“As to their affection for their military leaders, you will find proof in the elections at Richmond and South Carolina. No man has a better claim to their sympathy, and none stand a better chance of election, than those who were the last to give up. Motives of policy may induce them to nominate others, but the fact remains as I have stated. I repeat, that General Lee and Wade Hampton are the two most popular and best loved men in the South to-day. I have heard but one disparaging remark made of General Lee since I was at the South, and that was in this connection. I was riding one night in a hack across the gap in a railway, made by Wilson, and, as usual, the conversation turned on political affairs and the condition and prospects of the Southern people. One man said that General Lee stood the best chance for the next Presidency,--by the way, that is a very prevalent idea here at the South,--when another remarked that he would rather have Andrew Johnson. I was curious to know why, and inquired. He replied, that ‘he had but little confidence in Lee since he favored negro soldiers, and in his opinion he was not much better than a Black Republican.’ … “At present every one at the South is occupied in his personal and family interests. There are no political parties,--very little coherence of opinion as to the policy best to be pursued. But I find among the knowing ones, particularly those who have been on to the North, and remained some time in New York or Washington, a sanguine belief that they can easily resume the reins of office; and these men are the only Unionists in the South to-day. You can depend upon it, that the Southern States in the future will present one solid, unanimous front; their leaders have them well in hand. And this is precisely what ninety-nine in every hundred of the men, women, and children believe sincerely as to the situation to-day: first, that the South of right possesses, and always possessed, the right of secession; secondly, that the war only proved that the North was the strongest; thirdly, that Negro Slavery was and is right, but has been abolished by the war. The Southerners are too smart not to see that Slavery is dead, but many of them hope as long as the black race exists here to be able to hold it in a condition of practical serfdom. All expect the negro will be killed in one way or another by Emancipation. The policy of those who will eventually become the leaders here at the South is, for the present, to accept the best they can get, to acquiesce in anything and everything, but to strain every nerve to regain the political power and ascendency they held under Buchanan. This they believe cannot be postponed longer than up to the next Presidential election. They will do all in their power to resist Negro Suffrage,