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Union; but there was not an earnest devotee of human chattelhood whether in the South or in the North-whether in America or in Europe-whether a Tory aristocrat, scorning and fearing the unwashed multitude, or an Irish hod-carrier, of the latest importation, hating 'naygurs,' and wishing them all sint back to Africa, where they belong' whose heart did not throb in open or secret sympathy with the Slaveholders' Rebellion. Many did this whose judgments told them that Secession was a mistake- a rash, headlong staking of momentous interests on the doubtful chances of a mortal strife that might easily and safely have been avoided; but, after all, the truth remained, that whoever really loved Slavery did not and could not regard the Rebellion otherwise than with tenderness, with forbearance, with that 'fellow feeling' that makes wondrous kind,' | and insists that the mistakes it sees and admits shall be regarded and treated with generous allowance. There were thousands in the Free States, never really for bondage, whom party ties and party necessities had held in silent, passive complicity with the Slave Power through years, whose bonds were snapped like glass by the concussion of the first cannonshot of the war; but whoever was really pro-Slavery was at heart an apologist for if not an active partisan of the Slaveholders' Rebellion-not merely at first, but so long as his affections were unweaned from the grim and gory idol of their early love. On the other hand, the Unionists were fettered, their unity threatened, their enthusiasm chilled, their effi

of the struggle with the problem of Slavery. They stood for Law, Order, and Established Right; all which were confidently, plausibly claimed as guarantors of Slavery. They were struggling to preserve the Union; yet their efforts, even in their own. despite, tended to unsettle and endanger that which, in the conception of many, was the Union's chief end and function. Even the loyal Millions were not ripe, at the outset though they might, by a heroic leader, have been surely and rapidly ripened-for stern dealing with the source of all our woes. Hence, the proffer of new concessions, new guarantees to Slavery, backed by vehement protestations of devotion to its chartered rights, which marked the initial stages of the struggle. The reflecting few remembered how kindred professions-doubtless sincere of unshaken, invincible loyalty to the British Crown, were constantly reïterated by our fathers in all the earlier stages of their Revolutionary struggle; and how like protestations of loyalty to the throne and person of Louis XVI. were persisted in by the leaders of the French in their great convulsion, down to within a short period of the abolition of the monarchy, closely followed by the execution of the monarch. So History repeats its great lessons, and must, so long as the nature of Man remains essentially unchanged. The Republicans of 1860 purposed no more than the Secessionists a speedy and violent overthrow of Slavery. Each were but instruments in the hands of that benign, inscrutable Power which 'shapes our ends, rough-hew them as we will;' but, in their common blindness, the

advantage was with those who seemed to be struggling more directly, logically, fearlessly toward their avowed end. VI. The strong reliance of the Rebels on their Cotton, as so vitally necessary to the maritime Powers of Europe that it would compel them speedily to recognize the independence of the Confederacy, and even to aid in its achievement, by forcibly raising the foreseen blockade of their ports, was not justified by the event. Communities, like individuals, are apt to magnify their own consequence, and to fancy the rest of mankind subsisting by their favor, if not on their bounty. ("Soldiers !" said a General, going into battle, "remember that you are Portuguese !") The Southrons, in their impetuosity and conceit, seem not to have duly considered that their dependence on others was in the direct ratio of the dependence of others on them, and that Europe could dispense with their Cotton with (at least) as little inconvenience as they could forego the receipt of whatsoever its proceeds might purchase. Yet it is manifest that a region which produced for sale only a few great staples, which western Europe could not produce and must largely buy, and which bought freely of whatever Europe most desired to sell, would be regarded with partiality by her manufacturing and trading classes, when contrasted with an adversary who largely bought Cotton and Tobacco, and made Wares and Fabrics to sell. It is but stating the most obvious truth to assert that regarding the Southrons as generous, lavish customers, and the Yankees as sharp, close-fisted, tricky, dangerous rivals, the responsible authors of the American tariffs, whereby their ex

ports to the New World were restricted and their profits seriously curtailed-the fabricating, trading, banking classes across the Atlantic were, for the most part, early and ardent partisans of Disunion.

VII. That the ingrain Tories, Aristocrats, and Reäctionists of the Old World should be our instinctive, implacable foes, was inevitable. For eighty years, this Republic had been not only a standing but a growing refutation of their most cherished theories, their vital dogmas. A New England town meeting, wherein the shoemaker moves that $6,000 be this year raised by it for the support of common schools, and is seconded by the blacksmith - neither of them worth, perhaps, the shop wherein by daily labor he earns his daily bread

the wagon-maker moving to amend by raising the sum to $8,000, and the doctor making a five-minutes' speech to show why this should or should not prevail-when the question is taken, first on the amendment, then on the main proposition—either of them standing or falling as a majority of those present shall decide— such is a spectacle calculated to strike more terror to the soul of Kingcraft than would the apparition of a score of speculating Rousseaus or fighting Garibaldis; and its testimony to the safety and beneficence of intelligent democracy increases in weight with every year of its peaceful and prosperous endurance. When it has quietly braved unharmed the shocks and mutations of three-quarters of a century, assertions of its utter insecurity and baselessness-solemn assurances that it cannot possibly stand, and must inevitably topple at the first serious trial-sound very much like

had been educated at West Point, had fought through the Mexican W Var, had been four years at the head of the War Department, and been succeeded therein by Floyd, a man after his own heart, who left the service, at the close of 1860, in precisely that state which was deemed most favorable to their great design. One, if not both, of them knew personally almost every officer in our service; knew the military value of each; knew that he was pliant or otherwise to the behests of slaveholding treason. They knew whom to call away to help organize and lead their own forces, and who, even if loyal, would serve them better in our armies than he could do in their own.

The immense advantages they thus secured can never be overestimated. Their Generals exposed their lives in leading or repelling charges with a reckless courage which made promotions rapid in their ranks; and, where the troops on both sides are raw and undisciplined, the bravest and most determined officers, if capable, are seldom beaten. In the course of the war, eminent courage and conspicuous cowardice were often displayed on either side; but the Rebels were seldom beaten through the pusillanimity, never through the treachery, of their leaders.

On the other hand, President Lincoln, without military education or experience, found himself suddenly plunged into a gigantic and, to him, most unexpected war, with no single

12" Mr. Lincoln," said an officer who called at the White House during the dark days, when Washington was isolated and threatened from every side, "every one else may desert you, but I never will." Mr. Lincoln thanked and dismissed

ing to military genius or experience, and with the offices of his army filled to his hand by those who were now the chiefs of the Rebellion. His officers were all strangers to him; many of them superannuated and utterly inefficient, yet bearing names associated with remembered heroism, and not to be shelved without invoking popular as well as personal reprobation. How should an Illinois lawyer, fresh from comparative obscurity, and who never witnessed the firing of a platoon or read a page of Vauban, presume to say, even had he dared to think, that the illustrious Lieutenant-General at the head of our armies, covered all over with the deep scars of wounds received in glorious conflicts nearly half a century ago, no longer possessed the mental vigor requisite to the planning of campaigns or the direction of military movements? The bare suggestion, on Mr. Lincoln's part, would have been generally scouted as the acme of ignorant conceit and fool-hardy presumption.

But not merely was it true that, while Jefferson Davis was not only able to place every man in his service exactly in the position he deemed him fitted for, while Abraham Lincoln had neither the requisite knowledge" nor the legal authority to do likewise with our officers, the fact that every one who went over to the Confederates thereby proved that his heart was in their cause, gave that side a just confidence in their mili

him to his duties. Two days afterward, he learned that this modern Peter had absconded to take service with the Rebels. His name was J. Bankhead Magruder, then a Lieut. Col. of Artillery; since, a Confederate Major-General,

507

"Heaven takes the good, too good on earth to stay, And leaves the bad, too bad to take away,"

has a qualified application to this

case.

Of the army officers-some two hundred in number-who went over to the Rebellion, not one fancied that he was consulting his own ease or physical comfort in so doing. Say they were ambitious, ' sectional,' traitorous, forsworn, or whatever you will: it is barely possible that some of them shared the prevalent Southern delusion that the North would not fight; but it is not probable that their error on this point at all approached that of their stay-at-home compatriots, who supposed the North" a small patch of country mainly devoted to the production of schoolmasters, counter-jumpers, peddlers, and keepers of watering-place hotels, all keen at a bargain, but never to be driven into a fight. Perhaps no other class of the Southern people were so free from the prevalent delusion on this head as were their relatively educated, widely-traveled, observant army officers, who, abandoning the service of their whole country, proffered their swords and their lives to the cause of Human Slavery. On the other hand, the indolent, the stolid, the consciously inefficient, who aspired to light work and easy living, naturally clung to a service wherein they had found what they most desired. The Confederacy might fail; the Union, even though defeated and curtailed, could not well absolutely go down. Many thus remained whose hearts

13" Do you know John Williams ?" asked a Southern young lady of average education, addressing her Yankee school-mistress." No, I do

did not believe the overthrow or disruption of the Union would prove a light undertaking.

X. The more flagrant instances of official cowardice or imbecility which these pages must often record, will sometimes prompt the question"Were these men downright traitors ?" And the general answer must be: Consciously, purposely, according to their own conceptions, they were not. They did not desire, nor seek to compass, the division of the republic. Many of them were not even bewildered by the fatal delusion of State omnipotence. They hoped for and sought such an issue from our perilous complications as would leave our country undivided, and stronger, more powerful, greater than before. But they had undoubtingly imbibed that one-sided, narrow, false conception of the genius and history of our political fabric which identifies Slavery with the Constitution, making the protection and conservation of the former the chief end of our National existence-not a local and sectional excrescence, alien and hostile to the true nature and paramount ends of our system, to be borne with patience and restrained from diffusing its virus until opportunity should be presented for its safe eradication. To this large and influential class of our officers, the Rebellion seemed a sad mistake, impelled and excused by the factious, malignant, unjustifiable refusal of the Republicans to give 'the South' her 'rights' in the territories; and they controllingly desired that there should be the least possible