General Joseph E Johnston to Senator Louis T. Wigfall, March 14, 1865

raleigh, March 14th, 1865.

My dear Wigfall:

I have just received yours of February 27th. I have been for two weeks looking for an opportunity other than by mail, to send you a letter. But all are reported to me too late.

What you write me of Lee gratifies me beyond measure. In youth and early manhood I loved and admired him more than any man in the world. Since then we have had little intercourse and have become formal in our personal intercourse. A good deal, I think, from change of taste and habits, in one or the other. When we are together former feelings always return. I have long thought that he had forgotten our early friendship: to be convinced that I was mistaken in so thinking would give me inexpressible pleasure. Be assured, however, that Knight of old never fought under his King more loyally than I'll serve under Gen. Lee.¹ I have suggested to him what seems to be the only course for us, should Sherman endeavor to join Grant. . . .

As ever yours,

j. e. johnston.

_______________

¹ In another letter he speaks of serving under Gen. Lee “as loyally as my father served under his in the first revolution.”

SOURCE: Louise Wigfall Wright, A Southern Girl in ’61, p. 240-1

Edward Everett Hale to George Abbott, approximately April 1, 1861

Your letter, shows that you had there no idea of the way the whole North is backing up this movement. I have no idea that in 1775 there was such unanimity. There was not, of course, a thousandth part of the power.

SOURCE: Edward Everett Hale Jr., The Life and Letters of Edward Everett Hale, Volume 1, p. 327

Diary of William Howard Russell: April 23, 1861

A lovely morning grew into a hot day. After breakfast, I sat in the shade watching the vagaries of some little tortoises, or terrapins, in a vessel of water close at hand, or trying to follow the bee-like flight of the hummingbirds. Ah me! one wee brownie, with a purple head and red facings, managed to dash into a small grape or flower conservatory close at hand, and, innocent of the ways of the glassy wall, he or she — I am much puzzled as to the genders of humming-birds, and Mr. Gould, with his wonderful mastery of Greek prefixes and Latin terminations, has not aided me much — dashed up and down from pane to pane, seeking to perforate each with its bill, and carrying death and destruction among the big spiders and their cobweb-castles which for the time barred the way.

The humming-bird had as the Yankees say, a bad time of it, for its efforts to escape were incessant, and our host said tenderly, through his mustaches, “Pooty little thing, don't frighten it!” as if he was quite sure of getting off to Saxony by the next steamer. Encumbered by cobwebs and exhausted, now and then our little friend toppled down among the green shrubs, and lay panting like a living nugget of ore. Again he, she, or it took wing and resumed that mad career; but at last on some happy turn the bright head saw an opening through the door, and out wings, body, and legs dashed, and sought shelter in a creeper, where the little flutterer lay, all but dead, so inanimate, indeed, that I could have taken the lovely thing and put it in the hollow of my hand. What would poets of Greece and Rome have said of the hummingbird? What would Hafiz, or Waller, or Spenser have sung, had they but seen that offspring of the sun and flowers?

Later in the day, when the sun was a little less fierce, we walked out from the belt of trees round the house on the plantation itself. At this time of year there is nothing to recommend to the eye the great breadth of flat fields, surrounded by small canals, which look like the bottoms of dried-up ponds, for the green rice has barely succeeded in forcing its way above the level of the rich dark earth. The river bounds the estate, and when it rises after the rains, its waters, loaded with loam and fertilizing mud, are let in upon the lands through the small canals, which are provided with sluices and banks and floodgates to control and regulate the supply.

The negroes had but little to occupy them now. The children of both sexes, scantily clad, were fishing in the canals and stagnant waters, pulling out horrible-looking little catfish. They were so shy that they generally fled at our approach. The men and women were apathetic, neither seeking nor shunning us, and I found that their master knew nothing about them. It is only the servants engaged in household duties who are at all on familiar terms with their masters.

The bailiff or steward was not to be seen. One big slouching negro, who seemed to be a gangsman or something of the kind, followed us in our walk, and answered any questions we put to him very readily. It was a picture to see his face when one of our party, on returning to the house, gave him a larger sum of money than he had probably ever possessed before in a lump. “What will he do with it?” Buy sweet things, — sugar, tobacco, a penknife, and such things. “They have few luxuries, and all their wants are provided for.” Took a cursory glance at the negro quarters, which are not very enticing or cleanly. They are surrounded by high palings, and the entourage is alive with their poultry.

Very much I doubt whether Mr. Mitchell is satisfied the Southerners are right in their present course, but he and Mr. Petigru are lawyers, and do not take a popular view of the question. After dinner the conversation again turned on the resources and power of the South, and on the determination of the people never to go back into the Union. Then cropped out again the expression of regret for the rebellion of 1776, and the desire that if it came to the worst, England would receive back her erring children, or give them a prince under whom they could secure a monarchical form of government. There is no doubt about the earnestness with which these things are said.

As the “Nina” starts down the river on her return voyage from Georgetown to-night, and Charleston harbor may be blockaded at any time, thus compelling us to make a long detour by land, I resolve to leave by her, in spite of many invitations and pressure from neighboring planters. At midnight our carriage came round, and we started in a lovely moonlight to Georgetown, crossing the ferry after some delay, in consequence of the profound sleep of the boatmen in their cabins. One of them said to me, “Mus’n’t go too near de edge ob de boat, massa.” “Why not?” “Becas if massa fall ober, he not come up agin likely, — a bad ribber for drowned, massa.” He informed me it was full of alligators, which are always on the look-out for the planters’ and negroes’ dogs, and are hated and hunted accordingly.

The “Nina” was blowing the signal for departure, the only sound we heard all through the night, as we drove through the deserted streets of Georgetown, and soon after three o'clock, A. M., we were on board and in our berths.

SOURCE: William Howard Russell, My Diary North and South, p. 132-4

Diary of Judith Brockenbrough McGuire: February 22, 1863

Ashland.—A very deep snow this morning. The cars are moving slowly on the road, with two engines attached to each train. Our gentlemen could not go to Richmond to-day. Washington's birthday is forgotten, or only remembered with a sigh by his own Virginia. Had he been gifted with prophetic vision, in addition to his great powers, we would still remain a British colony; or, at least, he would never have fought and suffered for seven long years to have placed his native South in a situation far more humiliating than the colonies ever were towards the mother-country; or to have embroiled her in a war compared to which the old Revolution was but child's play.

SOURCE: Judith W. McGuire, Diary of a Southern Refugee, During the War, p. 194

Diary of William Howard Russell: Monday, April 2, 1861

The following day I started early, and performed my pilgrimage to “the shrine of St. Washington,” at Mount Vernon, as a foreigner on board called the place. Mr. Bancroft has in his possession a letter of the General's mother, in which she expresses her gratification at his leaving the British army in a manner which implies that he had been either extravagant in his expenses or wild in his manner of living. But if he had any human frailties in after life, they neither offended the morality of his age, nor shocked the susceptibility of his countrymen; and from the time that the much maligned and unfortunate Braddock gave scope to his ability, down to his retirement into private life, after a career of singular trials and extraordinary successes, his character acquired each day greater altitude, strength, and lustre. Had his work failed, had the Republic broken up into small anarchical states, we should hear now little of Washington. But the principles of liberty founded in the original Constitution of the colonies themselves, and in no degree derived from or dependent on the Revolution, combined with the sufferings of the Old and the bounty of nature in the New World to carry to an unprecedented degree the material prosperity, which Americans have mistaken for good government, and the physical comforts which have made some States in the Union the nearest approach to Utopia. The Federal Government hitherto “let the people alone” and they went on their way singing and praising their Washington as the author of so much greatness and happiness. To doubt his superiority to any man of woman born, is to insult the American people. They are not content with his being great — or even greater than the great: he must be greatest of all; — “first in peace, and first in war.” The rest of the world cannot find fault with the assertion, that he is “first in the hearts of his countrymen.” But he was not possessed of the highest military qualities, if we are to judge from most of the regular actions, in which the British had the best of it; and the final blow, when Cornwallis surrendered at Yorktown, was struck by the arm of France, by Rochambeau and the French fleet, rather than by Washington and his Americans. He had all the qualities for the work for which he was designed, and is fairly entitled to the position his countrymen have given him as the immortal czar of the United States. His pictures are visible everywhere — in the humblest inn, in the Minister's bureau, in the millionnaire's gallery. There are far more engravings of Washington in America than there are of Napoleon in France, and that is saying a good deal.

What have we here? The steamer which has been paddling down the gentle current of the Potomac, here a mile and more in breadth, banked in by forest, through which can be seen homesteads and white farm-houses, in the midst of large clearings and corn-fields — has moved in towards a high bluff, covered with trees, on the summit of which is visible the trace of some sort of building — a ruined summer-house, rustic temple — whatever it may be; and the bell on deck begins to toll solemnly, and some of the pilgrims uncover their heads for a moment. The boat stops at a rotten, tumbledown little pier, which leads to a waste of mud, and a path rudely cut through the wilderness of briers on the hill-side. The pilgrims, of whom there are some thirty or forty, of both sexes, mostly belonging to the lower classes of citizens, and comprising a few foreigners like myself, proceed to climb this steep, which seemed in a state of nature covered with primeval forest, and tangled weeds and briers, till the plateau, on which stands the house of Washington and the domestic offices around it, is reached. It is an oblong wooden house, of two stories in height, with a colonnade towards the river face, and a small balcony on the top and on the level of the roof, over which rises a little paltry gazebo. There are two windows, a glass door at one end of the oblong, and a wooden alcove extending towards the slave quarters, which are very small sentry-box huts, that have been recently painted, and stand at right angles to the end of the house, with dog-houses and poultry-hutches attached to them. There is no attempt at neatness or order about the place; though the exterior of the house is undergoing repair, the grass is unkempt, the shrubs untrimmed, — neglect, squalor, and chicken feathers have marked the lawn for their own. The house is in keeping, and threatens to fall to ruin. I entered the door, and found myself in a small hall, stained with tobacco juice. An iron railing ran across the entrance to the stairs. Here stood a man at a gate, who presented a book to the visitors, and pointed out the notice therein, that “no person is permitted to inscribe his name in this book who does not contribute to the Washington Fund, and that any name put down without money would be erased.” Notwithstanding the warning, some patriots succeeded in recording their names without any pecuniary mulct, and others did so at a most reasonable rate. When I had contributed in a manner which must have represented an immense amount of Washingtoniolatry, estimated by the standard of the day, I was informed I could not go up-stairs as the rooms above were closed to the public, and thus the most interesting portion of the house was shut from the strangers. The lower rooms presented nothing worthy of notice —some lumbering, dusty, decayed furniture; a broken harpsichord, dust, cobwebs — no remnant of the man himself. But over the door of one room hung the key of the Bastille.*  The gardens, too, were tabooed; but through the gate I could see a wilderness of neglected trees and shrubs, not unmingled with a suspicion of a present kitchen-ground. Let us pass to the Tomb, which is some distance from the house, beneath the shade of some fine trees. It is a plain brick mausoleum, with a pointed arch, barred by an iron grating, through which the light penetrates a chamber or small room containing two sarcophagi of stone. Over the arch, on a slab let into the brick, are the words: “Within this enclosure rest the remains of Gen. George Washington.” The fallen leaves which had drifted into the chamber rested thickly on the floor, and were piled up on the sarcophagi, and it was difficult to determine which was the hero's grave without the aid of an expert, but there was neither guide nor guardian on the spot. Some four or five gravestones, of various members of the family, stand in the ground outside the little mausoleum. The place was most depressing. One felt angry with a people whose lip service was accompanied by so little of actual respect. The owner of this property, inherited from the “Pater Patriӕ,” has been abused in good set terms because he asked its value from the country which has been so very mindful of the services of his ancestor, and which is now erecting by slow stages the overgrown Cleopatra's needle that is to be a Washington Monument when it is finished. Mr. Everett has been lecturing, the Ladies' Mount Vernon Association has been working, and every one has been adjuring everybody else to give liberally; but the result so lately achieved is by no means worthy of the object. Perhaps the Americans think it is enough to say — “Si monumentum quӕris, circumspice" But, at all events, there is a St. Paul's round those words.

On the return of the steamer I visited Fort Washington, which is situated on the left bank of the Potomac. I found everything in a state of neglect — gun-carriages rotten, shot piles rusty, furnaces tumbling to pieces. The place might be made strong enough on the river front, but the rear is weak, though there is low marshy land at the back. A company of regulars were on duty. The sentries took no precautions against surprise. Twenty determined men, armed with revolvers, could have taken the whole work; and, for all the authorities knew, we might have had that number of Virginians and the famous Ben McCullough himself on board. Afterwards, when I ventured to make a remark to General Scott as to the carelessness of the garrison, he said: “A few weeks ago it might have been taken by a bottle of whiskey. The whole garrison consisted of an old Irish pensioner.” Now at this very moment Washington is full of rumors of desperate descents on the capital, and an attack on the President and his Cabinet. The long bridge across the Potomac into Virginia is guarded, and the militia and volunteers of the District of Columbia are to be called out to resist McCullough and his Richmond desperadoes.

_______________

* Since borrowed, it is supposed, by Mr. Seward, and handed over by him to Mr. Stanton. Lafayette gave it to Washington; he also gave his name to the Fort which has played so conspicuous a part in the war for liberty — “La liberté des deux mondes,” might well sigh if he could see his work, and what it has led to.

SOURCE: William Howard Russell, My Diary North and South, p. 55-9

Senator Charles Sumner to Abraham Lincoln, November 8, 1862

Boston, 8th November, '62.

My Dear Sir, — I send you Mr. Livermore's Memoir on the employment of slaves and Africans during our Revolution, and call your especial attention to the last half. You will find it learned, thorough and candid.

The author is a conservative Republican, and his paper was read before the Mass. Historical Society, which is one of the most conservative bodies in our country.

I deplore the result in New York. It is worse for our country than the bloodiest disaster on any field of battle. I see only one way to counteract it; and this is by the most unflinching vigor, in the field and in council. Our armies must be pressed forward, and the proclamation must be pressed forward; and the country must be made to feel that there will be no relaxation of any kind, but that all the activities of the country will be yet further aroused.

I am sanguine yet of the final result, although I fear further disaster; but I am sure of two things, first, this grand Republic cannot be broken up and secondly, slavery in this age cannot succeed in building a new Govt. Believe me, my dear sir,

Very faithfully yours,

Charles Sumner.

SOURCES: Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Volume 44: April Meeting, 1911, p. 602-3; The original of this letter can be found in the Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress.

Diary of Judith W. McGuire: June 15, 1861

Yesterday was set apart by the President as a day of prayer and fasting, and I trust that throughout the Confederacy the blessing of God was invoked upon the army and country. We went to church at Millwood, and heard Bishop Meade. His sermon was full of wisdom and love; he urged us to individual piety in all things, particularly to love and charity to our enemies. He is full of enthusiasm and zeal for our cause. His whole heart is in it, and from the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh, for he talks most delightfully and encouragingly on the subject. He says that if our ancestors had good reason for taking up arms in 1775, surely we had much better, for the oppression they suffered from the mother-country was not a tithe of the provocation we have received from the Government at Washington.

SOURCE: Judith W. McGuire, Diary of a Southern Refugee, During the War, p. 29-30

John Jay To The English Anti-slavery Society,* 1788

Gentlemen:

Our society has been favoured with your letter of the 1st of May last, and are happy that efforts so honourable to the nation are making in your country to promote the cause of justice and humanity relative to the Africans. That they who know the value of liberty, and are blessed with the enjoyment of it, ought not to subject others to slavery, is, like most other moral precepts, more generally admitted in theory than observed in practice. This will continue to be too much the case while men are impelled to action by their passions rather than their reason, and while they are more solicitous to acquire wealth than to do as they would be done by. Hence it is that India and Africa experience unmerited oppression from nations which have been long distinguished by their attachment to their civil and religious liberties, but who have expended not much less blood and treasure in violating the rights of others than in defending their own. The United States are far from being irreproachable in this respect. It undoubtedly is very inconsistent with their declarations on the subject of human rights to permit a single slave to be found within their jurisdiction, and we confess the justice of your strictures on that head.

Permit us, however, to observe, that although consequences ought not to deter us from doing what is right, yet that it is not easy to persuade men in general to act on that magnanimous and disinterested principle. It is well known that errors, either in opinion or practice, long entertained or indulged, are difficult to eradicate, and particularly so when they have become, as it were, incorporated in the civil institutions and domestic economy of a whole people.

Prior to the great revolution, the great majority or rather the great body of our people had been so long accustomed to the practice and convenience of having slaves, that very few among them even doubted the propriety and rectitude of it. Some liberal and conscientious men had, indeed, by their conduct and writings, drawn the lawfulness of slavery into question, and they made converts to that opinion ; but the number of those converts compared with the people at large was then very inconsiderable. Their doctrines prevailed by almost insensible degrees, and was like the little lump of leaven which was put into three measures of meal: even at this day, the whole mass is far from being leavened, though we have good reason to hope and to believe that if the natural operations of truth are constantly watched and assisted, but not forced and precipitated, that end we all aim at will finally be attained in this country.

The Convention which formed and recommended the new Constitution had an arduous task to perform, especially as local interests, and in some measure local prejudices, were to be accommodated. Several of the States conceived that restraints on slavery might be too rapid to consist with their particular circumstances; and the importance of union rendered it necessary that their wishes on that head should, in some degree, be gratified.

It gives us pleasure to inform you, that a disposition favourable to our views and wishes prevails more and more, and that it has already had an influence on our laws. When it is considered how many of the legislators in the different States are proprietors of slaves, and what opinions and prejudices they have imbibed on the subject from their infancy, a sudden and total stop to this species of oppression is not to be expected.

We will cheerfully co-operate with you in endeavouring to procure advocates for the same cause in other countries, and perfectly approve and commend your establishing a correspondence in France. It appears to have produced the desired effect; for Mons. De Varville, the secretary of a society for the like benevolent purpose at Paris, is now here, and comes instructed to establish a correspondence with us, and to collect such information as may promote our common views. He delivered to our society an extract from the minutes of your proceedings, dated 8th of April last, recommending him to our attention, and upon that occasion they passed the resolutions of which the enclosed are copies.

We are much obliged by the pamphlets enclosed with your letter, and shall constantly make such communications to you as may appear to us interesting.

By a report of the committee for superintending the school we have established in this city for the education of negro children, we find that proper attention is paid to it, and that scholars are now taught in it. By the laws of this State, masters may now liberate healthy slaves of a proper age without giving security that they shall not become a parish charge; and the exportation as well as importation of them is prohibited. The State has also manumitted such as became its property by confiscation; and we have reason to expect that the maxim, that every man, of whatever colour, is to be presumed to be free until the contrary be shown, will prevail in our courts of justice. Manumissions daily become more common among us; and the treatment which slaves in general meet with in this State is very little different from that of other servants.

I have the honour to be, gentlemen,

Your humble servant,

John Jay,

President of the Society for Promoting the Manumission of Slaves.

_______________

* In 1788 a society in France, and another in England, formed for promoting the abolition of slavery, opened a correspondence with the New York society through its president. The above letter to the English society was from Jay's pen. See letter from Granville Sharp, May 1, 1788.

SOURCE: Henry P. Johnston, Editor, The Correspondence and Public Papers of John Jay Volume 3: 1782-1793, p. 340-4

The Government of God

Society is of God, as well as nature and religion.  Man has received his life from the Creator, and no one has the right to take it from him, unless he is a violator of the most precious rights and privileges he has conferred upon him. – Even the Guilty and the wicked should not suffer the extremity of the law, but for crimes involving the life and peace of society.  No one has the right to shed the blood of his fellow, unless for reasons the highest and most sacred, derived from the word of God and the original constitution of our nature.  Government holds a sword, and that sword is the gift of God.  Without it, society would be exposed to the lawlessness of the unprincipled and base, and would be like a human body without arms.  God has the power to take away human life, as he does by sickness, famine, and death; and he has put the sword into the hands of human governments, to be used when the necessity of the case demands it.

He is called the Lord of hosts, or armies, and the reason is, that among the heathen the nation most successful in arms was supposed to have the most powerful God!  Jehovah entered the lists against the Lords many and Gods many of the idolatrous nations, and was always successful, when his chosen people, the Jews, cast themselves upon his arm, and thereby proved the eternal sovereignty.

The history of the struggles of the Revolution shows the special care of Providence over our great leader, Washington.  He rode in the thickest of the fight, and was never injured.  Four bullets made as many holes in his coat, and two horses fell dead under him in a single battle, yet he escaped without a wound.  He, himself, regarded it as a special interposition of the hand of God.

The following incident is reported of him:  In the battle of Monongahela – the defeat of Braddock – a distinguished warrior swore it was impossible to bring Washington down by a bullet.  His reason was, that he had taken steady aim at Washington seventeen times, but could not once hit him, and he gave up believing he was invulnerable.  Washington’s work was not then completed.  An unseen hand defended him; and every soldier is under the special care of Him, who recognizes His authority.  Let every one who goes out to defend the sacred rights of his country, look to God for aid and counsel.  He is a present help – a refuge in distress.  If he fall in battle, he falls in a good cause; and even the more wicked and desperate are cut off from the evil to come, and are saved from additional years of crime and guilt.  God does not permit war to be an undeserved and lasting injury to any one.

War should lead us to look to god as the Supreme Arbiter and Judge of nations, and make us feel our dependence upon Him, at home and in the field of battle.  Each father and mother, who has sent a son into battle, should pray as Moses did for Judah:  “Hear, Lord, the voice of Judah, and bring him unto his people.  Let his hand be sufficient for him; and be thou an help to him from his enemies.”  Let every warrior, like Judah, call upon the Lord; and let every parent and friend remember Judah on the field of battle.

God uses war as a purifier of the world.  It is often the scourge of a nation’s wickedness and impiety.  It makes the proudest heart to quail, and humble itself under his mighty hand.  It shows how vain is the help of man.  The neglect of a single officer may turn the tide of war against us, and after a successful campaign, bring us into unexpected disasters.  God is now reminding us of His authority, and teaching the nation that not in statesmen, nor in captains or great generals, but in Him alone there is ever-lasting strength.

The following incident is recorded in a private letter from Ft. Donelson by a soldier in the fifteenth Illinois regiment:

I visited the battle-field on the day of the surrender; here indeed can one truly see the “horrors of war.”  I would not sicken you by detailing the horrible sights I witnessed, but I cannot refrain from mentioning one incident.  In passing among the wounded and dead of the enemy, I came to the body of a young man, lying partly on his side; he belonged to the Second Kentucky Regiment, and was an exceedingly handsome man.  It was the expression of his face, so different from the rest, which first attracted my attention.  One of his hands rested upon his breast just beneath his coat; slightly removing this, I discovered the cause of that expression: tightly grasped in his hand was a Bible.  My curiosity was so great that I could not resist the temptation of learning his name, but it was with no little difficulty that I succeeded in obtaining it, so tightly had his fingers stiffened in their grasp.  I opened the book, and on the fly leaf was written: “Presented to Robert Reeves by his affectionate mother,” and then immediately beneath these words were “My dear son, when troubles and temptations assail you, here alone can you find comfort and consolation.”  What a consolation would it be to her poor heart if, when she hears of the death of her dear son, could she but know that ’midst the din and roar of battle, and with death slowly but surely creeping over him, he had sought and found that comfort and consolation in the teachings of a redeeming Savior.  * *

– Published in The Davenport Daily Gazette, Davenport, Iowa, Monday Morning, May 5, 1862, p. 2

The Foe in our Midst

In St. Louis there are scores of dangerous men, zealous and scheming rebels, who are both acting the part of spies in our camp, and, by their position, presence, example and counsel, are rendering valuable service to the enemy.  The immunity with which they have long done this emboldens others to follow in their footsteps, and gives encouragement to the almost despairing foe in the field.  It is time that these mischief makers were placed where their influence would be powerless.  The peace of the city, the welfare of the State, and the cause of the country, as well as genuine kindness to these disturbers and their friends, all demand this. – Justice, policy, precedent and propriety alike require it.

During the struggle that gave birth to the Republic, the country was grievously infested by active and bitter tories.  In certain portions of the land they especially abounded, and in some were actually predominant in numbers.  They frustrated the efforts of patriots, gave invaluable information to the enemy, and materially aided in protracting the conflict.  Many of them were wealthy, educate, of high standing, had even gained a reputation for integrity, and thus wielded an influence mischievous in the extreme.  The journals of that time have since been published, tell us how these citizens were disposed of.  They were made to pay heavily for carrying on the war, and were removed to some region where their power for evil ceased.  This course was adopted by the advice and with the hearty concurrence of Washington.

In principle, the secessionists of this war are more flagitious than the tories of ’76, and in practice those of them near our military lines are worse.  The difference between the olden and the modern tory is purely circumstantial, and the circumstances are in favor of the former.  The one breathed in the times of ’76, when a republic was an experiment, the other knows that the experiment has been gloriously successful for four score years.  The one was opposed to a government of the country by the people of the country, and the other is so opposed.  The first was unwilling to have the people of the land rule the land, and the second is similarly unwilling.  But while one objected to sacrifice, peace and the ties of the fatherland, with its hallowed memories and proud historic associations, to enter upon a novel experiment under gloomy auspices, the other invokes war, tramples upon every sentiment of national price, outrages the glorious history and flag of his country, in order to render abortive the tried and well proved experiment of national self government.  Every sentiment that palliated the course of the tory of ’76, aggravates that of the secessionist of to-day.

What plea can be urged in behalf of further tolerance to the foe in our midst?  Why has he more claim to the shelter of constitutional law than the [foe] in the field?  How, when his whole spirit, all his aspirations, hopes, efforts and influence, are known to be hostile, is he not amenable to the laws of war?  Are the friends and well wishers of the enemy to be indefinitely harbored and cherished among us? – It is time that all illusions were at last dissipated, and that many of our citizens, who seem to be still dreaming amid the terrible realities upon us, were startled with a discovery of the serious nature of their position.  We are at war, St. Louis is a military post, yet in all quarters she is infested with prying, hypocritical, plotting, ingenious, implacable and deadliest foes.  What shouts of jubilee would they send up in our streets should some chance of war enable the enemy, through their aid, to gain possession of St. Louis?  How much mercy would be shown to their Union fellow-citizens?  Not a particle.  Every Unionist would be banished, or imprisoned and his property confiscated.  The wealth of the patriots of St. Louis has been by Sterling Price distinctly offered, though with absurd imbecility, as the prize of his rebel horde!  We urge no such wholesale treatment of those here who may sympathize with the enemy. – Yet the busy leaders and conspicuous intriguers among these sympathizers ought to be, and we trust soon will be, marked and effectually disposed of.

– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, February 8, 1862, p. 2

Subjugation of the South – Loyalty in Dixie

(From the Richmond Dispatch, Feb. 26th.)

The Yankee nation, elevated by the recent victories of its hireling armies, is entirely certain of the speedy and thorough subjugation of the South.  It laughs to scorn any idea of any other possibility, and exults in delicious daydreams of the degredation to which its enemy will be reduced.  It glories in the consciousness of its brute strength, and intends to exercise it in the spirit of a brute.  All the enormous self complacency and self conceit which for a while were humbled by the battle of Manassas have renewed their ancient exultation, and they fancy themselves the masters of the universe and the predestined conquerors of all mankind.  But the work of subjugation is as distant now as ever – more distant, more impracticable than it was before the shadow of disaster had been cast upon our flag.

If our early victories had been followed up, and a blow struck which would have paralyzed the north and compelled a peace, it would have been a temporary paralysis, and a peace which would have subjugated the South more completely than she is ever likely to be by the hands of her enemies.  The inevitable consequences of a speedy peace would have been the restoration of the old commercial and manufacturing dependency of the South upon the North, with no other results of her nominal independence than a temporary exemption from abolition legislation, and the heavy expenses of a separate Government, with none of those sources of wealth to support it which commerce, manufactures, and trade supply.  Such a condition, call it by what name we may, would be essentially subjugation; and if the North had taken counsel of wisdom instead of pride, malignity and revenge, it would, in the first instance, never have permitted the war to be waged, or, when it had begun to have brought it to a termination as speedily as possible.

When we say that the subjugation of the South is now more remote than it would have been after an early peace, we have no reference to that small minority which, in the South, as well as every community, is willing to purchase peace at any price.  There are tories in the South, as there were tories in the Revolution, whose only sympathies are with the enemies of their country, who lament its victories and rejoice over its defeats.  The subjugation of these is not the question; for all the tyrants who threaten to oppress us, they, in the event of an opportunity, would be the most revengeful and inexorable.  The tories in the Revolution committed atrocities which far surpassed the most cruel oppressors of the British invaders, and we are prepared to expect from Southern tories – happily not so many in number, nor so capable of mischief as their illustrious predecessors – the exhibition of a similar spirit.

There is another and more numerous class who may be subjugated, because they are already subjugated by their apprehensions of the evils and calamities which are incident to a state of war.  Whilst generally honest and patriotic, they look upon national honor as an abstraction, not to be weighed against personal comfort and security and material gain.  “Dying for one’s country” they consider a very pretty poetical sentiment, much to be admired in novels and tragedies; but like many other poetical sentiments, nonsensical and Quixotic when reduced to practice.  Self indulgence is the rule of life with many men who are patriotic, honest, virtuous and moral, as long as the exercise of those qualities costs them no sacrifice.  But of any higher life than the life of the flesh they have not the faintest conception, nor can they imagine any greater evil than the loss of money, the deprivation of physical comforts, and, above all, the loss of life.  No one will deny that the subjugation of this class is practicable, even with a moiety of immense forces which Lincoln has brought into the field.

But such is not the spirit of the great majority of the Southern people.  They are devoutly attached to their country, to its institutions, to its habits and modes of life, and they have in innate and ineradicable antagonism to the political and social system of the invading race, to their character and habits of their very modes of speech, which the present cruel war has intensified into such passionate and profound detestation that sooner than acknowledge the Yankees as masters, they would rather see the whole Southern country sink to the bottom of the ocean.  As a whole the South is proud, sensitive to the last degree to a stain upon her honor, and holding death an inferior evil to degradation.  Such men may be overrun, may be exterminated, but they cannot be subjugated. – They will resist as long as resistance is possible, and if conquered, they will not stay conquered.  When the spirits of a people are indomitable, they can never be enslaved, and so long as the South is true to herself, she will maintain her freedom of independence.

What can the enemy do with such a people?  If driven from the cities they will retire to the country, and their cities altogether could not make a town half the size of New York.  To follow them to the country, in the vast territory of the South, would require an army more numerous than that of Xerxes.  They will retire to the country and take their arms with them, each man his trusty rifle, and be prepared to seize the first opportunity to re-assert their rights.  They will at once destroy the cotton and other staples which the North is endeavoring to force from them by the sword, and will never cultivate them again till they can do so for their own benefit.  Every bale of cotton in the Southern States will be burned, and the proprietors will raise wheat and corn and other articles which they have hitherto purchased of the North.  They will return to the simple and frugal ways of their forefathers, in dress, furniture, and all the comforts of life, manufacturing for themselves such plain and useful articles as their simple wants and absolute necessities require.  If the Yankees chose to hold their cities, and be masters of the only spots where their enemies are quartered, these will be but islands in the midst of a vast ocean, and will not affect the freedom and independence of the people so long as they are constant to their cause and true to themselves.

In the very worst aspect of the Southern cause, this is the extreme limit which Yankee subjugation can reach, even if our armies would be driven from every battle field, and every Southern city, and fort fall into the enemy’s hands.  But the accomplishment of even that result, with all their superiority of numbers, is an achievement beyond their power.  They have taught us, by the perseverance with which they contrived to fight us after their signal reverses at Bethel, Bull Run, Manassas, Springfield, Belmont, Carnifex Ferry, Leesburg, Green Briar River, Alleghany and others, not to be dismayed and disheartened by reverses, but to make them incentives to new energy and fresh determination.  We shall rise, like Antreus, refreshed by every fall.  The farther the enemy penetrates into the interior and extends his line of march, the more costly and perilous will be his means of aggression, and the more economical and practical our means of defence.  Every where he will be met by desperate and prolonged resistance, until the foreign world, dependant as it is upon Southern commerce, would become impatient of the eternal contest, and itself interpose to put an end to the mad dreams of Southern subjugation.

– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, March 8, 1862, p. 1

Vestiges of Democracy

During the war of the revolution no persons did us more injury, or proved to me more malicious and dangerous foes, than those found in our midst – the tories.  They annoyed us on every side, by weakening our army at home and giving aid and comfort abroad.  We need not go far to find their antitypes among us.  We have been compelled into a war by those who wielded the political interests of the country for more than half a century.  It is now understood, and generally believed, that the present civil war originated with those who were jealous of political power which the[y] saw was on the wane, and would finally be taken from them, owing to the progress of free principles among the people.

He must be blind to the working of the leaders of that great political party in the United States, not to be apprised of the fact, that so long as all the wheels of the Government were well oiled by the Democracy, and kept in motion exclusively by their hands, they were satisfied with the Union and the Constitution.  But the first evidences they practically had of a change in the administration, determined them in their course for the future.  They valued the party more than they did the Union; and if one was to be sacrificed they did not long hesitate which should go down.  We do not speak of individuals, but simply of the party.  It was an overgrown, tyrannical and oppressive power in our midst.  It was the chief element that sustained the dying fortunes of the slave-ocracy – in fact, its last and only hope.  When this was broken, secession followed.  It was like the letting out of pent-up waters, threatening to destroy everything in their course.  They were held back by this power only to increase their violence.  The day would come, and every shrewd statesman of the land knew that it was inevitable.  But it could have been met and adjusted by the pen and the tongue – the Democracy unsheathed the sword.

It is evident that there were two parties in the South, who looked at the question of slavery from different stand-points.  The one simply as property, the other as political capital.  The latter prevailed, and hence this insurrection.  Those who still adhere to the old party in the North, look at the question from a political stand-point.  What care they for the property view of the matter?  The fewest of them have any personal interest in it.  But the power of party has prevailed over the better feelings of their nature, and freedom, country, the defence of ancient laws and honorable institutions, and all the sacred safeguards of a nation, have been jeopardized by them.

Let it be remembered that those who still cling to the rotten principles which gave vitality to the party, are now with the rebels, and are aiding them as far as they can in their desperate and suicidal work.  They will share in their down fall and disgrace.  The very attempts on their part of identifying the President with their ruined fortunes, show that they are not insensible to the danger which threatens then.  The demagogue-ism of the party is dead, with here and there a galvanic editorial spasm, without the hope of a revival.  The leaders North which to find a plank to save them amid the wreck of all their hopes, but this is denied them.  They will sink so deep that no sounding line will ever reach them.

The evils of failure in a civil war are greater than in a foreign one, also the probabilities of success.  The great North in this struggle will be successful, and its strength will be increased a thousand fold; while the South will become enfeebled and finally so poor that non will do it reverence.  These results are certain.  Let then every man be faithful to his country, stand by it to the last, and leave a clean record for his children.

– Published in The Davenport Daily Gazette, Davenport, Iowa, Friday Morning, March 28, 1862, p. 2 

Explosion of a Currency

Public attentions has been so exclusively directed to the military and navel movements of the Rebel Government that but comparatively little notice has been taken of its monetary progress, whether upward or downward.  Steam rams, turtles, forts, and rifle-pits, have filled the Northern eye, while the foul issue of a still fouler conspiracy have filled the Southern pockets.  We have shelled the turtles, sunk the rams, cleared the rifle-pits and captured the forts, facing the enemy at every point; but, singularly enough, have had no encounter with the Rebel currency.  It is true that we have obtained distant glimpses of the great carnival of rags in which the Southern zanies have been rioting.  Huge deposits of their fetid trash have been taken with their forts and passed from hand to hand among the victors, to be preserved as mute but greasy mementoes of typographical barbarism.  Samples have been sent home by the captors, to be pasted up in shops and bar rooms as curiosities, or preserved in the albums of collectors of Continental currency, that issued for a holy cause for the first time in American history, taking its place by the spawn of an unholy one.  But saving a short, abortive effort at the outbreak of the Rebellion, to peddle the worthless stuff in Northern cities, and the chance reports which reach us from our advancing armies or from fugitive loyalists, we know but little of the social and commercial results of this unexampled issue of an irredeemable currency.  In the hurrying tramp of advancing columns – in the excitement of battle – even after the peaceful occupation of the largest Southern cities – those flying historians of the war, the army correspondents and reporters seem to have given no attention to the currency question.  We may form some general idea of how it stands on learning that tea is selling at $4 a pound, and calico at $1 a yard; but of the wide-spread misery under which the South has suffered we shall learn no definite particulars until the domestic history of the Rebellion shall have been written.

History, however, enables us to conjecture what misery the South is yet to undergo from the collapse of its paper currency.  We know not what amount her treasonable Government has issued, but, from all the information obtainable through her newspapers, we presume it to be at least $300,000,000.  A fraction of the first issue was taken by her citizens in the early furor of the outbreak.  As the people held back, the banks were coerced into subscriptions, then into exchanges of their notes for Rebel bonds.  These resources exhausted, the leaders issued without limit and forced it on the people in payment for supplies, the armies carrying with them millions of unsigned scrip to be used whenever and wherever it might be required.  The true basis for redemption was the success of rebellion.  We have had other rebellions in this country, but this is the only one which attempted to manufacture its own money.  Its artificial basis was the cotton crop and redemption was dependent on success, because without the latter the cotton crop would fail to reach the European market.  But treason has run its bloody course with a rapidity that has astonished the nations.  Every basis, real and artificial, has disappeared.  Conscious of this, the cotton foundation for its bonds is ordered to be destroyed.  This act is the dying confession of the discomfited traitors.  The millions of paper they have issued is left to perish in the hands of the Southern people.  It was in every one’s possession.  As coin disappeared into thousands of private hoards, its place was supplied by paper, which immediately filled the channels of circulation.  It was that or nothing.  Both terror and necessity compelled its adoption.  Those who hesitated to receive it were suspected, while those who refused it were stripped of property and imprisoned.  Real money, in fact, ceased to be known in business transactions and the day of barter returned, the bartering of merchandise for paper.

But even this compulsory currency was insufficient to gorge the community.  Every individual was at liberty to issue whatever he could circulate.  As there was no small change, so each man made it for himself.  Barbers issued tickets good for a shave, groggeries such as were good for drinks, undertakers such as were redeemable in coffins, and even the gamblers and faro bankers issued similar tokens.  The entire fractional currency of all the Southern cities was made of this irredeemable trash.  From them it spread into the country, and as it was there absorbed, the makers issued more.  So pitiable was the southern destitution – so humiliating her dependence on the North, that, shut out from fresh supplies by a blockade which it was thought facetious six months ago to sneer at, these myriads of tickets were printed on brown paper, back of old letters, shop cards and bonnet boards.  The world has never seen a currency to equal it for rottenness.  The Continental currency had value at the beginning – even the French assignats were the representatives of a vast tangible property – but this whole Rebel currency has been the most stupendous swindle from the start that the world has ever beheld.  It falls dead upon the hands of every man who holds it, and $300,000,000 of loss cannot be so distributed in any community as not to impoverish thousands by the explosion.  What other generations suffered from Continental notes and assignats, the South must suffer with far greater severity from this universal collapse.

No history of the Continental currency has yet been written, and what we know concerning it must be gathered up from contemporaneous records in which it is incidentally referred to.  Neither has a history of the Colonial paper currency been written; but enough has been preserved to give us some idea of the wide spread ruin which has in every instance swept over the community which may have plunged into great issues of irredeemable paper.  Even cautions, prudent Massachusetts was compelled, in 1751, to redeem £1,792,236 of her paper, at a loss of 90 per cent. to the holders.  In 1712, South Carolina issued £48,000 in bills, which depreciated one third the first year, one half the second, and gradually sunk to almost nothing. – Only six months after the Declaration of Independence, public confidence in the Continental money was seriously impaired.  The Tories sneered at it, and the British counterfeited it.  In October, 1777, it had depreciated to three for one.  The belief was that even if independence were secured by the country would be found too poor to pay its debt; while domestic enemies declared, and the army unfortunately believed, that, if ever able to pay, it did not intend too.  Up to September, 1779, Congress had issued $160,000,000 of paper, and then resolved that the issues should at no time exceed $200,000,000.  But once entered on the career, its issues soon exceeded this limit, and the next year its paper sunk to seventy-five for one.  Coin was impossible to be had, and taxes could not be collected.  In 1781, Congress had issued $359,000,000 of paper, and at that date the earlier notes had sunk to five hundred for one of hard money.  Thenceforward, the depreciation went rapidly toward utter worthlessness.  It is known that millions of this paper were never redeemed, and that depreciation and repudiation combined inflicted untold distress upon the people.  Taxation followed, and this culminated in the Whisky Insurrection in Pennsylvania and in Shay’s Rebellion in Massachusetts, with alarming symptoms of an outbreak in New Hampshire and Connecticut.

All American history is full of warning as to the certain ruin to follow the gorging of a community with a paper currency for whose early redemption no certain provision may have been made.  The South can hope for no exemption from a similar fate.  Her currency began to depreciate from the moment it was issued.  The Continental Congress bore up for eight years under the waning value of its currency, but a single year has been sufficient to wipe out hundreds of millions in the South.  That Congress did repay many millions of its war debt by bonds which have long since been liquidated, but not a dollar of the enormous issues of the Southern Confederacy will be paid.  If a successful rebellion impoverished so many of our fathers, how many will an unsuccessful one convert into paupers!  The stake, moreover, which the South has hazarded in provoking this contest is immeasurably greater than that which all the Colonies possessed.  They had no banks, no railroads, no canals, no telegraphs, no steamers, no furnaces nor mines, nor any of the multiplied appliances of modern civilization into which the South has concentrated millions of capital.  All these have been dangerously crippled, some nearly ruined, others annihilated.  Her banks must be hopelessly insolvent; her State bonds may continue as footballs at the Stock Board, but redemption is almost impossible; while the great bulk of her Corporation stocks is comparatively worthless.  Thousand depended upon incomes thus derived, but now swept away. – Other thousands have meanly fattened upon slave labor; but, under the stunning blows rained down upon it by the stalwart North and West this dependence now reels to its dissolution.  No coupon is paid, no corporation declares a dividend.  Slaves are unsalable, while the title to all real estate is doubtful under the prospect of a wholesale sequestration.  Every prop on which her deluded people has rested has been knocked away.  Agriculture produces no crops, while every cannon fired by our advancing armies drives hundreds of families as fugitives from their homes.  Of all wars, those of invasion are the most frightful, and this the righteously desolated South as fully realized.  The crash must be proportioned to the magnitude of the interests involved.

But the full force of her monetary collapse is yet to come.  When peace lifts the curtain, and lays bare her pecuniary nakedness, we shall behold a perfect carnival of insolvency.  It will be aggravated by the obliteration of vast properties voluntarily destroyed.  The voluntary destruction is of itself an admission that confiscation is inevitable.  Here, then, is an accumulation of causes for a huge monetary explosion such as had no existence in the Revolution.  It is only on the return of peace that such explosions really culminate.  While the war lasts, a pervading pressure serves to brace up all hopes, all interests.  But this pressure relaxes with the return of peace, and the fast artificial system which the war compelled collapses into a desolating chaos.  This generation will soon witness a spectacle in the Rebel States such as history but faintly pictures as having succeeded the American Revolution, the overthrow of Napoleon, or the close of our second war with England.  The North has already gone through its portion of the terrible ordeal, and will now move forward with elastic enterprise, under invigorated energies, to new industrial achievements.  The currency explosion at the South is yet to come. –{Tribune.

– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, May 24, 1862, p. 1

A Revolutionary Hero

Correspondence of the Missouri Republican.

Yesterday, while at Gen. Curtis’ headquarters, I was introduced to a most remarkable man – a surviving hero of the revolution, in his one hundred and second year, who served with Washington and Marion towards the close of the war. His name is William Dotson, and his residence on the James Fork of White River, near Galena. The following is the history he gives of himself. He was born near the Dan river, Virginia, February 22d, 1760, of Irish and German parentage; entered the army of Gen. Washington when a young man; was at the siege of Yorktown; was also with Marion and his men on the Pedec, and fought the Tories of South Carolina; was in the war of 1812, and fought under Gen Pinckney; took part in the battle of James Island, on the coast of Carolina, in which three British ships were sunk by cannon shots from a fortification made of Cotton bales, the Wasp and Hornet co-operating with the land forces in which battle he was wounded in the right hand. These are his own recollections, as given by himself, and may not be in all respects correct, depending, as they do, on the memory of an uneducated man of great age.

Mr. Dotson says he has fourteen sons in the Federal army, fighting for the Government established by Washington. Two of them are in the army of the Southwest, under Colonels Phelps and Boyd; the others were living in Indiana and Illinois, and have joined the army in their respective states. He has been married to four wives, the last a young woman of Missouri, by whom he has several young children. – He is the father of twenty-two children, all living, the oldest being seventy-six years of age, residing in east Tennessee, and the youngest three years old by his young wife, born to him in his ninety-ninth year. After the Revolutionary war, he removed to South Carolina, and resided there till 1820, when he emigrated to East Tennessee. Here he remained until 1854, when he emigrated to Southwest Missouri. He is a farmer by occupation, and he and his sons have always performed their own labor. They have never owned slaves, nor used slave labor. Once bought a slave by an exchange of property, and his wife was so opposed to it that he took him back and induced the owner to trade back again. He as always labored with his own hands, and what he possesses is the fruit of his own honest toil. He is still in the enjoyment of vigorous health and a sound memory, rides on horseback and walks perfectly erect, converses intelligently, and performs a considerable amount of labor. Two years ago, during the sitting of the Court at Galena, he ran a foot race, with a younger man, in the presence of the Court and a multitude of spectators, amid the shouts and laughter of the crowd at his defeated antagonist.

He is about five feet four inches in statue, and compactly built, and, like Moses of old, “his eye is not dimmed, nor his natural force abated.” There is no reason why he should not live another fifteen or twenty years. He is a strong Union man, and was tempted at the outbreak of the rebellion to offer himself for enlistment in the Union army, but the rebels came and took his horse and gun, and he gave up his purpose, feeling that his fourteen sons would do their own and his share of service in putting down the rebellion.

The rebels visited him and warned him that he was in danger, and had better flee. But he answered them, saying, “I have bought and paid for my farm, and mean to live and die upon it. If you choose to kill me you will only wrong me out of a few years, and the deed will do you no credit. According to the common course of nature I ought to have died years ago.” They did not further molest him, except to take an excellent horse, his gun and tobacco. The latter he said was a great privation. He could not get along without it, and thought they might have left him his tobacco.

The old man appeared delighted to see and converse with our troops. Riding about upon his horse he mingles with the crowd, cracks his jokes and laughs with great hilarity. Gen. Curtis has had his statement taken down, and to which the old hero has subscribed and made his affidavit, and it is to be sent on to Washington with a recommendation for a pension the remainder of his days.

– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, April 26, 1862, p. 2