the common Constitution of the country. What may be designated gen-
erally as the Conservative party in the North, had long held the doctrine
that, as the Union was inviolable and permanent, secession was illegal, rev-
olutionary, null, and void ; that it had no legal validity or effect ; that it
was the act of seditious individuals, and did not affect the status of the
States purporting to secede. This branch of their doctrine was accepted
by a large number of the Republican party ; among them Mr. Seward,
the Secretary of State. President Lincoln had acted upon this theory
when it became necessary to reorganize States overrun by Federal armies.
It was held by the Conservative party, against all rational dispute, that
the business of the Federal Government, with respect to the insurgent
States, was simply to quell resistance, and to execute everywhere the
Constitution and laws. Its contest was not with the States, but with the
illegal powers within the States engaged in resisting its authority. When
the resistance of these persons ceased, the work was done ; and the States
were co instante^ ipso facto, as much within the Union as ever ; no act of
re-admission being necessary. It only remained for the judiciary to pro-
ceed by indictment and legal trial, under the forms of law, against the in*
dividuals who had resisted the authority of the Union to test the fact of
treason, and to vindicate the reputation of the Government. And this
was the whole extent to which the policy of penalities could be insisted
upon.
On this opinion there was soon to be a sharp and desperate aiTay of
parties at Washington. When, by the tragical death of President Lin-
coln, in a public theatre, at the hands of one of the most indefensible but
courageous assassins that history has ever produced, the Executive office
passed to the Yice-President, Andrew Johnson, the Southern people
io-norantly deplored the change as one to their disadvantage, and the
world indulged but small expectations from the coming man. The new
President was sprung from a low order of life, and was what Southern
gentlemen called a " scrub." In qualities of mind it was generally con-
sidered that he had the shallowness and fluency of the demagogue ; but in
this there was a mistake. At any rate, it must.be confessed, Mr. Johnson
had no literature and but little education of any sort ; in his agrarian
POLITICS AND CHARACTER OF PRESIDENT JOHNSON. 745
speeches in the Senate, he quoted " the Lays of Ancient Rome " as " trans-
lated by Macaulaj ; " and he was constantly making those mistakes in
historical and literary allusions which never fail to characterize and betray
Belf-educated men. Before his elevation to the Presidency, Mr. Johnson
was considered a demagogue, who seldom ventured out of common-places,
or attempted anything above the coarse sense of the multitude, successful,
industrious, a clod-head, a " man of the people," that peculiar product of
American politics. But there are familiar instances in history where char-
acters apparently the most common-place and trifling, have been suddenly
awakened and elevated as great responsibilities have been thrust upon
them, and have risen to the demands of the new occasion. An example of
such change was afibrded by plain Andrew Johnson, when he stepped to
the dignity of President of a restored Union, with all its great historical
trasts for him to administer in sight of the world. From that hour the
man changed. The eminence did not confound him ; he saw before him
a part in American history second only to that of George Washington ;
he left behind him the ambitions and resentments of mere party ; he rose
as the man who has been secretly, almost unconsciously, great — a common-
place among his neighbour, the familiar fellow of the company — suddenly,
completely to the full height and dignity of the new destiny that called
him. The man who had been twitted as a tailor and condemned as a
demagogue, proved a statesman, measuring his actions for the future, in-
sensible to clamour and patient for results.
President Johnson belonged to an intermediate school of politics, stand-
ing between the doctrines of Mr. Calhoun and those of Alexander Hamil-
ton. He was never an extreme Stato-Rights man ; he had never recog-
nized the right of nullification, or that of secession ; but he was always
disposed to recognize, in a liberal degree, the rights of the States, and to
combat the theory that the Federal Government absorbed powei-s and
privileges, which, from the foundation of the republic, had been conceded
to the States.
It was fortunate that the Chief Magistrate of the country, who was to
administer its affairs and determine its course on the close of the war, occu-
pied this medium ground in politics — the one that suggested the practica-
bility of compromise, and assured a conservative disposition in a time of
violent and critical dispute. It was natural that on the close of hostilities
the tide of public opinion should have set strongly in favour of Consolida-
tion ; and that men should apply the precedent of powers used in the war,
to the condition of peace. The great question which the war had left, waa
as to the form and spirit of the Government that ensued upon it — in short,
the determination of the question whether tlie experience of the past four
years had been a Constitutional Revolution, or the mere decision of certain
special and limited questions. This was the great historical issue. The
746 THE LOST CAUSE.
political controversies which figured in the newspapers were only its inci-
dents ; and the questions which agitated Congress all sounded in the great
dispute, whether the war had merely accomplished its express and particu
lar objects, or given the American people a change of i)olitj, and dated
a new era in their Constitutional history.
At the time these pages are committed to the press, a series of meas-
ures has already been accomplished or introduced by the Radical party in
the Congress at Washington that would accomplish a revolution in the
American system of government, the most thorough and violent of modern
times. Propositions have been made so to amend the Constitution as to
deprive the States of the power to define the qualifications of electors ;
propositions to regulate representation by tlie number of voters, and not of
population ; propositions to declare what obligations assumed by the
States shall be binding on them, and what shall be the purposes of their
taxation. What is known as the Civil Rights Bill (passed over the Presi-
dent's veto) has not only established negro equality, but has practically
abolished, on one subject of jurisdiction at least, State laws and State
courts. In short, the extreme Black Republican party at Washington has
sought to disfranchise the whole Southern people, to force negro suffrage
upon the South, to prevent the South from being represented in Congress
eo as to perpetuate the power of the Radicals, and afford them the means
of governing the Southern States as conquered and subjugated territories.
The practical fault of all Despotism is that it takes too little into ac-
count the sentimentalism which opposes it, and attempts to deal with men
as inanimate objects, to which the application of a certain amount of force
for a desired end is decisive. It never considers feelings and prejudices.
It does not understand that in the science of government there are ele-
ments to conciliate as well as forces to compel. The Northern radicals
look to the dragoon with his sword, the marshal with his process of confis-
cation, and the negro thrust into a false position as the pacificators of the
country and the appropriate sentinels of the South. They never reflect on
the results of such measures upon the feelings of the Southern people ;
they do not estimate the loss in that estrangement which makes unprofit-
able compam'ons ; they do not imagine the resentments they will kindle ;
they do not calculate the effect of a constant irritation that at last wears
into the hearts of a people, and makes them ready for all desperate enter
prises.
If on this subject the Northern people are best addressed in the lan-
guage of their interests, they may be reminded that the policy of the Radi-
cals is to detain and embarrass the South, not only in the restoration of
her political rights, but in her return to that material prosperity, in which
the North has a partnership interest, and the Government itself its most
important financial stake. Tlie Southern people must be relieved from the
THE " EESIDXIUM " OF STATE EIGHTS. 747
apprehension of confiscation, and other kindred measures of oppression, be-
fore they can be expected to go to work and improve their condition.
They must be disabused of the idea that the new system of labour is to be
demoralized by political theories, before giving it their confidence, and en-
larging the experiment of it. The troubled sea of politics nmst be com-
posed before the industry of the South can return to its wonted channels,
and reach at last some point of approximation to former prosperity.
The financiers at Washington consider it of the utmost importance that
the South should be able to bear its part of the burden of the national
debt, and by its products for exchange contribute to the reduction of this
debt to a specie basis. The whole edifice of Northern prosperity rests
on the unstable foundation of pap6r credit. Every man in the North
is intelligibly interested in the earliest development of the material pros-
perity of the South. It is not by political agitation that this interest is to
be promoted ; not under the hand of the Fanaticism that sows the wind
that there are to grow up the fruits of industry. When the Southern
people obtain political reassurance, and are able to lift the shield of the
Constitution over their heads, they will be prepared for the fruitful works
of peace ; they will be ready then for the large and steady enterprises of
industry. All history shows and all reason argues that where a people are
threatened with political changes, and live in uncertainty of the future,
capital will be timid, enterprise will be content with make-shifts, and
labour itself, give but an unsteady hand to the common implements of
industry.
He must be blind who does not perceive in the indications of Northern
opinion and in the series of legislative measures consequent upon the war
the sweeping and alarming tendency to Consolidation. It is not only the
territorial unity of the States that is endangered by the fashionable dogma
of the day, but the very cause of republican government itself. A war
of opinions has ensued upon that of arms, far more dangerous to the
American system of liberties than all the ordinances of Secession and all
the armed hosts of the Confederates.
The State Rights put in question by the propositions we have referred
to in Congress, are not those involved in the issue of Secession, and, there-
fore, decided against the South by the arbitration of the war. The Radi-
cal programme, which we have noted above, points the illustration that
the war did not sacrifice the whole body of State Rights, and that there
was an important Tesiduum of them outside of the issue of Secession, which
the people of the South were still entitled to assert, and to erect as new
standards of party. It is precisely those rights of the States which a revo-
Itionary party in Congress would deny, namely : to have their Constitu-
tional rej)resentation, to decide their own obligations of debt, to have their
OAvn codes of crimes and penalties, and to deal with their own domestic
748 THE LOST CAUSE.
concerns, that the Southern States claim have survived the war and are
not subjects of surrender.
And it is just here that the people of the South challenge that medium
doctrine of State Eights professed by President Johnson to make the neces-
sary explanation, and to distribute the results of the war between North
and South. They do not look at the propositions in Congress as involving
a mere partisan dispute ; they are not disposed to encounter them in a nay-
row circle of disputation, and make a particular question of what is one
grand issue. They regard them in the broad and serious sense of a revolu-
tion against the Constitution ; a rebellion against all the written and tra-
ditionary authority of American statesmanship ; a war quite as distinct as
that of bayonets and more comprehensive in its results than the armed
contest that has just closed.
The following remarks of the President of the United States, do not
magnify the occasion. They are historical :
" The present is regarded as a most critical juncture in the affairs of the nation,
scarcely less so than when an armed and organized force sought to overthrow the Gov-
ernment, To attack and attempt the disruption of the Government by armed combina-
tion and military force, is no more dangerous to the life of the nation than an attempt
to revolutionize and undermine it by a disregard and destruction of the safeguards
thrown around the liberties of the people in the Constitution, My stand has been taken,
my course is marked ; I shall stand by and defend the Constitution against all who may
attack it, from whatever quarter the attack may come. I shall take no step backward
in this matter."
An intelligent foreigner, making his observations at Washington at
this time, would be puzzled to determine whether the Americans had a
Government, or not. There are the names : The Executive, the Congress,
the Judiciary ; but what is the executive question, what the congressional
question, what the judicial queston, it appears impossible to decide. It is
a remarkable fact that at Washington to-day, there is not a single well-de-
fined department of political power ! There are the paraphernalia and
decorations of a government ; an elaborate anarchy ; but the well-defined
distribution of power and the order necessary to administer pubhc affairs
appear to have been wholly lost, the charter of the government almost
obliterated, and the Constitution overlaid with amendments, which, car-
ried into eflPect, would hardly leave a vestige of the old instrument or a
feature in which could be recognized the work of our forefathers, and the
ancient creation of 1789. The controversy thus engendered is something
more than a mere question of parties where there are points of coincidence
between the contestants sufficient to confine opposition, and where both
argue from the common premises of a written constitution. It is some-
thing more than the temporary rack and excitement of those partisan
PARTIES IN THE SOUTH. 74:9
difficulties in which the American people have had so much experience
of exaggerated dangers and foolisli alarms that they are likely to give them
attention no longer, but as ephemeral sensations. It is something vastly
more than tnc usual vapours of the political cauldron. When a Congress,
representing not much more than a moiety of the American States, and,
therefore, in the condition of an unconstitutional authority and factious
parly, undertakes to absorb the power of the government ; to determine
Executive questions by its close " Committee of Reconstruction ; " to put
down the judiciary of the Southern States and by a Freedmen's Bureau,
and other devices, erect an imperlum in im,perio in one part of the Union,
it is ol)vious that the controversy is no narrow one of party, that it involves
the traditions and spirit of the government, and goes to the ultimate con-
test of constitutional liberty in America. Regarding these issues, the ques-
tion comes fearfully to the mind : Has the past war merely laid the foun-
dation of another f Tiie pregnant lesson of human experience is that few
nations have had their first civil war without having their second ; and
that the only guaranty against the repetition is to be found in the policy
of wise and liberal concessions gracefully made by the successful party.
And such reconciliations have been rarest in the republican form of gov-
ennnent ; for, while generosity often resides in the breast of individual
rulers, the history of mankind unhappily shows that it is a rare quality of
political parties, where men act in feverish masses and under the domin-
ion of peculiar passions.
To the division of parties in the North — Radicals and Conservatives —
there has grown up to some extent a correspondent difference of opinions
among the Southern peo})le as to the consequences of the war. But only
to a certain extent ; for the party in the South that, corresponding to the
theory of the Northern Radicals, account themselves entirely at the mercy
of a conquering power and taking everything ex gratia^ is only the detest-
able faction of time-servers and the servile coterie that- attends all great
changes in history, and courts the new authority whatever it may be.
There is a better judgment already read by the Southern people of
what the war has decided as against themselves. The last memorable
remark of Ex-President Davis, when a fugitive, and before the doors of a
prison closed upon him, was: "The princii)le for which we contended is
bound to reassert itself, though it may be at another time and in another
form." It was a wise and noble utterance, to be placed to the credit of
an unfortunate ruler. And so, too, the man, marked above all others as
the orator of the South — Henry A. Wise, of Virginia, standing before his
countrymen, with his gray hairs and luminous eyes, has recently proclaimed
•with trumpet-voice that all is not lost, that a great struggle of constitu-
tional liberty yet rcmains, and that there are still missions of duty and
glory for the South.
47
750 THE LOST CAUSE.
The people of the South have surrendered in the war what the war has
conquered ; but they cannot be expected to give up what was not involved
i]i the war, and voluntarily abandon their political schools for the dogma
of Consolidation. That dogma, the result has not properly imposed upon
them ; it has not " conquered ideas." The issues of the war were practi-
cal : the restoration of the Union and the abolition of slavery ; and only so
far as political formulas were necessarily involved in these have they been
afiected by the conclusion. The doctrine of secession Avas extinguished ;
and yet there is something left more than the shadow of State Rights, if we
may believe President Johnson, who has recently and officially used these
terms, and. affirmed in them at least some substantial significance. 'Exaii if
the States are to be firmly held in tlie Union ; even if the authority of the
Union is to be held supreme in that respect, it does not follow that it is to
be supreme in all other respects ; it does not follow that it is to legislate
for the States ; it does not follow that it is " a national Government over
the States and people alike." It is for the South to preserve every rem-
nant of her rights, and even, though parting with the doctrine of secession,
to beware of the extremity of surrendering State Eights in gross, and con-
senting to a " National Government," with an unlimited power of legisla-
tion that will consider the States as divided only by imaginary lines of
geography, and see in its subjects only " the one people of all the States."
But it is urged that the South should come to this understanding, so as
to consolidate the peace of the country, and provide against a " war of
ideas." Now a " war of ideas " is what the South wants and insists upon
perpetrating. It may be a formidable phrase — "the war of ideas" — but
after all, it is a harmless figure of rhetoric, and means only that we shall
have parties in the country. We would not live in a country unless there
were parties in it ; for where there is no such combat, there is no liberty,
no animation, no topics, no interest of the twenty-four hours, no theatres
of intellectual activity, no objects of ambition. We do not desire the va-
cant unanimity of despotism. All that is left the South is "the war of
ideas." She has thi-own down the sword to take up the weapons of argu-
ment, not indeed under any banner of fanaticism, or to enforce a dogma,
but simply to make the honourable conquest of reason and justice. In
such a war there are noble victories to be won, memorable services to be
performed, and grand results to be achieved. The Southern people stand
hy their principles. There is no occasion for dogmatic assertion, or fanati-
cal declamation, or inflammatory discourse as long as they have a text on
which they can make a sober exposition of their rights, and claim the ver-
dict of the intelligent.
Outside the domain of party politics, the war has left another consider-
ation for the people of the South. It is a remarkable fact that States re-
duced by war are apt to experience the extinction of their literature, the
DUTY AND HOPE OF THE SOUTH. 751
decay ol mind, and the loss of their distinctive forms of thought. Nor is
Buch a condition inconsistent with a gross material prosperity that often
grows upon the bloody crust of war. "When Greece fell under the Eoman
yoke, she experienced a prosperity she had never known before. It was
an era rank with wealth and material improvement. But her literature
became extinct or emasculated ; the distinctive forms of her art disap-
peared ; and her mind, once the peerless light of the world, waned into an
obscurity from which it never emerged.
It is to be feared that in the present condition of the Southern States,
losses will be experienced greater than the immediate inflictions of fire and
sword. Tlie danger is that they will lose their literature, their former
habits of thought, their intellectual self-asssertion, while they are too intent
upon recovering the mere material prosperity, ravaged and impaired by
the war. Tliere are certain coarse advisers who tell the Southern people
that the great ends of their lives now are to repair their stock of national
wealth ; to bring in ITorthern capital and labour ; to build mills and fac-
tories and hotels and gilded caravansaries ; and to make themselves rivals
in the clattering and garish enterprise of the North. This advice has its
proper place. But there are higher objects than the Yankee magna hona
of money and display, and loftier aspirations than the civilization of mate-
rial things. In the life of nations, as in that of the individual, there is some-
thing better than pelf, and the coarse prosperity of dollars and cents. The
lacerated, but proud and ambitious heart of the South will scarcely respond
to the mean aspiration of the recusant Governor of South Carolina — Mr,
Orr : " I am tired of South Carolina as she was. I court for her the ma-
terial prosperity of New England. I would have her acres teem with life
and vigour and intelligence, as do those of Massachusetts."
There are time-servers in every cause ; there are men who fill their
bellies wnth husks, and turn on their faces and die ; but there are others
who, in the midst of public calamities, and in their own scanty personal
fortune, leave behind them the memoiy of noble deeds, and a deathless
heritage of glory.
Defeat has not made " all our sacred things profane." The war has
left the South its own memories, its own heroes, its own tears, its own
dead. Under these traditions, sons will grow to manhood, and lessons
sink deep that are learned from the lips of widowed mothers.
It would be immeasurably the worst consequence of defeat in this war
that the South should lose its moral and intellectual distinctiveness as a
people, and cease to assert its well-known superiourity in civilization, in
political scholarship, and in all the standards of individual character over
the people of the North. That superiourity has been recognized by every
foreign observer, and by the intelligent everywhere ; for it is the South
that in the past produced four-fifths of the political literature of America,
752 THE LOST CAUSE.
and presented in its public men that list of American names best known
in the Christian world. That superiourity the war has not conquered or
lowered ; and the South will do right to claim and to cherish it.
The war has not swallowed up everything. There are great interests
which stand out of the pale of the contest, which it is for the South still to
cultivate and maintain. She must submit fairly and truthfully to what
the war has properly decided. ^' But the war properly decided only what
was put in issue : the restoration of the Union and the excision of slavery ;i^
and to these two conditions the South submits. Bnt^the war did not de-