when 'tis done, then 'twere well
It were done quickly."

But the war, like Duncan's murder, was not done after it was done. There
supervened the unnecessary, vindictive, and malignant reconstruction
acts of the Federal Congress.

On the 14th of April, only nine days after Lee had surrendered, a great
calamity befell the South in the foolish and infamous assassination of
President Lincoln, who was the only man who could have restrained the
rage of such men as Sumner in the Senate and Stephens in the House of
Representatives. The hatred of the Northern politicians was intensified
by the supposition that his death was instigated by Southern men, and it
did not abate even after they were convinced that the supposition was
unfounded.

It is a singular fact that while the war was in progress the acts of
secession were considered null and void, and the Southern States were
declared to be parts of an indissoluble union, but when the war had
ended they were dealt with as alien commonwealths and conquered
territories. For four years Virginia was not a co-equal State in the
Union but "Military District No. 1," governed by a Federal general, who
appointed the local officers in the several counties. The affairs of the
State were managed by carpetbaggers in close agreement with despicable
scalawags and ignorant negroes. The elective franchise was granted to
the emancipated slaves regardless of character or intelligence, while it
was denied to many white men. In Lancaster county the negroes had a
registered majority of a hundred voters; it was represented in a
constitutional convention by a carpetbagger, and after the adoption of
the constitution it was represented in the Legislature by a negro. To
injury were added hatred and insult. It was not enough that the South
was conquered, it must be humiliated by African domination!

The Southern people did not go to war--war came to them. Not to gain
military glory did they fight, although this meed must be awarded to
them. Nor was the perpetuation of African slavery the object for which
they took up arms, for in Virginia nineteen-twentieths of the citizens
owned no slaves, and there was perhaps the same proportion in the other
States of the Confederacy. Neither was it for conquest that they so long
waged the unequal contest; for though they twice crossed the Potomac it
was not to gain an acre of territory, but only to relieve their own
beleaguered capital. From first to last it