the Government, the new loans, and the tax and tariff bills prescribed at the second (first regular) session of the thirty-seventh Congress, and the steady rise in the value of Government securities, notwithstanding the large amounts issued, we shall have more to say further on. The tax of $20,000,000 on real and personal estate was apportioned to the several States; that portion due from the seceded States was only collectable by means of a law subsequently passed, authoriz ing the seizure of real estate to liquidate those taxes. That due from loyal States was assumed by them, they accounting for it, less fifteen per cent. discount for cost of collection; and as nearly all of them had advanced sums for the equipment of their troops, which the Government had agreed to refund, the tax was generally set off against these sums, and thus, while the money did not come into the United States treasury, the Government debts were liquidated by it.

The energy, determination, and resources of the people of the North, which for a little time had seemed paralyzed at the idea of such a war, were now developed in all their grandeur, and showed that so soon as they realized the magnitude of the struggle they were ready for it. The shock of war had disturbed the usual flow of capital, and deprived the North of more than $200,000,000 due to it from the Southern merchants. Had this large sum been recovered, it would have been subscribed to the Federal loan; on the other hand, the Confederacy took prompt measures to turn it into its own coffers by the act of May 21st already alluded to, directing that money due Northern citizens be paid into the Confederate treasury, and bonds bearing eight per cent. interest be issued therefor. This, in point of fact, compelled Northern creditors to subscribe to the Southern loans.

The rebel States were now beginning to appreciate the financial difficulties and personal hardships which beset the path to independ

Stringent laws punished by banishment and confiscation of property all who did not give in their adhesion to the new governiment. Those who remained, as well as the Southern citizens, were not exempt from severe assessments in support of the armies in the field. The contributions levied were very onerous in most districts, and the mode of their assessment is indicated in the following notice of General Beauregard's course:

"All classes of citizens of Virginia are called upon to contribute their quota of forage for Beauregard's army, and with those who are forgetful of their obligations, the general says that 'constraint must be employed.'"

The ranks of the rebel army were filled by means quite as peremptory, as may be seen by the following official notice of the Mayor of Memphis:

"TO THE CITIZENS OF MEMPHIS:-Applications have repeatedly been made to me, as executive officer of the city, for protection against indiscreet parties, who are sent out to impress citizens into service against their will on steamboats. Many of these men have been dragged from their beds, wives, and children, but never has there been a man taken who had on a clean shirt. I hereby notify any citizen who may wish a pass within the city of Memphis to call on me, and I will furnish the same, and will see he will be protected. One poor man being shot yesterday by one of these outlaws, as they may be called, causes me to give the above notice. JOHN PARK, Mayor.

"August 16th."

The following notice issued in Virginia, is also significant :—

"All the militia belonging to the Eighty-ninth Regiment Volunteer Militia are ordered to meet at Oakland, on Monday next, as early as they can, in order to march to headquarters, Winchester, forthwith; and I would make a friendly request of those men that failed to go before, for them to turn out now, like true-hearted Virginians, and what they have done will be looked over, but if they do not regard this call, they will work their own ruin. They can never be citizens of Virginia, and their property will be confiscated. The General will send a troop of horse to Morgan as soon as we leave, and all those men that fail to do their duty will be hunted up, and what the consequence will be I am unable to say.

"July 24th, 1861."

"SAMUEL JOHNSTON, Col. 89th Regiment, V. M.

As an indication of the temper of the times, the following, from a Southern paper, expresses a degree of ferocity somewhat startling :-

"We unhesitatingly say that the cause of justice, and the cause of humanity itself, demands that the black flag shall be unfurled on every field-that extermination and death shall be proclaimed against the hellish miscreants who persist in polluting our soil with their crimes. We will stop the effusion of blood, we will arrest the horrors of war, by terrific slaughter of the foe, by examples of overwhelming and unsparing vengeance. When Oliver Cromwell massacred the garrison of Drogheda, suffering not a man to escape, he justified it on the ground that his object was to bring the war to a close-to stop the effusion of biood-and that it was, therefore, a merciful act on his part. The South can afford no longer to trifle-she must strike the most fearful blows the war-cry of extermination must be raised."

That this was not mere idle newspaper bluster, numerous occurrences in different parts of the country fully demonstrate. An instance may suffice. The Nashville (Tenn.) Courier says:

"We learn that a squad of twelve men were sent to Franklin yesterday, to arrest some Lincolnites. They had collected to the number of twelve or fifteen at the house of one of their number, one Bell; and defying the party, fired at them, killing one man, said to be Lee, of Louisville, and wounding one or two more. Our men then charged the house, and set fire to it, burning it and all of the men in it, it is believed, but two, who escaped."

John Beman, a watchman employed on a Southern steamboat, who had a family in Boston, was arrested by a committee, for opinions expressed against the Confederacy. The committee proposed to forgive him if he would take an oath to support the Southern States. He indignantly repelled the proposition, and said he would die first, when they immediately hung him. Volumes would not suffice to relate the acts of cruelty perpetrated on unoffending men in what was claimed to be the interests of Southern independence.

Such proceedings, vigorously pressed, stifled all open expression of opinions opposed to the South, and, as a matter of course, no newspapers were tolerated that did not support the Confederate Government. Attempts were made to overawe or purchase the Louisville (Kentucky) Journal, but without success. The Knoxville (Tennessee) Whig was edited by W. G. Brownlow, who steadily advocated the Union cause. He was forced to suspend its publication, and, in his farewell address to his readers, said, that he would neither give a bond to keep the peace, nor take an oath to support the Jeff. Davis

Confederacy. He was indicted by the grand jury for treason, because, as he said, he refused to publish garbled accounts of skirmishes in Kentucky, and other articles, the insertion of which in his sheet was insisted upon by the rebels. This gentleman, known as Parson Brownlow, after a long imprisonment, was allowed to visit the Northern States, where he addressed large audiences, giving an account of the cruelties inflicted on Union men, and published a narrative of his own sufferings.

Not only were Northern citizens deprived of their property and of all legal redress, but they were banished from the States, and forbidden to return even to look after their rights, under penalty of arrest. Measures were taken also to prevent any further immigration hereafter from the North, in order to prevent the growth of anti-secession sentiments; and not only was no diversity of opinion tolerated among the Southern people, but their personal liberty and property were all at the disposal of the Government to carry on the war for disunion.

The advent of civil war, under the extraordinary circumstances that marked the accession of Mr. Lincoln to power, involved the Federal Executive in proceedings which called up lively discussions in relation to his power, under the Constitution. No Government ever before occupied so singular and trying a position as was forced upon that which came into power March 4th, 1861. The process of breaking up the Union had been going on for many years, and had culminated under the Administration of Mr. Buchanan, whose cabinet contained at least three members who were only waiting the signal to leave the Government of the Union and join the ranks of the Southern Confederacy. Mr. Thompson, Secretary of the Interior, was known to have acted as a secession envoy to North Carolina, even while he held a seat as a member of the Federal Cabinet. Mr. Cobb, Secretary of the Treasury, resigned to assume his seat as a member of the Southern Convention; and Mr. Floyd, Secretary of War, followed in the same direction, after having plundered the Northern armies and arsenals to furnish arms to the South for the anticipated strife. Under the gradual development of the plan of secession, the whole Federal patronage had been designedly so bestowed as to fill the important subordinate offices with men who favored the Southern movement, and who had nothing to expect from the incoming Administration. A large number of the officers of the army and navy were waiting to resign at the signal of secession, and range themselves in opposition to the Government. The patronage of the Government under such an Administration, it was evident, had been used in furthering the views of the leading and active members. The diplomatic corps

abroad and the incumbents of office at the North were most of them inclined to thwart the action of the new Administration, and in their train was a large number of active men on whom the Government could not depend, if it had no open opposition to encounter. The new Administration found itself thus comp'etely in the power of the secession party, and all its secrets, from the Cabinet debates to the details of orders, were known to the South. The bureaus of the departments, the judiciary, the army and navy, and the public offices

were filled with persons who were eagerly watching to catch up and transmit every item of information that might aid the Confederates, or thwart the Government. Under such circumstances, the Executive was driven to proceedings very different from those which were recognized in time of peace. The prompt and vigorous arrest of all suspected persons was, under these circumstances, necessary for present safety, and as a means of intimidating those disposed to oppose the Government. In some of these proceedings it was admitted that he had overstepped his authority; but it was believed that the exigencies of the case, and the support of public opinion at the North, fully justified such possible infractions of the organic law of the country, as necessary to the public safety.

During the year a number of citizens were arrested and imprisoned, by order of the Federal Government, for alleged treasonable conduct, without the usual process of law, and whenever the bodies of these prisoners were demanded under a writ of habeas corpus, their delivery was refused. The writ was suspended by the President, and the question was raised, whether, under the Constitution, the power to suspend it pertained to the President or to Congress. In the case of John Merryman, a citizen of Maryland, arrested on the 25th of May, the application for a writ of habeas corpus was made to Roger B. Taney, Chief-Justice of the United States, who issued it. General Cadwallader, to whom the writ was directed, refused to obey, alleging that the President had authorized him in such cases to suspend the writ. The Chief-Justice then ordered an attachment to issue against General Cadwallader, but the officer who went to Fort McHenry to serve it was not admitted. The Chief-Justice then prepared and sent to the President an opinion, in which he took ground adverse to his power to suspend the writ. The President referred the question to the Attorney-General, Hon. Edward Bates, as the constitutional adviser and law officer of the Government. Mr. Bates, on the 5th of July, rendered an elaborate opinion on the questions at issue, which were, whether the President had the right to arrest persons on suspicion of intercourse with the insurgents, and if he was justified in refusing to obey a writ of habeas corpus, sued out to ascertain whether the alleged suspicions were just. The answer was in the affirmative. The opinion of the Attorney-General was :

"Unity of power is the great principle recognized in Europe; but a plan of 'checks and balances, forming separate departments of Government, and giving to each department separate and limited powers, has been adopted here. These departments are coordinate and coequal; that is, neither being sovereign, each is independent in its sphere, and not subordinate to the others, either of them or both of them together. If one of the three is allowed to determine the extent of its own powers, and that of the other two, that one can, in fact, control the whole Government, and has become Sovereign. The same identical question may come up legitimately before each one of the three departments, and be determined in three different ways, and each decision stand irrevocable, binding upon the parties to each case, for the simple reason that the departments are co-ordinate, and there is no ordained legal superior with power to revise and reverse their decision. To say that the departments of our Government are co-ordinate, is to say that the judgment of one of them is not binding upon the other two, as to the arguments and principles involved in the judgment. This independence of the departments being proved, and the Executive being the active one, bound by

oath to perform certain duties, he must be therefore of necessity the sole judge both of the exigency which requires him to act, and of the manner in which it is most prudent for him to employ the powers intrusted to him, to enable him to discharge his constitutional and legal duties."

Hon. Reverdy Johnson, of Maryland, a constitutional lawyer of note, also published an opinion on the subject, in which he reviewed the opinion of Chief-Justice Taney, and demonstrated its error. The power of the suspension of the writ he showed to have been intended, by the very terms in which it was authorized in the Constitution, to inhere in the Executive and the Executive only, and that the ChiefJustice had himself so decided in the case of Luther and Borden, in 7 Howard, 1. He also showed that Alexander Hamilton, one of the framers of the Constitution, had, in his essays on that document, expressly assigned the power to the President, to which Mr. Madison, another of the framers, in his review of those essays, had tacitly assented; and that President Jackson had exercised it without objection.

The persons thus arrested and imprisoned by the Executive being for the most part those who had sought to overthrow the Government, little public sympathy was manifested in their behalf; and even if mistakes were made in individual cases, it was considered that these were inevitable under such complicated circumstances.

The Judges of the United States Courts expressed their opinions very decidedly in regard to these aiders and abettors of treason. Judge Betts, of the United States District Court at New York, in a charge to the Grand Jury, thus defined treasonable acts, and pointed out what constituted misprision of treason:

Giving aid or comfort to the enemies of the country consists in furnishing them military supplies, food, clothing, harbor or concealment, or communicating information to them, helping their hostilities against the country and its Government.

"It is most probable that complaints will be laid before you under this branch and definition of the crime. Within it will be included acts of building, manning, or in any way fitting out or victualling vessels to aid the hostilities of our enemies; sending provisions, arms, or other supplies to them; raising funds, or obtaining credit for their service; indeed, every traitorous purpose manifested by acts, committed in this district by persons owing allegiance to the country, will be acts of treason. It is not necessary that the accused should have raised or created war by his own acts; he levies war by acting with those who have set it on foot, or by seizing or holding ports, or like acts of hostile aggression. The kindred crime of misprision of treason is this: If any person owing allegiance to the Government, has knowledge of acts of treason, committed by others within the jurisdiction of the court, and does not make it known to the President of the United States, or one of the judges of the United States, or the Governor of the State, or a judge or magistrate thereof, he becomes guilty of misprision of treason, and subject to seven years' imprisonment, and a fine of one thousand dollars for the offence; and it is the duty of the Grand Jury to present for trial therefor such offender, whatever may be his individual connection or relationship with the offender."

In the Circuit Court of the United States for New York, Judge Nelson, at a later day, thus defined the overt act of treason :—

"There is more difficulty in determining what constitutes the overt act under the second clause of the Constitution-namely, adhering to the enemy, giving him aid and comfort. Questions arising under this clause must depend very much upon the facts and circumstances of each particular case. There are some acts of the citizen, in his relations with the enemy, which leave no room for doubt-such as giving intelligence