temporaneously. Shall they remain inert? The value and vitality of history never depreciate; its virtues are ever new. Men die, but what they do for the true greatness of their country will live forever.

Men who fought on the other side, lacked not valor and endurance. We do not, in any sense, hold them culpable for the horrors we suffered in prison. They are our neighbors; they are citizens of the Union. The benefits of its preservation are theirs as they are ours. In fighting for it we fought for them. In loving our country we loved them.

The work concludes with a report of Dr. Joseph Jones relative to prison conditions as he found them in a visit to Andersonville, by direction of Surgeon-General Moore, of the Confederate government, in the interest of medical science; also the report of Colonel Chandler, representing the Confederate War Department, and his testimony relative to it, who was there about August 1, 1864. These reports confirm passages in my diary as to the wretched condition of prisoners and the wickedness of our prison keepers. J. W. NORTHROP.

Wichita, Kansas,

June 4, 1904.

HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION

CAUSE AND EVENTS LEADING TO CIVIL WAR.

The cause of the Civil War was slavery. African slavery in this country was an entailment coming through many years and peoples in other lands. It was an offspring of barbarism, despotism and Dark Ages. Before the beginning of any movement looking to independence from the rule of European powers, its existence in the Colonies, transplanted from those countries, was condemned by the best and ablest men of that time. It was one of the evils for which England was blamed, as the era of independence approached. Beneficiaries conceded its incompatibility with republican government when the time approached for its establishment. Among this class were the Tories of the Revolutionary period. After the Revolution, in the formation of the National Constitution, as in the Articles of Confederation, they demanded that slavery be left untouched, that some provision for its protection be incorporated in that instrument. Contrary to the conviction of the authors of the document the desire was gratified as the unity of all interests and all classes was highly essential, but with a mutual understanding that its abolition would naturally follow at "a more convenient season." Slavery was regarded as purely domestic, having no political or social significance, an abomity to be eliminated; but how and when, was an event of the future. The very fact that it was a class interest, left by concession, under a free government in which equality of human rights was a declared principle, made it seem plausible that some guaranty of non-intervention in its control be inserted in the Constitution. This compromise authorized Congress to pass a law for the recovery of persons held to service in one state who might escape to other states, and restricted Congress from abolishing the importation of Africans to be sold as slaves until 1808. It was a mistaken policy and opened a way for other demands, among which was a three-fifths representation in Congress based on slave population, which was granted as a compromise for a demand for full representation.

In 1784 it was proposed to cede to the general government, lands that belonged to Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia, which lands now compose the states of Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi. The ordinance designed to make the transfer was drawn by Jefferson. One stipulation was that after the year 1800 neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall exist, otherwise than as punishment for crime of which the party shall have been convicted and upon this article six of the eleven states present voted in its favor, New Jersey losing its vote by the temporary absence of its representatives. The motion to strike out received seven votes cast by Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina, Jefferson of Virginia and Williams of North Carolina, voting for it to stand. The vote was recorded six states for the stipulation to stand, and three against it, North Carolina being a tie and not counted, the vote for slavery restriction being lost through the absence of a New Jersey representative, as the Articles of Confederation required an affirmative vote of a majority of all the states. By this accident all that rich and extensive territory became slave states, and but for which slavery would have been confined to the Southern Atlantic States. As it was slavery was rendered permanent and profitable, and the traffic in slaves was stimulated. In a few years Louisiana was acquired and added to the slave states. Thus in the early years of the Republic the country became sectionalized by the existence of slave labor, and the accursed traffic in men widened.

In 1787 the Northwest Territory was ceded to the government from which slavery was restricted.

Roger B. Taney-later Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court-in defending as a lawyer, before a Maryland court in 1818, Rev. Jacob Bruber, charged with anti-slavery inculcations, truthfully set forth the revolutionary idea of slavery and the plea for leaving it undisturbed. He said: "A hard necessity, indeed, compels us to endure the evils of slavery for a time. It was imposed upon us by another nation, while we were in a state of colonial vassalage. It cannot be suddenly removed. Yet, while it continues, it is a blot on our national character, and every real lover of freedom confidently hopes that it will be effectually, though it must be gradually, wiped away, and earnestly looks for the means by which the necessary object may be attained. Until it shall be accomplished, until the time comes when we can point without a blush to the Declaration of Independence, every friend of humanity will seek to lighten the galling chain of slavery, and better, to the utmost of his power, the wretched condition of the salve."

This was said by a man born, reared and living in a slave State, but who, in later life, became a slave to the slave power,

and thirty-nine years after, as Chief Justice, declared to the astonished world that slavery had every right in the Territories of the United States that freedom had, and that no one had a right to protest, in the infamous Dred Scott case. His idea that "it must be gradually wiped away," was long before wiped out by the wrathful suppression of discussion of policies looking to its gradual abolition or against its further extension, thus bringing to a direct conflict the long "irrepressible conflict."

Slavery had triumphed beyond the anticipation of its friends or foes, so that when President Polk was inaugurated in 1845, of the twenty-eight States comprising the Union, half were free, half slave. In 1820 the line between free and slave territory had been made definite by the Missouri Compromise, giving all territory south of the southern line of Missouri to slavery; all territory north of that line to freedom. Nevertheless, Missouri had already become a slave Territory. Its admission to the Union with a slave Constitution at this time, caused great excitement over the country, which the Compromise Act designed to allay. Though it did prevent slavery north of the Compromise Line, except in Missouri, at the same time it sanctioned slavery in territory south of the Missouri southern line to the Pacific Coast. These conditions proved the insincerity of the South when the North was led to trust that slavery, if let alone, would disappear. From the adoption of the Constitution, it had been aggressive. From the hour of the first concession, the conflict became irrepressible.

Trade centers grew favorable to slavery for sordid reasons. They were the bulwark of pro-slavery in the North. Mobs were encouraged by their attitude, sometimes led by men of influence, to prevent abolition meetings and destroy anti-slavery literature. The press was used to pervert truth and condemn justice. Northern Legislatures were petitioned and threatened by Southern committees to pass stringent laws against tongue and pen that spoke against slavery. For thirty years free speech and a free press had been banished from the South, prior to 1860. On mere suspicion strangers were mobbed, deported and hung in the South. Efforts to bring about similar conditions North did not succeed, though they received serious attention by reigning powers. These but confirmed the convictions of anti-slavery people and made the contest more determined until the movement against slavery extension assumed shape:

Illustrative of the feeling of the controlling class in the South against anti-slavery people, I quote a few paragraphs:

"The cry of the whole South should be death-instant deathto Abolitionists wherever caught."-Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle. "We assure Bostonians who have embarked in the nefarious

scheme of abolishing slavery, that lashes will be spared their emissaries. Let them come to Louisiana; they will never return to tell their sufferings, but they will expiate their crime by being burned at the stake."-New Orleans True American.

"Abolition editors in slave States will not dare avow their opinions. It would be instant death to them."-Missouri Argus. "Resolved, That it is our opinion that any person who dares circulate any incendiary tracts or newspapers in this country, is justly worthy, in sight of God and man, of immediate death, and we doubt not that such would be the punishment of any such offender in any part of Mississippi where he may be found." (Resolution passed at a public meeting in a church at Clinton, Miss., Sept. 5, 1835.)

"Let no Abolitionist come within the borders of South Caroline; if we catch him * * * we will hang him."-Senator Preston in United States Senate, June 4, 1838.

*

"The people of the North must go to hanging the fanatics if they would not lose Southern trade, and they will do it. ** Depend upon it Northern people will never sacrifice their present lucrative trade with the South, so long as hanging a few thousand Abolitionists will prevent it."-Richmond (Va.), Whig.

Henry A. Wise, later the Governor of Virginia, who hung John Brown in 1859 for his appearance at Harper's Ferry, early prescribed "Dupont's best gunpowder, and cold steel" as the medicines for "Abolition fanatics."

Rev. T. S. Witherspoon, Alabama, wrote W. L. Garrison, editor of the Emancipator: "Let your emissaries cross the Potomac and I promise you that your fate will be no less than Haman's."

Rev. William Plummer, D. D., Richmond, Va., to a body of other clergymen, in 1835: "Let the Abolitionists understand that they will be caught if they come among us, and they will take care to stay away."

Pages of similar utterances exist; but my purpose is answered with these, as they show the feeling of slavery supporters South for forty years prior to 1860, and the spirit of hate Union soldiers faced, and the kind of treatment they suggested would be and was meted to Northerners who became prisoners.

Fugitive slave laws were a source of conflict, a firebrand instead of an olive branch. Before the year 1808 slavery had become an influential factor politically, commercially and socially, in elections, in trade centers, so that not until 1820 was the slave trade abolished against bitter opposition. As anticipated slavery was abolished where it existed in Northern States, some owners selling their slaves to Southerners where slave industry was more fostered, where slaves numerically increased and the area of slavery was extending. It soon became a paramount interest.