The condition of the South after the rebel armies surrendered reminds me of the havoc wrought when a forest of great tall trees is swept down by a strong and mighty wind, and all the forest monarchs are flat on the ground. Their mighty roots are exposed to the gaze of every passer-by; an enormous quantity of earth is torn up by the terrible wrench that has taken place; and the great branches are broken and jumbled together with the great crash of the now prostrate and ruined forest. Such was the state of the South after Lee surrendered at Appomattox Court House, in Virginia. He had, indeed, no great army to surrender, and what little armies remained to the rebellion elsewhere were but of small account, and promptly laid down their arms at last.
Whilst the South fought with a valor that was worthy of a better cause, and her slave-holders and followers actually laid down their lives in thousands and ten thousands for their darling "independence" and slavery, I am never able to think without regret of the dreadful sacrifice of human lives and treasure that we of the North were forced to make to restore the Union to its former state, and to secure the freedom of the last slave in all the land. Never since this world began did a defiant, haughty and valiant race of rebels so long and so successfully resist--I might almost say the wealth, the resources, and the physical strength of half the world. It was the "strong man armed," and in his own house, fighting there with all his might and main. And how did we knock down the house and kill him? Alas, alas! we had to sacrifice whole legions of our well-beloved, both white and black, that the Union and liberty might be where they are at the present day.
I have just above compared the condition of the South at the close of the war to that of a forest of mighty trees, all suddenly dashed to the earth by the force of overwhelming and irresistible winds--even the terrible winds that are swept upon the land from the wild and stormy ocean that breaks upon our shores. The question next was how were we to clear this forest land; remove all the trees with their great upturned roots; fill up the great cavities--in a word, "clear the land," and worst of all, restore the forest? What Abraham Lincoln might have done if he had lived--he and his cabinet between them--I am unable to say. A great many people are of the opinion that had Lincoln lived things would have gone ten times better with Reconstruction than they did. That may have been so, but the wish was father to the thought, and it has always been my opinion that there would have been a bad time of it for years and years to come, as there was without the great war President. Poor fellow! Because ever during his lifetime, and when the war was going on, there were many times when Lincoln himself confessed that he was almost at his wit's end, and did not know what to do for the best. With the Southerners going home, sullen, angry and defeated, and four millions of slaves redeemed from the curse of the "peculiar institution," for the very life of me I am unable to see that any one with much less wisdom than that which is divine, could ever had at once brought order out of chaos in a day, or even in a year. Even with the assistance of 10,000 giants, it must have taken time to clear away that fallen forest, fill up the awful gaps, and put a new forest in the place of the one that had been knocked down!