The war begun to save the union had become, as Maine’s Sen. Lot Morrill would say in 1866, a second American revolution. Slavery and the extremes of states’ rights—the hallmarks of the South—were dead. Without slavery, there would have been no war. The South fought in defense of slavery; it had said so, vociferously and repeatedly, and the South had lost. The federal government was more powerful than ever. These things were settled.
