The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 1, January, 1864. Various

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      If therefore the constitutional restriction on forfeiture apply to the Confiscation Law, it makes the law unconstitutional, in so far as it enacts the perpetual forfeiture of the personal estate of rebels; and the discrimination made in regard to their real estate does not save the constitutionality of the act.

      If, therefore, the Confiscation Law is to be held as constitutional, it can be so, as it seems to us, only on the ground that it does not fall within the scope of the constitutional prohibition in question. This ground may be maintained by asserting that the constitutional prohibition of perpetual forfeiture applies only to cases of 'attainder of treason,' that is, according to Blackstone, of 'judgment of death for treason,' and that cases under this act are not such; that the limitations applicable to ordinary judicial proceedings against traitors are not applicable here; that the Confiscation Act seizes the property of rebels not in their quality of criminals, but of public enemies; that it is not an act for the punishment of treason, but for weakening and subduing an armed rebellion, and securing indemnification for the costs and damages it has entailed—in short, not a penal statute, but a war measure; and that the Constitution which gives Congress the right to make war for the suppression of the rebellion, and to subject the lives of rebels to the laws of war, gives it the right to subject their property also to the same laws—putting both out of the protection of the ordinary laws; and finally that all the objects aimed at by the measure are legitimated by the principles of public law.

      If these views can be sustained, it follows that Congress was justified not only in enacting the perpetual confiscation of the personal property of rebels, but need not, and should not, have passed the explanatory clause prohibiting 'forfeiture of real estate beyond the natural life' of the rebel. So far as weakening the rebellion, indemnifying the nation for costs and damages, or the rights and interests of the heirs of rebels, are concerned, there is no reason in justice or in policy for the discrimination made between personal and real estate; if it is right and wise to take the one in perpetuity, it is equally so to take the other. In our judgment, it is right and wise to do both.

      MILITARY ADMINISTRATION—NO ARMY OF RESERVE

      In looking over the war, we can all now see a very great error in the military administration—the neglect, namely, to provide and keep up a proper reserved force. It is the grand mistake of the war. Two years and a half of war, and no army of reserve! Eighteen months ago, a force of reserve of at least two hundred thousand men should have been formed. It could probably then have been formed of volunteers. From it, vacancies made in the armies in the field by battle, disease, or expiration of time of service, could have been filled with drilled and disciplined soldiers, and reinforcements drawn to meet any special exigency. The victory of Gettysburgh might have resulted in the total destruction of Lee's army before he could recross the Potomac; and Rosecrans might have been strengthened without weakening the Army of the Potomac or any other. Whether the cost of forming and keeping up such a force of reserve would have greatly exceeded the cost of the recent draft, we do not pretend to know. We are inclined to think it would not. But that is a question of little moment. Money wisely spent is well spent: money unwisely saved is ill saved. With such a force, the recent draft might not have been necessary—at all events there would have been no necessity for suspending active military operations in Virginia, and awaiting the slow completion of the draft, at a moment when, large additions to the forces in the field were precisely the one thing needful. The army of reserve would at once have supplied disciplined soldiers, and their places in the camps of instruction and reserve could have been filled with the new conscripts as fast as they were collected.

      CONSOLATION—ENFORCEMENT OF THE DRAFT IN NEW YORK

      But grave as the error is which we have signalized, there is something that might well console us for greater misfortunes than it has entailed, and which gives us another illustration of the truth that God and Time often work for us better than we for ourselves, and out of our errors bring good that we could not forecast.

      It would not be wise to assert that the not having such a reserved force necessitated the recent draft, and thereby occasioned the horrible outbreak in New York. But if it may even be safely suggested as possibly true, the successful enforcement of the draft becomes all the more a matter for boundless joy and congratulation. Important as its enforcement throughout the country was as a means of filling up the ranks of our armies, the outbreak in New York made it a thousand times more important as the only adequate assertion of the supremacy of national law.

      There can be no doubt as to the nature, origin, and purpose of that outbreak. It was the result of a long-prepared traitorous conspiracy in the interest of the rebels. The enforcement of the draft against mob violence instigated by treason, was indispensable not only to the successful prosecution of the war against the rebels of the South, but to the maintenance of the supreme authority and power of the National Government, and of the foundations of social order at the North. Not to have enforced it might have insured the triumph of the rebellion and the independence of the South; it certainly would have rendered the North no longer a country fit for any decent man to live in. Such and so great was the significance of the crisis. The responsibility of the Administration was immense. The President met it nobly. He took care that a sufficient military force—not under the control of Governor Seymour, but of a well-tried patriot—was present in New York. He carried out the draft there and everywhere else. He crushed the schemes and hopes of the traitorous conspirators—more guilty than the rebels in arms-and gave a demonstration of the strength of the National Government, as grand in its majesty as it was indispensable to the national salvation in this crisis and to its security in all future time. The Government has triumphed in the quiet majesty of its irresistible force over factious and traitorous opposition at the North, springing from treasonable sympathy with the rebels, or, from what, in a crisis like this, is equally wicked, the selfishness of party spirit, preferring party to country. More than this, it has triumphed over the dangerous and destructive notions on State sovereignty, which traitors and partisans have dared invoke. It is impossible to overestimate the importance for the present and for the future of this victorious assertion of the supremacy of the National Government.

      SUMMARY REVIEW

      In a review, then, of this gigantic struggle, we have every reason to be content and confident—no reason to bate one jot of heart or hope. The triumph over Northern treason, achieved by the force of the Government, has been followed by a moral triumph at the polls, no less grand in its significance. The country is not oppressed by the stupendous expenses of the war. The money is all spent at home. It stimulates the productive industry of the country, and the nation is all the time growing rich. The rebels have been disastrously repulsed in two attempts at invasion, and do not hold one inch of Northern soil. One third of the States claimed by them at the outset, are gone from them forever: Maryland, Missouri, Kentucky, are securely in the Union; Virginia we have cut in two—nearly one half of its territory, by the will of its inhabitants, now constituting a loyal member of the Union as the new State of West Virginia—while of its eastern half we securely hold its coast, harbors, and fortresses, and a considerable number of its counties. Tennessee is ours, and cannot, we think, be wrenched away. We have New Orleans, and the uncontrolled possession of the Mississippi river—cutting the territory of the rebels in two, destroying their communications, and giving us a considerable portion of the States bordering that river. In North Carolina and South Carolina we have a hold, from which it will be hard to drive us. On the Atlantic and Gulf coast nearly every fortress is in our possession; there is not a port which is not possessed by us, or else so blockaded that (except in the peculiar case of Wilmington) it is a hazardous affair for any vessel to attempt going in or coming out; and the rebels are utterly unable to raise the blockade of a single port. In fine, they have lost more than one third of their territory forever, and of the remaining portion there is not one considerable subdivision over which in some part the flag of the Union does not securely wave. What title to recognition as an independent power can the Confederate rebels present to the neutral powers of the world?

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