e place or
countenance among honest and humane and patriotic people. When the
nation gives them life, and a chance for its continuance, it shows all
the magnanimity that humanity in such case can afford.

III.

In North Carolina there is a great deal of something that calls itself
Unionism; but I know nothing more like the apples of Sodom than most of
this North Carolina Unionism. It is a cheat, a Will-o'-the-wisp; and any
man who trusts it will meet with overthrow. Its quality is shown in a
hundred ways. An old farmer came into Raleigh to sell a little corn. I
had some talk with him. He claimed that he had been a Union man from the
beginning of the war, but he refused to take "greenback money" for his
corn. In a town in the western part of the State I found a merchant who
prided himself on the fact that he had always prophesied the downfall of
the so-called Confederacy and had always desired the success of the
Union arms; yet when I asked him why he did not vote in the election for
delegates to the Convention, he answered, sneeringly--"I shall not vote
till you take away the military." The State Convention declared by a
vote of ninety-four to nineteen that the Secession ordinance had always
been null and void; and then faced squarely about, and, before the
Presidential instructions were received, impliedly declared, by a vote
of fifty-seven to fifty-three, in favor of paying the war debt incurred
in supporting that ordinance! This action on these two points exactly
exemplifies the quality of North Carolina Unionism. There may be in it
the seed of loyalty, but woe to him who mistakes the germ for the
ripened fruit! In all sections of the State I found abundant hatred of
some leading or local Secessionist; but how full of promise for the new
era of national life is the Unionism which rests only on this
foundation?

In South Carolina there is very little pretence of loyalty. I believe I
found less than fifty men who admitted any love for the Union. There is
everywhere a passionate devotion to the State, and the common sentiment
holds that man guilty of treason who prefers the United States to South
Carolina. There is no occasion to wonder at the admiration of the people
for Wade Hampton, for he is the very exemplar of their spirit,--of their
proud and narrow and domineering spirit. "It is our duty," he says, in
his letter of last November, "_it is our duty to support the President
of the United States so long as he m