Comic History of the United States Part 25

He was never punished, with the exception perhaps that he published a book and did not realize anything from it.

Lee fled to the westward, but was pursued by the triumphant Federals, especially by Sheridan, whose cavalry hung on his flanks day and night.

Food failed the fleeing foe, and the young shoots of trees for food and the larger shoots of the artillery between meals were too much for that proud army, once so strong and confident.

Let us not dwell on the particulars.

As Sheridan planted his cavalry squarely across Lee's path of retreat, the worn but heroic tatters of a proud army prepared to sell themselves for a b.l.o.o.d.y ransom and go down fighting, but Grant had demanded their surrender, and, seeing back of the galling, skirmis.h.i.+ng cavalry solid walls of confident infantry, the terms of surrender were accepted by General Lee, and April 9 the Confederate army stacked its arms near Appomattox Court-House.

The Confederate war debt was never paid, for some reason or other, but the Federal debt when it was feeling the best amounted to two billion eight hundred and forty-four million dollars. One million men lost their lives.

Was it worth while?

In the midst of the general rejoicing, President Lincoln was a.s.sa.s.sinated by John Wilkes Booth at Ford's Theatre, April 14. The a.s.sa.s.sin was captured in a dying condition in a burning barn, through a crack in the boarding of which he had been shot by a soldier named Boston Corbett. He died with no sympathetic applause to soothe the dull, cold ear of death.

West Virginia was admitted to the Union in 1863, and Nevada in 1864.

The following chapters will be devoted to more peaceful details, while we cheerfully close the sorrowful pages in which we have confessed that, with all our greatness as a nation, we could not stay the tide of war.

CHAPTER XXIX.

TOO MUCH LIBERTY IN PLACES AND NOT ENOUGH ELSEWHERE.--THOUGHTS ON THE LATE WAR--WHO IS THE BIGGER a.s.s, THE MAN WHO WILL NOT FORGIVE AND FORGET, OR THE MAWKISH AND MOIST-EYED SNIVELLER WHO WANTS TO DO THAT ALL THE TIME?

When Patrick Henry put his old cast-iron spectacles on the top of his head and whooped for liberty, he did not know that some day we should have more of it than we knew what to do with. He little dreamed that the time would come when we should have more liberty than we could pay for.

When Mr. Henry sawed the air and shouted for liberty or death, I do not believe that he knew the time would come when Liberty would stand on Bedloe's Island and yearn for rest and change of scene.

It seems to me that we have too much liberty in this country in some ways. We have more liberty than we have money. We guarantee that every man in America shall fill himself up full of liberty at our expense, and the less of an American he is the more liberty he can have. Should he desire to enjoy himself, all he needs is a slight foreign accent and a willingness to mix up with politics as soon as he can get his baggage off the steamer. The more I study American inst.i.tutions the more I regret that I was not born a foreigner, so that I could have something to say about the management of our great land. If I could not be a foreigner, I believe I should prefer to be a policeman or an Indian not taxed.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PATRICK HENRY'S GREAT SPEECH.]

I am often led to ask, in the language of the poet, "Is civilization a failure, and is the Caucasian played out?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE MORE I REGRET THAT I WAS NOT BORN A FOREIGNER.]

Almost every one can have a good deal of fun in America except the American. He seems to be so busy paying his taxes that he has very little time to vote, or to mingle in society's giddy whirl, or to mix up with the n.o.bility. That is the reason why the alien who rides across the United States in the "Limited Mail" and writes a book about us before breakfast wonders why we are always in a hurry. That also is the reason why we have to throw our meals into ourselves with such despatch, and hardly have time to maintain a warm personal friends.h.i.+p with our families.

We do not care much for wealth, but we must have freedom, and freedom costs money. We have advertised to furnish a bunch of freedom to every man, woman, and child who comes to our sh.o.r.es, and we are going to deliver the goods whether we have any left for ourselves or not.

What would the great world beyond the seas say to us if some day the blue-eyed Oriental, with his heart full of love for our female seminaries and our old women's homes, should land upon our coasts and crave freedom in car-load lots but find that we were using all the liberty ourselves? But what do we want of liberty, anyhow? What could we do with it if we had it? It takes a man of leisure to enjoy liberty, and we have no leisure whatever. It is a good thing to keep in the house for the use of guests, but we don't need it for ourselves.

Therefore we have a statue of Liberty Enlightening the World, because it shows that we keep Liberty on tap winter and summer. We want the whole broad world to remember that when it gets tired of oppression it can come here to America and oppress us. We are used to it, and we rather like it. If we don't like it, we can get on the steamer and go abroad, where we may visit the effete monarchies and have a high old time.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MAY BE LED TO TRY IT ON HIMSELF.]

The sight of the G.o.ddess of Liberty standing there in New York harbor night and day, bathing her feet in the rippling sea, is a good thing. It is first-rate. It may also be productive of good in a direction that many have not thought of. As she stands there day after day, bathing her feet in the broad Atlantic, perhaps some moss-grown alien landing on our sh.o.r.e and moving toward the Far West may fix the bright picture in his so-called mind, and, remembering how, on his arrival in New York, he saw Liberty bathing her feet with impunity, he may be led in after-years to try it on himself.

More citizens and less voters will some day be adopted as the motto of the Republic.

One reference to the late war, and I will close. I want to refer especially to the chronic reconciler who when war was declared was not involved in it, but who now improves every opportunity, especially near election-time, to get out a tired olive-branch and make a tableau of himself. He is worse than the man who cannot forgive or forget.

The growth of reconciliation between the North and the South is the slow growth of years, and the work of generations. When any man, North or South, in a public place takes occasion to talk in a mellow and mawkish way of the great love he now has for his old enemy, watch him. He is getting ready to ask a favor. There is a beautiful, poetic idea in the reunion of two contending and shattered elements of a great nation.

There is something beautifully pathetic in the picture of the North and the South clasped in each other's arms and shedding a torrent of hot tears down each other's backs as it is done in a play, but do you believe that the aged mothers on either side have learned to love the foe with much violence yet? Do you believe that the crippled veteran, North or South, now pa.s.sionately loves the adversary who robbed him of his glorious youth, made him a feeble ruin, and mowed down his comrades with swift death? Do you believe that either warrior is so fickle that he has entirely deserted the cause for which he fought? Even the victor cannot ask that.

"Let the gentle finger of time undo, so far as may be, the devastation wrought by the war, and let succeeding generations seek through natural methods to reunite the business and the traffic that were interrupted by the war. Let the South guarantee to the Northern investor security to himself and his investment, and he will not ask for the love which we read of in speeches but do not expect and do not find in the South.

"Two warring parents on the verge of divorce have been saved the disgrace of separation and agreed to maintain their household for the sake of their children. Their love has been questioned by the world, and their relations strained. Is it not bad taste for them to pose in public and make a cheap Romeo and Juliet tableau of themselves?

"Let time and merciful silence obliterate the scars of war, and succeeding generations, fostered by the smiles of national prosperity, soften the bitterness of the past and mellow the memory of a mighty struggle in which each contending host called upon Almighty G.o.d to sustain the cause which it honestly believed to be just."

Let us be contented during this generation with the a.s.surance that geographically the Union has been preserved, and that each contending warrior has once more taken up the peaceful struggle for bettering and beautifying the home so bravely fought for.

CHAPTER x.x.x.

RECONSTRUCTION WITHOUT PAIN--ADMINISTRATIONS OF JOHNSON AND GRANT.

It was feared that the return of a million Federal soldiers to their homes after the four years of war would make serious trouble in the North, but they were very shortly adjusted to their new lives and attending to the duties which peace imposed upon them.

The war of the Rebellion was disastrous to nearly every branch of trade, but those who remained at home to write the war-songs of the North did well. Some of these efforts were worthy, and, buoyed up by a general feeling of robust patriotism, they floated on to success; but few have stood the test of years and monotonous peace. The author of "Mother, I am hollow to the ground" is just depositing his profits from its sale in the picture given on next page. The second one, wearing the cape-overcoat tragedy air, wrote "Who will be my laundress now?"

Andrew Johnson succeeded to Mr. Lincoln's seat, having acted before as his vice.

A great review of the army, lasting twelve hours, was arranged to take place in Was.h.i.+ngton, consisting of the armies of Grant and Sherman. It was reviewed by the President and Cabinet; it extended over thirty miles twenty men deep, and const.i.tuted about one-fifth of the Northern army at the time peace was declared.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE STAY-AT-HOMES WHO WROTE WAR-SONGS.]

President Johnson recognized the State governments existing in Virginia, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Louisiana, but inst.i.tuted provisional governments for the other States of the defeated Confederacy, as it seemed impossible otherwise to bring order out of the chaos which war and financial distress had brought about. He authorized the a.s.sembly also of loyal conventions to elect State and other officers, and pardoned by proclamation everybody, with the exception of a certain cla.s.s of the late insurgents whom he pardoned personally.

On Christmas Day, 1868, a Universal Amnesty was declared. The Thirteenth Amendment, abolis.h.i.+ng slavery, became a part of the Const.i.tution, December 18, 1865, and the former masters found themselves still morally responsible for these colored people, without the right to control them or even the money with which to employ them.

The annual interest on the national debt at this time amounted to one hundred and fifty million dollars. Yet the Treasury paid this, together with the expenses of government, and reduced the debt seventy-one million dollars before the volunteer army had been fully discharged in 1866.

Comment on such recuperative power as that is unnecessary; for the generation that fights a four-years war costing over two billions of dollars generally leaves the debt for another generation or another century to pay.

Congress met finally, ignored the President's rollicking welcome to the seceded States, and over his veto proceeded to pa.s.s various laws regarding their admission, such as the Civil Rights and Freedman's Bureau Bills.

Tennessee returned promptly to the Union under the Const.i.tutional Amendments, but the others did not till the nightmare of Reconstruction had been added to the horrors of war. In 1868, after much time worse than wasted in carpet-bag government and a mob reign in the South which imperilled her welfare for many years after it was over, by frightening investors and settlers long after peace had been restored, representatives began to come into Congress under the laws.

During this same year the hostilities between Congress and the President culminated in an effort to impeach the latter. He escaped by one vote.

It is very likely that the a.s.sa.s.sination of Lincoln was the most unfortunate thing that happened to the Southern States. While he was not a warrior, he was a statesman, and no gentler hand or more willing brain could have entered with enthusiasm into the adjustment of chaotic conditions, than his.