THE DIFFICULT FEATURES OF THE SITUATION.

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vast and sudden at once. All history and logic protested against it; but the Government was inexorable. The Southern people submitted, as a whole. They had the chief miseries to bear, the principal sacrifices to make, and must be consid ered as having done high honor to themselves, to the AngloAmerican race and to human nature.

The most disagreeable features of the situation for the Southern whites continued from seven to ten years in the different States, according to their progress in political "Reconstruction." At first it was a general military occupation, during which civil government was gradually organized under the supervision of intelligent army officers. Their sense of justice and sympathy for misfortune softened some of the harsher features of the situation, for the time. As soon as possible, military rule ceased and local government was conducted by the classes considered loyal to the General Government. These included a small minority of the Southern whites; Northern people newly settled in the South; officials of the General Government; and, soon, of the new citizens of African descent.

All these classes had interests more or less antagonistic to those of the great body of the Southern whites who had formed the ruling class before, and during, the war. The true Southron inevitably felt more or less contempt, aversion and hostility to those whom he regarded as the usurpers of his rights. Many of influence among these new rulers were neither very wise nor very virtuous, and sometimes their legislation and finance were really an outrage on the general public. Yet, acting under Federal and Congressional inspiration, they gave the necessary new cast to Southern institutions and forms of government by the adoption and inauguration of new State Constitutions. The colored race came into power under the guidance of Federal officers, of the Freedman's Bureau, and of Northern teachers and settlers.

It was natural that many unwise things should be done by

these inexperienced rulers and that the people of the South should feel much of secret sorrow, shame and rage, if it was not openly expressed. In general, they endured what could not be helped in silence and waited for better days. Some scenes of violence occurred, some murders were committed, and ill-feeling, though generally suppressed in its more violent forms, rendered all parties uncomfortable and apprehensive; yet, on the whole, the Southern people endured with very commendable patience and self-control. It was the most humiliating, painful and difficult period for them. Yet it soon passed, and various experiences taught them that there was more hope for them in their own land, with all these miseries, than anywhere else. Some, at the close of the war, believed that they could make a more endurable future in Mexico, South America and other foreign lands than in their desolated and ruined country. Some years of experience, however, showed them that nothing was to be gained and much was to be lost by these self-expatriations, and no general emigration was organized. In the course of years most of these emigrants returned and accommodated themselves cheerfully to the new situation.

At the close of the war, and for some time after, these distressing features of the situation predominated. Many a matron, accustomed to superintend a large household of servants, but unfamiliar with manual labor, was reduced to the necessity of caring for her family unaided. To unusual toil was added the unskillfulness of the beginner, adding doubly to the physical and mental strain. Delicate women, accustomed to affluence, and tenderly nurtured children, were thrown, by thousands, on their own resources; their natural supporters and guardians having perished on the field of battle or in the army hospital, leaving no income behind for their support.

Many a gentleman born to wealth and ease found himself face to face with absolute poverty, without habits of labor,

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with no knowledge of a profession or handicraft from which he might draw a support for himself and his family. A community where all are accustomed to take an active part in bearing the burdens of life, where personal labor is the rule, would bear these losses with tolerable equanimity. At least their past habits would be an aid, and not a bar, to recovery. It was impossible for the people of the North to realize the extent and severity of such a weight of calamity among communities where social and industrial life had been organized so differently from their own.

The Federal Government was conducted almost exclusively by the North-at least the great majority of the party in power were from the free States. The success of the Federal armies was, to them, but the first step taken. The future must be secured. They had prevented disunion; they must now take care that it should be forever impossible. They therefore elaborated a plan of reconstruction with an inflexibility that could not but seem ruthlessness to the impoverished South -it would perhaps have seemed so to themselves could they have been able to realize fully the Southern situation in detail. With the cessation of resistance they ceased shedding blood and confiscating property, and in those respects showed a moderation not often recorded in history; but they were all the more unyielding in carrying out the system of reconstruction they had adopted. The character of the instruments they employed in the South, and the brief time allowed for the most radical changes, greatly intensified the misfortunes of the Southern people for the first few years. These, however, were borne so wisely by the mass of Southern whites, and they accommodated themselves so soon to the new situations, that a new era of hope and prosperity soon began to dawn on them.

CHAPTER II.

CHANGES IN THE SOUTHERN VALLEY AFTER THE WAR.

Institutions truly democratic leave a very large liberty to individual activity, which often appears, in formative periods, to threaten anarchy. There seems to be no adequate restraint to ambition and passion, and irregularity, disorder, and sometimes violence, become the predominating features on the surface of society. But all American history has shown that beneath the surface were conservative elements of so much vigor that only a short time was required for them to master the disorder, and that they could do this more naturally, completely and in a shorter time, than a system of external force.

The treatment of the Southern whites was now in strong contrast with the theory of republican equality and it could be maintained only as a temporary measure. The principle was as odious to the North as to the South, and was designed to be abandoned as soon as it became evident that the permanence of the Union was no longer threatened. A large minority in Congress unceasingly protested against the system of reconstruction adopted by the majority and so rigorously applied. That system was chiefly embodied in the three Constitutional Amendments securing citizenship and its rights to the colored race, and when these were definitely accepted by the South coercion was to cease.

In actual fact, there was very little military force applied in the South after the dispersion of the Confederate armies and Government. A few thousand troops were scattered over the vast territory where, at first, they merely did police duty and acted as civil agents of the Federal Government. Soon they were withdrawn from all but the most prominent central points, where the smallness of their numbers made them lit

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tle more than a moral force. Self-control had become so habitual to the American that no occupation "in force" was required in the South-no military police answering to the "gensd'armerie" of the monarchial governments of Europe. There was virtual freedom of personal movement, and absolute freedom from espionage. Notwithstanding the bloody war and the deep antagonism of principle and sentiment still existing, the two sections understood and trusted each other to a degree unparalleled in history. Nominally, there was a Federal army in the South and its political destiny was in the hands of Congress. Actually, the South was left to reconstruct itself, provided it would respect the three new Amendments. Political disabilities were very soon removed from the mass of the white population. They generally held aloof from political action where they must see the institutions. among which they had been born and for which they had fought overthrown. They, in general, quietly turned away until the change had been wrought by other hands.

There were scenes of violence, of bloodshed, of desperate revenge on the new-made citizens, colored office holders and Northern teachers; but these were not properly the acts of the Southern people. They were, usually, in isolated communities largely composed of the rude and uncontrollable classes. of society, or by desperate characters who improved the opportunity to commit crime under the shield of political opposition. These acts were truly disapproved by the mass of the Southern people.

The native good sense of that people soon recognized the wasteful and undesirable character of the slave-labor system and felt it to have been a mistake. Irritation at the elevation of the ignorant black to citizenship continued longer, but, in the course of years, this gave way so far as to permit their general return to the political field of action, where they employed their diplomatic abilities in the effort to secure the colored vote to their own side.