IVas the Confederate Soldier a Rebel f
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WAS THE CONFEDERATE SOLDIER A REBEL? By Bushrod C. Wash1ngton. I. "T/ITH their political disabilities reV V moved, in the possession of restored citizenship, and loyal to our re-united coun try, there are thousands of Confederate soldiers in all parts of the United States, filling, in public office and private enterprise, positions of highest honor and trust. The great body of these now grizzled, time-worn veterans is still resident in the once seceded States of the South. After four years in the Civil War, of unex ampled endurance and devotion, and a dis play of heroism which the Anglo-Saxon race now everywhere contemplates with pride and claims as a common heritage, having yielded to the inevitable, they sub scribed at Appomattox the terms of an honorable and honest surrender. While that surrender, to their minds, did not compromise a single principle for which their statesmen had disputed in the national councils, nor in defence of which their States had later seceded and called them to take up arms, it did establish an immutable faet — a fact they were forced to admit, which they instantly recognized, and pledged themselves thenceforward forever to observe, — that seeession was impossible, that the Federal Union, whatever their understanding of it before had been, was then and forever " one and inseparable." While Appomattox witnessed the reestablishment of our territorial oneness under domination of the national theory of govern ment, and demanded a return of paramount allegiance to the Federal centre by those who had lately rendered it to their res pective States, it was the restoration of a geographic union only. While the surren der accomplished the re-association of lately
separated States, it did not effect, instanter, a reunion of the American people. It did not bring immediately to pass that return of confidence and mutual respect, that "Union of hearts and union of hands," without which, in a democratic republic like ours, there could not be the complete and ideal union. Such a consummation, at such a time, was not within the range of human possi bility. It was not in the nature of man, that the animosities aroused by the carnage, devas tation, and nameless horrors of an inter necine war, a war of proportions without historic precedent, could be dissipated by the mere surrender of arms and interchange of pacific formalities. The heart-wounds of a people emerged from a civil war like ours could be healed only through the mollient processes of time, or closed by some sudden emergency of national defence or aggression, which would call upon the people of all sections to share a common danger, and unite in acts of mu tual endurance and self-sacrifice. The proc esses of time were slow, not always mollient, and often interrupted. The five and thirty years since Appomattox, with intertrade and intermarriage might have filled or bridged the "bloody chasm," could soldiers and statesmen -have had their way. The magnanimous terms of capitulation offered by Ulysses Grant, thegreat commander of the Federal army, went far towards promoting the return of fraternity, and were an earnest of the sincerity of his later utterance — " Let us have peace." But after the battle, the jackal and the vulture. After the war, its grim sequel of "reconstruction " set in, when those heroes, "invisible in war, invincible in peace,"
