ESTIMATED ECONOMICAL COST OF THE WAR. 217 The aggregate, of course, includes the public debt, and interest on it for that period, but not the interest paid since June 30, 1879. Nor does it include the vast sums paid since June 30, 1879, for pensions and arrears of pensions, and for pay of retired army and navy officers. These additional expenditures will amount to at least $800,000,000 more. The average number of men in the United States service during the four years of war would fall but little below one million. They mostly belonged to the class of laborers and mechanics; and nearly all had been contributing to the common weal by occupations of one kind or another. Their earnings, in peaceful avocations, would have averaged $1.50 per day, and for 312 working days, $468,000,000, or $1,872,000,000, during their four years in the army. An approximate statement of the cost of the Civil War may, therefore, be given thus: Expenditures prior to June 30, 1879, . Interest on public debt, pensions, etc., since June 30, 1879, Total expenditure and waste, $6,189,929,909 800,000,000 1,872,000,000 . $8,861,929,909 To this sum must be added the accounts for the destruction of property North and South, and for the producing capacity lost in the South of at least three-quarters of a million of men for four years. It will be safe to state the losses on these accounts at $2,000,000,000. This gives a grand total of national loss, amounting to $10,861,929,909! This estimate leaves out of view the losses of the white people of the South by the overthrow of slavery, as the effect of abolition was not to destroy property, but merely to transfer the title to the slave and make him his own man. It has been thought by sanguine men, looking for the dawn of a better and millennial day, that arbitration would be the grand factor in the arrangement of disputes among nations, but it does not appear that the great wars have made the ambitions of kings and princes more peaceful and virtuous. The making of great guns which are outdoing and penetrating the thickest armor, and the appliances of steam and chemistry for explosive purposes, may lead to such a destruction of human life and human property as to halt the movement of the nations in their warlike designs. The refinement of horrors and blood may lead the nations to peace. But no element should be so important in estopping these preparations and conflicts as the mighty cost in money as well as of life. The Austro-Prussian war destroyed forty-five thousand men at an expense of three hundred and fifty millions of dollars; the Italian war the same number of men at almost the same cost; the Crimean war destroyed seven hundred and eighty-five thousand men at an expense of seventeen hundred millions. The war which is approaching in Europe or Asia, or both, may, as some one has said, confound all statistics and appall all arithmetic. The war in our country from 1861 to 1865 may yet appear no larger than a speck on the horizon-no larger, perhaps, than Herat appears to-day in Central Asia, around which are mustering the hordes of India and England, and of Russia and her confederate tribes. When the war-cloud appeared upon our horizon, in 1861, there were men and the author was among them - who preferred the bonds of love without the armor of force; who found in the Sermon on the Mount a wisdom beyond that of President or priest. The author never went so far, perhaps, as Charles Sumner, in his speech on the true grandeur of nations, when he pronounced all international war to be civil war, and the partakers in it to be traitors to God and enemies to man; or when he quoted Cicero to show that he preferred an unjust peace to a just war, and Franklin to show that there never was a good war nor a bad peace. Mr. Sumner declared that in this age there can be no peace that is not honorable. In carrying out this comprehensive and Christian thought, the writer was living up to a democratic principle laid down by Madison before the War of 1812. It was this: That war is only rarely tolerable as a necessary evil, to be kept off as long as, and when it takes place, to be closed as soon as possible. In closing this chapter, the writer would fain inculcate the teachings of the Prince of Peace Him who spake from the mountains of Judea, as never man spake. Nay, not from the mountains, but from one lone, unknown mountain. All lights are but subordinate around the central light which came from the mountain whence the great Sermon was spoken. Its name is unknown; its locality has no geography. All we know is, that' it was "set apart." The mountains of our Scriptures are full of inspiration. for our guidance. Their teachings may well be carried into our political ethics. Along with these teachings and to the same good end, are the teachings of history, patriotism, chivalry, and even economic selfishness. Yet these worldly teachings are often blind guides to duty. They are but mole-hills compared with the lofty mountain whose spiritual grandeur sheds the light of peace, order, and civilization to a suffering world. When these principles obtain in our hearts, there will come a glorious era for the world. Then, the reminders of our sad and bloody strife will not be in vain, if they cause the Nation to rise in supernal dignity above the party passions of the day. Then, that party which vindicates right against might, freedom against force, popular will against lust of power, rest against unrest, and God's goodness and mercy around and above all, will, in that sign, sway and direct the destinies of America. CHAPTER XI. PERSONAL LIBERTY ABUSED AND VINDICATED. A WAR FOR THE CONSTITUTIONAL UNION RADICAL OPPOSITION - PERSECU- I ION - THE SECOND DECADE BEGINS WITH RECONSTRUCTION OF DISMANTLED STATES HOPE FOR THE PEOPLE · BEAUTY FOR ASHES. IN this chapter will be presented the attitude and action of the two great political parties of the North during the Civil War, in regard to the liberty and rights of American citizens. It has been shown in preceding chapters that the war could have been avoided by the adoption of the Crittenden proposition in the Thirty-sixth Congress. It was not out of any regard for slavery as an institution that the friends of peace and Union offered to amend the Constitution in the mode proposed by Mr. Crittenden. The purpose of those who favored such an amendment was to eliminate from national discussion all questions relating to slavery. They desired to leave that decaying institution to exhaust its vitality in a natural death. They were content, as a famous Ohio platform said, to live in the hope of its ultimate extinction. Being incompatible with the enlightening influences of a progressive age, it could not long survive. Its death being a question of a few years, or at most a generation, was it not wise statesmanship to seek to avoid a conflict that might dismember the Union? Such a conflict must imbrue the whole land in blood, and certainly maintain, if not generate, sectional animosities both bitter and lasting. The conflict of arms was far from being irrepressible, whatever might be the character, of the moral conflict between the spirit of liberty and the spirit of slavery. And even after it had commenced, its continuance was not, at any time, an absolute necessity for accomplishing a peace with union -if slavery were left as for seventy-five years of constitutional government it had existed, namely, a state institution a domestic relation. These are the views which actuated the Democracy of the North in accepting the Crittenden proposition. They sought above all things to avert a war of sections. It became a capital tenet of Democratic faith, that war could be avoided, and, after the war came, that peace and union were at all times within reach, on terms of compromise honorable and equitable to both sections. It is in this light that the course of the Northern Democrats is to be judged, preceding and during the secession war. They would shed no blood either to maintain or to destroy the institution of slavery; but all that they had would be freely given to maintain the Union, and the supremacy of the Constitution of their fathers. They ask no special credit for destroying slavery,- the war effectually did that, and they were not aloof from its perils. They scorn the charge that they desired to maintain it as an institution. They wanted slavery to die in peace, rather than in war. The idea of a temporary sacrifice to slavery with a view of maintaining the Union, was always paramount in the Democratic councils. It would be waste and excess, to detail the acts of the factions which precipitated the whole people into a state of war. It is sufficient to say that war was forced upon the country, while the great mass of the people desired peace. Is evidence required on this point? Let the letter of General Grant-just published -dated, Galena, April 19, 1861, speak the sentiments of the party of which he was then a member. After referring to the reprehensible conduct of the states in so prematurely seceding, he says: "In all this I can but see the doom of slavery. The North does not want, nor will they want, to interfere with the institution, but they will refuse for all time to give it protection, unless the South shall return soon to their allegiance." The Democratic party felt that each age would work out its own reforms; and that those which come according to general desire are the best and most enduring. The rising generation have often heard it charged that the Democratic party gave its sympathy to secession. Was there any justification for that charge? Had the seceding states any grounds for expecting that North THE POSITION OF NORTHERN DEMOCRATS. 221 ern Democrats would ever submit to a dismemberment of the Union? Let the response to the pealing of Sumter's guns give answer. Were they Democrats, who urged the "wayward sisters" to depart from the Union? Were they Democrats, who asserted that Union with the South was a covenant with hell?" Were they Democrats, who called the flag of the Union "a flaunting lie," and wanted to tear it down? Were they Democrats, who hounded on the war, and then bought southern negroes to fight the battles in which they would not risk their own lives? How many regiments of Georgia and South Carolina negroes carried the flag of Massachusetts in the fore-front of battle? How many abolitionists of that state were hiding from the draft, or paying men of alien birth to enlist as their substitutes? It was such craven creatures as these, who charged Northern Democrats with secession sympathy. Who, in the North, had long been willing to destroy the Union? By what irony of events was it, that these creatures-who were at all times more disloyal to a constitutional Union than the most violent secessionists -wormed themselves and their plots into national affairs, and prolonged a war in which they had no part, except to incite the conflict and fan the flames of passion? There is no comprehending the ascendency of the radical element in the conduct of the "War for the Union," except on the principle that in war, and especially an internecine war, the worst passions obtain the mastery. The Federal Administration, had it disregarded the whisperings of the fanatics, could have restored peace to the land, and "the Union as it was." It could have done this before a shot was fired or a bayonet crossed. Was it any wonder, then, that the Democratic party, which had sprung to arms at the first call of-"save the Union!" was, at every step of the struggle, outspoken for, and anxious to make, peace? Was it any wonder, that with peace always attainable, the Democratic party opposed every extreme, unnecessary measure of the radical party, which was prosecuting the war on the false pretence of saving the Union, while seeking above all things to destroy slavery, irrespective of the fate of the Union? Democrats in the ranks of the Union armies were constantly told that their party was disloyal to the Union. Thousands of these soldiers were led to give credence to the charge, because the army did not understand, what the Democratic leaders knew, namely, that the war was prolonged for party purposes. But the reader must see that it was the Republican leaders who were the Northern disunionists. The Union armies were fighting for the restoration of Federal authority, while the Republican leaders were conducting an abolition crusade,—a war of conquest, of subjugation, and constitutional amendment, by force and arms. Between a war for the Union, and the war as conducted by a Republican Administration that was daily succumbing to the fanatics, there was a vast difference. It is by the length of this difference that the present and future generations must estimate the status |