CHAPTER XIV.

OF the protracted and terrible conflict which supervened, it is not my plan or purpose to write. To most persons it came unexpectedly. It was generally believed that the North would welcome a release from further responsibility for the "barbarism and crime of slavery," and that the "wayward sisters," as Horace Greeley in the Tribune advised, would be allowed "to depart in peace."

South Carolina sent a commission to Washington to adjust all questions of dispute between her and the United States. One of the first acts of the Confederate government was to accredit agents to visit Washington and use all honorable means to obtain a satisfactory settlement of all differences. Both efforts failed. Peace Congresses were alike impotent for good. It would avail nothing now to seek to explain the criminations and recriminations on both sides. The passions and prejudices of men were too inflamed for calm negotiation. Each side has published irreconcilable statements as to what occurred. Suffice it to say that war began. For the arbitrament of arms, the South had made, could have made, no preparation. Without the organized machinery of an estab

lished national government, without a navy, or the nucleus of an army, without even a seaman or soldier, with limited mechanical and manufacturing facilities, with no accumulation of arms or ordnance and with no existing means for making them, without revenue, without external commerce, without foreign credit, without a recognized place in the family of nations, with the hostile prejudices of the world, it is not easy to conceive of a nation with fewer belligerent capabilities.

When war was accepted by the Confederacy, in its prosecution every resource of men, money, and means was used and exhausted. The blockade excluded from Southern ports arms, munitions, medicine. Bibles even had to be introduced surreptitiously, by evading the vigilance of formidable fleets. The whole coastline being guarded, the salt, which was necessary for cooking and for curing meats, had to be found in few and remote salt mines, or by boiling saline water, or the saturated earth of "smoke-houses." The loyalty and fortitude and heroism of the women surpassed the courage and patient endurance of the men. Women singly furnished clothing, or united in bands and forwarded boxes of shoes and clothing, over failing and slow railroads, to the distant soldiers. By fatigue, hunger, disease and battle the Southern army, largely armed with guns captured from the foe, was reduced to a thin skirmish line, confronting lines upon.

lines of well-clad, well-fed, well-drilled, wellequipped hosts, reinforced from the populous North, from freedmen, from hordes of foreigners. At length came the surrender. Attrition had worn away the granite hill to disparate pebbles. Whatever may be the differences of opinion as to the causes of the war, no brave or generous person can deny that it was illumined by deeds of desperate valor, of consummate skill, matchless fortitude, and patient endurance of retreat, sickness, nakedness, and hunger. The heroism of the defence of asserted rights, the dramatic catastrophe, submission to the inevitable, resumption of paralyzed industries, the brave battle for rehabilitation of homes and establishment of a new civilization, should challenge respect, if not approval; sympathy, if not admiration. The two chiefs, may I not say the four,-Lee and Johnston, Grant and Sherman, at the head of the conquered and of the conquerors, present a spectacle of the moral sublime, at Appomatox and Durham's Station, which history may parallel but cannot surpass.'

On the much-belabored question of exchange of prisoners see vol. i. of Southern Historical Papers, for testimony of Gen. Grant before the "Committee on the Conduct of the War," concurrent statements of Gen. Butler and others, and the following letter from Gen. Grant :

"TO GENERAL BUTLER :

66

'CITY POINT, Aug. 18, 1864.

"On the subject of exchange, however, I differ from Gen. Hitchcock. It is hard on our men held in Southern prisons

The North displayed illimitable resources and indefatigable durability of fight." The conflict developed marvellous military and naval skill and capacity. Since 1865 millions have been and are now being paid in grateful reward for services rendered. The Grand Army of the Republic keeps up its semi-political organization, and membership is a quasi title of nobility. Statues and monuments, from public revenues and by private subscription, are erected to dead heroes. A war record is the most available qualification for a candidate seeking popular suffrage. The "Bloody Shirt " is waved vigorously and successfully more than a quarter of a century after Appomatox. The most courageous politician yields conscience and conviction before every demand of a soldier, and no party nor man dares to antagonize an issue. which involves one of the Union patriots. The glory of men is that they volunteered or were drafted into the war; the glory of a party is that it managed the war and brought it to a victorious termination; the glory of the North is that it subjugated the weaker South. Every

not to exchange them, but it is humanity to those left in the ranks to fight our battles. Every man released on parole, or otherwise, becomes an active soldier against us at once, either directly or indirectly. If we commence a system of exchange which liberates all prisoners taken, we will have to fight on until the whole South is exterminated. If we hold those caught, they amount to no more than dead men. At this particular time, to release all Rebel prisoners North would insure Sherman's defeat and would compromise our safety here."

thing in the past hides its diminished head in comparison, or contrast, with the unexcellable honor of winning victories over the Confederates. The credit, the enthusiasm, the furor, are not permitted to die out, but are sedulously fostered and enkindled. It would seem that all this should teach justice, and magnanimity, and chivalrous courtesy, and a ready recognition of the noble and valorous and knightly deeds which secured for the conquerors so much fame. Here and there, in towns and cemeteries of the South, are monuments to officers and privates, erected by the hands and hearts of poverty and patriotism, but every pension granted to Union soldiers, every resolution of thanks and congratulation after a battle, every statue of marble or bronze, crowning hillside or public square, every guarded and decorated national cemetery, is, indirectly, however otherwise intended, an enduring and eloquent tribute to the courage, the skill, the patriotism, the nobility of the South.