existence, and see what parts can be taken from the body, and yet leave an imperfect, hideous life. The South lived after the operation, survived the loss and torture; but surely the penalty was enough, and devils only might have thought of taking further vengeance upon the torn and mutilated victim. The exhibition of the past war was a conflict of two schools of opinion, long contestant but most unequally supplied with physical instruments and resources. It was a profound and long-continued conflict between the political and social systems of North and South, with which Negro Slavery had a conspicuous connection; a conflict on which was ranged on one side the party that professed the doctrines of consolidation and numerical majorities; that represented the material civilization of America; that had the commerce and the manufactures, the ships, the workshops, the war-material of the country-on the other side the party that maintained the doctrines of State-rights, studied government as a system of checks and balances, and cultivated the highest schools of statesmanship in America; that represented a civilization scanty in shows and luxuries, but infinitely superiour in the moral and sentimental elements; that devoted itself to agriculture, and had nothing but its fields and brave men to oppose to a people that whitened every sea with their commerce, and by the power of their wealth, and under the license of "legitimacy," put the whole world under tribute for troops and munitions.*

In this unequal match of force, aggravated, as we have seen, by a disproportion of statesmanship and other causes,

* And yet notwithstanding this inequality of material resources, a recent New York Herald (of March 21, 1868) describes the past war as an attempt that came nearer success than ever did such revolt before !"

the material civilization of the North conquered, and impressed itself upon the entire history of the struggle. It originated a coarse characteristic warfare, destitute of those ingenious methods and fine emotions, which have made of modern war an intellectual game and a moral inspiration, and thus dignified and adorned it—a cruel mechanical warfare of numbers and vis anertie, disdaining all sentimentalism, and justifying all means that might most certainly accomplish the end of subjugation. It was a war which ravaged the country, not to disable the enemy, but to "strike terrour" into the general population; which spared no age, sex, or condition; which burnt two thousand churches; which sacked the homes of the helpless and afflicted; which violated every humanity, and brought before the startled attention of the civilized world the picture of a conflict devoided of all the heroic and chivalric sentiments which were thought to attend modern arms, and repeating some of the worst atrocities of a past and barbarous age.

When Gen. Benjamin F. Butler marched into Maryland in the first year of the war, at the head of Massachusetts troops, he issued an order to his command that " any unauthorized interference with private property will be most signally punished." He only wished to march to Washington, "peaceably, quietly, and civilly, in obedience to the request of the President." He tendered to Governor Hicks the assistance of his troops to suppress a threatened servile insurrection. When Governor Andrew of Massachusetts ventured to reprove him for this act as one of "unmerited grace," Butler replied: "It was simply a question of good faith and honesty of purpose.' He declared that to use the Negro in the war would be to repeat that, legend of infamy in the Revolution, when the British

ministry, in availing themselves of the alliance of the red man, asked, "May we not use all the means which God and nature have put into our hands to subjugate the colonies? ". and growing warmer in the argument, he proceeded to declare, in the face of Governor Andrew's displeasure: "When any community in the United States who have met me in honourable warfare, or even in the prosecution of a rebellious war in an honourable manner, shall call upon me for protection against the nameless horrours of a servile insurrection, they shall have it."

The reader may well ask with surprise if these humane and refined sentiments-and especially the protest against the "legend of infamy" in arming the Negro-were uttered by the same man who now demands the most extravagant rewards for the Negro for his assistance in the war and has tendered the reminiscences of his own beastly and ferocious cruelty to the South as his only title-papers to fame. Unhappily our political history abounds in these enormous self-contradictions of our public men; they have ceased to attract attention; although the intelligent must regard as the worst sign of the moral depravity of a people that condition of public sentiment, in which the inconsistencies of leading men are not only tolerated but actually and positively rewarded. The conversion of such men as Butler to the worst and cruellest purposes of the war is otherwise interesting than in a personal sense; it shows the force and direction of the public sentiment on which such creatures instinctively fastened to save their popularity and on which they rode easily to fame and fortune. The protest we have quoted from Butler might have been a boundary of public opinion in the North, at the time it was written, in the exact and emphatic language we have quoted;

but that opinion soon marched across it and developed ferocity which the Massachusetts adventurer found it convenient to adopt, and in the increase of which he has acquired all the popularity he possesses to-day. The Negro was first armed; then forcibly emancipated; then used as a partisan instrument; then made a political master, where he had formerly been slave, soldier, freedman; then and now held up as a standing threat, not only of insurrection in the South, but of a war of races, the most terrible exhibition that could possibly be made in the living age. These ascents in cruelty were watched in the progress of the war by the people of the South with increasing anxiety; but they supposed that the summit had been attained at the close of hostilities, and that the list of penalties for the past was complete.

What especially sustained the South in her grief and agony at the end of the war was the instant, lively hope of the restoration of the Union, and the comfort of a speedy re-organization in it. It is remarkable that to the last moment of the war, no one sanely doubted that a reconstruction of the Union would be immediately consequent upon it, while many people in the South had peculiar hopes not only of a speedy, but a generous restoration of rights. Recovery of the Union was the logical conclusion of the contest; it was the professed immediate object of the arms of the government; Congress had proclaimed it, as early as July, 1861-on the eve of the battle of Manassas; and Mr. Lincoln had declared, almost up to the time of the surrender of the Confederate armies, that the war was for the sole purpose of " restoring the Union." It is curious that the only anxiety of Abraham Lincoln was that this restoration might not be expeditious enough after the war, and that it might be necessary to amend

the Constitution so as to compel the Southern States to send their Senators and Representatives to the Congress at Washington. It is a historical recollection that should be carefully preserved; it is found in a conversation which President Lincoln had with Andrew Johnson, when the latter came to Washington to be inaugurated as Vice-President.* It shows the urgent desire of the former-the "lamented Lincoln "—for a speedy restoration of the Union, even to the point of compulsion of the South to participate again in the common government of the country. Expedition in this matter was shown at his prominent desire, when after the Federal occupation of Richmond, he rode in an open barouche through the streets of that city, scattering smiles and compliments, giving audience and assurance to Richmond editors, pronouncing peace and good-will everywhere, and even on the point of convoking the Virginia Legislature to dispatch the ceremony of restoration.

Surely no one then anticipated the "problem" of Reconstruction-that the very object and end of the war was to be constructed into a devious, intricate problem to serve the purposes of a political party, and to defer the hopes of all true patriots. The spectacle and situation to-day is: the constitutional re-union of the States delayed by a political controversy which threatens to last longer than the war itself, and is quite as dangerous!. There must be some explanation of a condition so unnatural and illogical; this cheat of the intellect and

*The conversation referred to is reported in a speech of President Johnson made on the 22d February, 1866. He testifies that Mr. Lincoln said, speaking of the Southern States: "My great and sole desire has been to preserve these States intact under the Constitution, as they were before; and there should be an amendment to the Constitution which would compel the States to send their Senators and Representatives to the Congress of the United States.' ""