Methodist Episcopal Church was planted firmly in this Western wilderness, and many glorious signs have followed, and will follow, to the end of time.

A danger which Cartwright points out with greater reason is the very result of the Church's progress. In proportion as Methodism has increased its numbers and wealth, it has been called upon to satisfy more extensive demands, and has sought to put itself upon a level with other Churches. Therefore it has founded seminaries to instruct its clergy, and colleges to recruit its seminaries; it has established journals for the promotion of its interests and for controversy; it has instituted associations and business enterprises for the publication and spread of its literature. Each of these establishments, which are constantly multiplied, involves the creation of numerous positions which add to the attractions of a settled life the advantage of a comfortable remuneration, and which naturally claim the best talent. Since it were impossible to exclude from the Church men who are an honor to it and its apparent chief strength, these continually multiplying occupants of the local positions are maintained in all the prerogatives of the ministry. Cartwright complains of seeing men vote in the Conferences who have never had charge of a circuit, know nothing of the life and wants of a preacher, and have indeed, perchance, never once preached. He anticipates with dread the day when these dignitaries of settled position shall constitute a majority in the Conferences, and shall give law to the preachers.

Whenever, indeed, this inevitable revolution shall be accomplished, Methodism will be destroyed in its very essence; it will cease to be a militant Church, a nursery of propagandism; nothing will distinguish it from the innumerable sects which spring up around it, and which are constantly enfeebled by the spirit of schism. Cartwright's fears are therefore legitimate; but no one can arrest the course of Methodism in the fatal decline to which the force of circumstances impel it. When a Church has not that immovable basis to which the Roman Church lays claim, it is obliged to be compliant and suit the times, even if it must, in order to live, sacrifice the very sources of its life. Cartwright laments that the camp-meeting scenes of his own triumph are now quite fallen into des

uetude; but this is a change well enough explained by the very notion he himself gives us of that institution. Many other changes will take place, and will be, like that, the natural result of certain transformations occurring in the United States. The population is denser, and, taking on the milder manners of civilization, it has more regular customs and wants quite different from those of a widely scattered and half-civilized people. Why should you go into the woods to hear preaching which solicits attention just at your door? Why should a well-settled and rich community be compelled to await the return of an evangelist to have its children baptized, its marriages and the sacraments celebrated, when at a little sacrifice it may erect a church in its midst and establish there a pastor well known to all? The Mississippi valley is filled to-day with large towns, some of which have a population above one hundred thousand; with such populous cities new necessities are presented which Methodism must meet, and this Church, having been already, at an early day, established in the new territory, counts now, without doubt, the largest number of its adherents in the towns. A settled population necessarily implies a settled clergy. From this change in circumstances has sprung and proceeds daily the transformation of American Methodism. While the settled institutions of this Church grow, and its ministry becomes to a greater extent educated; while its endowments of all sorts are being multiplied and enriched, its original work of evangelism will by degrees decline and come to occupy a subordinate place, as in the other Churches. Meanwhile the course of emigration still pursues its way toward the Pacific, and the perils and necessities of the pioneers are not less than before. But now upon their track comes the Catholic missionary. Since it set foot in the United States in following the Irish emigration, the Catholic Church has made marvelous progress in the West. It has its regular clergy for the towns, its religious orders for the floating and scattered populations, and, thanks to the twofold militia which it unceasingly recruits in both hemispheres! it will perhaps inherit in the Mississippi valley the place which the Methodist Church has for nearly a century filled.

ART. IV. THE KU KLUX CONSPIRACY.*

It is generally conceded that the victorious party in our late war acted toward the vanquished with unprecedented generosity. When General Lee tendered his sword under the appletree at Appomattox it was with the most serious apprehensions as to himself andthe other rebel leaders. But the first item of General Grant's terms was that all officers should retain their side-arms, implying that the conqueror desired to inflict as little humiliation as possible. But still more generous was the next provision, which declared "that each officer and soldier is permitted to return to his home, there to remain undisturbed so long as he obeys the laws of the land where he resides." Here was complete amnesty to the entire army; and afterward, when President Andrew Johnson was seized with his spasm to make treason odious, and proposed to try General Lee for levying war against the nation, General Grant interposed a negative on the ground that he was a paroled soldier, and his parole could not be broken.

Then, after the terms were signed, and General Lee, remembering that many of his artillery horses belonged to the men, and that it would be a great hardship to surrender them, came hesitatingly to represent the case to General Grant, saying, "But it is too late; the papers are signed. General Grant said, "No matter about the papers;" and at once wrote the order for retaining the horses, "because," said he, "they will need them for the spring plowing."

Since the close of the war no man's property has been confiscated on account of his connection with the rebellion, and no man has been executed for treason. Nor has Congress ever hesitated to grant amnesty whenever it has been asked. It has not only freely granted all such requests, but has also passed a general bill relieving all persons from their disabilities except members of the Thirty-sixth and Thirty-seventh Congresses, the cabinet ministers of that period, judges of the United States

* Report of the Joint Select Committee appointed to inquire into the condition of affairs in the late Insurrectionary States so far as regards the execution of the laws, and the safety of the lives and property of the citizens of the United States. Senate of the United States, February 19, 1872.

Courts, and the officers of our army and navy who went into the rebellion. Probably, in all, not over two hundred persons.

Nor is it easy to see that there are any reasonable grounds of complaint against the victors on account of their terms of reconstruction. The war had emancipated the slaves, and the people had, by the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, made them citizens. They were consequently entitled to the ordinary rights of citizens; and when we demanded, as one of the conditions of self-government, that they should make all their citizens equal before the law, and give them equal political rights, we required only what had been conceded in all the free States, and what was set forth in our great Declaration of Independence as the basis of all just and equitable government, namely, that the newly-organized States should "derive their just powers from the consent of the governed."

But however reasonable this requirement may have been, it was so directly against Southern pride and Southern prejudice as to be well-nigh intolerable. Under the old order government embraced the white population only, and the rights of the slaves were wholly disregarded. They had no voice in public affairs, nor even in their own affairs, and no independent power in the case "of life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness."

But when society was reorganized on the basis of the reconstruction acts, and governments were established which recognized the late slaves as citizens and voters, while, at the same time, a considerable portion of the old ruling class were disfranchised on account of their participation in the rebellion, the effect was to turn society "bottom upward," and to put the government in the hands of the emancipated slaves.

But these new citizens were ignorant and incapable, and must, in the nature of things, lean on others; and as men from the North had fought for and achieved their emancipation, and were engaged in establishing schools among them, and in looking after their improvement, they turned from their old masters and took counsel and direction from the Northern men who had come among them since the war. Hence arose the power and consideration of that much-abused class of persons known as Carpet-baggers. Many of them were undoubtedly narrow enough, and selfish enough; but a still greater evil was the prejudice which they fostered between the freedmen and the old

ruling class. The effect of their intercourse with the negroes was to encourage them to lay aside their demeanor of deference, and to come forward and claim a share of the honors and offices hitherto enjoyed only by the white race.

This was a state of things deeply mortifying to Southern pride, and against which it strongly revolted. "Nigger" had always been an expression of supremest contempt. As a slave the negro "had no rights which a white man was bound to respect." Emancipated, it was supposed that in time he might grow into some intelligence and consideration. But to make him an equal at once, to put him in positions of honor and profit, to have him in the seats of authority, laying down the law to the white man, touched Southern pride to the quick, and aroused the most intense feeling of disgust.

But what, more than any thing else, intensified this feeling, was the fact that while the planters had no influence whatever with the new voters, the adventurers from the North, whom they so heartily despised-schoolmasters, ministers, agents of the Freedmen's Bureau, little traders who had come among them to" turn an honest penny "-not only controlled them, but so controlled them as to make them a political power directly antagonistic to their old masters.

For this state of things there seemed to be no remedy. In most of the States the negroes and the few white men who acted with them constituted the voting majority; and hence they had more or less power over both legislation and administration. The negro could not, therefore, be taught "to know his place" by any process of court procedure. The law was what he appealed to. The law was on his side. Still it was clear enough that he was all wrong; that he was getting impudent and above his condition; that he had lost his deference for the old master race, and that society needed some correction outside of the law to bring it back to a tolerable condition.

With a knowledge of this state of facts it will be easy to understand why the Ku-Klux idea took such instant and deep hold of the Southern mind. The best classes of persons saw in it exactly what was needed to correct what they regarded as the abuses of the reconstruction acts. Through it they could punish negro impudence and negro ambition, and teach their old slaves to know their place. They could also administer a