If a man had ascended one of the lofty peaks of the Southern Appalachian chain of mountains at the termination of the war, and been endowed with telescopic powers of vision extending for hundreds of miles in every direction, he would have beheld the wreck of "the storm-cradled nation" that fell in defense of the rights that they possessed under the constitution of 1787-88, which was shaped, and established, and agreed to, by the States forming the convention. As far as such vision could extend, that once beautiful country was almost desolate and silent; the busy hum of industry had ceased, the daily smoke of burning buildings, the marching of armies, and the dull sound of distant cannon terminated; railroads had been destroyed, bridges were burned, many wagon roads were impassable; agriculture had nearly ceased, draft animals had been taken for war purposes; the flower of the South, with its pride of ancestors, had "fallen foremost in the light;" the noble women were almost paralyzed in mind, ready to doubt the existence of a just God who seemingly had been deaf to their prayers, and made fatherless their little children; four million slaves sat idle around their decaying cabins, impressed with the prevailing idea that freedom meant to do as they pleased, and not work any more; provisions were scarce, and the whole scene was a picture of war's desolation and misery.

I can call to mind the delight I experienced when reading that wonderful description by Burke of the desolation of the Carnatic, in India, by the butcher Hyder Ali, in years long passed; or with sorrowful heart the desolation of the Palatinate by the French troops by order of Louvois, but I am not aware of any Northern pen having told the story of the destruction of the beautiful Valley of the Shenandoah[39] in Virginia by Gen. P. H. Sheridan, though it be a theme as sad as the one immortalized by the genius of Burke.

Hyder Ali left nothing in the Carnatic that drew the breath of life; Sheridan left nothing in the Valley for a crow to feed on—as stated in his official report, wherein he writes that "a crow could not cross the Valley without carrying his provisions with him."

It is true, however, that you can find in some of the Northern schoolbooks a beautiful poem entitled "Sheridan's Ride," as mythical as Barbara Frietchie; still there are in the true story some incidents not unlike those in Burns's "Tam O'Shanter" that kept "Sheridan far away."

And now the surviving Confederate soldier returned to what was once his happy home. He had faith in the terms of his parole, that he was "not to be molested by the United States authorities as long as he obeyed the laws of 1861." Inured to hardships incident to a soldier's life, he was well equipped to become an industrious, peaceful citizen; he had stormed fortifications, captured batteries, marched up to the cannon's deadly mouth without tremor, passed days without rest and nights without sleep, subsisted on parched corn, been frost-bitten by cold, and burned by the torrid sun. His bare feet had left their prints in blood on the rocks, and crimsoned the snow on many a wintry march; he had stopped the marauder in his path, and turned the enemy from his course; he had tempted the ocean in its wrath, and driven off its waters the enemy's commercial sails. All that man dares he had done. And now in adversity, almost naked, with unending toil before him, he commenced life anew, and went manfully to work with hope for the joy of peace, little thinking of the degradation, insults, humiliations, oppressions, robbery, extortions he and his family would be subjected to during the coming years, caused by revengeful legislation. And now behold him even greater in peace than in war!

The plunder obtained by the soldiers of the Union army had so whetted the avaricious spirit of those who had furnished substitutes for themselves, that they were bent on having their share of the spoils; and the politicians, anxious to ride into place and power, to that end resorted to more machinations than Machiavelli ever dreamed of in his advice to the prince.

By the daily trains came men, generally from the Eastern States, in every garb, and they walked along the streets in single file in quest of cheap hotels and boarding houses, and the insignia of their order was a carpetbag, and their interests and tastes—not their sympathy—prompted them to associate with the freedmen, considering themselves just as good and honorable as the "Wards of the Nation."

You must not deem it out of place if I here make mention of some incidents that occurred pretty early in the war.

In the Bible we read how Jephthah vowed a vow unto the Lord that if he would deliver the children of Ammon into his hands he would do certain things. So Lincoln made a solemn vow before God that if Gen. Lee were driven back from Maryland he would set the slaves free. After "Antietam" he announced his intention of issuing, and on September 22, 1862, he did issue, a proclamation setting free, by his military authority, all the slaves in the rebel States. He still founded his action on "policy and the Constitution."[40] As the Confederate States did not return to the Union as required in his September proclamation, on January 1, 1863, he issued his emancipation proclamation, the slaves having been confiscated by Act of Congress in 1862.

The act of confiscation and the President's proclamation emancipating the slaves in the Confederacy could not abolish slavery, because it existed under the laws of the States. It could alter no State law, still it did affect slavery in this way: it caused slaves to leave their owners, and to this extent diminished their property and their wealth, but under the laws they could purchase others.

The great undefined latent power of the Constitution is embodied in Article I., Section 8: "To provide for the common defense and general welfare." Under this section almost all the outrages of the war were committed, restrained only by international rules of war; but these were ignored under the plea that the war was only a rebellion—quite a family affair, and would soon be settled. Under this article also is found the power to tax to any amount "for the common defense and public welfare."

The confiscation act of Congress was unconstitutional. Ed Burke, in the Warren Hastings trial, said: "I do not know the method of drawing up the indictment against a whole people." The Constitution declares that the "trial of all crimes, except in cases of impeachment, shall be by jury." But this confiscation act punished a "whole people" without indictment, trial by jury, or conviction.

As the slave owners were called the only privileged class in the United States, it is pertinent to inquire if this class of people did not exist in all the States when the Union was formed, and if they of the North did not sell their claim to a privileged class for a "mess of pottage" and then howled at the purchasers for being a privileged class! Who demanded the enlargement of slavery by making it legal to steal or purchase negroes from Africa until the year 1808, to give employment to the six hundred slave ships owned in the North—in New York and New England. We know the town of Newport, R. I.—now the abode of wealth—in the year 1750 had one hundred and seventy ships engaged in the slave trade for "the love of money."

A question presents itself here—and it is a pertinent one, for it commences at the beginning of this whole matter of modern slavery in this country: Who first owned these slaves, how did they obtain them, how did they treat them, and to whom did they sell these human beings for money, and then with the price of blood in their pockets soon began to howl against the sin of slavery, and thank the God they served that they were not slaveholders any longer?[41]

It has been said by a Northern writer that "indirectly, and for the purpose of a more equal distribution of direct taxes, the framers of the Constitution tolerated, while they condemned, slavery, but they tolerated it because they believed it would soon disappear. They even refused to allow the charter of their own liberties to be polluted by the mention of the word 'slave.'" But take heed: did not this convention give ear to the clamor of the owners of slave ships and slaves thereon to continue for twenty years longer to increase slavery and increase their wealth by enslaving free people in Africa?

No, "they could not, consistently with honor or self-respect, transmit to future ages the evidence that some of them had trampled on the inalienable rights of others."

"Though slavery was tolerated by being ignored, we should not dishonor the memory of those who organized that government to suppose that they did not intend to bestow upon it the power to maintain its own authority—the right to overthrow or remove slavery or whatever might prove fatal to its permanence or destroy its usefulness."

To this the answer is yes. But the proper mode of removing it is the real question. It should not be by making war, laying waste the country, burning all public buildings and dwelling houses, sinking ships, blockading ports, killing, wounding, and capturing soldiers, creating debts, levying taxes, exposing our soldiers to deadly battle and all the horrors of war—but by removing the evil by compensation "for the term of service" of the slaves to their owners.

This government is under obligation to compensate, and does compensate, parents, masters of apprentices, masters of slaves, for service and labor of those subjects who are enlisted in the army and navy, for the Constitution recognizes slaves as "persons held to labor or service." Removal by compensation might have prevented the war.

England compelled the abolition of slavery in her colonies, and she paid in compensation for services, to the slave owners, the sum of one hundred million dollars. Out of this, for instance, Cape Colony obtained fifteen million dollars, which was about four hundred dollars per slave.

If slavery was believed to be fatal to the permanence of the Union, it could have been removed by compensation, as in the case of England, and not by hatred and fanaticism.

View it as we may, the fact exists that the confiscation act, although unconstitutional, did, in effect, rob the Southern people of about two thousand million dollars ($2,000,000,000), computing four million slaves at five hundred dollars each, which is only about half their value; and this was done as a punishment for secession. In law it was void; but the property was of such a character that it became useless to the owners, because it was enticed away. So this act and Lincoln's proclamation caused the slaves to leave their owners. And so without a crime, without an indictment, without a trial by jury or conviction, this property was taken from the owners. It was the largest steal ever committed by a nation; and, furthermore, they stole from the South slaves that they had sold the South. Call it by what name you will, it was robbery. It exceeds in magnitude, in money value, any of the invasions of India, from Genghis Khan down to the English East India Company; or the robbery of the proconsuls of Rome; or the wealth Spain derived from Mexico and Peru by the infamous acts of Cortez and Pizarro. And, after all, the loss from confiscating the "labor" of the slaves, great as it is, becomes but one item of loss to which the Southern people were subjected.

It would perhaps be unjust for me to assign the inducements that moved Mr. Lincoln to issue this proclamation, considering Congress had already confiscated them. I do not know if possession of property is, or is not, necessary before it can be sold by confiscation.[42] If a slave not in possession of the United States marshal, being in the interior of the Confederacy, can be confiscated, then also could all property be confiscated by a paper bulletin posted on the wall. But in that proclamation there was a sinister object in view, and that was to array against the Confederate States the sympathies of the Christian world, by trying to make it appear that we made the war in defense of, and to perpetuate, slavery. Others there are who think that the "loyal governors" who met at Altoona, Pa., obtained it by insidious threats. But, be this as it may, the proclamation, as a legal paper, was worthless. The slaves were afterwards legally emancipated by the several States, by the thirteenth amendment to the Constitution, and by taking the oath prescribed in the President's proclamation, dated May 29, 1865; and all the owners of slaves who were worth twenty thousand dollars, being disfranchised, had to make oath "not hereafter, at any time, to acquire any property whatever in slaves, or make use of slave labor, or make claim for slaves liberated." The numerous oaths and various proceedings required to set the negro legally free, and make it binding, remind me of many loyal friends in the North going before some judicial officer and renewing their oaths of allegiance every new moon, to make it sure and clear by accumulated recorded evidence.

When Jephthah made his vow there was no power to restrain him from fulfilling it. Lincoln could not perform his; he was not an abolitionist from principle, and there is very much evidence that he was not in favor of emancipation; his proclamation set free (on paper) only the slaves in a part of the Confederate States, leaving slavery untouched in the United States. That is, the Yankees retained slavery in Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri, and part of Louisiana and the North, and tried to abolish it where they could not, and maintained it where they could have abolished it. At this malignant confiscation of the slaves only in the Confederacy, Fanueil Hall went wild with delight, and Exeter Hall, England, was jubilant.

I have no desire to discuss annexation (reconstruction) here, and hasten on, only to relate some of my experiences under it, so that you may know the patience, forbearance, and charity of the Southern people under persecution. No one possessing knowledge has a right to withhold it from his fellow-men, if it will be valuable to them; and so I write.

And now came reconstruction (annexation), with all its evils. President Abraham Lincoln had been foully murdered, and Vice President "Andy" Johnson reigned in his stead.

It is stated that he disliked the refined and best class of people in the South; and now, in authority, he thirsted for vengeance against them. He declared that "treason should be made odious," and would have arrested Gen. R. E. Lee and other Confederate army officers and punished them if possible, had not Gen. Grant declared that they could not be molested without violating the paroles he had given them, and so prosecution was abandoned and persecution substituted, as will be shown after a while.

Having surrendered and signed a written agreement, and made oath to the same, I desired to go to my home in Mississippi, as stipulated in the parole.

Gen. Grant's declaration that his paroles could not be violated seems to have been, with him, an after thought, as the following telegram will show:

Here is Ord's manly answer:

It was after this date that Grant, on reflection, turned around and informed the President that the paroles he gave at Appomattox should not be broken; that he would defend them. All honor to him for this! And greater honor to Gen. Ord, who pledged his life for the honor of the Southern men who were paroled!

The first matter to claim consideration was money. I had in gold a five-dollar piece and in Confederate notes a few thousand dollars. The purchasing power of the latter may be ascertained from a bill made by Miss Abercrombie, now my wife, of which the following is a true copy:

As I had no means to purchase tickets over the railroads, I applied to the Quartermaster, U. S. A., for transportation for myself, two servants, and two horses, which was furnished me. It was sometime in May that we started for home via Montgomery, Mobile, and New Orleans. As I had to call at the headquarters of the commanders in these cities for passes and permits, I will here remark in regard to my reception by these my late enemies: Gen. A. J. Smith was crabbed and petulant when I showed him the order for transportation for the negroes. Gen. Sturgis was kind and did all that was desirable for our comfort. In New Orleans Gen. Canby was very polite to us, as he was to every one. He sent me up the Mississippi river on a chartered steamer. The trip up the river was pleasant. There were only two other passengers—Father Livingston, a priest, and a sick boy. Livingston—may God bless him!—had but one change of linen, and he gave that to the sick boy, who was a stranger to him, and nursed the lad attentively.

I was forcibly struck with the amount of the most costly second-hand furniture sent by express to small towns in Illinois and Ohio, put up in oat sacks.[44] But furniture in New Orleans, you know, like "Butler's" spoons, belonged to the victors. The captain of the steamer put me on shore at Argyle Landing, near my home. I mounted my horse, and the first man I saw was "Tom Shelby" sitting on the fence looking at some negro men plowing a large field of corn. He hailed me, but I paid no attention to him. He was a "rampant" war man before the war began, but he stayed at home. Indeed, every one of my immediate neighbors—ten in number—were not in the army; and all, except one, able-bodied men and younger than I was. The Scott boys and Calhoun Hale and his brother were good and faithful soldiers, living outside the belt around me.

When I dismounted at my door, God only knows my agony of heart. None to welcome me, none to greet me!

Where were the laurels that were to crown my brow? Willows! Fences burned, bridges destroyed; the plantation a forest of tall weeds; horses, mules, cattle, sheep, poultry, provisions, wagons, implements of every kind—all gone; wealth, servants, comforts—all means of support for my family gone; all lost save honor. I sat down and surveyed the desolation around me. Fortunately my house was not burned, and I had a shelter for my family, should they come here. I knew the noble women of the South, who for years had labored hard and cheerfully, trusting in God and the justice of their cause, would not despond. Lord Byron makes the beautiful daughters of

sit down by the rivers of Babylon and weep, but never would they string a harp for their foe. The beautiful daughters of the South had wept no bitter tears of repentance, nor sung pÆans for their foe; they had proved themselves equal to adversity in war, and would they not help build up lost fortunes in peace? So resolve took the place of despondency, and I returned to Columbus for my family.

Sherman—the fell destroyer—had burned the city of Jackson, Miss., and the ruins reminded me of Pompeii. In walking one of the streets I passed a canvas shanty, from which I was hailed by an Israelite with "Good morning, General; come in." He had been in the army and knew me; he had some goods and groceries for sale. When I was leaving, he asked; "General, can't I do something for you? Here are fifty dollars, just take them; maybe you can pay me back sometime." I thought the angel of mercy was looking down on us, and I thought of Portia's address to Shylock on the quality of mercy. I thanked him kindly, and the day came when I had the pleasure of repaying the debt. In a few days I arrived in Columbus, and there I found a letter from my cousin, Clayton French, of Philadelphia, Pa., containing a check for a thousand dollars. I had written to him to send me some money, and this was his liberal response.

The servants I had in Columbus had been nominally "confiscated" and set free; so they came to me, almost daily, begging me to take them back to the plantation in Mississippi. As I was not able to do this, I applied to some "bureau," that had charge of "refugees," for transportation for these negroes, and to my surprise it was granted. As soon as possible they were put on the cars and started for the plantation.[45]

On the 17th of September, 1865, Mrs. French and I left Gen. Abercrombie's for Greenville, Miss., via Montgomery, Mobile, and New Orleans, on some box cars, furnished with wooden benches for seats—such was the condition of the railroads at that time.

When we reached home we found most of my old servants there awaiting our arrival. To feed and clothe about a hundred of these people, and to plant a crop of cotton in the spring, clothing, provisions, mules, wagons, farming implements, harness, etc., had to be procured.

To obtain funds to purchase the articles enumerated—to commence again—I went to Philadelphia and New York (by special permission of the government) in November.

My clothing was not very tidy; it had seen service; and I concluded after I left St. Louis to travel through the enemy's country incognito so as to avoid war talks. I got along very well until I reached Philadelphia. I had been advised to go to the Lafayette Hotel; and, too proud to present myself there in my present garb, I entered a large clothing establishment and arrayed myself in a suit of black broadcloth, and told the attendant to wrap the old suit up. When I paid the bill, judge of my astonishment to have him say: "To what hotel, General, shall I send the package?" "Why do you call me general?" I asked. "Because I saw your rank and name in full written on the inside of your vest; that is all right; call and see us again." Next I entered the hotel, and went to register my name. As the clerk threw the book around, he exclaimed: "How do you do, Gen. French!" I was surprised; he replied: "I was in the Confederate army, and knew you in Virginia; I am employed here because we want Southern patronage." Here was my incognito discovered twice in one hour. But that is not all. The next day I took the train from Camden, N. J., for Woodbury, where my mother, sister, and daughter had been refugeeing since they left Mississippi until they joined me at the plantation in November, 1865. I knew many people in the city, and had the honor to have been hung there once in effigy by its fanatical people in the beginning of the war, for some reason, or no reason, save they did a foolish thing and repented of it; and as the "bitter war feeling" raged there yet, like the billows of the ocean after the storm has passed, I took the last seat in the rear car as a quiet place. Now it so happened that the seat opposite me was occupied by a genteel-looking fellow, who evidently had been indulging too freely in whisky and wanted to make himself companionable. I answered his questions briefly, but he persisted in talking, desirous to know who I was. Finally I told him my name was French, at which he exclaimed, "Are you Gen. French?" in such a loud voice as to draw the attention of many of the passengers to me; and, rising, he proffered his hand and said: "Going to your mother's, I reckon; I am a Union soldier, and when we reach Woodbury I will get my musket and be your escort." He walked up the street with me to the corner, where we parted; and his parting words were: "If any one troubles you, send for me. My name is Paul."[46] Such was my experience in trying to travel incognito. I gave it up, and, when necessary, fought square out for Confederate rights. As I went North on business, I avoided all controversy about the war as far as possible.

I must now make a digression. In the autumn of 1864 my mother, sister, and child, owing to illness, engaged passage on a steamer at Greenville, Miss., and started for our summer home in Woodbury, N. J. On arriving at the Girard House, in Philadelphia, Mr. Edward Cooper, a relation of mother's, called on her and asked her where she was going, and she said: "Down home." He then informed her that the property had been confiscated and sold, and that he had bought it, and rented it. He asked her also about funds, and, finding she had near a thousand dollars in Confederate money (valueless), under the pretense of exchange he replaced it with "greenbacks"—a kind act delicately done. Besides, a few years later he voluntarily deeded the property back to me. This was in striking contrast with others who bought my personal property, valuable mainly as mementos. It is always pleasant to find a gentleman. They are seldom found to the manor born,

"Where commerce long prevails."