PERSECUTION OF RELIGIOUS TEACHERS.

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Hospitalières of France, Beguines of Flanders, and the Sisters of Elizabeth in Germany, in their black gowns and white hoods, their complacent sweetness and holy living, gave to the stricken their self-devotion, so nobly illustrated by Florence Nightingale and her company of noble women, whose only desire was to go where suffering and perils were greater, ever dared to lay secular or rude hands upon one of this Sisterhood.

no one had

Who would have thought, at the close of our Civil War, when the bugles had sounded the long truce and war-broken soldiers were left stranded in the hospitals, that there was one being in human shape who could be so regardless of those gentle sisters who had shown such self-abnegation, as to persecute them as outlaws of society? Had they not bent over the wounded and ⚫ the sick "when pain and anguish wrung the brow," and whispered low the words of peace, patience, and divine hope, while smoothing the pillow and holding the cup to the parched lip? Had they not aided the healing power with angelic cheerfulness, and by their softening and purifying presence given good impulses and holy thoughts to the sick and dying? Why, even the Robespierres and Dantons, and the very devils of the French Reign of Terror respected this Sisterhood. They were recalled by a special decree of the republic, which recited their boundless love and charity; and their faithful head, "Citoyenne" Duleau, was given new authority to practice their beautiful vocation. But had this French sisterhood lived in Missouri and given their angelic sympathy and good offices to the wounded rebels, fine and imprisonment would have been their punishment. The very fiends of the Reign of Terror put to shame these bigots of our day and generation! In only one other state did radical proscription go thus far. In West Virginia the constitution forbade any one to teach school who had not taken an oath of loyalty. Girls of fourteen were suppressed as teachers under this policy of spite.

The Supreme Court has more than once passed on the iron-clad oath. In the case of Mr. Attorney-General Garland, already referred to in another chapter, who desired to resume his practice in the Supreme Court of the United States, the same principles as those asserted in the Cummings case were vindicated. The Court allowed him to resume his practice in the United States Courts. By a law passed on the 24th of January, 1865, the iron-clad oath had been extended to the attorneys of the courts of the United States. But the Court held that the oath prescribed operated as a legislative decree of perpetual execution, and was ex post facto.

The repeal of the proscriptive statutes, which clouded our Federal system, was a paramount duty. The Democrats sought to recrown the discrowned majesty of the people, and to enthrone the states in their proper relation to the government, and thus reset and repolish the jewels of popular sovereignty. With what success?

The reader may well ask, was this discrowned sovereignty rehabilitated?

vote.

Only after many efforts was this done. The lower House of the Forty-eighth Congress, at its first session, passed the bill of the writer- by a two-thirds. It was a general bill. It had the sanction of the best lawyers, such as Judge Poland. But the Senate was reluctant. At last, however, the matter was compromised. Something was gained, but not all. Senator Garland-whose magnificent efforts in behalf of this amnesty were his crowning glory in Congress advised the author to take what the Senate sent as the best possible to be then and there had. The bill repealed the iron-clad oath and the jury test oath. It was approved by the President, May 13, 1884-almost two decades after the war was over. It took away many of the gross absurdities of the law. It retained one, however. amended section 1218 of the Revised Statutes, so as to read—“No person who held a commission in the army or navy of the United States at the beginning of the late rebellion, and afterward served in any capacity in the military, naval, or civil service of the so-called Confederate States, or of either of the states in insurrection during the late rebellion, shall be appointed to any position in the army or navy of the United States." Still proscriptive! The commissioned officers are still under the ban.

It

The great trouble with the policies of the Radicals was that they were framed in suspicion of all the people South and of all party opponents North. The Radicals forgot the motto of the Italians: "Sospetto licenzia fede." If they had not the spirit of kindness toward others, they should not have been cruel to themselves. As Sir Thomas Browne said of revenge, "It only feathers the arrow of the enemy"; so the same may be said of ignoble suspicion. It destroys all that is knightly and magnanimous. There is no lack of wisdom or patriotism in following the precepts of history as to clemency. They teach that revenge is injustice, and that it hurts most those who indulge in it.

Twenty years have passed since the war was closed. It is high time that all sectional proscriptions, prejudices, and animosities should cease. We have felt-those of us who are Northern Democrats-that a great wrong was done by this long delay in healing the wounds of the war. Let us now draw the curtain upon sectional wrongs. It is for us to have our brothers as our equals, to harbor no spirit of separation, distrust, or enmity. Let us be bound and solidified by one Constitution, for one inseparable Union, and under it, for the untrammeled will and rich heritage of its past wisdom and glory. If we must have a test of loyalty, let us swear to each other by every star upon the blue field of our ensign, by the white radiance in which all colors, red, white, blue,-aye, and gray,- blend as one; not, as in the old Italian code, by the God who avenges, but as the old Anglo-Saxon kings were adjured, by the grace and mercy of His Son - that good-will and full amnesty shall be the spirit and aim of our legislation, in state and Nation!

CHAPTER XXXV.

POLITICAL CAMPAIGNS AND ISSUES UP TO 1876.

THE CONTEST OF 1864 — MCCLELLAN AND LINCOLN

I

MILITARY AND CIVIC VIRTUES IN ISSUE-ARM-IN-ARM CONVENTION --- 1868 AND ITS ISSUES; - GOVERNOR SEYMOUR - HIS SPEECHES AND CONDUCT — THE PATRIOTISM OF THE DEMOCRACY INCREASE OF OUR AREA AND POWER UNDER DEMOCRATIC ADMINISTRATION -THE NUMBER OF DEMOCRATIC VOTERS AND SOLDIERS – SEYMOUR defeated-JUDGE BLACK ON THE CARPET-BAGGER-HORACE GREELEY TRIED, AS A BRIDGE FOR HONESTY AND AMNESTY— – GREELEY'S DEFEAT ON AN INCREASED VOTE - OTHER QUESTIONS OF FEDERAL LEGISLATION CIVIL RIGHTS ECONOMIES CURRENCY BAYONETS AT THE POLLS-ABRAM S. HEWITT'S SPLENDID CHAMPIONSHIP OF FREEDOM VERSUS FORCE - ENGLISH STATUTES AND LAW ON THE SUFFRAGE-ABOLITION OF MILITARY INTERFERENCE WITH ELECTIONS.

N November, 1864, the Republican party was called before the people, in the election of a President. Its choice was Abraham Lincoln. General McClellan represented the Democracy. The campaign was that of a soldier with civic graces against a civilian with a military policy. The Democrats discussed General McClellan's treatment by the Administration. Had he not been the saviour of the capital-a second Sobieski, and treated with the same indignity? Were not other Democratic generals ignored? Were not the confiscation policies cruel? Was not the destruction of the Union sure, if the Republican plans of reconstruction should be carried out?

These were the primates in the procession of ideas in 1864. But the main points for McClellan, whose nomination at Chicago was seconded by the author, were these:

1st. That his policy was the only correct and constitutional one for the conduct of the war. 2d. That had it been adhered to, the war would have been closed and the Union restored. 3d. That owing to the President and his advisers, the fruits of his victories were resultless, and the victories themselves were snatched from him by their intermeddling.

Amidst the feebleness and fickleness of the Administration, the wavering support of the President, and the persistent opposition of the Republicans, the fear, vanity, and trifling of those in power, the daring interference and secret persecutions of those who could not understand his plans or were determined to foil them-McClellan came before the convention refined from the fire. Calm, vigilant, without rest, yet without haste; clear in conception, vigorous in action, with a grasp of mind and comprehension of intellect possessed by few; with a power to organize confessed by all, and a power to execute rarely equaled, he presented the type of a conservative soldier whose views of political necessity far outshone the disjointed ideas of the fanaticism of the day. Such a man was this hero of the people. He had no interest to subserve but that of his country.

He was selected by the Democrats because it was their impression that, if unhindered, he would have ended the war in 1862. A record of that wonderful year, with his general plan to strike all around at once; his movement in February, forced by the President, when it was impossible at that season; his protests; his salvation of Washington; the battles of the Seven Days and his campaign in Maryland; his cruel and shameless recall on the 10th of November, 1862, while moving after the defeated enemy;—all these vindicated him as the then best known soldier of the Republic. These were evidence to the country that the radicals had determined to prolong the war until the last measure of their policy should be carried out.

-

What, then, was the remedy? If the American people desired peace with union; a Union strong in its members a permanent Union of states assured of their dignity and equality, they must defeat the Republican party, and elect McClellan; they must prefer Democracy and its principles.

To this end the Democracy, in their platform of 1864, proposed by all peaceable means to negotiate for reunion. An armistice was not necessary to open negotiations. "Let commissioners be appointed," said the Democracy; "let a Democratic President proclaim the illegal proclamations of his predecessor null and void; let the sovereign people of each sovereign state send their wisest men to a grand national council, and there take steps toward the rebuilding of the shattered system." "Let this be done," said the Democracy, "and three months will not elapse before the hosannas of a generous and Union-loving people will hail the advent of peace as if it were the coming of a new salvation to our world!" Well, did Southern papers, in anticipation of such a time, prophesy that the accession of a conservative Democrat like McClellan, who would repeal the obnoxious proclamations, and make overtures to the South to return, with a guarantee of constitutional rights, be the paralysis of secession, and the elevation of a party to power invincible for the Union! The Democracy could then alone have established peace with Union. That they would never consent to a peace based on separation, is as true as that they never

SLAVERY MUST PERISH.

619

“Peace,

would have used their power for a war of subjugation. Anxious for peace, and ready to hail it as a permanent condition, their legend was: Union, and Fraternity."

On these issues, and in that campaign, the Democratic party was defeated and the Republican party was sustained. Passion was rife; more blood must flow. The slavery extremists brought on the war what matter how? "Slavery must die the death of violence. Peace with slavery can never be in the American Union. Perish the Union rather than that," is the verdict, North. "Peace and Union without slavery can never be," is the cry of the extremist, South. Democracy submits, and says to its sons: "The Union shall not perish from the Earth." "We love not slavery let it die

the death"-"Save the Union !" "Save it—but bind in with your laurels of victory the olives of peace and reconciliation."

Since the war, there have been five Presidential elections. In four of them the Democracy were worsted. In the fifth and last one they came out the victors. It does not matter to the present generation, nor to posterity, what persons succeeded to the Presidency. The main consideration is that the government should be honestly administered; and that there should be no impediment to the people in their grand march for progress, prosperity, and happiness. Many efforts, such as that of the "Arm-in-Arm Convention" at Philadelphia on the 14th of August, 1866, were made to reconcile by sentiment, what reconstruction was destroying. The political elements were not then ready for consolidation against the iconoclastic majority of Congress. The activity of pulling down had not then ceased. The wellintended attempts of President Johnson and his Cabinet for reconciliation of the sections, in their tour over the Northern states - ostensibly made to be present at the laying of the corner-stone of a monument to Stephen A. Douglas, at Chicago — did little more than fret the body politic. Indeed, they tended to increase the Republican majorities. The radical legislation took a harsher form. The demand to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment and spread universal suffrage came in collision and rode down ruthlessly the impotent vetoes of the President. On the question of military or civil reconstruction, the result is known. It appeared in the act of March 2, 1867. The work for state rehabilitation was retarded. The executive and legislative departments did not harmonize. Supplemental acts came along, producing chaos. Reconstruction, with its temperless mortar, had already begun its incongruous work. Impeachment was threatened and it came. At length the year 1868 rolls round. It is the year for the choice of a new President. Horatio Seymour is nominated on the 4th of July, at New-York City. The canvass creates great excitement. The strife of the war resounds again. It is the old clangor of "closing rivets up" for a desperate encounter. The questions at issue are still those growing out of the war. The platforms are pro and con, as to the principles and conduct of the Republican party; pro