Chapter 44:
- Proper limit of the narrative of the war. -- a glance at its political consequences. -- General condition of the South after the war. -- alternative of policies at Washington. -- hideous programme of the radicals. -- the policy of reconciliation.Enlightened lesson of history. -- the problem of “reconstruction.” -- coincidence of moderate Republicans with the conservative plan. -- position of President Johnson. -- estimate of the views and character of the new President. -- his school of politics, midway between those of Calhoun and Hamilton. -- a happy position. -- the great historical issue. -- series of Radical measures in Congress. -- the blindness of despotism. -- plain consequences of the Radical policy. -- the residuum of State Rights claimed by the South. -- President Johnson's declaration of another war. -- have the Americans a government? -- differences of opinion in the South, correspondent to the division of parties in the North. -- a small and detestable faction of time-servers. -- noble declaration of Ex -- President Davis. -- eloquent appeal of Henry A. Wise. -- basis for a new Southern party. -- the South to surrender only what the war conquered. -- what the war determined, and what it did not determine. -- the new arena of contest and “the war of ideas.” -- coarse and superficial advice to the South about material prosperity. -- an aspiration of Gov. Orr of South Carolina. -- the South should not lose its moral and intellectual distinctiveness as a people. -- questions outside the pale of the war. -- Rights, duties and hope of the South. -- what would be the extremity of her humiliation
The record of the war closes exactly with the laying down of the Confederate arms. We do not design to transgress this limit of our narrative. Bat it will not be out of place to regard generally the political consequences of the war, so far as they have been developed in a formation of parties, involving the further destinies of the country, and in the light of whose actions will probably be read many future pages of American History. The surrender of Gen. Lee's army was not the simple act of a defeated and overpowered General; it was not the misfortune of an individual. The public mind of the South was fully represented in that surrender.
