known. Meanwhile the culture of rice and sugar will have fully revived, and become enormously profitable. Nor will planting alone flourish. Burned cities and plantation-buildings must be restored, new towns and villages will spring up, old losses must be repaired, and a thousand 'new wants supplied. Trade, manufactures, the mechanic arts, all are invited to share in this teeming activity.

1

Particular location the emigrant must select for himself, according to his own judgment, tastes, and means. Just now I should not advise Northern men to settle far back from the main routes of travel, unless they go in communities, purchasing and dividing large plantations, and forming societies independent of any hostile sentiment that may be shown by the native inhabitants. But I trust that in a year or two all danger of discomfort or disturbance arising from this source will have mostly passed by.

The loyalty of the people is generally of a negative sort: it is simply disloyalty subdued. They submit to the power which has mastered them, but they do not love it; nor is it reasonable to expect that they should. Many of them lately in rebellion, are, I think, honestly convinced that secession was a great mistake, and that the preservation of the Union, even with the loss of slavery, is better for them than any such separate government as that of which they had a bitter taste. they do not feel much affection for the hand which corrected their error. They acquiesce quietly in what cannot be helped, and sincerely desire to make the best of their altered circum

stances.

Yet

There is another class which would still be glad to dismember the country, and whose hatred of the government is radical and intense. But this class is small.

The poor whites may be divided into three classes: those who, to their hatred of the negro, join a hatred of the government that has set him free; those who associate with the negro, and care nothing for any government; and those who, cherishing more or less Union sentiment, rejoice to see the old aristocracy overthrown.

Except in certain localities, like East Tennessee, positive unconditional Union men are an exceedingly small minority. But they are a leaven which, properly encouraged, should leaven the whole lump of Southern society. Upon the close of hostilities, these men who, for near five years suffered unrelenting persecution, rose temporarily to a position of influence which their conduct had earned. Secession saw with dismay that to this class the first place in the future government of the country rightfully belonged. Their old neighbors, who had so long done evil to them continually, or given them only dark looks, now shrank sullenly out of their sight, or openly courted their smiles. A professed Union sentiment blossomed everywhere; lives, that had all along been thistles, now bore a plentiful harvest of figs. This was a hopeful state of things. It is better, as an example to a community, that goodness should receive insincere homage, than none at all; and that men should assume a virtue if they have it not. But as soon as it was seen that the muttering thunder-cloud of retribution was passing by with nothing but sound, and that loyal men were not to have the first, nor even the second or third or fourth place, in the government of the lately rebellious States, they sank to their former position. What is needed now is to cause this class, and the principles they represent, to be permanently respected.

The mere utterance of disloyal sentiments need not alarm any one. It is often sincere ; but it is sometimes mere cant, easily kept in vogue, by newspapers and politicians, among a people who delight in vehement and minatory talk, for the mere talk's sake.

Of another armed rebellion not the least apprehension need be entertained. The South has had enough of war for a long time to come; it has supped full of horrors. The habiliments of mourning, which one sees everywhere in its towns and cities, will cast their dark shadow upon any future attempt at secession, long after they have been put away in the silent wardrobes of the past. Only in the case of a foreign war might we expect to see a party of malignant malcontents go

over to the side of the enemy. They would doubtless endeavor to drag their States with them, but they would not succeed. Fortunately those who are still so anxious to see the old issue fought out, are not themselves fighting men, and are dangerous only with their tongues.

Of unarmed rebellion, of continued sectional strife, stirred up by Southern politicians, there exists very great danger. Their aims are distinct, and they command the sympathy of the Southern people. To obtain the exclusive control of the freedmen, and to make such laws for them as shall embody the prejudices of a late slave-holding society; to govern not only their own States, but to regain their forfeited leadership in the affairs of the nation; to effect the repudiation of the national debt, or to get the Confederate debt and the Rebel State debts assumed by the whole country; to secure payment for their slaves, and for all injuries and losses occasioned by the war; these are among the chief designs of a class who will pursue them with what recklessness and persistency we know.

How to prevent them from agitating the nation in the future as in the past, and from destroying its prosperity, is become the most serious of questions. If you succeed in capturing an antagonist who has made a murderous assault upon you, common sense, and a regard for your own safety and the peace of society, require at least that his weapons, or the power of using them, should be taken from him. These perilous schemes are the present weapons of the nation's conquered enemy; and does not prudent statesmanship demand that they should be laid forever at rest before he walks again at large in the pride of his power?

All that just and good men can ask, is this security. Vindictiveness, or a wish to hold the rebellious States under an iron rule, should have no place in our hearts. But if the blood of our brothers was shed in a righteous cause, if for four years we poured out lives and treasures to purchase a reality, and no mere mockery and shadow,-let us honor our brothers and the cause by seeing that reality established. If treason is a crime, surely it can receive no more fitting or merciful

SOUTHERN PLAN OF RECONSTRUCTION.

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punishment than to be deprived of its power to do more mischief. Let peace, founded upon true principles, be the only retribution we demand. Let justice be our vengeance.

It was my original intention to speak of the various schemes of reconstruction claiming the consideration of the country. But they have become too numerous, and are generally too well known, to be detailed here. The Southern plan is simple; it is this: that the States, lately so eager to destroy the Union, are now entitled to all their former rights and privileges in that Union. Their haste to withdraw their representatives from Congress, is more than equalled by their anxiety to get them back in their seats. They consider it hard that, at the end of the most stupendous rebellion and the bloodiest civil war that ever shook the planet, they cannot quietly slip back in their places, and, the sword having failed, take up once more the sceptre of political power they so rashly flung down. Often, in conversation with candid Southern men, impatient for this result, I was able to convince them that it was hardly to be expected, that the government, emerging victorious from the dust of such a struggle, and finding its foot on that sceptre, should take it off with very great alacrity. And they were forced to acknowledge that, had the South proved victorious, its enemies would not have escaped so easily.

This plan does not tolerate the impediment of any Congressional test oath. When I said to my Southern friends that I should be glad to see those representatives, who could take the test oath, admitted to Congress, this was the usual reply:

"We would not vote for such men. We had rather have no representatives at all. We want representatives to represent us, and no man represents us who can take your test oath. We are Rebels, if you choose to call us so, and only a good Rebel can properly represent us."

This is the strongest argument I have heard against the admission of loyal Southern members to Congress. And if the white masses of the lately rebellious States are alone, and

indiscriminately, to be recognized as the people of those States, it is certainly a valid argument.

"It is enough," they maintained, "that a representative in Congress takes the ordinary oath to support the government; that is a sufficient test of his loyalty; "-forgetting that, at the outbreak of the rebellion, this proved no test at all.

Such is the Southern plan of reconstruction. Opposed to it is the plan on which I believe a majority of the people of the loyal States are agreed, namely, that certain guaranties of future national tranquillity should be required of those who have caused so great a national convulsion. But as to what those guaranties should be, opinions are divided, and a hundred conflicting measures are proposed for the settlement of the difficulty.

For my own part, I see but one plain rule by which our troubles can be finally and satisfactorily adjusted; and that is, the enactment of simple justice for all men. Anything that falls short of this falls short of the solution of the problem.

The "Civil Rights Bill,"-enacted since the greater portion of these pages were written, is a step in the direction in which this country is inevitably moving. The principles of the Declaration of Independence, supposed to be our startingpoint in history, are in reality the goal towards which we are tending. Far in advance of our actual civilization, the pioneers of the Republic set up those shining pillars. Not until all men are equal before the law, and none is hindered from rising or from sinking by any impediment which does not exist in his own constitution and private circumstances, will that goal be reached.

Soon or late the next step is surely coming. That step is universal suffrage. It may be wise to make some moral or intellectual qualification a test of a man's fitness for the franchise; but anything which does not apply alike to all classes, and which all are not invited to attain, is inconsistent with the spirit of American nationality.

But will the Southern people ever submit to negro suffrage? They will submit to it quite as willingly as they submitted to