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 -1864] Increase in the central power. 609 did not employ the extreme measures put in force by the Washington government during the same years. In the policy of confiscating the property of Northerners the Confederate States went much further. By a series of Acts such property was made payable to the Confederate government in exchange for bonds. The commercial debts due to Northern creditors were especially aimed at. The results of the policy were meagre, for few Southern debtors sought to rid themselves of the claims upon them; and, owing to the invisible and intangible character of the property concerned, the government found little to confiscate. Less than $400,000 (specie value) was paid into the public treasury. This questionable practice of confiscating debts due to an enemy was declared constitutional by the Courts, though strongly opposed by some who, adhering to the traditional strict interpretation of the Constitution, held that no such power was given by that instrument to the Congress. The State legislatures, as usual, followed the example set by the central government, and passed Confiscation Acts that were equally ineffective from a fiscal point of view. As the war progressed and grew in dimensions, the necessary powers of the central authorities became more and more pronounced; and an in- evitable conflict arose between the notion of a confederation of sovereign States and that of a powerful centralised government in Richmond. The development of a strong military power could not be reconciled with a loose federation of independent States. In interpreting the Con- federate Constitution in favour of the former principle, the Attorney- General did violence to the treasured doctrine of States rights which the exigencies of the war dissipated. In the spring of 1862 the first Conscription Act was passed, enrolling in the army all white residents within certain age limits. In February, 1864, another similar but more stringent measure was adopted. This policy aroused much particularist opposition and outspoken disaffection in the States, especially in Georgia and North Carolina, where Stephens and Governors Brown and Vance put great difficulties in the way of the Confederate authorities carrying out the conscription. The relations between the State militias and the Confederate War Department were a constant cause of irritation. In North Carolina the feeling for States rights was most pronounced. In the summer of 1863 disaffection became general, and was crystallised in the so-called Peace Party, of which W. W. Holden became the head. Numerous public meetings were held to denounce the military despotism of the Richmond authorities and their encroachments upon the proper sphere of the State governments. The movement culminated in the political campaign of 1864, when Governor Vance was re-elected, defeating Holden. The former had abandoned his particularist attitude, and championed the cause of the central government. In North Carolina, as elsewhere, there were threats of seceding from the Confederacy; and it is an open question whether the South would have held together C. 11. H. TIL. CH. XIX. 89