ccount of a fear that they may lose Southern trade, what may they not
demand? Certainly, very soon nothing less than Vice-President will be
accepted, and the same people who sustain these things now will cry out
that this is right!"

"It does look so. I have been studying this question since you have been
reciting your experiences and giving the views of yourself and others,
and am now prepared to agree that greed is at the bottom of all
this. This same greed is one of the several dangers that threaten
our country's institutions to-day. It causes crimes and wrongs to be
overlooked, and in many cases defended, in order to gain influence with
the people who are determined by any means in their power to control the
Government."

"Yes; and see the progress they are making in this direction. As I
have said, there is not a man, with but very few exceptions, North, who
denounced the war and those who were engaged in prosecuting it, who is
not in some official position. Turn to the South. So far as they are
concerned it may seem natural for them to select from their own class;
but why should the North fall in with them? You have given, in your
answer to me, the only reasonable answer--that of greed and gain; but to
see this great change in the minds of the people in so short a time is
strange indeed. Twenty years ago they were thundering at the very gates
of our Capital. To-day they control the country. There is not a man,
save the President of the Southern Confederacy and a very few of the
leaders in the war made to destroy our Government, who is not now in
some honorable position if he wishes to be. We find them representing
us in the first-class missions abroad, in the second-class and in the
third-class; and there not being high places enough of this kind, that
the world may know the Confederacy has been recognized fully by our
people since its downfall, those who were in high positions under it now
take to the Consulships and are accepting them as rapidly as can well be
done.

"You find your Cabinet largely represented by their leading men, and
many of your Auditors, your Assistant Secretaries, Bureau officers,
etc., are of them. This not being satisfactory, all the other
appointments South are made up of those men to the exclusion of every
one who was a Union man before, during, or since the war. The Government
not furnishing places enough, all the State, county, and city offices
South are filled in the same manner by