cotton could also, like the cotton, be delivered "free of expense," Stanton generously replied affirmatively. Food, clothing, and medicine from the North were then poured into Richmond, Charleston, Andersonville, and other Confederate prisons, but the death-rate among the Federal captives continued to be frightfully large for the reason, agents reported, that the contributions were intercepted and consumed by the insurgents, who were almost equally hungry. The temper of the North was roused to vengeful heat by these reports, and in January, 1865, Congress was driven to give attention to the matter. A resolution calling on Stanton for information was passed, but not until it had been made the occasion of fully explaining and vindicating his entire course.

On February 11, 1865, at the close of the debate in Congress, General Grant testified before the Committee on the Conduct of the War that "he did not think it just to the men who had to fight our battles to reinforce the enemy with thirty or forty thousand strong and disciplined troops at that time," and explained that the Confederate captives were forced back into service as soon as released while not half of the Federal prisoners could ever re-enter the army and none of them under one or two months. He also declared that, except for the sufferings of the Union prisoners in the Confederate prisons, there would have been no exchanges at all, thus fully vindicating Stanton's course.

In January, 1868, while Stanton's suspension by President Johnson was under consideration in executive session of the Senate, the entire matter of exchanges was violently attacked by the Democrats. On the request of Senator Fessenden of Maine, Stanton furnished a written explanation of his course, especially describing his unceasing efforts to "provide for, relieve, and liberate our prisoners," but it was never given to the public. The suspension of exchanges, he said, was forced upon him by the flagrant abrogation of the cartel; subjecting Union officers to the penalty of death for commanding colored troops; refusing to release citizens (non-combatants) captured in the loyal States; releasing from parole and returning to battle (40,000) soldiers captured by Grant at Vicksburg and Port Hudson; condemning colored prisoners to death and "deliberately starving Union captives in rebel mews."

Technically the South was always willing to exchange, but never upon terms that Stanton could accept, save from a humanitarian standpoint-and there is little that is humanitarian in war.

He was well informed concerning the unspeakable horrors of the insurgent prisons; he knew that the nation's heart was wrung with anguish and that he was cursed by thousands of his countrymen; yet he knew also that in times of war all war matters must be managed upon a war basis, and that to accept the terms dictated by the Confederates meant a prolongation of the Rebellion, foreign intervention, and possibly a divided Union.

Though his soul was on fire and the people's heart was breaking, he resolutely planned and executed solely with reference to the future glories of a perpetually reunited Republic, with all the splendors of its race development, industrial advancement, general enlightenment, and social and political freedom in view; and history says now that he was right.

CHAPTER XLII.

RAISING TROOPS-FEARFUL DRAFT-RIOTS.

To Stanton's marked success in developing the full fighting strength of the North is largely due the preservation of the Union. It made him fame but not friends, for he laid an iron hand upon every community, if not upon every household.

On April 3, 1862, seeing that to depend upon volunteers to recruit the armies transferred the preponderance of voting strength to the stay-at-home communities, which, being hostile to the war policy of the nation, did not promote enlistments or vote supplies, he ordered all recruiting suspended and the officers sent to the front. On August 4, 1862, he issued the President's call for three hundred thousand militia apportioned equitably among the States, following a proclamation for three hundred thousand volunteers to fill up old regiments, deficiencies in volunteers from any State to be filled by draft. A great hegira to Canada and Europe followed, which Stanton checked by the famous "stay-at-home" order of August 8, 1862, declaring that "no citizen liable to be drafted into the militia shall be allowed to go to a foreign country," and instructing the military to arrest whoever might undertake it—which raised a yell of "copperhead" rage from ocean to ocean.

Under this call the individual States inaugurated drafts, but they were ineffective. Less than eighty-five thousand out of three hundred thousand were drawn and hardly a full regiment reached the front. The States were unable to deliver the drafted men, and many of their executives and supreme courts entertained peculiar notions of State rights. In Wisconsin the draft was attended by rioting. When arrested by Federal marshals, the rioters sued out State writs of habeas corpus, which General Elliott refused to obey. The matter was taken to the State supreme court, which promptly decided the draft invalid and the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus and declaration of martial law illegal, and issued an attachment for General Elliott.