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.

[565] officers. Mourners were seized at funerals, while burying their dead. Young children were arrested and imprisoned for months, in some cases for years. The victims of these proceedings were in many instances driven to lunacy and to suicide, some of them dying under their severe usage. The detective system took the feature of eaves-dropping, and domestic servants were enlisted in the pay of Government. Arrests were often made on the most frivolous and contemptible pretences. A father, hearing that his son was shot instantly dead in battle, exclaimed, “That is good,” meaning to express his relief at the thought that he had escaped the agonies of a lingering, painful death; he was arrested for the “disloyal” expression, hurried precipitately to Camp Chase, and imprisoned for two months before the privilege of explanation was accorded him. Two ladies of undoubted loyalty were arrested in a carriage in the streets, for raising their handkerchiefs, and passing them several times over their mouths. They were suspected of making signs to prisoners; whereas they had been eating an orange. The system of terrour was employed not only in the Border States, but was put in practice everywhere. In far interiour towns, where the idea of danger from the rebels was supremely ridiculous, it was as active as in Washington city or New Orleans. A single clergyman in Central New York, wrote thirty letters in two months, sending lists of his neighbours whose arrest he demanded. An order was issued by the President to all policemen in the country, commanding their services in these seizures. State machinery was thus brought to the help of this nefarious business. The system was vigorously employed for partisan purposes. “Democrat” was held to be synonymous with “traitor,” and being a “Democrat” was often the only ground for arrest.

We make this recital to show how impossible it was, for a while, to maintain an opposition party at the North. The power of a Government, wielding a patronage of many hundred millions of dollars per annum, and supported by an army of more than a million of soldiers, half of them kept habitually in the North, and allowed to resolve themselves into a mob on the slightest pretence, was too great to be opposed by reason and argument, when brought to bear without scruple and with despotic ferocity upon a helpless and paralyzed opposition. Passive submission to despotic rule, being a necessity, became a temporary duty. We have no heart nor right to censure those who remained consistent though often silent opponents of the Administration, during such a period of force and terrourism. But there was a class of original conservatives, who did not remain passive; who went over heart and hand and soul to the Republican party; and who vied with the minions of power in intemperance of speech and violence of action. The principal authors of the enormities that were perpetrated will receive the due sentence of history; but what will be the ignominy that will attach to the names of men, who, in the character of