PERMANENT RESULTS OF THE WAR 783 birth. It will be noticed that all the generals who achieved the highest success were graduates of West Point. A few volunteers, however, such as John A. Logan, N. P. Banks, Lew Wallace, Butler, Phil Kearney, Nelson A. Miles, Sigel, and Carl Schurz, made most creditable records. It is notable that no well-known commander of the war, except General Hunter, had reached the age of fifty years at the close of the war, and many of them were under forty.1 In addition to the causes of northern success given on a preceding page, another must be mentioned, the great superiority of Lincoln over Jefferson Davis. These two opposing chieftains were born in the same state, Kentucky, but a year apart. Both left their native state in early life, the one drifting northward absorbed the free-soil sentiment of his adopted section, until it became the guiding star of his life; the other, migrating to the cotton belt, espoused the cause of the slaveholder and became the leader of the far-famed aristocracy of the South. It is curious to speculate what might have been the history of our country had the direction of the migration of these two been reversed. The most remarkable fact concerning the Civil War is that it wrought no permanent change in our civic institutions (aside from slavery), that it left no trace upon the people as regards local government, personal liberty, or freedom of speech, and that it did not change our character as a peace-loving people. For four years the President wielded almost imperial power, but the functions of his office were not permanently affected. No President since Lincoln has enjoyed greater power than those who preceded him. The thousands of arbitrary arrests and the suppression of many newspapers have left not a trace on our personal liberty and freedom of the press. At the close of the war the armies melted away like magic, the soldiers returned to the pursuits of peace, and the relative importance of the civil and military authorities was left absolutely the same as before the war. These facts we look upon with pardonable pride, as they prove our great steadiness and conservatism as a people. What then were the results of the great war aside from the extinction of slavery? It readjusted the relations between the nation and the individual states, and established the nation on a permanent basis by eliminating from American politics the idea of state sovereignty and of secession; it transferred the primary alle. 1 See Blaine, Vol. II, p. 29. giance of the citizen from the state to the nation; and, by removing slavery, the war opened the way for a feeling of common brotherhood between the two great sections of the country, and led to the development of the vast resources of the South. The war was a surgical operation, severe indeed, but necessary to restore the normal health of the nation, and with all its cost it brought untold blessings to the United States. Never before the war was the development of the country so marvelous as it has been since; never was there a feeling of oneness in all sections of our broad land as at present, and never in history was the theory of self-government so firmly established as a practical and enduring thing as to-day in the United States. NOTES Capture of Jefferson Davis. - The Confederate President, on escaping from Richmond, April 2, went with his cabinet to Danville, where they obtained rooms, set up the departments of the government, and issued an address to "fire the southern heart." Learning of Lee's surrender and of the approach of Federal cavalry, he hastened to move to Greensboro, North Carolina. Here he had an interview with Johnston and Beauregard, who declared that the cause was hopeless, and advised a surrender; but Davis refused to give up. From here the party moved in all sorts of vehicles to Charlotte, North Carolina, thence to Abbeville, South Carolina, and thence to Washington, Georgia. On leaving Charlotte the company consisted of some two thousand persons, mostly cavalry from Johnston's army, but it rapidly melted away until few were left except the fallen President, his family, one member of his cabinet, and a few servants. The aim was to move westward and join with the army of Kirby Smith west of the Mississippi; but this was now given up, and it was decided that Davis leave his family and proceed on horseback to the coast of Florida and thence embark for Texas. The party encamped on the night of May 9 in a pine forest near Irwinville, in southern Georgia, and here at daybreak next morning they were captured by a band of Federal cavalry under Colonel Pritchard of Michigan. Davis was defiant and sullen, though he was well treated by his captors. He was carried northward, and imprisoned in Fortress, Monroe. Here he remained for two years, when he was indicted for treason and released on bail, his bondsmen being Horace Greeley, Gerrit Smith, and Cornelius Vanderbilt. On Christmas day, 1868, President Johnson proclaimed a pardon for all hitherto unpardoned participants in the rebellion. This included Davis, who thus became a free man. He returned to his former home in Mississippi, where he lived for a quarter of a century in retirement, writing, meantime, his "Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government" in two large volumes. Fate of Lincoln's Assassins. John Wilkes Booth was found to be at the head of a few conspirators, whose headquarters had been at Washington for 1 This was accomplished by the Civil War and was put into permanent form by the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. several months. Their intention was to abduct President Lincoln and carry him to Richmond; but as no opportunity offered, and as the surrender of Lee maddened their brains, already insanely devoted to the southern cause, they resolved to kill the President, the Vice President, Mr. Seward, and General Grant. But Grant went to Baltimore on the afternoon of the 14th, and thus escaped. After the assassination, Booth escaped across the navy-yard bridge and, joined by an accomplice named Herold, rode till toward morning, and came to the house of Dr. Mudd, a sympathizer, who set the bone of Booth's broken leg. They were aided by sympathizers along the way, remaining a whole week with a Mr. Jones near Port Tobacco. At length they were rowed across the Potomac into Virginia; but the government detectives were scouring the country, and escape was impossible. Booth was greatly disappointed. He expected the whole South to rise up and call him a hero. On the night of the 25th of April, Booth and his companion were found sleeping in the barn of a Mr. Garrett near Port Royal, by a searching party under Lieutenant Doherty. Herold came out and surrendered, but Booth refused to do so, and the barn was fired. While it was burning, Booth was shot in the neck by Boston Corbett, and died three hours later. Payne, who had attempted the life of Secretary Seward, left his hat when he escaped. This led to his capture. Hiding a few days near Washington, he stole into the city, hatless, in search of food, and was arrested. He and Herold, Mrs. Surrat, at whose house the conspiracy was hatched, and an accomplice named Atzerodt, were hanged, while Dr. Mudd and a few others were imprisoned for life, but were afterward released. The common belief at first, that Jefferson Davis was connected with the conspiracy to assassinate Lincoln, was proved to be wholly without foundation. The Finances. The government met its war expenses by laying an income tax of 3 per cent on all incomes over $800, by tariff duties, by internal revenue, and by issuing interest-bearing bonds to the extent of $1,199,000,000, and noninterest-bearing notes called "greenbacks" to the extent of $150,000,000, as noted in the text. By the close of the year 1861, all banks had suspended specie payments, and the government soon did the same. All coin soon disappeared from circulation, and gold rose rapidly in value, reaching 285, its highest point, in July, 1864. A soldier's pay was $13 per month with food and clothes. It cost the government about $1000 a year to keep each soldier in the field. The Confederate notes depreciated until, in the spring of 1865, it required $100 to purchase one dollar in gold, and $1000 to purchase a barrel of flour, while a spool of thread cost $20, and a pound of sugar $75. This money, of course, had no purchasing power on the collapse of the Confederate government. CHAPTER XXXI ANDREW JOHNSON AND RECONSTRUCTION THE surrender of the Confederate armies marked the end of bloodshed, but did not bring rest and peace to the American people. As at the close of the Revolution the great problem of self-government remained to be solved, so with the close of the Civil War came the serious task of restoring the seceded states to their normal relations in the Union. THE NEW PROBLEM Long before the war had closed, the subject of how to get the seceding states back into the Union began to occupy the attention of the President and Congress. The problem was a new one and had no precedent in history, nor was it provided for in the Constitution. Much eloquence was wasted on the subject of the relations the rebellious states bore to the Union during the war. Some took the ground that the seceding states had lost all standing as members of the Union, others, including President Lincoln, contending that the relations of the seceded states to the government were only suspended and could not be severed.1 But the practical question was, how to reinstate the straying sisters in the family. On this subject the Republican party came to be seriously divided. One faction took the position that when the war was over and the Southern states had accepted the great twofold result, the restoration of the Union and the removal of slavery, The President they should be readily forgiven and should be readand Congress mitted with as little further humiliation as possible. at variance. To this class belonged President Lincoln, Secretary Seward, Generals Grant and Sherman, and many of the leading men of the North who had done all in their power to put down the rebellion. The opposing faction was far more radical. It comprised the 1 This position was sustained in a Supreme Court decision (Texas vs. White, 1868), in which our country is pronounced an indestructible Union composed of indestructible states." RADICALS IN CONGRESS 787 majority of the members of Congress, led by Charles Sumner in the Senate and by Thaddeus Stevens in the House. These men and their followers were ready to humiliate the people of the South still further after defeating them in battle, and to grant them forgiveness only when they abjectedly begged it and acknowledged themselves utterly in the wrong. This was asking too much. If it be granted that the southern people were sincere in warring against the Union, how could they be expected, on their defeat, instantly to denounce the cause in which their fathers and brethren had died as a false one? Time alone can bring such changes; matters of the heart and conscience are wholly beyond the powers of legislative coercion. The South has come to see that a division of the Union would have been a disaster, and that slavery was an evil; but such a condition could not have been expected in 1865. Early in the war Stevens took the ground that the seceded states had forfeited all rights under the Constitution, and should be dealt with as conquered territory. As the war drew to a close, he and his followers became more fierce in their attitude toward the South; they displayed an utter want of magnanimity, and they failed also to realize that their course was bad public policy. Many of the leading southerners would have been of great service, had they been given an opportunity, in leading their countrymen to accept in good faith the results of the war and to become good citizens. "I perceived that we had the unbounded respect," said General Sherman, "of our armed enemies. . . . I am sure that at the close of the Civil War the Confederate army embraced the best governed, the best disposed, the most reliable men of the South; and I would have used them in reconstruction instead of driving them into a hopeless opposition." This was also the view of President Lincoln; but not so with the leaders in Congress, and the result was a serious breach between the legislative and executive branches of the government. Mr. Lincoln believed that as the pardoning power in the case of an individual rested with the Executive, the same should extend to the states. In December, 1863, he set forth a plan of reconstruction by which he offered pardon to those who had been in rebellion, with certain exceptions, on condition that they take an oath to support and defend the Constitution and the Union, and to abide by the laws and proclamations relating to slavery. He also declared that a state might resume its place in the Union when one tenth of the number of the voters of 1860 had taken Lincoln's |