But far away another line is stretching dark and long,
Another flag is floating free where armed legions throng;
Another war-cry’s on the air, as wakes the martial drum,
And onward still, in serried ranks, the Southern soldiers come.
George Herbert Sass
Beginning of Seven Days’ Battle around Richmond, 1862
June Twenty-Sixth
A PROPHECY, 1869
The close of the Civil War found the conquering States so nearly equally divided between the Radical and Conservative parties, that if the South should be restored to her relative might in the Union, the balance would be thrown at once in favor of the Conservatives. The problem therefore assumed a mathematical form, and demanded that the South should not reinforce the Conservatives of the North. This could be prevented only in two ways, viz.; either by keeping the South out of the Union entirely or by placing the political power there in the hands of a minority. To adopt one or the other of these expedients was a party necessity. This is the whole key to Reconstruction; and fifty years hence no man living will be found to deny it.
Judge J. Fairfax McLaughlin
(In the “Southern Metropolis,” June 26, 1869)
June Twenty-Seventh
The duties exacted of us by civilization and Christianity are not less obligatory in the country of our enemy than in our own.