Had like courts followed the army, or been established in every city of the South on the day they fell into the hands of Union troops, what immense suffering might have been saved; how many rescued from premature graves, caused by inhuman treatment; and how many thousands could have been given the blessed boon of freedom, who were run into Texas, thence to Cuba and Brazil, and thence consigned to a fate worse than death itself! [Illustration: 0205] CHAPTER XII. LOYALTY VERSUS DISLOYALTY. PREJUDICE AND SELF-INTEREST PROMPTING THE ACTORS. |THE definition given by lexicographers to the word loyalty, namely, "faithful to the lawful government," is so plain that no one can fail to comprehend it; and yet such were the complications in the late war between the United States and the Confederate States, that to no word could a greater variety of significations have been given. The Northern man claimed that to be loyal one must be faithful to the United States government, and all who were not so were rebels. The Southern man claimed that, after the organization of the Confederate States government, no man south of "Mason and Dixon's line" could be regarded as loyal who was not in favor of, and faithful to, that government. The extreme State-rights man claimed that to be loyal one must be faithful to the government of the State in which he resided, or of which he was a native. Each claimed theirs, and theirs only, to be the "lawful" government, and insisted that to be loyal one must be faithful to it, and to it alone, and that any lack of fidelity thereto was disloyalty, and could be nothing. To illustrate by a figure once before used in this volume--that of a divorce suit between man and wife--it is easy enough to see how the children, taking the side of the father, might charge those who took the side of the mother with disloyalty to the family, and how those taking the side of the mother might retort by saying that else, the mother was quite as much a part of the family as the father, and that those who opposed her were more disloyal to the family than themselves. Thus criminations and recriminations might pass between the children of a divided household--divided in sentiment, if not yet by law--and if a third party were called in as arbitrator, it would be no easy matter for him to decide which of the two was right and which wrong. Viewing the subject from this stand-point, now that the prejudices and excitements of the war are over, it is not difficult to understand how President Davis, General Lee, General Beauregard, General Polk, and their adherents, regarded themselves quite as loyal as President Lincoln, General Grant, General Sherman, General Sheridan, and their followers. Each regarded theirs as the "lawful government," and that only by adhering to it, by being faithful to it, could one justly claim to be loyal.