I do not use the word Rebel as a term of reproach—these people themselves would hardly regard it in that light—but simply as the best distinctive term by which they can be accurately described to Northern readers. It must not be understood that they still resisted the United States authority—on the contrary, they were profuse in their acknowledgments of being subdued; nor that they plotted new rebellion, for they would shrink from it as burnt children from the fire. But the great mass of the adult white male population of New Orleans (nine-tenths, indeed, of the white male population of Louisiana) were in sympathy, or, by active efforts, supporters of the rebellion. No reorganization was possible on a white basis which should not leave these men in full control of the civil government by an overwhelming majority. He was blind, therefore, who failed to see that any government then set in motion by the votes of these Rebel Louisianans, must be composed of Rebel officers, chosen because they were known to be in full sympathy with their Rebel electors. Of course, these Rebels and Rebel sympathizers, and registered enemies, _et id omne genus_, all now professed to be Union men. They were Unionists according to their interpretation of Unionism. They meant by it that they accepted the fact of defeat, and the necessity for giving up just so much of their old policy as that defeat compelled them to give up—not a whit more. Thus they abandoned the doctrine of secession. Most of them honestly said that they still believed it a constitutional right; but that having appealed to the verdict of arms, instead of the verdict of the Supreme Court, they were bound to acquiesce in the decision which the trial by battle had given. So they abandoned slavery. Three-fifths of them still insisted that slavery was an institution beneficial to both races, if not indeed indispensable to Southern prosperity; but they appealed to war to sustain it, and they yielded to the logic of accomplished facts in admitting that war had destroyed it. So much they gave up, because they realized that they must. More they would have yielded in like manner, if equally convinced that more must be yielded. But all the concomitants and outgrowths of slavery and State sovereignty, doctrines which lie at the foundation of secession, and beliefs which reject the possibility of free negro labor, or the prudence of conferring legal rights upon free negroes, remained in full strength. They were imbedded in constitutions, they were walled about by the accretions of a century’s laws, they were part and parcel of the accepted faith of the people. They would be given up as was slavery—not otherwise. Every step must be by compulsion.