we have called
attention) this pet institution was wrecked on the breakers of war,
property affairs in all their borders reached an ebb beyond which, it
would have seemed, they could not have been impelled by even a retribution
born of that highest example of social evil--State treason. The male
inhabitants of the South thus found themselves, at the close of the war,
not only stripped of fortune, and all that pertained to a farmer's
inheritance, in the strictly agricultural communities to which they
belonged, but without business capacity or business employ, had the former
been supplied, and under the explicit disfavor of the government
administration, in all its branches, with all that that implied.

But while the physical straits to which the inhabitants of these States
were driven almost exceeded belief, and challenged the sympathies of
Christendom, they were met at this time with a yet more incorrigible evil,
as we have already prevised, and one from which all attempts at escape
seemed likely to plunge them into deeper miseries. Despite the generous
policy inaugurated by the commanders of the Federal forces at the close of
the civil conflict, and the good intentions of President Johnson, who had
lately succeeded to the chief magistracy, the Congress of the United
States at this time resolved upon a system of oppressions towards this
people whose parallel is not to be found in modern history. This work was
inaugurated by the passage of laws whose effect was a virtual
dismemberment of the Union; all the efforts of these States to participate
in the administration of the affairs of the general government being in
pursuance thereof promptly discountenanced.

The movement which followed was in keeping therewith, and involved the
withdrawal from the State governments of all their prerogatives as such.
The civil power was vested in military satraps, who were commissioned to
govern these provinces (for such they had become); or where the work of
reconstructing or radicalizing the populace was more advanced, and it was
necessary to preserve the form of the civil machine, State elections were
improvised and conducted under the shadow of overawing bayonets. The
administration of justice was as summarily withdrawn from the legal
functionaries, and given over to the Federal judicatories; or, what was
far worse, placed in the hands of that most ignorant and despotic of all
judiciary systems--military courts-martial. The law-maki