In illustration of the reasons that the people think they have to fear our army when the war is over, we will refer to a recent publication by General Milroy and some other abolition officers from Indiana. After denouncing as traitors the Democratic members of the Indiana Legislature for fulfilling the wishes and pronouncing the opinions of their constituents, these officers assume to declare for themselves and the whole army: "When we have crushed armed treason at the South, we will upon our return, while our hands are in, also exterminate treason at the North, by arms, if need be, and by the blood of traitors wherever found." This infamous threat from his subordinates, it is to be hoped the President has not seen. In other days its authors would have been promptly dismissed in disgrace from the army. If such threats can be made with impunity by army officers against the people, who are taxed to pay, clothe, and feed them, and be held in terrorem over the representatives of the people, the days of freedom are nearly gone. We had as well be preparing the obsequies of American liberty. Take this threat, in connection with the notorious fact that the last elections in Missouri were carried under the terror of the bayonet, and the Senate and President must see that this is no time for increasing but for soothing these fears of the people. If they do not so see and act, they need not be surprised at the daily increasing clamor for peace.

Instead of unnecessarily swelling the vast expenditures of the war, by organizing a negro army that must be powerless for everything but evil, we should endeavor, by the most vigilant and rigorous economy, to retrench the present expenditures. Such retrenchment is both a military and a political necessity of no flexible order. Unless our expenditures are circumscribed within some reasonable limit, our defeat is imminent. We will destroy our national credit. When that is destroyed, we shall have used "the last man and last dollar" of impassioned patriots. There will be nothing left for sacrificial offering on the altar of country. Every effort should be made to ward off that result. Without the credit, we cannot obtain the dollar, and, without the dollar, we cannot obtain the man. These may be unpalatable truths; but they are truths, and they are less unpalatable now than they will become hereafter, if we fail boldly to grapple with them. It

behooves us, in this emergency, to act like men, and not like children.

Our revenue from taxation and tariff will not cover more than a fourth, or at most a third of our expenses; for the balance we have to depend upon our credit. Treasury notes are only a temporary, partial expedient. Secretary Chase, together with the finance committees, see and admit that an increase of their amount will only serve proportionally to their depreciation, and a corresponding increase in the amount of our expenses. The Secretary says he has negotiated a permanent loan only to the amount of twenty-five millions; that no more can be obtained, or, if at all, only to a moderate amount, and at a ruinous sacrifice; yet such loans are the only means of carrying on the war. Adequate taxation would be so enormous as not to be thought of. He missed his opportunity for negotiating such loans by letting slip the time when the Administration was sustained by an undivided public sentiment and the aroused patriotism of the North was at fever heat. Much of the loan, if then effected, would have found a market in Europe, furnishing the means at home for taking new loans. The solid, redundant capital seeking permanent investment to such vast amount does not and never did exist in this country. Probably it never will exist here while the great bulk of our real estate remains unimproved.

A year ago the necessary loans would have been effected for an economical prosecution of the war upon a reasonable scale. It could have been effected then, because the North was unanimous and zealous in supporting a vigorous prosecution of the war. Why can it not be done now? There is no other reason, but that the unanimity and zeal of a year ago are now gone. Why are they gone? It is because of a change of policy by the Administration not acceptable to the nation; because the policy of the Administration is no longer to maintain the Constitution as it is and restore the Union as it was. It is because the leaders of the dominant party have thrown off all disguise, showing they will submit to no restraint from the Constitution, that abolition is their object, and avowing their determination to consent to no restoration which shall permit the South to retain its slave institution. What is the remedy? The obvious one of retracing the steps which brought about the change in national sentiment. A retrac

tion of the unconstitutional and abolition action of Congress and the Executive will bring us back where we were. A retraction of the martial-law proclamation should be accompanied by a solemn assurance that there shall be no future attempt to trample on the guaranteed liberties of the people. Unanimity restored, the North will supply the means. Capital in large amounts does not exist for such a permanent loan, but it is distributed through the nation in small sums, which, in the great aggregate, are an enormous amount. In that restored state of things, an appeal to the nation for a patriotic loan would, as it did in France, bring all this out. Every old woman would lend the Government her spare hundred dollars.

If some such policy as the one here indicated is not pursued, the Government must almost certainly sink under the pecuniary load of the war. Our armies cannot be kept in the field without money. Most respectfully, and with all deference to other opinions, it does appear to us that the money can be obtained in no other way. The ultra abolitionists are probably, all told, not two hundred thousand voters, with comparatively little wealth, and even less influence, when deprived of that which they derive from the Administration. It is every way proper that they, and not the rest of the nation, should be made to yield in such an exigency. A large, a very large majority of the nation is unalterably opposed to the destruction of the whole white population and property of the South. It is sheer madness to attempt to carry out any policy against the will of such a majority.

CHAPTER XIV.

AMENDMENT OF THE CONSTITUTION.

Letter to a Member of the Kentucky Legislature.

PUBLISHED FEBRUARY 11, 1865.

DEAR SIR:-There can be no doubt of it, I see no room for intelligent doubt that the constitutional amendment must entirely annul all such legislation as the pending bill to apprentice slaves. Every lawyer knows that such must be its effect, giving right of action to the freed negroes for the full value of their hire, from the time they are so illegally held under such apprenticeship. In this aspect, the bill is a ludicrous specimen of that "practical statesmanship" of which certain gentlemen are arrogating to themselves the exclusive monopoly-a scheme to avoid the mischief of the amendment, which will be nullified the instant the amendment takes effect!

The futile scheme of Governor Bramlette to obtain compensation, by a conditional ratification of the amendment, I should be sorry to consider a fair specimen of his "practical statesmanship." I cannot, in ordinary charity toward him, bring myself to suppose that he really believes it has any practicability whatever. I have too much respect for his "practical statesmanship" to believe that he entertains even a hope that abolitionists will accord bare justice, much less what they would esteem great generosity toward Kentucky. He knows, as every lawyer knows, that the legislature has no power to make a conditional ratification. All it can do is to say yes or no. Such a ratification would only enable the abolition Congress to consider the condition as mere surplusage, and treat the ratification as unconditional, which they would certainly do. Men who have the effrontery to attempt by fraud to engineer a seeming ratification of such an amendment, when it is notorious that vast majorities of the people of more than a fourth of the States are unalterably opposed

to it, will have the effrontery to do this also, or even worse, if necessary to their purpose.

They know that the courts would treat the apprenticing as a mere nullity, from being an obvious fraud upon the higher law, in disparagement of the rights which slaves were about to acquire under the amendment. But they will not trust to mere judicial decision. By the second clause of the amendment they have secured to themselves full power to nullify any legislation which goes to restrict the emancipated slave to the munificent remuneration of "a new suit of clothes and twenty-five dollars," in full for seven years' labor.

I have always believed that the clause giving Congress the seemingly unnecessary power to enforce an amendment which adequately enforces itself, was introduced for the express purpose of affording Congress the apology of assuming exclusive jurisdiction over our negro population, the exercise of which, as prefigured in the "Freedmen's Department," created at the last session, would give the Federal Government more local patronage than the governments of the slave States now enjoy. In the exercise of this power they will tolerate no apprenticeship other than the natural one of the child to its negro parent, and will make it felony to hold an emancipated negro under such apprenticeship.

All honor to glorious, unterrified Delaware. She promptly refuses to bow down and lick the foot that spurns her. That is not merely acting with proper spirit, but in accordance with the highest order of true "practical statesmanship." If Kentucky follows her example, the assent of the requisite three-fourths of the States cannot be obtained, and the nation will not be improvidently afflicted with that great obstacle to reconstruction and permanent pacification.

It is inconceivable to me how any Kentuckian could fancy any possible benefit to our State, which could induce the giving of her vote toward the robbery of her own citizens and the infliction upon her of that dire doom of two hundred and fifty thousand lazzaroni negroes, who would effectually repel the influx of all white labor or capital, and would certainly drive off much of that which we now have. The exercise of the principal labor of the State by lazzaroni free negroes would be much more degrading to labor and much more repulsive to white laborers than a humane, well-ordered slave-labor system.