTRY.                201
ical world than the composite character of the American
people. It is perhaps not pleasant to our vanity to recognize
how much we are indebted in our elements of progress to the
streams of foreign population, which have continued to flow'in
upon us within the term of our national independence. We
recollect a recent estimate, referring to the census of 1860,
made in a work of Sir Morton Peto on America, and since
adopted in the speech of a United States Senator, that the
European emigrants to America and their descendants, in the
present century, to the date referred to, numbered twenty one
million, or about two-thirds of our population in 1860! Thsingular fact appears from this, that not more than one-third cf
our population is native, in the sense of being traced to American parentage, since 1800. If we look behind that date, we
may go back to the colonial history, and. we find a country incongruously settled by Swedes, Dutch, French, Spanish and
English.  What is remarkable, too, is the want of binding
moral influences in a population so mixed. We have none of
the harmonizing influence of a uniform spiritual lbelief,  We
receive every day enormous bodies of emigrants bringing with
them the most various ideas about religion and government.
We live under the influences of a constant and reciprocal action
between America and Europe, which confuses every attempt at
analysis.
In this condition of things it is evident that the problem, for
America to solve, is territorial consolidation (not political consolidation).  If the ingenuity of man had been taxed for a
system of government to suit this extraordinary condition, the
invention could not be more exact than the American Union,
as devised in 1787, founded on the novel, admirable idea of a
confederate unity, standing in some respects for a national
9*




202          DUTY OF THE WHOLE COUNTRY.
identity, a complete territorial consolidation, limited and
qualified by the principle of local sovereignty.  We can really
imagine no other possible accomodation of the incongruous
population of America, feeling, as they do, the necessity of a
general government for certain purposes, yet having an AngloSaxon attachment to their local institutions, and deeply penetrated by a love of individual liberty, than in the Union as
formed by our fathers. It is the Union in this interpretation
which is now imperiled by the designs of a revolutionary
party, and with it all the greatness and growth of America.
" It, " says President Johnson, speaking of the Union he
defends, " is the best form of government the world ever saw.
No other is or can be so well adapted to the genius, habits
or wants of the American people. Combining the strength of
a great empire with unspeakable blessings of local self-government, having a central power to defend the general interests,
and recognizing the authority of the States as the guardians
of industrial rights, it is the sheet-anchor of our safety abroad,
and our peace at home."




DUTY OF THE WHOLE COUNTRY.                         203
THE TRUE NATURE AND SERVICE OF THE UNION.
The political novelty of the American Union-No mission apart from the States-A
curious reflection on political science-Thomas Jefferson's idea of "ward republics"
-Political decentralization in America-" The Union as it was," the logical expression of the "Lost Cause "-The Union, as an object of idolatry-Necessity of an
element of reverence in our political system-Consolidation more odious than
Secession-Power and certainty of public opinion arising out of the nature of the
Union-A new value of State institutions-Public opinion, the. supreme ruler and
the last arbiter.
It is very well known, that preceding that union of the States
constructed after the Revolution, there had been a number of
other unions or confederations. But these were mere pacts or
leagues; they did not contain the distinctive trait and virtue of
the union of 1787, in which the world was to see for the first
time combined and harmonized the principle of geographical
sovereignties with that of a confederation which, for certain
purposes, and especially in the regard of foreign powers, was to
stand as a distinct, uniform nationality.
The political novelty, the peculiar and fundamental idea of
the Union was simple enough.  It was the combination of a
common chief magistracy with the largest reservation of liberty
in its constituents, and the assertion of local institutions as the
main depositories of political power. The idea of such a chief
magistracy, erected for the national good, controlled by the
will of the parties to it, resting on the voluntary basis, strength.
ened  by  moral considerations, and severely limited  by the
principle of local independence, was new to the world, and, as
we shall shortly see, was a capital step towards perfection in
the science of government.




204          DUTY OF THE WHOLE COUNTRY.
The reader anxious to comprehend this new political system
must bear in mind that the necessity which originated the Union
was a necessity for purely economical purposes. The Constitution of the United States, considered in a broad, historical
light, was not a revolution, in the sense of a proclamation of a
new civil polity; for the civil institutions of the State, as
derived from the common law of England, were already perfect
and satisfactory, and it is remarkable that they have remained
without material change for nearly a century.
The new Union was not a political revolution.  It was a
convenience of the States, growing out of their wants of a
system by which they might have a common agent, and a uniform code on concerns common between themselves.  It is in
this sense, indeed, that the moral significance of the American
Union is interpreted; in this sense its great political virtue
was contained. There was put before the eyes of mankind not
a consolidated nationality; not a simple republic with an anomalous and indescribable appendage of "States, " which are
hot provinces, or cantons, or territories, and yet, in a sense,
subordinate; not some undefined and mis-shapen political
mongrel; but a spectacle, such as it had never seen-an association of co-equal and sovereign States, with'a common authority, the subjects of which were sufficient to give it the
effect of an American and national identity-a government
which derived its entire life from  the good will, the mutual
interests and the unconstrained devotion of the States which at
once originated and composed it.
The Union was to be limited by its beneficence to the States.
It had no dynastic element; it had no mission apart from the
States; it had no independent authority over individuals, except within the scope of the powers delegated to it by the




DUTY OF THE WHOLE COUNTRY.                 205
States.  In short, it was a compact which covered only the
interests which it specified, yet quite large enough to stand as
an American nationality for all practical purposes.
The science of government is fundamentally of the simplest
description.  The sage who wished his son to attend a great
political convention, that he might see what little wisdom it
took to govern the world, expressed a profound truth, and not
a flippant satire, or a melancholy reflection, as some have interpreted it. When we come to penetrate with an analytic philosophy the most excellent of man's inventions, we discover the
invariable condition of extreme simplicity of the fundamental
idea, co-existent with a multitude of details enlarging and perfecting the application-the degree of perfection being in proportion to the number and exactness of these details. The
progress of all perfection is in details-the intricacy of the
superstructure erected on a simple idea. Take, for instance,
the steam engine: what more simple than the expansive movement of steam, and the application of leverage to it! But on
this principle we find constructed a net-work of machinery,
which together becomes more nice and powerful in action, in
precise proportion to the number of details, as long as these
are properly adjusted.
The two conditions of human invention-simplicity of the
fundamental idea and multiplicity of details-are singularly
well fulfilled in the political structure of the American Union.
We have at the foundation the simple idea of the union of a
General Government with State Rights-the union of a common magistracy with reservations of local liberty-and on
this idea our true progress in government is to multiply, to
adjust, to interlace the relations between the State and the
General Government-to produce the greatest possible irftr



U(b          DUTY OF THE WHOLE COUNTRY.
cacy without creating confusion. The peculiar task of American statesmanship, its, most intelligent and highest mission,
is to be constantly adding to, adjusting and refining these
relations between the central and local authorities; is to subdivide the political power to the extremest limits; is to multiply as much as possible the local depositories of power. No
man better conceived this idea of American statesmanship
growing out of the peculiar nature of our government than did
Thomas Jefferson.  He was for following the principle of local
liberty in the State governments to yet further institutions,
and subdividing the political power of the country even down
to ward republics. In a letter to Samuel Kercheval, dated in
1816, proposing certain changes in the Constitution of Virginia he wrote: "These wards, called townships in New England, are the vital principle of their governments, and have
proved themselves the wisest invention ever devised by the
wit of man for the perfect exercise of self-government and
for its preservation. We shall thus marshal our Government
into, 1. The general Federal republic, for all concerns foreign
and federal; 2. That of the State, for what relates to our
own citizens exclusively; 3. The county republics, for the
duties'and concerns of the county; and 4. The ward republics, for the small and yet numerous and interesting concerns
of the neighbourhood: and in governnent, as well as in every
other business of life, it is by division and subdivision of duties
alone, that all matters, great and small, can be managed to
perfection."
Understanding that the true direction of American statesmanship is essentially to political decentralization; that it is a
necessity growing out of the very nature of our government,
wemay  better appreciate the extent of aberration of the revo



DUTY OF THE WHOLE COUNTRY.               207
lutionary party now governing at Washington.  It is to bring
our remarks to this point that the foregoing reflections have
been designed.
"The Union, as it was, " is the true and logical expression
of that " Lost Cause " which the country is in prospect of re.
gaining, or on the point of losing forever.  It is the most
captivating and powerful phrase in which the controversy can
be expressed, in behalf of the South, and of the conservative
party of the country. We repeat the firm belief, on which we
have enlarged in the foregoing pages, that the party of Consolidation stands, at present, in weaker attitude than ever
before in the history of-the country; because it has attached
to it the unpopular and odious particular measure of the elevation of the Negro, at the expense of the constitutional and
traditional liberty of the white man in America. But, again,
the danger is, that that party has already so progressed in power
by increasing ratios, has accumulated so much of influence,
that it will be difficult to arrest it on the unpopularity of particular measures. We have, therefore, conceived the necessity,
after having discussed in previous parts of this work Consolidation, with reference to its special topics of Reconstruction
and Negrophilism, to exhibit the abstract and essential evils
of the doctrine, apart from particular questions, and thus complete the argument against the revolutionary movement taking
place in our government.
The last and supreme exhibition of the so-called Radical party is that in which it combats the true principle of the Union,
and destroys the peculiar and essential sources of American
patriotism. Our affections for the Union can only be explained
on the grand and august theory of co-equal sovereign States,
ennobled by mutual confidences, enthused by common affections,




208          DUTY OF THE WHOLE COUNTRY.
inspired by a single destiny. This is the peculiarity of our
political system; this the especial form of our patriotism.
This peculiarity and the affections which attach to it, Consolidation at once destroys. It reduces " the glorious Union"
to a mere geographical name; it makes it only the convenient
designation of a certain extent of territory, without any particular claims upon our regards. The Union has lost its distinctive moral traits, and the affections which have grown out
of them, and which constitute so large an element of American
patriotism, perish along with the destruction of the theory of
a novel and august combination of equal States. It is this
theory which has been beautified by so many illustrations
drawn from the stars of the sky, governed by a common centre;
the billows, distinct, but "one as the sea;" the noblest and
sublimest images of nature. It is this theory which has furnished so many themes of patriotic eloquence; which has so
often stirred the popular heart with grand imaginations; in
which the orator has found unfailing sources of inspiration;
which, indeed, has occupied the most of whatever there is of
beauty in the political literature of America.
It is remarkable how this literature has been devoted to the
consecration of the Union; how it abounds in paraphrases of it,
as a singular object of patriotic adoration. The time was,
when no public speaker could obtain admiration, without some
tribute to the great and glorious Union. Poets have hymned
its praises. The earliest essays of the sophomore, and the maturest efforts of the statesmen, have paid tribute to it, as the
supernal work of our political fathers. It has been described
as the last, best gift of government to man. Those who made
it have been honoured as benefactors, and sometimes invested
with a superstitious regard.  "They," says President Johnson,
" obtained a higher than human wisdom."




DUTY OF THE WHOLE COUNTRY.                209
The first impulse is to reprove these excesses, to treat them as
the rhetorical tumours of the demagogue, a characteristic extravagance of the hustings. This, indeed, is the not unusual criti.
cism of sober and cultivated minds.  Why should the Union
be apotheosized?-why should it not be spoken of in plain,
exact language?-why make it the subject of rhetorical dis.
plays? These are the thoughts which first and naturally occur
on the singular exaltation of language concerning the Union,.
so remarkable in our political literature.  But a more profound
reflection follows these first impressions; and at the end of it,
we are not only willing to tolerate what we first deemed a
rhetorical extravagance for the Union, but to encourage it as
one of the most valuable demonstrations of patriotic senti.
ment.
The great want of our government is an element of rever.
ence.. The tendency of a harsh and excessive modern democra.
cy is to reduce government to the aspect of a mere affair of
police. Such a tendency is essentially revolutionary, produc.
tive of changes, in proportion as there are substituted for the
fine emotions of patriotism the caprices of selfishness, or the calculations of utility. In every stable government we naturally
inquire for some objects of reverential regard, some moral inspi.
ration, some sources of affection through which men love their
government, rather than calculate it on a mere system of debits
and credits.  We are profoundly convinced that patriotism
must be sentimental to a degree, to be true patriotism.  The
tendency in America, sometimes encouraged by a most false
and superficial statesmanship, is to divest the government too
much of sacred and reverential regards. The processes of utilitarianism, excellent as they may be within certain limits, must
be arrested before the government becomes, in popular estima.




210         DUTr OF THE WHOLE COUNTRY.
tion, a mere institution of police, a mere convenience of public
order. In America, the limited extent and influence of our
traditions, the absolute divorce of the Church from the State,
the common denudation of the ceremonials and insignia of authority, have brought the country to a condition where the
thoughtful and philosophic mind perceives the necessity of
some element of reverence in the government, to sustain it in
the affections of the people, and to inspire a patriotism above
the mean and changeful regards of selfishness.
It is in this sense that we find the supreme value of a ven.
eration for the Union-the supply of a great and growing
want in the moral economy of the American system of government. The patriotism of every country must have some
great rallying cry. As we have elsewhere said, we have such,
to a certain extent, in the names of our political ancestors, in
limited traditions.  But we would add to this appeal "the
Union "-as something peculiarly glorious and sacred; pic.
turing, as nothing else can, the greatness of our country;
sanctified as the first fruits of the blood of the Revolution of
76, revered even as the product of a wisdom "higher than
human. "
There may be an extravagance in these appeals, when
brought to severe tests of logic; but no nation is expected to
measure its patriotic memories by the cold and exact rules of
history.
We have traced the swift and decisive steps which Consolidation has taken since the war. We have followed them, in
preceding pages, almost to the destruction of the Union.  We
have seen the establishment of military rule and Negro domination in the South; the attempt to clench this ruinous policy
on so large a part of the country, by requiring that the re.




211          DUTY OF THE WHOLE COUNTRY.
admitted State. shall never change the organic laws under
which it is admitted-a satire and mockery of "republicanism "-by prostituting the Supreme court, and compelling it
to assume the constitutionality of all the acts of Reconstruction, and, at last, by attacking  the Executive office, and
attempting to reduce it to a condition of absolute servility to
Congress.
It is well that this last proceeding should be understood as
part of this general design, rather than as a mere personal
episode in the history of an Administration; and that the
country should perceive that it was not Andrew Johnson alone,
who lately stood at the bar of the Senate of the United
States, but that the great body of American liberties was arraigned there, and the tutelar genius of the Constitution
insulted and disrobed in the presence of a shallow and tittering curiosity.
Against the progress of Consolidation, advancing to the
overthrow of the government and the verge of destruction, we
have urged various appeals, not one of which is exaggerated.
We have appealed to the interests of our civilization; to community of race; to whatever is dear in the past, or hopeful in
the future. The last appeal we put up is the Union-that
for which the war was fought, and which for three generations
has symbolized our greatness, and assured our prosperity.
The Union may be more effectually destroyed by Consolidation than by Secession.  The first is far more odious, and
especially in the present instance, with the stripe of Negro
government in it. Far better that the States should disband
into petty republics still preserving their institutions of local
government, than pass into an imperial despotism, disfigured,
too, by Negro rule. It is thus that the revolutionary design




212          DUTY OF THE WHOLE COUNTRY.
of Congress, in every logical respect, exceeds whatever was
claimed of evil for the " rebellion " of 1861, and forces the
country to an issue, of which the past war was only a partial
and imperfect exposition.  The imminent danger is that the
country has, indeed, been brought to a condition, where there
is no longer a remedy in the political structure itself, where
its checks and balances no longer operate, as they were designed in the Constitution; and where the only resource is
outside of it, in the mass of the people.
It is said that the people, in all parts of the country, are
gloomy and impassive.  There is, indeed, a popular tameness
which is the forerunner of easy and successful despotism, when
the people manifestly quit their interest in political affairs,
and the mass becomes an unresisting prey to whatever government alights upon it. But this, we firmly believe, is not the
true interpretation of whatever quiet there may be in the
country outside of the circle at Washington.' There is a quiet
which comes from the consciousness of strength; from the assurance of a last, supreme, certain resort; from the confidence
of perfect ability to restore what has been lost, and to appoint
its own times and opportunities of action.
This perfect ability yet resides in our people; and the opportunities of action are yet abundant.  The people are still
able to act, having not yet been actually fettered; and the
condition is one upon which public opinion may operate with
unlimited efect.
We do not know that it has ever been observed what rare
and remarkable power public opinion has in America, arising
from the peculiar nature of the Union.  We claim it as the
discovery of a new virtue in our political system. It is the
essential design of Consolidation and Imperialism  to keep




DUTY OF THE WHOLE COUNTRY.               213
public opinion diffuse and disorganized, to destroy all its
centres and rallying points, and thus to render it measurably
incapable of action.  In America, the value of our State
institutions is, that they maintain vast bodies of public opinion
ready and organized at any moment to oppose the usurpations
of the general government. It is an inestimable service; and
it is surprising that so many commentators on the tJnion have
failed to perceive this greatest of its virtues, in keeping large
and independent organizations of public opinion in the State
Governments, that can be summoned at any time ipto opera.
tion, having their own machinery, their own agents, their own
military establishments.  It is thus, through the very nature
of the Union, that we have been so busy to describe, that
public opinion in America has a certainty and power whicb
it has nowhere else in the world. In European countries, the
sentiment of the people is seldom  ascertained; it is never
known; it is a vague and diffuse thing, at best; and the states.
man who asserts it is listened to as scarcely more than the
utterer of a rhetorical platitude, incapable of proof. But in
our country, and especially through the State Government,
public opinion may not only be more certainly known, but it
is a power, constantly erect, perfectly organized, that can be
summoned at all times to swift and decisive issues.
It is this public opinion, already organized and alert in all
the States-except those ridden bymilitary rule-and growing
out of the very nature of the Union which it is invoked to
protect, that indicates the true hope of the country, and
contains all lost causes of constitutional liberty. - All recom.
mendations to force are hasty and unnecessary, in view of the
extraordinary powers of this opinion; and there are no grounds
of comparison with revolutionary appeals in other countries.




214          DUTY OF THE WHOLE COUNTRY
The American political system  is yet competent to  right
itself, without the violence of arms.  The " Lost Cause "needs
no war to regain it. We have taken up new hopes, new arms,
new methods"By winning words to conquer willing hearts,
And make persuasion do the work of fear."
THE END.




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HIS BOOK.-The first colleaion of humorous writings by A.
Ward. Full of comic illustrations.   I2mo. cloth, $1.50
s TRAVELS.  -A comic volubme of Indian and Mormon adventures. With laughable illustrations.   I2mo. cloth, $1.50
IN LONDON.-A new book containing Ward's comic Punch
letters, and other papers.  Illustrated.  I2mo. cloth, x$.50
Miss Augusta J. Evans.
BEULAH.-A novel of great power..   I2mo. cloth, $1.75
MACARIA.-   do        do.                  do..$1.75
ST. ELMO.-    do.     do. yust published. do.    $2.00
By the Author of  "Butledge."
RUTLEDGE.-A deeply interesting novel   I2mo. cloth, $1.75
THE SUTHERLANDS.-      do..             do.   $1.75
FRANK WARRINGTON.-   do..              doo.   $1.75
ST. PHILIP'S.-         do...        do.   $1.75
LOUIE'S LAST TERM AT ST. MARY'S.-..     do.   $1.75
ROUNDHEARTS AND OTHER STORIES.-For children. do.   $1.75
A ROSARY FOR LENT.-Devotional readings.     do.   $1.75
J. Cordy Jeaffreson.
A BOOK ABOUT LAWYERS.-Reprinted from  the late English
Edition.  Intensely interesting..  2mo. cloth, $2.00
Allan Grant.
LOVE IN LETTERS. — A fascinating book of love-letters from
celebrated and notorious persons..   I2mo. cloth, $2.00
Algernon Charles Swinburne.
LAUS VENERIS-and other Poems and Ballads. I2mo. cloth, $1.75
Geo. W. Carleton.
OUR ARTIST IN CUBA.-A humorous volume of travel; with
fifty comic illustrations by the author.  I2mo. cloth, $1.50
OUR ARTIST IN PERU.-          do.         do.    $I.50