federate leaders. The Richmond Examiner, commenting on this resolution, said:

It is not merely the pretention of a regular government affecting to deal with rebels, but it is a deadly stab which they are aiming at our institutions themselves-because they know that, if we were insane enough to yield this point, to treat black men as the equals of white, and insurgent slaves as equivalent to our brave soldiers, the very foundation of slavery would be fatally wounded.

After one of the conflicts before Charleston an immediate exchange of prisoners was agreed on, but when the Union prisoners came to be received only whites made their appearance. A remonstrance against this breach of faith was met by a plea of want of power to surrender blacks taken in arms because of the resolve of the Confederate Congress just quoted. This caused President Lincoln, on July 30, 1863, to issue a general order:

"It is the duty of every government to give protection to its citizens, of whatever class, color, or condition, and especially to those who are duly organized as soldiers in the public service. The law of nations and the usages and customs of war, as carried on by civilized powers, permit no distinction as to color in the treatment of prisoners of war as public enemies. To sell or enslave any captured person on account of his color, and for no offence against the laws of war, is a relapse into barbarism, and a crime against the civilization of the age.

"The Government of the United States will give the same protection to all its soldiers; and, if the enemy shall sell or enslave anyone because of his color, the offence shall be punished by retaliation upon the enemy's prisoners in our possession.

"It is therefore ordered that, for every soldier of the United States killed in violation of the laws of war, a rebel soldier shall be executed; and for every one enslaved by the enemy or sold into slavery, a rebel soldier shall be placed at hard labor on public works, and continued at such labor until the other shall be released and receive the treatment due to a prisoner of war."

Either the threat of the Confederates was an idle one, or Lincoln's order deterred them from putting it

into execution, for with but one important exception they gave negroes captured in battle the same treatment that was accorded white prisoners. At the storming of Fort Pillow, Tennessee, on April 12, 1863, the Confederate General Forrest massacred at least three hundred of the garrison, most of them negroes and their white officers, after these soldiers had thrown down their

arms.

A rumor of this act came to the President just before he delivered an address at a sanitary fair in Baltimore on April 18, 1864, and in his speech he solemnly promised that if the charge against Forrest proved upon investigation to be true retribution would be surely executed. He said:

There seems to be some anxiety in the public mind whether the Government is doing its duty to the colored soldier, and to the service, at this point. At the beginning of the war and for some time the use of colored troops was not contemplated; and how the change of purpose was wrought I will not now take time to explain. Upon a clear conviction of duty I resolved to turn that element of strength to account; and I am responsible for it to the American people, to the Christian world, to history, and in my final account to God. Having determined to use the negro as a soldier, there is no way but to give him all the protection given to any other soldier. . . . If, after all that has been said it shall turn out that there has been no massacre at Fort Pillow, it will be almost safe to say there has been none, and will be none, elsewhere. If there has been the massacre of three hundred there, or even the tenth part of three hundred, it will be conclusively proved; and, being so proved, the retribution shall as surely come. It will be a matter of grave consideration in what exact course to apply the retribution; but in the supposed case it must come.

A congressional investigation found that the rumor was true, and had not been exaggerated. Yet the brutality revealed was so monstrous that the tenderhearted President refrained, in spite of his promise, from a retribution which, to be effective, would have to be coextensive with the offence, and, because visited in cold blood upon innocent prisoners, would be even

more brutal than the massacre, which was perpetrated in the blood-lust of conquest.

Accordingly, the public interest being concentrated at the time on the bloody Wilderness campaign of Grant in Virginia, the Fort Pillow incident was allowed by the Government to pass without action upon it.

Toward the end of the war, when the collapse of the rebellion was in plain sight, the Confederate Government debated the question of arming the slaves; the measure failed by one vote. Mr. Lincoln expressed his sentiments upon this unique phase of the conflict begun in defence of slavery in a speech on the occasion of a presentation of a captured rebel flag to Governor Morton of Indiana.

While I have often said that all men ought to be free, yet would I allow those colored persons to be slaves who want to be, and next to them those white people who argue in favor of making other people slaves. I am in favor of giving an appointment to such white men to try it on for these slaves. I will say one thing in regard to the negro being employed to fight for them. I do know he cannot fight and stay at home and make bread too. And, as one is about as important as the other to them, I don't care which they do. I am rather in favor of having them try them as soldiers. They lack one vote of doing that, and I wish I could send my vote over the river so that I might cast it in favor of allowing the negro to fight. But they cannot fight and work both. We now see the bottom of the enemy's resources.

CHAPTER X

"THE WAR IS A FAILURE"

Clement L. Vallandigham [O.] Speaks in the House on the Failure of the War, and Demands Armistice with the Confederacy to Arrange Terms of Peace-Reply by John A. Bingham [O.] Declaring the Union Is Worth the Costliest Sacrifice of Blood and Treasure to Maintain ItLincoln's Gettysburg Speech: "These Dead Shall Not Have Died in Vain'-Second Election of Lincoln-His Inaugural Address on the Prosecution of the War: "The Almighty Has His Purposes.''

TH

HE Union disaster at Fredericksburg (December 11-12, 1862) and the strong resistance of the Confederates at Vicksburg, overweighing in popular opinion the costly Union victory at Stone River (December 30, 1862-January 4, 1863), caused the Opposition in Congress to inaugurate its peace policy-the view that the "war is a failure," "the South cannot be conquered," and therefore that the Government should speedily make the best terms it could with the enemy. On January 14, 1863, Clement L. Vallandigham [0.] spoke as follows in the House:

PEACE AND REUNION

CLEMENT L. VALLANDIGHAM, M. C.

Sir, twenty months have elapsed, but the rebellion is not crushed out; its military power has not been broken; the insurgents have not dispersed. The Union is not restored; nor the Constitution maintained; nor the laws enforced. A thousand millions have been expended and three hundred thousand lives lost or bodies mangled; and to-day the Confederate flag is still near the Potomac and the Ohio, and the Confederate Government stronger, many times, than at the beginning. Not a State has been restored, not any part of any State has voluntarily re

turned to the Union. And has anything been wanting that Congress, or the States, or the people in their most generous enthusiasm, their most impassioned patriotism, could bestow? Was it power? And did not the party of the Executive control the entire Federal Government, every State government, every county, every city, town, and village in the North and West? Was it patronage? All belonged to it. Was it influence? What more? Did not the school, the college, the church, the press, the secret orders, the municipality, the corporation (railroads, telegraphs, express companies), the voluntary association, all, all yield it to the utmost? Was it unanimity? Never was an Administration so supported in England or America. Five men and half a score of newspapers made up the opposition. Was it enthusiasm? The enthusiasm was fanatical. There has been nothing like it since the Crusades. Was it confidence? Sir, the faith of the people exceeded that of the patriarch. They gave up Constitution, law, right, liberty, all at your demand for arbitrary power that the rebellion might, as you promised, be crushed out in three months and the Union restored. Was credit needed? You took control of a country, young, vigorous, and inexhaustible in wealth and resources, and a Government almost free from public debt, and whose good faith had never been tarnished. Your great national loan bubble failed miserably, as it deserved to fail; but the bankers and merchants of Philadelphia, New York, and Boston lent you more than their entire banking capital. And when that failed, too, you forced credit by declaring your paper promises to pay a legal tender for all debts. Was money wanted? You had all the revenues of the United States, diminished, indeed, but still in gold. The whole wealth of the country, to the last dollar, lay at your feet. Private individuals, municipal corporations, the State governments, all in their frenzy gave you money or means with reckless prodigality. The great Eastern cities lent you $150,000,000. Congress voted first $250,000,000 and next $500,000,000 more in loans; and then first $50,000,000, then $10,000,000; next $90,000,000, and in July last $150,000,000 in treasury notes; and the Secretary has issued also a paper "postage currency," in sums as low as five cents, limited in amount only by his discretion. Nay, more: already since the 4th of July, 1861, this House has appropriated $2,017,864,000, almost every dollar without debate and without a recorded vote. A thousand millions have been expended since the 15th of April, 1861; and a public debt or liability of $1,500,000,000 already incurred. And to support all this stupendous outlay and indebtedness a system of taxation,