ATTRACTED MORE ATTENTION THAN THE COLLECTION.ATTRACTED MORE ATTENTION THAN THE COLLECTION.
Rosecrans would have moved on the enemy, but learned that the foe had several head of cavalry more than he did, also a team of artillery. At this time John Morgan made a raid into Ohio. He surrounded Cincinnati, but did not take it, as he was not keeping house at the time and hated to pay storage on it. He got to Parkersburg, West Virginia, and was captured there with almost his entire force.
On September 19 and 20 occurred the battle of Chickamauga. Longstreet rushed into a breach in the Union line and swept it with a great big besom of wrath with which he had wisely provided himself on starting out. Rosecrans felt mortified when he came to himself and found that his horse had been so unmanageable that he had carried him ten miles from the carnage.
But the left, under Thomas, held fast its position, and no doubt saved the little band of sixty thousand men which Rosecrans commanded at the time.
His army now found itself shut up in intrenchments, with Bragg on the hills threatening the Union forces with starvation.
On November 24-25 a battle near Chattanooga took place, with Grant at the head of the Federal forces. Hooker came to join him from the Army of the Potomac, and Sherman hurried to his standard from Iuka. Thomas made a dash and captured Orchard Knob, and Hooker, on the following day, charged Lookout Mountain.
This was the most brilliant, perhaps, of Grant's victories. It is known as the "battle of Missionary Ridge." Hooker had exceeded his prerogative and kept on after capturing the crest of Lookout Mountain, while Sherman was giving the foe several varieties of fits, from the north, when Grant discovered that before him the line wasbeing weakened in order to help the Confederate flanks. So with Thomas he crossed through the first line and over the rifle-pits, forgot that he had intended to halt and reform, and concluded to wait and reform after the war was over, when he should have more time, and that night along the entire line of heights the camp-fires of the Union army winked at one another in ghoulish glee.
The army under Bragg was routed, and Bragg resigned his command.
Burnside, who had been relieved of the command of the Army of the Potomac, was sent to East Tennessee, where the brave but frost-bitten troops of Longstreet shut him up at Knoxville and compelled him to board at the railroad eating-house there.
Sherman's worn and weary boys were now ordered at once to the relief of Burnside, and Longstreet, getting word of it, made a furious assault on the former, who repulsed him with loss, and he went away from there as Sherman approached from the west.
WHERE AM I."WHERE AM I?"
Hooker had succeeded Burnside in the command of the Army of the Potomac, and he judged that, as Lee was now left with but sixty thousand men, while the Army of the Potomac contained one hundred thousand who craved out-of-door exercise, he might do well to go and get Lee, returning in the cool of the evening. Lee, however, accomplished the division of his army while concealed in the woods and sent Jackson to fall on Hooker's rear. The close of the fight found Hooker on his old camping-ground opposite Fredericksburg, murmuring to himself, in a dazed sort of way, "Where am I?" Lee felt so good over this that he decided to go North and get something to eat. He also decided to get catalogues and price-lists of Philadelphia and New York while there. Threatening Baltimore in order to misleadGeneral Meade, who was now in command of the Federals, Lee struck into Pennsylvania and met with the Union cavalry a little west of Gettysburg on the Chambersburg road. It is said that Gettysburg was not intended by either army as the site for the battle, Lee hoping to avoid a fight, depending as he did on the well-known hospitality of the Pennsylvanians, and Meade intending to have the fight at Pipe Creek, where he had some property.
July 1-2-3 were the dates of this memorable battle. The first day was rather favorable to Lee, quite a number of Yankee prisoners being taken while they were lost in the crowded streets of Gettysburg.
The second day was opened by Longstreet, who charged the Union left, and ran across Sickles, who had by mistake formed in the way of Meade's intended line of battle. They outflanked him, but, as they swung around him, Warren met them with a diabolical welcome, which stayed them. Sickles found himself on Cemetery Ridge, while the Confederates under Ewell were on Culp's Hill.
On the third day, at oneP.M., Lee opened with one hundred and fifty guns on Cemetery Ridge. The air was a hornet's nest of screaming shells with fiery tails. As it lulled a little, out of the woods came eighteen thousand men in battle-array extending over a mile in length. The Yankees knew a good thing when they saw it, and theypaused to admire this beautiful gathering of foemen in whose veins there flowed the same blood as in their own, and whose ancestors had stood shoulder to shoulder with their own in a hundred battles for freedom.
Their sentiment gave place to shouts of battle, and into the silent phalanx a hundred guns poured their red-hot messages of death. The golden grain was drenched with the blood of men no less brave because they were not victorious, and the rich fields of Pennsylvania drank with thirsty eagerness the warm blood of many a Southern son.
Yet they moved onward. Volley after volley of musketry mowed them down, and the puny reaper in the neglected grain gave place to the grim reaper Death, all down that unwavering line of gray and brown.
They marched up to the Union breastworks, bayoneted the gunners at their work, planted their flags on the parapets, and, while the Federals converged from every point to this, exploding powder burned the faces of these contending hosts, who, hand to hand, fought each other to death, while far-away widows and orphans multiplied to mourn through the coming years over this ghastly folly of civil war.
Whole companies of the Confederates rushed as prisoners into the arms of their enemies, andthe shattered remnant of the battered foe retreated from the field.
PRICE OF LIVING RUNNING UP TO EIGHT HUNDRED AND NINE HUNDRED DOLLARS PER DAY.PRICE OF LIVING RUNNINGUP TO EIGHT HUNDRED AND NINEHUNDRED DOLLARS PER DAY.
While all this was going on in Pennsylvania, Pemberton was arranging terms of surrender at Vicksburg, and from this date onward the Confederacy began to wobble in its orbit, and the President of this ill-advised but bitterly punished scheme began to wish that he had been in Canada when the war broke out.
In April of the same year Admiral Dupont, an able seaman with massive whiskers, decided to run the fortifications at Charleston with iron-clads, but the Charleston people thought they could run them themselves. So they drove him back after the sinking of the Kennebec and the serious injury of all the other vessels.
General Gillmore then landed with troops. Fort Wagner was captured. The 54th Regiment of colored troops, the finest organized in the Free States, took a prominent part and fought with great coolness and bravery. By December there were fifty thousand colored troops enlisted, and before the war closed over two hundred thousand.
It is needless to say that this made the Yankee unpopular at the time in the best society of the South.
General Gillmore attempted to capture Sumter, and did reduce it to a pulp, but when he went to gather it he was met by a garrison still concealedin the basement, and peppered with volleys of hot shingle-nails and other bric-à-brac, which forced him to retire with loss.
He said afterward that Fort Sumter was not desirable anyhow.
This closed the most memorable year of the war, with the price of living at the South running up to eight hundred and nine hundred dollars per day, and currency depreciating so rapidly that one's salary had to be advanced every morning in order to keep pace with the price of mule-steaks.
General Grant was now in command of all the Union troops, and in 1864-5 the plan of operation was to prevent the junction of the Confederates,—General Grant seeking to interest the army in Virginia under General Lee, and General Sherman the army of General Joseph E. Johnston in Georgia.
Sherman started at once, and came upon Johnston located on almost impregnable hills all the way to Atlanta. The battles of Dalton, Resaca, Dallas, Lost Mountain, and Kenesaw Mountain preceded Johnston's retreat to the intrenchments of Atlanta, July 10, Sherman having been on the move since early in May, 1864.
Jefferson Davis, disgusted with Johnston, placed Hood in command, who made three heroic attacks upon the Union troops, but was repulsed. Sherman now gathered fifteen days' rations from the neighbors, and, throwing his forces across Hood's line of supplies, compelled him to evacuate the city.
The historian says that Sherman was entirelysupplied from Nashvilleviarailroad during this trip, but the author knows of his own personal knowledge that there were times when he got his fresh provisions along the road.
GETTING FRESH PROVISIONS ALONG THE ROAD.GETTING FRESH PROVISIONS ALONG THE ROAD.
This expedition cost the Union army thirty thousand men and the Confederates thirty-five thousand. Besides, Georgia was the Confederacy, so far as arms, grain, etc., were concerned. Sherman attributed much of his success to the fact that he could repair and operate the railroad so rapidly. Among his men were Yankee machinists and engineers, who were as necessary as courageous fighters.
"We are held here during many priceless hours," said the general, "because the enemy has spoiled this passenger engine. Who knows any thing about repairing an engine?"
"I do," said a dusty tramp in blue. "I can repair this one in an hour."
"What makes you think so?"
"Well, I made it."
This was one of the strong features of Sherman's army. Among the hundred thousand who composed it there were so many active brains and skilled hands that the toot of the engine caught the heels of the last echoing shout of the battle.
Learning that Hood proposed to invade Tennessee, Sherman prepared to march across Georgia to the sea, and if necessary to tramp through the Atlantic States.
Hood was sorry afterwards that he invaded Tennessee. He shut Thomas up in Nashville after a battle with Schofield, and kept the former in-doors for two weeks, when all of a sudden Thomas exclaimed, "Air! air! give me air!" and came out, throwing Hood into headlong flight, when the Union cavalry fell on his rear, followed by the infantry, and the forty thousand Confederates became a scattered and discouraged mob spread out over several counties.
The burning of Atlanta preceded Sherman's march, and, though one of the saddest features ofthe war, was believed to be a military necessity. Those who declare war hoping to have a summer's outing thereby may live to regret it for many bitter years.
On November 16, Sherman started, his army moving in four columns, constituting altogether a column of fire by night, and a pillar of cloud and dust by day. Kilpatrick's cavalry scoured the country like a mass meeting of ubiquitous little black Tennessee hornets.
In five weeks Sherman had marched three hundred miles, had destroyed two railroads, had stormed Fort McAllister, and had captured Savannah.
On the 5th and 6th of May, 1864, occurred the battle of the Wilderness, near the old battleground of Chancellorsville. No one could describe it, for it was fought in the dense woods, and the two days of useless butchery with not the slightest signs of civilized warfare sickened both armies, and, with no victory for either, they retired to their intrenchments.
Grant, instead of retreating, however, quietly passed the flank of the Confederates and started for Spottsylvania Court-House, where a battle occurred May 8-12.
Here the two armies fought five days without any advantage to either. It was at this time that Grant sent his celebrated despatch stating that he"proposed to fight it out on this line if it took all summer."
Finally he sought to turn Lee's right flank. June 8, the battle of Cold Harbor followed this movement. The Union forces were shot down in the mire and brush by Lee's troops, now snugly in out of the wet, behind the Cold Harbor defences. One historian says that in twenty minutes ten thousand Yankee troops were killed; though Badeau, whose accuracy in counting dead has always been perfectly marvellous, admits only seven thousand in all.
Grant now turned his attention towards Petersburg, but Lee was there before him and intrenched, so the Union army had to intrench. This only postponed the evil day, however.
Things now shaped themselves into a siege of Richmond, with Petersburg as the first outpost of the besieged capital.
On the 30th of July, eight thousand pounds of powder were carefully inserted under a Confederate fort and the entire thing hoisted in the air, leaving a huge hole, in which, a few hours afterwards, many a boy in blue met his death, for in the assault which followed the explosion the Union soldiers were mowed down by the concentrated fire of the Confederates. The Federals threw away four thousand lives here.
On the 18th of August the Weldon Railroadwas captured, which was a great advantage to Grant, and, though several efforts were made to recapture it, they were unsuccessful.
PAUSING TO GET LAUNDRY-WORK DONE.PAUSING TO GET LAUNDRY-WORK DONE.
General Early was delegated to threaten Washington and scare the able officers of the army who were stopping there at that time talking politics and abusing Grant. He defeated General Wallace at Monocacy River, and appeared before FortStevens, one of the defences of Washington, July 11. Had he whooped right along instead of pausing a day somewhere to get laundry-work done before entering Washington, he would easily have captured the city.
Reinforcements, however, got there ahead of him, and he had to go back. He sent a force of cavalry into Pennsylvania, where they captured Chambersburg and burned it on failure of the town trustees to pay five hundred thousand dollars ransom.
General Sheridan was placed in charge of the troops here, and defeated Early at Winchester, riding twenty miles in twenty minutes, as per poem. At Fisher's Hill he was also victorious. He devastated the Valley of the Shenandoah to such a degree that a crow passing the entire length of the valley had to carry his dinner with him.
It was, however, at the battle of Cedar Creek that Sheridan was twenty miles away, according to historical prose. Why he was twenty miles away, various and conflicting reasons are given, but on his good horse Rienzi he arrived in time to turn defeat and rout into victory and hilarity.
Rienzi, after the war, died in eleven States. He was a black horse, with a saddle-gall and a flashing eye.
He passed away at his home in Chicago at lastin poverty while waiting for a pension applied for on the grounds of founder and lampers brought on by eating too heartily after the battle and while warm, but in the line of duty.
The Red River campaign under General Banks was a joint naval and land expedition, resulting in the capture of Fort de Russy, March 14, after which, April 8, the troops marching towards Shreveport in very open order, single file or holding one another's hands and singing "John Brown's Body," were attacked by General Dick Taylor, and if Washington had not been so far away and through a hostile country, Bull Run would have had another rival. But the boys rallied, and next day repulsed the Confederates, after which they returned to New Orleans, where board was more reasonable. General Banks obtained quite a relief at this time: he was relieved of his command.
August 5, Commodore Farragut captured Mobile, after a neat and attractive naval fight, and on the 24th and 25th of December Commodore Porter and General Butler started out to take Fort Fisher. After two days' bombardment, Butler decided that there were other forts to be had on better terms, and returned. Afterwards General Terry commanded the second expedition, Porter having remained on hand with his vessels to assist. January 15, 1865, the most heroic fighting on both sides resulted, and at last, completely hemmed in, the brave and battered garrison surrendered; but no one who was there need blush to say so, even to-day.
At the South at this time coffee was fifty dollars a pound and gloves were one hundred and fifty dollars a pair. Flour was forty dollars a barrel; but you could get a barrel of currency for less than that.
Money was plenty, but what was needed seemed to be confidence. Running the blockade was not profitable at that time, since over fifteen hundred head of Confederate vessels were captured during the war.
The capture of Fort Fisher closed the last port of the South, and left the Confederacy no show with foreign Powers or markets.
The Alabama was an armed steam-ship, and the most unpleasant feature of the war to the Federal government, especially as she had more sympathy and aid in England than was asked for or expected by the Unionists. However, England has since repaid all this loss in various ways. She has put from five to eight million dollars into cattle on the plains of the Northwest, where the skeletons of same may be found bleaching in the summer sun; and I am personally acquainted with six Americans now visiting England who can borrow enough in a year to make up all the losses sustained through the Alabama and other neutral vessels.
PERSONALLY ACQUAINTED WITH SIX AMERICANS.PERSONALLY ACQUAINTED WITH SIX AMERICANS.
Captain Semmes commanded the Alabama, and off Cherbourg he sent a challenge to the Kearsarge, commanded by Captain Winslow, who accepted it, and so worked his vessel that the Alabama had to move round him in a circle, while he filled her up with iron, lead, copper, tin, German silver, glass, nails, putty, paint, varnishes, and dye-stuff. At the seventh rotation the Alabama ran up the white flag and sunk with a low mellow plunk. The crew was rescued by Captain Winslow and the English yacht Deerhound, the latter taking Semmes and starting for England.
This matter, however, was settled in after-years.
The care of the sick, the dying, and the dead in the Union armies was almost entirely under the eye of the merciful and charitable, loyal and loving members of the Sanitary and ChristianCommissions, whose work and its memory kept green in the hearts of the survivors and their children will be monument enough for the coming centuries.
In July, 1864, the debt of the country was two billion dollars and twenty cents. Two dollars and ninety cents in greenbacks would buy a reluctant gold dollar.
Still, Abraham Lincoln was re-elected against George B. McClellan, the Democratic candidate, who carried only three States. This was endorsement enough for the policy of President Lincoln.
Sherman's army of sixty thousand, after a month's rest at Savannah, started north to unite with Grant in the final blow. "Before it was terror, behind it ashes."
Columbia was captured February 17, and burned, without Sherman's authority, the night following. Charleston was evacuated the next day. Johnston was recalled to take command, and opposed the march of Sherman, but was driven back after fierce engagements at Bentonville and Averysboro. On March 25 Lee decided to attack Grant, and, while the latter was busy, get out of Richmond and join Johnston, but when this battle, known as the attack on Fort Steadman, was over, Grant's hold was tighter than ever.
Sheridan attacked Lee's rear with a heavyforce, and at Five Forks, April 1, the surprised garrison was defeated with five thousand captured. The next day the entire Union army advanced, and the line of Confederate intrenchments was broken. On the following day Petersburg and Richmond were evacuated, but Mr. Davis was not there. He had gone away. Rather than meet General Grant and entertain him when there was no pie in the house, he and the Treasury had escaped from the haunts of man, wishing to commune with nature for a while. He was captured at Irwinsville, Georgia, under peculiar and rather amusing circumstances.
He was never punished, with the exception perhaps that he published a book and did not realize anything from it.
Lee fled to the westward, but was pursued by the triumphant Federals, especially by Sheridan, whose cavalry hung on his flanks day and night. Food failed the fleeing foe, and the young shoots of trees for food and the larger shoots of the artillery between meals were too much for that proud army, once so strong and confident.
Let us not dwell on the particulars.
As Sheridan planted his cavalry squarely across Lee's path of retreat, the worn but heroic tatters of a proud army prepared to sell themselves for a bloody ransom and go down fighting, but Grant had demanded their surrender, and, seeing backof the galling, skirmishing cavalry solid walls of confident infantry, the terms of surrender were accepted by General Lee, and April 9 the Confederate army stacked its arms near Appomattox Court-House.
The Confederate war debt was never paid, for some reason or other, but the Federal debt when it was feeling the best amounted to two billion eight hundred and forty-four million dollars. One million men lost their lives.
Was it worth while?
In the midst of the general rejoicing, President Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth at Ford's Theatre, April 14. The assassin was captured in a dying condition in a burning barn, through a crack in the boarding of which he had been shot by a soldier named Boston Corbett. He died with no sympathetic applause to soothe the dull, cold ear of death.
West Virginia was admitted to the Union in 1863, and Nevada in 1864.
The following chapters will be devoted to more peaceful details, while we cheerfully close the sorrowful pages in which we have confessed that, with all our greatness as a nation, we could not stay the tide of war.
TOO MUCH LIBERTY IN PLACES AND NOT ENOUGH ELSEWHERE.—THOUGHTS ON THE LATE WAR—WHO IS THE BIGGER ASS, THE MAN WHO WILL NOT FORGIVE AND FORGET, OR THE MAWKISH AND MOIST-EYED SNIVELLER WHO WANTS TO DO THAT ALL THE TIME?
When Patrick Henry put his old cast-iron spectacles on the top of his head and whooped for liberty, he did not know that some day we should have more of it than we knew what to do with. He little dreamed that the time would come when we should have more liberty than we could pay for. When Mr. Henry sawed the air and shouted for liberty or death, I do not believe that he knew the time would come when Liberty would stand on Bedloe's Island and yearn for rest and change of scene.
It seems to me that we have too much liberty in this country in some ways. We have more liberty than we have money. We guarantee that every man in America shall fill himself up full of liberty at our expense, and the less of an American he is the more liberty he can have. Shouldhe desire to enjoy himself, all he needs is a slight foreign accent and a willingness to mix up with politics as soon as he can get his baggage off the steamer. The more I study American institutions the more I regret that I was not born a foreigner,so that I could have something to say about the management of our great land. If I could not be a foreigner, I believe I should prefer to be a policeman or an Indian not taxed.
PATRICK HENRY'S GREAT SPEECH.PATRICK HENRY'S GREAT SPEECH.
I am often led to ask, in the language of the poet, "Is civilization a failure, and is the Caucasian played out?"
THE MORE I REGRET THAT I WAS NOT BORN A FOREIGNER.THE MORE I REGRET THAT IWAS NOT BORN A FOREIGNER.
Almost every one can have a good deal of fun in America except the American. He seems to be so busy paying his taxes that he has very little time to vote, or to mingle in society's giddy whirl, or to mix up with the nobility. That is the reason why the alien who rides across the United States in the "Limited Mail" and writes a book about us before breakfast wonders why we are always in a hurry. That also is the reason why we have to throw our meals into ourselves with such despatch, and hardly have time to maintain a warm personal friendship with our families.
We do not care much for wealth, but we must have freedom, and freedom costs money. We have advertised to furnish a bunch of freedom to every man, woman, and child who comes to our shores, and we are going to deliver the goods whether we have any left for ourselves or not.
What would the great world beyond the seas say to us if some day the blue-eyed Oriental, with his heart full of love for our female seminaries and our old women's homes, should land upon our coasts and crave freedom in car-load lots but find that we were using all the liberty ourselves? But what do we want of liberty, anyhow? What could we do with it if we had it? It takes a man of leisure to enjoy liberty, and we have no leisure whatever. It is a good thing to keep in the house for the use of guests, but we don't need it for ourselves.
Therefore we have a statue of Liberty Enlightening the World, because it shows that we keep Liberty on tap winter and summer. We want the whole broad world to remember that when it gets tired of oppression it can come here to America and oppress us. We are used to it, and we rather like it. If we don't like it, we can get on the steamer and go abroad, where we may visit the effete monarchies and have a high old time.
The sight of the Goddess of Liberty standingthere in New York harbor night and day, bathing her feet in the rippling sea, is a good thing. It is first-rate. It may also be productive of good in a direction that many have not thought of. As she stands there day after day, bathing her feet in the broad Atlantic, perhaps some moss-grown alien landing on our shore and moving toward the Far West may fix the bright picture in his so-called mind, and, remembering how, on his arrival in New York, he saw Liberty bathing her feet withimpunity, he may be led in after-years to try it on himself.
MAY BE LED TO TRY IT ON HIMSELF.MAY BE LED TO TRY IT ON HIMSELF.
More citizens and less voters will some day be adopted as the motto of the Republic.
One reference to the late war, and I will close. I want to refer especially to the chronic reconciler who when war was declared was not involved in it, but who now improves every opportunity, especially near election-time, to get out a tired olive-branch and make a tableau of himself. He is worse than the man who cannot forgive or forget.
The growth of reconciliation between the North and the South is the slow growth of years, and the work of generations. When any man, North or South, in a public place takes occasion to talk in a mellow and mawkish way of the great love he now has for his old enemy, watch him. He is getting ready to ask a favor. There is a beautiful, poetic idea in the reunion of two contending and shattered elements of a great nation. There is something beautifully pathetic in the picture of the North and the South clasped in each other's arms and shedding a torrent of hot tears down each other's backs as it is done in a play, but do you believe that the aged mothers on either side have learned to love the foe with much violence yet? Do you believe that the crippled veteran, North or South, now passionately loves the adversary who robbed him of his glorious youth, madehim a feeble ruin, and mowed down his comrades with swift death? Do you believe that either warrior is so fickle that he has entirely deserted the cause for which he fought? Even the victor cannot ask that.
"Let the gentle finger of time undo, so far as may be, the devastation wrought by the war, and let succeeding generations seek through natural methods to reunite the business and the traffic that were interrupted by the war. Let the South guarantee to the Northern investor security to himself and his investment, and he will not ask for the love which we read of in speeches but do not expect and do not find in the South.
"Two warring parents on the verge of divorce have been saved the disgrace of separation and agreed to maintain their household for the sake of their children. Their love has been questioned by the world, and their relations strained. Is it not bad taste for them to pose in public and make a cheap Romeo and Juliet tableau of themselves?
"Let time and merciful silence obliterate the scars of war, and succeeding generations, fostered by the smiles of national prosperity, soften the bitterness of the past and mellow the memory of a mighty struggle in which each contending host called upon Almighty God to sustain the cause which it honestly believed to be just."
Let us be contented during this generation with the assurance that geographically the Union has been preserved, and that each contending warrior has once more taken up the peaceful struggle for bettering and beautifying the home so bravely fought for.
RECONSTRUCTION WITHOUT PAIN—ADMINISTRATIONS OF JOHNSON AND GRANT.
It was feared that the return of a million Federal soldiers to their homes after the four years of war would make serious trouble in the North, but they were very shortly adjusted to their new lives and attending to the duties which peace imposed upon them.
The war of the Rebellion was disastrous to nearly every branch of trade, but those who remained at home to write the war-songs of the North did well. Some of these efforts were worthy, and, buoyed up by a general feeling of robust patriotism, they floated on to success; but few have stood the test of years and monotonous peace. The author of "Mother, I am hollow to the ground" is just depositing his profits from its sale in the picture given on next page. The second one, wearing the cape-overcoat tragedy air, wrote "Who will be my laundress now?"
Andrew Johnson succeeded to Mr. Lincoln's seat, having acted before as his vice.
A great review of the army, lasting twelvehours, was arranged to take place in Washington, consisting of the armies of Grant and Sherman. It was reviewed by the President and Cabinet; it extended over thirty miles twenty men deep, and constituted about one-fifth of the Northern army at the time peace was declared.
THE STAY-AT-HOMES WHO WROTE WAR-SONGS.THE STAY-AT-HOMES WHO WROTE WAR-SONGS.
President Johnson recognized the State governments existing in Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Louisiana, but instituted provisional governments for the other States of the defeated Confederacy, as it seemed impossible otherwise to bring order out of the chaos which war and financial distress had brought about. He authorized the assembly also of loyal conventions to electState and other officers, and pardoned by proclamation everybody, with the exception of a certain class of the late insurgents whom he pardoned personally.
On Christmas Day, 1868, a Universal Amnesty was declared. The Thirteenth Amendment, abolishing slavery, became a part of the Constitution, December 18, 1865, and the former masters found themselves still morally responsible for these colored people, without the right to control them or even the money with which to employ them.
The annual interest on the national debt at this time amounted to one hundred and fifty million dollars. Yet the Treasury paid this, together with the expenses of government, and reduced the debt seventy-one million dollars before the volunteer army had been fully discharged in 1866.
Comment on such recuperative power as that is unnecessary; for the generation that fights a four-years war costing over two billions of dollars generally leaves the debt for another generation or another century to pay.
Congress met finally, ignored the President's rollicking welcome to the seceded States, and over his veto proceeded to pass various laws regarding their admission, such as the Civil Rights and Freedman's Bureau Bills.
Tennessee returned promptly to the Union under the Constitutional Amendments, but theothers did not till the nightmare of Reconstruction had been added to the horrors of war. In 1868, after much time worse than wasted in carpet-bag government and a mob reign in the South which imperilled her welfare for many years after it was over, by frightening investors and settlers long after peace had been restored, representatives began to come into Congress under the laws.
During this same year the hostilities between Congress and the President culminated in an effort to impeach the latter. He escaped by one vote.
It is very likely that the assassination of Lincoln was the most unfortunate thing that happened to the Southern States. While he was not a warrior, he was a statesman, and no gentler hand or more willing brain could have entered with enthusiasm into the adjustment of chaotic conditions, than his.
The Fourteenth Amendment, a bright littlebon mot, became a law June 28, 1868, and was written in the minutes of Congress, so that people could go there and refresh their memories regarding it. It guaranteed civil rights to all, regardless of race, color, odor, wildness or wooliness whatsoever, and allows all noses to be counted in Congressional representations, no matter what angle they may be at or what the color may be.
Some American citizens murmur at taxation without representation, but the negro murmurs at representation without remuneration.
The Fenian excitement of 1866 died out without much loss of life.
In October, 1867, Alaska was purchased from Russia for seven million two hundred thousand dollars. The ice-crop since then would more than pay for the place, and it has also a water-power and cranberry marsh on it.
The rule of the Imperialists in France prompted the appointment of Maximilian, Archduke of Austria, as Emperor of Mexico, supported by the French army. The Americans, still sore and in debt at the heels of their own war, pitied the helpless Mexicans, and, acting on the principles enunciated in the Monroe Doctrine, demanded the recall of Maximilian, who, deserted finally by his foreign abettors, was defeated and as a prisoner shot by the Mexicans, June 19, 1867.
The Atlantic cable was laid from Valentia Bay in Ireland to Heart's Content, Newfoundland, one thousand eight hundred and sixty-four miles, and the line from New York to the latter place built in 1856, a distance of one thousand miles, making in all, as keen mathematicians will see, two thousand eight hundred and sixty-four miles.
A very agreeable commercial treaty with China was arranged in 1868.
Grant and Colfax, Republicans, succeeded Andrew Johnson in the next election, Horatio Seymour, of New York, and Frank P. Blair, ofMissouri, being the Democratic nominees. Virginia and Mississippi had not been fully reconstructed, and so were not yet permitted to vote. They have squared the matter up since, however, by voting with great enthusiasm.
In 1869 the Pacific Railroad was completed, whereby the trip from the Atlantic to the Pacific—three thousand and three hundred miles—might be made in a week. It also attracted the Asiatic trade, and tea, silk, spices, and leprosy found a new market in the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Still flushed with its success in humorous legislation, Congress, on the 30th of March, 1870, passed the Fifteenth Amendment, giving to the colored men the right to vote. It then became a part of the Constitution, and people who have seen it there speak very highly of it.
Prosperity now attracted no attention whatever. Gold, worth nearly three dollars at the close of the war, fell to a dollar and ten cents, and the debt during the first two years of this administration was reduced two hundred million dollars.
Genuine peace reigned in the entire Republic, and o'er the scarred and shell-torn fields of the South there waved, in place of hostile banners, once more the cotton and the corn. The red foliage of the gum-tree with the white in the snowy white cotton-fields and the blue-grass ofKentucky (blue-grass is not, strictly speaking, blue enough to figure in the national colors, but the author has taken out a poetic license which does not expire for over a year yet, and he therefore under its permission is allowed a certain amount of idiocy) showed that the fields had never forgotten their loyalty to the national colors. Peace under greatly changed conditions resumed her vocations, and, in the language of the poet,—
"There were domes of white blossoms where swelled the white tent;There were ploughs in the track where the war-wagons went;There were songs where they lifted up Rachel's lament."
October 8, 1871, occurred the great fire in Chicago, raging for forty-eight hours and devastating three thousand acres of the city. Twenty-five thousand buildings were burned, and two hundred million dollars' worth of property. One hundred thousand people lost their houses, and over seven and one-half millions of dollars were raised for those who needed it, all parts of the world uniting to improve the joyful opportunity to do good, without a doubt of its hearty appreciation.
Boston also had a seventy-million dollar fire in the heart of the wholesale trade, covering sixty acres; and in the prairie and woods fires of Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Michigan, many peoplelost not only their homes but their lives. Fifteen hundred people perished in Wisconsin alone.
In 1871 the damage done by the Alabama, a British-built ship, and several other cruisers sent out partly to facilitate the cotton trade and partly to do a little fighting when a Federal vessel came that way, was assessed at fifteen million five hundred thousand dollars against Great Britain by the arbitrators who met at Geneva, Switzerland, and the northwestern boundary line between the United States and British America was settled by arbitration, the Emperor of Germany acting as arbitrator and deciding in favor of America.
This showed that people who have just wound up a big war have often learned some valuable sense; not two billion dollars' worth, perhaps, but some.
San Domingo was reported for sale, and a committee looked at it, priced it, etc., but Congress decided not to buy it.
The Liberal Republican party, or that element of the original party which was opposed to the administration, nominated Horace Greeley, of New York, while the old party renominated General Grant for the term to succeed himself. The latter was elected, and Mr. Greeley did not long survive his defeat.
The Modoc Indians broke loose in the early part of Grant's second term, and, leaping fromtheir lava-beds early in the morning, Shacknasty Jim and other unlaundried children of the forest raised merry future punishment, and the government, always kind, always loving and sweet toward the red brother, sent a peace commission with popcorn balls and a gentle-voiced parson to tell Shacknasty James and Old Stand-up-and-Sit-down that the white father at Washington loved them and wanted them all to come and spend the summer at his house, and also that by sin death came into the world, and that we were all primordial germs at first, and that we should look up, not down, look out, not in, look forward, not backward, and lend a hand.
PEACE COMMISSION POW-WOWING WITH THE MODOCS.PEACE COMMISSION POW-WOWING WITH THE MODOCS.
It was at this moment that Early-to-Bed-and Early-to-Rise-Black Hawk and Shacknasty James, thinking that this thing had gone far enough, killed General Canby and wounded both Mr. Meacham and Rev. Dr. Thomas, who had never had an unkind thought toward the Modocs in their lives.
The troops then allowed their ill temper to get the best of them, and asked the Modocs if they meant anything personal by their action, and, learning that they did, the soldiers did what with the proper authority they would have done at first, bombarded the children of the forest and mussed up their lava-beds so that they were glad to surrender.
In 1873 a panic occurred after the failure of Jay Cooke & Co., of Philadelphia, and a money stringency followed, the Democrats attributing it a good deal to the party in power, just as cheap Republicans twenty years later charged the Democratic administration with this same thing. Inconsistency of this kind keeps good men, like the writer, out of politics, and turns their attention toward the contemplation of a better land.