and by the speculations of the gamblers in Wall Street. In January, 1862, gold in New York was at a premium of 12 per cent. It soon fell to I, from which it rose, on the 10th of October, to 37, and closed on the 31st of December at 34.'

The Confederate paper money, by the very terms of its certificates, was not to be redeemed until the ratification of a treaty of peace between the United States and the Confederate States, and its value was therefore merely nominal.

struggle.

The struggle between the North and the South was the natural consequence of their environment. Society in the South crystallized around the life of Cause of the the planter. From the Southern standpoint, he was the father of a great family; the absolute owner of his slaves, whom he fed and sheltered as his cattle, chastised and cherished as his children, and for the care of whose souls and bodies he was responsible to God. The poor whites looked up to the planters, and felt little sympathy for the slaves. In contrast with this patriarchal life was the industrial activity of the North, where agriculture, commerce, and manufactures grew side by side, where large cities sprang up, wealth accumulated, and all the arts and sciences flourished.

A life of agriculture favors the growth of an aristocracy. One of agriculture combined with commerce and manufacture, that of a democracy. In the early life of the Republic, it was the pride of the American that these two civilizations could grow up side by side as a single nation; but as this nation expanded, it was clear that

Comptroller's report, 1863, quoted in Bolles' Financial History of the United States, 1861-1885, p. 141.

6 N. & H., 248.

it must develop on one line, or on the other; the Republican party proposed to solve the problem by limiting the extension of slavery leaving it intact where it already was. The Southern leaders preferred to break up the Republic; the clash came with the result that might be expected. The fight at first was not between African slavery and free labor; it was between an agricultural and a varied life, between aristocracy and democracy, between the old and the new, between stagnation and progress. The brave resistance of the South made it not only right, but prudent, for the North to weaken its enemy by declaring the slaves to be free. There was now no longer any question about the issues at stake; no longer any hope of compromise. One side or the other must yield; and, in yielding, must lay aside those cherished ideals that it held to be dearer than life.

Effect of

With emancipation, the South feared all the horrors of a servile insurrection with a race of submissive servants transformed into barbarous and brutal masters. Many of the Southern proclamaleaders, like the noble and gallant Lee, tion on the South. would gladly see slavery abolished, but resisted the violent action of the North as their forefathers had resisted that of the mother country. Of the Confederate soldier, General Alexander says:

He was lean, sunburned, and bearded; often barefoot and ragged. He had neither training nor discipline, except what he acquired in the field. He had only antiquated

and inferior arms until he captured better ones in battle. He had not even military ambition, but he had an incentive which was lacking to his opponents,-brave and loyal as they were, he was fighting for his home.1

The Confederate Soldier, E. P. Alexander.

In the North, the proclamation awakened the fervent zeal of that large class of men who saw the false and criminal side of slavery, and recognized it Effect of proclama- as a blot upon the name of a free and indetion on the pendent nation. This feeling, however, was North. far from universal; a large number of officers and soldiers openly declared that they were fighting for the Union, and would never have enlisted in a war for the abolition of slavery. A large majority of this class hated this institution, but sympathized with the slaveholders on whom it had been imposed. Many took pride in their connection with these hospitable farmers, whose manner of living was different from their own. Some prized the Union for its name, some for its trade, some for its power; others felt that they could not exist without it and maintain the high standard on which the Republic was based, and without which it would perish. The eloquence of Webster had fostered the feeling that Liberty was inseparable from Union. Upon the issue of this war depended the success or failure of the government by the people. The American Revolution of 1776 had been followed by an uprising in Western Europe, where a great government was established which, after a series of struggles, broke down before the gold of England and the united empires of Eastern Europe. No other great republic was left on earth; and if the Union should be dissolved, the once united States of America would become puppets in the hands of the stronger nations and soon be blotted out of existence. As the war became more serious, the feeling against slavery increased, and the conviction gradually spread that slavery and free labor could not live side by side on the same continent.

Webster and

Lincoln.

To Daniel Webster is due much of the credit for the first uprising of the people of the North; but when, after long protracted warfare the hope of reconciliation was lost, and many at the North had little sympathy for the bloody policy of coercion, it was due in a large part to the tact and determination of Abraham Lincoln, that the staunch patriotism and heroic sacrifices of the loyal men at the North brought to a close the war that not only restored the Union, but abolished the great danger that had threatened it.

CHAPTER V

THE RAPPAHANNOCK.

LINCOLN'S view of the military situation may be inferred from a memorandum he prepared for Seward in the summer of 1862.

Lincoln's view of the situation.

What should be done [he says] is to hold what we have in the West, open the Mississippi, and East Tennessee, without more. A reasonable force should, in any event, be kept about Washington for its protection. Then let the country give us a hundred thousand more troops in the shortest possible time, which added to McClellan, directly or indirectly, will take Richmond without endangering any other place that we now hold, and will substantially end the war. (Lincoln's Complete Works, II., 190.)

He was right in believing that no efforts should be wasted on points of minor importance. The destruction of the Confederate Army was the primary Comment. object of the war; it was holding a line on the Rappahannock where it defended the State of Virginia and the Confederate capital, threatened Washington, forcing the Federal Government to keep there a large garrison, and might at any moment press safely and rapidly down the Valley of the Shenandoah and into the heart of Pennsylvania. Let the Federal Army drive it back from the Rappahannock