MISSION OF VICE-PRESIDENT STEPHENS. 413 hostile forces, care has been taken to give no pretext for refusing to receive it on the ground that it would involve a tacit recognition of the independence of the Confederacy. "Your mission is simply one of humanity, and has no political aspect. "If objection is made to receiving your letter on the ground that it is not addressed to Abraham Lincoln as President instead of Commander-in-Chief, &c., then you will present the duplicate letter, which is addressed to him as President, and signed by me as President. To this letter objection may be made on the ground that I am not recognized to be President of the Confederacy. In this event, you will decline any further attempt to confer on the subject of your mission, as such conference is admissible only on a footing of perfect equality. "My recent interviews with you have put you so fully in possession of my views that it is scarcely necessary to give you any detailed instructions, even were I at this moment well enough to attempt it. "My whole purpose is, in one word, to place this war on the footing of such as are waged by civilized people in modern times, and to divest it of the savage character which has been impressed on it by our enemies, in spite of all our efforts and protests. War is full enough of unavoidable horrours, under all its aspects, to justify, and even to demand, of any Christian ruler who may be unhappily engaged in carrying it on, to seek to restrict its calamities, and to divest it of all unnecessary severities. You will endeavour to establish the cartel for the exchange of prisoners on such a basis as to avoid the constant difficulties and complaints which arise, and to prevent for the future what we deem the unfair conduct of our enemies, in evading the delivery of prisoners who fall into their hands, in retarding it by sending them on circuitous routes, and by detaining them sometimes for months in camps and prisons, and in persisting in taking captive non-combatants. "Your attention is also called to the unheard-of conduct of Federal officers in driving from their homes entire communities of women and children, as well as of men, whom they find in districts occupied by their troops, for no other reason than because these unfortunates are faithful to the allegiance due to their States, and refuse to take an oath of fidelity to their enemies. "The putting to death of unarmed prisoners has been a ground of just complaint in more than one instance, and the recent execution of officers of our army in Kentucky, for the sole cause that they were engaged in recruiting service in a State which is claimed as still one of the United States, but is also claimed by us as one of the Confederate States, must be repressed by retaliation if not unconditionally abandoned, because it would justify the like execution in every other State of the Confederacy, and the practice is barbarous, uselessly cruel, and can only lead to the slaughter of prisoners on both sides, a result too horrible to contemplate without making every effort to avoid it. "On these and all kindred subjects you will consider your authority full and ample to make such arrangements as will temper the present cruel character of the contest, and full confidence is placed in your judgment, patriotism, and discretion that, while carrying out the objects of your mission, you will take care that the equal rights of the Confederacy be always preserved. "Very respectfully, "JEFFERSON DAVIS." Mr. Stephens proceeded only as far as Fortress Monroe, where he was intercepted by a despatch peremptorily forbidding his access to the Federal capital. Whether the authorities there were aware or not of the real nature of his mission it is since ascertained that, apart from the written text which it bore, it was to sound the Washington Government on the ques tion of peace. There could be no other proper conclusion, judging from the importance of the emissary, and the absurd futility of his going to Washington merely to protest against the enemy's cruelties in conducting the war. The whole explanation of the affair is that Mr. Stephens was fully empowered in certain contingencies, to propose peace; that President Davis had sent him on this extraordinary visit to Washington, anticipating a great victory of Lee's army in Pennsylvania; that the real design of the mission was disconcerted by the fatal day of Gettysburg, which occurred when Mr. Stephens was near Fortress Monroe; and that it was in the insolent moments of this Federal success that he was so sharply rebuffed by the Washington authorities. Considering the conjuncture of the occasion and the circumstances in which the President of the Southern Confederacy sought to signalize what he supposed would be a great victory of his arms, by a distinct and formal proposition of peace at Washington, it may be said that, notwithstanding the disappointment of the event, and the jeer of the enemy, Mr. Davis occupied a proud position in this matter, and one that merited the applause of the Christian world. CHAPTER XXV. GETTYSBURG AND VICKSBURG TWIN DISASTERS FOR THE CONFEDERATES.-THEIR EFFECT ON GOVERNMENT. - GETTYSBURG and Vicksburg were twin victories for the Federals-twin disasters for the Confederates. They marked the line where the war turned, and the fortunes of the Southern Confederacy declined. The disaster of Vicksburg was a shock to the whole internal economy of the South; and this period of military disaster was coincident with a distress in material resources, in which some men already thought to discover signs of the fatal decay of the Confederacy. Money has been designated as "the sinews of war;" and when it is known that the Confederate currency declined a thousand per cent. on the news of these military disasters, it may well be comprehended what occasions of alarm and anxiety they were. The whole concern of the Confederate finances invites a studious consideration, which may well take place here at a period which affected so much their virtue and integrity. And the subject is so distinct that, without regard to any particular date of our narrative, we may extend our view of it through the whole period of the war. THE FINANCIAL SYSTEM OF THE SOUTHERN CONFEDERACY. The South was in a condition of complete isolation in the war. The laws of finance were less disturbed by extraneous influences than was ever the case in any country of equal extent, population and civilization before. The community consisted of several millions of people, occupying a large territory without a specie circulation, and compelled to establish a thoroughly artificial system of finance adapted to the condition of war. The case was anomalous. Very valuable lessons in finance might be learned from the history of the Confederate system, if space were allowed to trace its development, step by step, throughout its extraordinary career, and to mark the influence which it exerted upon the social condition, the public and private morals, and the fortunes of the Confederacy. It may be said generally that the result of the war was powerfully influenced by the condition of the Confederate finances, as much so as by any other cause. It is the most striking peculiarity of modern wars that they are conducted chiefly by means of credit in the form of paper issues. The system was inaugurated by Great Britain; and its result is the mammoth debt of the British government. The revolutionary governments of France, as they succeeded each other in the various stages of transition between the autocracy of the Bourbons and the Empire, copied the British example, and created enormous debts which shared the fate of the ephemeral pow ers which incurred them. All the governments of Europe, with scarcely an exception, now labour under the burden of obligations incurred in expensive wars. In proportion with the facility of public credit, has been the magnitude of the scale on which modern wars have been conducted. And if in America the people have reason to boast of the stupendous magnitude of the armies which they brought into the field, and of the extent and costliness of their military operations, the marvellous exhibition will be found to have been due, not so much to the boundlessness of their resources, as to the lavish and reckless manner in which they employed a credit never before brought into requisition. Nor would it be over-stepping the bounds of truth to say, that the war spirit in either section was fed and stimulated, in a very great degree, by the profits which the heavy public expendi tures brought to large classes of persons directly responsible for the war, and connected with its operations. This modern scheme of throwing the burden of debts incurred in war upon the shoulders of posterity has done more to stimulate costly and bloody conflicts between nations and peoples, SYSTEMS OF CREDIT IN WAR. 417 than all the harmonizing influences of modern civilization and Christianity have done to restrain them. Until the system of credit is counterbalanced by some other scheme, by which the persons immediately connected with the public operations shall be impoverished rather than enriched by a state of war, we shall have no occasion to expect the Millennium. The three most conspicuous examples of the abuse of credit for purposes of war, antecedent to those furnished by the two belligerents in the American conflict, were those of Great Britain, France, and Russia. The debt of the British government at the close of the Napoleonic wars, was eight hundred and eighty-five millions of pounds sterling. In March, 1863, after a lapse of nearly half a century, embracing the costly expenditures of the Crimean war, it had been reduced, by dint of resolute taxation, no lower than the amount of seven hundred and eighty million pounds sterling, or about thirty-nine hundred millions of dollars. The amount of Assignats issued by the Revolutionary authorities of France, counting all the different series, reached the enormous amount of forty thousand millions of francs.* These were followed by a second species of paper money called Mandates, to the ainount of twenty-four hundred mil lions of francs. The great bulk of both these forms of circulation, amounting in the aggregate to more than forty-two thousand millions of francs, or eighty-five hundred millions of dollars, proved a loss to their holders; a circumstance which is thought to have been fortunate for France rather than otherwise, in proving the means of divesting her, at the same time with the burden itself, of the spurious authorities that had imposed it. The British debt was contracted almost altogether in the form of bonds at long dates, upon the faith of which the Bank of England put forth a proportionate amount of its own notes of circulation. It is true that the Exchequer bills issued by government for temporary purposes, went directly into the hands of the public; but they also soon found their way, for the most part, into the Bank of England; and constituted, like the bonds, a basis of additional circulation. In this respect, it will be observed, the English and French systems were essentially different. In England the circulation was not identical with the debentures of government, but was issued through the agency of a banking company, which made of the govcrnment bonds a basis for the security of the circulation. In France, the government itself put forth its obligations in the form of a currency, de clared it to be the medium of exchange by law, and denounced heavy penalties against the refusal to accept it as money. The comparative merits of the two systems were strikingly exemplified by the result. The French issues, as we have seen, went on augmenting in volume until they reached The statement seems incredible; but it is made on the authority of the American Encycləpedia. |