"I am very glad, sir, that you have been entirely frank with me," said the stranger, "and I fully appreciate your feelings. I suspect that you do not think that a strongly centralized government in any contingency is the least oppressive form of government?"
"Assuredly not, sir. Nature has established a diversity of climates, interests and habits in the extensive territories embraced by the Federal government. We cannot assimilate these differences by legislation. We cannot conquer nature. Other differences have been introduced by human laws and adventitious circumstances, very difficult, if not impossible to be adjusted by Federal legislation, hence the necessity of local legislatures with adequate powers, and a general government with its appropriate powers."
"I presume, sir," said the stranger, "that you cannot conscientiously support the reconstruction measures of Congress and the president?"
"I cannot and will not, sir," responded Colonel Seymour with emphasis; "and if you were advertant to that point of time in the history of our late war when, from sheer exhaustion, the South laid down its arms, you would not ask the question. There were hundreds of thousands of patriotic men in the North, who, upon the question of the emancipation of the negro, concurred in its propriety, yea, its necessity, but who denounced those reactionary measures that were crystalized and enforced with cruelty against the South. In our judgment these measures were not only extra-hazardous, but inherently oppressive. It would have been a pernicious power in the hands of an intelligent, conservative, law-abiding people, but most deadly in the hands of ignorant, unscrupulous and truculent officials. You must remember that the South, in a metaphorical sense, was an immense area sown in grain ready to be harvested, with its hedges trampled under foot and destroyed, and inviting cattle and swine to enter and devour. The herds came greedily through every gap, and like the wild beasts upon our western prairies, depastured and consumed almost the whole."
"How wonderfully recuperative have been the energies of your people sir," interrupted the stranger.
"Yes, but will you allow me to proceed?" replied the Colonel; "We believed that when the war ended, the people of the South relying upon the pledges made by the union generals in the field before the armies were disbanded; on the negotiations preceding the surrender; on the proclamation of President Lincoln; and the publications of the press; as well as upon the terms actually agreed on between Grant and Lee, and Johnson and Sherman, at the time of the capitulation of the Confederate armies; that when resistence to federal authority ceased, and the supremacy of the constitution of the United States was acknowledged; and especially after the ordinances of secession were repealed, and an amendment to the constitution, abolishing slavery wherever it existed, was ratified by the legislatures of the insurrectionary states; that a full and complete restoration of the southern states to their former position of equal states would at once take place; and after the exhaustion of such a war they hailed the return of peace with satisfaction; they acknowledged defeat; accepted the situation, and went to work to rebuild their waste places and to cultivate their crops. The men who composed the union armies, found on their return home, a healthy, prosperous, peaceable and well organized society; while the government with a prodigal hand freely distributed pay, pensions, and bounties. It was not so in the south; society here was disorganized; the strain upon the people to supply the armies in the fields had exhausted their resources; labor was absolutely demoralized; the negroes being freed, in their ignorance and delusion were not slow to understand their changed condition, and became aggressive, riotous and lawless. Under such circumstances it was impossible to restore harmony in the civil government without the utmost confusion; yet so earnestly did our people struggle to return to their allegiance and thus entitle them to the protection which had been promised, that from the day of the surrender of the Confederate army, not a gun has been fired; no hostile hand has been uplifted against the authority of the United States, but before breathing time even was allowed, a set of harpies, many of whom had shirked the dangers of the battle field, pounced down upon our people to ravage, plunder, and destroy. All remonstrances, entreaties, resistances were stifled by the cry of treason and disloyalty and by the hollow pretence that the plunderers were persecuted because of their loyalty to the Union. A system has grown up in the South with obstinacy, whereby great protected monopolies are fostered at the expense of its agricultural labor; then follow the series of offensive measures known as the reconstruction acts; but one further observation sir, and I have done. The English people had no just conception of the oppressions want only inflicted upon the South; of the insolence and rapacity of the carpet-baggers and freedmen who were made our masters."
There was quite an interval before the stranger replied.
"Your address sir has been a revelation indeed; it is a lesson of great educational value and I sincerely hope I may hear you again. Would you care to present your views in writing?"
The Colonel without any suggestion of evil said to the stranger. That possibly at some future day he might find the leisure to do so.
"And now you must allow me to thank you, before leaving, for the courtesy you have shown. I shall take pleasure in reporting this interview."