Simply their living in post that fell into the Was this civilized

And what was their crime? the neighborhood of the first hands of the enemy in open war. warfare, to seize and appropriate to government officials whole areas of the territory, and all the private property, merely because the military post near them had fallen? We will have to look far back into the annals of the past to find any precedent for this course, and only succeed when on the confines of the dark ages.

When the returned soldier had once seen his premises, fenceless, and grown up in weeds, the doors and blinds of his house all gone, used up for fire-wood, the portraits of his ancestors taking the places of fire-screens, and even their tombstones, in Beaufort, applied to other and meaner purposes, his heart would sink too low to rise again to any hope of restoring the past. But when he would find the whole vicinity given up to a motley gang, and miscegenation and open concubinage the prevailing habits of the new settlers, his impulse was to put his family and all he held dear, as far as possible from this moral pestilence. It could be his home no longer!

And poor old Charleston, the once proud metropolis of the State, the seat of elegance and refinement, and of a hospitality so world-wide in its fame! Like all her sons, the returned soldier had cherished a filial affection for his native city, unknown to a migratory people. When he had gone forth as a hopeful volunteer, and all through the hardships, fightings and privations of a long war, the most

cheering picture before him was, old Charleston. restored to her commercial importance. Though he knew that the course of events before the war had caused her to subside into a mere dependency on her northern rivals, still he knew that it had not always been so. There had been a time when she held proud rank with these same rivals, and her commerce, too, had whitened foreign seas. He knew that about the time of the Revolution she had had six large ship-yards in active operation; and as early as between 1740 and 1779, she had built twenty-five square-rigged vessels, besides very many coasters for the West India trade and that of the Atlantic coast. Under new and brighter auspices, why might not prosperity not only be restored to her, but be greatly enhanced? The Southern Confederacy once established, why might not this ancient city become the New York of the New Republic? These had been his day-dreams for four long years, but what was his awaking?

Her wharves either torn up, or rotted down from disuse, her princely mansions, which had been venerated for generations, all ragged from bursting shells, and shattered in the unprecedented bombardment of those long and weary years, her streets covered with coatings of grass, and her public squares so grown up in weeds that the wild beasts from the country. found ample shelter there through the demolished enclosures.

But grand even in ruins, proudly had she defied all the enemy's engines of destruction for more than

two long years, and only fell when her citizen soldiers marched out to defend more vital points. It was some days before the evacuation was even known to the enemy, and then he marched in, only to triumph over women and children, in their battered dwellings and blackened walls. But here, too, they assumed all their peculiar "rights of the conquerors," and we have the same sickening tales of private property seized for government use, or no known use at all, and of private rights insulted and outraged by the elevation of the slave to the position of master.

Just here, the writer would pause to notice some most ungenerous flings against the energy and enterprise of this stricken city, graced by those modern cant phrases of "Bourbonism," "old fogyism," "fossilized," &c., and all this accompanied by glowing contrasts, pictured in the cases of Chicago and Boston. That while these two great cities had built up their waste places, as if by magic, the traces of the fire which occurred in Charleston more than thirteen years ago are still manifest in the vacant lots and crumbling walls which mark its progress.

These carpers should remember that the business of Charleston was not only paralyzed by the war, but was "dead, twice dead, plucked up by the roots!" Savannah and some of her other Southern neighbors were revived by the return of some of their strongest firms, with increased capitals, who had removed to places of safety at the beginning of hostilities; but there was no such recuperation for this old city. Her merchants and business men stood in their own

lot through the whole strife, and were all prostrated together. They, therefore, had to begin, as the phrase is, from the stump. Even in these circumstances, the enterprise and grit of her citizens would soon have restored a measure of prosperity, if they could have had a fair field for their development. But, just then, she was turned over to African rule, both State and municipal; and what people could have flourished under such insatiate and incessant draining? Sampson, shorn of his locks, was not more completely in the hands of his Philistines.

But to come back to our returned soldier. Even in the most favored sections of the State, scenes of desolation and decay awaited him. Four long years of rigid blockade from without, and of extortion and rapacity from heartless "speculators" from within, had blackened all the picture his imagination had painted of home, and, worst of all, his rights of citizenship were all gone. The old State was peopled by negroes and "paroled prisoners of war," without even the forms of civilized government. Her courthouses were all closed, her Governor was himself a prisoner in the Dry Tortugas, and even municipal government of incorporated towns was all suspended. It afforded a striking evidence of the law-abiding character of her citizens, that, in this complete interregnum of all constituted authority, which continued for so many months, there should be so few infractions of the public peace; and that all things should go on as orderly and peacefully as they did.

The negroes had not yet been tampered with, and

were as obedient and faithful as they had been during the war. The whole history of the State, during this short period, was a practical illustration of the power of public opinion in maintaining order, and in preserving the peace of the community. Sometimes a small garrison of colored troops would be marched to some point in the interior, and then a series of petty annoyances would begin and expand. The little "Lieutenant commanding" would be judge, jury and sheriff, in his little "Military Court," and fines were almost exclusively his penalties. How near these fines ever got to the United States treasury has never been ascertained, and probably never will be. All the cases, it may be safely said, were of colored plaintiffs against white defendants, on charges of "assault and battery." The negroes would be put up to all manner of insolence by their brethren in uniform and their friends, and when a blow, or other punishment, would thus be provoked, the culprit would soon be seized by an armed squad, and taken to headquarters (Lieutenant commanding), whether by day or by night, and irrespective of distance or state of health. This petty tyranny was excessively annoying, particularly as these fines, varying from twenty to one hundred dollars, had to be promptly met, when there was no money in the country. Heir-looms and old family plate had in most instances to be sacrificed, and the "Court," too often, became the purchaser.

And following hard upon these intolerable annoyances, came the " Freedman's Bureau," emerging from