one side and sometimes on the other; and the momentary satisfaction produced by an occasional coincidence of sentiment does not prevent each class from occasionally charging me with inconsistency.

On which Mr. Conway tersely comments: "Randolph's admission, at its worst, would merely show him an early 'Mugwump'!"

In 1794, Randolph succeeded Jefferson as Secretary of State in Washington's cabinet. We cannot here follow the endless, bewildering complications of our domestic politics growing out of the war between England and France, which so embittered this period, nor the equally endless feuds of Hamilton and Jefferson and their adherents. Yet no one who has followed Randolph to this point can resist the intense personal interest which his remaining career excites.

The story of Randolph's overthrow cannot be easily or briefly told. Mr. Conway has taken for it no less than 160 pages-nearly two-fifths of his volume. It is only possible here to say that a long dispatch of Fauchet, French minister at Washington, to his home government, dated October 31, 1794, was picked up at sea, March 28, 1795, having been thrown overboard from a French corvette pursued by a British cruiser. A copy of this dispatch was sent from London to the British minister at Washington and came into the hands of Col. Pickering, Secretary of War, and by him was made known to Washington.

If this incident is not intrinsically of high importance, its elucidation is perhaps the most painstaking and difficult of Mr. Conway's tasks. To the personal reputation of Randolph it is of first importance and his biographer has spared no labor or research to set it in its true relations. The story deals with so many details, and has so many ramifications and intricacies, that few will probably be qualified to pass judgment except as the result of a general impression of the matter as a whole. When it is considered, however, that the charges, so-called, against Randolph contained in this dispatch, rested wholly on the unsupported statements of Fauchet, a low-toned, gasconading agent of France under Robespierre, it is impossible not to feel that the effect produced on all the actors, in the little drama, including Washington, was quite unwarranted.

long life of blameless eminence, devotion to Washington and his administration, attested on all occasions, patriotism proved by all tests, ought to have outweighed the flippant, self-glorifying insinuations or charges of Fauchet.

Passing over the personal indignity to which Randolph was subjected in connection with the disclosure to him of this dispatch-which is surely painful reading—the flimsiness of the charges themselves, and the total lack of proof, are the most astonishing features to recall. Chief Justice Taney truly describes Fauchet's dispatch as "containing a variety of mattersome assertions and some conjectures and speculations-very desultory-in which the passages in relation to Mr. Randolph are to be found in different places-mixed up with other matters, so as to make it difficult to understand what Mr. Fauchet meant." The impression fastened upon our mind by all that is now known, is admirably stated in Judge Taney's letter, p. 351.

Randolph upon being confronted with the Fauchet dispatch, resigned his office, August 19, 1795, and in December following published his "Vindication." He retired to Richmond, where he resumed his profession, appearing as counsel for Burr on his trial for treason in 1808. He died in 1813-not "an old man," but "broken with the storms of state."

What our author well calls the "conventionalized disfigurement" to which Randolph's memory has been subjected, is especially noticeable in the general estimate of his character which has obtained and still passes current. Jefferson in a letter to Judge Tucker in 1793 called him a "chameleon," and what that word implies has gone into history and been caught up, parrot-like, by one after another of our so-called authorities. Thus, a writer in this very centennial year of our Constitution has thought fit to say;-" His whole character was marred by a spirit of vacillation, which inclined him to temporize and compromise all dangerous political questions." *

But great as is our obligation to Jefferson and profoundly as he has affected our political thought and life, and for the most

* Charles R. Hildeburn, in History of the Celebration of the one hundredth anniversary of the Promulgation of the Constitution of the United States, edited by Hampton L. Carson. Vol. I. p. 213.

part in right directions, it is plain he was too often a reckless, if not a malignant, personal critic. This volume gives proof enough not only of Randolph's firm sense of public duty, but it teems with touching instances of his habitual fidelity of friendship even for those who, like Madison, seem never to have lifted a hand in his defence when the arrows were flying thickest about him, or like Jefferson, to have written and spoken of him with back-biting asperity, or above all, for Washington, towards whom Randolph kept his faith and love under the cruel weight, as he at least must have felt, of disgrace inflicted either from haste, or from prejudice carefully fanned into wrath by those who compassed his overthrow.

If, as we have already hinted, Mr. Conway's volume had no other value than as an occasion and stimulant to students and to all patriotic citizens, to revive or increase their familiarity with the formation, and with the true spirit, of our Constitu tion and the men who most figured in its beginnings, this would justly secure for his work our high appreciation; but he has done far more than this; he has revealed new facts of value to our constitutional history, as well as new facts essential to a true knowledge of a high name in American statemanship—a name too long and too deeply clouded by the shadow of Washington's displeasure, but at last placed by this volume in such lights as will ensure at least a more competent tribunal and, we believe, a far more favorable judgment.

DANIEL H. CHAMBERLAIN.

ARTICLE IV.-THE LOST CAUSE.

SEVERE criticism is sometimes leveled against Northern men for keeping alive the issues of the War of the Rebellion. We are blamed for waving bloody emblems of it and for firing the hearts of the voters by impressive reference to the facts which the great conflict made prominent. Replies to the fiery speeches of Southerners are denounced as attacks upon our countrymen.

But the Northern disposition has been and is to accept the results of the struggle with a generous sympathy for the Southern people and to let by-gones be by-gones. We are not inclined to tantalize the South for its defeat, nor to take any advantage of that section of our common country by reason of our superiority in position or in resources. From the surrender at Appomattox till this day, the North has shown, what it has felt, a noble magnanimity toward its fellow-citizens of the South-land. Immediately on the surrender, Northern capital began to flow into the Southern States. Northern men were disposed to settle there, and Northern benevolence undertook to carry education and religion to the most needy of that whole region. If the feeling that the North truly cherished had been reciprocated by the South, the wounds of the war would have been soon healed and forgotten, and a New Union would have taken the place of the old, with nobler purposes and closer fraternity.

But Northern capital was spurned, and Northern sympathy was scoffed at, and Northern and Christian benevolence was hounded out; and it was only by a kind of missionary enthusiasm and martyr devotion that Northern men and women persisted in their humane work at the South. The story of humiliation and persecution and ostracism and banishment to which our people were subjected, is a mournful commentary on the qualities which slavery had produced. To a great extent, time and better acquaintance have changed and softened all this, and coming time and experience will accomplish still

more. The testimony which intelligent and liberal Southerners are carrying home from their visits among us, the testimony of the impressive and patent work which our educational and religious institutions are doing in the South, the regal gifts of mercy which Peabody and Slater and Hand and others are lavishly offering for the enlightenment and training of the ignorant masses in the old slave realm, together with the needs of the Southern people in contrast with the growth and rapid augmentation of power of the old free States, will gradually but surely combine, with many occult causes, to convince the South where its true interests lie, and to raise up a generation that will be in fair harmony with American ideas and principles. The pronounced loyalty of leading Southern men to the Union and their intense passion for the restored Nation will be an educational force of great power on the minds of Southern youth. The wise policy of the new Administration in encouraging the development of justice in the minds of Southern white men and of manhood in the souls of Southern black men, will work for patriotism and unity and fraternity. We may rationally look for an improved era, for steady strides toward a strong Nationality, for the welding of our differing races into patriotic harmony, so that we shall, at least, deal justly with one another and rejoice in the contribution which each shall bring to the welfare of all. It is to be regretted that there are all along, occurrences which are retarding this desirable union: As, the murder of negroes, the assassination. of John M. Clayton, the prostitution of the ballot, and, more than all, the continued eulogy of the Lost Cause. This last is the peculiar mission of Mr. Jefferson Davis. For this he lives. On every occasion, convenient or otherwise, his voice of illomen is heard in approval of the Confederate rebellion. recall his letter to the Confederate Veterans at their annual reunion, in which he said: "Be assured that in heart and in mind I will be with those who bravely struggled to maintain the right and still honor the truth, despite its overthrow, and hopefully look forward to the resurrection which truth's eternity insures." We recall his presence at the meeting in New Orleans in aid of the Southern Historical Society, where he was the principal speaker and indeed the hero of the occasion.

We