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This book must not 
 be taken from the 
 Library building. 
 
 Form No. 471 
 
Digitized by tine Internet Arciiive 
 
 in 2012 witii funding from 
 
 University of Nortii Carolina at Chapel Hill 
 
 http://archive.org/details/politicalsocialsOOvanc 
 
THE POLITICAL AND SOCIAL SOUTH DORIM THE WAR, 
 
 A LECTURE 
 
 DELIVERED BEFORE 
 
 John A. Andrew Post, 
 
 IsTo. 15, a-. -A.. T^., 
 
 In Boston, Massacliusetts, Dec. 8, 1888, 
 
 SENATOR Z. B. VANCE, 
 
 OF NORTH CAROLINA. 
 
 "Let us read the inscription on ilie other side of tlie shield." 
 
 WASHINGTON, T). C. 
 R. O. POLKINHdllN, PRINTER. 
 1886. 
 
THE POLITICAL AND SOCIAL SOUTH DURINS THE WAR, 
 
 A LECTURE 
 
 DELIVERED BEFORE 
 
 John A. Andrew Post, 
 
 3^0. ±5, 3-. .^. IS., 
 
 In Boston, Massachusetts, Dec. 8, 1886, 
 
 SENATOR Z. B. VANCE, 
 
 OF NORTH CAROLINA, 
 
 "Let us read the inscription on the other side of the shield." 
 
 WASHINGTOK, D. C. 
 R. 0. POLKINHOKN, PRINTEK. 
 1886. 
 
V >:>-9 
 
 The Political and Social South during the War. 
 
 My presence here to-night, ladies and gentlemen, occasions me a de- 
 gree of embarrassment. I was prominently involved in the affairs 
 about which I propose to speak, having taken an active part in both 
 the military and civil transactions of my State during ihe period of 
 war. On the one hand I am under the duress of your hospitality, 
 which tempts me to say the things which would prove most agreea- 
 ble to you ; on the other hand, I somewhat fear that, if I should be toa 
 plain spoken, I might become liable to the charge of abusing the privi- 
 leges of a guest. Should I fail in properly avoiding either extreme I 
 beg you to give me credit for good intentions at least. I honestly desire 
 to speak the simple truth as it appears to me. This I believe is what 
 you wish to hear ! [Cries, " that's what we want."] Necessarily my 
 remarks will be discursive and with no pretension to the preciseness 
 and continuity of narration which should characterize a historical 
 essay. I shall endeavor to entertain you for a brief space with the 
 ideas and observations of occurrences as they appeared to a Southern 
 man concerning the great civil war. 
 
 It is proper that you should hear the inscription read upon the 
 other side of the shield. 
 
 This generation is yet too near to the great struggle to deal with it 
 in the true historic spirit. Yet it is well enough for you to remember 
 that the South is quite as far removed from it as is the North ; and 
 the North has industriously undertaken from the beginning tO' 
 write the history of that contest between the sections, to set forth its 
 causes and to justify its results, — ^and naturally in the interest of the 
 victorious side. It is both wise and considerate of you to let the los- 
 ing side be heard in your midst. If you should refuse to do so it will 
 nevertheless be heard in time, before that great bar, the public opin- 
 ion of the world, whose jurisdiction you cannot avoid, and whose 
 verdict you cannot unduly influence. Neither side acts wisely in at- 
 tempting to forestall that verdict ! 
 
 It is well to remember, too, that epithets and hard names, which as- 
 sume the guilt that is to be proven, will not serve for arguments for 
 the future Bancrofts and Hildredths of the Republic, except for the 
 purpose of warning them against the intemperate partiality of their 
 authors. 
 
 The modest action of the common law should be imitated in the 
 treatment of historic questions, which considers every accused person 
 as innocent until his guilt is proven. Murder is treated as simply 
 homicide until there is proof that the killing was felonious. 
 
 In treating, for example, of all questions pertaining to the war, you 
 assume the guilt of your adversaries at the outset. You speak of the 
 secession movement as a rebellion, and you characterize ad who par- 
 ticipated in it as "rebels and traitors!" Your daily literature, as 
 well as your daily conversation, teems with it. Your school histories 
 and books of elementary instruction impress it in almost every pag& 
 
upon the young. Your laws, State and Federal, have enacted the 
 terms. Yet every lawyer and intelligent citizen among you must be 
 well aware that in a technical and legal sense there uins no rebellion, 
 and there were no rebels ! Should this not be admitted, however, I 
 am sure there will be no denial of the fact that you once had the op- 
 portunity of obtaining an authoritative decision of the highest court, 
 not only of the United States, but ot the world, on this very question 
 — and that opportunity was not embraced. 
 
 I hope you will not be alarmed ; it is not my intention to make you 
 listen to an argument in favor of the right of secession. I only wish 
 to remind you of some of i\xvx)r .ma facte reasons why the people of 
 the North — and of Massachusetts in particular — should not assume 
 the verdict of history in their favor when they declined to test the 
 verdict of the law. [Applause] 
 
 In attempdng to withdraw herself from the Union of the States by 
 repealing, on the 20th of May, 1861, the ordinance by the adoption of 
 which she had entered the Union on the 21st of November, 1789, 
 against whom and what did North Carolina rebel ? To whom had she 
 sworn allegiance? Certain'y to nobody; to no Government; to noth- 
 ing but the Constitution of the United States. Was she violating that 
 oath when she thus withdrew ? When Virginia ard New York re- 
 served, upon their accession to the Constitution, their right to with- 
 draw from the same, and declared that tlie powers therein granted 
 might be resumed whenever the same shall be perverted to " their in- 
 jury or oppression," did those Slates reserve the light to commit trea- 
 son ? When Massachusetts openly threatened to separate from the 
 Union upon the admission of Louisiana as a State, was she conscious 
 that she was threatening treason and rebellion ? When her Legisla- 
 ture, in 1803, " resolved that the annexation of Louisiana to the Union 
 transcends the Constitutional power of the Government of the United 
 States," and that it "formed anew Confederacy to which the States 
 united by the former compact are not bound to adhere;" was not 
 that a declaration that secession was a Constitutional remedy ? Again, 
 the same principle was proclaimed by the authority of Massachusetts 
 in the Hartford Convention, where it was declared *' that when emer- 
 gencies occur which are either beyond the reach of judicial tribunals 
 or too pressing to admit of delay incident to their forms, States which 
 have no common umpire must be their own judges and execute their 
 own decisions." Wi+h such a record, to which might be added page 
 after page of corroborating quotation from her statesmen and her ar- 
 chives, should not the ancient commonwealth of Massachusetts be a 
 little modest in denouncing as " traitors " those whose sin consisted 
 in the following of her example ? It has been said that the ground 
 work and essence of the doctrine of secession was laid in the Virginia 
 resolutions of 17&8, of which Mr. Madison, the leading spirit, the 
 Morning Star of the convention which formed the Constitution, was 
 the author. If so, let it be remembered that these resolutions were 
 submitted to every State in the then Union, of course, including Massa- 
 chusetts ; were expressly or tacitly approved by all, and disapproved 
 by none. 
 
 Indeed, it may be said generallv that during the period of discussion 
 concerning the adoption of the Constituti m by the several States, it 
 was taken for granted that any State becoming dissatisfied might with- 
 draw from the compact, /i9?' cause of which she was to be her own 
 judge. The old articles of Confederation declared that the Union 
 ormed thereunder should be perpetual; this clause was purposely 
 
and after discussion, left out of the new Constitution. The great 
 danger apprehended by the statesmen of ^that day was that the Fed- 
 eral Government would gradually encroach upon and absorb the 
 rights of the States. In deference to this fear the Xth Amendment 
 was adopted, chiefly on the urgent instigation of Massachusetts, ex- 
 pressly reserving to the States all rights not delegated. Still these 
 fears remained. In faci these encroachments upon the rights of 
 States have constituted for three-fourths of a century the great dis- 
 tinguishing subject of contention between American statesmen; dur- 
 ing all of which time, it was claimed that secession was a Constitu- 
 tional remedy therefor. If it had been understood that over the doors 
 of the Constitution were written nulla restigiu retrursum; ihat the 
 State which entered there could never more depart thence, whatever 
 might be the injuries and oppressions inflicted upon her, how many 
 States would have entered therein ? What would jealous, sensitive 
 Massachusetts, Virginia, North Carolina have said to such a proposi- 
 tion ? Would they have subjected their citizens to a condition of 
 things wherein North Carolina for example could have hung a man 
 in her borders if he refused to figbt for her, and Massachusetts and 
 the others could have hung him if he did ? 
 
 The essence of all crime is to be found in the criminal intent. Now 
 the object of these brief references to the doctrine of secession is to 
 ask you and the conservative, legal sentiment of the Northern people 
 how you could convict and execute a man for the intentional com- 
 mission of a crime, when the greatest intellects of the whole American 
 people held not been able to determine that the act committed was 
 a crime; when the act committed had been pronounced a Constitu- 
 tional right, an essential muniment of freedom, by legislatures of 
 great States, by along line of great and glorious statesmen; by primary 
 assemblages of the people, by conventions of great political parties, 
 whose ennciations received again and again the endorsement of a 
 majority of the American people at the polls ; when the Constitution 
 itself was silent as to express words, and when no court of law had 
 ever found by implication or legal deduction that this act was a crime ! 
 The idea of holding the citizen up to all the legal penalties and re- 
 sponsibilities of treason under such circumstances is revolting to our 
 sense of human justice. Now if you would not or could not thus in- 
 flict upon him the severe penalties of law, is it just, is it fair, is it 
 christian charity to a'-sume his guilt and visit upon him socially and 
 politically all the odium of one actually condemned; so far, as daily, 
 hourly iteration can do it ? May we not fairly retort upon you that 
 if secession be indeed a crime— you taught it to us. Sir Edward Coke 
 says of copy-hold tenures, that though of base descent, they are of a 
 most ancient house; we can say here that though secession be an in- 
 famous doctrine, yet it had a most illustrious origin, Virginia and 
 Massachusetts. [Loud applause.]. 
 
 Oh, wise and patriotic enemy of secession who fought that monster 
 by a "substitute," and who enriched yourself by speculation^on the 
 distresses and confusions of war, spare us! [Laughter]. 
 
 Oh, brave, true soldiers of the Union, and all you people who had 
 honest convictions of the unwisdom of our acts, ye who fought and 
 sacrificed for love of country and its fair autonomy, spare us, who 
 were equally brave, equally honest, but not equally fortunate! 
 
 Again, my friends, we of the South have most serious cause to com- 
 plain of you in reference to your efforts to forestall his tory in regard to 
 the causes which led to secession and war. It is written : ' ' Thou shalt 
 
6 
 
 mot bear false witness against thy neighbor." You say that it was 
 slavery, and slavery alone, that caused the war. In your literature it 
 is spoken of as the "slave-holders-rebellion." A false shot out of 
 both barrels ! Slavery was the occasion, not the cause of war. You 
 put us in the position not only of traitors and rebels but of becoming 
 such for. the privilege of holding human beings in bondage, thereby 
 heaping upon us all the reproach and opprobrium that such a thing 
 renders possible. This is at once a misrepresentation and an injustice. 
 The great majority of the people of the South entertained in the ab- 
 stract as much repugnance to slave-holding as you did. 
 
 Their fault in respect to slavery, as with secession, was not all to be 
 charged upon them. As usual, Massachusetts comes in for the lion's 
 share. Boston and Providence slavers vexed the seas in their ungodly 
 search for kidnapped Africans to be bought in exchange for New 
 England rum and sold to the Southern Plantations, against which Old 
 Yirginia and other Southern States protested. 
 
 Nay, by reference to the history of the constitution it will be seen 
 that New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut 
 united with North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia in postpon- 
 ing the suppression of the slave trade for twenty years, in the for- 
 mation of that iostrument : the Southern States because they wanted 
 the slaves, the Northern States because they had large shipping in- 
 terests engaged in the profit of buying and carrying them to market. 
 "The horrors of the middle passage" belonged to you; we only 
 bought your wares. The desire to protect her infant industries was 
 thus manifested even at that early day against her ancient rival, 
 England, whose "pauper labor" was engaged in the same trade. 
 
 So, too, a fierce arraignraeot of King George III, for forcing the 
 slave trade upon the colonies was inserted by Mr. Jefferson in the origi- 
 nal draft of the Declaration of Independence. It was striken out at the 
 instigation of the Eastern States as well as Southern, because it was felt 
 to be a reflection on citizens of Massachusetts and of Rhode Island en- 
 gaged in the slave trade. Slavery and Ihe slave trade were in full and 
 cruel operation in Massachusetts before there was a white man's home 
 in North Carolina, a slave trade which not only imported Africans, but 
 exported Africans, Indians, and, worst of all, our own race — the 
 people of our own blood ! How slavery grew and ramified through 
 all the South, under the natural stimulus of climate and productions, 
 and how the abstract sentiment against it was extinguished by the 
 political necessities of the times, arising from the fierce attacks made 
 upon it by the States to whose climate and pursuits it was unsuited, 
 and who therefore sold out, quit business and turned philanthropist! 
 All this is an old, old story; and I only allude to it to remmd you that 
 you are not at liberty to cast the first stone. [Applause.] 
 
 The ownership of slaves and the regulation of the system wei'e left 
 to the exclusive control of the States, not only by the Tenth amendment 
 which reserved to them all rights and powers not expressly granted to 
 the Federal government, but its existence was specially recognized 
 and its safety specially provided for in the constitution itself. It be- 
 ing a matter, therefore, of purely domestic concern, wholly within the 
 control of the States, the attempt to interfere with it by the Federal 
 government in any shape, directly or indirectly, was justly regarded 
 as a violation of constitutional right, and injurious to that perfect 
 equality of the States guaranteed by the constitution. That is why 
 we went to war. Slavery happened to be the particular item or in- 
 stance wherein this equality was assailed; and in resistance to this at- 
 
tempt of the Federal Government to interfere within a State in a mat- 
 ter which peculiarly pertained to that State we resorted to secession as 
 a peaceable remedy. The thing which made our forefathers hesi- 
 tate to adopt the constitution at all, had here come upon us, and the 
 remedy which our forefathers — and yours — had suggested as the 
 only one proper or possible, was naturally resorted to. 
 
 Had it been conceded by submission that the Federal government 
 could interfere in the matter of slavery, we would have been logically 
 precluded from resistance to like interference for any other cause 
 whatever, and there was an end to the rights and equality of the 
 States under the constitution forever; and therefore an end to the 
 freedom, sovereignty, and independence of each State which, accord- 
 ing to all writers and statesmen, north and south, was retained by them 
 when they acceded to the constitution. 
 
 It was a constitutional principle for which we fought ; not merely 
 the right to hold slaves. So far as I have the right to speak for the 
 people of North Carolina, I believe that with them this war was one 
 for principle as purely and simply as was the war of 1776 ; as sacred 
 a principle as that which made Boston men disguise themselves and 
 throw the tea overboard (by the way the first kukluxina; ever known 
 in America), and made the North Carolina militia of the Cape Fear 
 openly and without disguise seize the British Stamp-Master, destroy 
 his stamps and force him to take an oath not to execute the stamp act 
 in that colony. 
 
 It will not do to say that the Federal government was not interfere- 
 ing with or threatening slavery at the time of secession. 
 
 Northern States were openly violating the provisions of the consti- 
 tution relative to the return of fugitive slaves. A president had just 
 been elected on the principle of avowed hostility to slavery, by a strict 
 sectional vote. No one doubts now or could doubt then, that a war 
 upon the reserved rights of the States, way;ed in the name of slavery, 
 was the animating motive of the great party which had just come into 
 power. No pretext could disguise it. So late as June, 1862, a Con- 
 gress composed entirely of representatives of the adhering States, 
 solemnly declared that the Federal government had no power to 
 abolish slavery and that the war was waged exclusively for the preser- 
 vation of the Union. In six months thereafter slavery was abolished 
 all the same. The real point of attack was then disclosed. Do not 
 misunderstand me, I am not ashamed of the term "rebel" in connec- 
 tion with the part I bore in those events, neither are my people. I am 
 simply pleading for historic, legal truth. The fair Goddess Liberty 
 was born of rebellion, and was baptised in the blood of rebels. It is 
 the only remedy for wrong under absolute governnient ; in all ages it 
 has been the last hope of freedom. I have said this much in the earn- 
 est desire that it might call your attention to an injustice, which you 
 are daily perpetrating, not for the purpose of reviving an issue which 
 has been settled. Now that it has been settled in a manner satisfac- 
 tory to you, you can aiiord to do justice to the motives and the con- 
 duct of your opponents, — you can afford to accept the late war as an 
 appeal to arms to decide a disputed question of constitutional construc- 
 tion,— one of the few vital questions which the wisdom of the fathers did 
 not make sufficiently clear. That will be the verdict of history when 
 your passions and mine shall have been forever extinguished in death. 
 Need you say anything more ? Does your reputation or vindication 
 require that you should asperse your adversaries ? I trow not. The 
 preservation of the Union with all which that means, the settlement 
 
of a great constitutional question, which threatened its safety, is your 
 all-sufficient justification and your rightful glory. [Applause]. You 
 add not a spark to that splendid radiance, which gathered around the 
 defenders of the Union, by casting abuse upon those whom you over- 
 came. Here, let me remark, that a new duty is imposed ujDon you by 
 the ;^ery fact of your great achievement ; now that your swords have 
 definitely settled the question that the Union is indissoluble; that no 
 State for whatever cause has any right to withdraw therefrom; that 
 secession is not a constitutional remedy for grievances, it devolves 
 upon you as just men to see that by a strict adherence to the condi- 
 tions of the Union no State shall have reasonable cause to complain. 
 [Applause] 
 
 The people of North Carolina, more, perhaps, than those of any of 
 the eleven seceding States, were devoted to the Union. They had 
 always regarded it with sincerest reverence, and affection, and 
 they left it slowly and with sorrow. They were actuated by an hon- 
 est conviction — 
 
 1st. That their constitutional rights were endangered, not by the 
 mere election of Mr. Lincoln, as others did, but by the course which 
 subsequent events were compelled to take in consequence of the ideas 
 which were behind him; 
 
 2d. By the force of neighborhood and association; 
 
 3d. By a fatality of events which ordinary prudence could not 
 have avoided. The Union men of that State, of whom I was one, 
 whatever may have been their doubts of the propriety of secession, 
 were unanimous in the opinion that it was neither right nor safe to 
 permit the General Government to coerce a State. In their argu- 
 ments therefore with the secession advocates they logically look the 
 position that should coercion be attempted they would unite with 
 the secessionists in resisting it During the last session of Congress, 
 which preceded the outbreak, the winter of 18G0 and '61, the tjnion 
 members of Congress from Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina and 
 Virginia, after earnest and anxious consultation, constituted a com- 
 mittee to wait upon Mr. Lincoln, who was then in the city prepara- 
 tory to bis inauguration, and present him their views in regard to 
 the situation. They did so, and my colleague, the Hon. John A. 
 Gilmer, gave me the results of their interview. It was represented to 
 Mr. Lincoln by them that the Cotton States proper alone could not 
 make any effectual headway in maintaining secession without the aid 
 of the great border States of Missouri, Kentucky, Virginia, Mary- 
 land, North Carolina and Tennessee; that the population of those 
 States was devoted to the Union, but could not be held to that position 
 should coercion be attempted and the blood of their southern brethren 
 be shed. They expressed to him the opinion that the secession move- 
 ment could be checked and finally broken down if those great States 
 could be kept out of it. Mr. Lincoln appeared fully impressed with 
 the wisdom of these views and promised that if possible he would 
 avoid the attempt 'at coercion. In his inaugural address he commit- 
 ted himself only to the announcement that his duty would compel 
 him to hold and possess the public property of the United States. I 
 quote from memory. With this promise and these hopes the Union 
 Congressmen trom these States returned to their homes and began 
 their canvassings for re election. They promised ihe people that no 
 force would be attempted, and if there should be, they could and 
 would no longer hold out for the Union. As precarious as this posi- 
 
tion was, such was the temper of the Soul hern people, it was all that 
 the situation afforded even in States so conservative. 
 
 But when Fort Sumpter was fired upon, immediately followed by 
 Mr. Lincoln's call for " volunteers to suppress the insurrection," the 
 whole situation was changed instantly. The Union men had, every 
 prop knocked from under them, and by stress of their own position 
 were plunged into the secession movement. For myself, I will say, 
 that I was canvassing for the Union with all my strength; I was 
 addressing a large and excited crowd, large numbers of whom 
 were armed, and literally had my arm extended upward in 
 pleading for peace and the Union of our Fathers, when the tel- 
 egraphic news was announced of the firing on Sumpter and the 
 Piesident's call lor seventy-five thousand volunteers. When mv hand 
 came down from that impassioned gesticulation, it fell slowly and 
 sadly by the side of a Seci ssionist I immediately, with altered voice 
 and manner called upon the assembled multitude to volunteer, not 
 to fight against but for i^outh Carolina. I said : If war must come I 
 preferred to be with my own people. If we had to shed blood I pre- 
 ferred to shed Northern rather than Southern blood. If we had to 
 slay I had rather slay strangers than my own kindred and neighbors; 
 and that it was better, whether right or wrong, that communities and 
 States should go together and face the horrors of war in a body — shar- 
 ing a common fate, rather than endure the unspeakable calamities of 
 internicine strife. To those at all acquainted with the atrocities 
 which were inflicted upon the divided communities of Missouri, Ken- 
 tucky and Tennessee, the humanity of my action will be apparent. I 
 wentwiih and shared the fate of the people of my native State, hav- 
 ing first done all I could to pres-erve the peace and secure the unanimity 
 of the people to avert, as much as possible, the calamities of war. I 
 do not r.'gret that course. I do not believe there is an honorable man 
 within my hearing! to-night who, under the same circumstances, would 
 not have done as I did [Much applause.] 
 
 My own feeling and conduct is given as a specimen of that of the 
 people of North Carolina at large. I charge no bad faith on Mr. Lin- 
 coln for This entrapment ; doubtless his intentions were as sincere as 
 those of Union men with whom he conferred. Events were happening 
 so rapidly and so irresistibly that he could see no further ahead than 
 others. His course from day to day was shaped by his surroundings, 
 — so was ours ! 
 
 The argument having ceased and the sword being drawn, all 
 classes in the South united as by migic, as only a common danger 
 could unite them. No people were more zealous and unanimous than 
 became the Unionists of my State in support of the war ; because they 
 had been honest in their belief that coercion was wrong, and because 
 they felt conscious of haviag done all that was honorable to avert hos- 
 tilities. The co-relative duty now was to do all that was manly to 
 fight it out. Well and truly she performed that duty, as the result on 
 many a stricken field will show. First and last she sent to the armies 
 of the Confederacy, not relatively but absolutely, more soldiers than 
 any other Slate in the South; furnished more supplies, equipped her 
 troops better. On many of the hardest fought fieMs of Northern Vir- 
 ginia she left more dead and wounded upon the blood soaked earth 
 than all the other Southern States combined. At Appomattox she laid 
 down at the feet of General Grant double the number of muskets of 
 any other State in the Confederacy. She did the same at Greens- 
 boro. There was not a sacrifice which she was called upon to make 
 
10 
 
 for the good of the Southern canse that she did not make, and make 
 clieeifully. 
 
 Th s, from old fashioned, steady, sober, modest North Carolina, in 
 a quarrel not of her making ; in a war not of her clioosing. I men 
 tion these things not with the expectation of exciting your applause in 
 behalf of peoi le whos- opinions are so widely different fiom yours, 
 who fought against your armies and soutiht to withdraw from politi- 
 cal association with you, but with the earnest hope of enlisting your 
 sympathy foi' that kind of statesmanship which seeks to utilize sucii 
 noble citizenship for the purposes of the Eepublic, and because I be- 
 lieve that a tiue soldi' r can honor courage and faithfulness to duty 
 wherever he sees it displayed by any portion of the great American 
 people. All genius, all steadfastness, all public and private virtue is 
 the common property of our couDtrv. 
 
 Instead of fostering bitti rness and devoting politics to those small 
 prejudices which are calculate I to carry a ward or a township prim- 
 ary, I neg your recognition, of that wiser and nobler policy which 
 seeks to make every spark of genius, every arm of strenglh, every 
 heart of integrity, and every soul of tire in America contributory to 
 the strengthening and the np-building of freedom, and the glory of the 
 great Republic. [Great applause.] 
 
 But I did not come before you to-night to discourse upon the mili- 
 tary aspects and operations of that struggle (ihouuh it is a tempting 
 thenif), but rather to speak of its political and civil condition. Wi hin 
 two weeks after the opening of hostilities at Sumpter, a convemionof 
 the people of North Carolina which, in the February preceding had 
 been ^oted down by a large majority, as looking towards (lis union, 
 was called together in Raleigh to consider and provide for the situa- 
 tion. In it were the ablest men in our State, perhaps the ablest which 
 were ever assembled in our State in a body. They were composed of 
 whigs, democrats, unionists, and secessionists : there were Gov. 
 Morehead, Gov. Graham, George E. Badger, Thos Rutfin, John A. 
 Gilmer, Burton Craig, James W. Osborne, N. W. Wordfin, and others 
 of sirai'ar high character and ability. The la-t semblance of ok! patty 
 distinctions was exhibited in that convention in the contest as to the 
 method of retiring from the Union and joining the new Confederacy. 
 The Unionists proposed a resolution of withdrawal, containing a de- 
 c\&ra\ion in cxteii so of the causes of separation; the Secessionists op- 
 posed it by an ordinance simply repealing the ordinance of 1789, by 
 which North Carolina had entered the Union. The latter prevailed, 
 and thenceforth all distinctions measurably disappeared. At first 
 the popular feeling was one of great confidence and hope The coun 
 try was pro>^perous and full of material resources. The novelty of 
 war with all its pomp and circumstance filled the land with unusual 
 and lofty feeling. Say what you will about sla\ ery it had filled our 
 country with a class of young men admirably fitted for war; men with 
 habits formed to command; with a consciousness of superiority, and 
 with a sense of chivalry which taught them to believe that personal 
 courage was one of the highest of human virtues. Your people 
 thought, and frequently said, that they had become effeminated by 
 slavery and luxuiious habits, and could not endure the hardships of 
 war. You did not find it so. On the other hand we thought you 
 were enfeebled in like manner by your in-door lives of shop and 
 factory: W'-, too, found it somewhat different. Indeed both sides under- 
 valued their adversaries, a not uncommon fault in people about to go 
 
11 
 
 to war. The buoyant and hopeful feeling which animated our people 
 ai the beginn ng of the sir iggle was sustained by the belief that on 
 principle they werr in the right; and es eciall}' that they were on the 
 defensive and had their homes and firesides to defend auainst desola- 
 tion. They furthermore believed — and they certainly were entitled to 
 thitt opinion for they paid a hiijh price for it — that a^ a commercial 
 and manufacturing people, much given to the making of money, ynu 
 would not long continue a contest in whi ;h there was apparently no 
 money to be m ide. — Alas, we reckoned without our hos^. in this re- 
 spect. We did not know how Yankee ingenuity was equal to the ta-k 
 of making money where it was spent; how it could accumulate wealth 
 out ot the very pi'ocess ot exhaustion. [Laughter.] But we did not 
 believe, as has been often enlarged, that we could starve you into 
 peace, by withholding our cotton. There were some who professed to 
 believe this, but the lunatic asylums of the State (and there were not 
 many), could have furnished accommodation for them all. • 
 
 Many of our people, too. among those who had been most devoted 
 Unionists, soon came to look at ihingsin a philosophic spirit, in their de- 
 sire to reconcile them-elves to the situation. They recalled the old his- 
 toric idea that liberty was best preserved in countries of small extent, 
 whose gove'-nments came most immediately under the nbservatiim of 
 the governed, and whose officials were most directly responsible to 
 their constituents ; and that in countries' of great lerritorial extent, 
 filled with vast populations, of diverse interests and pursuits, there 
 would naturally be a demand for a strong government, and a govern- 
 ment was made strong necessarily by conferring up^n it powers 
 wrested from the people, — a process most undoubtedly dangerous to 
 liberty. They considered also that the centralizing tendencies of the 
 times, which they had always been taught to dread, might best be 
 checked by a division of this great la d into two or more nationalities, 
 wher in individual rights might still be made to constitute 'be primal 
 objects of the smaller governments, rather than the national glory 
 which threatened to agt^randize the movement of the one great 
 united government. Whatever mav be your opinion of ihese views, 
 I only wish here to as-ure you that they were widely entertained, and 
 that they served to reconcile many to the proposed separation. 
 
 With such feelings and hopes the war was begun I Volunteers were 
 first called upon for six months, then for twelve months ; then for 
 "three years or the war" — no man supposing that it could exceed 
 three years in duration 
 
 Promises were freely made that six months must wind it up. Look- 
 ing back at it all now, it is easy for us to assume a superior wisdom, 
 and laugh at all this folly. The first Congress of the Confederacy, 
 sitting in Montgomery, Alabama, provided for the raising of fifteen 
 millions of dollars for the support of the war. They did not want 
 the President embarrassed for want of money. For this they were 
 seriously rebuked in many quarters for pernicious extravagance ; and 
 it was alleged that we were beginning alieady to fall into the habit of 
 the U. S. Government, in thus accumulating useless money in the 
 treasury to become a source of corruption. It seems to me however 
 that some of this kind of lunacy was also displayed on this side of 
 the line. I think I remember fome promises of Mr. Seward of sup- 
 pressing the rebellion on ninety-days- after sight, exclusive of the usual 
 days of grace allowed on commercial paper. [Laughter J But what- 
 ever the mistakes our leaders made in calling for troops, the troops 
 came ; came so promptly and in such numbers that neither their own 
 
12 
 
 States nor the Confederate Government could receive and properly 
 provide for thrm. Numbers were refused, and it was often consid- 
 ered a special favor for a regiment or a battalion to be accepted and 
 sent to the front. 
 
 At this time and for twelve or fifteen months afterwards the civil 
 authoriti s of the new Confederate Government were very pojiular 
 and were most cordially supported by all classes. In the winter of 
 1861-2 a change began to take place. The time of the six months' 
 volunteers had expired, and that of the twelve months' men was ap- 
 proaching expiration, and it was seen that if they were all ai once 
 mustered out the Confederacy would be left without a sutficient 
 army, at the very opening of a campaign. Eff. rts were at first made 
 to induce the troops in the field to re-enlist, hut for various causes 
 these efforts were only partially successful. By this time much of 
 the novelty of the thing had worn off; the volunteers had seen service 
 enough to gratify their cariosity, and the people had experienced 
 what it was to be in a state of actual war. Both soldiers and people 
 had also tasted somewhat of its unpleasint elements. The enthusiasm 
 which had b<^en excited by the victories of Big Bethel, Manassas and 
 other engagements of the first years' campaign, had st^nsibly dimin- 
 ished And on the whole, people were no longer disposed to go far 
 out of the way for the sake of being shot at. Seeing, tberefure. whilst 
 yet these efforts at re- enlistments were going on, that the result was 
 at leas^ doubtful, the Confederate Congress suddenly ended ttie mat- 
 ter by the enactment of a sweeping cunscript law, pi icing every able- 
 bodied man. between the ages of eighteen and thirty five, with certain 
 exceptions, in the service. Here the first open and undisguised com- 
 plaints were heard, and the murmurings grew louder when the 
 nature of the exceptions wasascertciineii. One of the exceptions from 
 the operations of the law was in favor of the owner or manager of 
 twenty negroes. Altogether it produced a decided effect on public 
 sentiment. 
 
 It was perhaps the severfst blow the Confederacy ever received, as 
 it did more than anything else to alienate the affections of the common 
 people, w ithout whose support it could not live for a day. It was not 
 only legarded as a confession that the ne"w Government was not able 
 to depend upon the voluntary support of the people, with which it so 
 triumphantly started out — which, of course, happened also to you, 
 and must happen to any Government in a long continued struggle — 
 but it opened a wide door to deraagojues to appeal xo the non-slave- 
 holding class, and make them believe thut the only issue was the pro- 
 te' tion of slavery, in which they were to be sacrificed for the sole 
 benefit of the masters. The cry was rung through the country that 
 it was a "rich man's war and a poor man's fight." This was un- 
 doubtedly the weakest point in our position, and you can well imagine 
 the s ate of political feeling such an appeal was calculated to bring 
 about, and the great dilflculty the supporters of the war had in meet- 
 ing it. That this 1 w was a great calamity to the Southern cause I 
 regard as indisputable, but that it was a mistake I a'-n not prepared 
 to assert when I consider the counter calamity which it was intended 
 to avert. The wise man of scripture hfissaid that the "destruction of 
 the poor is their poverty. " We were so hard pressed that neces-ity 
 selected our means for us. Undoubtedly but for it the Southern ar- 
 mies would have been virtually disbanded at the very opening of 
 the great campaign of eighteen hundred and sixty-two, and McClel- 
 lan would have marched triumphantly into Richmond. The troops 
 
13 
 
 which had enlisted for the war, added to those which had re-enlisted 
 and those whose time had not yet expired, could not bave stopped him. 
 This would probably have been decisive of the war, for in this a^e of 
 railroads and telegraph lines such a contest could not have been main- 
 tained by the spasmodic efforts of a volunteer force, as was our War 
 of Independence one hundred years ago. It is necessary also, in rela- 
 tion to the exemption of the managers of negroes from conscription to 
 give a word of explanation concerning that enactment. It may not 
 have occurred to the people of the North that our slaves were not an 
 element of weakness to us, a? it was asserted confidently that they 
 would be, On the contrary, they proved a source of positive strength, 
 in that by tilling the soil, conducting our domestic industries, and pro- 
 ducing our supplies, they enabled the entire capable white population 
 to take up arms. By this means we far exceeded the ratio which in 
 all wars should exist between those who fight in the field and those 
 who labor at home. For example, one soul out of every six in North 
 Carolina served in the army. The exemption of managers and owners 
 of negroes from conscription may therefore be called an unwise at- 
 tempt to do a most wise thing, to wit, to utilize to the utmost the 
 capacity of a black population of four millions to contribute to the 
 support of the war. Whether this could have been done in some less 
 objectionable but equally effective way it would be an assumption of 
 wisdom after the fact for me now to gay. 
 
 Here permit me to call your attention to the conduct of the south- 
 ern slaves during that war. You had been taught, by press, pulpit and 
 hustings, to believe that they were ^n oppressed, abused and diaboli- 
 cally treated race; that their groanings daily and hourly appealed to 
 heaven, whilst their shackles and their scars testified in the face of all 
 humanity against their treatment. No doubt many of you believed 
 :he harrowing story, for there was much like it, only worse, in your 
 own early history. 
 
 How was this grave impeachment of a whole people sustained, when 
 you went among them to emancipate them from the horrors of their 
 serfdom ? When the war began, naturally you expected insurrections, 
 incendiary burnings, murder and outrage, with all the terrible condi- 
 tions of servile war. There were not wanting fanatic il wretches who 
 did their utmost to excite it. Did you find it so? Here is what you 
 found. Within hearing of the guns that were roaring to set them free, 
 with the land stripped of its male population, and none around them 
 except the aged, the women and the children, they not only failed to 
 enibrace their opportunity of vengeance, but for the most part they 
 failed to avail themselves of the chance of freedom itself. They re- 
 mained quietly on our plantations, cultivated our fields and cared for 
 our mothers, wives and little ones with a faithful love and a loyal 
 kindness which, in the nature of things, could only be born of sincere 
 good will. Very few, indeed, compaiatively, followed your armies as 
 they swept by the old homesteads, and a ^till smaller number tied from 
 their homes to get under its protection. No murder, no outrage, no 
 burnings characterized their course. Not a hand was raised in ven- 
 geance by the southern slave when the supreme opportunity came to 
 him. Even those who left the plantations did so mostly by stealth, as 
 though ashamed of deserting their master's families even for the com- 
 mendable purpose of joining themselves to freedom. This was the 
 general rule. From the day of their emancipation to the present 
 moment, except where instigated by the evil counsels of bad white- 
 men, their demeanor towards their late masters has been characterized 
 
14 
 
 -mostly by kindness and considerate respect. I know of no instance in 
 the world's history when a people similarly situated have behaved 
 better on the whole. These facts are significant. That they are com- 
 plimentary in the highest degree to the black race no one doubts ; do 
 they not also say enough for the southern whites, in regard to their 
 rule as masters, to justify you in thinking better of them than per- 
 haps you have been accustomed to do ? According to well known 
 moral laws this kindly loyalty of the one race could not have been be- 
 gotten by the cruelty and oppression of the other. [Applause.] It will 
 do you no harm to reflect upon this. 
 
 Whilst the Confederate armies were holding their own in the field 
 and the civil authorities were administering its affairs in the ordinary 
 grooves, there was but little excitement or political feeling in the public 
 mind. It had been supposed that the war could be fought through 
 without' any disturbances of the ordinary functions of civil government, 
 or any strain upon the muniments of their civil rights. But so soon 
 as the fortunes of the Confederacy began to ebb ; so soon as the supe- 
 rior numbers and resources of the North began to be seriously felt, 
 the managers of the South came to feel the necessity of resorting to 
 extraordinary means, and this feeling of serenity was rudely disturbed. 
 Political discontent and distrust began to prevail. Perhaps in this 
 respect was made the initial mistake of the whole secession move- 
 ment: a mistake, the fatality of which increased day by day to the end. 
 We started out without revolution of any kind, with all the machinery 
 of society, State and Federal, in complete operation. There was simply 
 a transfer of the central authority from the United States to the Con- 
 federate States of America. The same bond of Union or Constitution 
 was adopted, save a change of a few strokes ot the pen. In thus 
 avoiding the alarms of revolution and giving assurance to the timid 
 of the security of society at the outset, a great point was undoubtedly 
 gained. But this was dearly paid for. These smoothly flowing con- 
 ditions could not of course be maintained No consideration was 
 given to the dangers of that coming period when hard necessity 
 should compel the setting aside of civil rights and peaceful forms, and 
 the substitution of the harsh features of revolution — at a moment, 
 too, when the government most needed the warm support of public 
 opinion. Looked at simply with a view to success, in my opinion the 
 seceding States should have faced the most ultra measures of revolu- 
 tion at the very start ; they should have formed no National govern- 
 ment and should have bound themselves by the shackles of no Con- 
 stitution To face the great and terrible odds against them in their 
 struggle with a people three times their numbers and ten times their 
 wealth, with the world for a recruiting ground of armies and of 
 means, they should'^have stripped themselves naked of every vestige of 
 law, constitution or restraint which in any way hindered or encumbered 
 the arm of war, and should have submitted every energy, every 
 element of strength to the sole direction of a single will. This would 
 indeed have been a terrible thing to do, but no less fearful was the 
 alternative, and we should not have gone into the thing at all if not wil- 
 ling to embrace every possble means of success. Men would have no 
 doubt made up their minds to it, if instead of glossing over the difticul- 
 ties and deceiving with fallacious hopes of a short war and easy success, 
 ■the real facts had been boldly and honestly presented -at the initial 
 jfnoment. I tested this better principle of our nature in the re enlist- 
 
15 
 
 ing of my own regiment when its term was about to expire in 1862. 
 I did this most successfully by telling them the simple truth, that there 
 was a long and terrible war before them ; hardship and suffering and 
 death for the most of them ; that no man could foresee the end — but 
 that their country needed them and its cause would be lost without 
 them. That was all, audit was sufficient. That regiment, the 26th 
 North Carolina, led by the gallant Colonel Harry Burgwyn, the son 
 of a noble Boston woman, left six hundred dead and wounded on the 
 heights of Gettsyburg, with their heroic young commander among 
 them. A number of these were found within that deadly stone wall 
 which Lee's whole army had so vainly attempted to scale. [Applause]. 
 
 But this course was not adopted, and the usual disappointment fol- 
 lowed. When conscription came, as I have said, complaints began ; 
 when conscription was extended complaints grew louder ; when com- 
 plaints became angry, the suspension of habeas corpus was authorized 
 and martial law— that is to say, no law — was allowed to be pro- 
 claimed, if need be. This, of course, increased and deepened the dis- 
 content, and from that time forward there was in several of the 
 States, notably North Carolina and Georgia, an irritating sense of 
 wrong, caused by the attempt of the Confederate Executive to enforce 
 the laws of Congress, and the efforts of ihe State to protect the per- 
 sonal rights of their citizens. Simple justice requires me to say that 
 there was no disposition on the part of the President of the Confed- 
 eracy to violate these rights per se. Indeed the disposition was quite 
 the contrary. He never abused the extraordinary powers given him 
 by Congress ; in fact, scarcely resorted to them at all. 
 
 So great was his reverence, and that of the Southern mind at large, 
 for all the old-time muniments of personal liberty, that nearly every 
 claim of the States in behalf of their citizens was conceded — oftentimes 
 at what appeared to be a sacritice of the public interest. I believe 
 when you view these things dispassionately and calmly you will feel 
 bound to give proper credit to both Confederate and State authorities 
 for their eft'orts during all the confusion of those unhappy times to 
 preserve both the essence and the forms of personal liberty under the 
 strongest temptations to disregard them. I feel that it would not be 
 too much in me to say here that we far exceeded your States, and cer- 
 tainly your Federal Government, in this important respect, though 
 the strain upon you was not nearly so hard as upon us. From Sep- 
 tember. 1862, to May, 1865, I was Chief Magistrate of the State of 
 North Carolina; and when eleven years afterwards I was again inaugu- 
 rated Governor for the third time, the proudest boast which I could 
 make in regard to my previous service was that during my adminis- 
 tration the old legal maxim inter arma silent legtS was expunged, and 
 in its place was written inter armfo leges audithantur. The laws icere 
 heard amidst all the roar of cannon. No man within the jurisdiction 
 •of the State of North Carolina was denied the privilege of the writ of 
 Jiabeus corpus, the right of trial by jury, or the equal protection of the 
 laws, as provided by our Constitution and the Bill of Rights. 
 
 It would, perhaps, be not uninteresting to you to know something of 
 the curious experience through which the Southern people passed 
 during that period in the matter of physical resources. You can 
 scarcely imagine the feeling which comes to a people when isolated as 
 we were, and shut out fro7n communication with all the world. A 
 nation in prison we were, in the midst of civilized society, and 
 forced to rely exclusively upon ourselves for everything. "When the 
 
16 
 
 war began, with the exception of a few cotton and woolen mills and 
 the crude establishments common to all plantations and villages, we 
 were utterly without manufactures of any kind. !So far as I can re- 
 call theie was not a foundry for casting a cannon, a shop for mak- 
 ing a musket, nor a mill for making a pound of powder, within the 
 limits of the eleven seceding States. Not a grain scythe, nor an axe, 
 nor a bar of railroad iron was made in the country, except the few, 
 possibly, occasionally produced in the smallest quantities and in the 
 crudest style of temporary makeshift, In short, nearly ail the staple 
 articles of human necessity, for both peace and war, we were without 
 the machinery and the establishments for making. But the land was 
 full of resources, and the raw material for the manufacture of all that 
 we needed. And strange as it may appear to you, it was full of me- 
 chanical capacity to deal with this material. If you could have wit- 
 nessed the zeal and ihe success with which our native genius took 
 hold of it, under the extraordinary stimulus of the times, you would 
 no longer believe that New England Yankees possess a monopoly of 
 the American inventive faculty. [Laughter] Cotton and woolen 
 mills quickly sprang up and the c ipacity of existing ones was enlarged. 
 Foundrys for casting cannon, shops for making fire arms, swords 
 and bayonets, and mills for making powder were set up in abundance. 
 Shoes and blankets were made by the hundred thousand, and trans- 
 portation wagons and camp equipage- of h11 kinds soon supplied the 
 demand. A rigid blockade of our coast at a very tarly date shur off 
 our hopes of supplies from abroad; and yet that blockade was not so 
 successfully maintained but that needed articles crept in in considera- 
 ble quantities, though fitfully. A long-legged steamer which I pur- 
 chased in the Clyde for the State of" North Carolina, made eleven 
 round trips from IBermudas into the port of Wilmington, carrying out 
 cotton and bringing back supplies of those things which could not be 
 procured al home, especiallj^ grain scythes, card clothing for the 
 factories, hand cards for our old-fashioned looms, and medicines, with 
 large quantities of shoes, blankets and army cloths. She often entered 
 the port in broad daylight, in the face of the blockading fleet. The 
 situation called into active use all the mechanical talent of our people. 
 The village or cross-road blacksmith refurnished his shop and made 
 tools and agricultural implements for his neighbors; the shoemaker, 
 the cooper, the wheelwright, iind the tanner, all sprang into sudden 
 importance. Even the druggist compounded from the wondrous 
 flora of the country substitutes for nearly all the drugs of commerce, 
 which if not so efficacious were at least more harmless than the 
 genuine article. The devices and expedients adopted in all the in- 
 dustries, the social and domestic departments of our daily life, were 
 most ingenious, though sometimes ludicrous. Here the subtle con- 
 trivings of the female sex became most conspicuous. The silks, me- 
 rinos, alpaca^ and other dress goods of our woman-folks, known as 
 " store clothes," which were on hand when the blockade began, were 
 saved and carefully used for weddings and other occasions of high 
 state. For calico prints were substituted tlie colored plaids manufac- 
 tured in our cotton mills or woven in the hand- looms of the old plan- 
 tation. 
 
 Perhaps you have given some consideration to the importance which 
 a worn m attaches tothe bonnet ; and unless your domestic educatioti 
 has been neglected you are doubtless aware how essential in all civil- 
 ized lands tiie satisfactory adjustment of the bonnet question is to the 
 peace of mankind. This was now upon us with all its force ! There 
 
17 
 
 ■we were, with a bonnet-wearing population of at least three millions 
 in our midst, and not a bonnet factory within the Confederate States, 
 and with a frowning cordon of ships of war guarding every port to 
 keep out this essential army supply as contraband of war ! Tlie situa- 
 tion was indeed most appalling ; but my fair country-women were 
 •equal to it, as they have been to all other emergencies which they 
 have been called on to face. As in the Wars ot the Roses, the women 
 were greater partizans than the men, and with them the memories of 
 the struggle were longer in dying out, so it proved with us. 
 
 They submitted to the privations and hardships of the situation 
 with a cheerful patience which shamed the boasted courage of man. 
 In these inconsiderable matters they showed that beneath the thin 
 veneer of personal vanity there lay the great and noble qualities of 
 common sense and patriotism. They took the bright straw of the 
 wheat, oats, and rye, and the husk of the corn ears, rich in the 
 beauteous coloring of silver and old gold, and with deft fingers wove 
 for themselves all . manner of headgear, as charming as any which 
 ever came from the shops of France or Italy the natural earthly 
 homes of artistic beauty ! As to the effects produced, I beg to 
 assure the inexperienced in ray audience that in gazing upon 
 Southern girls thus arrayed from top to toe in home made striped 
 cottons, which we called Alamanee plaids, set off by corn-shuck 
 bonnets, the work of their own hands, I have felt all the usual 
 symptoms of a violent attack — increased action of the heart, short- 
 ness of breath, and that general feeling of " all-overishness," as strong 
 and irresistible as could have been superinduced by any other possible 
 female get-up. I became sadly aware of the fact that it did not matter 
 how they dressed, they had the same power to find the soft spot in our 
 hearts every time. It is male destiny. In the language of St. Paul, 
 " Brethren, I speak as a man," — "I lie not." [Great laughter.] 
 
 Nor were their efforts confined to the habilitating of their own sex. 
 They made hats of the same material, and nearly all the clothing 
 worn by men and boys was woven and made up by them, of wool or 
 cotton or a mixture of the two materials, by the aid of the old hand- 
 looms. 
 
 In the way of eating and driaking we did better, especially with re- 
 gard to the leading articles of diet. Our farm productions, always 
 abundant and good, were made still more so by the fact that there 
 was no sale for our great staples, cotton and tobacco, and our fields 
 were therefore devoted to edible products. Of alcoholic liquors we 
 had too much. Corn whiskey and apple brandy were both abundant 
 and cheap. If any of my auditors happened to be in Eastern North 
 Carolina during that time he will doubtless have heartburning recol- 
 lections of the apple brandy he found there, under the somewhat 
 mysterious denomination of " New Dip." Bat I shall do— what he 
 perhaps did not — forbear. [Laughter.] 
 
 When toward the close of the war, by reason of the circumscribing of 
 the scope of country from which the army obtained its supplies, it 
 became necessary for the States to forbid the use of grain tor distilla- 
 tion, various other substances were adopted. A drink was made from 
 potatoes, from rice, from pumpkins and turnips, and from the domestic 
 sugar cane, called sorghum. A brandy was also made from persim- 
 mons. As to sorghum whiskey I can only say that in its flavor and 
 its effects it was decidedlymoreterrible than "an army with banners." 
 On the shortest notice it could furnish its victims with the panoramic 
 view of a full managerie. [Laughter.] If at any time during your 
 
18 
 
 visit to the South a well directed stream from a few barrels of it 
 could have been fired into your ranks, you could never have lived 
 to honor me by your attention to night. As to the brandy made from 
 the native persimmon, it had some good trait-, one of which was that 
 it partook of the highly astringent qualities of the fruit. I specially 
 commend it to oratory. During the campaign I made for governor 
 in 1864, a speech which I made under the refreshment of this 
 iluid was "pronounced one of the best of my life," my admiring 
 friends declaring it to be such, because the astringent drink had 
 tended to shut me up — and I had said less than usual ! Congress could 
 not do wiser than to purchase a quantity of that beverage for its own 
 use. [Applause and laughter.] In the matter of tea, coffee, and 
 sugar we were very badly off. No one can imagine, until he has seen 
 it tried, how dependent people become upon these gentle beverages, 
 especially the aged and infirm. Whilst there ai'e several tolerable 
 substitutes for tea, there is nothing in nature that can at all supply 
 the place of the gracious Arabian berry. It stands alone in the catalogue 
 of generous, refreshing non-intoxicating stimulants, and more so 
 perhaps to the people of the South than to any other in Christendom. 
 Whilst our small stock on hand lasted, divers and sundry expedients 
 were adopted to prolong its existence, by mixtures with various 
 substances, parched rye, corn-meal, chestnuts, ochra and sweet 
 potatoes were mingled with small quantities of coffee in the 
 roasting, in the hope that the royal berry would assert its superiority 
 by imparting at least a portion of its flavor to the ignoble compound. 
 But this proved a delusion and a snare. The linked sweetness refused 
 to be long drawn out. Nature abhored the bibulous miscegenation, 
 and the throes of deathly thirst alone rendered it sufferable. A wag 
 once recommended that it be roasted with pop- corn, for the reason 
 that, in the process of roasting, the pop- corn would all jump out of 
 the pan leaving the original coffee as good as ever. [Laughter.] But 
 when the last grain of coffee had been used, and the last pound of 
 sugar which could be obtained from captured Louisiana had gone 
 with it, then, and not till then, did we realize that the crisis of our fate 
 had come, and blank despair had settled down upon the southern 
 cause. Without the flavor or the shadow of a pretense of the flavor of 
 coffee, we were reduced to the honest truth in the shape of a drink 
 made of parched rye sweetened with sorghum molasses! With a cheer- 
 ful melancholy this was spoken of as coffee, in deference to the cus- 
 toms of antiquity. [Merriment]. It might with propriety be described 
 as the fluid form of secession — and as the last and a most faithful sup- 
 port of the Confederacy. I wonder did anyone who hears me to night 
 ever taste it ? I am flrmly persuaded that if all who are present had 
 lived upon it for one week, as we did tor three years, they would rise 
 as one man from their seats and extending both hands towards me, 
 would exclaim: "We forgive the war, O, Rebel; we pardon secession; 
 friends and brothers you have suffered enough!" [Tumultuous laugh- 
 ter.] To say, as was the custom, that the hopes of the Confederacy 
 depended upon the brave hearts of its defenders was in effect to take 
 an unpardonable liberty with science; these hopes rested chiefly on 
 the strong stomachs of their defenders ! Patriotism had become a 
 question of dyspepsia and nightmare! 
 
 But ^ truce to this jesting with the sadness of our situation. 
 
 ih'.v pli/sical privations and discomforts did not produce any se- 
 rious dissat4sf action with our cause. They were borne by all classes 
 with a patient composure. No one was disposed to blame the Gov- 
 
19 
 
 ernment for them. It was the utter hopelessness of the struggle 
 which forced itself upon the popular mind in the beginning of 1864 
 that increased the discontent and made our people look eagerly around 
 for the ways which led to peace. It was seen that after evei'y great 
 battle, no odds what the result, the losses to the Union arms were im- 
 mediately supplied, whilst the gaps which were left in our ranks were 
 filled no more. In JSTorth'.Carolina a large party, composed of citizens, 
 whose opinions were not to be despised, favored the making of some 
 effort in the direction of peace. I may say this desire was almost 
 universal, but the difficulty was in finding that way in accordance 
 with the Constitution and laws wherewith we had bound ourselves, 
 and the faith which we had plighted to our Confederates. By ac- 
 ceeding to the Confederacy and joining our fortunes to those of the-, 
 members thereof, an obvious principle of honor and good faith re- 
 strained any State from the attempt to make separate terms for itself. 
 According to the Constitution which we had assumed to support, the 
 Confederate Executive and" Senate were the lawful agents for the 
 making of treaties. When requested to attempt negotiations for the 
 common benefit their reply was that they had again and again done 
 so, with the invariable answer that no terms could be obtained except 
 such as amounted to unconditional surrender. There is no qiiestion 
 but that circumstances rendered it impossible for the Confederate of- 
 ficials to have done more than they did without a manifest violation 
 of the trust reposed in them. They could not commit suicide. So with 
 a full conviction that we were in the rapids and drifting swiftly on to 
 the final and inevitable catastrophe, all parties — State and Federal — 
 were so bound by the trammels of the Constitution we had so un- 
 wisely taken upon ourselves to support, that nobody could interfere 
 without apparent dishonor. We could only stand still, watching our 
 brave but ragged and ill-fed battalions as they wasted away in the vain 
 effort to work a miracle which was beyond the reach of human cour- 
 age, whilst despair lowered sullenly upon the hearts of a noble people, 
 who preferred the worst which fate might have in store for them rather 
 than incur the suspicion of dishonor. We could now see something 
 of that fate. There awaited us not only the usual penalties of subju- 
 gation — bitter enough even when inflicted by an organized force re- 
 strained by discipline — but all the license of demoralized armies and 
 society in a state of defeat. The land was already darkened by the 
 shadow of those evils which are born of lawlessness and terror. 
 Thieves, murderers, and beasts of prey dominated the land and out- 
 raged the helpless. The deserting soldier turned desperado and villain. 
 
 "Rough and hard of heart, 
 
 With full lllievty of the toloody hand, 
 
 Did range with conscience wide as hell." 
 
 It looked, indeed, so like chaos come to reign again that the Army 
 of the United States appeared to us as a deliverer when the end came, 
 because its battalions at least seemed to obey somebody and to be 
 governed by some law; and when you think of the devastating 
 "bummers" who followed in its wake, or preceded its march, you 
 ■^ill understand the utter desperation of things with us. jMa} God 
 preserve any portion of the American people from the experience of 
 a country drenched in the blood of its sons, desolated by the 1ramp 
 of armies, exhausted of its substance, bereft of its laws and jeace- 
 keepers, and utterly abandoned to the reign of unrestrained and un- 
 principled violence. I am powerless to describe it or make you even 
 
20 
 
 faintly sensible of its horrors. Our own true and faithful soldiers 
 had not yet returned from the field, and it was not until they arrived 
 at home that these disorders were suppressed and our condition be- 
 came tolerable. 
 
 But these things did end at last, as all things must. The last Confede- 
 rate soldier laid down his arms, the flag of the Union was triumphant 
 everywhere, and the bloody drama of secessinn became as a dream. 
 
 Slowly violence and disorder passed away and the conservative forces 
 of society began to assert their power in the restoration of law. Their 
 actio I was quickened by the necessities of an impoverished and well 
 nigh heart broken people, whose industries so sorely needed the pro- 
 tection ot peace. Chaos, the first born, spread her wings in flight, 
 .bearing her black daughter Erebus with her whilst her nobler progeny 
 Day and iEther began to emerge full of hope and loving promise upon 
 the face of " broad breasted Earth;" calming and soothing the rest- 
 less surgings of Civil War. After gloomy Tartarus, the Greek Poet 
 tells us, came Love. Will it come to us in our re-creation ? 
 
 My faith is that of those who believe that all human events — of 
 nations as of individuals — are wisely as well as kindly ordered by the 
 Great Kuler ot All for the best interest of His creatures, and so th^ the 
 very wrath of man is made to praise Him. Bitter to my taste as the 
 results of this Civil War were, day after day has reconciled me to 
 them and convinced me of the wisdom of cheerful submission to 
 the will of Him who brought them about. The Union of these 
 States has been preserved and declared indissoluble ; a great and dis- 
 turbing Constitutional question has been finally settled ; and slavery 
 has been forever abolished, no longer to tarnish the fair fame of 
 the great, free Republic. Because it was involved in the question 
 of Constitutional right I fought four years in its defence ; on 
 the honor of my manhood, I assure you, though my hairs have 
 since become white, that I would fight eight years against the attempt 
 to reinstate it in my country. [Great applause.] I do not believe 
 there is one man to the hundred in all the South whose sentiments are 
 not the same ; I am sure there is not in the land of my nativity and 
 my unchanging love — North Carolina. 
 
 I thank the ladies and gentlemen of my audience most earnestly for 
 their presence and attention ; I thank you. Union Soldiers of Massa- 
 chusetts, for this opportunity of saying in your midst a word in behalf 
 of those who fought and suffered, and lost. [Long continued applause.] 
 
APR 1953