There was but one answer to be returned to Ould's proposal, made at the end of August, that the sick prisoners should be mutually returned without equivalents, each party furnishing transportation for its own men. There appears, however, to have been culpable tardiness on the part of the United States Government in furnishing transportation for its sick. But at last, in November and December, they came. It was the appearance of these sick men in the North that first spread the news of the Andersonville horror. The able-bodied men were left behind; the living skeletons came back, and, scattering themselves in their various homes, carried to nearly every vil lage of the North an impression that can never be eradicated. It suited us at that time that the impression should be strong. There was a readiness to accept these as fair samples of the whole number of prisoners at the South. But from the various prisons of the North cargoes of living skeletous were also sent, to be scattered over the South. If these men inspired tears of pity in the Union soldiers, heated by the events of the war, what must have been the impression made by their appearance in the South!

A review of the whole case makes it certain that the United States Government was responsible for the failure of exchanges during the last year of the war, and that to its policy in this matter, it owes in a large measure, its final success. But it would be hasty to brand it with odium for this bare fact. That is the course of those who wish to make out a case against it. Vattel laid it down long ago, as a principle of international law, that "whoever makes a just war, has a right, if he thinks proper, to detain his prisoners till the end of the war." But the United States Government committed two sins. By failing to avow openly its determination not to exchange, and putting forward a quarrel as a mere pretext, it exposed itself to the charge of trying "to blacken the reputation of an honorable adversary." By leaving out of account the peculiar condition of the South, which made starvation and disease of prisoners natural, if not inevitable, it incurred the charge of dealing foully with its own soldiers.

There was one course left open to the South to preserve its honor, and those who have its good name at heart must

Alexander H.

ever regret that it did not pursue this course. Stephens recommended to Gen. Howell Cobb, commanding the Department of Georgia, that, in view of the impossibility of exchanging or subsisting the prisoners, they should be paroled and sent to the North without an equivalent. This plan was deemed Utopian, inasmuch as it left the Confederate prisoners at the mercy of the North, and, in view of the bitter quarrel over the subject of exchanges, and the threats arising therefrom it is no wonder that it was not adopted. Had it been adopted it would have shed a greater luster upon the dying Confederacy than the halo of military glory won by its famous army of Northern Virginia.

Whether there was not a possibility of a Waterloo or Sadowa on the Rapidan instead of an "attrition" campaign continued through a year will always remain an interesting question. But at any rate, as the course of events actually turned, the men who languished at Andersonville played, in their sufferings and death, a most essential part in the campaign. This part was not so stirring as charging on the guns, or meeting in the clash of infantry lines. But their enforced, long continued hardship made it possible for mere superiority of numbers to decide the struggle, and for the Confederacy to crumble without its Waterloo, and to terminate its existence by the surrender of those less than eight thousand muskets at Appomatox.

ARTICLE III. — WESTERN COLLEGES: THEIR CLAIMS AND NECESSITIES.*

IT is only when we survey the cordon of colleges, extending from the Ohio River to the shores of the Pacific, that the great work accomplished by the Society for the Promotion of Collegiate and Theological Education at the West, can be appreciated. Since its organization in June, 1843, a quiet, constantly extending work has been followed up, while the results have demonstrated the sagacity and statesman-like views which animated its projectors and patrons. The exigences of struggling institutions have been met by the timely assistance this Society afforded them, and the energies and resources of friends of Western education have been happily combined, and wisely utilized. An immense amount of scepticism had to be met and overcome, as to the practicability or necessity of any scheme for aiding the feeble collegiate institutions of the West. The objections made to the Society's plans and appeals, read like a chapter from the history of a far remote age. But it was less than forty years ago, that to the efforts to found and foster to a vigorous life Western seminaries of learning, it was objected that Eastern colleges needed all the funds that could be raised in the East for educational purposes; that the West had already too many colleges; that these were mere pretenders and quacks in education; or further still, were the nurseries of all the worst ultraisms of the day. Moreover it was alleged at that early date in Western development, that the West will create, and ought to sustain, its own collegiate institutions. These may

serve as a sample of the objections prevalent at the time of the Society's formation, all of which were measurably overcome, so that under its economical régime the work of aiding and founding the colleges which have been, and are so invaluable to the Commonwealths of the Interior and the far West, went on with increasing success. The total net resources of the *Read before the Minnesota Congregational Club, Sept. 27, 1880.

five institutions the Society took upon its list at its organization in 1843, were not over $300,000, but after twenty-five years had elapsed, it reported the resources of the noble cluster it had aided up to that time, as not less than $2,500,000. During this period, while the Society had been instrumental in securing from eastern patrons and friends of education in the West between six and seven hundred thousand dollars, it was the estimate of its Secretary, that "more than twice six hundred thousand dollars were realized at the West, no small portion of which may be justly credited to the stimulating influence in question."

Educational Benefactions.-There is no grander proof of the estimate in which higher education is held in this country, than the munificent gifts of American citizens to promote the same. Theron Baldwin, venerabile nomen! who was the heart and brain, so long as he lived, of the College Society, summed up in his twenty-third annual report, a total from all sources, of $6,541,000, given to collegiate and theological institutions during our civil war and in the years immediately succeeding its close. Among the causes assigned for such unprecedented liberality in this direction, was one which attested beyond all question the wisdom of founding and fostering colleges in the East and West, viz: the spirit of loyalty to the Government developed in them, and the services rendered in the field and councils of State, by their students and alumni. This outburst of benevolence was a popular answer to objections which had obtained to a considerable extent, against our literary institutions. And so far as these princely contributions reached the treasuries of some of the young and still struggling colleges of the West, it was a deserved acknowledgment of the patriotism and noble service of their graduates or under-graduates, in the nation's hour of extreme peril. The humble and often despised seminaries of higher learning in the West, equalled proportionately in their contributions to the ranks of the Union armies, the older and well endowed institutions of the East. Since that report, made in 1866, the sum total of gifts to our Colleges, for a period of six years, closing in 1869, amounted to $12,514,050, not including $3,355,000 to other educational institutions and objects.

This wonderful exhibit of benevolence, when published, awakened astonishment and admiration in the university towns of the old world. At the same time it was a substantial testimony from the intelligent and wealthy of our people, of the high esteem in which they held the cause of letters.

Gifts to Western Institutions.-The colleges west of the Alleghanies received a comparatively small amount of the above named sum. Then, as now, their real needs, and more than that, their just claims were not apprehended. Of course as the donors of the greater part of these moneys resided on the sea-board, it was to be expected that the institutions by them best known and existing near to them, should receive the major part of what was given. It has always been difficult to secure large contributions to institutions in the Western field. The masterly pleas made by Dr. Baldwin when he was Secretary of the Society, in behalf of the same, no doubt accomplished much; and, indeed, without them these institutions would not have met with the favor they did. But since his decease, there has been apparent a tendency to disparage the claims of the new colleges of the Western States, and to converge upon those in the East gifts which in the judgment of many could more wisely, to say the least, have been divided between the institutions of both sections.

Comparative Resources.-From figures cited by President Magoun of Iowa College, in 1872,* only one New England College had a valuation under $250,000 dollars, but twelve Western colleges had less. At that date the next two smallest colleges in New England were rated at over $300,000, while the two next largest in the West were valued respectively at $300,000 and $258,000. Oberlin, which was then, and is now, the richest of our higher seminaries this side of the Ohio, has vet but one-half the valuation of Amherst, and one-fifth that of Yale. Moreover, according to Dr. Magoun, the whole property of eighteen Western colleges was less than one-third that of the eight in New England. Here is a disproportion I cannot believe the friends of education in the East are aware of One result of the restricted resources of these Western institutions is their still meagre equipment for the educational

* Sermon before College Society, Oct., 1872.