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.

[563] was the result of terrour. The people of the North seem to have a peculiar dread of public opinion. The great majority will not only surrender their own convictions to what happens to be the popular caprice, but they will join the populace in persecuting those who entertain their own previous convictions. It was so in the crisis under consideration. But very effective measures were taken by the Government in aid of this spontaneous instinct of terrour. They revived the system of espionage and arrests which had been employed in France by Robespierre and Fouche. At first, it was pretended that the arrested persons held secret correspondence with the Southern authorities; but soon all disguise and hypocrisy were thrown off, and arrests were made on charges, even suspicion, of mere disloyalty. It was held that the safeguards which the Constitution threw around citizens, protecting them “in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures;” guarantying them a speedy trial in open court of law, and giving them by the writ of habeas corpus the right to know at once the charge against them, and to have the validity of that charge examined by a judge having power to discharge ;it was held that these provisions were put in abeyance by the state of war, and that the liberty of the citizen was not to be considered when the nation's life was at stake.

At the South, where great armies were penetrating and beleaguering the country, where public and domestic danger were everywhere and at all hours present, and where disaffection could at any moment bring fearful calamity upon the community, these arrests by order of Government were rare. It was a constant complaint of Generals in the field, and of civil officers in the municipal service, that when dangerous persons guilty of overt acts of treason to the Confederacy, were arrested and sent to Richmond, they were, as a general rule, released on the most unsatisfactory explanations, and let loose again upon the country. Much has been said of the sufferings, humiliations, and spoliations inflicted upon “Union” men in the South; and infinite, ingenious, and unblushing falsehoods have been published on the subject; but when the period arrives for a dispassionate examination of real facts, the reader of the history will be amazed at the moderation which was observed by the Southern people, more especially by the Confederate Government, towards a class of persons capable of so much mischief in a society threatened by imminent and fearful peril from within and without.

But at the North, there was no necessity for arbitrary arrests. The country was not invaded. The war was at a distance; and was offensive, not defensive. Except in portions of the Border States, the public sentiment was unanimous as against the South; opinions only differing as to the best means of reducing the distant “rebellion.” Yet a system of terrour was established, which could only have been warrantable at the South,