licable 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 u