LEGISLATIONTHE CONFISCATION LAW
The action of Congress has in everything been nobly patriotic in spirit, and in nearly everything it has wisely and adequately met the exigencies of the crisis.
But we are compelled to hold the Confiscation Act, in the form in which it was passed, as a mistake.2 If the clause of the Constitution prohibiting 'attainder of treason to work forfeiture except during the life of the person attainted,' be necessarily applicable to the Confiscation Act, it seems to us impossible to avoid the conclusion that the act is unconstitutional. So far as the language of the prohibition is decisive of anything, it must be taken to include all sorts of property, real as well as personalthe term forfeiture certainly having that extent of application in the old English law and practice, from which the framers of our Constitution took it, and there is nothing elsewhere in the Constitution or in its history to warrant any other construction. So the Congress of 1790 understood it in the act declaring the punishment of treason and some other high crimes. As to the perpetuity of forfeiture, it seems equally necessary to hold that it is prohibited by the clause of the Constitution in question. Such is undeniably the first and obvious meaning of the terms. It has been argued indeed that it was not the intention of the framers of the Constitution to prohibit perpetual forfeiture of property from being 'declared' by Congress, but only to prohibit 'attainder of treason' from 'working' of itself that effect by necessary consequenceas it did under the Common Law of England. It has also been argued that the constitutional restriction does not relate to perpetuity of forfeiture, but only requires that the forfeiture or act of alienation take place, have effect, and be accomplished 'during the life of the person attainted,' and not after his death.
But this reasoning is more subtile than satisfactory. A fair consideration of the subject leaves little room for doubt that the framers of the Constitution had in view and intended to prohibit everything which under the old English common law followed upon 'attainder of treason'to prohibit forfeiture in perpetuity of property of every sort, no less than 'bills of attainder,' 'corruption of blood,' and barbarities of punishment, such as disembowelling, quartering, etc.
If therefore the constitutional restriction on forfeiture apply to the Confiscation Law, it makes the law unconstitutional, in so far as it enacts the perpetual forfeiture of the personal estate of rebels; and the discrimination made in regard to their real estate does not save the constitutionality of the act.
If, therefore, the Confiscation Law is to be held as constitutional, it can be so, as it seems to us, only on the ground that it does not fall within the scope of the constitutional prohibition in question. This ground may be maintained by asserting that the constitutional prohibition of perpetual forfeiture applies only to cases of 'attainder of treason,' that is, according to Blackstone, of 'judgment of death for treason,' and that cases under this act are not such; that the limitations applicable to ordinary judicial proceedings against traitors are not applicable here; that the Confiscation Act seizes the property of rebels not in their quality of criminals, but of public enemies; that it is not an act for the punishment of treason, but for weakening and subduing an armed rebellion, and securing indemnification for the costs and damages it has entailedin short, not a penal statute, but a war measure; and that the Constitution which gives Congress the right to make war for the suppression of the rebellion, and to subject the lives of rebels to the laws of war, gives it the right to subject their property also to the same lawsputting both out of the protection of the ordinary laws; and finally that all the objects aimed at by the measure are legitimated by the principles of public law.
If these views can be sustained, it follows that Congress was justified not only in enacting the perpetual confiscation of the personal property of rebels, but need not, and should not, have passed the explanatory clause prohibiting 'forfeiture of real estate beyond the natural life' of the rebel. So far as weakening the rebellion, indemnifying the nation for costs and damages, or the rights and interests of the heirs of rebels, are concerned, there is no reason in justice or in policy for the discrimination made between personal and real estate; if it is right and wise to take the one in perpetuity, it is equally so to take the other. In our judgment, it is right and wise to do both.
MILITARY ADMINISTRATIONNO ARMY OF RESERVE
In looking over the war, we can all now see a very great error in the military administrationthe neglect, namely, to provide and keep up a proper reserved force. It is the grand mistake of the war. Two years and a half of war, and no army of reserve! Eighteen months ago, a force of reserve of at least two hundred thousand men should have been formed. It could probably then have been formed of volunteers. From it, vacancies made in the armies in the field by battle, disease, or expiration of time of service, could have been filled with drilled and disciplined soldiers, and reinforcements drawn to meet any special exigency. The victory of Gettysburgh might have resulted in the total destruction of Lee's army before he could recross the Potomac; and Rosecrans might have been strengthened without weakening the Army of the Potomac or any other. Whether the cost of forming and keeping up such a force of reserve would have greatly exceeded the cost of the recent draft, we do not pretend to know. We are inclined to think it would not. But that is a question of little moment. Money wisely spent is well spent: money unwisely saved is ill saved. With such a force, the recent draft might not have been necessaryat all events there would have been no necessity for suspending active military operations in Virginia, and awaiting the slow completion of the draft, at a moment when, large additions to the forces in the field were precisely the one thing needful. The army of reserve would at once have supplied disciplined soldiers, and their places in the camps of instruction and reserve could have been filled with the new conscripts as fast as they were collected.
CONSOLATIONENFORCEMENT OF THE DRAFT IN NEW YORK
But grave as the error is which we have signalized, there is something that might well console us for greater misfortunes than it has entailed, and which gives us another illustration of the truth that God and Time often work for us better than we for ourselves, and out of our errors bring good that we could not forecast.
It would not be wise to assert that the not having such a reserved force necessitated the recent draft, and thereby occasioned the horrible outbreak in New York. But if it may even be safely suggested as possibly true, the successful enforcement of the draft becomes all the more a matter for boundless joy and congratulation. Important as its enforcement throughout the country was as a means of filling up the ranks of our armies, the outbreak in New York made it a thousand times more important as the only adequate assertion of the supremacy of national law.
There can be no doubt as to the nature, origin, and purpose of that outbreak. It was the result of a long-prepared traitorous conspiracy in the interest of the rebels. The enforcement of the draft against mob violence instigated by treason, was indispensable not only to the successful prosecution of the war against the rebels of the South, but to the maintenance of the supreme authority and power of the National Government, and of the foundations of social order at the North. Not to have enforced it might have insured the triumph of the rebellion and the independence of the South; it certainly would have rendered the North no longer a country fit for any decent man to live in. Such and so great was the significance of the crisis. The responsibility of the Administration was immense. The President met it nobly. He took care that a sufficient military forcenot under the control of Governor Seymour, but of a well-tried patriotwas present in New York. He carried out the draft there and everywhere else. He crushed the schemes and hopes of the traitorous conspiratorsmore guilty than the rebels in arms-and gave a demonstration of the strength of the National Government, as grand in its majesty as it was indispensable to the national salvation in this crisis and to its security in all future time. The Government has triumphed in the quiet majesty of its irresistible force over factious and traitorous opposition at the North, springing from treasonable sympathy with the rebels, or, from what, in a crisis like this, is equally wicked, the selfishness of party spirit, preferring party to country. More than this, it has triumphed over the dangerous and destructive notions on State sovereignty, which traitors and partisans have dared invoke. It is impossible to overestimate the importance for the present and for the future of this victorious assertion of the supremacy of the National Government.
SUMMARY REVIEW
In a review, then, of this gigantic struggle, we have every reason to be content and confidentno reason to bate one jot of heart or hope. The triumph over Northern treason, achieved by the force of the Government, has been followed by a moral triumph at the polls, no less grand in its significance. The country is not oppressed by the stupendous expenses of the war. The money is all spent at home. It stimulates the productive industry of the country, and the nation is all the time growing rich. The rebels have been disastrously repulsed in two attempts at invasion, and do not hold one inch of Northern soil. One third of the States claimed by them at the outset, are gone from them forever: Maryland, Missouri, Kentucky, are securely in the Union; Virginia we have cut in twonearly one half of its territory, by the will of its inhabitants, now constituting a loyal member of the Union as the new State of West Virginiawhile of its eastern half we securely hold its coast, harbors, and fortresses, and a considerable number of its counties. Tennessee is ours, and cannot, we think, be wrenched away. We have New Orleans, and the uncontrolled possession of the Mississippi rivercutting the territory of the rebels in two, destroying their communications, and giving us a considerable portion of the States bordering that river. In North Carolina and South Carolina we have a hold, from which it will be hard to drive us. On the Atlantic and Gulf coast nearly every fortress is in our possession; there is not a port which is not possessed by us, or else so blockaded that (except in the peculiar case of Wilmington) it is a hazardous affair for any vessel to attempt going in or coming out; and the rebels are utterly unable to raise the blockade of a single port. In fine, they have lost more than one third of their territory forever, and of the remaining portion there is not one considerable subdivision over which in some part the flag of the Union does not securely wave. What title to recognition as an independent power can the Confederate rebels present to the neutral powers of the world?
SKETCHES OF AMERICAN LIFE AND SCENERY
While American tourists are delightedly visiting and minutely describing the most hidden recesses of beauty among the mountains, plains, seas, lakes, and rivers of Europe, there are, close within their reach, innumerable spots well worthy of consideration, and hitherto entirely unknown to the great mass of pleasure and scenery seeking travellers. These fair but hidden gems have become of the more importance that the grand struggle convulsing our country has rendered foreign travel difficult, even when advisable, and has roused within our people a love for their own land, a pride in its loveliness, much more rarely felt before the attempt to dismember and ruin it had awakened dormant patriotism and completed the severance between the recent province and the historically renowned mother country. American painters are worthily illustrating American life and landscape; American poets, and no less poetical prose writers, are singing the forests, skies, flowers, and birds of their native land; and the inquisitive traveller should surely not fail to add his humbler mite in the way of discovery and description. The following sketches are founded upon actual observation, and the delineations of scenery and manners therein contained are strictly in accordance with the personal experience of the author.
I.A SUMMER EXCURSION
'All very well,' said Aunt Sarah; 'I have no doubt the excursion would be charming; but who will accompany you?'
'We do not require an escort; we can take care of each other,'
'Can it be that you, Lucy, a staid married woman of thirty-six, and you, Elsie, a demure young girl of twenty, are suddenly about to enter the ranks of the strong minded?'
'Why, dear aunt,' said Lucy D, 'you would not have us weak minded, would you? I think I heard you say no longer ago than yesterday that half the domestic miseries in this world were due to the weak nerves and feeble intellects of poorly educated women.'
'True; but the technical expression, 'strong minded,' does not mean strong in mindrather the contrary.'
'In other words, strong minded means weak minded, is that it, auntie?' laughed Elsie.
'I see, Aunt Sarah,' said Lucy, 'we shall be forced to call upon you for that most difficult of tasks, a definition. What is meant by the term, 'strong-minded woman'?'
'A monster,' replied Mrs. Sarah Grundy, 'who lectures, speaks in public, wants women to vote, to wear men's garments; in a word, one who would like to upset religion, social life, and the world in general.'
'Well,' dear auntie, 'we surely do not purpose committing any of these enormities; our intentions simply embrace a short excursion of some forty miles in search of fine scenery, health, and a little amusement. We have no confidence in our power to influence the public, even if we thought we had aught to say which they do not already know; we do not see that voting has a very beneficial effect upon men, witness election days; as for their garments, they are too hideously ungraceful for us to covet; in faith, we are of the most orthodox; we confess, we do think social life needs sundry reforms, more charity and forbearance, less detraction and ostentation, etc., etc.; and as for the world in general, we think it very beautiful, and only wish to overlook some few additional miles of its lovely mountains, lakes, and streams.'
'Well, well, girls, young people always can talk faster than old ones; but do you really think it safe for you to venture without escort? You do not even know the name of the place which you wish to visit; you have been informed that on the summit of yonder mountain is a lake, said to be picturesque; but of its cognomen, and of the proper means to reach it, you are utterly ignorant. You will have to ask questions of all sorts of people.'
'Suppose we dobeing women, we will certainly in America receive civil answers.'
'But if some person unknown to you should speak to you?'
'Little danger, dear aunt, of dread unknowns, if we comport ourselves properly; I have travelled much in all kinds of public conveyances, and never yet have been improperly addressed. Did you ever have an adventure of the sort'?
'Once only,' replied Aunt Sarah, 'and then the fault was my own. I was young and giddy; Cousin Nancy was with me, and we were in a rail-car. In a near seat sat a very good-looking young man; Nancy looked toward him once or twice and, meeting his eye, began to giggle: I foolishly joined her; thus encouraged, our young gentleman opened a conversation. Nancy laughed immoderately; but I, being a few years older, soon controlled my silly giggling; and by the tone of my reply speedily silenced our would-be admirer. He turned his back upon us, and, so far as I know, in less than five minutes had forgotten our very existence.'
'Decidedly a case in our favor! And if the boat should blow up, or the car roll down an embankment, in what would we be benefited by the fact of having an escort also to be scalded or have his head broken?'
'Ye maun even then gang your ain gait. I wish you a pleasant journey and a safe return.'
'Thank you, auntie, and you will not call us strong minded?'
'Certainly not, unless I find you merit the appellation.'
The little trunk was soon packed, and one fine July morning the two travellers set off in search of the beautiful lake, whose name is not to be found in the guide books. They knew it was to be looked for in a sharp and peculiar dent in the Shawangunk mountain, which dent, so far as they could judge from the hills near their dwelling on the northern slope of the Highlands, must be nearly opposite Poughkeepsie. Neither map nor gazetteer could they procure; the neighbors could give them no information, and they were forced to proceed with only the above-mentioned meagre stock of knowledge.