imperious tones demanding an apology, the instant delivery of Mason and Slidell, and the dismissal of Wilkes from our service; forthwith embarking troops for Canada, and gathering vast munitions of war; engaging the whole power of the Empire to enforce his demand if it was not instantly obeyed. The wisdom and moral strength with which the president met this most difficult situation,-yielding in a manner appeasing England and not humiliating to our Country,-is of highest example.

Then during all the years of the war, England permitted the building and equipping within her jurisdiction and territory of ships intended as Confederate cruisers, and for the known purpose of warring upon the commerce of the United States. This went on in disregard of every protest, until the end of the war, we were in a position to ask England to consider the question of damages; and a Board of Arbitration awarded as a minimum, fifteen millions of dollars. Had the decision been otherwise, and England sustained, we probably could have borne it. But England, in case of a rebellion in some of her dependencies, would have been astonished at the fleets of rebel cruisers investigating her commerce on all seas.

At best, France and England were reluctant and perfunctory observers of neutrality, and anything but cordial well-wishers. All the while they were eager for a pretence of reason to recognize the independence of the Confederate States.

It was believed by us all in the army marching to the unknown field predestined to be immortal Gettysburg, that upon the issue of this battle hung the fate of the nation; that should Lee's army gain a decided advantage here, these two governments would seize the moment to declare the independent sovereignty of the Confederate States, and accord such recognition and support as would bring the end of our great endeavor. You may well believe that this conviction had part in the superhuman marching and fighting which made that a field of deathless glory. It gave us new devotion. It seemed to lift the whole scene and scale of the contention to a higher plane. We were fighting not only forces in the field, but with spiritual foes in high places, with "the princes of the powers of the air."

A serious flank-movement, which gave the president much anxiety, was the occupation of Mexico by the French Emperor. After various vexing schemes, he chose the darkest hour for

that Republic and ours, to send a French army to force a monarchy, with an Austrian arch-duke as Emperor, on the people of Mexico. Besides the direct effect on us, this scheme of planting a hostile monarchial power on our southern border, had an ulterior motive,-to gain a vantage ground from which, by some turn of tangled affairs, to recover a hold on the old Louisiana tract, and the control of the lower Mississippi. In his eagerness Louis over-reached himself. His formal proposal to the Confederates to cede to him, in the name of France, the great State of Texas, angered them, and lost him the game. But he kept his army in Mexico, fighting its people, with Maximillian as nominal head, or catapult, and under the increasing remonstrance of our far-sighted president.

Some of us remember, at the disbandment of the Army of the Potomac, being retained in the service and assigned to a mysterious Provisional Corps of veterans; the intent and mission of which, we were confidentially informed, was to go down with Sheridan to assist Louis Napoleon to get his French army out of Mexico. A personal reconnoissance of Sheridan in Mexico, and the virile diplomacy of Seward, deprived us of that outing. The French army with its monarchy vanished from the shores of Mexico, leaving a stain on the pride of France and a fearful fate for Maximillian and poor Carlotta.

Contemplate for a moment, what would have been the situation, if in any event, Louis had got his foothold in Louisiana under color of title; and what the task might have been for either the North or the South, or both together, to recover that holding and the control of the mighty Mississippi, sea-road for the commerce of half our Atlantic slope.

Let us now take a closer view, and consider the great embarrassments of the president in treating a domestic insurrection under the laws of war; when compelled to use the military forces of the nation, not in aid of the civil authority, and under its regulation, as in common cases, but to replace and supersede it.

In spirit war and law are opposed: the end of one is the beginning of the other. Still, upon occasion, they are made reciprocally supporting. War is brought to support law, and law is applied to regulate war. An armed rebellion is war, and all its consequences are involved.

We did not realize this

at first. Military force in time of war stands on a very different basis from that when it is called to the aid of the civil authority. The strict limitations in the latter case are much relaxed; indeed quite replaced. Military law regulates the conduct of armies, and is prescribed by the civil authority. Martial law is something beyond this; it is the arbitrary will of the commander, and operates upon civilians and citizens. This justifies itself by "necessity," which, it is said, "knows no law." So things have to be done which in time of peace are illegal; yet are justified by the inherent law of sovereignty, the law of life.

I shall not attempt to enumerate all the consequences involved in the operation of belligerent rights. By the law of nations strictly speaking provinces or communities in revolt have no rights. Concessions to such are not made on their account, but from considerations of policy on the part of the dominant state, or of humanity.

Some of the privileges granted to recognized belligerents are well known; such as flags and passages of truce for occasions of need or mercy; exchange of prisoners; immunity of hospitals and perhaps of homes. But on the other hand, and for the larger range, there are corresponding liabilities involved in these "rights," and of a most serious nature. They follow the right to capture, confiscate and destroy enemy's property; to arrest, capture and imprison persons of the enemy; to employ and emancipate slaves of the enemy; to suspend or reduce civil and political rights of a community brought under the jurisdiction of arms, leaving them only the rights of a conquered territory under the laws of war.

This would seem to be enough to task the best ability and conscience in any case. But in a case of intensified and enlarged domestic insurrection, where the insurgents are claiming independent sovereign capacity, denied and resisted by the parent people, which on the other hand regards them as rightly and in fact part of itself,-how to concede belligerent rights and yet avoid acknowledgment of the competency of the antagonist to be a party to the agreement, is a task for tact and wisdom of no common order. And the necessity of applying the laws of war to fellow citizens must bring grievous problems to the head and heart.

Practical questions also were forced upon the president, beyond

the sphere of ordinary peace or war, for the determination of which there was no precedent, nor certain warrant. Questions of statesmanship, of political ethics, and constitutional interpretation, such as kept our Congress and Supreme Court busy for years afterwards, had to be acted on practically and promptly by him.

He took to himself no credit for anything. After years of the struggle and many dark and discouraging aspects of the issue, just before the yet darker depths of the terrible campaign of '64, he writes this self-abasing sentence: "I claim not to have controlled events; but confess that events have controlled me." We can judge better about that, perhaps, than he could, enveloped in the mesh of circumstance. We know how disturbed were the polarities of compelling forces, and how firm the guidance, how consummate the mastery. To our eyes he sat high above the tumult, watching events, meeting them, turning them to serve the great purpose. So far and so far only, did events control him.

He felt himself upborne by the power of his obligation, as charged with a duty like that of the Roman consul: "to see to it that the Republic suffered no detriment." The rule of such emergency is that, also Roman,-which constitutions involve but do not enunciate, warrantable only in the last extremity: "Salus populi, suprema lex." The salvation of the people is supreme law!

Take the instance of the Emancipation Proclamation. I remember well that many high officers of our army disapproved this in heart and mind, if they dared not in speech. They thought the president had no right to proclaim this intention nor power to carry it into effect. But they had not deeply enough studied the implications of the constitution of their country, or those of the laws of war. They had to take a postgraduate course in their own profession. Indeed, upon political matters the habitual thought of us all was related to a condition of domestic peace, and did not contemplate war at the center of life.

So our Congress, just before the breaking out of the rebellion, in the hope to avoid war and to save the Union, had unanimously passed a resolution that "neither the Federal government nor the free States had any right to legislate upon or in

terfere with slavery in any of the slave-holding States of the Union." This seems more like an utterance under duress, than a deliberate interpretation of the Constitution. They did not foresee the construction as well as the destruction involved in

war.

Even for the president there was a progressive revelation. At his inauguration he had publicly affirmed that he had no intention, directly or indirectly, of interfering with the institution of slavery in the States where it existed. "I believe I have not the right, and I am sure I have not the desire," he adds. He was then viewing the matter under the precedents of peaceful times. The deep reach of his constitutional powers in time of supreme peril of the Country had not been brought to light as it was under the tremendous tests of a vast and devastating war. It came to him but slowly. He seemed reluctant to avail himself of it. Later we find him saying in effect: "My purpose is to save this Union. I will save it without slavery, if I can; with slavery, if I must."

When in the course of events the war-powers of the president emerged, they appeared with a content and extent not dreamed of before. He took them to a high tribunal. He almost made a covenant with God that if the terrible blow threatening the life of the country was broken at Antietam, he would emancipate the slaves in the territory of the rebellion. The thought was not new. The laws of war gave to commanders in the field the right to break down all the forces supporting the enemy; and two of his generals had declared the freedom of the slaves within their military jurisdiction. He promptly rebuked them and countermanded their proclamations. This was not work for a subordinate. So grave, so deep-reaching, so far-reaching, were its necessary effects, he reserved the prerogative for the chief commander and the last resort.

This was not because of immaturity of purpose, nor fear to act; but because he chose to wait until the terrible sufferings and cost of war made this measure seem a mitigation, and the right and necessity of it so clear that the Country and the world must acquiesce. He did this, not because slavery was the cause of the war, but because it was a muniment of war waged against the life of the people. He set the appointed time and conditions when, within the territory of the rebellion, the slaves should be