“Surrender—though he said to me the other day, when he came to see me here, ‘For myself, I intend to die sword in hand.’”
I could not refrain from a sentiment of profound gloom, as I listened to these sombre predictions. It seemed incredible that they could be well founded, but I had more than once had an opportunity to remark the extraordinary prescience of the remarkable man with whom I conversed.
“You draw a black picture of the future,” I said. “And the South seems moving to and fro, on the crust of a volcano.”
“No metaphor could be more just.”
“And what will be the result of the war?”
“That is easy to reply to. Political slavery, negro suffrage, and the bayonet, until the new leaven works.”
“The new leaven?”
“The conviction that democratic government is a failure.”
“And then—?”
“An emperor, or dictator—call him what you will. The main fact is, that he will rule the country by the bayonet—North and South impartially.”