He had not only the ordinary
instinct of the educated Southern man for political thought--an
instinct which makes every man in that section first of all things
a partisan, and constitutes politics the first and most important
business of life--but besides this general interest in public
affairs he had also an inherited bias of hostility to the right
of secession, as well as to its policy. His father had been what
was termed a "Douglas Democrat," and the son had absorbed his views.
With that belief in a father's infallibility which is so general
in that part of the country, Hesden, despite his own part in the
war and the chagrin which defeat had brought, had looked only for
evil results to come out of the present struggle, which he believed
to have been uselessly precipitated.
It was in this state of mind that he had watched the new phase of
the "irrepressible conflict" which supervened upon the downfall of
the Rebellion In so doing, he had arrived at the following conclusions:
1. That it was a most fortunate and providential thing that
the Confederacy had failed. He had begun to realize the wisdom
of Washington when he referred to the dogma of "State rights" as
"that bantling--I like to have said _that monster._"
2. That the emancipation of the slaves would ultimately prove
advantageous to the white man,
3. That it was the part of honorable men fairly and honestly to carry
out and give effect to all the conditions, expressed and implied,
on which power, representation, and autonomy were restored to the
recently rebellious States.
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