described in that way. That Lee or the confederacy were struggling for independence in the sense in which the American colonists of 1776, or the Boers of to-day or the Swiss or the Irish struggled for that object I most positively deny. If Lee and the confederacy had been struggling in that sense the civil war would not yet be over. The eleven southern states would be now either independent or in the condition of Ireland.

First of all the southern states were not a naturally separate people. They were contiguous territory. There was no natural boundary dividing them from the North. They were of the same race, language and social status as the north. They had taken part with the north in making the whole country independent of England and with the north they had made the National Constitution.

They had quarrelled with the north simply about the question of slavery. At one time they had disapproved of slavery in the abstract as much as the north did; but as their slaves were more profitable than slaves in the north they were slower about abolishing slavery than the north had been. Their slaves were guaranteed to them by the Constitution. The rising moral sentiment against slavery in the north, which seemed to them to threaten the abolition of slavery in the south by violence without regard to the Constitution and without compensation to owners drove them into war. Their confederacy which they formed was a mere make-shift to protect millions of dollars worth of slaves. There is no evidence of any passion for independence among them, such as has characterized the people already described, and as a matter of fact there was nothing in their unseparated situation that would cause that passion.

High strung, intelligent men such as the southerners are, will fight a long time over millions of dollars worth of slaves, if they think they are to be suddenly and unfairly deprived of them, but not as they would fight for independence, for political existence. There was so little moral righteousness in slavery and they had always known so well its unrighteousness that when the point of scientific defeat was reached, when their regularly organized armies were formally defeated they gave up the game. The inspiration of the cause was not perennial. There was none of the eternal justness in it which inspired the cause of Washington and your ancestor, which has kept the Cubans struggling for thirty years, and the Irish and the Armenians for seven hundred.

General Lee, who, as you say, set the example of giving up, was a man of peculiar views on the civil war. He was not a believer in slavery. He described it as a "moral and political evil" and "a greater evil to the white than to the colored race." He did not even believe in the right of secession. He spoke of it as an absurdity, and said that it was impossible to suppose that the framers of the Constitution could have contemplated anything of the sort. He had great misgivings and much mental struggle when Virginia seceded and he finally decided to go with his state because as he put it, "I have not been able to make up my mind to raise my hand against my relatives, my children, my home." He cared little or nothing for the confederacy. It was the invasion of Virginia against which he fought and he always commanded the army in Virginia. "Save in defence of my native state," he said, "I hope I may never be called on to draw my sword."

Such a man easily dropped the contest for the confederacy when the point of scientific defeat had been reached. He fought to acquit his own honor as a man fights a duel until blood is drawn, and that done he has no more incentive for fighting.

There is also another point you have forgotten. The terms which General Grant offered Lee were of a liberality beyond the capacity of any British general or statesman. Lee's whole army was paroled and told to go home taking their horses with them to cultivate their farms. There were to be no punishments or executions for treason. Afterwards when some people in the north foolishly clamored for punishment, Grant sternly insisted on the fulfillment of every condition in the surrender. Under such terms it was very easy and natural for Lee to ride quietly from the surrender to his own home, walk in and shut the door, and never trouble himself about the rebellion again.

You say Lee's example influenced the other southern leaders. But it was Grant's example, the fair and honorable terms, which were the real influence, the real power that was accomplishing this result. It was very American and possible only among Americans. The English are too stupidly violent ever to achieve such a result as that.

You may remember that some months ago Botha and some of the Boer leaders met Lord Kitchener to discuss terms of peace. And what were the British terms? Compare them with Grant's. Lord Kitchener said that immunity would be given to certain of the leaders, but no immunity could be promised to certain others. Could honorable men consent to surrender themselves and escape on condition that certain of their associates were to be hung?

Suppose Grant had said to Lee, "You and your officers, if you will surrender, shall be guaranteed immunity; but Jefferson Davis, and Johnston and Beauregard are to be hung." Do you suppose Lee would have surrendered? I am inclined to think that if any such British policy had been carried out there would be guerilla war and Irish rebellion in the south to this hour.

Lord Kitchener, you will also remember, would give the Boers no promise of local self-government. It was indefinitely postponed. They asked him about giving the right to vote to the black Kaffir population. But Kitchener refused to give any promise on that point.

In other words they were asked to surrender without any agreement that the lives of the rebels in Cape Colony who had been assisting them should be spared the gallows, they had no definite promise of local self-government, and so far was the possibility of self-government removed that it was left uncertain whether or not the black Kaffir population would not be used to control them and outvote them if a sham of self-government were set up.

Now let us suppose Grant offering similar terms to Lee. Let us suppose him saying that the eleven states of the confederacy would be held as crown colonies, or presidential subject colonies for an indefinite period, and that the north reserved the right to control the south by means of giving the vote to the recently freed black slaves and withholding it from the whites. Do we not all know what Lee's answer and what the answer of the whole south would have been to those terms?

We all know what happened a few years afterwards in the reconstruction period when the blacks were to a certain extent put over the whites. We all know that the south immediately turned to guerilla methods or as they were called the Ku Klux societies, societies of secret assassination and terror, methods far worse than ordinary guerillaism. Moreover these Ku Klux methods were successful. They broke the dominion of the black man. They compelled the north to stop, to recall its carpet baggers, to reconsider its injustice; or as Mr. Page puts it the southerners reconquered their own country, and had it again under their own normal state governments. But if Lee and the other southern leaders had known all this was coming they would have begun the guerillaism at Appomatox.

The Ku Klux methods were unpleasant, atrocious, unfortunate in many ways; for as most of us can remember, they fixed upon southern life the habit of assassination, which continued for many years in a manner most revolting and shocking to northern moral sense and it has only recently begun to die out. But who was to blame? England has in the same way turned the Irish into assassins, rioters and law