T m i : 
 
 TWO NATIONS: 
 
 TO Tilt 
 
 H1ST0M OF THE AMERICAN WAR. 
 
 EDWAIID A. POLtARD, 
 
 XPl IIOK Of " rn 
 
 \\ J C !l >r < > X D: 
 
 a^t:r,des Sz. wade 
 
George Washington Flowers 
 Memorial Collection 
 
 DUKE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY 
 
 ESTABLISHED BY THE 
 
 FAMILY OF 
 
 COLONEL FLOWERS 
 
THE 
 
 m 
 
 TWO NATIONS: 
 
 A. KEY 
 
 TO T!7E 
 
 HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN WAR. 
 
 EV 
 
 EDWAKD A. POLLAED, 
 
 AUTHOR OF "THE FIRST AND 8EC0XD YEARS OF THE f 
 
 
 RICHMOND: 
 
 A^IRES Sc "WADE. 
 
 1864. 
 

 THE TWO NATIONS. 
 
 It has been a sentimental regr?t with certain European students of American 
 History that the colonies of America, after acquiring their independence, did 
 not establish a single and compact nationality. The philosophy of these opti- 
 mists is that the State institutions were- perpetual schools of provincialism, self- j 
 ishness and discontent, and that they were constantly educating the people for 
 the'disruption of that Union which was only a partial and incomplete expres- 
 sion of th-> nationality of America. These men indulge the idea that America, 
 as a nation, would have been colossal; that its wonderful mountains anfl river-, 
 its vast stretch of terrritory, its teeming wealth, and the almost boundless mili- 
 tary resources, which the present war has developed and proved, would then 
 have been united in one picture of grandeur, and in a single movement of 
 sublime, irresistible progress. 
 
 These are pretty dreams of ignorance. Those who ascribe to the State insti- 
 tutions of America our present distractions, and discover in them the nurseries 
 of the exisfmg war, are essentially ignoraut of our political history. They are 
 strangers to the doctrines of Calhofrn of South Carolina— the first name in -the 
 political literature of our old government— the first man who raised the party 
 controversies of America to the dignity of a political jjiilosophy and illuminated 
 them with the lights of the patient and accomplished scholar. 
 
 The great political discovery of Mr. Calhoun was this : that the Flights of 
 the States was the only solid foundation of the -Union f and that, so far from 
 being antagonistic to it, they constituted its security, realized its perfection, and 
 gave to it all the moral beauty with which it appealed to the affections of the 
 people. It was in this sense that the great South Carolina statesman, so fre- 
 quently calumniated as " nullifier," agitator, kc, was indeed the real and 
 devoted friend of the American Union. He maintained the nights of the 
 States— the sacred distribution of powers between them and the general gov- 
 ernment—as the life of the Union, and its bond of attachment in the hearts of 
 the people. And in this he was right. # The State institutions of America, 
 
 2-5 
 
properly regarded, were not discordant; nor were they unfortunate elements in 
 our political life. They gave certain occasions to the divisions of industry ; 
 they were instruments of material prosperity ; thef were schools of pride and 
 emulation; above all, they were the true guardians of the Union, keeping it 
 from degenerating into that vile and short-lived government in which power is 
 consolidated in a mere numerical majority. 
 
 Mr-. Calhoun's so-called doctrine of Nullification is one of the highest proofs 
 ever oiven by any American statesman of attachment to the Union. The 
 assertion is not made for paradoxical effect. It is clear enough iu history read 
 in the severe type of facts, without the falsehoods and epithets of that Yankee 
 literature which has so long defamed us, distorted our public men, and misrep- 
 resented us, even to ourselves. 
 
 The so-called and miscalled doctrine of Nullification marked one of the most 
 critical periods in the controversies of America, and constitutes one of the most 
 curious studies for its philosophic historian. Mr. Calhoun was unwilling to 
 offend the popular idolatry of the Union; he sought a remedy for existing evils 
 short of disunion, and the consequence was what was called, by an ingenious 
 slander, or a contemptible stupidity, Nullification. His doctrine was, in fact, 
 an accommodation of two sentiments : that of Yankee injustice and that of 
 reverence of the Union. He proposed to save the Union by the simple and 
 august means of an apfeal to tHe sovereign States that composed it. He pro- 
 posed that should the general government and a State come into conflict, the 
 power should be invoked that called the general government into existence, and 
 gave it all of its authority. In such a case, said Mr. Calhoun, " the States 
 themselves may be appealed to, three-fourths ' of which, in fact, form a power 
 whose decrees are the Constitution itself, and whose voice can silence all dis- 
 'content. The utmost extent, then, of the power is, that a State acting in its 
 sovereign capacity, as one of the parties to the constitutional compact, may 
 compel the -government created by that compact to submit a question touching 
 " its infraction to the parties who created it," He proposed* a peculiar, conserva- 
 tive and noble tribunal for the controversies that agitated the country and 
 threatened the Union. He was not willing that vital controversies between the 
 sovereign States and the general government should be submitted to the 
 Supreme Court, which properly excluded political questions, and comprehended 
 those only where there were parties amenable to the process of the court. This 
 was the length and breadth of .Nullification. It was intended to reconcile 
 impatience of Yankee injustice, and that sentimental attachment to the Union 
 
whkji colours so much of American politics ; it resisted the suggestion of revo- . 
 j^tion ; it clung to the idolatry of the Union, and marked that passage in 
 American history in which there was a combat between reason and that idolatry, 
 and in which that idolatry made a showy, but ephemeral conquest. 
 
 The doctrine, then, of Mr. Calhoun was this : He proposed only to consti- 
 tute a conservative and constitutional Carrier to Yankee aggression; and, so far 
 from destroying- the Union, proposed to erect over it the permanent and august 
 guard of a tribunal of those sovereign powers which had created it. It was 
 this splendid, but hopeless vision of the South Carolina statesman which the 
 North slandered" with the catch-word of Nullification ) which Northern orators 
 made the text of indiguatfon; on which Mr. AVebster piped his school-boy 
 rhetoric; and on which the more modern schools of New England have 
 exhausted the lettered resouroes of their learned blacksmiths and Senatorial 
 shoemakers. Mr. "Webster, the representative of that imperfect and insolent 
 education peculiar to New England, Spears never to have known that Mr. Cal- 
 houn's doctrine was not of his own- origination ; that its suggestion, at least, 
 came from one of the founders of the republic. We refer to that name which 
 is apostolic in the earliest party divisions of America, and the enduring orna- 
 ment of Virginia — Thomas Jefferson, the Sage of Monticello. At a late period 
 of his life, Mr. Jefferson said : u With respect to our State and Federal gov- 
 * ernments, I do not think their relations are correctly understood by foreigners. 
 They suppose the former subordinate to the latter. This is not the case. They 
 are co-ordinate departments of one simple and integral whole. But you may 
 ask if the two departments should claim each the same subject of power, where 
 mn the umpire to decide between them? In cases of little urgency or impor- 
 tance, the .prudence of both parties will keep them aloof from the questionable 
 ground ; but, if it can neither be avoided nor compromised, a Convention of 
 the States must be called to ascribe the doubtful power to that department 
 which they may think best." 
 
 Here was the first suggestion of the real safety of the Union; and it iras 
 this suggestion, reproduced by Calhoun, which the North slandered as Nullifi- 
 cation, insulted as heresy, and branded as treason. 
 
 It is a remarkable circumstance that the South should have tamely allowed the 
 Yankees to impose upon her political literature certain injurious terms, and should 
 have adopted them to her own prejudice and shame. The world takes its im- 
 pression fYoni names; and the false party nomenclature which the North so 
 easily fastened upon us, and which survives even in this war, has bad a nio^t 
 
important influence in obscuring our history, and especially in soliciting the 
 prejudices of Europe. • 
 
 The proposition of Mr. . Calhoun to protect the Union by a certain consti- 
 tutional and conservative barrier, the North designated Nullification, and the 
 South adopted a name which was both a^ falsehood and a slander. The well 
 guarded and moderate system of negro servitude in the South, the North called 
 Slavery; and this false and accursed name has been permitted to pass current in 
 European literature, associating and carrying with it the horrours of barbarism, 
 and defiliiig us in the eyes of the world. The Democratic party in the South^ 
 which claimed equality undej the Constitution, as a principle, and not merely as 
 a selfish interest, was branded by the North as a Pro-Slavery party, and the 
 South submitted to the designation. 
 
 How little that great party deserved this title was well illustrated in the 
 famous Kansas controversy ; for the history o? that controversy was simply this : 
 the South struggled for the principle of equality in the Territories, without refer- 
 ence to the selfish interests of so-called Slavery, and even with the admission of 
 the hopelessness of those interests in Kansas; while the North contended for 
 the narrow, selfish, practical consequence of making Kansas a part of her Free- 
 Soil possessions. The. proofs of this may be made in two brief extracts from 
 these celebrated debates. These are so full of. historical instruction that they 
 supply a place here much better than any narrative or comment could do: 
 
 Mr. English, of Indiana. — I think I may safely say that ther*e is not a Southern man 
 within the sound of my voice who will not vote for the admission of Kansas as a Free 
 State, if she brings here a Constitution to that effect. Is there a Southern man here 
 who will vote against the admission t of Kansas as a Free State, if it be the' undoubted W 
 will of the people of that Territory that it shall be a Free State? 
 
 Maxy Members. — N-ot one. 
 
 At another stage of the Kansas debate occurs the following : 
 
 Mr. Barksdale, of Mississippi.— I ask you gentleman on the other side of the House, 
 of the Black Republican party, would you vote for the admission of Kansas into the 
 U,nion, with a Constitution tolerating Slavery, if a hundred thousand people there 
 wished it ? 
 
 Mr. Giddijtgs, of Ohio. — I answer the gentleman that I will never associate, politi- 
 cally, with men of that character, if I can help it. I will never vote to compel Ohio to 
 associate with another Slave State, if I can prevent it. 
 
 * * * * * *.* #■* 
 
 Mr, Stanton.— I will say, if the gentleman, will allow me, that the Republican mem- 
 
bers of this House, so far as I know, will never vote foe the admission of any Slave 
 State north of 3fe° 30'. * 
 
 We return to the influence of State institutions on America. We contend 
 that they 'were not hostile to the Union, or malignant in their character; .that 
 on the contrary, they were auxiliary lo the Union ; that they stimulated the 
 national progress j that, in fact, they interpreted the true glory of America ; and 
 that it was especially these modifications of ouirnational life which gave to the 
 Union that certain moral sublimity so long the theme of American politicians. 
 From these propositions we advance to a singular conclusion. It is that the 
 moral veneration of the Union, which gives the key to so much of American 
 history, was peculiarly a sentiment of the South ; while in the North it was noth- 
 ing more than a mere affectation. 
 
 This may sound strange to those who have read American history in the smooth 
 surface of Yankee books ; who remember Webster's apostrophes to the glorious 
 Union, and Everett's silken rhetoric j whose political education has been manu- 
 factured to hand by the newspapers, and clap-traps of Yankee literature about 
 u nullification" and treason. But it is easy of comprehension. The political ideas 
 of the North excluded that of any peculiar moral character about the Union ; 
 the doctrine of State Rights was rejected by them for the prevalent notion 
 that America was a single democracy ; thus, the Union to them was nothing 
 more than a geographical name, entitled to no peculiar claims upon the affections 
 of the people. It was different with the South. The doctrine of State Rights 
 gave to the Union its mor^l dignity ; this doctrine was th^ only real possible 
 source of sentimental attachment to the Union; and this doctrine was the 
 received opinion of the Southern people, and the most marked peculiarity of 
 their politics. The South did not worship the Union in the bas<* spirit of com- 
 mercial idolatry, as a painted machinery to secure tariffs and bounties, and to 
 aggrandize a section. She venerated the Union because she discovered in it a 
 sublime moral principle ; because she regarded it as a peculiar association in 
 •which sovereign States were held by high considerations of good faith ; by the 
 exchanges of equity and comity j by the noble attractions of social order; by 
 the enthused sympathies of a common destiny of power, honour and renown. It 
 was this galaxy which trie South wore upon her "heart, and before the clustered 
 fires of whose glory she worshipped with an adoration almost Oriental. That 
 Union is now dissolved ; that splendid galaxy of stars is no more in the heaven^; 
 and where once it shone, the fierce comet of war has burst, and writes a red 
 history on the azure page. 
 
8 
 
 But Jet this be said by the historian of this war f that the. South loved the 
 Union • dissolved it Unwillingly ; and, though she had had the political admin- 
 istration of it in her. hands during most of its existence, surrendered it without 
 a blot on its fame. "Do not forget/' said a Southern Senator, when Mr. Seward 
 boasted in the United Slates Senate. that the North was about to take control at 
 Washington, a it can never be forgotten-»-it is written on the brightest page of* 
 human history — that we, the slaveholders of the South, took our country in her 
 infancy, and, after ruling her for sixty out of the seventy years of her existence, 
 we shall surrender her to *ou without a stain upon he* honour, boundless in 
 prosperity, incalculable in her strength, the wonder and the admiration of the 
 world.* Time will show what you will make of her; but no time can ever 
 . diminish our glory or your responsibility." 
 
 But there is one conclusive argument which we may apply to the common 
 European opinion, and the half-educated notion of this coimtry that the State 
 institutions of America were schools of provinci§lism and estrangement. If such 
 had been the case, the dissolution of the Union would have found the States 
 that composed it a number of petty principalities opposed to each other, or, at 
 least, diverse and heterogeneous. But this war has found no such thing. It 
 has found the people of Virginia and Tennessee, the people of Missouri and 
 South Carolina entertaining the same political ideas, pursuing a single, common 
 .object in the war, and baptizing it in a common bloodshed on its fields of con- 
 test and carnage. The States of the Southern Confederacy offer to the world 
 the example of its inhabitants as one people, hornogenogus in their social systems, 
 alike in their ideas, and unanimous in their resolves • and the States of the 
 North afford similar illustrations of national unity. The war has found not dis- 
 cordant States, but two distinct nations, in the attitude of belligerents, differing 
 -in blood, in race, in social institutions, in systems of popular instruction, in political 
 education and theories, in ideas, in manners ■ and the whole sharpened by a long 
 and fierce political controversy, that lias arrayed them at last as belligerents, and 
 interposed the gage of armed and bloody contest. . The development of America 
 has been a North and a South • not discordant States, but hostile nations. The 
 present war is not for paltry theories of political parties, or for domestic institu- 
 tions, or for rival administrations, but for the vital ideas gf each belligerent, and 
 the great stakes of national existence. . • 
 
 What have been the ideas' which the North has- developed or illustrated in 
 . this war ? We will answer briefly. 
 
 The Nor-th presents to the world the example of a people corrupted by a 
 
gross material prosperity ; their ideas of government, a low and selfish utilita- 
 rianism; their conceptions of civilization, prosperous railroads, penny news- 
 papers, showy churches. Their own estimates of their civilization never pene- 
 trated beyond the mere surface and convenience of society; never took into 
 account its unseen elements : the public virtue, the public spirit, the conserva- 
 tive principle, the love of order, the reverence of the past, all which go to make * 
 up the*grand idea of human civilization. 
 
 It is amusing to the student of history to hear Mr. Sumner, of Massachusetts, 
 asserting, with scholarly flourishes, that the South is barbarous, because she has 
 no free schools : the sources of that half education in the 3*orth, which nave 
 been nurseries of insolence, irreverence of the past, infidelity in religion, and 
 an itch for every new idea in the mad calendar of social reforms. It is yet 
 more amusing to hear his Senatorial peer — <• the Natick cobbler." When, on 
 the' eve of the downfall of the government at Washington, a Southern Senator 
 depicted»the wealth that the South had poured into the lap of the Union, the 
 elements it had contributed to its civilization, and the virtues it had brought to 
 its adornment, Mr. Wilson, of Massachusetts, had this reply: " Massachusetts 
 has more religious newspapers than all the slaveholding States of the Union." 
 
 The people of the North have never studied politics as a moral science. They 
 have no idea of government as an independent principle of truth, virtue and 
 honour; to them it is merely an engine of material prosperity — a mere auxiliary * 
 appendage to a noisy, clattering world of trade, and steam, and telegraphs. It 
 is this lew commercial sense of government which developed all the old Yankee 
 theories of tariffs, and bounties, aud free farms. 
 
 Indeed, the most fruitful study in American politics is the peculiar material- 
 istic idea of the Yankee. Its developments are various, but all held together 
 by the same-Heading idea: superficial notions of civilization; agrarian theories; 
 the subordination of the principles of government to trade ; mercantile " states- 
 manship];" the exclusion of moral ideas from politics ; the reduction of the whole 
 theory of society to the base measure of commercial 'interests. Such are -some 
 of the developments of the materialistic idea : the last and fullest is the present 
 war. 
 
 This war, on the part of the Yankee, is essentially a war of interest : hence 
 its negation, on his part, of all principles and morals; hence its adoption of that 
 coarse maxim of commercial Casuistry, "the end- justifies the means;" hence its 
 treachery, its arts of bad faith, its "cuteness" on all belligerent questions; 
 hence its atrocities which have debased the rulfcs of civilized warfare to a code 
 
10 
 
 of assassins and brigands. It is true that the North has affected in this war 
 such sentiments as love of the Union, reverence of the American nationality, 
 a romantic attachment to the old flag. But we repeat that the proof that the 
 North has fought for coarse, material interests in this war is the conduct of 
 the war itself. 
 
 "War is horrible ; but it has its laws of order and amelioration. Civilization 
 has kindled the dark cloud of horrours with the vestal observances of honour > 
 and the undying lights of humanity have irradiated its aspects — softened the 
 countenance of the Giant who 
 
 " On the mountain stands,' % 4 
 
 His blood-red tresses deepening in the sun, 
 With death-shot glowing in his fiery hands." 
 
 But where, in this war of the Yankee, shall we find exhibitions of the chivalry 
 and amenity of modern belligerents. A ghostly echo comes shrieking from fields 
 blackened by fire, and scarred and tormented with the endless scourge of the 
 tyrant. The characteristics of the Yankee war are precisely those which arise 
 out of the materialistic idea : treachery dignified as genius, and cruelty set up 
 to gaze as the grandeur of power. The crooked woof of treachery — the scarlet 
 thread of the lie — have Been woven by the Yankee into every part of ihis war. 
 ,It is not necessary to unravel here the whole story of Yankee falsehood. One 
 instance*will suffice. The government which, a't the commencement of hostili- 
 ies, played at the game of conciliation by affecting to arrest on the streets of its 
 capital, Washington, fugitive slaves, and to return them to their masters; which ; 
 in 'the first months of the war, declared that it '"repudiated all designs whatever 
 and wherever imputed to it of disturbing the system of slavery;" that any such 
 •effort would be "unconstitutional;" and that "all the acts of the President in 
 that direction would be prevented by the judicial authority, even though they 
 were assented to by Congress and the people" — for such was the solemn assur- 
 ance of Mr. SeWard's diplomatic circular of 1861; which promised the South 
 " the Constitution as it was," and recited poetrv in Congress entreating South 
 Carolina to return to the bosom of the Union, is to-day found making the boast — i 
 rather we may say indulging the fiendish exultation — that it has Abolitionized 
 every district it has invaded ; that it has forced into military service one hundred 
 thousand blacks, stolen from their masters; that it has forcibly consigned them 
 from peaceful occupations to the perils of the battle-field ; and that it has whetted 
 their ignorant and savage natures with an appetite for the blood of the white 
 
11 • 
 
 mamof the Confederacy. And this stupendous lie is called the genius of Yankee 
 statesmanship, and the world is asked to applaud it ! 
 
 But it is in the atrocious warfare of the enemy that we find the most striking 
 instances of his exclusion of that noble spirituality common to the great con- 
 flicts tff civilized nations, and the most characteristic evidence of the brutal 
 selfishness of his hostilities. The Yankee has never shown mercy in this war 
 and not one touch of refinement from his hand has relieved its horrours. The 
 track of his armies has been marked by the devouring flame, or by the insatiate 
 plunder and horrid orgies of a savage and cowardly foe. The weed-growth of 
 Louisiana, where once flourished the richest plantations of the South; the desert 
 that itretches from the Big Black to the Mississippi, once a beautiful expanse 
 of happy Glomes; the black, mangled belt of territory that, commencing at 
 Harper's Ferry, extends to Fortress Monroe, bound like a ghastly pall with the 
 silver fringe of the Potomac; these are the hideous monuments of partial con- 
 quest which the Yankee has committed to the memory of the world and to the 
 inscriptions of History. "What has been safe in this war from the grasp of his 
 plunder or the touch of his desecration ? In* the districts of the Confederacy 
 where his soldiers have penetrated they have appropriated or destroyed private 
 property ; they have stolen even works of art and ornament ; they have plun- 
 dered churches ; they have desecrated the grave and despoiled the emblems 
 which love has consecrated to honour. And all this has been done according 
 to a peculiar theory of hostilities which makes of war a sensual selfishness, and 
 contemplates its objects as a savage gain of blood and plunder. This is the 
 true and characteristic conception of the Yankee. He is taught by his political 
 •education, by his long training in the crooked paths of thrift, that all the prin- 
 ciples 0/ civilized usage are to be set at naught, when convenience and present 
 policy mterfere with their fulfilment. 
 
 It is in this sense of narrow, materialistic expediency that the Yankee has 
 surrendered his liberties in this war, and proclaimed the enormous doctrine that 
 the Constitution under which he lives, and all his other muniments of liberty, 
 are suspended by the paramount necessity of conquering and despoiling the 
 South. He has carried his commercial politics in the war, and trades his own 
 liberties for the material rewards of an otherwise vain and fruitless conquest. 
 
 But we leave the subject of the Yankee to turn to the other side of the ques^ 
 tion, and inquire what new political ideas the South has developed in this war. 
 Here is an extraordinary blank. In- the new government of the Confederacy 
 we do not discover any statesmanship, any financial genius, any ideas beyond 
 
• 12 
 
 what are copied from the old effete systems that, it was thought, the revolution 
 replaced. There must be some explanation of this absence of new ideas, this 
 barren negation in our revolution. 
 
 By a misfortune, not easily avoided, the new government of the Confederacy 
 fell into the hands of certain prominent partizans, but mediocre politicians, 
 who made a servile copy of* the old* Yankee Constitution ; who had no ideas of 
 political administration higher than the Washington routine; and who, by their 
 ignorance and conceit, have blindfolded and staggered the devolution fmm its 
 commencement. This observation gives the kej to the political history of the 
 Confederacy in this war. A servile copy of old political ideas, an ape of the 
 Washington administration, without genius, without originality, rejecting the 
 counsel's of the intelligent, and living in its own little circle of conceit, the Con- 
 federate government has fallen immeasurably below the occasion of this revolu- 
 tion, and misrepresents alike its spirit and its objects. 
 
 But this weak, negative government of the Confederacy is but the early acci- 
 dent of this revolution; and the people endure the accident of their present 
 rulers merely from patriotic scruples which contemplate. imnidfiiate exigencies. 
 We stand but on the threshold of this revolution, and the curtain falls over a 
 grand future of new ideas. Those who expect that it will terminate with the 
 mere formality of a treaty with the public enemy, and. that we shall then have 
 a plodding future of peace, a repetition of old political ideas and manners, have 
 got their pleasant phUosopy from newspaper articles arid street talk ; t^ey have 
 never read the exalted and invariable lesson of history, that, on commotions as 
 immense as this war — no matter what its particular occasion — there are reared 
 those new political struclures which mark the ages of public progress. If it 
 was true that this war, with its immense expenditures of blood and treasure, 
 was merejy to determine the status of negroes in the South — merely If settle 
 the so-called Slavery . question — there is not an intelligent man in the Con- 
 federacy but would spit upon the sacrifice. If it was true that this terrible war 
 was merely to decide between two political administrations of the same model, 
 then the people of the Confederacy would do right to abandon it. « 
 
 ■ Political novelty will come soon enough : it is the inevitable offspring of such 
 commotions as'this war. We repeat that the Confederacy is now barren of polit- 
 ical ideas, because those who are accidentally its rulers are, without originality 
 or force, copyists of old rotten systems, and the apes of routine ; and because 
 the public mind of the South is now too forcibly engrossed with the public 
 enemy, either to replace their authority or to chastise their excesses. It is under 
 
13 
 
 these peculiar restraints that the Confederacy has produced such little political 
 novelty in this war. 
 
 But the revolution is not yet past. .Those exalted historical inspirations, 
 which, with rapt souls and kindled blood, we read in the printed pages of the 
 past, are this day, with trumpet sound, at our doors. We live in great times; 
 we are in the presence of great events; we stand in the august theatre of a 
 national tragedy. This struggle cannot pass away, until the great ideas, which 
 the public danger alone holds in abeyance, have found a full development and 
 a complete realization ; until the South vindicates her reputation for political 
 science and eliminates from this war a system of r government more ingenious 
 than a Chinese copy of Washington. 
 
 But while we thus reflect upon the intellectual barrenness of this war, we 
 must not for*|t that, while the Confederacy in this time has produced but few 
 new ideas, it has. brought out troops of virtues. In this respect, the moral 
 interest of the war is an endless theme for the historian; and we may be par- 
 doned for leaving our immediate subject to say a few words of those fields of 
 grandeur in wjiich the Confederacy has found compensation for all other 
 short-comings, and stands most conspicuous before the world. 
 
 "We have put into the field soldiers such as the world has seldom seen — men 
 who, half-clothed and half- fed, have, against superiour numbers, won two- thirds 
 of the battles of this war. The material of the Confederate army, in social 
 worth, is simply superiour to all that is related in the military annals of man- 
 kind. 'Men of wealth, men accustomed to the fashions of polite society, men 
 who had devoted their lives to learned professions and political studies, have 
 not hesitated to shoulder their muskets and fight as privates in the ranks with 
 the hard-fisted and uncouth labourer, no less a patriot tnan themselves. Our 
 army presents to the world, perhaps, the only example of theoretical socialism 
 reduced to ^practice it has ever seen, and realizes, at least in respect of defen- 
 sive arms, the philosopher's dream of fraternal and sympathetic equality. 
 
 The hero of this war is the private soldier .* not the officer whose drees is 
 embroidered with lace, and whose name garnishes the^ gazette, but the humble 
 and honest patriot of the South in his dirt-stained and sweat-stained clothes, 
 who toils through pain and hunger and peril; who has no reward but in the 
 satisfaction of good deeds ; who throws his poor, unknown life away at the can? 
 non's mouth, and dies in that single flash of glory. How many of these heroes 
 .have been laid in unmarked ground — the nameless graves of self-devotion 
 But the ground-where they rest is in the sight of Heaven. Nothing ^ kisses 
 
14 
 
 their graves but the sunlight ; nothing mourns fcr them but the sobbing wind ; 
 nothing adorns their dust but the wild flowers that have grown on the bloody 
 crust of the battle field. But not a Southern soldier has fallen in this war 
 without the account of Heaven, and Death makes its registry of the pure and 
 the brave on the silver pages of immortal life. 
 
 It is said that some of our people in this wrar have cringed beneath disaster, 
 and compromised with misfortune. These are exceptions : they may be sor- 
 rowful ones. But in this war the people of the Confederacy, in the mass, have 
 shown a fortitude, an elasticity under reverse, a temperance in victory, a self- 
 negation in misfortune, a heroic, hopeful, patient, enduring, working resolution, 
 which challenge the admiration of the world. It is not only material evils 
 which have been thus endured : the scourge of tyranny, the bitterness of 
 exile, the dregs of poverty. But the most. beautiful circumstance of all is the 
 strange resignation of our people in that worst trial and worst Tigouy of war — 
 the consignment of the living objects of their love to the bloody altars of sacri- 
 fice. These are the real horrours of war, and patriotism has no higher tribute 
 to pay than the brave and uncomplaining endurance of such aeony. 
 
 How have we been resigned in this war to the loss of our loved ones ! How 
 many noble sorrows are in our hearts ! How many skeletons are in our closets ! 
 War may ruin and rifle the homestead ; may scatter as chaff in the wind the 
 property of years; may pronounce the doom of exile— but, all these, are paltry 
 afflictions in comparison witli the bereavement of kindred, whose blood has 
 .been left on the furze of the field and the leaves of frhe forest, and whose 
 uncofhned bones are scattered to the elements. vp 
 
 TTiere is a picture by a British poet* of the miseries of war which has been 
 so touchingiy realiz6d in the experience of the people of this Confederacy that 
 it might be imagined to have been written directly and particularly of the 
 struggle in which we are engage!. The poet describes the distant home of the 
 soldier and its inmates in a night storm, and then takes the imagination to the 
 battle-field, where the same storm is the witness of horrours more terrible than 
 
 the elements : . • 
 
 * 
 
 'Tis a wild night out of doors ; 
 The wind is mad upon the moors, 
 And comes into the rocking town, 
 Stabbing all things, up and down, 
 
 .* Leigh Hunt : Captain Sword and Captain Pen; 
 
And then there is a weeping rain. 
 Huddling 'gainst the window-pane, 
 And good men bless themselves in bed ; 
 The mother brings her infant's head 
 Closer, with a joy like tears, 
 
 And thinks of angels in her prayers \ * 
 
 Then sleeps, with his small hand in hers. 
 
 • 
 Two loving women, lingering yet 
 . Ere the fire is ont, are met, 
 
 Talking sweetly, time beguiled, • 
 
 One of her bridegroom, one her child, 
 
 The bridegroom he. They have received 
 
 Happy letters, more believed 
 
 For public news, and feel the bliss 
 
 The heavenlier on a night like this 
 
 They think him housed, they think him blest. 
 
 Curtain'd in the care of rest, 
 
 Danger distant, all good near ; 
 
 Why hath their "Good Xighti' a teat? 
 
 Beheld him ! By a ditch he lies 
 Clutching the wet earth, his eyes 
 Beginning to be mad. In vain 
 His tongue still thirsts to lick the rain. 
 That mock'd.but now his homeward tears ; 
 z. And ever and anon he rears 
 
 His leg3 and knees with all their strength, 
 And tiren as strongly thrusts at length. 
 Raised, or stretch'd, he cannot bear 
 The wound that girds him, weltering there; 
 And "Water!" he cries, with moonward stare. 
 '■* * * * * * 
 
 His nails are in earth, Lis eyes in air, 
 And "Water!" he crieth. ' 
 
 The virtues and passions of the South in this war are not idle sentinieutali.-ms 
 They are the precursors of new and illustrious ideas — the sure indications of a 
 new political growth. In the warmth of such passions arc born noble and robust 
 ideas. Thus we await the development of this war in ideas, in political struc- 
 tures, in laws which wii honour it, and for which we shall not unduly pay the 
 dreadful price of blood. 
 
16 
 
 It is impossible that a nation should have suffered as the South has in this 
 struggle ; should have adorned itself with such sacrifices j should have illustrated 
 such virtues, to relapse, at the end, into the old routine of its political. existence. 
 "We have not poured out our tears — we have not made a monument of broken 
 hearts — weTiave not kneaded the ground with human flesh merely for the poor 
 negative of a peace, with naught higher or better than things of the past. Not 
 so does nature recompense the martyrdom of individuals or of nations : it 
 pronounces the triumph of resurrection. 
 
 We believe that a new name is to be inscribed in the pantheon of history; 
 not that of an old idolatry. All now is ruin and confusion, but from the scat- 
 tered elements will arise a new spirit of beauty and order. All now is dark, but 
 the cloud will break, and in its purple gates will stand the risen Sun. 
 
or s 
 
 THE RIVAL ADMINISTRATIONS: 
 
 x Peccaid nocntium nol.a esse oporttt et'ezpedit. — Justinian. 
 
 i . 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 I.j." Want of Capacity*? in the Confederate Administration. 
 II. Jefferson Davis — Early Prognostications of the War. 
 in. The Confederate Finances. 
 
 JV. The Military Situation in the Confederacy— Bernagogueisin. 
 V. Lincoln's "Peace" Proclamation. 
 VI. The Slavery. Question in the War. 
 VII. HiBtory of the " Retaliation " Policr. 
 VIII. The Last Hope. 
 
 I NOTICES OF THE PRESS. 
 
 \ Fruni the Axigmta Constitutionalist.} 
 We bare read' it with great interest, and while we cannot give our assent to all <.f the a.uth_ 
 views, yet we cannot but feel that the honest spirit of criticism which characterizes it wirTbe 
 producHre of good to the cause of the country. We commend the pamphlet to the reading- 
 public as essentially worthy of attention. 
 
 [ From the Ckwrtesfon Mercury,'] 
 This is the title of a tart and well-written production, by E. A. Pollard, author of « Black 
 Diamonds." The pamphlet is a scathing review of the enormities of the one administration as 
 contrasted with the shortcomings of the other. 
 
 \ From itif Atlanta Register,"] 
 That Mr, Davis, with the great mass of his countrymen, failed <o foresee the result^ ten- 
 dencies, magnitude, duration, and necessary adjuncts of this war^cannot be denied. On one 
 Occasion,, at least,in an official paper, the President confessed that he had not anticipated many 
 necessities arising from a conflict that had assumed a sliape eo extraordinary in all its needful 
 appliances. Of many of thevfacts stated in Mr. Pollard's pamphlet there can be no question. 
 
 [From the Sfoutgomery JJalJ.\ 
 
 Mr. Pollard i- one of the ablest writer" in the Oouderacy. His late publication is a scathing 
 
 review <»f the shortcomings of the Executive Department of the Government, and while some 
 
 may dis.ent Iroui the harshness of his criticism, none will deny the force and point with which 
 
 Mr. Pollard diseusse- the question. His pamphlet is! destined to have an extensive circulation. 
 
 [From the CJmttanooga Resell'] 
 a spirited and caustic review of the manner in which our Government an'airs have been 
 managed and mismanaged from the commencement of the rebellion up to the present time. 
 
 [ From th« Ohrtrleuton Courier. ] 
 This in a pamphlet lately issued from the pointed pen of E. A. Pollard, author of '^Black 
 Diamonds," " First Year of the War," &-. Many readers will dissent from some of Mr. Pol- 
 lard's views, but none will deny hi* abilities or the relevance of hi.- conclusions to his premies 
 if once admitted or -established. .No one will go to sleep over this pamphlet— unless its reading 
 follows a good do-e of atfodyne. 
 
 1 I'yoin tli>: South Oarolmfaiu] , 
 Prejudiced or m>i. the author tells the truth a< he believes it; and while some mny object tn 
 the enunciation of opinions, however well grounded, at a period when they can do little practi- 
 cal good at home or abroad, we must, at the same time, admit that his arguments are cogent and 
 many of his facts are irrefutable. * * * * Few, however, will swallow a pill that is not 
 sugar-coated without making wry faces. 
 
 Sold at all the Bookstore-. Pri-e. One Dollar. Sent to any part of the tJoni'ederacv. post- 
 paid, for One Dollar. Trade Order Fberally discounted. 
 
 Address, PBOP: v rrt'OR <»F CONFEDERATE READING ROOM, 
 
 Richmond, Ya. 
 
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