these--landscape horrors; vast cemeteries, whose enforced
tribute reached unto all kindreds; flame-scarred wastes memorializing a
past civilization, and extending from the Alleghany hills to the Georgian
forests, and from the rivers to the sea; and brooding over all, sole relic
of the conqueror's power, that grim sentinelcy that looked down from
dismantled ruins, and bleak, wind-shaken towers, upon the burial-place of
the domestic arts.

A Northern tourist, who, soon after the close of hostilities, followed the
trail of Sherman's army half across the State of Georgia, and explored the
Shenandoah Valley from the mountains at its source to the mountains at its
foot, thus comments upon the scenes which beguiled the earlier and later
moments of his journey: "And this lovely heritage, interspersed by hills
and valleys, lakes and rivers, which but as yesterday, under the
transforming hand of wealth and art combined, blossomed as the rose, and
was lighted by the torch of America's best civilization, now, and under
these severe conditions--alas! that we should be driven to concede it--has
sunk back into aboriginal unsightliness, and many portions thereof become
the fitting abode of those monsters who, warned by an instinct of their
nature, shun the haunts of human progress."

But not only did this ghost of desolation hold its solemn rounds where
wealth and its monumental insignia had erst been set up--more practical
subjects were included in the fearful summing up of Federal conquest. The
grain crop of four years had been consumed by the requirements of both
armies, or ruthlessly committed to the flames through the weak policy of
military commanders; export products were sacrificed to confiscation
needs; the agricultural districts were bereft of all labor aids, and stood
tenantless and barren; nothing of practical value--not even the currency
of the country, which had been demonetized months before the events of
which we particularly write--greeted the impoverished inhabitant, who,
standing in this presence, could scarce look back upon four years of
bootless strife with regret unmingled with repining.

Slavery, which was undoubtedly a great evil, and is at this period
conceded to have been such by its most clamorous apologists of _ante
bellum_ times, was nevertheless the great prop of community wealth in
those States where it had been recognized by the government; and when
(keeping in view the wide-spread destitution to which