righteousness and justice, we may hope that throughout an undivided nation our prosperity will be increased, our peace be uninterrupted, and our liberties be eternal."

A resolution was at once introduced into the House of Representatives, adopting and ratifying the XIIIth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, abolishing and prohibiting slavery. "The Democratic leaders promised that no opposition should be made to the passage of the resolution, provided the yeas and nays were not called. Under this agreement, the resolution was passed nem, con., the Republicans voting aye' and the Democrats maintaining the stipulated silence. In the Senate, the roll was called and the twenty-one Republican Senators voted 'yes.' So Connecticut cast her vote for the abolition of slavery without a dissentient voice."

Thus this real climax of the war was reached, and these loyal men were all agreed about it, and alike persistent in securing it. And when this was accomplished, they might well, like the Governor of Connecticut, lay their cares and their honors down, and retire at least for a while to private life. For history will do them justice, and they must ever be regarded as remarkable men, such as have been the product of no other age, nor have left to their country and to mankind such another bequest of liberty and humanity.

The reconstructive period of the government, which immediately succeeded the war, was almost as full of peril as the war itself. Upon what terms were the Secession States to be received back into the Union? What penalties were to be inflicted upon the leaders of the Rebellion? What privileges were to be given to the emancipated slave, and what legislation adopted to make him eventually an American citizen, and allow him to vote among a white population? And how could the South be conciliated by our consideration and magnanimity, so as to forget the animosities of the war, and let us become a truly united

people? These were questions delicate and perplexing enough to tax the wisest statesmanship, as well as the bestcontrolled and most Christian spirit. And here was where a surprising difficulty was encountered in Mr. Lincoln's successor. President Johnson was a strange man, and if he had not been so strangely unreasonable and forfeited to such an extent the confidence of the country, he would have caused the government more embarrassment than he did, and have defeated the best results of the war. He held that the Secession States were still in the Union; he vetoed the Freedmen's Bureau bill, designed to protect the negroes; he vetoed the Civil Rights bill, which made the freedmen citizens without the right of suffrage, and afterwards the bill giving them the right of suffrage in the District of Columbia was passed over his veto. And when the XIVth Amendment followed, to carry out and more effectually execute the XIIIth, it had to encounter his disapproval and earnest opposition. The President was finally impeached before the Senate for violating the provisions of the Tenure of Office Act, and on his trial only escaped conviction where three-fourths of the body were required to convict, for the lack of one more vote in behalf of the prosecutors. Still, in spite of this and every other obstruction in the way of the reconstruction of the Union, it was well done, and has been endorsed by all parties and all parts of the country, South as well as North, which is the highest testimony that could be paid to its wisdom and justice, and the necessity for it.

That XIIIth Amendment, with its few lines and simple language, and two clauses,

Clause I. Neither slavery, nor involuntary servitude except as a punishment for crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Clause II. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

is the charter of our freedom and foundation of our Republic. The privileges of the English people, contained in their Magna Charta, as wrung from one of their sovereigns at Runnymede, were not greater or more fundamental than these are to us.. But for these privileges, the English monarchs had still been the vassals of the Pope, and England a province of France, while but for ours, 4,000,000 of our population had continued to be plantation slaves, "with no rights which a white man was bound to respect," and the rest of us required to be slave hunters and bound to help keep them in that condition forever. It is certainly cheering after the alienations of a century and the struggles of a civil war, and within thirty years after that war, to have one competent from his Southern birth and training, and his present position and his Christian spirit, tell us :

Living in that section of the country which was last and longest cursed by the institution of slavery, and myself the son of a slaveholder, I rejoice beyond expression in the fact and providence of emancipation. The hateful thing is dead and buried beyond power or possibility of resurrection, and for this all our people are devoutly thankful. With an extensive acquaintance over the entire Southland, I do not know a single person, old or young, who would consent to its restoration.-[Bishop Galloway, of the Methodist Episcopal Church South, 1892.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

GREAT BRITAIN CALLED TO ACCOUNT FOR BUILDING CONFEDERATE CRUISERS.

The Alabama-Our Claims for Damages-The Geneva Award-“ How I Ran into the Builder of the Alabama”—Napoleon III's Latin Kingdom in Mexico Disposed of by Our "Monroe Doctrine"

The end of our war required not only the reconstruction of our own government, but also the settlement of important matters with foreign governments, particularly Great Britain, and France, who had taken advantage of our embarrassments to encroach upon our rights, as they never would have thought of doing had we been free to prevent it at the time.

Great Britain had allowed piratical vessels, or "Confederate Cruisers," as they were called, to be built by her subjects, and sent out to prey upon our commerce. This was done to a considerable extent, but the most reckless and hostile instance of it was the case of the Alabama. This vessel, called by the number of her dock on the Clyde, where she was built, "The 290," and built by a firm to which the Laird Brothers, one of whom was a member of Parliament, belonged, caused the greatest consternation to our shipping, and it was a long time before her depredations could be stopped. She was built in the summer of 1862, and her depredations were not put an end to for a full year. In the meantime, under command of an English captain, she went to one of the West Indian Islands, and was there joined by another English vessel, from which she received her armament, and soon after still another brought her Semmes, the former captain of another Confederate privateer, and a crew. On Sunday, August 26th, 1862, having received her arms, crew and commander, and being in other respects ready, "The 290" steamed out of port. When in the open sea, Semmes appeared on deck in full uniform, and announced that the ship was hereafter the Confederate steamship Alabama. The British flag was hauled down, the Confederate hoisted and saluted.

The crew were British. On the 29th of August she began her cruise, and on the 5th of September made her first capture, burning the ship and putting the crew in irons. By the close of October, she had made twenty-seven prizes. Her manner of operation, as indeed was the case with all the Anglo-Confederate cruisers, was to approach her prey under the British flag, and when it was captured to hoist the Confederate. Semmes then either burnt or bonded his victim. Having received a supply of coal at one of the West Indian Islands, he lay in wait for the California treasure-ships, capturing one, the Ariel, which, however, was outward bound, and therefore not very profitable. On January 11 he sunk the Hatteras, one of the blockading ships off Galveston, having lured her within reach by hoisting British colors and hailing as her Majesty's ship, Petrel. He subsequently cruised in the West India seas for a time, and then went to the coast of Brazil. He then crossed the Atlantic to Cape Town, August 5th, and thence to the Malay Archipelago, which he reached in November. After an unproductive cruise of three months in those waters, he returned, destroying on his way but few American vessels, for there were but few now upon the sea. On the 11th of June he went into the French harbor of Cherbourg.-[Draper's "Civil War," Vol. III, p. 201.

All this, be it remembered, took place when this ship of war had no recognized government to issue any such commission; had not a port in the wide world where it could take its prizes, and have them adjudged lawful prizes by consular power, as the laws of civilized nations require. Seemingly such a vessel might have been hunted down by the navy of every civilized nation, and especially by England's, through whose negligence, if not direct connivance, she was proving the pest of all commerce.

In June, 1864, the Alabama found shelter in the harbor of Cherbourg, France, where she found sympathy, but where the French government could hardly be said to welcome her for fear of complications with our government. This port is only separated from England by the British

* The only commission which this ship had was the following: Captain Semmes took command, and drawing up the crew read his commission as a port captain in the Confederate Navy, and opened his sealed orders in which he was directed to hoist the Confederate ensign and pennant and "to sink, burn and destroy everything which flew the ensign of the so-called United States of America."