A FOOL'S ERRAND & Its Sequel, Bricks Without Straw. Albion Winegar Tourgée
are my convictions. I might get away, and avoid this result, so far as I am concerned; but I have cast in my lot with this people. I have advocated this measure, and I will abide with them its results.
In fact, my dear Doctor, I begin seriously to fear that the North lacks virility. This cowardly shirking of responsibility, this pandering to sentimental whimsicalities, this snuffling whine about peace and conciliation, is sheer weakness. The North is simply a conqueror; and, if the results she fought for are to be secured, she must rule as a conqueror. Suppose the South had been triumphant, and had overwhelmed and determined to hold the North? Before now, a thoroughly organized system of provincial government would have been securely established. There would have been no hesitation, no subterfuge, no pretence of restoration, because the people of the South are born rulers, — aggressives, who, having made up their minds to attain a certain end, adopt the means most likely to secure it. In this the North fails. She hesitates, palters, shirks.
There is another danger, Rebellion has ended without punishment. It is true the South has lost, — lost her men, her money, her slaves; but that was only a gambler's stake, the hazard placed upon the dice. There was talk of "making treason odious." How that result should be accomplished was a serious question; but how to make it honorable, I fear we have found an easy matter to demonstrate.
As I have said, the party, if it may so be called, to whom the mighty task of rehabilitation has been assigned, must fail at the South. Already we hear the threat from the highest seats in the hostile camps, "Just wait until the Blue Coats are gone, and we will make Sodom and Gomorrah more tolerable than these States to Republicans!" They will do it too. They have the power, the intellect, the organizing capacity, the determined will. Our numbers only make us a cumbrous rope of sand. Weak, incoherent particles are not made strong by mere multiplication. In the struggle against us, the most reckless and unworthy of those who led in the war will again come to the front. Their success will make them the heroes of the people, and they will win place and honor thereby. It will result that turbulent, ambitious men will hereafter say that the road to honor, renown, fame, and power, in our nation, lies through the "Traitor's Gate." Burr and his coadjutors won only shame by their attempt to destroy the nation. Davis, Lee, and their compatriots have already won a distinction and eminence they could not have hoped for had they remained peaceful citizens of the Republic. They are destined to achieve far greater honor. From this day the prestige of the Federal soldier will begin to wane throughout the land. In the course of another decade, one will almost be ashamed to confess that he wore the blue. On the other hand, the glory of the Confederate leader will hourly wax greater and brighter. The latter has a people devoted and steadfast, to whose pride, even in defeat, he can appeal with certainty of receiving an unshrinking response. The former has a country debauched by weak humanitarianisms, more anxious to avoid the appearance of offending its enemies than desirous of securing its own power or its own ends. These men who have led in the Rebellion will not be slow to perceive and take advantage of their opportunity; and other generations following them will note the fact that the sure, safe, and brilliant road to fame and success is an armed rebellion against existing powers. You may think me discouraged and morbid; but mark my words, old friend, we have sown to the wind, and shall reap the whirlwind.
Yours truly,
COMFORT SERVOSSE.
So, with foreboding, the Fool looked to the future, and awaited the event of that great experiment, from the preliminaries of which he was only able to presage danger and disaster.
CHAPTER XXVI
BALAK AND BALAAM
THE re-action from subjection to autonomy was so sudden and astounding, that even the people of the late rebellious States were unable to realize it for a considerable period. That a nation, after four years of war, the loss of a million of men and uncounted millions of treasure, should relax its grip upon the subjugated territory, relieve its people of all disabilities, or only bar from a useless privilege a few superannuated leaders, who only thus were susceptible of martyrdom, and without guaranties for the future, or without power of reversal or modification, should restore this territory, this people, these States, to the position of equal, independent, and co-ordinate sovereignties, was so incredible a proposition, that years were required for its complete comprehension.
During these years the public press of the South was a curious study. Immediately after the close of the war, and until about the period of the rehabilitation of the States, its utterances were cautious and guarded. While there was almost always an undertone which might be construed to mean either sullen hate or unconcealable chagrin, there was little of that vindictive bitterness toward the North which had immediately preceded the war, or attended its prosecution. It is true, that, in some instances, its bottles of unparalleled infamy were unstopped, and poured on the heads of unoffending citizens of Northern birth, or those natives who saw fit to affiliate with the conqueror, or to accept office at his hands. This, however, was not a universal rule. As soon as the reconstruction period had passed, this caution relaxed. More and more bitter, more and more loathsome, became the mass of Southern journalism. Defiant hostility, bitter animosity, unrestricted libertinism in the assaults of private character, poured over the columns of the Southern press like froth upon the jaws of a rabid cur. Whatever or whoever was of the North or from the North was the subject of ridicule, denunciation, and immeasurable malignity of vituperation. Whoever had aided, assisted, or assented to the process of reconstruction, became a target for infamous assault. Rank, station, purity of life, uprightness of character, religious connection, age, sex, were no safeguard from these assaults. The accumulated malignity of the years of quietude and suppression burst its bounds, and poured over the whole country a disgusting flood of hideous, horrible, improbable, and baseless accusation and rabid vituperation. Men of the fairest lives were covered over with unutterable infamy; women of the highest purity were accused of unnamable enormities; and even children of tender years were branded with ineffaceable marks of shame. The previous training which the press of the South had received in the art of vilification, under the régime of slavery, became now of infinite service in this verbal crusade. The mass of their readers had long been accustomed to believe any thing absurd and horrible in regard to the North. To them it was already the land of thieves, adulterers, infidels, and cheats. There might be good men there; but they were counted rarer than in Sodom. For fifty years the necessities of slavery had rendered the cultivation of such a sentiment necessary in order to preserve the institution from the assaults of free labor and free thought. To turn this tide of public sentiment against the ideas, principles, and men who were engaged in the work of reconstruction, to intensify its bitterness, increase its credulity, and make thereby a seven-times heated furnace of infamy for those who saw fit to favor this movement, was the assigned work and mission of the Southern press, and right nobly was it executed. Never was such unanimity, never was such persistency, never such rivalry in malevolence, never such munificence in invective, never such fertility in falsehood.
It was but natural, and in a great measure fair, upon the principle that all in war is fair. So far as the official representatives of the government were concerned, they had nothing of which to complain. The represented the conqueror; and if their master was inherently or accidentally too weak to protect them, or disinclined to compel obedience and respect from the recently vanquished enemy, it was only the fault of their employer, whose service was purely voluntary. The fools who had removed to these States from motives of ease or profit, engaging in production, manufacture, or trade, ought not to have complained, because they came among a conquered people, being of the conqueror, well knowing (or at least they should have known) the generations of antagonism which war had fused into hate, and having, therefore, no right to look for or expect kindliness, favor, or even fair play. If they did so, it was their own folly.
Those who had most right, or perhaps the sole right, to complain, were those among the conquered people who had espoused the cause of the nation before or after the downfall of the Confederacy. They had a right to suppose that the conquering power would at least make itself respectable, and would not permit its supporters to be disgraced by the mere fact of allegiance to it. It must have been a matter of