granddaughter? I have no right even to presume that I will have a
grandson, certainly none that he will be able to meet his own debts in
addition to those I entail upon him. The character of the people
called upon to settle the debt of Virginia, contracted in 1860, before
or immediately after, differed radically from the character of the
people who were called upon to tax themselves to cancel that debt. Not
only had the character of the people undergone a radical change; the
whole social and industrial mechanism of the state had undergone a
wonderful, almost an unrecognizable, metamorphosis. The haughty
aristocrat, with his magnificent plantation, his army of slaves, and
his "cattle on a thousand hills," who eagerly contracted the debt,
had been transformed into a sour pauper when called upon to honor his
note; while the magnificent plantation had been in many instances cut
into a thousand bits to make homes for the former slaves, now freemen
and citizens, the equals of "my lord," while "his cattle on a thousand
hills" had dwindled down to a stubborn jackass and a worn out milch
cow. True, the white man possessed, largely, the soil; but he was,
immediately after the war, utterly incapable of wringing from it the
bounty of Nature; he had first to be re-educated.

But, when the bloody rebellion was over, the country, in its sovereign
capacity, and by individual States, was called upon to deal with grave
questions growing out of the conflict. Mr. Lincoln, by a stroke of the
pen,[9] transferred the battle from the field to the halls of
legislation. In view of the "Emancipation proclamation" as issued by
Mr. Lincoln, and the invaluable service rendered by black troops[10]
in the rebellion, legislation upon the status of the former slave
could not be avoided. The issue could not be evaded; like Banquo's
ghost, it would not down. There were not wanting men, even when the
war had ended and the question of chattel slavery had been forever