"I fear," writes the rebel War Clerk, observing from his secure position
in the war office, "I fear this government in future times will be
denounced as a cabal of bandits and outlaws, making and executing the most
despotic decrees."
Whether this system of the reduction of prisoners was devised by the
executive, or his immediate advisers, time may reveal. But of this we may
remain positive, that the crime belongs to that little faction of
Breckinridge Democrats who ruled the Confederacy as they pleased, and of
which Davis was the recognized leader. Wirz was only the De Vargas and
Winder the Alva of the arranged system. Neither is there any doubt that
the power of affording relief was clearly within the control of the
executive. This power was not withheld from want of audacity, for the man
who dared place in power, in spite of remonstrance, men who jeopardized
the existence of the Confederacy, and who openly disgraced its honor,
certainly had sufficient courage to perform a common act of humanity, and
relieve the sufferings of tortured prisoners, if such had been his
inclination.
No; there was a system, and "systems are brutal forces." "What are your
laws and theories," said Danton, brutally, to Gensonne, "when the only law
is to triumph, and the sole theory for the nation is the theory of
existence."--"Give a man power of doing what he pleases with impunity, you
extinguish his fear, and consequently overturn in him one of the great
pillars of morality. This, too, we find confirmed by matter of fact. How
many hopeful heirs-apparent to grand empires, when in possession of them,
have become such monsters of lust and cruelty as are a reproach to human
nature!"--"Ambition brings to men dissimulation, perfidy, the art of
feigning the language and sentiments which lay at the bottom of the heart;
of measuring their hate and their friendship only by their interests and
circumstances; and above all, the perfidious science of composing their
features, rather than correct and govern their principles."
The wills of bad men are their laws, and brute strength their logic.