deep was the gratitude of the Government and the people to Grant and his heroic army, that his terms were accepted as he wrote them, and his exercise of the Executive prerogative of pardon entirely overlooked. It must be noticed here, however, as a few days later it led the greatest of Grant's generals into serious error. Lee must have read the memorandum of terms with as much surprise as gratification. He said the permission for officers to retain their side-arms would have a happy effect. He then suggested and gained another important concession that those of the cavalry and artillery who owned their own horses should be allowed to take them home to put in their crops. Lee wrote a brief reply accepting the terms. He then remarked that his army was in a starving condition, and asked Grant to provide them with subsistence and forage, to which he at once assented, and asked for how many men the rations would be wanted. Lee answered, "About twenty-five thousand,” and orders were at once given to issue them. The number surrendered turned out to be even larger than this. The paroles signed amounted to 28,231. If we add to this the captures at Five Forks, Petersburg, and Sailor's Creek, the thousands who deserted the failing cause at every by-road leading to their homes, and filled every wood and thicket between Richmond and Lynchburg, we can see how considerable an army Lee commanded when Grant "started out gunning." Yet every Confederate writer, speaker, and singer who refers to the surrender says, and will say forever, that Lee surrendered only seven thousand muskets.

With these brief and simple formalities one of the most momentous transactions of modern times was concluded. The news soon transpired, and the Union gunners prepared to fire a national salute; but Grant would not permit it. He forbade any rejoicing over a fallen enemy, who he hoped would hereafter be an enemy no longer. The next day he rode to the Confederate lines to make a visit of farewell to General Lee. Sitting on horseback between the lines, the two heroes of the war held a friendly conversation. Lee considered the war at an end, slavery dead, the national authority restored; Johnston must now surrender - the sooner the better. Grant urged him to make a public appeal to hasten the return of peace; but Lee, true to his ideas of subordination to a government which had ceased to exist, said he could not do this without consulting the Confederate President. They parted with courteous good wishes, and Grant, without pausing to look at the city he had taken or the enormous system of works which had so long held him at bay, intent only upon reaping the peaceful results of his colossal victory, and putting an end to the waste and the burden of war, hurried away to Washington to do what he could for this practical and beneficent purpose. He had done an inestimable service to the Republic: he had won immortal honor for himself; but neither then nor at any subsequent period of his life was there any sign in his words or his bearing of the least touch of vainglory. The day after Appomattox he was as simple, modest, and unassuming a citizen as he was the day before Sumter.

WH

William R. Huntington.

IN

Southern Cadets in Action.

N his sketch of "The West Point of the Confederacy," published in THE CENTURY MAGAZINE for January, 1889, Mr. John S. Wise says: "At a later period of the war it [the Virginia Military Institute] had, I believe, the exceptional honor of having sent its corps of cadets, as a body, into battle." The cadets of the University of Alabama share with the Virginia Military Institute corps the honor of having received "a baptism of fire" in the closing days of the war.1 In fact, from the thoroughness of its military organization and equipment, and from the number and quality of the officers it furnished the Southern army, the University of Alabama may fairly contest with the Virginia Institute the honor of having been the "West Point of the Confederacy."

Unlike the Virginia Military Institute, the University of Alabama was not founded as a military school; but the legislature of the State, at its session of 1859-60, probably in anticipation of the "irrepressible conflict" between the sections, took steps towards grafting a military department on the classical and scientific courses of the institution, and in September, 1860, its students for the first time went into camp on the college grounds as a military body under the name of the Alabama Corps of Cadets. Colonel Caleb Huse, now in charge of a training school for West Point at Highland Falls, N. Y., who was then a young army officer, was detailed as commandant of cadets, and under his direction the corps soon reached a high degree of excellence in drill and discipline. At the outbreak of the war Colonel Huse resigned his commission in the army and accepted an important post under the Confederate Government. Colonel J. T. Murfee, an accomplished officer and a graduate of the Virginia Military Institute, succeeded Colonel Huse as commandant, and he was aided in perfecting the organization of the military department of the institution by a complement of young officers known as "State Captains," most of whom were also Virginia Military Institute graduates.

As the war became more and more an earnest reality the University of Alabama assumed more and more the aspects of a second West Point. The president, Dr. L. C. Garland, now the venerable chancellor of the Vanderbilt University, donned the regulation gray of a Confederate colonel, and held reviews, inspections, etc., with the soldierly precision of a West Point superintendent. From time to time the young men whom the University had trained to the profession of arms were commissioned as officers in the Southern army, and of these quite a number rose rapidly in rank; one

In a communication published in the "Battles and Leaders of the Civil War," Lieutenant James Oates, of the 9th Illinois Mounted Infantry, writing of Sherman's march towards Atlanta, says. "It was during the advance that day (May 9, 1864] that we came in contact with the Georgia Cadets from the Military Institute at Marietta, who had come out from the woods at Resaca and formed their line behind a rail fence. After a volley from the Cadets, which killed several of our men, our regiment charged them... ."- EDITOR.

of them, the lamented General John C. Saunders, having won the stars of a brigadier before he had reached his majority.

The university, being located at Tuscaloosa, in the interior of the State, was for a long time exempt from danger from the raiders who ravaged the northern borders of Alabama; but as the crisis drew on in the spring of 1865 the Federal troops came nearer and nearer. On the 30th of March, General E. M. McCook, then at Elyton (at present a suburb of the new city of Birmingham), fifty miles northeast of Tuscaloosa, acting under orders from General J. H. Wilson, detached Brigadier-General John T. Croxton and his brigade of fifteen hundred veteran cavalry with orders "to proceed rapidly by the most direct route to Tuscaloosa, to destroy the bridge, factories, mills, university (military school), and whatever else might be of benefit to the rebel cause."

The opportunity was now at hand for the cadet corps to taste the realities of war that it had so often mimicked in the marching and countermarching of the battalion manoeuvers. The corps was about three hundred strong and was in fine trim. On the night of the 3d of April "taps" was sounded as usual. The cadets went to bed with little thought that within three miles, just across the Black Warrior River, lay Croxton's raiders, ready to make a dash across the bridge into Tuscaloosa. The Federal general, by his capture of scouts and citizens, had prevented knowledge of his approach. The surprise was complete. For the sake of form, a few of the "home guard"-old men and boys-had been kept at the bridge that night; but no one had an idea that the Federals were near. When their approach was discovered, a courier was at once dispatched to the university. The long roll was sounded, and in a few moments the cadet battalion was formed and hurried away in the darkness to the brow of the hill overlooking the bridge. There a line of battle was formed.

It was too late. Croxton's men had already crossed the bridge and were formed on the river bank. The cadets, however, were eager for the fray, and the two or three volleys that they poured down the hill for a while disconcerted the Federals and checked their advance. There was rapid firing for a short time on both sides; but, owing probably to the darkness of the night, the casualties were few. The officer in charge of the cadets, seeing the hopelessness of an attempt to dislodge a force so superior in numbers, drew off his command, having sustained a loss of only three or four wounded.

General Croxton, in his official report, makes no mention of the losses sustained by the Federals. He says: "They [the militia and cadets] made several unsuccessful attempts to dislodge us, but failed, and morning found us in peaceful possession of the premises, with sixty prisoners and three pieces of artillery." The prisoners referred to were members of the "home guard," and not cadets. The three pieces of artillery

belonged to the cadet battery, but they had not been taken into the action. The Federals found them under a shed, where they had been stored for protection from the weather.

The sequel to this scrap of history is briefly told. The cadets retreated in the direction of Marion, some fifty miles distant, where a few days later they were disbanded. General Croxton carried out faithfully his orders to destroy the university. Its handsome buildings, its extensive libraries, and its valuable chemical and physical apparatus, representing in all nearly a half million dollars, went up in smoke. However, like the Virginia Military Institute, the University of Alabama has been rebuilt, and is growing with equal pace with the prosperous State of which it is the educational center. It still retains the military feature as a means of discipline and physical culture among its students; but it is not probable that its cadet corps will ever again have the brush of real war that the boys of 1865 experienced on that memorable April night.

"Who ever saw a Dead Cavalryman ?"

THE article in THE CENTURY for May, 1888, entitled "The Chances of Being Hit in Battle," contains this statement (page 102): "Cavalrymen go into action oftener than infantrymen, and so their losses, being distributed among a larger number of engagements, do not appear remarkable as reported for any one affair. Still, in some of their fights the 'dead cavalry. man' could be seen in numbers that answered only too well the famous question of General Hooker, 'Who ever saw a dead cavalryman?'"

The candor and fairness evident in the whole article forbid the thought of a purpose to cast a reflection on this arm of the service, for Colonel Fox at once proceeds to show on indisputable authority a record of 10,596 "dead cavalrymen." The credit given General Hooker of being the author of this interrogatory, as Colonel Fox states it, is open to objection in more than one respect. General Hooker did not ask a question; he did not make an offensive allusion; but he did make a remark from which have grown many phrases, the most frequent being the form now given. The circumstances calling forth the remark are well known to the writer, and are briefly narrated as follows: When Fitzhugh Lee's brigade crossed the Rappahannock in November, 1862, attacking the outposts at Hartwood Church, composed of four companies of the 3d Pennsylvania Cavalry, he inflicted a loss of eighty men, wounded and captured. Soon after this occurrence had been reported to General Hooker, then commanding the Right Grand Division of the Army of the Potomac, he rode over to General Averell's headquarters to confer with him. Of course the matter under consideration was the loss to General Averell's old regiment, whose record of service had given him rank as brigadier-general. As the interview ended, and General Hooker was leaving, he remarked, “Well, General, we have not had many dead cavalrymen lying about lately!" This remark was not intended to be in any sense offensive or derisive, although this is the use

generally made of it. It was no doubt meant in a comparative sense, as the losses in the cavalry up to that time had not attracted any special mention. Standing alone, as it does in Colonel Fox's article, it admits only of a construction which is thoroughly demolished by the force of statement and narration of facts piled on it by the author of the article, and the circumstances connected with it do not sustain the version given. Jno. C. Hunterson,

3d Pennsylvania Cavalry.

Shooting into Libby Prison.

A DENIAL BY ONE OF THE GUARD.

IN an article on "Colonel Rose's Tunnel at Libby Prison," that appeared in THE CENTURY MAGAZINE for March, 1888, the author says, on page 780:

A captain of an Ohio regiment was shot through the head and instantly killed while reading a newspaper. He was violating no rule whatever, and when shot was from eight to ten feet inside the window through which the bullet came. This was a wholly unprovoked and wanton murder; the cowardly miscreant had fired the shot while he was off duty, and from the north sidewalk of Carey street. The guards (home guards they were) used, in fact, to gun for prisoners' heads from their posts below pretty much after the fashion of boys after squirrels.

The guard of Libby Prison at that time was the 18th Virginia Heavy Artillery, composed entirely of Virginia troops, and not home guards, and one company (E) was composed of veterans of 1861. This company, formerly known as Kemper's Battery, had been engaged at Vienna on June 17, 1861, and at the first battle of Bull Run, July, 1861.

As to the shooting of prisoners, I was doing guard duty at the prison at that time and very distinctly remember the shooting case referred to. The officer who was shot was Captain Forsythe of the 100th Ohio regiment, and the man who shot him was a private in Company C, 18th Virginia Heavy Artillery, by the name of Charles Weber, and the shooting was accidental. I was standing within three feet of Weber when his gun was discharged, and he was standing in the rear rank of the guard that was just going on duty. Weber was to blame, as he had loaded his gun without orders, and he placed the cap on the nipple and was in the act of letting the hammer down when his thumb slipped and the gun was discharged. He did not have the gun to his shoulder aiming at any one, but it was resting against his right hip in the position of "ready." He had been wounded in the right hand and did not have good use of it, and the morning of the shooting was quite cold, and I suppose these were the causes of his letting the hammer of his gun slip. He was arrested and held until the matter was investigated. The affair cast quite a gloom over our entire command, and Weber was generally blamed for his carelessness.

Since the war I have seen several men who were in the prison at that time, and when I mentioned the shooting of Captain Forsythe they told me that they were satisfied the shooting was purely accidental.

James M. Germond,

Co. E, 18th Virginia Heavy Artillery.

Prohibition by Law or by Constitution?

I can be denied to been understood
T can hardly be denied that the cause of prohibition,

and politics, has been set back materially during the past year. The expectations of its supporters in the Presidential election of 1888 were high, and their disappointment at the meagerness of the results must have been correspondingly intense. That this should be followed by an apparently contemptuous coolness among the politicians, who had so long been used to regard prohibition with profound outward deference, was perhaps disagreeable, but only to be expected; but there was hardly anything to mitigate the tremendous adverse majorities in the popular vote of Pennsylvania and Rhode Island last summer. Such a year in the experience of a war administration or of a mercantile house would lead to a general overhauling of affairs, in order, if possible, to find the root of misfortune.

Opinions as to the moving cause will vary even upon the facts as found. The prevailing belief will undoubtedly be that, after a fair and prolonged comparison between prohibition and high and restricted license, there is a more general and decided inclination to abandon prohibition in favor of its competitor. The belief of the Prohibitionists will be that their calamities are the work of the politicians; and there is probably no doubt that many of those who have been saying to prohibition deferentially and for years, "Is it well with thee, my brother?" have seized this opportunity to drive the dagger deep beneath the fifth rib. There is truth enough in the belief of both Prohibitionists and restrictionists: the unpardonably foolish belief, which can only bring its own punishment, is that the results are due to an increased popular indifference to the evils of drunkenness and of the system under which intoxicants have been sold freely in the past. The people “do care”; but perhaps they have come to see by instinct objections to the recently developed prohibition policy which Prohibitionists would do well to consider frankly.

We have in this country a written Constitution for the United States and similar written constitutions for each of the individual States. We are much in the habit of speaking of these instruments as "organic laws" and of thinking of them as if they were much the same in kind as ordinary laws, differing only in the intensity of their action and the difficulty of repeal. Such a conception entails many errors. The written constitution differs from a law in almost every point of nature and function. A law aims at both coercion and freedom; it helps to furnish tests for the decision of disputes; it makes or secures privileges. A constitution is all this, and more; it makes or unmakes laws and legislation; it is the voice of the underlying sovereignty, whatever it may be, imposing restrictions upon voters, upon non-voters, upon governmental agents, upon every manifestation of the political being called the State. But a constitution has even higher characteristics. It is the ultimate expression, not of some one's desires or hopes, not of what some warmly interested people think ought to be done for the people, but of the inmost political life, nature, and development of the people. It

cannot but be a mistake to use so peculiar an instrument as a for ment as a constitution for purposes peculiarly appropri

constitution and law than between the subtle, mysterious vital force and the flesh and bones which it builds up. True as it is that a law must also express some substantial fact of a people's nature and progress, or else it will fail, this is very far from putting a constitution on a par with a law. There must be some field for experimentation and possible mistake; but this must be in a law, not in a constitution. In a country like Great Britain, which has no written constitution, the real offense of him who advises or commits an "unconstitutional" act is that he is throwing his own minute personality athwart the whole life and development of his people, and is attempting to impose his will as a limitation upon the national career. Where is the difference in the act of him who disobeys a written constitution, unless it be that his offense may usually be stated in more definite terms? Where, in reality, is the difference in the act of him who should assume to force upon a people such a constitution as he thinks they ought to have, but which they would never have made for themselves? Either they will invade or override it, or else he has permanently marred or crippled their whole political development. "An unconstitutional constitution," instead of being a contradiction in terms, may be a definite and true expression for an unnatural constitution.

Has there been the highest wisdom, then, in the new policy of the past few years, of " imbedding prohibition in the constitutions" of the States interested? There are, no doubt, cases in which such a policy is valid, when it indicates just the line and point of a State's own development. But there are cases which are not of this kind, but merely colorable imitations of it: it is possible, as every one knows, to coerce the real will of voters and reach the same result by a skillful use of temporary circumstances, by a strategic balancing of party against party, or by a spasmodic and exciting use of moral forces. Such a process could make at the best only an "unconstitutional constitution"; it would be the worst thing possible for popular government; and yet the temptations to seize upon such a success, and hope for good results, are peculiarly great for earnest men. Was it wise to multiply and intensify such temptations by the adoption of an indiscriminate policy of constitutional amendment?

"Everybody knows more than anybody"; and it may very well be that the disasters of the past year are due to an instinctive popular perception of the dangers of the new policy. It seems clear that, where popular condemnation is fairly to be inferred, it has thus far been provoked mainly along the lines of this policy. But it should not be forgotten that there is an entirely distinct field, that of law, applying either to a whole State, or to part of it by local option. None of the facts available seem to indicate that this is any the less debatable ground than it has always been. At any rate, those who believe that prohibition in this sense is dead would do well not to be too hasty in administering upon its estate.

American Game Laws.

IN so extensive and various a country as this it would be impossible to fix a date even so general as the English Twelfth of August, and the "opening of the season" has varied hopelessly for different regions and different types of game. There has been, nevertheless, an apparent disposition to make the event center somewhere about September, and it seems to be increasing in strength with the growing tendency to make the opening of a season compulsory, rather than conventional or traditional.

For years, probably rather for centuries, the general American feeling with regard to the edible portion of the wilder animals was one of indifference; the supply was abundant, and it was not the business of any one in particular to impose any restraints on the desire to use the supply either for pleasure or for profit. The unhappy results of this indifference are familiar. Every one was at liberty to kill at discretion; men shot, and snared, and seined as they saw fit. The contest was increasingly unequal. The swiftest and most acute of the game animals found it continually more difficult to gain places of security against the improved weapons and transportation of their pursuers; and even the fittest for survival had an increasingly precarious tenure of existence. Fools or selfish men, if they were able to buy a ticket on a far Western railway, were thereby enabled to appropriate to themselves that to which they really had no title, except in common with the millions who were not in position to assert their claims. "Sport" became a veneering for senseless and heartless massacre, which had almost done its work before any general notice was taken of it. It is a national disgrace that one of our few characteristic animals, the bison, has practically ceased to exist. But only those far-sighted men who have invoked the shield of law against the further course of this destruction can tell us how narrowly the caribou, the prairie-chicken, and the different varieties of game fish have escaped the fate of the bison.

As such results have opened the eyes of the people, the reign of unlicensed selfishness has come to an end, and we are entering upon the era of systematic protection for game. State after State is coming to recognize the fact that the game animals eat little that could be required for man, while they may become, under protection, an important part of the national larder; and the States are becoming as willing to grant such protection as they would to the fields or factories against similar acts of folly or ill-will. Parts of the year are marked off by statute, and during these periods the game animals are not to be injured, but are to enjoy a season for race recuperation. It is none the easier for them to find holes or corners of security against modern invention; but the law comes in to give them a time limit, within which the most active or most selfish of their pursuers must let them alone. The whole change of view has been a complete one. A little more than a century ago it seemed to Franklin the most natural thing possible to declare that, rather than submit to Parliamentary exaction, he would retire with his family "into the boundless woods of America, which are sure to afford freedom and subsistence to any one who can bait a hook or pull a trigger." Already there are not many places, at least between the Atlantic

and the Mississippi, where the patriot who should seek an indiscriminate subsistence in that way would be safe from arrest and punishment as a poacher.

The American "poacher," however, will always be a very different offender from his English prototype. All that the American law will require will be a due respect for the rights of the people. Game is not to be preserved for particular persons, but for all; and during the proper time limit all men may become "poachers" so far as the American game laws will concern themselves with him. All this may seem to many quite incompatible with the fact that, even within proper time limits, no one may pursue game upon the land of another without express or tacit permission, and they may conclude that there is not to be any essential difference between English and American game preservation after all. Such a belief confuses two different things, land ownership and game protection. If we are to have land ownership, the owner must be owner altogether, and his ownership must cover the live stock on the estate, be it wild or tame. But this is just as it always has been. It is true that there is an increasing unwillingness to grant permission for the intrusion of others in pursuit of game; but the permission has always been legally necessary, as a part of land ownership, and should not be attributed to the new system of game protection. The change is merely a corollary of the country's development; the permission to hunt or fish, which was once valueless and was given with corresponding liberality, is now valuable and must be paid for.

It would not be fair, however, to leave even an implication that the change, legal as it may be, is withal an injury to the people. When one tract of wild land after another is taken out of the market and reserved as a hunting or fishing park, when the people of successive neighborhoods find that the lakes, brooks, and forests over which they and their fathers have fished and shot from time immemorial are now closed to them, it is easy to suggest to them that they have been injured in some way. One must take the development as a whole, not in parts. The case is not one in which powerful barons have entered by force and ousted the people from their natural privileges. It is merely that the lake, the trout-brook, or the shooting-ground has acquired a new value from a general development which, in another part of it, has enriched our tables with fish and game from the most distant parts of our own country and with food products from all over the world. The parts must go together. He who wishes to turn back the years, and fish and shoot as freely as his grandfather did, cannot surely expect to enjoy the Northwestern salmon, the Southern berries, the Florida oranges, the California figs, the Western beef, the tinned or glass goods from all over the world, for which his grandfather possibly would have been glad to barter all his meager privileges of the chase. Such details of development are enough to show that, while there is always a scale of popular loss, it is altogether outweighed by the scale which represents the popular gain.

Progress in the Copyright Reform.

WE commend to our readers the perusal of Mr. Hayes's Open Letter in the present number of THE CENTURY, recalling the confidence of the literary men