Page:American Historical Review, Volume 12.djvu/81

Oi-ganization of Post-Office Department of Confederacy 71 United States and the present contractors, until it assumes the entire control of its postal affairs. This course is rendered necessary by the utter impracticability of mixing the employees of the two Governments in the same service. The question as to whether the government of the Confederate States will assume any liability to present contractors, before it assumes the control of our postal affairs, involves the idea of liability on the part of the Government for the obligations of the United States before the Department shall be organized and ready to enter into new contracts. I am authorized to continue the existing contracts provisionally, by proclamation, until new contracts can be entered into. All postmasters and employes of the postal service were in- structed to render all accounts and to pay all moneys to the order of the United States authorities, as they had heretofore done, until the government of the Confederacy assumed entire control. Another paragraph reads : ^'e must regard the carrying of our mails at this time by that Gov- ernment as a great public necessity to the people of both Governments, resulting from their past intimate political, commercial and social rela- tions, and alike important to the preservation of the present interests of the people of both countries ; and while that Government, by its action, consults such considerations, our Government and its people should act with the same high regard for great public interests. Such a course on our part, springing from such motives will preserve the character of our people, without impairing the dignity of our Government, with far less injury to the people of both than would necessarily follow from precipitate action on the part of either. The Judge furnishes an excellent illustration of the beclouded state of mind possessing the highest in authority in the South : It was hoped that this course would have beneficial effects, by removing all doubts as to the duty, for the time being, of those engaged in the postal service, and by showing to the Government at Washington that so long as it continued to hold itself liable for the mail service in the Confederate States, it should receive all the revenues derived from that service. It was supposed, too, that it was greatly to the interests of that country, as well as to the interests of our own, to avoid a sudden suspension of the postal communication between the people of the two countries, and to avoid being brought at once into practical non-inter- course, which it was supposed would occur if this department had been required to assume control of the service before its organization, and before any time had been given to pass the mail across the frontier. And when that policy was determined on, it was not known that active hostilities would occur, but it was then supposed to be still possible that our separation from the United States might be peaceably effected, and that all questions relating to the public property and to pecuniary lia- bility between the two countries, might be settled by them on terms of equality.