2^/ 
 
 Duke University Libraries 
 
 A letter on the 
 Conf Pam #638 
 
 DTTDE1737 
 
ON THE 
 
 STATE OF THE y^A.lR. 
 
 BY ONE RECENTLY RETURNED FROM THE ENEMY'S COUNTRY. 
 
 I was .relc'ased from a Yankee prison in August of last year, and for four 
 months thereafter resided in the North on "u parole of honour, awaiting my ex- 
 change. When I came out of prison,,! found that everywhere the thought of 
 the North was peace; not so much in the newspapers, whose office, especially 
 with the Yankees, is rather to disguise public sentiment, than to express or 
 apply it; but in every circle of conversation, and every quarter where men dared to 
 unmask their minds and to substitute their tx"ue convictions for the stereotypes 
 of affectation, I found a real desire for peace, which had almost ripened into a 
 popular demand, ready to define its terms and resolved to insist upon its conces- 
 sion. I- can recollect how I then burned .to be in Richmond, to proclaim my 
 convictions and to open my budget of assurances ; how that the Chicago Con" 
 vention meant peace ; how that this and that man, least suspected of generosity 
 to the Confederacy or of deference to truth, privately confessed the war to be* 
 failure; how that even Republicans of Mr. Lincoln's school, seizing upon certain 
 amiable expressions in the Confederate Congress of last summer, wanted to 
 know if they might not mean some accommodation of the questions of the wan 
 and replied to them with those affectations of generosity with which the dexte- 
 rous cowardice of the Yj^nkee is always ready to cover his sense of defeat. 
 
 This disposition of the public mind in the North — then a great surpriae to 
 me — was easily accounted for, when it was closely observed. It wa.s clearly not 
 the fruit of any decisive disasters to the Northern arms in the Summer cam- 
 paign of 1864. Bpt that campaign, up to the time in which I date my first 
 obaervations in the North, had been negative. Atlanta had not fsUeo. All 
 
the enf?a"'eiueuts iu ^sortlieru Georgia had dot atuouuted, as Juhustou >aid, to 
 the sum of more than one battle, and it was yet doubtful on which sid« to strikje 
 the average of success. Richmond was erect -and defiant; and Lee's army had 
 given new and conspicuous proofs of fortitude, at Cold Harbour and at Peters 
 buro-. Nowhere, as yet, could the enemy find any prospect of the speedy ter. 
 minatlon of the war; and though he had searched every link of the armour of 
 the Confederacy, he had been unable to plant anywhere a serious wound. It-is 
 true, that so far in the campaign, the enemy's fortune had not been superiour to 
 ours But it was simply because it was thus negative; simply in prospect of a 
 prolongation of the war that, in mid-summer of 1864, the Yankee public halted 
 in its opinions aijd seriously meditated a proposition of peace. ^ 
 
 The great lesson whicn the South is to Iparn of public opinion in the North 
 is this: that the prospect of a long^war is quite as sure to obtain the success and 
 independeace of the Confederacy, as the positive victories of her arins. It 
 might not have been so in the first periods of the war, when the resolution of 
 the enemy was fresh and patient, and the Union was then^ really the apple of his 
 eye. But it is when patience has bee^a worn threadbare by promises ; when 
 expectation haa stood on tip-toe until it has ached; when the sentiment of Union 
 has lost all its original inspiration ; when " the Union' as it was " has become 
 more and more impossible to the hopes of the intelligent, and the attempt to 
 realize it has fallen from the resolution of a sovereign necessity to a mere prefer- 
 ence of alternatives, that we find the enemy quite as likely to be defeated by the 
 prospect of a prolonged war, as by the dint of positive disaster, and, in fact, 
 meditating more anxiously the question of Southern endurance, than the imme- 
 diate fortunes of any military campaign. 
 
 It is a great mistake to suppose that in these later years of the war, the North 
 is fighting for the Union as the sine qua non, the indispensable thipg. That 
 may be thp elack of Yankee newspapers and the drone of demagoguns. But I am 
 convinced to the contrary. It is to be admitted that the North, in the devel- 
 opment of her resources in this war, and the discovery cotemporary with it of 
 an almost fabulous wealth in her oil regions and mines, and new fields of enter- 
 prise opened along the entire slope of the Rocky Mountains, has obtained a con- 
 fidence which has assured her, among other things, that, even apart from the 
 South, she has in herself the elements of a great national existence. It is 
 this swollen wealth — some of it the wind-falls of a mysterious Providence — 
 which has appeased much of that avarice which formed so large a share in the 
 Northern desire for the Union. Again, as the war has progressed, it has be- 
 
^^^.^ 
 
 come more and more obvious — I may say irresistibly apparent — to countless in- 
 telligeut persons ip the North, that it has wasted what is most desirable iu the 
 Union; destroyed its esprit; left nothing to be recovered but its shadow, and 
 that along with such paltry recovery of a mere name, must be taken the conse- 
 quences of such despotic government as will be necessary to hold two hosti- 
 lized countries under a common rule. It is thus that the sentiment of the 
 Union has lost much of its power in the Xorth. The first fervours of the war 
 are scarcely now to be discovered among a people who have chosen to carry on 
 hostilities by the mercenary hands of foreigners and negroes, and have devised 
 a system of substitution — a vicarious warfare — to an extent that is absolutely 
 without parallel in the history of any modern nation. 
 
 All persons in the North, with the exception of some hundreds, tell you they 
 prefer the Union j it is a universal desire spoken everywhere; but spoken only 
 as a preference and desire, and no longer as a passion that insists upon an ob- 
 ject which it 'considers death and ruin to dispense with. Of all who declare for 
 the Union, but few will testify sincerely that they are for it at all hazards and 
 consequences Whatever may be the convenient language or the fulsome pro- 
 testation of public opinion in the North, I am persuaded of two things': 
 
 i^'irst, that the North will not insist upon the Union in plain prospect of a war 
 indefinitely prolonged. 
 
 And second, that the North will never fight the war beyond that moderate 
 point of success on the part of the South, where she would be disposed to ac- 
 commodate the enemy with certain treaty favours which might stand in lieu of 
 the old Union, and where she would not.be quite confident enough in her posi- 
 tion to insist upon a severe independence. 
 
 It is thus that the war, on the part of the North, is limited by contingencies, 
 which are very far short of decisive results one way or the other, and which 
 may transpire even without any very signal successes of our arms. 
 
 What I have said of the peace movement in the North in the summer of 
 1864, before the fall of Atlanta, has its application to other times. That move- 
 ment was simply the result of a conviction, cot that the South was about to ac- 
 complish a positive triumph, but that she was able to endure the war much 
 longer than had been expected, and yet had not reached that point of confi- 
 dence where she would not be likely to make valuable concessions to the North 
 for the early and graceful acknowledgment of her independence. That ac- 
 knowledgment the North was then on the eve of makiag under certain dis- 
 guiCii;, it iB tru*;, of p'irty eonvsnitacy, but noao ths itei qertairdy beoau&e it 
 
6ou"-ht decent excuse for the act. The Democratic party Was then Well-nigh a 
 unit on the subject of peace. "Burn my letter," wrote a distinguished politi- 
 cian of New England to me; *^but when you get to Richmond, hasten to Presi- 
 dent Davis, and tell him the Chicago Convention means peace, and nothing but 
 peace." It was the military events which followed that interrupted this resolu- 
 tion, and showed how little thefe Was of principle or of virtuous intention in 
 Yankee parties; and with the fall of Atlanta, Savannah, Wilmington and Charles- 
 ton, and Sherman's campaign of magnificent distances, the Northern mind has 
 again become inflaoied with the fever of new hopes, and clamors for uncon- 
 ditional war, when it thinks that it is in the last stages of success. 
 
 The grand conclusion to which the observations I made in the North last 
 summer l6ad is this : that if we can ever regain substantially nothing more than 
 the status quo of seven months ago; if we can ever present to the North the same 
 prospect of a long war we did then, and put before them the weary task of overcom* 
 fng the fortitude of a brave people, we shall have peace and independence in 
 our "rasp. It is a vulgar mistake that to accomplish our success in this war we 
 have to retrieve all of the past and recover by arms all the separate pieces of our 
 territory. It is to be remeipbered that we are fighting on the defensive, and 
 have only to convince the enenay tiat we are able to protect the vital points of 
 our country to compel him to a peace in which all is surrendered that he has 
 overrun, and all the country that he holds by the ephemeral and Worthless title 
 of invasion, falls from him as by the law of gravitation. The price of our peace 
 has come to be now but a moderate measure of endeavour — a measure I am per- 
 suaded only large enough to convince the Yankee of aoothVr link drawn out in 
 the prolongation of the war. Let but his present animated hope of dispatching 
 the Confederacy in a few months be exploded, and I predict that peace will be 
 the result ; for he will have then an occasion of discouragement far greater than 
 that of last summer, as each later prolongation of the war will bring with it a 
 larger tax on patience and a new train of necessities — among them the dreaded 
 one of conscription, no longer to be put off" by the present comfortable expedi- 
 ents which have reached their maximum in the substitution of the foreigner 
 and the negro. 
 
 My friends, it is not extravagant to say that the time has come when only 
 such endeavour as will put us in anything like the situation we were a few 
 months ago — or only such proof of endurance as will convince the North of an- 
 other lease of the war — will assure us peace and independence. I wish that I 
 could iuEert this conviction in every fibre of the Southern mind Thf. <9Gk be 
 
fore us is not very great. If we can only regain the situation of last summer, or 
 even if we can only give a proof to the enemy that we are not at the extremity 
 of our resources or at the last limits of resolution- — that We are aVe and deter- 
 mined to fight this war indefinitely, we have accomplished the important and 
 vital conditions of peace. And I believe we can easily do the first — recover 
 substantially, in all important respects, the losses of the past few months, and 
 even add to the sf.atus*qUo of last summer ne\^ elements of advantage for us. 
 Defeat Sherman at any stage short of Richmond and it re-opens and recovers all 
 the country he has overrun. Leave him if you please the possession of the sea- 
 ports ; but these have no value to us as ports of entry and are but picket posts 
 in our system of defences. His (Campaign comes to nought if he cannot reach 
 Grant; nothing left of it but the brilliant zig-zag of a raid, vanishing as heat 
 lightning iu the skies. Follow the consequences of Sherman's misadventure. 
 Grant's army of mortgrels alone, without the looked for aid from the Carolinas, 
 can no more take Richmond than it can surmount the sky. If that army is the 
 only assailant of Richmond, t^en the city never was more feebly threatened. It 
 is true that Grant is within a few miles of our capital, when, this time last year, 
 he was on the Rapidau. But that is a fool's measure of danger ; for in each 
 case we have' the same army shielding Richmond, and whether that shield is bro- 
 ken ten or a hundred miles away is of uo importance to the interest it covers. 
 Again, Grant had on the Rapidan the finest army the enemy had ever put in 
 the field. He has now on the lines around Richmond the poorest army that 
 has ever been assembled under the Yankee flng; and the last dregs of the re- 
 cruiting offices have been sifted (iut to make it. 
 
 Is there anything really desperate in our situation, unless to fools and cowards 
 w*ho draw lines ou paper to show how the Yankees are at this place and at that 
 place, and think that this Cob-Wcb occupation of the country, where the enemy 
 has. no garrisons" and no footholds, indicates the extent of Yankee conquest and 
 gives the true measure of the remliantof the Confederacy ! And yet. this is too 
 much the popular fashion of the time in estimating the military situation. Men 
 are drawing for themselves pictures of despair out of what are to those who 
 think profouiidly and bravely no more important than the passages of the hour— - 
 
 Light and shade 
 Upon a waving field, chasing each other. 
 
 I am determined to express the truth, no matter how painful to myself or un- 
 Tpfkome to otherfS. In th'- firtt period*- of tbii- t^ar who was not proud of the 
 
Confederacy and its heroic figure in history '. Yet now it is to be confessed that 
 a largo portion uf our people have fallen below the standards of history, and 
 hold no honourable comparison with other nations that have fought and struggled 
 for independence. It is easy for the tongue of the demagogue to trip with flat- 
 tery on the theme of the war ; but when we come to the counsels of the intel- 
 ligent the truth must be told. We are no longer responding to the lessons and 
 aspirations of history. You. sp«ak of the scarcity of suljsistence. But Prussia' 
 in her wars, drained her supplies until black, bread was the only thing eat in the 
 king's palace; and yet, under Frederick, she wdh not only her independence, but 
 a position among the Five Great Powers of Europe. You speak of the scarcity 
 of men. Yet with a force not greater than that with which We have only, to 
 hold an invaded country and maintaiu the defensive, Napoleon fought his 
 splendid career, and completed a circle of victories that touched the boundaries 
 of Europe. 
 
 It is enough to j^icken the heart with shame and vexation that- now, when, of 
 all thoief, it is most important to convince the enemy of our resolution — now, 
 when such a course, 'for peculiar reasons; will insure our success — there are men 
 who not only whine on the streets about making terms with the enemy, but in- 
 trude their cowardice into the official places of the Government, and sheltered 
 by secret sessions and confidential conversations, roll the word "reconstruction" 
 under the tongue. Shame upon the Congress that closed its doors that it might 
 better consult of dishonourable things J Shame upon those leaders who should 
 encourage the" people and yet have broken down their confidence by private 
 conversations, and who, while putting in newpapers some cheap words of patri- 
 otism, yet in the same breath suggest their despair by a suspicious cant about 
 trusting in Providence, and ga ofi" to talk submission with their intimates in a 
 corner! Shame upon those of the people who have now no other feeling in the 
 war than an exasperated selfishness; who are ready to sink, if they can carry 
 down in their hands some little trash of property ; who will give their sons to 
 the army, but not their precious negro slaves ; who are for hurrying off 
 embassies to the enemy to know at what price of dishonour they may purchase 
 some paltry remnant of their possessions ! Do these men ever think of the 
 retributions of history 'i 
 
 When Cato the Younger was pursued to Utica by the victoriyus arms of Cae- 
 sar, Plutarch relates of him on this occasioii certain conversations and senti- 
 ments which singularly apply to our own condition in a beseiged city, and may 
 cliacst ba taken zz. rspoatsd in lbs Btrsstg of Riclioacad ; 
 
" One of the Coancil,'' writes riutarch, •' observed tlio expediencj' of a decree fori en- 
 franchising; the slaves, and riiany commended the motion. Cato, howeyer, said : 'He 
 Tvo'ild not do that, because it'wus neither just nor lawful ; but s^ch as their masters 
 would voluntarily discharge,^ he would' receive, provided they were of proper age to 
 bear arms ' This manj- promised to do j and Cato withdrew, after having ordered lists 
 to be made out of alT that should offer. * * "■•" * All of the patrician order wi^h 
 great readine.^s enfranchised and armed their slaves ; but as for the three hundred, who 
 dealt in traffic and loans of money at high interest, and whose slaves were a consider- 
 able part of their fortune, the impression which Cato's speech had made tipon them did 
 not last long. • As some bodies readily receive heat, and as easily grow cold again when 
 the fire is removed, so the sight of Cato warmed and liberalized these traders ; but 
 when they came to consider tbe matter among theta3elve.=?, the dread of Csesar soon put 
 to flight their revere&ce for Cato and for virtue. For thus they talked : ' What are we, 
 and what is the man whose orders we refuse to receive? Is it not C.nesar, into whose 
 hands the whole power of the. Uoman empire is fallen? And surely none of us is a 
 Scipio, a Pompey, or a Cato. Shall we, at a time when their tears- make all men en- 
 tertain sentiments beneath their dignity — shall we, in Utica^ fight for the liberty of 
 Rome T^ith a man against whom Cato and Pompey the Qi-eat durst not make a stand in 
 Italy? Shall we enfranchise our slaves to oppose C;t?ar, who have no more liberty 
 . ourselves than that conqueror is pleased to leave us ? Ah! wretches that. we are I Let 
 us at last know ourselves, and send deputies to intercede with him for mercy.' * * * 
 * Th^y told Cato that they had resolved to send deputies to Caesar to intercede first and 
 principally for him. If that request should not be granted, they would have no obliea- 
 tion to him for any favour to themselves, but as long aa they had breath would fight for 
 Cato. Cato made his acknowledgments for their regard, and advised them to send im- 
 mediately to intercede for themselves -For me,' said he, ' intercede not. It is fot* the 
 conquered to turn suppliants, and for those who have done an injury to beg pardon. 
 For niT part, I have been unconquered through life, and auperiour in the things I wished 
 to bej for injustice and honour I am Cjesar'ij superiour.' '' 
 
 The arguments of the traders and time-servers in Utica are not unknown m 
 Richmond. But shall we not also find in this city something of the aspiration 
 of Cato — a determination, even if we are overcome by force, to be unconquered 
 in spirit, and, in any and all events^ to remain superiour to the enemy — in 
 honour. 
 
 I do not speak to you, my countrymen, idle sentimentalisin. I firmly believe 
 that the great Commonwealth of Virginia, and 'this city, which has a peculiar 
 title to whatever there is of good and illustrious report in this war, have been 
 recently, and arp yet in some measure on the verge of questions which involve an 
 interest immeasurably greater than has yet been disclosed in this contest— that 
 of their historical and immortal honour. 
 
 I know — I have had opportunities of informing myself — that there are influ- 
 ences at work to place, the State of Virginia, in certain contingencies, in com- 
 municatien with the public enemy, for terms of peace, which cannot be other. 
 wise than coupled with the condition of her submission to the Federal au- 
 thority. The extent of this conspiracy against the honour of Virginia has been 
 screened by secret sessions, and been covered up by half-mouthed sugges- 
 tions, and the i/s and ands of men who are not yet ready to disclose their cor- 
 
ruption and to spit, i'roiu their iips the rotteuncss iu their hearts. 1 kuow th« 
 fashionable arguments of these men. "If there is to be a wreck," say they, 
 << why not save what we can from it?" *' Houour," they say, *' is a more rhe- 
 torical laurel j" "Gen. Lee talks like a school-girl w'hen he speaks of preferring 
 to die on the battle-field to getting the best terms of submission he can ;" '' let 
 us be done witli this sentimental rubbif-h, and look to* the care of our substan- 
 tial interests." 
 
 My friends, this is nut rubbish'. The glovy of Histui v i« indifferent to 
 events : it is simply Honour. The name of Virginia in this war is historically 
 and absolutely inore important to us than any other element of the contest ; and 
 the coarse time-servet who would sell an immortal title of honour as a trifling 
 sentimentalism, and who has constantly in his mouth the phrase of " substantial 
 interests,'^ is the inglorious wretch who laughs at history and grovels in the cal- 
 culations of the brute. 
 
 Those who haae lived entirely iu the South'siuco the commencement of this 
 war have little idea of the measure of honour which Virginia has obtained in 
 it, and the consideration she has seciived iu the eyes of the world. 'One away 
 from home finds even in intercourse with our enemies, that the name of Virgi- 
 niao IS an ornament to him, and that the story of yfthis her heroic capital— ^the 
 record of Richmond — is universally accepted in two hemispheres as the most 
 illustrious episode of the war. Honour such as this is not apiece of rhetoric or 
 a figure of speech; it is_ something 'to-be cherished under all circumstances, and 
 to be preserved in all events. 
 
 It is scarcely necessary to say that I regard subjugation but as the vapour of 
 our fears. But if remote posisibilities are to be regarded, I have simply to say, 
 that in all events and extremities, all chances and catastrophes, I am for Vir- 
 ginia going down to history, proudly and starkly, with the title of a subjugated 
 people — a title not inseparable from true glory, and which has often claimed the 
 admiration of the world — rather than as a people who ever submitted, and bar- 
 tered their honour for the mercy of an enemy — in our -case a mercy whose pit- 
 tance would be as a mess of pottage weighed against an immortal patrimony 1 
 
 The issue I would put before you is: \No Submission ; No State Negotiations 
 with the Enemy ; No Conventions for suoh objects, however proper for others. 
 Let Virginia stand or fall by the fortunes of the Confederate arms, with her 
 spotless honour in her hands. 
 
 If Virginia accepts the virtuous and noble alternative, she saves, in all events, 
 her honour, and by the resolution which it implies, may hope to secure a positive 
 and glorious victory ; and I, among the humblest of her citizens, will be proud 
 to associate myself with a fate which, if not happy, at least can never be ignoble. 
 But, if she chooses to submit, and make terms for Yankee clemency, the satis- 
 faction will at least remain to me of not sharing in tlie dishonour of my native 
 State, and of going to other parts of the world,, where I may say : " I, too, was 
 a Virginian, but not of those who sold the jewels of her history for the baubles 
 and cheats of her conquerours.'^ 
 
 EDWARD. A POLLARD. 
 
HoUinger Corp. 
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