was she who obtained for us the seats so near to where his Holiness would pass that we could have touched him without unduly stretching our arms. He said the Noble Guard, not the Pope-that we could get in the Sistine Chapel after the procession had passed; now it would be an impossibility.

A little after half-past nine a shout such as we had never heard before arose, a mighty roar, piling sound upon sound, the high-pitched voices of women mingling with the deeper ones of the men, forming one huge crashing chord of human tones. By standing on tiptoe we could see that Benedict XV had entered the long hall, descended the marble steps, and was seating himself in the sedia gestatoria. First came the cardinals, putting on their miters as they passed, their scarlet gowns covered with long white mantles embroidered with gold, and many adorned with precious stones that sparkled as they walked. At the rear, nearest the Holy Father, came Cardinal Gibbons, his sweet, kindly face in profound repose, his eyes gazing straight ahead to where the candles in the Sistine Chapel flickered beyond a screen of gold.

Following the cardinals came six candlebearers, and then, high above the people, borne on the shoulders of sixteen men, appeared Benedict XV. Above him the flabelli waved those great feather fans which formerly were waved before the Emperors of pagan Rome. He looked neither to the right nor to the left as he passed, blessing the people with the three movements of the hand which signify the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Attired in the smallest of the three white vestments— there are three always kept on hand, a small one, a middle size one, and a large one, so as to be suited to the cardinal who may be elected-every few moments he lifted his left hand to adjust the heavy golden headcovering that continually became displaced. His intellectual, determined, masculine face was very pale; the hand that dispensed the blessing trembled; and behind the spectacles which, as in all his photographs, sit unevenly upon his nose, his eyes seemed tender and a little sad.

Thus he passed, first into the Pauline Chapel, where are two almost forgotten frescoes of Michael Angelo-" The Crucifixion of St. Peter" and "The Coronation of St. Paul." It is here that the three little piles of hemp are lighted before the Pope; as they flare up, one after the other, a solemn voice is

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heard saying, "Thus pass the things of this world." And the procession moves again into the Sistine Chapel, the crowning glory of the greatest artist who has ever lived. Within its consecrated walls the first Papal mass of Benedict XV was said. The dense crowd interfered with our vision, but the superb music drifted solemnly toward where we stood by the wall, and, although the screen that cut the chapel hall in two hid most of the ceremony, it did not hide that wonderful ceiling of Michael Angelo's, which makes everything human of small account. Beneath the pity and the horror of the "Last Judgment" the ceremony went on and on, and the music rose and fell like waves upon a distant shore. About us in this chapel, built by Baccio Pintelli in 1473-a score of years before the discovery of America—for Sixtus IV, are some of the greatest masterpieces of the Renaissance: frescoes by Perugino, Sandro Botticelli, Ghirlandajo, Lucca Signorelli, and, above all, dwarfing all else, that ceiling which still remains the artistic triumph of all times.

As the chapel grew hot and unbearably close, we went out to promenade the terrace overlooking the courtyard of S. Damaso, which was full of waiting motor cars and restless horses. Beyond, across the Eternal City, one saw the long yellow line of the King's Palace, formerly the summer palace of the reigning Pope, and we could not but wonder how long this could continue, the King of Italy and the Pope gazing at each other across the city for which they had both fought, the defeated one refusing to acknowledge the victor, waiting patiently, quietly, a voluntary prisoner-waiting-waiting for what?

When we returned, refreshed by the sunshine and air of the courtyard, the mass was almost ended, Lighted candles flickered beyond the screen of gold; the odor of sweltering humanity mingling with the fragrance of incense hung heavy in the air. In a little while the procession reformed, and, led as before by the cardinals, the Pope was borne aloft amid his applauding people, his triple erown upon his head, a smile upon his pale, thoughtful face, the pagan feathers floating on before him like two enormous birds of victory, his hand raised in benediction. Thus ended the solemn ceremony, and we found ourselves in the midday glare of the Piazza of St. Peter's, our evening clothes looking out of place as we called madly for a cab.

Rome, Italy.

F

OR the ten years preceding the Civil War a slave insurrection had been dreaded. The raid of John Brown had. thrown, not the State of Virginia only, but the entire Atlantic slave States, into a panic. The history of the war proved this dread to be without just cause. The Negroes remained at home raising the crops while their masters fought in the field to keep them in slavery. In some cases this patient waiting of the slaves may have been due to a habit of abject submission which they had not the will power to break; in many cases it was due to a feeling of loyalty by the slaves toward the masters and mistresses, for between them had grown up a peculiar feeling of attachment which the North has never understood-loyalty of service on the one hand, loyalty of protection on the other. But more important than either was the religious faith of the Negrosuperstitious, some think it; rational, I think it. The Negro is something of a fatalist. He realized that the problem in which he found himself, by no act of his, involved was far too great for him to understand. God was at work, and God would somehow accomplish his redemption. He could do nothing; he must wait and see the salvation of the Lord.

But the Emancipation Proclamation wrought a gradual change in his feeling, quickened his aspirations, and in hundreds of cases became a call to action. Even before the Proclamation, Negroes had flocked from their plantations to neighboring camps of the Federal armies. Benjamin F. Butler, with characteristic shrewdness, confiscated them as contraband of war, and "contrabands " they became. After the Emancipation Proclamation, the exodus of slaves increased, and their title was changed to "freedmen." Thus gradually in all the Southern territory permanently occupied by the Federal authority there grew up camps of Negroes, many of them almost as helpless as a lost dog without his master. A race does not easily and quietly pass from a habit of dependence and submission into a habit of self-support and self-control.

Copyright, 1914, the Outlook Company.

With these Negroes, companions only in their misfortunes, were camps of white men and women fleeing from the South. Some of them were Unionists. A Northern man, realizing the contempt with which the victorious section regarded the "Copperhead," should have been able to imagine the hatred felt in the defeated South for the Unionist. But the motto "Put yourself in his place" requires more imagination than most men possess. Nor was it only Union men that fled to the territory protected by Northern armies. Secessionists, deprived of home and industry by the devastating progress of the war, fled for safety and support to the regions where war was not. And with them

were many poor whites, who understood the causes and nature of the war even less than the Negroes whom they despised. Said a Confederate prisoner who had been drafted into the Southern service to a friend of mine, "What did you-uns come down to fight we-uns for?" What answer could be given to such a question with any hope that it would be understood?

What to do with these helpless colored "freedmen" and white "refugees" became the perplexing problem of every division commander as fast as his territory was cleared of Confederate forces. Rations could be, and were, provided out of the army's stores. Shelter was provided where possible out of army barracks or abandoned school-houses and churches. Here and there some fitful work was provided and some semblance of schooling. But to organize either an industrial or an educational system was beyond the power of local authorities. That this must be done for all the territories which had been devastated by the war gradually became apparent to the people of the North. It constituted the perplexing problem of Reconstruction.

It is easy, looking back, to see that the men of that generation blundered egregiously, and brought upon the country, espe cially the South, and most of all upon the Negro race, tragic disaster by their blunder

ing. But it is not so easy, even in the light of that experience, to see what they should have done. To build in a generation a new democratic civilization on the ruins of a feudalism overthrown, with only the impoverished lands and the ignorant serfs as material, is a problem almost impossible of achievement. A statement of some of the elements of this complex problem may at least serve to make its difficulty apparent.

What should the victorious North do with the vanquished States? Should it regard them as conquered territory to be held under martial law until their conqueror had decided what to do with them? and was their fate wholly in the power of the victor, a power to be exercised justly, perhaps generously, but without any responsibility to the wishes of the conquered? Or were those States still parts of the Union, which had by their rebellion abandoned their Statehood and lapsed into Territories, and were they to be treated by Congress as Territories are treated, provided with a Territorial government, and held in pupilage until they had proved their capacity for self-government in a free commonwealth? Or were they indestructible States in an indissoluble Union? Were the Confederate armies to be regarded simply as an organized mob, and, the mob having been put down and a republican form of government having been re-established, were the seceding States to resume their place in the Union under the Constitution, with all the Constitutional rights and prerogatives of States ?

Who was to undertake this work of reconstruction? Was it an executive function to be exercised by the President of the United States? Was he to determine by his authority, as Commander-in-Chief of the United States, in what sections martial law might be abandoned and civil law re-established, and, by his pardoning power, who of those lately in arms against the United States might resume the rights and prerogatives of citizenship? Or was the work of reconstruction a Congressional function, and was Congress to determine, as it would in the case of conquered territory, on what terms the States might come back into the Union from which they had attempted to secede ?

What should be done with the Negroes? The Emancipation Proclamation had relieved them from all duty of service to their masters; but it had also relieved the masters from all duty of providing for and protecting

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their slaves. By a stroke of the pen four million slaves had been transformed into four million vagrants and paupers. Under the existing laws of the various States they could not own a rod of land, or a house, or personal property of any description. They did not legally own the clothes they wore or the shacks they might have constructed. They could not vote, nor hold office, nor sit on juries, nor testify in court, nor practice as lawyers or as physicians. They were not legally married, and their children were not legitimate nor legally subject to parental authority.

Who should solve this problem? The States? Surely, said the South; in the State the Negro must live, in the State ply his industry; there he would be surrounded by his old masters, who had been his caretakers, understood his character, knew how to deal with him, and felt a real affection for him. Surely not, replied the North. To hand him over to the States was to hand him over to the very community which for four years had been fighting a bloody war for no other purpose than to enslave him. What they would do with him if they had the power was apparent from what in some States they had attempted to do. It is not strange that Southern men, who had never seen the Negro work except under compulsion, thought he never would work except under compulsion, and for the authority of the master over the slave he owned attempted to substitute, in a system of serfdom, the authority of the State exercised through their late masters over the freedmen. Should the Federal Government undertake the care of the Negro? That meant that Congress should undertake it. And Congress was composed almost exclusively of Northern men, who did not understand the Negro, never had lived among the Negroes, had no real affection for the Negro, and could not understand his temperament, his ignorance, his superstition, his shiftless habits, his animal passions, his disregard of property rights. Grant that these characteristics were relics of slavery; still, it would require time, patience, and intimacy of acquainance to emancipate him from them. If, then, neither the State nor the Nation could be trusted to take care of the Negro, why not trust him to take care of himself? Enfranchise him; give him the ballot, and with it all the rights and privileges and prerogatives of citizenship. Apply the principle of the Homestead Act. Use the

abandoned lands in the South, and, if necessary, confiscate the lands of the rebels, and give each Negro a lot for cultivation-forty acres, was proposed. What if the South objected to Negro suffrage? It would be a just punishment. But the South would not long object. In a few years-five at the most, said Charles Sumner-the South would conquer its prejudice sufficiently to allow the late slaves to be their equals at the polls. Sumner was better acquainted with political theories than with human nature. This, however, was the course finally adopted. The political power in the reconstructed States was given to all loyal citizens, white or black, ignorant or educated. The results proved that the ballot in the hands of ignorance is as effective an instrument for self-destruction as for self-protection. I agree with Professor Burgess that "it was a great wrong to civilization to put the white man of the South under the domination of the Negro race." But the alternative propositions were also full of peril.

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The reader must not think that these theories were as clearly defined as I have defined them here. Public opinion at the North was a swirl of contradictory opinions. Members of the same political party held opposite opinions, and the same man often held half a dozen opinions in as many weeks. Andrew Johnson, who as President became a bitter opponent of Negro suffrage, was reported on May 12, 1865, as in favor of it. Charles Sumner, of Massachusetts, was an ardent advocate of Negro suffrage; Governor Andrews, of the same State, opposed it. It was a time of chaos. There was nothing in the written Constitution or in the traditions of the Nation to govern, and little in either to guide. History furnished no precedents. Except to the doctrinaire, there was no great political or moral principle on which the voter could take his stand, sure that it was right, and therefore sure that it was wise. Probably an overwhelming majority of the people of the North gave little thought to the problem. The tense emotion aroused by the war was followed by a reaction. The war had succeeded, the Union was saved, slavery was abolished; why worry?

This brief summary of conditions is necessary to make clear to the reader the nature and reasons of the change in my work which this chapter is to describe.

"Reconstruction and the Constitution," by John W. Burgess, p. 133.

The October number of the "New Englander," a monthly review published at New Haven, contained an article from my pen on reconstruction.

It was one of hundreds of articles, speeches, and sermons on this topic uttered throughout the North, but it was among the first of them. At the time the article was written the country was just recovering from the most discouraging period in the war. Washington had been in serious danger from an invading force under General Early. Sheridan had been put in command of the troops in the Shenandoah Valley just in time to recover the ground lost by previous defeats. The armies of Hood and Thomas were confronting each other in Tennessee, and the battle of Nashville had not yet been fought. General Sherman had occupied Atlanta, but had not yet commenced his famous march to the sea. Volunteering for the army had ceased and a draft had been ordered. Gold had reached 2.85, the highest price at any time during the war. At the request of Congress, the 1st of August had been appointed by the President and observed by the people as a day of National humilia

tion and prayer. Horace Greeley, acting for the discouraged and disheartened in the Republican party, had initiated his futile negotiations for peace with representatives of the Confederacy. The Democratic party had declared the war a failure, and the country was in the throes of a hotly contested election to determine whether it would indorse the statement of Abraham Lincoln that no proposition for peace would be considered which did not embrace the integrity of the whole Union and the abandonment of slavery, or would sue for peace with a Confederacy whose President had declared that the war "must go on till the last man of this genera tion falls in his tracks and his children seize his musket and fight a battle, unless you acknowledge our right to self-government.” My essay on the reconstruction needed, published a month before the Presidential election of 1864, has historical significance only as it indicates the spirit of the dominant section of the Republican party; it has personal significance because it led to a change in my life as great as that made five years before when I left the law for the ministry. This justifies, if it does not necessitate, giving here a fairly full abstract of this essay. I wrote:

At the commencement of this war we were often sneeringly asked the question, Sup