held under the Constitution--as though we had been conquered
and made a colony of by France or Russia. The right of the
strongest--the law of the sword--was as absolute at "Appomattox" that
day as when Brennus, the Gaul, threw it in the scale at the ransom of
Rome.

So far, it was all according to the order of things, and we stood on
the bare hills men without a country. General Grant offered us, it was
said, rations and transportation--each man to his native State, now a
conquered province, or to Halifax, Nova Scotia. Many would not have
hesitated to accept the offer for Halifax and rations; but, in distant
Southern homes were old men, helpless women and children, whose cry
for help it was not hard to hear. So, in good faith, accepting our
fate, we took allegiance to this, our new country, which is now called
the "United States," as we would have done to France or Russia.

With all that was around us--the destruction of the "Army of Northern
Virginia," and certain defeat of the Confederacy as the result--no one
dreamed of what has followed. The fanaticism that has influenced the
policy of the Government, to treat subject States, whose citizens had
been permitted to take an oath of allegiance, accepted them as such,
and promised to give them the benefit of laws protecting person,
property and religion, as the dominant party in the United States has
done--exceeds belief.

To place the government of the States absolutely in the hands of its
former slaves, and call their "acts" "laws;" to denounce the slightest
effort to assert the white vote, even under the laws, treason; and,
finally, force the unwilling United States soldier to use his bayonet
to sustain the grossest outrages of law and decency against men of his
own color and race! This has gone on until, lost in wonder as to what
is to come next, the southern white man watches events, as a tide that
is gradually rising and spreading, and from which he sees no avenue of
escape, and must, unless an intervention almost miraculous takes
place, soon sweep him away.

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