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FOREIGN POLICY OF THE UNITED STATES.

207

Representatives of the Confederates, he was directed to return

home.

The action of the insurgent States was treated as a rebellion, purely domestie in its character, and no discussion on the subject with foreign Nations would be tolerated. England did not recognize the Confederates as a Nation. She did not choose war; but short of recognition, alliance and war, it is difficult to see how she could have done more to encourage and aid the insurgents. On the floor of the British Parliament, a member exulted in the secession of the slaveholders, as "The bursting of the bubble, Republic."

We have seen that slavery brought on the attempted revolution. To secure that institution, the aristocracy of the South, the slaveholders, seceded from the Union and drew the sword, declaring to the world their determination to make this their peculiar institution, the corner-stone of their empire.

The Confederacy had secured the coöperation of eleven States; and it had active aid and sympathy from Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri, while the Union cause had effective and numerous friends in Tennessee, and a large majority in that part of Virginia, since organized into the State of West Virginia.

There were, at this time, and mostly in the rebel States, nearly four millions slaves. How should they be treated? Should the Government, by offering them freedom, make them its active friends? or alienate them by returning them to slavery? In the light of to-day, it is difficult to realize why there should have been any hesitation or vacillation on this question. The transfer of four millions of people, living in the seceding States, from the rebel to the Union side, would be decisive. But many of the Union men of Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Maryland, were slaveholders. The Constitution had been generally held as recognizing and protecting slavery. By precedent, long established usage, and generally conceded Constitutional obligation, negroes were to be returned by Federal officers, on demand, to their claimants. The power of the Federal authority under the control of slaveholders, had been long used to return fugitive slaves.

The National Judiciary, the army, and the navy, had been the instruments, by which the institution of slavery was upheld. The claim of the master to his slave, had been protected by extraordinary guaranties unknown to any other species of property, and the right to this species of property had grown to be considered a sacred thing. No "rude hand" must touch it! Abolition and abolitionists were "vulgar fanatics," reckless of Constitutional obligations; slaveholders were gentlemen. For years the Military Academy at West Point, and the Naval School, at Annapolis, had been under pro-slavery influences. For eight years immediately preceding the revolt, Jefferson Davis and John B. Floyd, as Secretaries of War, had controlled the army, weeding out those who did not agree with them in their peculiar views of State rights and slavery. When the insurgents raised the flag of rebellion, the army and navy were scandalized, and the Nation disgraced by large numbers of the officers deserting their flag. Nearly two hundred of the graduates of the Military School at West Point, deserted and joined the rebel army. From Robert E. Lee, down to the contemptible Buchanan, who the day before his treason, came to Mr. Lincoln and said, "If all others desert you, I will stand by you,* there is a catalogue of names, which will forever disgrace the annals of the old regular army. The name of Benedict Arnold, long so conspicuous alike for his treason and his personal courage, has been overshadowed by the cloud of deserters, who turned their swords against the flag they had sworn to defend, and against the country which had adopted and educated them.

Among these deserters, the man destined to attain the most conspicuous position in the rebel army, was Robert E. Lee. It is important in the interest of truth, that history should do him justice; that his conduct should be rightly appreciated by the American people, and the world. He bore one of the proudest revolutionary names, and had intermarried with a family, which, by its connection with Washington, has always commanded the love and honor of our country. He had received from his country, grateful for the

*This statement the author received from Mr. Lincoln himself.

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services of his ancestors, the best education her National Military School could give. By accepting such education at her hands, he had dedicated his life to her military service. He became the petted soldier, the favorite of his loyal commander-in-Chief, and the staff of his years. General Scott loved and trusted him; and by his confidential relations to the Lieutenant General, Lee was in possession of all his plans and purposes. Suddenly, on the eve of a rebel war, he deserted his flag, betrayed his Chief, and within two days after his resignation was accepted, he was found in the rebel service, soon to receive a high command. How does his treason compare with that of Benedict Arnold? Each deserted his flag; each was treacherous to his Chief, by whom he was honored and loved; each drew his sword against his country and his old faithful comrades. Lee was as much beloved and honored by Scott, as Benedict Arnold was by Washington. Arnold sought to betray a stronghold into the enemies' hands. Lee took into the rebel councils, full knowledge of Scott's plans, and a minute and accurate knowledge of the military establishment of his country. He had been generously educated by his country, and his life was doubly pledged to her service; Arnold was a volunteer, and complained of personal grievances. Lee had the countenance of many traitors, to keep him company; Arnold's infamy, thanks be to God! was solitary and alone. It cannot be pleaded in extenuation of Lee's treason, that he followed Virginia into secession. He deserted before the secession ordinance of his native State had been adopted by the people, and he was one of those, who led Virginia into rebellion. Lee's letter of resignation bears date April 20th, and the people of Virginia did not vote on the ordinance of secession until the 23d of May.* To the infamy, justly attaching to him as a deserter from his flag, and a traitor to his country, the stern logic of truth compels us to add, that he shares with Jefferson Davis, the blacker colors of at least not preventing such fearful inhumanity, and cool calculating cruelty, as finds no parallel in the conduct of Arnold, nor in any act of the earlier American history, before the manhood of the South lost its real chivalry, in the barbarities of the slave system.

*Lee's appointment in the rebel service bears date April 22d.

During a long and bloody war, Davis and Lee saw, without interference, their comrades and fellow soldiers of the days before their fall, murdered by thousands, while prisoners of war. With their residences at Richmond, one as President and dictator, and the other as Commander of the armies in Virginia, the dark and horrid records of Libby, and Belle Isle, and Andersonville, could not have been unknown to them. Those sickening details of slow murder, starvation and suffering, at which humanity shudders, it would be well, for the sake of our common manhood, to consign to oblivion, but that they exemplify how some of the best blood of the South could, under the influence of the slave system, be converted into the brutal barbarians, by whom such outrages were perpetrated! The saddest spectacle of this fearful war is not the desolated field, the burning city, the homeless family, nor the bloody battle-scene, with its bleeding mutilated sufferers, patient, noble, sublime in their agony; nor is it the hospitals of sick, wounded, and dying; nor is it even those great prison-fields, where famine, and thirst, and heat, and vitiated air, and nakedness, and vermin, and every loathsome disease, joined with brutal guards, combined to reduce gallant, brave, heroic men to insanity, to imbecility, to idiocy, and to death. No! the the saddest picture of all, is to see educated, refined Southern gentlemen, the boasted "chivalry" of the slaveholding section, suffering, tolerating these barbarities as an instrumentality of war to reduce the power of their enemies!

This is indeed, the saddest spectacle of the war. For this the South has been purged with fire. Passing through this agony, the slave States have come out of it, freed, emancipated, disenthralled, and regenerated. The noble manhood of the South will be restored. On the dark clouds, which still envelope the Southern section of the Union, the bow of promise appears. That bow rests upon liberty.

To return to Robert E. Lee. The personal misfortunes of such a man, the romance of his bravery as a soldier, the charm of his personal manners, will not excuse the historian from recording the truth; that this man, gallant soldier as he was, had no loyalty to his flag, no regard for his oath, no

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fidelity nor gratitude to his country, or his Chief; no humanity, nor good fellowship towards his comrades, to induce him to interfere to prevent their extermination by fearful cruelties while prisoners of war. He must go down to posterity as a deserter and a traitor.

There were Southern loyalists true and faithful, scorning all temptations addressed to their fidelity. Among others, in civil life, were Andrew Johnson, and Andrew J. Hamilton; in war, the glorious names of Generals Scott, George H. Thomas, Geo. G. Meade, and Admiral David G. Farragut. How do the names of Lee and Davis grow black in contrast with that of the hero of Lundy's Lane, of Gettysburg, and of Nashville, and the blunt, but honest sailor, who so nobly and gloriously triumphed over traitors at New Orleans and Mobile.

Shall we so teach our children? Shall we thus make up the record? or are all moral distinctions to cease? Is treason odious? Shall truth, fidelity, and patriotism continue to be honored, and falsehood, perjury, and treachery scorned? Or is there no distinction between Andrew Johnson and Jefferson Davis; between General Scott and General Twiggs; between George H. Thomas and Robert E. Lee; between David G. Farragut and Raphael Semmes?

The former were faithful, the latter faithless; the former kept their oaths, the latter broke them; the former shed their blood in heroic defense of their flag, and the latter deserted, and then made war upon it.

Somebody will be held responsible for the suffering of this terrible war. Unrepentant rebels and traitors are consistent in holding the Federal Government responsible. Loyal men cannot be consistent, in honoring Scott, Thomas, and Farragut, without condemning Twiggs, Lee, and Davis.

Of the officers who remained, a few were only half loyal. How would such men -the Government seeking to hold the slave States of Kentucky, Maryland and Missouri-treat the negroes?

The solution of this question was practically made, and the difficulties surrounding it, cut away by the clear, bold,

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