Mingling freely with a crowd of fifteen or twenty gentlemen, who called a little later, all Georgians, and all but two or three residents of Savannah, I made some effort, by comparison of their various views, to get at the nature and standard of Savannah Unionism. Some of them, indeed, made no profession of being Union men, and said they only called to indicate their entire disposition to submit, without opposition, to whatever the Government might do, and to pay their respects to the man whom they recognized as the ablest in our public life, and, by virtue of his management of the finances, their real conqueror. But the most were all desirous of being considered now warm Union men. They were all ready to submit to anything. They were helpless, they said, but surely the Government would be magnanimous. They knew slavery was gone; but the Government ought not to permit the slaves to become vagabonds. If they must have the negroes living among them, they ought to have some power to make them work. The Rebel soldiers and officers were always spoken of with warm kindness; and it was evidently only in exceptional cases that active service for the Rebellion had made any of them think less of a returning Rebel neighbor. They hoped civil government would be re-established as soon as possible, and the military restraints removed. Of course, confiscation would be abandoned, now that all had submitted; and it would be very hard if the majority of the old voters were not still permitted to vote. Judge Wayne, of the Supreme Court of the United States, had returned within a few days, and settled down in his old house, among his old neighbors. They were glad to welcome him back, and hoped his coming was a token of the kindly feeling of the Judiciary toward them. They knew they would not be betrayed in returning like repentant children, and asking for protection in their rights. This last phrase was reiterated so often that at last I exclaimed to one of them: “But what rights have you?” “Our rights as a sovereign State under the Constitution.” “Your people, then, do not realize that, having rebelled from the Constitution, and abjured all rights under it, they can not, with a very good grace, after failing to destroy it, come back and demand the right to enjoy it.” “Why, of course, the Constitution stands. We only went out from under it. It would be strange, if, when we come back under it, we should find its protecting power gone.” “You do not regard any of your rights, then, as destroyed or imperiled by your rebellion?” “Why should they be? The right to hold slaves has been destroyed by the military authorities; but, unless the Constitution is destroyed, we have all the powers under it we ever had.”