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so born of conspiracy and so nursed in crime. By a perversion of reason, it has taken the form of defence of their native soil, and so stirs the deepest roots of affection and pride. By a perversion of sentiment, it has taken the form of bitter hatred to a population twice as great, and the vindictive and eager wish to do them the utmost possible harm. Bold is the man who can face the hate of a mob of a hundred excited men. Dreadful and appalling it is, when that hate is multiplied by millions, and made intense by the passions of a long and unrelenting war. Hardly less appalling the agency that is marshalled to repel and overcome it, the concentration of a nation's power, its political passion, its love of glory, its loyalty, courage, and physical strengh, in the ranks of an embattled army. It is the symbol of that war-power which (in the language before quoted from Mr. Adams) "breaks down every barrier so anxiously erected for the protection of liberty, of property, and of life." Ten thousand men, or a hundred thousand, armed with weapons the most terrible that art can invent, drilled to a use of them the most effective that skill and patience can attain, gathered in camps, far apart from the affections of home or the constraints of law, as irresistible amidst a peaceful population, however numerous, as a tiger in a group of children, that is an army. One shudders, at this distance of time, to remember what Alva's army was, or Turenne's, or Wallenstein's, when the war-signal gave them license of plunder and revenge. The "Articles of War," that cruel code,- Draconian, of "the Dragon," — pronouncing death inexorably as the sentence of so many an act innocent and simple in the code of peace, testify to the vigilance, akin to terror, with which this formidable machine is guarded, so as to do its foes, as Plato said, the utmost harm, and its friends the utmost service. When a man engages to be a soldier, he leaves behind him the mild laws of peace, and becomes a subject of that terrible code. Its disciplines and restraints are wanted, to curb the energies of so terrific a thing as the agent of that war-power, the light touch of one of whose fingers is heavier than the strength of the loins of the civil power we are matched with in the common walks of life. And So, what is a light offence in these common walks must in the army be

atoned bloodily as a crime. For sleeping, overwearied, at one's post, death. For signs of fear in the most appalling peril, death. For hinting a word of insubordination or sedition, death. For the least license of plunder, death. Wellington, in Spain, marches his files beside the gallows where hang the bodies of their bravest comrades, who have been detected stealing cattle. A regiment in Virginia is ordered back ten miles, in the heat, to replace some broken railing, and rebels must be guarded in their homes by a night patrol, while patriot soldiers sicken with exposure to night damps and chills. We cry out against these extreme instances. They seem to us mere cruelty and folly, - and no doubt they often are. But the system which begets them has grown out of a terrible experience. It is in the military code that the moral code takes its sternest, yet necessary shape. Even when "private property is taken for public uses," as in the needful supply of the troops, it must still be under strict military discipline, and by no license of private plunder. "These young men must not return to their homes marauders.' "The absolute obedience, the utter respect for law, that can make brave men endure such cruel restraints, is the strength and nobility of an army. The system of discipline is in its very nature arbitrary. In its details of administration it must be cruel. But without it the machinery of war would be an unmitigated horror, monstrous and intolerable. It is the dike built to keep back the flood which has swept desolate such great tracts of human history. It is the protest continually urged and insisted on to enforce the subordination of the military to the civil power. God help us, with our army of a million men, if the code of military morals should be once relaxed!

We have endeavored to suggest, as well as we might, what are the motives which have dictated in the main the war policy of our government. Our armies have been marshalled for the restoration of law, for the defence of already existing institutions, for the vindication of constitutional liberties, civil order, and peace. Their aim has been, not to conquer, but to win and defend; not to overthrow, but to build up and make

*See General McClellan's Army Order (No. 154) of August 9.

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secure; to assert an authority already supposed to exist, and to claim the allegiance of citizens supposed to be held in terror by a gigantic mob. With curious tenacity our government has held to this theory through all the stages by which the contest grew broad, deep, and bitter before our eyes. It fights for established law, not for a political theory or a philanthropic sentiment. The President, in his Inaugural Address, will use no stronger terms than to speak of "dissatisfied" citizens, and his own intention "to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the government." his proclamation, after the fall of Fort Sumter, he calls on the militia to suppress "combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, or by the powers vested in the marshals by law." It is not till August that he will speak of a "state of insurrection," as distinct from particular rebellious acts. In his correspondence with foreign governments, he steadily refuses (June 19) to receive or listen to any communications in which the phrase "belligerent parties" is used in speaking of the government and the rebellion, intimating that there can be any conflict of legal authorities on our soil. General Butler, at Annapolis (April 23), assures the Governor of Maryland that he is "armed to maintain" the laws of that State," and the peace of the United States, against all disorderly persons whatsoever"; and makes a merit of having volunteered the service of his Massachusetts men to suppress a threatened insurrection of slaves. General McClellan, at Cincinnati (May 26), assures the inhabitants of Western Virginia, that "all their rights shall be religiously respected"; that not only there shall be no interference with the slaves, but he "will, on the contrary, with an iron hand, crush any attempt at insurrection on their part." General McDowell, at Arlington (June 2), prescribes an exact schedule of inquiry, to ascertain precisely what damage may be done by the army in occupation to crops, buildings, trees, or fencing, that strict compensation may be made. The President's Message, at the opening of the special session of Congress (July 4), emphatically disclaims "any coercion, any conquest, or any subjugation." He is "anxious and careful," as he says later (December 3)," that

the inevitable conflict shall not degenerate into a violent and remorseless revolutionary struggle." It is his desire, as expressed by Secretary Cameron in his letter of instructions to General Butler (August 8), "that all existing rights in all the States be fully respected and maintained." And the very day after the battle of Bull Run (July 22), when they might be supposed nerved to a sterner policy, now that war had come in earnest, and its thunders could be heard at the very Capitol, the House of Representatives passed, almost unanimously, the following resolutions, as condensing, once for all, in the most solemn and authentic form, the motive and aim of the prodigious conflict now entering on its second stage:

"That the present deplorable civil war has been forced upon the country by the disunionists of the Southern States now in arms against the constitutional government, and in arms around the Capitol." (Yeas 121, nays 2.)

"That, in this national emergency, Congress, banishing all feelings of mere passion or resentment, will recollect only its duty to the whole country; that this war is not waged on their part in any spirit of oppression, or for any purpose of conquest or subjugation, or purpose of overthrowing or interfering with the rights or established institutions of those States, but to defend and maintain the supremacy of the Constitution, and to preserve the Union, with all the dignity, equality, and rights of the several States unimpaired; and that, as soon as these objects are accomplished, the war ought to cease." (Yeas 117, nays 2.)

The policy of dealing with the great rebellion, so carefully and repeatedly asserted, was not a matter of arbitrary preference on the part of the Administration; but, as we understand it, a necessity as clear and absolute as it is possible to conceive. To quote the fine expression of Secretary Seward, in his letter to Mr. Adams of July 21, "The policy of the United States is not the creature of the government, but the inspiration of the people." It has been said, epigrammatically, that "the President would be glad to have the Almighty on his side, but he was bound, at all events, to have Kentucky." Doubtless, so long as he respected his constitutional oath. And, at the time when the government had to choose its course, we apprehend there was but one

mind about it, the nation over. "The war," says the New York Independent, in May, 1861, "is not an antislavery crusade of the North against the South. Had this been so much as hinted at in the President's proclamation, not a regiment would have volunteered." "It could not be their purpose to put down slavery primarily," said the Antislavery Standard of June 29. As Mr. Sherman said, in the debate in Congress of July 18, "Nobody wanted to abolish slavery, unless the issue were forced on them." That emancipation would follow as a consequence of the war was very generally believed; and to many persons it seemed impossible that slavery should survive a year of actual fighting. Secretary Cameron even went so far as to say, in the month of June, speaking for the President, that "the war will not end with. his consent, until there will be no cause left for fighting"; that is, as was generally understood, until slavery itself should be destroyed. In the same month, a writer in the Boston Liberator protested against the "paper bondage" which hampered the Administration, asserting that the war could not be made effectual until ground was taken outside the Constitution for an assault upon the system of society itself out of which the insurrection had sprung. But, with this single qualification, we cannot recall any exception to the unanimous consent of the nation in the conservative and defensive policy which had been prescribed. As a matter of historical truth and justice, it is important that this should be borne in mind. It has been asserted-as we think wildly and without ground that immediate emancipation might have been declared after the bombardment of Fort Sumter, and again after the disaster of Bull Run. But no testimony of facts can be more decisive, than that such a course was then impossible, unless the Administration were prepared to cut adrift from the public opinion of the nation, and embark on its own responsibility in a career of social revolution. Whether this would have been abstractly right or not, is not our present argument. What we wish to put in clear relief is, that the policy of emancipation, as such, was decreed a year ago, by the universal voice, to be impossible.

What the consequence would have been, if such a policy VOL. LXXIII. - 5TH S. VOL. XI. NO. II.

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