With all that was around us—the destruction of the "Army of Northern Virginia," and certain defeat of the Confederacy as the result—no one dreamed of what has followed. The fanaticism that has influenced the policy of the Government, to treat subject States, whose citizens had been permitted to take an oath of allegiance, accepted them as such, and promised to give them the benefit of laws protecting person, property and religion, as the dominant party in the United States has done—exceeds belief.
To place the government of the States absolutely in the hands of its former slaves, and call their "acts" "laws;" to denounce the slightest effort to assert the white vote, even under the laws, treason; and, finally, force the unwilling United States soldier to use his bayonet to sustain the grossest outrages of law and decency against men of his own color and race! This has gone on until, lost in wonder as to what is to come next, the southern white man watches events, as a tide that is gradually rising and spreading, and from which he sees no avenue of escape, and must, unless an intervention almost miraculous takes place, soon sweep him away.