Harpers+11

Harper's Weekly, May 13, 1865, page 290 (Editorial)
 * THE REBEL CHIEFS **

The country is very much obliged to Robert E. Lee and Beverly Tucker for an exhibition of the real spirit of the conquered rebel leaders. They are conquered, not converted. Robert E. Lee is to-day as utter a rebel as he was on the day when he deliberately resolved to betray the country which had educated him and to fire upon the flag which he had engaged in honor to defend.

Three days after Lee had surrendered the forces which he commanded, while he was still a paroled prisoner, he issued an order to the soldiers of his dispersing army, in which he reminds them that they will take with them "the satisfaction that proceeds from the consequences of a duty faithfully performed." The duty of which he speaks is armed resistance to the constitutional government of his country. Its faithful performance is the slaughter upon many fields of men spotlessly true to their own government. Lee proceeds to say that he bids his troops farewell "with an increasing admiration of your constancy and devotion to your country." What country? The country of which Davis and Benjamin and Slidell and Mason have spoken for the last four years—a certain section of the United States of America called "the South," or "the Confederacy." That is "the country" to which they have been faithful; and for the fidelity, which, if successful, would have destroyed this nation, Robert E. Lee declares that he has an increasing admiration.

Mr. Beverly Tucker belongs to the third class of rebel chiefs. The first comprises those who fought and at least risked their lives in the field for what they professed to believe. The second consists of those who, like Slidell, slipped off to Europe when the fighting began, and believing that naught is every thing and every thing is naught, have been placidly enjoying the money they had made by the trade of politics, while they laughed in their sleeves at the more earnest conspirators whom they had outwitted. The third and infinitely the most contemptible class is composed of those who sneaked into Canada too far to be reached by the military conscriptions of the rebel despotism at Richmond, but near enough to the loyal part of the country to plot thefts, raids, railway slaughters, the burning alive of innocent women and children in theatres and hotels, and to instigate assassination. These three classes were made up of men who had lived by the government which they tried to overthrow, and which they had taken solemn oaths to respect and maintain; and to the third class. As we said, Mr. Beverly Tucker belongs.

This man has written a letter, since the surrender of Lee, professing horror that he, a supporter of the rebellion which hunted, hung, starved, and froze thousands of helpless Union men and prisoners, should be suspected of any complicity in the murder of one man. In the same letter Tucker declares himself a public enemy of the United States, and adds, that before the assassination of Mr. Lincoln, he had asked permission to go to Richmond and assist in the reconstruction of a government to the supreme authority of which he has always been and always shall be opposed.

Such are the vanquished rebel leaders as they describe themselves. The country needs no other proof of their spirit, and no more startling warning of the peril of allowing them the least voice in the political settlement of the nation. There is not one of Lee’s former slaves, the men whom he and his fellow-conspirators, like Beverly Tucker, have outraged and despised—the men who have been as unswervingly true to their country as Lee and Tucker have been basely false—who is not at this moment a worthier citizen of the United States and fitter to be intrusted with a vote than Robert E. Lee, who, in his tent, might have almost heard the groans of the starving, rotting soldiers of the Union upon Belle Isle and in Libby prison, yet who spoke never a word nor lifted a finger for their relief; and who publishes his increasing admiration of the fidelity of traitors to their treason; or than Beverly Tucker, who insolently proclaims his pride that he is a public enemy.

These men are representatives of that class of leaders at the South who inspired and consummated the bloody rebellion. They are silent guns, but loaded still; silent, not spiked or broken, and ready at any favorable moment to open fire again upon the national life and honor. They are the dragon’s teeth, which are now in the strong hand of the American Government and people. That hand may hold them harmless, or it may sow them again, and reap another bloody harvest of armed men. But if the nation is as true as it is strong, it will secure peace by the entire political disfranchisement of such avowed public enemies as Robert E. Lee and Beverly Tucker, with all the other ringleaders of the rebellion.


 * 1. What had Beverly Tucker done in the war? Who was he? **
 * 2. What had Robert E. Lee done before the war? **
 * 3. Why were these men so despised in the North? **