trade.

122. Character of the Government (1861-1865).

Such trade as did make its way through the blockade was used, like everything else, to support the government. Foreign An order of the confederate Treasury commanded that no vessel be granted a clearance unless at least one half of her cargo were shipped, on government account, from the otherwise unsalable stores which the government had been accumulating. The history of the Confederacy was the history of the absorption of all the resources of the southern country into the hands of the confederate authorities. Everything gave way, even law itself, before the inexorable exigencies of war. The executive personnel of the government was for the most part excellent; but excellence felt bound to approve itself in those days of trial and jeopardy by an energetic and effective prosecuCongress.

Centralization.

tion of the war. The Congress, never meet

ing the heads of the departments face to face, and yet bound to provide for every executive need, was as wax in the hands of the Executive; it hardly carried weight enough to make an effectual resistance. At first some men of marked ability had entered it. But there seemed greater need for leaders in the field of battle than for leaders in counsel; the rewards of distinction were much greater at the front than in the debates at Richmond; and the Congress was left almost stripped of men of influence and initiative. Its weight in counsel was still further lessened by the somewhat fictitious character of its make-up. In both the first and second Congresses of the Confederacy members were present from Kentucky and Missouri. The people of certain portions of those States, in their passionate sympathy with the States which had seceded, had broken with their own state governments in revolutionary fashion, and had

sent representatives to the confederate House and Senate. And the confederate Congress had admitted them to seats, upon the theory that they represented the real popular authorities of their States.

Secret

From the first, when subjects of defence were under consideration, the sessions of the Congress had been secret; as the struggle advanced, this privacy sessions. of action was extended to a large number of other subjects, and secrecy became more and more the rule. This was due, no doubt, to a combination of influences. Military affairs engrossed most of the time and attention of the body, and it was not prudent to discuss military affairs in public. But, more than that, it became increasingly difficult to command the approval of opinion out of doors for what was done by the government. Whatever might have been the necessity for the executive domination which had been so absolutely established, the people grew very restless under it. The writ of habeas corpus had been early suspended in the South, as in the North, and every one suspected of being out of sympathy with the government was subject to arbitrary arrest. A passport system, too, had been put in force which placed exasperating restraints upon the free movement of individuals.

123. Opposition and Despair (1864).

It was not easy to bear, even for the purposes of the war, so complete an absorption alike of all authority and of all the resources of the country into the The minority. hands of the Executive as had taken place, with the assistance of the Congress. Exhaustion and despair began to supervene upon the terrible exertions and sacrifices which the awful struggle had necessitated. There was a certain, not inconsiderable, body of opinion which from the first had not been convinced of the jus

tice and wisdom of the war. It had yielded to the major judgment under the exasperation of coercion by the North and of federal emancipation of the slaves. These measures had set the faces of all alike as steel to endure the contest. But conservative opinion had assented to secession at the first only as a promised means of making new terms with the Union. After giving many soundest proofs of its submission to the general will, it at length grew impatient for peace.

As the war advanced beyond the disasters of 1863, hope declined, and despair showed itself more openly. Desperate The ports were closed, and the South was left situation. to eat its heart out with the desperate fighting. There was no longer any shadow of hope of foreign recognition. For a time the English spinners had not felt the pinch of cotton famine; there was as much cotton in Liverpool at the beginning of the year 1862 as there had been at the beginning of 1861. And when the pinch did come, the spinners declared themselves, nevertheless, against slavery or the recognition of a slave government. Except for the sake of the spinners, England had nothing to gain by a recognition of the southern Confederacy. The bulk of her trade was with the North, and the North was powerful enough to resent interference. And so the demand for peace at length grew clamorous even in the South. Wholesale desertions from the confederate army became common, the men preferring the duty of succoring their starving families to the desperate chances of further fighting.

And yet the end did not come until Sherman had made his terrible march through Georgia and the Carolinas, a march almost unprecedented in modern warfare for its pitiless and detailed rigor and thoroughness of destruction and devastation. It illustrated the same deliberate and business-like purpose of destroy

Devastation.

ing utterly the power of the South that had shown itself in the refusal of the federal government to exchange prisoners with the Confederacy. The southern prisons were left full to overflowing with thousands upon thousands of prisoners because the South was known to be using up her population in the struggle, and it was not thought best to send any fighting men back to her. The southern troops were themselves enduring hunger for lack of supplies; and the prisoners too, of course, suffered severe privations, aggravated by the necessity of placing large numbers under the guard of small forces, by the difficulties of transportation, and by a demoralization in prison administration inevitable under the circumstances. was impossible that they should be well cared for in such overwhelmingly burdensome numbers. But General Grant said that they were dying for the Union as much where they were as if they died in the field.

The end.

It

And so the war ended, with the complete prostration and exhaustion of the South. The South had thrown her life into the scales and lost it; the North had strained her great resources to the utmost; there had been extraordinary devotion and heroism and mastery of will on both sides; and the war was over. Nearly a million men had lost their lives; the federal government had spent almost eight hundred millions of revenue upon the war, and had accumulated, besides, a debt of nearly three thousand million dollars. Cities, too, and States had poured out their revenues for the purposes of the war. Untold amounts of property had been destroyed. But now it was over; the federal army of over a million men was rapidly disbanded, being sent home at the rate of three hundred thousand a month; and only fifty thousand men were retained as a standing force. Now that the whirlwind had passed, there was much to be reconstructed.

V.

REHABILITATION OF THE UNION

(1865-1889).

124. References.

99 66

Bibliographies. - Lalor's Cyclopædia (Johnston's articles on "Reconstruction," "Impeachments," "Crédit Mobilier,' Disputed Elections"); Foster's References to the History of Presidential Administrations, 49-58; Bowker's Reader's Guide, passim; John Fiske's Civil Government, 275; A. B. Hart's Federal Government, § 469.

Historical Maps. No. 5, this volume (Epoch Maps, No. 14); MacCoun's Historical Geography of the United States, series "National Growth," 1853-1859, and series " Development of the Commonwealth," last two maps; Scribner's Statistical Atlas, plate 17; Johnston's School History of the United States, frontispiece.

General Accounts. Johnston's American Politics, chaps. xxi.– xxvi.; Patton's Concise History, pp. 963-990 (through Grant's administrations); Ridpath's History of the United States, chaps. Ixvii.lxx. (to 1881); Henry Wilson's Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America, iii. 434-740 (1865-1869). Special Histories.

Edward Stanwood's Presidential Elections, chaps. xxii.-end; Edward McPherson's History of Reconstruction; Walter Allen's Governor Chamberlain's Administration in South Carolina; R. H. Wilmer's Recent Past, from a Southern Standpoint; F. W. Seward's Seward at Washington, ii., xli.-lxxiii.; Taylor's Destruction and Reconstruction; E. B. Callender's Thaddeus Stevens ; G. S. Merriam's Bowles, ii.; Pleasant Stovall's Toombs, pp. 286369; O. A. Brownson's American Republic (chaps. xiii.-xiv.); J. C. Hurd's Theory of Our National Existence; J. J. Knox's United States Notes; F. W. Taussig's Tariff History, pp. 171-256; Albert Bolles's Financial History, iii., book ii.; J. C. Schucker's Chase; D. B. Warden's Chase; Moorfield Story's Charles Sumner (in preparation); E. L. Pierce's Charles Sumner.