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.

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