Twenty Years of Congress, Volume 2 / From Lincoln to Garfield, with a Review of the Events Which Led to the Political Revolution of 1860

by James Gillespie Blaine

In fact, 1864-65 was one continuous campaign. The armies of the Union did not go into winter-quarters to the extent of abandoning or suspending operations. They felt that it was in their power to bring the struggle to an end at once, and they pressed forward with prodigious vigor and with complete success. General Grant with his characteristic energy insisted that "active and continuous operations of all the troops that could be brought into the field regardless of season and weather were necessary to a speedy termination of the war." He had seen, as he expressed it in his own terse, quaint language, that "the armies of the East and the West had been acting independently and without concert, like a balky team, no two of them ever pulling together." Under his direction the forces of the Union, however distant from each other, were brought into harmonious co-operation and with the happiest results. The discipline of the Union army was never so fine, its vigor was never so great, its spirit was never so high, as at the close of that terrible campaign which under Grant's command in the East began at the Wilderness and ended with Lee's surrender, and which under Sherman's command in the West began with the march towards Atlanta, and closed with the complete conquest of Georgia and the Carolinas.

A grave moral responsibility rests upon those who continue a contest of arms after it is made clear that there is no longer a possibility of success. However far the laws of war may justify a belligerent in deceiving an enemy, the laws of honorable and humane dealing are violated with one's own partisans when a brave and confiding soldiery are led into a fight known by their commanders to be hopeless. Early in January, 1865, Jefferson Davis indicated the desire of the Confederate authorities to negotiate with the National Government for the arrangement of the terms of peace, and as a result the famous conference was held at Fortress Monroe. This step was taken by Mr. Davis because he saw that further effort on the part of the Confederates must be utterly futile. When he failed at this conference to secure any recognition of his government, he spitefully turned to the prolongation of the struggle. Every life destroyed in the conflict thereafter was needless slaughter, and the blood of the victims cries out against the Confederate Government for compelling the sacrifice.

When at last through sheer exhaustion the Confederate Armies ceased resistance and surrendered, they did so on precisely the same terms that had been offered by the Government of the Union three months before. In the interim the Confederate leaders had been deluding their people with the pretense that the "Lincoln Government" had outraged the South in refusing to recognize Confederate Nationality even long enough to treat with it for peace. "Nothing beyond this," exclaimed Mr. Robert M. T. Hunter in a speech delivered at a meeting in Richmond held immediately after the Peace Conference to which he had been one of the commissioners,—"Nothing beyond this is needed to stir the blood of Southern men." In the course of his inflammatory address Mr. Hunter made the naïve confession: "If our people exhibit the proper spirit they will bring forth the deserters from their caves; and the skulkers, who are avoiding the perils of the field, will go forth to share the dangers of their countrymen." The "skulkers" and "deserters" referred to were no doubt brave men who, having fought as long as there was hope, were not ambitious to sacrifice their lives to carry on the shameless bravado of the political leaders of the Rebellion.

Mr. Hunter spoke with singular intemperance of tone for one who was usually cool, guarded, and conservative. He was followed by the Mephistopheles of the Rebellion, the brilliant, learned, sinister Secretary of State, Judah P. Benjamin. He spoke as one who felt that he had the alias of an English subject for shelter, or possibly the Spanish flag for protection, when the worst should come, and thus he might continue to play the part of Confederate citizen so long as it favored his ambition and his fortune. He delivered a speech full of desperate suggestion—so desperate indeed that it re-acted and injured the cause for which he was demanding harsh sacrifices on the part of others. He urged upon his hearers that the States of the Confederacy had nearly seven hundred thousand male slaves of the age for military service. He gave the assurance that if freedom should be conceded to these men they would fight in aid of the Rebellion. Besides advocating a guaranty of emancipation to all these black men,—for the right to keep whom in slavery the war had been undertaken,—Mr. Benjamin urged that every bale of cotton, every hogshead of tobacco, every pound of bacon, every barrel of flour, should be seized for the benefit of the common cause.

Happily Mr. Benjamin went too far. His over-zeal had tempted him to prove too much. The Southern people who had desired to build up a slave empire, and who despised the negro as a freeman, were asked by Mr. Benjamin to surrender this cherished project, and join with him in the ignoble design of founding a confederacy whose corner-stone should rest on hatred of the Northern States, and whose one achievement should be the revival and extension of English commercial power on this continent. When the end came, Mr. Benjamin did not share the disasters and sacrifices with the sincere and earnest men whom he had done so much to mislead, and to whom he was bound in an especial manner by the tie which unites the victims of a common calamity. Instead of this magnanimous course which would in part have redeemed his wrong-doing, Mr. Benjamin took quick refuge under the flag to whose allegiance he was born. He left America with the full consciousness that to the measure of his ability, which was great, he had inflicted injury upon the country which had sheltered and educated him, and which had opened to him the opportunity for that large personal influence which he had used so discreditably to himself and so disastrously to the cause he espoused.

Mr. Benjamin became a resident of London and subsequently won distinction at the English Bar—rising to the eminence of Queen's counsel. His ability and learning were everywhere recognized, but it was at the same time admitted that he owed much of his success to the sympathy and the support of that preponderating class among British merchants who cordially wished and worked for our destruction,—who, covertly throughout the entire civil conflict, and openly where safe opportunity was presented, did all in their power to embarrass and injure the Union. If Mr. Benjamin had been loyal, and had honorably observed the special oath which he had taken to maintain and defend the Constitution, he might in vain have sought the patronage of that large number of Englishmen who enriched him with generous retainers. No one grudged to Mr. Benjamin the wages of his professional work, the reward of ability and industry; but the manner in which he was lauded into notoriety in London, the effort constantly made to lionize and to aggrandize him, were conspicuous demonstrations of hatred to our Government, and were significant expressions of regret that Mr. Benjamin's treason had not been successful. Those whom he served either in the Confederacy or in England in his efforts to destroy the American Union may eulogize him according to his work; but every citizen of the Great Republic, whose loyalty was unswerving, will regard Mr. Benjamin as a foe in whom malignity was unrelieved by a single trace of magnanimity.

The Confederates had failed in war, but their leaders had not the moral courage to accept the only practicable peace. Their subsequent course in Congress, in the Cabinet, and in the field, exposed in very striking outline the strong points and the weak points of Southern character. It exhibited Southern men as possessed of the utmost physical courage—often carried indeed to foolish audacity. It exhibited them at the same time as singularly deficient in the attribute of moral courage. When the Southern leaders knew the Confederate cause to be hopeless not a single man among them displayed sufficient heroism to brave public opinion with the declaration of his honest belief. The absolute suppression of free discussion which had long prevailed in the South, the frequent murder of those who attempted to express an unpopular opinion however honestly entertained, had deprived brave men of every trait of that higher form of courage which has given immortality of fame to the moral heroes of the world.

Not individually alone but in combined action this weak trait of Southern character was made manifest. Only a month before the time when the Confederacy was in ruins and the members of its Congress were fugitives from its Capital, they united in an inflammatory address to the people of the South, urging them to continue the contest. They made assertions and employed arguments which as men of intelligence they could not themselves believe and accept. They strove by exciting evil passions and blind animosities to hurl the soldiers of the Confederacy once more into a desperate fight with all its suffering and with certain defeat. In this address, which was the unanimous vote of the Confederate Senate and the Confederate House of Representatives, the people were told that if they failed in the war, "the Southern States would be held as conquered provinces by the despotic government at Washington;" that they "would be kept in subjugation by the stern hand of military power as Venice and Lombardy have been held by Austria, as Poland is held by the Russian Czar." A still more terrible fate was foretold. "Not only," continued the address, "would we be deprived of every political franchise dear to freemen, but socially we would be degraded to the level of slaves. . . . Not only would the property and estates of vanquished rebels be confiscated, but they would be divided and distributed among our African bondsmen."

Even the extravagance and absurdity of the foregoing declarations were outdone in other parts of the address. These senators and representatives—not ignorant men themselves—presumed so far upon the ignorance of their constituents as to assure them that "our enemies with a boastful insolence unparalleled in the history of modern civilization have threatened not only our subjugation, but some of them have announced their determination if successful in this struggle to deport our entire white population, and supplant it with a new population drawn from their own territory and from European countries. . . . Think of it! That we the descendants of a brave ancestry who wrested from a powerful nation by force of arms the country which we inhabit—bequeathed to us by them, and upon which we have been born and reared; that we should be uprooted from it and an alien population planted in our stead is a thought that should inspire us with undying hostility to an enemy base enough to have conceived it."

The white population of the eleven Confederate States was at that time between five and six millions. Of course no man who signed the address believed its statements. No one believed that the Government of the United States or the loyal people of the North were so inhuman and so unpatriotic as to advocate the deportation of this vast population, or so foolish as to think that such a task would be practicable even if it were desirable. The address was read in the North immediately after it was issued, and created a mingled feeling of astonishment, amusement, and sorrow. The severest comment made upon it was the remark of a Republican representative in Congress who had a most kindly feeling for the men of the South—that "the deportation for life of the men who signed and issued the libel would not only be a just punishment for the offense, but would be an undoubted advantage to both North and South." The close of the address was in harmony with its opening, and contained an argument which to some minds relieved the whole document from wickedness by making it ludicrous. Its last words insisted that "failure makes us vassals of an arrogant people—secretly if not openly hated by the most enlightened and elevated portions of mankind. Success records us forever in letters of light upon one of the most glorious pages of history. Failure will compel us to drink the cup of humiliation even to the bitter dregs of having the history of our struggle written by New-England historians."