first Congress the first permanent Union was founded; which was ratified by each colony as a separate body, as one by one they entered the Union. _Slavery_ With the question as to the origin of the war, the enemies of the South have mingled another--the slavery question--which strictly does not belong to it. This slavery question was inscribed on the banners of the war when it was seen that thereby could be enlisted on the side of the North the sympathies of the old world, and of a great part of their own inhabitants, especially of the German immigrants. This question could never legally be the cause of the war, for the Constitution expressly says that the question of slavery should be regulated by the State legislatures. * * * * At the time of the founding of the Union, eleven of the thirteen States were slave-holding, and it is a remarkable fact that it then occurred to no writer nor humanitarian in America or Europe even to think that this ownership (of slaves) was a wrong or a crime. It is enough to say that the institution was accepted not only as a matter of course, but that it was also especially protected, the farming interest being granted an increased suffrage in proportion to the number of negroes on their plantations. * * * * * Even in the last days, before the outbreak of war, when the press and demagogues raised the slavery question in order to inflame the masses, the statesman (of the North) carefully avoided such a blunder, since the slavery question was not the ground of the war, and could not be proclaimed as such. CHAPTER VI MATER REDIVIVA INTRODUCTORY NOTE [By J. L. Underwood.] For twenty years after the close of the war most of the Southern States, through the bayonet-enforced amendments to the Constitution and the carpet-bag negro governments established under them, were kept under military rule. The men met the awful responsibility and their hideous trials with an amazing courage and sought to counteract, in every possible way, the work of Congress at Washington and the work of the Union Leagues and other secret societies among the negroes at home, and to build up the South in spite of the demoralization of labor. The Ku Klux Klan, a secret vigilance committee, did much good in terrifying the carpet-bag deposits and breaking up the secret armed midnight meetings of the negroes. Rowdy imitators of the Ku Klux afterwards in many instances did much harm. But the women kept on at work. They have never faltered, and never shown any weariness. Thousands left penniless who were once wealthy, took up whatever work came to hand. The writer knew the daughter-in-law of a wealthy Congressman and the daughter of a governor of two States to plow her own garden with a mule. He saw all over the country the members of the oldest and wealthiest families of the Atlantic coast teaching school, even far in the west. Not a murmur escaped their lips. They cheered each other as they strengthened the nerves of the men.