Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 1.djvu/602

564 end of the battle strife, the law remained regnant instead of a discretionary power. The tyrannical dogma of military necessity was at once abrogated. Readjustment must therefore be made legally and constitutionally or it would not stand. Reconstruction or any plan that deprived intelligent, law-abiding citizens of the South of their power in the Nation would involve its projectors as the unrighteous subverters of government in an odium from which there can be no recovery. The preservation of the liberties for which the Union was at first formed demanded obedience by the North which had conquered, as well as by the South which had been subjugated. That duty of obedience to the fundamental truths on which our government is founded remained unchallenged when the last Confederate soldier gave up his gun.

It was for this great result that the final fight was made. This saving of the Southern equality in the Union, and at the same time the saving of the North from the evils that would come to it from any agreement which gave them authority to dominate any part of the Union, was surely an achievement which gave to Appomattox a glory in defeat greater than the glory even of First Manassas, where such a superb victory was won. The blood which brave men shed in March and April, 1865, was not poured in vain. North and South have gained alike by the last sacrifices of the Confederate people. Free government by a firm Constitution and wise statute law is not lost. The seceded States returned to the Union, but surrendered no right of man by treaty with a superior power as they had suffered no dishonor in defeat upon the battle field.

Resuming consideration of closely allied military and civic events we see that on the third of March, the day preceding the inauguration of President Lincoln for the second term, he instructed General Grant through the secretary of war to have no conference with General Lee unless for the capitulation of his army or some purely