To judge correctly of the magnitudes of these immolations, these crimes, history must wait for a calmer period, when prejudice shall have relaxed its hold upon the understanding, and when time shall have rolled up its accumulated materials of accusation and denial, of proof and exoneration. At present we can form some idea of their designs, and the degree of the implacability of their souls, from the evidence already placed before us, as we measure inaccessible heights by the awful shadows which they project.
Pity appears to have been with them only a vain, fleeting emotion, if the soul was disturbed at all; and whenever an act of humanity was displayed, there seems to have been the secret motive of gain at work. In defining the natural sentiments of pity, they would have declared them the illusions of the imagination.
The brutalizing scenes of Slavery had modified and affected their natural feelings, as the gladiatorial combats and exposures of the Christians to the attacks of infuriated wild beasts had inspired the vile populace of Rome with the love of blood and cruelty.
When these men, with sonorous rhetoric, proclaimed themselves as the guiding minds of the republic, the patrons, the judges of the correct ideas and principles of civilization,—when they arrogated to themselves the appearance of the wisdom of Lacedæmon with the politeness of Athens,—they forgot or despised those cardinal virtues of society, “justice and truth—these are the first duties of man; humanity, country—these his first affections.”
XXIV.
“I fear,” writes the rebel War Clerk, observing from his secure position in the war office, “I fear this government in future times will be denounced as a cabal of bandits and outlaws, making and executing the most despotic decrees.”
Whether this system of the reduction of prisoners was devised by the executive, or his immediate advisers, time may reveal. But of this we may remain positive, that the crime belongs to that little faction of Breckinridge Democrats who ruled the Confederacy as they pleased, and of which Davis was the recognized leader. Wirz was only the De Vargas and Winder the Alva of the arranged system. Neither is there any doubt that the power of affording relief was clearly within the control of the executive. This power was not withheld from want of audacity, for the man who dared place in power, in spite of remonstrance, men who jeopardized the existence of the Confederacy, and who openly disgraced its honor, certainly had sufficient courage to perform a common act of humanity, and relieve the sufferings of tortured prisoners, if such had been his inclination.
No; there was a system, and “systems are brutal forces.” “What are your laws and theories,” said Danton, brutally, to Gensonné, “when the only law is to triumph, and the sole theory for the nation is the theory of existence.”—“Give a man power of doing what he pleases with impunity, you extinguish his fear, and consequently overturn in him one of the great pillars of morality. This, too, we find confirmed by matter of fact. How many hopeful heirs-apparent to grand empires, when in possession of them, have become such monsters of lust and cruelty as are a reproach to human nature!”—“Ambition brings to men dissimulation, perfidy, the art of feigning the language and sentiments which lay at the bottom of the heart; of measuring their hate and their friendship only by their interests and circumstances; and above all, the perfidious science of composing their features, rather than correct and govern their principles.”
The wills of bad men are their laws, and brute strength their logic.