of Ohio, with five thousand adverse majority, and on questions connected with peace and union, he was re-elected to Congress in spite of threats and violence. After the war had ended and new associations gave him a pause for calm reflection, all his passions and interests became subordinated to a clear mental vision. Whatever of acrimony may have remained from the heat of discussion gave place to charity. He had time to observe the aftermath of the conflict, and to garner the second crop of trials which resulted from the prostration and upbuilding of the devastated states.

The main part of these memorabilia has to do with the reconstruction of the discordant elements in the Southern States subsequent to the war. There could be no reconstruction of the states themselves, for the states were indestructible. They had the celestial ichor of the Immortals, and could not, except by annihilation, die. In that part of this work the author discusses the military powers and the civil functions of the Federal Government. His pen follows the Ku-Klux into his lodge, and the freedman into his bureau. It lifts the veil from President Lincoln's plan for a peace administration, and President Johnson's vetoes. It opens to observation the clumsy, vindictive, and relentless doctrines and practices of partisan reconstruction.

The author believes with Montesquieu, that in devising measures for the elevation of down-trodden peoples and states after civil conflict, it is advisable to exceed in lenity rather than severity; to banish but few rather than many; and to leave the defeated their estates instead of making a vast number of confiscations; for, as the French publicist said: "Under the pretense of avenging the Republic's cause, the avengers would establish tyranny." The author ever held that the Federal duty was not to "destroy the rebel but the rebellion; that the disposition should be to return as quickly as possible into the usual track of government in which every one is protected by the laws and no one injured." Accepting this wise doctrine, he would make it the touchstone of the Johnsonian policy, of the Thaddeus Stevens theory drawn from Vattel, and of the reconstructions attempted by provisional governors in the temporary municipal organizations of various Southern states. While not depreciating the difficulties of reconstruction, there is reason now to believe that many years of bitter strife might have been avoided, had there been less toleration or encouragement given to spoliation by adventurers in the South, less obnoxious military intrusion under the Federal Government, and a more liberal operation given to this doctrine of amnesty and reconciliation. It was by military tyranny, by social ostracism, by civil arrogance, by all the machinery known to cunning and vengeful spirits, that the representation of the South in Congress was hindered and delayed, and the inducements to orderly government under new conditions of suffrage were postponed. These modes of reconstruction can now be discussed without prejudice to justice or truth.

Twenty years have passed away since the conclusion of the stupendous

war-struggle in our country. Effigies of the soldiers of that war are reared all over our land. They adorn the avenues of the Federal Capital. Every year, with the coming of the flowers of spring arises the grateful fragrance of American hearts toward those who fell in battle for and against our Federal system and social order. The popular heart, North and South, has for two decades dwelt proudly upon the deeds of the war. But it is no new thought, it is a saying as old as Roman civilization, that the trophies of war do not survive forever. Charles Sumner recognized the eloquence and philosophy of that legend when he appealed to the Senate to erase from our battle-flags the names of fratricidal battle-fields. It is an old adage which came from the same seat of authority and wisdom · - ancient Rome — that amid civil tumults the state should build a bridge of gold for the return of its insurgent enemy. This adage proceeds from the self-evident truth that. there is nothing so disastrous to society as belligerent dissensions in the state. Yet how prone is mankind to glorify the soldier, to elevate the defender of its hearths and liberties above the champion of liberty in the forum. Is it true that all the solid elements of courage and virtue glitter in the crown of martial success? If this be true, then the Napoleons would outshine the Washingtons; the Cæsars would create events rather than events create the Cæsars. While not depreciating the services of such great captains of our war as Grant, Sherman, McClellan, Sheridan, Meade, Hooker, Thomas, McPherson, Farragut, Dupont, or Porter, it must be remembered that there. are other names which shine in our country's annals, upon the martial roll of the Confederate armies. These names are yet upon every Southern lip: Lee, Albert Sidney Johnston, Joseph E. Johnston, Jackson, Hood, Longstreet, Gordon, and many others. But there is still another historic roll, upon which the names of statesmen are found who lifted their stricken communities out of the ashes of defeat and despair. Wade Hampton in South Carolina, George S. Houston in Alabama, Augustus H. Garland in Arkansas, Andrew Johnson in Tennessee, William L. Sharkey in Mississippi, are types of the men who gave their states a new growth and a blessed fruitage. To such men honors more enduring than blood-stained laurels must be awarded.

The author of this volume recognized the Roman lesson when, on the sixth day of January, 1861, as a member from Ohio, he denounced secession and pleaded for compromise. He then warned both North and South of the consequences of war. He made an appeal for nationality while predicting the social chaos which would follow in the wake of conflict. At that time four states only had seceded from the Federal Union. The rest were threatening to follow. It was in such a peril that the heart spontaneously prayed for nearer communication with the Divine prescience. Prosperity had made us proud, rich, intolerant, and self-sufficient. We were, therefore, prone to be rebellious. We were doing well- tempestuously well. Our population was increasing at a wonderful rate. The exchanges of the world were being drawn upon

our great metropolis. We were then called upon to break down and thrust aside the very means of our ascent, the Constitution itself! We were called upon to do this by zealots of the North and of the South. Time has passed since then. The exasperations of public sentiment are almost forgotten. But neither at that time, nor since, could the author speak of the South in the tone and temper of many of that day. Even that irascible and froward state, South Carolina, had been a part of our national life. Her blood was in our veins; her Marion, Sumpter, and Pinckney were ours; so were Eutaw, Cowpens, and Camden. These names and fields of fame could not be separated from the Union any more than the dawn from the sun. If reason should fail, Georgia, Texas, and Louisiana would assuredly follow the erratic course of South Carolina. The waves of the Gulf were making accordant music in the revolutionary anthem; and as the dashings of their surges were but the echoes of the excesses of the North, there was cause to fear the worst in the work of disintegration. Yet many were loath to believe that war would come. They trusted in a certain inventive faculty which had never failed us either in mechanical or political expedients. They thought our politics were plastic to every emergency. The writer discussed at that time several peace propositions, the leading one of which was to impress upon the Southern people the idea that secession, in theory or practice, was inconsistent with good government; that it would be a standing pretext for revolution. Every effort of conciliation should, therefore, be exhausted to check it before resorting to force. He held that the North should do her part fully in recession from unconstitutional aggression, so as to unite the Northern people with the conservative portion of the Southern people in repressing secession. He held that if the South should make a patient endeavor, equal to the great occasion, to secure her rights in the Union, she would succeed; but if she went on inconsiderately the country would have to incur the fearful hazard of He believed that if the South should press the one hard, overmastering question upon the North, and follow it with a seizure of forts and revenue, by cannonading our vessels, and other aggressive acts, without giving an opportunity for conciliation, there would be no power in the conservatism of the North to restrain the people,- and no sacrifice would be considered too great an offering for the defense of the Union. The consequences of a dissolution were not then exaggerated. In vain might come the solace that it was not like the breaking up of society; in vain, the hope that it was not anarchy -that the link might fall from the chain and still be perfect, though the chain had lost its link and its strength. The experiment revealed the fallacy of such solaces and hopes. The prophecy of the author as to the impending evils at that time—at the beginning of the year 1861 — was more than fulfilled.

war.

He then said:

"In the uniformity of commercial regulations, in matters of war and peace, postal arrangements, foreign relations, coinage, copyrights, tariff, and

CONSEQUENCES OF DISUNION.

33

other Federal and national affairs, this great government may be broken; but in most of the essential liberties and rights which government is the agent to establish and protect, the seceding state has no revolution, and the remaining states can have none. This arises from that refinement of our polity which makes the states the basis of our instituted order. Greece was broken by the Persian power; but her municipal institutions remained. Hungary has lost her national crown; but her home institutions remain. But were these curtailments of nationality voluntary? South Carolina may preserve her constituted domestic authority; but she must be content to glimmer obscurely remote, rather than shine and revolve in a constellated band. She even goes out by the ordinance of a so-called sovereign convention, content to lose, by her isolation, that youthful, vehement, exultant, progressive life, which is our NATIONALITY! She foregoes the hopes, the boasts, the flags, the music, all the emotions, all the traits, and all the energies, which, when combined in our United States, have won our victories in war and our miracles of national advancement. Her Governor, Colonel Pickens, in his inaugural, regretfully 'looks back upon the inheritance South Carolina had in the common glories and triumphant power of this wonderful Confederacy,' and he fails to find language to express the feelings of the human heart' as he turns from the contemplation. The ties of brotherhood, interests, lineage, and history are all to be severed. No longer are we to salute a South Carolinian with the eadem sententia de republica which makes unity and nationality. What a prestige and glory are here dimmed and lost in the contaminated reason of man!

"Can we realize it? Is it a masquerade, to last for a night, or a reality to be managed with rough, passionate handling? It is sad and bad enough; but let us not overtax our anxieties about it as yet. It is not the sanguinary regimen of the French revolution; not the rule of assignats and guillotine; not the cry of Vivent les Rouges! A mort les gendarmes !' but as yet, I hope I may say, the peaceful attempt to withdraw from the burdens and benefits of the Republic. Thus it is unlike every other revolution. Still it is revolution. It may, according as it is managed, involve consequences more terrific than any revolution since government began.

"I would, therefore, guard against the least recognition of this right of secession, or of nullification, which is the lesser type of the same disease. It would, I say, destroy all government. It would dissolve the united mass of powers now deposited in the Union into thirty-three separate and conflicting states; each with a flag, a tariff, an army, a foreign policy, a diversity of interests, and an idiosyncrasy of ideas. Nay, that would be tolerable; but it would do more and worse. It would disintegrate states, counties, towns; tear cities from their places on the map; disorder finances, taxes, revenue, tariffs; and convert this fabric, now so fair and firm that it seems built on the earth's base, and pillared with the firmament, into a play-house

of cards, built on a base of stubble. It would thus destroy the established order. And is such order nothing among men having views of permanency? The North has rights, property, interests, relations in the South, not to be sundered without loss; and the South in the North, vice versa. Is this nothing? Is depreciation of property, depression of business, loss and lack of employment, withdrawal of capital, derangement of currency, increase of taxes, miscarriage of public works and enterprise, destruction of state credit, the loss of that national symmetry, geography, strength, name, honor, unity and glory, which publicists tell us are themselves the creators and guardians of cash, credit, and commerce — are these consequences nothing? Surely such a mass of complicated interests—the growth of years, clinging, with root and fibre, to the eternal rocks of public stability - cannot be uptorn without great struggle and stupendous crime.

"I wish that I could contemplate secession as a peaceful remedy. But I cannot. It must be a forcible disruption. The government is framed so compactly in all its parts, that to tear away one part, you must tear the whole fabric asunder. It cannot be done by consent. There is no authority to give consent. The Constitution looks to no catastrophe of the kind. It is a voluntary, violent, and ex parte proceeding. A majority of the states, and a great majority of the people, are hostile to it. In this angry and warlike disruption of the compact, where shall we find our more perfect Union,' the establishment of justice, domestic tranquillity, provision for the common defense, the promotion of the general welfare, and the security of the blessings of liberty to ourselves and posterity?"

To avert such a terrible catastrophe, which has its only analogy in the agitations of our earth when shaken by the hand of God, almost any use of power would seem to be defensible. But the wisdom of civism teaches that in dealing with a delicate public sentiment, educated upon certain lines of thought for many years, great strength should not be rudely exercised. If the iron hand be necessary it should be gloved in velvet. Firmness should be allied with kindness. Power should assert its own prerogative, but in the name of law and love. Had these elements of reconciliation inspired the amendments to the Constitution and been blended in the policies of reconstruction after the war, as President Lincoln proposed and Andrew Johnson endeavored, our government would not so long have been the prey to those who honeycombed its prosperity and demoralized its administration. And there would not have been the same great necessity for the popular uprising in 1876, which gave to the Democracy its suffrage-a suffrage expressly given to that party in behalf of reform and principle, although the power to execute the trust was diverted and ravished from it by fraud and force. Nor would there have been the same controlling necessity for the contest of ten millions of men at the ballot-box in the year 1884, in order to vindicate popular sovereignty as illustrated in the refined system of polity by which fiftyfive millions of people are held together in common nationality.