be exchanged?  Shall censorious superiority assumed by one section provoke defiant self-assertion on the other?  Shall Manassas and Chickamauga be retorted for Chattanooga and Richmond?  Under the supposition that the full Congress will be composed of gentlemen, all this is impossible.  Yet, if otherwise, it needs no prophet of Israel to foretell the end.  The maintenance of Congressional decency in the future will rest mainly with the North.  Rightly will more forbearance be required from the North than the South, for the North is victor.

But some there are who may deem these latter thoughts inapplicable, and for this reason:  Since the test-oath operatively excludes from Congress all who in any way participated in Secession, therefore none but Southerners wholly in harmony with the North are eligible to seats.  This is true for the time being.  But the oath is alterable; and in the wonted fluctuations of parties not improbably it will undergo alteration, assuming such a form, perhaps, as not to bar the admission into the National Legislature of men who represent the populations lately in revolt.  Such a result would involve no violation of the principles of democratic government.  Not readily can one perceive how the political existence of the millions of late Secessionists can permanently be ignored by this Republic.  The years of the war tried our devotion to the Union; the time of peace may test the sincerity of our faith in democracy.

In no spirit of opposition, not by way of challenge, is anything here thrown out.  These thoughts are sincere ones; they seem natural—­ inevitable.  Here and there they must have suggested themselves to many thoughtful patriots.  And, if they be just thoughts, ere long they must have that weight with the public which already they have had with individuals.

For that heroic band—­those children of the furnace who, in regions like Texas and Tennessee, maintained their fidelity through terrible trials—­we of the North felt for them, and profoundly we honor them.  Yet passionate sympathy, with resentments so close as to be almost domestic in their bitterness, would hardly in the present juncture tend to discreet legislation.  Were the Unionists and Secessionists but as Guelphs and Ghibellines?  If not, then far be it from a great nation now to act in the spirit that animated a triumphant town-faction in the Middle Ages.  But crowding thoughts must at last be checked; and, in times like the present, one who desires to be impartially just in the expression of his views, moves as among sword-points presented on every side.

Let us pray that the terrible historic tragedy of our time may not have been enacted without instructing our whole beloved country through terror and pity; and may fulfillment verify in the end those expectations which kindle the bards of Progress and Humanity.

Poems From Battle Pieces

THE PORTENT 1859