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The last door of possible compromise with Slavery was shut and bolted firmly. All men knew that the institution could not be maintained in a few detached States and parts of States. Legislation might or might not provide remedies for these, but the President had done his whole duty by them. Especially is this true in view of the consideration, which so largely affected the course of Congress, that the "loyal" population of the districts in question consisted mainly of those who had no slaves to lose. There were exceptions, many and honorable; but, as a general rule, wherever one found a slaveholder, in those days, he found a person whose heart, if not his open deeds, were with the Southern Confederacy.

CHAPTER XLVI.

DARK DAYS.

A Tax Payable in Men-The New Financial System-The States and the Nation-Reconstruction Begun-A Flood of Calumny-Freedom of Speech and of the Press-A Sarcastic Present to the ConfederacyOpposition Taking Form at the North.

THE results of the fall elections had been sufficiently unfavorable to warn so experienced and shrewd a political manager as Mr. Lincoln. It was manifestly needful that the North should be reorganized for war purposes as completely as any army at the end of an exhausting campaign. He had already prepared for the work, and a host of busy and eager hands were co-operating with him. The Union League was spreading fast and wide. It had already accomplished excellent results, and promised still better things in the future. The suspension of the Writ of Habeas Corpus had given a stern and ominous suggestion to the more noisy malcontents; but a measure was now preparing which was to fall with terrific force upon them and their supporters.

No other request made by Mr. Lincoln of Congress for any legislation at any time was ever met with so intense and bitter a partisan opposition as that which was overcome in the passage of the "Draft Act." By this law the entire "militia" of the country, up to that time in the several control of the States as such, was placed in the hands of the Federal Government, as a general fund of fighting humanity. It was to be enrolled under rigid provisions that swept in the whole population supposed to be capable of carrying arms. It was to be drawn upon, pro rata, at the will of the Executive, subject only to the

forms prescribed by the law, and without any reference whatever to the political opinions of the human beings drawn or to their readiness to die for their country. Those who were thoroughly willing and ready were so nearly all in the field, at that date, that the "draft" was sure to draw upon the lukewarm, the timid, the unwilling, the men bound by home ties and business cares; and the law contained no clause exempting even the bitterest enemy of the Administration or the most profound admirer of human slavery and of peace-at-any-price.

That such a law, enforced in such a manner, would work great hardships in multitudes of cases was not to be denied, although the Act had been carefully framed to provide for these as well as might be. The power placed in the hands of the President was enormous, but, in order to make it effective, sundry other measures were necessary, of an entirely different character.

During Mr. Lincoln's long experience in the Illinois Legislature, and as a member of the "Long Nine" in that body and an ambitious imitator of De Witt Clinton, he had been made to pass a laborious apprenticeship and course of study in all matters of State debt, National debt, banks both State and National; bank-notes, bankruptcies, credit and losses of credit. He was well trained and prepared to join with the Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Chase, in devising the ways and means for revolutionizing the finances of the country.

They were sadly in need of a most sweeping revolution; and it came. The long Congressional debates could have but one termination so far as the gross amounts of money to be raised were concerned, and the sums tendered to the Administration were imposingly colossal. Nine hundred millions of six-percent-interest bonds were authorized to be printed and sold—to somebody. Four hundred millions of Treasury notes bearing interest were authorized to be printed and used as money. One hundred and fifty millions of Treasury notes without interest were also authorized; and there is a curious suggestion

of the politician rather than the banker in the simultaneous offering of the two kinds of circulating medium side by side. The first kind remained in circulation until it had earned a few cents' worth of interest, and then it did not circulate any more. Still it helped pay contractors and soldiers, and that was the main thing in those days.

Mr. Lincoln's favorite, of all the financial schemes pushed to conclusion by this Congress, was the National-Bank Act. He advocated it in his message to Congress and in private conversations with his friends. It met so strong an opposition on the floors of House and Senate, from the friends of the existing State-bank systems and from what yet remained of the oldtime enmity to a National Bank of any kind, that its fate seemed more than doubtful for a time. Its possible failure was regarded by Mr. Lincoln as a greater disaster than a defeat of the Union arms in the field. At the same time a growing jealousy of Executive interference was strong in either House, and there were limits beyond which even Mr. Lincoln could not safely venture. He did venture to the very verge, nevertheless, and the narrow margin of a majority by which the Act was finally passed was obtained so directly by his personal efforts, unobtrusively as these were made, that the NationalBank system owes to him individually its existence and its usefulness.

This done, a secure market was obtained for a vast mass of the authorized" bonds," and it was not long before every paper dollar in the pocket of every man throughout the country bound him to sustain the credit and solvency of the National Government. The base upon which the Administration stood was suddenly and enormously widened.

Through the entire course of Mr. Lincoln's public acts and utterances, from a time long before the war, can be clearly traced his personal conviction, slowly growing into definite form and ripeness, that the nation as a whole, and the now seceded States in particular, required an intelligent rebuilding.

At this day, looking back, the most shallow student of political history has little difficulty in pointing out the manifest differences between the organism now known as "The United States" and the loose, vague, unhooped, uncemented structure which down to the year 1860 bore the same title upon all maps of the world.

Something analogous to pulling down preceded rebuilding, even at the North. Here, however, the work of renewal had proceeded rapidly. The practical relations of State governments to the central authority had been discovered or created and were daily becoming better and better defined, through processes so sharp and searching that their results were likely to be permanent and unquestionable. The several conditions of the border slave-States had been even more entirely revolutionized, and the legislation procured by Mr. Lincoln of this Congress set the seal of perpetuity upon their renewed existence. During this session of it, moreover, the first wedge was driven home into the seemingly solid mass of the Confederacy, and no power could afterwards withdraw it. The old State of Virginia was permanently divided by the admission to the Union, as an independent State, of what is now West Virginia. Two representatives were also seated in the House from the occupied districts of Louisiana. The Confederate authorities were again duly notified of the fundamental principle upon which the repression of the Rebellion was to be carried on: that every Congressional district securely redeemed from their grasp was to return at once, if it would, to the performance of its functions as a part of the national body, and that the Government knew nothing of "States" as members of a foreign confederacy. It acknowledged the existence of a sedition, a riot, a conspiracy, a powerful organization of armed disturbers of the peace of the Commonwealth, but it recognized nothing more respectable.

There was no other political subject in which Mr. Lincoln took a more active interest, from first to last, than he did in

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