Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 01.djvu/19

Rh powers. Did the South enter into any such Union as that? Had not her leaders constantly declared that in their opinion this was the worst of all forms of government, and if she was willing to stake life, liberty and property on the effort to escape it, did she not thereby demonstrate the earnestness of her conviction of her right to escape, and that her faith had been plighted to a very different instrument, by which she refused any longer to be bound to those who were seeking under its name to destroy the rights which it guaranteed to her, and force her to subserve the purposes of those who were seeking to ruin and degrade her own citizens, her men, women and children. Who drove the South to these extremities? The very men who accuse her of treason. When she accepted the contest, to which she was thus virtually invited in terms of contumelious threat and reproach, she was threatened with being wiped out and annihilated by the superior resources of her antagonist, with whom it was vain and foolish to contend, so unequal were the strength and resources of the two parties. It is true that the South parted in bitterness, but it was in sadness of spirit also. She did not wish it-certainly, Virginia did not desire it-if she could maintain her rights within the Union. Probably few men foresaw the extent or the bitterness of the war. Surely it was a mighty contest to have been waged by two parties of such unequal strength in numbers and resources, with such a promise of success to the weaker, for nearly four years, and doubtless there were periods during that time when those who provoked that trial by battle regretted that they had done so. The South at last fell from physical exhaustion-the want of food, clothes and the munitions of war; she yielded to no superiority of valor or of skill, but to the mere avoirdupois of numbers. Physically, she was unable to stand up under such a weight of human beings, gathered from wherever they could be called by appeals to their passions or bought by a promise to supply their necessities. It is said that after the battle of the Second Cold Harbor, where Grant so foolishly assailed Lee in his lines, and where his dead was piled in thousands after his unsuccessful attack, the northern leaders were ready to have proposed peace, but were prevented by some favorable news from the southwest. They did not propose peace except upon terms of unconditional submission. When the South was forced to accept those terms to obtain it, the North was not afraid to avow its purposes and carry them out. Slavery was abolished without compensation, and slaves were awarded equal rights with their masters in the government. It was the fear