The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-08-23

was his instrumentality and he employed 1t with a most masterful hand. There
 are two letters of his that 1 venture to
 quote here After Sharpsburg, the fall
 of 1S62 he wrote to General Mcclellan to know why that commander allowed
 Lee, with about one-third his own force
 to re-cross the Potomac, at leisure, and
 why he yet tarried on the safe side of the stream The general made various excuses, among them the low condition of his cavalry. The President sent 5000 fresh cavalry horses to the army, but as it still remained in Maryland. while Lee was in Virginia, he called again for an
 explanatio. The general replied his re- enforced cavalry horses had sore mouths Finally Mcclellan crossed the Potomac
 and began to build a railroad to convey supplies from Harpers Ferry to Win chester. The President chafed at the prolonged inactivity and wrote to his general that Lee was then hauling all
 supplies for his army, by wagons, double the distance from Harper's Ferry to Win
 chester, concluding with the taunt, that if Lee could change places he would wipe
 the United States general off the earth in two weeks. After Gettysburg, the
 summer of 1863, Lincoln wished to know why Meade had allowed Lee to re-cross the Potomac at leisure. He wrote to Meade that he had choice of positions in the battle and that his force was equal to Lees; that after the battle he had | received 20,000 fresh troops, and yet he | allowed Lee to cross a wide stream and | move away from under his nose.
 MT. Lincoln had led the republican par ty to the conquest of the Confectionery. He now turned his attention at the be- ginning of his second term to the mpor- tance of aid from the south in Congress to save the government from revolution at the hands of his triumphant party , After Sherman had marched through Georgia to Savannah and had laid waste South Carolina from the seacoast to Cheraw, he passed over to North Car ! olina and, leaving his army under Scho- | field, he took boat to City Point, Va, to
 meet General Grant and the President. On river steamer on the James, at City Point, the. President dictated to Grant and Sherman the terms given at Appomatox to Lee and later at Greensboro to John ston, as originally agreed on by Sherman Lincoln's general view was to restore
 the states of the fallen Confederacy im-
 mediatey without revenges or retala- tions of any description. Congress had Just dissolved the short term March 1. The body would not assemble until De- cember. He hoped to have the southern
 states in their vacant places. He well
 understood the imperative necessity of
 their presence there to orderly govern
 ment.
 The Confederacy should have succeeded. The genesis of the new government was 1 in fact only the demonstration anew of | the original theories of American politics | enlarged and adapted. If we turn to the sea operations of its power for war, we | find phenomenal success where the land | operations failed. If we reflect that | commanders at sea necessarily relied on | their own resources of strategy and poli-
 cy while commanders on land were sub | ject to the impediments of the civil au- ] thority, We find room for very wide and ! original inquiry of the cause of the dis | appointment of the movement of 1S6O-61 <, Among various evidences of neglect ot ] Confederate history is the general igno. | rance of what was done at sea. For ex. ample under direction of General Beau. regard, the first submarine torpedo boa
 in the world went out from the wharves of Charleston, $. C., in February, 1864 | to attack the blockading fleet The flee | consisted of several very large and DOW | erful vessels of war, carrying complets
 armament and hundreds of men and of
 hcers each. The "Huney,' built at Mo
 bile, and exclusively by southern inven 1 ton, in darkness of night struck th, | .'Housatanc," one of the principal of tn. I fleet and sunk 1t immediately, with all or board, some 400 souls The other shin. fled for safety and were gone severa days, thus by the law of nations abdicat. ing all right to perpetuate the blockade The port of Charleston, under the law O.
 nations, was from that time open. This
 Is single instance where suppression O. fact is fragrant in our history" w, read much of the enormous property los. to the south in the emancipation q, slaves perhaps four billions of dollars It is difficult to determine what financia
 sacrifice attended the precipitate chang, in the status of the negro laborer, iron chatte to wage earner, while he re-
 mained yet on the land. But be the los; of property in slaves what it may, 1t doe. not compare to the loss of the merchan
 marine. owned exclusively by the peopl,