Edward Alfred Pollard, The lost cause; a new Southern history of the War of the Confederates ... Drawn from official sources and approved by the most distinguished Confederate leaders.

[176] Southern Confederacy in a state of blockade, and denouncing any molestation of Federal vessels on the high seas as piracy, having reference to letters of marque issued by the Confederate authority. He had prohibited all commercial intercourse with the States composing the new confederation. And although he insisted on referring to the belligerent powers in the flippant and unimportant words of “persons engaged in disorderly proceedings,” he had found it advisable, as early as the 3d of May, in addition to his first requisition for seventy-five thousand men to operate against these disorderly persons, to call for forty-odd thousand additional volunteers to enlist for the war, and eighteen thousand seamen, besides increasing the regular army by the addition of ten regiments. He now wrote to Congress: “It is recommended that you give the legal means for making this contest a short and a decisive one; that you place at the control of the Government, for the work, at least four hundred thousand men, and four hundred millions of dollars.” The recommendation was a singular commentary on the prospect that had been held out of subduing the Confederate power by three months levies, before the Congress should meet in the month of July to determine the disposition of the conquered States and the fate of the leaders. But Congress was generous; and, in excess of Mr. Lincoln's demand, voted him five hundred thousand men, to serve for a period not exceeding three years.

But the interest of the first Congress, under Mr. Lincoln's administration, is not confined to its military legislation. It is a period from which we may trace a spirit that essentially tended to revolutionize the political system and ideas of the North itself, and to erect on the ruins of the Constitution a despotic authority, whose consequences ran all through the war.

The first sessions of this Congress were signalized by a resolution refusing to consider any propositions but those looking to a continued and vigorous prosecution of the war, and confining all business to the military and naval operations of the Government; by a general approval of the acts done by the President without constitutional authority, including his suspension of the habeas corpus; and by the initiation of a barbarous policy of confiscation in a bill declaring free whatever slaves were employed in the service of “the rebellion,” thus evidently containing the seed of that thick crop of Abolition legislation which was to ensue.

Mr. Lincoln had suspended the writ of habeas corpus without the constitutional concurrence of Congress, and under a claim of authority to arrest without process of law all persons “dangerous to the public safety.” This remarkable usurpation was tolerated by the country. Indeed, it obtained many ingenious defences in Northern newspapers. It was declared that the privilege of habeas corpus was really in the interest of no one but quasi criminals; and that what had been esteemed for centuries as the