be fixed, depends upon the circumstances of the case. The right to participate in the choice of those who are to make or execute the laws, is not a natural right; it is a conventional right, springing from the organization of society. Enlightened reason, looking to ultimate justice as the great end, should determine its investiture and exercise. Reason teaches that no one rule can be properly laid down for all times, persons, and places. Nor has a bare majority any natural right to govern the rest. Society has no moral or natural right to govern itself except upon the principles of justice as stated. With society so established and its government so administered, every member, whether man, woman, or child, of whatever race or colour, is equal in this: that he or she has an equal right, with equal security for the right, to have justice rendered. Perfect justice in all cases need not be expected. In administration all that the best of mortals can do is to attain the nearest approximation possible to this Divine attribute; reason and a sense of justice based upon the Golden Rule laid down by Him who spake as never man spake of doing to others as you would have others do to you must be the guide. This rule, in my judgment, means that man in all circumstances should do to others as he would have others do to him, positions being reversed. The Corporal with dinner stops these reflections. Dinner over. Had a mess of green peas from sutler's; what he will charge I do not know. Thought of home, Harry, the garden, the beautiful plot of ground we had in peas, so promising when I left. Lieut. W. walked out with me this morning. He pointed out General Jackson, dressed in gray, walking on N. E. parapet. We were on S. E., several hundred yards away. He told me that Dr. Willis, of Savannah, supplies Jackson and other officers, prisoners here, with funds; he supposed I would be allowed to receive funds from friends. This gave me relief. He informed me that General DuBose is in excellent health and spirits, always pleasant and jovial. Reagan, he said, was well. General DuBose writes to Mrs. DuBose through General Wilson at Macon. I inquired if he knew if General DuBose had received any letters lately from Mrs. DuBose. He said he did not know. Jackson walked with quickness, great elasticity, and firmness of step. Corporal brought my wash bill. I paid it, Sunday as it is; the rate is $1.25 per dozen; for 16 pieces, $1.56. Whole expenses thus far paid, $49.56. For the first time in four weeks I became conscious of smiling. It was on reading Artemus Ward in Richmond Enquirer. For the humorous I ever had a relish, even when at my own expense or that of my friends. The impulse to laugh was succeeded instantly by a sense of my situation, thoughts of friends and of the condition. of the country. All risible inclinations were banished; sadness ensued. J UNE 5. CHAPTER IV Thunder and lightning after candles were out. First thunder since I left Hampton Roads. The warmest night since I have been here. Rose after a refreshing sleep. As has been my custom for many years on arising at home, I commenced singing, in my way, whatever happened to occur to me. This morning I began Moore's hymn: This world is all a fleeting show There's nothing true but Heaven! The very unmusical noise I made, or something else, seemed to excite much astonishment in the guard passing my window, just as the same discordant notes used to excite the mirth of Mr. O'Neal when he lived with me at Liberty Hall. He was a very grave man usually, and seldom I saw him seem to laugh internally at anything more than at my attempts to sing. Breakfast: No meat; coffee and rolls from sutler's that's all he sent. I ordered a half-pint of syrup: this Geary brought. With all my intense distress on Linton's account, I have not once dreamed about him. Last night, I dreamed of little Becky [Linton's daughter]; thought I was at home in a room writing, and she ran in and told me "The Yankees have come!" I saw them with guns at the window. I was not discomforted, nor was the dream unpleasant. Becky did not seem frightened. I awoke. The vision was gone and I was lying on my bunk — far away from the scenes where my sleeping thoughts had roamed. Paid newspaper bill, $2.03; all expenses paid to date, $51.59. Lieut. W. walked out with me. Spent the full hour walking and talking. Wrote two letters: one to Mr. Henry C. Baskerville, Richmond, Va., and one to Dr. Francis T. Willis or Dr. Richard Arnold, Savannah, Ga. That to Mr. B. was about Hidell's business -to know if he had heard from Hidell-and if Henry and Anthony had got safely home and how they are. The letter to Willis or Arnold was to get from either information, if possible, about Linton and home in case my letters to Linton and others at home should fail for any cause to reach them. Lieut. W. is to call at one-thirty for letters. Hear a piano overhead. This may be an offset to my music of this morning. 10.30- Got New York papers of Saturday. They are not brought down on Sunday. The name of the Herald's correspondent who travelled with me from Augusta to Fortress Monroe, is Theodore T. Scribner; it appears in the Herald's announcement of his having sent the Secretary of War the original draft on parchment of Alabama's Ordinance of Secession. He took it from the walls of the Capitol in Montgomery when General Wilson's forces were in that city. Mr. Stanton acknowledges its receipt and says it has been deposited in his office at Washington. The Boston Post publishes testimony, heretofore suppressed, in the Court Martial in Washington. If this testimony be true or half true, there was a most diabolical plot, deeply involving the honour and good name of my country. I cannot believe it is true. The statements are vague; the witnesses do not seem to have been cross-examined. Clay, from what they say, was in Canada in February last. He left before that time. From his solemn declarations to me, I cannot believe that he was engaged in or had knowledge even of such a hellish plot. Wonder and surprise have been expressed in a number of papers at the suddenness and completeness of the collapse of the Confederate Cause, etc. This wonder and surprise proceed from lack of accurate knowledge of public sentiment in the South. Resistance to the last extremity, it is said, was expected, and yet, more than 100,000 men-in-arms yielded the contest, abandoned the conflict, quit the field, surrendered on parole and went home. The facts are these as I understand them: No people on earth were ever more united, earnest, resolved to resist to the last extremity, than the Southern people at the outbreak of the war and during its first two years. They were ready to sacrifice property, life, everything, for the Cause, which was then simply the right of self-government. They conscientiously believed that the old Union was a compact between Sovereign Independent States; only certain powers named in the Constitution had been delegated by the States separately to the Central Government; among these was not ultimate absolute Sovereignty, this being retained by the States separately in the reserved powers; each State had the right to withdraw from the Central Government the powers delegated by repealing the ordinance that conferred them and herself resuming their full exercise as a free Independent Sovereign State, such as she was when the |