mission, was formed (November, 1861) with immediate reference to the spiritual wants of the soldiers; but its agents became as active as those of the Sanitary Commission in the relief of physical necessities. Side by side, the commissions distributed what the nation gave, all kinds of supplies and subscriptions in one steady stream, sometimes from a poor woman, sometimes from a man worth millions, in individual offerings, or in various combinations. Fairs in New York, Philadelphia, and Boston were successful in raising the largest sums. At least thirty millions, in money and stores, passed through the agencies of the two Commissions. Cost of The pecuniary cost of the war to the government the war. and the loyal states, without counting a dollar expended by the confederates, could not have been less than five thousand millions. Indirectly it involved heavy losses. in production and productive force, as every war has done; but these cannot be accurately estimated. The great cost of the war was personal the death of thousands in battle, and hospital, and, after their discharge, of wounds or diseases contracted in service, and the pain and privation occasioned by their loss to thousands upon thousands more. Here was the real sacrifice, and in this the dying and the living shared. Yet few would have drawn back from it, had they the power; for, much as the war cost them, it repaid them with the sense of suffering in a great cause, and of contributing to great ends-the emancipation of four million slaves, the union of forty million freemen. 40 Difficulties. CHAPTER XIV. REUNION. PEACE had its difficulties no less than war. The conquered were ready to confess their defeat, the conquerors to use their victory without abusing it. But here was a nation, split in two, to be reunited; here was a society, quivering with agitation, to be calmed. One great class—the slaveholding - was broken up. Another-the slave was suddenly thrown from slavery into freedom. The whole people were accustomed to war, and to all its consequences, public and private. Civil authority had outgrown its old traditions. The president and his cabinet, Congress, the state and municipal governments, were in the habitual exercise of more or less arbitrary powers. Large appropriations and expenditures of money were too common to excite a healthful concern. Habits and ideas were every where changing, and not at once for the better. On the contrary, the high qualities which the danger of the country called out seemed sinking beneath the corruption and indifference which set in like a flood when the danger passed. In these circumstances, reunion was not only difficult; it might be impracticable, and many predicted. that it would be. Disarming. The first obstacle in its way was removed by the disarming of the nation. In May, 1865, the army was more than a million strong. On the 22d and 23d of that month more than two hundred thousand soldiers passed in review before the president, at Washington. Fresh from their great victories, they looked as if they could do what they pleased with their unarmed countrymen. Nor were they all. The thousands who manned the national fleets were equally strong in the position they had won. Yet all these numbers dwindled, all these armies and crews were disbanded with as much ease as if they had been vanquished instead of victorious. The secretary of war reported eight hundred thousand troops mustered out in six months, while material of every kind, stores, transports, railroads and their trains, telegraphs, were disposed of, and the army placed upon a peace footing. The same reduction was effected in the navy. Soldier or sailor, the volunteer disappeared in the citizen. Freed men. The next obstacle to reunion could not be so rapidly removed. Three or four million freedmen were to be snatched from their former masters, or those who now threatened to master them, and trained to selfcontrol, before the nation to which they belonged could be properly considered as united. Just as the war was closing, Congress established in the war department a bureau of freedmen, refugees, and abandoned lands, to continue during the war, and one year thereafter, (March, 1865.) A commissioner, with an assistant for each state in insurrection and a number of clerks, was charged with all subjects relating to freedmen. Until the army was reduced so that it could no longer spare its officers, it supplied commissioners to the bureau. Their functions, originally, were to provide for the sick and needy, and to distribute abandoned lands among the freedmen; but few lands proved to be abandoned, and this part of the work fell through. Relief was administered in every possible form — food, clothing, shelter, and protection. When differences arose between freedmen and their employers, the commissioners served as arbitrators, and this service was as useful as any which they rendered. In July, 1866, the bureau was continued for two years longer, and its duties were enlarged so as to include education of the freedmen and their children. In this good work individuals and associations had been engaged here and there for several years, but it was now extended all over the Southern States. In 1868 the bureau was again continued, and in 1869 it reported twenty-five hundred and seventy-one schools, thirty-two hundred and sixty-two teachers, and one hundred and sixteen thousand one hundred and ten scholars. In 1870 it came to an end, having stood between the freedmen and their trials, and enabled them to cross the gulf between their old condition and their new. Recon A third obstacle to reunion was the position of struction the states that had seceded. Whether they were of states. states or not, in the Union or out of it, excited a great deal of discussion to little purpose. Practically, they were separated from the states which had not seceded, and it was necessary to bring the separation to an end. As this involved all the authorities, confederate and state, all the army and navy, all the classes which had been in insurrection, it was far the most severe task before the nation. Unhappily, its severity was increased by divisions between the two branches of the government employed in it; the president insisting upon one course, and Congress upon another, until both were on the brink of failure. President Johnson entered upon office with loud threats of avenging the assassination of his predecessor, and punishing the treason that had excited civil war. Vengeance, however, was not in the minds of the people, and Mr. Johnson's tone soon softened. He issued a proclamation of amnesty to "all persons who have directly or indirectly participated in the rebellion," excepting the higher civil, military, and naval officers of the confederate service, together with various other classes, provided that all availing themselves of the amnesty should take and keep an oath of fidelity to the Constitution, the Union, and the laws and proclamations of emancipation. Next, the president appointed provisional governors of the seceded states, with instructions to call conventions, in order to amend the state constitutions, and enable the loyal people to recover their constitutional relations to the Union. This was done in each state, the conventious declaring the secession of the state null and void, and prohibiting slavery within its borders. Then the state legislatures assembled and ratified the thirteenth amendment of the Constitution of the United States. This was the president's plan of reconstruction. It left the states very much in the hands of those who had taken them out of the Union, without any other proviso in behalf of their colored people than the acceptance of emancipation. Congress met in December, 1865, and instantly began upon another plan. A joint committee, commonly called the Reconstruction Committee, was appointed, and entered upon long investigations. At the end of six months, (June, 1866,) it reported as a basis of reconstruction a fourteenth constitutional amendment. This provides that all persons born or naturalized in the United States are citizens; that the privileges of citizenship shall not be abridged by any state; that if a male citizen, being twentyone years old, is denied the right to vote, he cannot be counted in the number to be represented in Congress; that no person who has broken his oath to support the Constitution, and engaged in insurrection, can hold office; that the validity of the public debt of the United States shall not be questioned, but that any debt in aid of insurrection, or any claim for the loss of a slave, shall be illegal. On this plan, it is evident that the hitherto ruling class at |