At the outbreak of war, what the Northerner saw confronting him was an organized attempt to overthrow the government and break up the nation in the interest of slavery. This as the essential fact took form in the circle of fire let loose on a beleaguered fort, and the Stars and Stripes lowered before an overwhelming force. Close following came the menace against the national capital, for Washington was believed to be in imminent peril. A Massachusetts regiment marching to its relief was assailed by the populace of Baltimore; communication was cut; and the city which was the centre and symbol of the national life seemed stretching her hands in appeal to the country's faithful sons. To the conscience, the heart, the imagination of the North, it was a war of national self-defense,—a holy war.
What the Southerner saw was an attempt to crush by force a legitimate exercise of the right of sovereign States to an independent existence. The typical Southerner, whether he had thought Secession expedient or not, believed that each State was the rightful judge of its own course, that the citizen's first allegiance was due to his State; and that the attempt at coercion was as tyrannical as the refusal by Great Britain of independence to the American colonies. And, apart from all political theories, there instantly loomed on the horizon the armies of the North, bearing down with fire and sword on the people of the Southern States. The instinct of self-defense, and the irresistible sympathy of neighborhoodand community, prompted to resistance. Beyond doubt, the typical Southern volunteer could say in all sincerity, as one of them has expressed it: "With me is right, before me is duty, behind me is home."
So natural and profound was the motive on each side, when the war began. Wholly different from the moral responsibility of those who initiated Secession, is the case of those who afterward fought for what to each side was the cause of home and country. But, driven though both parties felt themselves to war, none the less terrible was the war in itself. There are difficulties from which the only escape is through disaster. John Morley writes: "It is one of the commonest of all cheap misjudgments in human affairs, to start by assuming that there is always some good way out of a bad case. Alas for us all, this is not so. Situations arise, alike for individuals, for parties, and for States, from which no good way out exists, but only choice between bad way out and worse." For the American people, in the situation into which by sins of commission and omission they had been brought, the only way out was one of the worst ways that human feet can travel.
It does not belong to this work to give a history of the Civil War. But a truthful history might be written in a very different vein from the accepted and popular narratives. These for the most part describe the conflict in terms resembling partly a game of chess and partly a football match. We read of grand strategic combinations, of masterly plans of attack and admirable counter-strokes of defense. On the battlefield we hear of gallant charges, superb rushes of cavalry, indomitable resistance. Our military historians largely give us the impression of man in battle as in the exercise of his highest powers, and war as something glorious in the experience and heart-thrilling in the contemplation.
But a succinct account of the whole business would be to say that for four years the flower of the country's population were engaged in killing each other. All other industries were overshadowed by the occupation of human slaughter. Shop and farm, church and college, school and home, all were subsidiary to the battlefield.
The battlefield itself is not easily conceived by the civilian, even with the aid of poets and story-tellers from Homer to Kipling. The reader, who has perhaps never seen a shot fired in anger, may have chanced to witness a man struck down in the street by a falling beam or trampled by a runaway horse. Or, as a better illustration, he may remember in his own case some hour of sudden and extreme suffering,—a hand caught by a falling window, a foot drenched by scalding water. Intensify that experience, extend it through days, for the home couch and the nursing of mother or wife put the bare ground and the onrush of hostile men,—and you have the nucleus, the constituent atom, of a battle. Multiply it by hundreds or thousands; give to each sufferer the background of waiting parents, wife, children, at home; give to a part death, swift or agonizing; to another part lifelong infirmity or irritation,—and you begin to get the reality of war.
It was Wellington who said that the worst sight on earth, next to the field of defeat, was the field of victory. It was Lee who wrote from Mexico to his son: "You have no idea what a horrible sight a battle-field is." And he said that the strongest memory left from his first battle was the plaintive tone of a little Mexican girl whom he found leaning over a wounded drummer-boy.
Men not only witness such carnage but inflict it, in the excitement of battle, because animated by feelings of which only a part can rightly be called heroic. Honor indeed is due to the subordination of personal fear to the sense ofduty and comradeship,—yes, high honor; and the appeal of the soldier to the imagination, as a type of self-sacrifice and nobility, has its element of truth. But the ordinary courage of the battle-field is largely an excitement half-animal, half-contagious, running often into savagery and insensate fury. In that situation the highest and lowest elements in man come into play. For the most part only the highest is portrayed for us by the historians and romancers,—they keep the wild beast and the devil out of sight. Only in these later days, when mankind begins to scrutinize its boasted glories more closely, do Tolstoi in literature and Verestchagin in art give us glimpses of the grim reality.
An industry which has murder for its main output will have some by-products to match. In the armies of both sides the human stuff was of mixed character and motive. Some enlisted from pure patriotism,—for Union, State, or Confederacy; some from thirst of adventure; others for ambition; others for the bounty or under compulsion of the conscription officer; many from the mere contagious excitement. Army life always brings to many of its participants a great demoralization. Take away the restriction of public opinion in a well-ordered community, take from men the society of good women, and there will be a tendency to barbarism. A civilized army has indeed a code and public opinion of its own, which counts for some sterling qualities, but it is lax and ineffective for much that goes to complete manhood. Just as the war left a host of maimed and crippled, so it left a multitude of moral cripples. At the reunion, around the "camp fire," with the reminiscences of stirring times and the renewal of good comradeship runs a vein of comment which the newspapers do not relate. "What's become of A.?" "Drank himself to death." "And where is X.?" "Never got back the character helost in New Orleans,—went to the dogs." It is a chronicle not recorded on the monuments, but remembered in many a blighted household. The financial debt the war left behind it was not the heaviest part of the after-cost.
Nor must there be forgotten the temper which war begets, of mutual hate between whole peoples. Forty years later we bring ourselves,—some of us, and in a measure,—to see that our opponents of either side had some justification or some excuse; that they perhaps were honest as we. But little room was there for such mutual forbearance of judgment while the fight was on. For the average man, for most men, to fight means also to hate. While the contest lasted, Northerners habitually spoke of their foes as "the rebels,"—not in contumely, but as matter-of-fact description. They were "rebels" in common speech, and when one warmed a little they were "traitors." Good men said that now for the first time they saw why the imprecatory Psalms were written,—theirs was the only cursing strong enough for the country's enemies. Quite as hearty was the South's detestation of the Yankee invaders and despots,—the fanatics and their hired minions. The Southern feeling took the keener edge, because sharpened by the bitter fact of invasion and the hardships it brought. With them the home suffered, not only as at the North, by the departure of father or son to danger or death; the Southern homes often saw the foes in their midst, and sometimes suffered ravage and spoil. "How can you expect me to be well reconstructed," asked a Virginian after the war, "When I remember the family vaults in which the silver plates were wrenched from the coffins by your soldiers?" When the fighting was over, the life of the reunited nation had to work its way for a generation,—and the end is not yet,—against the hostilities, the rancors, the misunderstandings, generated in those four years of strife.
The reality of war where it fell heaviest,—in the border States, where neighborhoods and families were divided, and both armies marched and fought,—is touched by the graphic pen of a woman, Mrs. Rebecca Harding Davis, who saw and felt a part of it: "The histories which we have of the great tragedy give no idea of the general wretchedness, the squalid misery, which entered into every individual life in the region given up to the war. Where the armies camped the destruction was absolute. Even on the border, your farm was a waste, all your horses or cows were seized by one army or the other, or your shop or manufactory was closed, your trade ruined. You had no money; you drank coffee made of roasted parsnips for breakfast, and ate only potatoes for dinner. Your nearest kinsfolk and friends passed you on the street silent and scowling; if you said what you thought you were liable to be dragged to the county jail and left there for months. The subject of the war was never broached in your home where opinions differed; but one morning the boys were missing. No one said a word, but one gray head was bent, and the happy light died out of the old eyes and never came to them again. Below all the squalor and discomfort was the agony of suspense or the certainty of death. But the parsnip coffee and the empty purse certainly did give a sting to the great overwhelming misery, like gnats tormenting a wounded man."
Visiting in war-time the sages of Concord, she saw the difference between war as viewed by visionaries at a distance and the reality: "I remember listening during one long summer morning to Louisa Alcott's father as he chanted pæans to the war, the 'armed angel which was wakening the nation to a lofty life unknown before.' We were in the little parlor of the Wayside, Mr. Hawthorne's house in Concord. Mr. Alcott stood in front of the fire-place, his long gray hair streaming over his collar, his pale eyes turning quickly from one listener to another to hold them quiet, his hands waving to keep time with the orotund sentences which had a stale, familiar ring as if often repeated before. Mr. Emerson stood listening, his head sunk on his breast, with profound submissive attention, but Hawthorne sat astride of a chair, his arms folded on the back, his chin dropped on them, and his laughing, sagacious eyes watching us, full of mockery.
"I had come up from the border where I had seen the actual war; the filthy spewings of it; the political jobbery in Union and Confederate camps; the malignant personal hatreds wearing patriotic masks, and glutted by burning homes and outraged women; the chances in it, well improved on both sides, for brutish men to grow more brutish, and for honorable gentlemen to degenerate into thieves and sots. War may be an armed angel with a mission, but she has the personal habits of the slums. This would-be seer who was talking of it, and the real seer who listened, knew no more of war as it was, than I had done in my cherry-tree time, when I dreamed of bannered legions of crusaders debouching in the misty fields."
The youth who reads may ask in wonder, "And was then the war to which we have been used to look back with exultation and pride,—was it but a horror and a crime?" No; it was something other and more than that; it had its aspects of moral grandeur and of gain for humanity; it was a field for noble self-sacrifice, for utmost striving of men and deepest tenderness of women, it had its heroes and martyrs and saints; it was in the large view the tremendous price of national unity and universal freedom. But in the exaltation of these better aspects, we have as a people too much forgotten the other and awful side. That is what we need now to be reminded of. For among our presentdangers none is greater than the false glorification of war. Against such glorifications stands Sherman's word, "War is hell." And on that grand tomb with which our greatest city crowns its proudest height is inscribed, as the one word by which Grant forever speaks to his countrymen, "Let us have peace."
The nobler side of the war is told and will be told in many a history and biography, romance and poem. In the broad view, the grandest fact was that a multitude of men and women felt and acted as never before for a cause greater than any personal gain. Under the discipline of sacrifice and suffering, and with the personal horizon widened to take in nations and races, a multitude on the field and at home grew to loftier stature. The hardships and perils which wrecked some strengthened others. The development of energy and resource was beyond measure. The North created armies and navies; it organized a new system of finance; it transformed a peaceful industrial community into an irresistible military force; and all the while it carried on its productive industries with scarcely visible shrinkage; farm and mill, school and college, kept on with their work. The South made itself into a solid army of resistance; cut off from its accustomed sources of supply, it developed for itself all the essentials of material life; it showed an ingenuity and resourcefulness beyond all expectation; and the fidelity of its slaves supplied its armies with food while keeping its homes secure. In peace haunted always by latent dread of insurrection, in war the South found its servants its best friends. So, in both sections, wonders were wrought and deeds never dreamed of were achieved.
In justly viewing the evil and the good of war, we must compare it with other disturbances and catastrophes. The finest traits and highest efficiency of men come out underdisasters which yet it must be our habitual effort to avert. It is the ship on the rocks, the theater on fire, that shows the hero. But what should we think of one who ran a ship on shore, or set fire to a theater, in order to call out heroism? Exactly so are we to regard those who glorify war as in itself a fine and admirable thing, a proper school and arena of manhood. The refutation of such talk comes not so well from men of the church or closet as from those who have drunk deepest of war's reality. A man of exuberant vitality, whose personal delight in physical strife colors his statesmanship, and who is exhilarated by the memory of a skirmish or two in Cuba, may talk exultantly of "glory enough to go round," and preach soldiering as a splendid manifestation of the strenuous life. But the grim old warrior whose genius and resolution split the Confederacy like a wedge, General Sherman, in the very midst of his task wrote to a friend: "I confess without shame that I am sick and tired of the war. Its glory is all moonshine. Even success, the most brilliant, is over dead and mangled bodies, the anguish and lamentation of distant families appealing to me for missing sons, husbands, and fathers. It is only those who have not heard a shot, nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded and lacerated (friend or foe), that cry aloud for more blood, more vengeance, more desolation."
One glance we here may give at the traits which against this dark background shone with the light which redeems humanity. The worst scenes of all were not on the battlefield but in the military prisons. At Andersonville, and other points, thousands of Northern prisoners were crowded together, with insufficient supply of unnutritious food, with scanty and foul water; surrounded by harsh guards, quick to shoot if the "dead line" was crossed by a foot; harassed by petty tyranny; starved, homesick, diseased, dying likeinfected sheep. It is a black, black page,—but let its blackness be mainly charged to war itself, and what war always breeds. In Northern prisons, the rate of mortality was nearly as high as in Southern; the work of hunger in the one was matched by cold in the other. "All things considered," says J. F. Rhodes in his impartialHistory of the United States, "the statistics show no reason why the North should reproach the South. If we add to one side of the account the refusal to exchange the prisoners"—a refusal based by Grant at one time on the military disadvantage of restoring the Southern prisoners to active service—"and the greater resources, and to the other the distress of the Confederacy; the balance struck will not be far from even." Enough for our present purpose that the Andersonville prison-pen was a hell. Well, after a time the Union armies were recruited by negroes, and the Confederates in resentment refused to consider these when captured as prisoners of war, and would not include them in the exchanges. Thereupon the Federal Government declared that its negro soldiers must receive equal rights with the whites, and until this was conceded there should be no exchange at all. Then some of the Andersonville prisoners drew up a petition, and signed and sent it to Washington, praying the government to hasten their release, and if necessary to hold the question of negro prisoners for negotiation, while pressing forward the liberation of its faithful and suffering white soldiers. But promptly by others in the prison-pen a counter petition was started, signed, and sent on. It ran in substance thus: "We are in evil case, and we earnestly desire that you hasten our deliverance by every means consistent with right and honor. But—honor first! Let the nation's plighted faith to its black soldiers be kept, at whatever cost to us. We ask you to still refuse all exchange of prisoners, until theÕsame treatment can be secured for black and white." Was ever a braver deed than that?
One picture more. In a military hospital at Washington, Walt Whitman was engaged as a volunteer nurse. In a letter to a friend, he depicted in a few sentences the tragedy of it all, and yet the triumph of the spirit over the body and over death itself. He wrote of a Northern hospital, but the like might be seen on Southern soil, as to-day among Russians or Japanese,—it is the tragedy and triumph of humanity. "These thousands, and tens and twenties of thousands, of American young men, badly wounded ... operated on, pallid with diarrh[oe]a, languishing, dying with fever, pneumonia, etc., open a new world somehow to me, giving closer insights, ... showing our humanity ... tried by terrible, fearful tests, probed deepest, the living souls, the body's tragedies, bursting the petty bonds of art. To these, what are your dreams and poems, even the oldest and the tearfulest?... For here I see, not at intervals, but quite always, how certain man, our American man,—how he holds himself cool and unquestioned master above all pains and bloody mutilation.... This, then, what frightened us all so long! Why, it is put to flight with ignominy—a mere stuffed scarecrow of the fields. Oh, death, where is thy sting? Oh, grave, where is thy victory?"
When the war began, the absorbing issue at the North was the maintenance of the Union. The supreme, uniting purpose was the restoration of the national authority. Slavery had fallen into the background. But it soon began to come again to the front. Two tendencies existed at the North; one, to seek the restoration of the old state of things unchanged; the other, to seize the opportunity of war to put an end to slavery.
The pressure of events raised special questions which must be met. As soon as Northern armies were on Southern soil, slaves began to take refuge in the camps, and their masters, loyal in fact or in profession, followed with a demand for their return. Law seemed on the master's side; but the use of the army, engaged in such a war, to send slaves back to bondage, was most repugnant. At first some commanders took one course, some another. General Butler, a volunteer from Massachusetts, hit on a happy solution; he declared that slaves, being available to the enemy for hostile purposes, were like arms, gunpowder, etc., "contraband of war," and could not be reclaimed. The stroke was welcomed with cheers and laughter; and "contraband" became a catchword. Congress, in March, 1862, forbade the army and navy to return fugitives.
General Fremont was in command in Missouri. He was ardent and uncompromising, and in August, 1861, he issued a drastic proclamation, declaring the State under martial law, threatening death to all taken with arms in their hands,and giving freedom to the slaves of all rebels. The President remonstrated by letter against this too heroic surgery, and when Fremont declined to modify his order, used his authority to cancel it. The public reception of the incident marked and heightened the growing division of sentiment; the conservatives and especially the border State men, were alarmed and indignant at Fremont's action, while he became at once a favorite of the strong anti-slavery men.
This divergence among his own supporters added another to the complications which beset Lincoln and taxed him to the utmost. He had extraordinary tact and shrewdness in managing men, and in dealing with tangled situations. He showed this power toward his Cabinet officers, who included the most various material,—Seward, accomplished, resourceful, somewhat superficial, but thoroughly loyal to his chief after he knew him, managing the foreign relations with admirable skill, and somewhat conservative in his views; Chase, very able as a financier and jurist, but intensely ambitious of the Presidency, regarded as a radical as to slavery; Stanton, a great war minister but of harsh and intractable temper. These men and their colleagues Lincoln handled so skilfully as to get the best each had to contribute, and keep them and the political elements they represented in working harmony. No less successfully did he deal with Congress, guiding it to a great extent, but acquiescing in occasional defeats and disappointments so patiently that he disarmed hostility. He kept in closest touch with the common people; he was accessible to every one, listened to each man's grievance, remonstrance, or advice; and acquired an instinctive knowledge of what was in the hearts and minds of the millions.
In his own conduct, his guiding principle was fidelity to his official duty as he read it in the Constitution and the laws. He felt the specific, supreme task laid upon him to bethe restoration and maintenance of the Union. And to succeed in that, he knew he must rightly interpret and enforce the general sentiment and desire of the loyal people. If he let them become so divided as to no longer act together, the cause was lost. And to follow any personal opinion or conviction of his own, in disregard of his official duty, or in defiance of the popular will, was to betray his trust.
It was under these conditions that Lincoln dealt with slavery. No man more than he detested the institution, or desired its removal. But he felt that he had no right to touch it, except as empowered by the Constitution and the laws, or as guided by the supreme necessity of saving the nation's life. Beyond that he had no authority. Beyond that, his position toward slavery must be like that of a President toward, for example, a system of religion which he believed to be false and injurious. Be he intensely orthodox, believing infidelity to be the road to hell,—yet he must not as President, put a straw across the path of the free-thinker. Be he as heretical as Thomas Jefferson, he must not as President, any more than did Jefferson, lay a finger on the churches. Just so did Lincoln feel himself restricted as to slavery,—he could not touch it, except as the civil laws brought it within his province, or unless as supreme military commander the laws and necessities of war brought it within his authority.
Congress soon proceeded to discuss questions about slavery. Sumner, the foremost leader of the radicals, proposed resolutions, in February, 1862, declaring that the seceded States had by their acts extinguished their State organizations and relapsed into a territorial condition, subject only to Congress; and that slavery within them, existing only by a local authority now defunct, was thus abolished. Congress would take no such ground as that. But, as within its proper sphere, it abolished slavery in theDistrict of Columbia, in April, 1862, giving compensation to owners at a maximum rate of $300 for each slave. And in the following June, it abolished slavery in all the national territories,—thus giving full force to the cardinal doctrine of the Republican party up to the war. But the war had inevitably brought a more radical issue to the front,—the question of slavery in the States.
Under the name of a confiscation act, Congress passed a law, July 17, 1862, which declared freedom to all slaves of convicted rebels; to slaves of rebels escaping within the army lines, or captured, or deserted by their masters; and to all slaves of rebels found in places captured and occupied by the Union army. This came near to making the abolition of slavery follow exactly the progress of the Union arms. But, leaving untouched the slave property of loyalists, it spared the institution as a system.
Lincoln, in many ways a man of the people by his convictions and sympathies, in other aspects towered in solitude. He was almost unique in that he could fight—fight if need were to the death,—with no spark of hatred in his heart. In the midst of war he was a devoted peace-lover. To an old friend, though a political opponent, Congressman D. W. Voorhees, of Indiana, who called on him at the White House, he said with a pathetic look of anxious pain: "Voorhees, doesn't it seem strange that I should be here—I, a man who couldn't cut a chicken's head off,—with blood running all around me?" While he was overseeing campaigns, selecting and rejecting generals, learning the business of a commander, keeping touch with all the great matters of administration, besieged by office-seekers, importuned by people in all manner of private troubles,—he found intervals in which to devise ways out of the horrid business of war, ways that might lead both to peace and freedom.
The key of the situation he thought lay largely with the border States,—Maryland, Missouri and Kentucky,—all of them formally in the Union, but their population divided, sending recruits to both armies, and with hopes in the Confederacy that they might be entirely won over. If they could be bound faster to the Union, if at the same time they could be helped to make themselves free States,—then might the Union cause be mightily helped, and at the same time the work of emancipation be begun. Aiming at this result, Lincoln sent a message to Congress, March 6, 1862, proposing this resolution: "That the United States ought to co-operate with any State which may adopt gradual abolishment of slavery, giving to such State pecuniary aid, to be used by such State, in its discretion, to compensate for the inconveniences, public and private, produced by such change of system." He urged this with special reference to its application in the border States; and, inviting the Congressional members of these States in a body to the White House, he pleaded with them earnestly to support the resolution, and apply the plan. They listened, but were non-committal. Congress received the plan coolly. The Radicals were little in the humor of compensating slaveholders, and the Conservatives apprehended a progressive attack on slavery. But the President's influence triumphed; the resolution passed in mid-April; and the nation pledged itself to assist compensated emancipation in any State that would adopt it.
Nothing came of it. The border States did not move. Three months later, July 12, their delegations were again invited to the White House. The situation was at the gravest; McClellan's army had been baffled in the desperate seven-days' fight; factions at the North were growing hot. Lincoln pleaded reasonably, movingly, that they would bring decisive help to the national cause, by committing theirStates to emancipation, with help from the nation, gradually if they pleased, with colonization if they desired—peace, union, freedom, all lay that way! Two days they took to make answer, and then of the twenty-nine members only nine were favorable; the rest with one accord began to make excuse,—and that hope failed.
Events were forcing on the question of slavery. In the previous May, General David Hunter, in South Carolina, finding himself with 10,000 fugitives in his camps, whom the laws forbade him to return to their masters and did not permit him to hold as slaves, met the difficulty by a proclamation, declaring that the martial law of the United States was incompatible with slavery, and the slaves in his military district—South Carolina, Georgia and Florida,—were set free. Again the President overruled his subordinate, but in the proclamation he distinctly said that the question of emancipation as a military necessity belonged to himself as commander-in-chief. It was a note of warning. Twenty years before, John Quincy Adams had written,—and the words came from a conservative statesman of the highest standing: "I say that the military authority takes for the time the place of all municipal institutions, and slavery among the rest"; and had elaborated and reiterated the doctrine that in case of war slavery might be abolished by the commander. These statements had lately been recalled; the action of Fremont and Hunter had given life to the idea; and Lincoln now intimated that he might yet assume this authority.
Party divisions had soon reappeared at the North. The Democrats were not harmonious; a part called themselves "War Democrats," and a part were ready to let the South go, or went as near that as they prudently could; now one and now the other faction controlled the party according to time and locality. The Republicans were more united,yet among them was a cleavage between conservatives and radicals; the one taking for their watchword, "the Constitution as it is and the Union as it was"; the other eager to see the war turned against slavery; and both claiming the President, and jealously watching any leaning on his part toward their rivals.
There was developing at the North a profound sentiment for attacking slavery. The war was protracted beyond all early expectation; it was costly, bitter, woeful. What was to be at last the recompense for all this blood and tears? Was there, if victory came at last, to be with it no advance, nothing but the old Union, half slave and half free? For nothing better than this were sons, fathers, brothers, husbands to be sacrificed? Was the nation crossing a Red Sea of anguish only to emerge into the old bondage? Rather, let us fight at once for union and for liberty!
Those who voiced this cry could not always see the difficulties that beset the President. Many of them failed to realize that at heart he was as true to freedom as they. Even Lowell, in the laterBiglow Papers, which pleaded with deeper pathos and power than before for freedom—even he could write of "hoisting your captain's heart up with a derrick." Wendell Phillips on one occasion, impatient of Lincoln's attitude toward the fugitive slave law, called him "the slave-hound from Illinois." Beecher,—who did great service, especially by his speeches in England,—wrote in theIndependenta series of articles, to spur the President to more pronounced action. Some one gave the articles to Lincoln; he sat down and read them all, then rose to his feet exclaiming, "Am I a dog?"
All this time the conservatives were no less urgent that the President must make no move against slavery. Among their spokesmen was General McClellan. On him rested the chief hope of the North for military success during theyear following the disaster of Bull Run. He was an admirable organizer and a good theoretical strategist; his care for his men won their affection; and sometimes in the field he struck heavy and effective blows. But he was always prone to overrate the enemy's resources and underrate his own; he was slow to follow up a success; and he lacked the bulldog grip by which Grant won. Right on the heels of his failure in the seven-days' fight in the Peninsula, he wrote a letter to the President, from Harrison's Landing, July 7, 1862, lecturing him severely as to the errors he must avoid. Nothing must be done or said looking to confiscation, forcible abolition, or territorial organization of the States. "Until the principles governing the future conduct of our struggle shall be made known and approved, the effort to obtain requisite forces will be almost hopeless. A declaration of radical views, especially upon slavery, will rapidly disintegrate our armies." This letter was given to the public, and on this platform McClellan began to loom up as an opposition candidate for the Presidency.
So Lincoln was buffeted on the right hand and on the left. In this summer of 1862, Greeley wrote in theTribune, August 20, an open letter to the President, upbraiding him for his slackness against slavery. Lincoln replied, August 22, in a letter which startled many of his friends, and to this day bewilders those who do not understand the man himself or the position in which he stood. He wrote: "I would save the Union, I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution.... My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that." In fact, the last was the course which he eventually took.
This letter stated with full sincerity Lincoln's basal principle. It was not necessary to add that the purpose was growing within him to save the Union by freeing the slaves in the seceded States. The very growth of that purpose made it necessary for him to freshly bind to himself the conservatives whose only care was for the Union and not for emancipation. Nothing could serve this purpose better than the declaration in this letter to Greeley. In Lincoln, sincerity and shrewdness were thoroughly blended.
At a later day he told the artist Frank Carpenter, when he was to paint "The Signing of the Emancipation Proclamation": "It had got to be mid-summer, 1862. Things had gone on from bad to worse, until I felt that we had reached the end of our rope on the plan we had been pursuing; that we had about played our last card, and must change our tactics or lose the game. I now determined upon the adoption of the emancipation policy; and without consultation with, or the knowledge of, the Cabinet, I prepared the original draft of the proclamation, and after much anxious thought, called a Cabinet meeting upon the subject.... I said to the Cabinet that I had resolved upon this step, and had not called them together to ask their advice, but to lay the subject-matter of a proclamation before them, suggestions as to which would be in order after they had heard it read." This proclamation—the first sketch—set forth that at the next meeting of Congress, four months later, the President designs to again recommend a practical measure for tendering pecuniary aid to any State then recognizing the authority of the United States, which should have adopted, or should thereafter adopt, gradual abolishment of slavery; that the object of this is to promote the restoration of constitutional relations between the general government and all the States; and finally, as commander-in-chief, the President declares that from the first ofJanuary next all slaves in States still rejecting the national authority shall then and forever be free.
The Cabinet were amazed—and divided. Only Stanton and Bates were for immediate promulgation. Chase thought it would be better to leave the matter to district commanders, but would support the proclamation as better than inaction. Blair opposed it as likely to be unpopular and lose the Fall election. All this Lincoln had weighed beforehand. But now came a suggestion from Seward, that the immediate time was inopportune, because just after military reverses (McClellan's Peninsula defeat) it would seem like a desperate cry for help,—"our last shriek on the retreat," as Lincoln phrased it. His judgment welcomed this as a wise suggestion, and he put the draft of the proclamation aside and waited for victory. Among the elements which entered into his decisions was a subtle instinct as to when and how far he could command the support of the various elements on whom success depended. His rare capacity as a listener, and his keen sagacity, enabled him to divine that the hour was at hand when a decisive move against slavery would attract more support than it would repel. Seward's suggestion gave the final shape to his purpose.
This happened July 22, 1862; and when the President made his calm reply to Greeley's onslaught a month later, the unsigned proclamation lay in his desk, and he was still waiting for a victory before he issued it.
Instead of victory came defeat. Pope, taking the command after McClellan's failure, was beaten and driven back in the second battle of Bull Run, and matters were at the worst. McClellan was recalled; his genius for organization rehabilitated the demoralized army; the soldiers' confidence in their old chief gave them new courage. When Lee, after a year on the defensive, took the offensive and entered Maryland, he was beaten and turned back at Antietam.
Then Lincoln summoned his cabinet again, September 22, 1862. Before he spoke the momentous word, he freshened himself in his own way,—he said that Artemus Ward had sent him his book, and he would read them a chapter which he thought very funny; and read it he did, with great enjoyment; the secretaries also laughing as in duty bound—all except Stanton! Then the President became grave enough—he told them that he had been thinking a great deal about the proclamation he had read them two months before; that victory seemed to have brought a favorable occasion; that when the rebel army was at Fredericksburg he determined as soon as it was driven out of Maryland to proclaim emancipation. He went on: "I said nothing to any one, but I made the promise to myself, and,"—hesitating a little—"to my Maker." So now, he tells them, he fulfills that promise. One last word,—some other might do better than he; he would surrender his place to a better man if he saw the way; he believes that he has not so much of the confidence of the people as he once had, but on the whole he does not know that any one has more, and at any rate there is no way for him to give place to any other. "I am here; I must do the best I can, and bear the responsibility of taking the course which I feel I ought to take." It is the counterpart of Luther's "Here stand I; I cannot do otherwise; God help me!"
Discussion in the Cabinet: general approval; slight modification only. The proclamation runs on the original lines; compensated abolition recommended; colonization favored; freedom to be declared next New Year's day to all slaves in rebellious States: ultimate compensation recommended for all loyal owners. The proclamation is issued, September 23, 1862, and the nation is inexorably committed to emancipation,—compensated if possible; forcible if necessary; partial at first, but moving inevitably, swiftly, toward universal freedom.
The proclamation with its sequence was the best Lincoln found himself able to do. What he wanted to do,—his own ideal which he could not bring his countrymen to accept,—was shown in his message to Congress when it met in December. The main burden of that message was an earnest plea for action on the line of compensated emancipation. The President proposed an amendment to the Constitution, to this effect: every State abolishing slavery before 1900 to receive compensation from the United States, at some fixed rate, in government bonds; meantime, all slaves freed by chances of war to remain free, with compensation to loyal owners; Congress authorized to spend money for colonization of such as wish to go. For the general plan of compensation Lincoln argues as broadly and calmly as if dealing with a purely economic question, and with the restrained fervor of the patriot and statesman. He dwells on the vast growth which the country promises; on the increasing resources which will make light the burden of ransoming the slaves; the safety of a process of gradual liberation; the humane, economic, Christian superiority of this settlement instead of prolonged war. This is the close: "We, even we here, hold the power and bear the responsibility. In giving freedom to the slave we assure freedom to the free—honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save or meanly lose the last best hope of earth. Other means may succeed; this could not fail. The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just—a way which, if followed, the world will forever applaud and God must forever bless."
But as for practical effect, he might as well have read Dr. Watts's Cradle-hymn to a couple of fighting bulldogs. The proposition of compensated emancipation was thirty years too late. Now the blood of both sections was up, the fighting animal in man let loose,—and they would go on indefinitely killing and being killed, to free the slaves or to hold them, but they would not lay down their arms and peacefully share the light burden of emancipation.
So came in New Year's day, 1863, and the final word was spoken, declaring freedom to all the slaves in Arkansas, Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas and the greater portion of Virginia and Louisiana; enjoining good order on the freedmen; and opening the army and navy to their enlistment. "And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind, and the gracious favor of Almighty God."
How far, it may be asked, was the military necessity on which the proclamation was based actually met by its results? Immediate gain, in a military sense, did not accrue. Not a slave was freed except as the ground was conquered foot by foot. But by opening the door to the enlistment ofnegroes, there was soon a substantial advantage won to the Union armies; for, enlisting by many thousands, they proved themselves docile, trustworthy, and not lacking in courage. In the last two years of the war, they added nearly 200,000 men to the Union forces. They were not considered equal to white soldiers, for they succumbed far more easily to wounds and disease; and though their officers were chary of exposing them in battle, their mortality was greater than that of the whites. In a sense broader than the military, the first results of the emancipation policy were adverse. It was said by many that the proclamation would "unite the South and divide the North." The seceded States could hardly be more united than they were before, but a fresh motive was added to their struggle. In the border States, there was a wide alienation of slave owners and their sympathizers. At the North, a similar effect was obvious at first. From the day of the first proclamation, a war now evidently waged in part for emancipation lost favor with many who cared nothing for the slaves. The elections two months later, in November, 1862, were disastrous. New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois and Indiana, all went against the administration. Its majority in Congress was greatly reduced.
But the emancipation proclamation had struck deep to the hidden springs of power. For the exigencies of a prolonged and desperate struggle, it had evoked the full power of a great sentiment. It had roused the passion of freedom which nerves men to suffer and die. It was an unselfish passion,—it was for the freedom of other men that the North now fought. The loss of the half-hearted and the materialists was outweighed by the enlistment of the enthusiasts for humanity. And the sympathies of the nations, which had wavered while the Union cause was declared to be apart from the slavery question, now swung weightily to theside of the North, since it was avowedly the side of freedom.
By his proclamation, Lincoln had,—to use his language to Greeley,—"freed some and left others alone." He could not go further on the ground of military necessity. But the work, or the promise, could not be left in that imperfect shape. The natural resource was soon found,—universal freedom by a constitutional amendment. This, the Thirteenth Amendment, was brought forward in April, 1864, and received more than the necessary two-thirds vote in the Senate—38 to 6; but in the House (elected in the reaction of 1862) only 95 to 66. The next winter it was brought up again in the same House, but a House enlightened now by the Republican victory in Lincoln's re-election; and strongly urged by him it won the necessary two-thirds vote—119 to 56. The States had still to pass upon it, after the war, but to resist emancipation then was fighting against the stars in their courses; and only Kentucky and Delaware rejected the amendment, while Texas was silent, and Alabama and Mississippi gave a qualified assent. The amendment was declared adopted, December 18, 1865, and on that day slavery in the United States came to an end.
When the issue was finally shaped by the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, both sides set themselves anew for the grim struggle—two years more of hard fighting. Since fighting it must be, they bore themselves all, let us say, as brave men and women,—North and South, white and black. The Confederates came often into dire extremities. Men whose lives had been luxurious fared on the plainest and hardest. Delicate women bore privations uncomplainingly, and toiled and nursed and endured. Food, clothing, medicines were scant. Invasion was borne, with its humiliation and suffering, its train of ravage and desolation. The supporting motive was the common defense, thecomradeship of danger and of courage. The Confederacy and its flag had won the devotion which sacrifice and suffering breed. Little thought was there of slavery, little calculation of the future, as the siege grew closer and the shadows darkened—but an indomitable purpose to hold on and fight on. The chief hero of the Confederacy was Lee. He was the embodiment and symbol of what the Southern people most believed in and cared for. He was not one of those who had brought on the trouble; his whole attitude had been defensive. He and his Army of Northern Virginia were the shield of the South. A skilful commander, strong to strike and wary to ward; his personality merged in the cause; gentle as he was strong,—his army trusted and followed him with a faith that grew with every victory, and did not wane under reverses.
Let the negroes in the war-time be judged in the calm retrospect of history. Their fidelity meant the security of the families on every lonely plantation from Virginia to Texas.
Instead of the horror of servile insurrection, women and children were safe in their homes, supported and protected by their servants. It was their labor that made it possible for the whole white population to take the field. It was their fidelity and kindliness that kept the social structure sound, even though pierced and plowed by the sword. Their conduct was a practical refutation of the belief that they were in general sufferers from inhuman treatment. It was a proof that slavery had included better influences than its opponents had recognized. But it suggested, too, that a people capable of such things under slavery were fully ready for an upward step, and might be trusted with freedom.
They gave another proof of fitness for freedom when, enlisted in the Union armies, they showed the qualities ofgood soldiership. They accepted discipline, and developed under it. They were brave in battle, and in victory they were guiltless of excess. It was a wonderful epoch in the race's history,—the transition from servitude to freedom,—and in that ordeal, first as slaves and then as soldiers, they showed themselves worthy of the deliverance that had come at last.
As soldiers, they found leaders in the flower of the North. Such was Robert Gould Shaw, of the best blood and training of Massachusetts; a son of Harvard; serving from the first as private and then as captain; called by Governor Andrew in 1863 to the command of the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts, the first black regiment mustered into service; taking a place which risked not battle peril only but social obloquy; training his recruits into soldiers; leading them in a hopeless onset against the batteries of Fort Wagner; falling at their head; buried in a ditch with his men; honored in an immortal sculpture which portrays the young, highbred hero in the midst of the humble, faithful men for whom he gave his life.
All the energies of the North were at the highest stretch. In those whose hearts were in the strife, at home or in the field, there was a great glow and elation. The intensity of the time communicated itself to industry and trade. There was an almost feverish activity; with heavy taxation and a fluctuating currency—gold was long at a premium of 250—mills and markets and stores were in full tide of operation. The North matched the South in personal courage and generalship; and greatly outweighed it in numbers, material, and in the productivity engendered in a free, urban, industrial society. The passion of the war touched everything. The churches were strongholds of the national cause. The Sanitary and Christian Commissions kept camp and home in close touch. But under all this stir was the tragedy ofwide-spread desolation and bereavement. The multitudinous slaughter of campaigns like the Wilderness had an awful background of woful families.
Arduous achievement, heroism and anguish, suffering and sacrifice for the cause of the nation and humanity—that was the North's story in those years. It is a sublime story as we look back:
The glory dies not, and the grief is past.
Once more the North was called on to solemnly decide, in the election of 1864. Against Lincoln was nominated by the Democrats, General McClellan, himself a stainless soldier and a patriot, but supported by every element of hostility to emancipation, of sympathy with the Southern cause, and of impatience with the long and burdensome struggle. The platform called for an immediate armistice, to be followed by a convention of the States, or other peaceable measures for the restoration of the Union. McClellan's letter of acceptance ignored the platform, and declared strongly for the persistent maintenance of the Union. The result of the election was a majority of 400,000 votes in 4,000,000 for Lincoln, every State supporting him save New Jersey, Kentucky, and Delaware.
It was the greatness of the prize at stake that justified the cost. Lowell sang the true song of the war, when the end was almost reached, in the poem that records the sore loss to his own family,—his three nephews, "likely lads as well could be,"—slain on the battle-field. In that lofty, mournful verse, there is no drum and trumpet clangor, but the high purpose whose roots are watered by tears:
Come, Peace, not like a mourner bowedFor honor lost an' dear ones wasted,But proud, to meet a people proud,With eyes thet tell o' triumph tasted!Come, with han' grippin' on the hilt,An' step that proves ye Victory's daughter!Longin' for you, our sperits wiltLike shipwrecked men's on raf's for water.Come, while our country feels the liftOf a gret instinct shoutin' "Forwards!"An' knows thet freedom ain't a giftThet tarries long in han's o' cowards!Come, sech ez mothers prayed for, whenThey kissed their cross with lips thet quivered,An' bring fair wages for brave men,A nation saved, a race delivered.
With Grant and Lee locked in the last desperate struggle at Petersburg, with final victory almost in sight, Lincoln spoke his second inaugural,—too grave for exultation, with the note of humility and faith. He is awed before the course of events since he stood there four years ago. He feels the strangeness of both combatants appealing to the same Bible and the same God. For himself and his people he utters the fond hope, the fervent prayer, that "this awful scourge of war may pass away." He accepts the suffering as the penalty of the nation—the whole nation—for the sin of slavery. Humbly, resolutely, he faces with his people the final effort, the sacred duty: "With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, and to all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."
"God uses a good many ugly tools to dig up the stumps and burn off the forests and drain the swamps of a howling wilderness. He has used this old Egyptian plow of slavery to turn over the sod of these fifteen Southern States. Its sin consisted in not dying decently when its work was done. It strove to live and make all the new world like it. Its leaders avowed that their object was to put this belt of the continent under the control of an aristocracy which believes that one-fifth of the race is born booted and spurred and the other four-fifths ready for that fifth to ride. The war was one of freedom and democracy against the institutions that rest on slaves. It will take ten years for the country to shed the scar of such a struggle. The state of society at the South that produced the war will remain and trouble the land until freedom and democracy and the spirit of the nineteenth century takes its place. Only then can we grapple the Union together with hooks of steel, and make it as lasting as the granite that underlies the continent."
These were the brave words of a Southern newspaper, the GalvestonBulletin, in January, 1867, in the mid-throes of reconstruction. So it was that the best minds of the reunited nation foresaw and accepted the path on which we still are slowly mounting; often slipping, stumbling, falling, but still getting upward.
When, on January 31, 1865, the vote of the House completed the ratification by Congress of the Thirteenth Amendment, abolishing slavery, a burst of jubilant cheering swept the whole assembly, and a wave of joy went through the North. Universal freedom seemed close at hand. Two months more, and the Confederate capital fell, on April 3, and still higher rose the triumph. Another week, and the North woke at midnight, to forget sleep and rejoice as over the final consummation,—Lee had surrendered! In those days it seemed to ardent souls that all the sacrifices of the past four years were repaid, and freedom and Union were completely won.
But real freedom of men, true union of a nation, are not achieved by votes of Congress alone, or victories of the sword. The first and worst was over, yet the work was only begun. And these first steps had been by a rough and bitter road, of which the next stage could not be smooth or sweet. The plow of slavery had been followed by the harrow of war,—blossoms and fruitage could not instantly follow.
Lincoln practically made his own the motto ascribed to the Jesuits, "The goal of to-day, the starting-point of to-morrow." Even before to-day's goal was reached, his eye was measuring the next stage. While his patient shoulders were still bowed under the weight of war, his hands were reaching out to the work of reconstruction. In December, 1863, a year after the Emancipation Proclamation, he issued another proclamation. In this he offered full amnesty to all who had taken arms against the government, on condition simply of an oath to support the Constitution, and all laws and proclamations concerning slavery until such were legally overruled. From this amnesty were excepted those who had held diplomatic or high military offices in the Confederacy; those who had left Congress or the army or navy to aid the Confederate cause; and those who hadmaltreated negro prisoners of war. Whether Lincoln in his own mind regarded the official classes as more blameworthy or more dangerous than their followers, we can only surmise; but he doubtless considered that public opinion was not ripe—the war being still flagrant—for a wider offer of pardon.
Further, he invited a return of the seceded States to their former relations, under these conditions: Wherever a number of voters equal to one-tenth of the registered list of 1860, having individually taken the oath of allegiance, shall unite to form a loyal State government, their organization will be recognized by the Federal government. It is desirable to retain as far as practicable the old State boundaries, constitution, and laws. Such a State government may make regulations for the negroes,—if their freedom and education are provided for,—as a "laboring, homeless, and landless class." The admission of representatives and senators must depend on the action of Congress.
Under this plan—regarded by the President as somewhat tentative and provisional, and expressly made dependent on Congress for its consummation by the admission of senators and representatives—within the next twelve months governments were established in three States where the Union arms were partly in the ascendant, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Tennessee. Congress, in July, 1864, passed a reconstruction bill on more radical lines; assuming that the rebel States were by their own act extinguished as States and were to be createdde novo; directing that a provisional governor be forthwith appointed for every such State; requiring the new Legislatures to abolish slavery, exclude high Confederate officials from office, and annul the Confederate debt. The President let this bill fail for want of his signature, and in a proclamation explained his objections: He was not ready to accept the "State suicide" theory; he didnot want to rest the abolition of slavery on the fiat of Congress (he was looking for the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment); and he was unwilling to sacrifice the provisional governments already set up in Louisiana and Arkansas. If in any other State a movement on the congressional plan was initiated, that might do well; but for any hard-and-fast, all-round plan the time was not ripe. The radicals, led by Wade and Henry Winter Davis, chafed bitterly, but Lincoln was not an easy man to fix a quarrel on.
In the following winter, 1864-5, the new Louisiana Legislature, recognized and encouraged by the President, elected two senators who applied at Washington for admission. The judiciary committee, headed by Lyman Trumbull, reported in their favor, and the large majority of the Senate took the same view. But Sumner was strongly opposed to beginning the readmission of the rebel States to congressional power until the rights of the freedmen were fully and finally established. Aided by two other radicals, Wade of Ohio and Zachariah Chandler of Michigan, he "talked against time," and defeated action until the end of the session. Under senatorial usage it was legitimate—but it was exasperating. The little world of Washington, always greatly given to tempests in a teapot, looked for a break between the President and the foremost man of his supporters. What it saw instead was, at the inauguration ball, Mr. Sumner entering in company with the President and with Mrs. Lincoln on his arm! No, Lincoln was not going to quarrel with Sumner—nor with any one, if it lay with him.
Richmond was taken, and through its streets moved the gaunt form of the President, his eyes taking grave, kind note of all. Back to Washington, and the supreme word comes at last. Lee has surrendered, the war is over, thevictory won! A cheering, exultant crowd beset the White House. Lincoln came out on the balcony, said a word of response, and invited them to come back two days later for a fuller word. When they came again, he talked to them and to the country. His whole theme was, What is our next duty? Here is the next step, the first of the "erring sisters" to return is to be welcomed back. Louisiana has adopted a constitution abolishing slavery, establishing public schools for black and white alike, and allowing the Legislature at its discretion to extend suffrage to the blacks. Under this constitution 12,000 voters have been enrolled. The Legislature has met and ratified the Thirteenth Amendment. Can we do better than to accept and restore them to the full privileges of statehood? For them would it not also be wise to extend the suffrage to the most intelligent negroes, and to those who have served in the Union army? As to all the seceded States, the question whether they have ever been out of the Union is "a merely pernicious abstraction." The real question is, how to get them again into proper practical relations with the Union. "Concede that the new government of Louisiana is to what it should be only as the egg is to the fowl, we shall sooner have the fowl by hatching the egg than by smashing it." Let us be flexible as to our methods, inflexible as to vital principles.
These were his last words to his countrymen. Three days later, April 14, as he sat in Ford's theatre,—the strain of responsibility lightened by an hour of kindly amusement—there fell on him, from an assassin's hand, the stroke of unconsciousness and speedy death. For himself, how could he have died better! At the summit of achievement, hailed by the world's acclaim, in the prime of manly strength, unweakened by decay, unshadowed by fear; a life of heroic service crowned by a martyr's death; a place won in thenation's heart of such love and gratitude as has been given to no other,—how better could he have died?
But never was heavier bereavement than his death brought to the American people. It was not sorrow only, but lasting loss, beyond estimation and beyond repair. We know not how in the sum of things all seeming evil may find place, but to human eyes seldom was man taken who could so ill be spared. By nature and capacity he was above all else a peace-maker. Called to be captain in a great war, his largest contribution to its success had been in holding united to the common purpose men most widely varying among themselves. He said, toward the end, that he did not know that he had done better than any one else could, except perhaps at one point,—he did think he had been pretty successful in keeping the North united. And while he did this, while he kept radicals and conservatives, Abolitionists and Unionists, New Englanders and Kentuckians, loyal to the common cause, he also shaped that cause toward the highest aims that his various constituency would admit. He could not bring them to his own highest thought,—they would not be persuaded to try compensated emancipation and peaceful reunion instead of war to the extremity. But he did lift a war for the Union to a war for freedom also, and so direct it that from the strife should emerge not the old, but a nobler nation. And now, the harder half was to be done! Instead of generalship, statesmanship; instead of animal courage, justice and kindness toward former foes; instead of holding the North together, to bring North and South together; that was the gigantic task now to be wrought. Who so fit for it as he? And for want of him, grievous and slow has been the journey.
From the first thrill of passionate grief, men turned to ask anxiously what the new President was to be. He hadbeen selected with that carelessness as to the Vice-Presidency which is a tradition of American politics. Had the convention which renominated Lincoln chosen with care the man best fitted to aid or possibly succeed him in his work—had they for instance chosen John A. Andrew of Massachusetts—history might have been very different. But they took Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, with little scrutiny of his qualities, but desiring to broaden their ticket by including a Southern Unionist. Johnson had been bred as a tailor, with only the meagerest schooling, with no training in the law, going straight from his trade into politics, and by native force rising to the senatorship. He was regarded, and rightly, as a man of honesty, patriotism, courage, and rough energy. He had been conspicuous in denouncing the seceders with the heat of a border-State Unionist, and something of the uncontrolled temper of the "poor white." "Treason must be made odious," had been his cry, "traitors must be punished." In that war-heated time, there were good men who thought they read the purpose of the Almighty in removing the too kindly Lincoln, that the guilty rebels might be more severely scourged.