never came to a practical point, and were loose efforts indicative of its weak and bewildered mind. None of these propositions ever originated in the Confederate Senate; no vote was ever taken there; they came from the House and were generalities.

Almost during the entire period of the war, there had been a certain Union party in some of the States of the Confederacy. Its sentiment was uniform during the term of its existence; but its designs varied at dif ferent stages of the war. Early in 1863, a party organization was secretly proposed in Georgia, to introduce negotiations with the enemy on the part of the States separately, without regard to their Confederate faith. It was supposed that the excessive vanity of Gov. Brown could be easily used in this matter; and he was weak enough to give his ear to the coarsest flattery and to believe what a charlatan told him, that "he (Gov. Brown) held the war in the hollow of his hand." The party of State negotiation obtained a certain hold in Georgia, in Northern Alabama, and in parts of North Carolina; but the great object was to secure the Legislature of Virginia, and for a long period an active and persistent influence was used to get the prestige of Virginia's name for this new project. But it failed. The intrigue caught such third-rate politicians as Wickham, and such chaff as James Lyons, and men who had balanced all their lives between North and South. But this was a low order of Virginians. In the last stages of the war, the Legislature of Virginia was besieged with every influence in favour of separate State negotiation with the Federal Government; propositions were made for embassies to Washington; but the representative body of the proudest State in the Confederacy was true to its great histor ical trust, and preferred that Virginia should go down to posterity proudly, starkly, with the title of a subjugated people, rather than a community which bartered its Confederate faith, its honour, and its true glory for the small measure of an enemy's mercy, and the pittance of his concessions. The deliberate choice of Virginia, in the very last period of the war, was to stand or fall by the fortune of the Confederate arms, holding her untarnished honour in her hands, and committing to history along with the record of success or of disaster the greatest and most spotless name of

modern times.

In the month of January, 1865, Virginia raised her voice for the last time in the war, and gave official expression to her heroic choice. In a public letter of the two Houses of her Legislature to President Davis, it was then declared: "The General Assembly of Virginia desire in this critical period of our affairs, by such suggestions as occur to them, and by the dedication, if need be, of the entire resources of the Commonwealth to the common cause, to strengthen our hands, and to give success to our strug gle for liberty and independence." The reply of President Davis was noble. Almost his last official writing was a tribute to the grand State of

PROPOSITION TO ARM THE SLAVES.

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Virginia. To the presiding officer of her Legislature, he wrote: “Your assurance is to me a source of the highest gratification; and while conveying to you my thanks for the expression of the confidence of the General As sembly in my sincere devotion to my country and sacred cause, I must beg permission, in return, to bear witness to the uncalculating, unhesitating spirit with which Virginia has, from the moment when she first drew the sword, consecrated the blood of her children and all her material resources to the achievement of the object of our struggle."

If the spirit of Virginia had animated the entire Confederacy, a cause now prostrate might have been still erect and in arms, and perhaps triumphant. For after all, the main condition of the success of the Confederacy was simply resolution, the quality that endures; and as long as the people were resolved to be free, there was no military power that could have been summoned by the enemy, to bring under subjection a country occupying so many square miles, and so wild and difficult as that of the South. The mind may easily discover many causes that concurred in the decline and downfall of the Southern Confederacy, and contributed something to the catastrophe; but one rises uppermost, and, for the purposes of the explanation, is sufficient and conclusive-the general demoralization of the people, and that demoralization consequent upon such a want of confidence in the administration of President Davis, as was never before exhibited between a people and its rulers in a time of revolution. He who takes broad and enlightened views of great historical results, and is not satisfied to let his mind rest on secondary causes and partial explanations, will ascribe the downfall of the Southern Confederacy to a general breakng down of the public virtue, and the debasement of a people who, having utterly lost hope in their rulers, and having no heart for a new experiment, descend to tame and infamous submission to what they consider fortune.

We may properly add here some considerations of an extraordinary measure to restore the fortunes of the Confederacy, indicative, indeed, of the desperate condition of the country, and of the disposition of the government to catch at straws. Throughout the entire session of the last Congress in Richmond there was an ill-natured debate of a proposition to arm the slaves, and thus repair the strength and organization of the armies. The circumstances in which this proposition was discussed showed plainly enough that the yield of the conscription law had been practically exhausted, and were the occasion of prejudicial dissensions, which contributed to the overthrow of the Confederacy. It may easily be calculated that out of three million slaves, two hundred thousand might have been spared, and brought into the field. This addition, if made some time ago, might have turned the scale in favour of the South, considering how evenly the balance hung in the early campaigns of the war. But the time for this measure was past; soldiers could not be impro

THE LOST CAUSE.

vised; there was no time to drill and perfect negro recruits before the re sumption of the active and decisive campaign; and it is a striking evidence of the shiftlessness of the Confederate Government and the imprac ticability of the Congress, that there should have been debated a bill to put two hundred thousand negroes in the Confederate armies at a time when there were not five thousand spare arms in the Confederacy and our returned prisoners could not actually find muskets with which to resume their places in the field.

Whatever may have been the general merits of the question of enlist ing the negro and competing with the enemy in this branch of the recruit ing service, the time and circumstances in which the measure was actual ly discussed in Richmond rendered it impracticable and absurd, and gave occasion to a controversy which, however barren of proper results, created parties and drew lines of exasperated prejudice through different classes of the people. The country, in its exhausted state, could not half feed and clothe the few soldiers left in the ranks. Hence, under all possible circumstances, the negroes could but add to the painful embarrassments already existing. The policy of the government in this, as well as nearly all its measures, was lamentably weak and short-sighted. To suppose that it could accomplish with negro soldiers what it had totally failed to do with the white, who had a much greater interest in the issue, was supremely absurd. The actual results of the legislation of Congress on the subject were ridiculously small, and after the pattern of all its other productions in its last session-a pretence of doing something, yet so far be low the necessities of the case, as to be to the last degree puerile, absurd, and contemptible. The proposition to arm negroes was made in Novem ber, 1864; it was debated until March, 1865; and the result was a weak compromise on the heel of the session by which the question of emancipation as a reward for the negroes' services was studiously excluded, and the President simply authorized to accept from their masters such slaves as they might choose to dedicate to the military service of the Confederacy.

Such paltry legislation indeed, may be taken as an indication of that vague desperation in the Confederacy which grasped at shadows; which conceived great measures, the actual results of which were yet insignificant; which showed its sense of insecurity—and yet, after all, had not nerve enough to make a practical and persistent effort at safety.