“Our rights as a sovereign State under the Constitution.”
“Your people, then, do not realize that, having rebelled from the Constitution, and abjured all rights under it, they can not, with a very good grace, after failing to destroy it, come back and demand the right to enjoy it.”
“Why, of course, the Constitution stands. We only went out from under it. It would be strange, if, when we come back under it, we should find its protecting power gone.”
“You do not regard any of your rights, then, as destroyed or imperiled by your rebellion?”
“Why should they be? The right to hold slaves has been destroyed by the military authorities; but, unless the Constitution is destroyed, we have all the powers under it we ever had.”
And, in short, they consider that they have the absolute right to State Governments, the old suffrage, and, in a word, the old status on everything, slavery only excepted. Yet, withal, there is a curious submissiveness about them, whenever there is talk of the power of the conquerors. The simple truth is, they stand ready to claim everything, if permitted, and to accept anything, if required.
In the evening a stroll through the streets gave some other phases of the city life. As has been said, the place was full of returning rebel soldiers. At every corner their friends, and particularly their female acquaintances, were greeting them with a warmth that seemed in nowise tempered by contempt for their lack of success. Many a stalwart fellow, in coarse gray, was fairly surrounded on the sidewalk by a bevy of his fair friends; and if without an arm or a leg, so much the better—the compliments would rain upon him till the blushes would show upon his embrowned cheeks, and he was fairly convinced that he had taken the most gallant and manly course in the world.
Very pretty it was, nevertheless, if one could only forget what these men had been doing, to see the warmth of their welcome home; to watch little children clinging to the knees of papas they had almost forgotten; to observe wives promenading proudly with husbands they had not seen for years; to notice the delighted gathering of family groups around some chair in the piazza, long vacant, but filled again by a crippled soldier, home from the wars, with only his wounds and his glory for his pay.
The bearing of the rebel soldiers was unexceptionable. My companion was a staff officer, in undress uniform, and without arms. At times, for squares, there would be no sentry in sight; so that it was not the mere vulgar fear of immediate arrest that made them respectful. Occasionally I observed them look curiously and rather admiringly at the elegant texture and easy fit of the uniform, so unlike their own; often they straightened up to a thorough soldierly bearing, and even sometimes respectfully saluted as they passed.