Nor has this act been less wicked in its effects than in its motive. To the white race it was the most violent, convulsive, reckless and mischievous act ever perpetrated by a civilized government. As a war measure, it was calculated and expected to evoke all the savage horrors of servile war, neighbourhood massacre and butchery of non-combatants. Only the kindly relations which the benevolence and justice of the people of Virginia had established between themselves and their slaves, and the good character which we had given to these former savages, disappointed this desired result. As an economic measure, it was the most violent ever attempted in modern history; being a sudden confiscation of half, (and in some of the counties two-thirds) the existing property of the country; and a dislocation of its whole labour system, just when the people were bowed under the burden of a gigantic war, and a collapsed currency. That it did not then again result in a total paralysis of industry, in famine and anarchy, (which was probably intended), is only to be explained by the exercise of an energy, versatility, good sense, and industry in the Southern people, which are almost miraculous. By annihilating at one blow so much of the property on which the indebtedness of the country was based, it insured a financial confusion and general bankruptcy which are destined to plunge hundreds of thousands of innocent persons (innocent even from Yankee points of view) into destitution and domestic distress, which three generations will not heal. It confiscated the property of "loyal Union men," of helpless minors and lunatics, of venerable and infirm widows, without compensation, just as it did the possessions of the Confederate leader most obnoxious to the Yankee wrath. And what was the species of possession? Was it some foul lucre, like the spoils of an Achan, so unrighteous that it must be instantly plucked away, regardless of consequences? No; it was a species of property legalized by Moses and Christ, owned for ages by the boasted ancestors of the despoilers, now owned by themselves in the form of its fruits and increase, guaranteed by the Constitution which alone gave them any right to govern us, legalized by all our State laws, which were of earlier and superior authority to that Constitution, and recognized by the sacred pledges of the North itself, even so late as the beginning of this war.