158 RcviciL's of Books This was more or less the case when, at the close of the Civil AVar, the Union had been made safe and slavery had been abolished. The problems of reconstruction were complicated in the extreme, but Sumner advocated his own solution of them as if eternal right was as clearly de- monstrable as the day. His two leading dogmas were that secession had been state suicide, leaving blank paper on which the majority in Con- gress could write what constitutions they would, and that dominance in the South by means of negro suffrage was the necessary means of main- taining emancipation. On these points Mr. Storey's natural sympathy with the subject of his biography makes him come something short of the historical treatment which the lapse of time now makes possible. It can- not fairly be said that judicious students of history and of legal princi- ples commonly approve either of Mr. Sumner's dogmas. A state has made an insurrection and has failed in maintaining it. No doubt it may be punished for it. War indemnities may be demanded in varying form and extent. But the very demand of these implies that the corporate state survives which is to pay them and undergo the penalty. The con- queror may destroy the state, but whether that be right or wrong, politic or impolitic, such a fate cannot be imposed upon the body already /f/(7 de se. You must have a live subject for an execution. And as to the ex- tent of penalties, whilst the rights of conquerors in war are indefinite they are not boundless. Mr. Sumner himself recognized this when discussing retaliation. " What civilization forbids cannot be done . . . You can- not be barbarous and cruel." The relations of belligerents are subject to the principles of international law as far as these are applicable, and the destruction of the corporate existence of a state has almost never been approved in the final judgment of history. In practice, too, the consent of the conquered state has usually been found a desirable safeguard for continuing submission to the terms imposed, and the organization which waged the war will give a more binding consent than any new one made for the purpose. As to negro-suffrage as a necessary condition of peace based on ulti-- mate human rights, there were inconsistencies in Mr. Sumner's position which were very open to criticism. He advocated statutory action by Congress rather than amendment of the federal Constitution. Yet a majority of Senators and Representatives came from states which them- selves denied suffrage to negroes. For them to enact it was to lose even the pretence of basing the change on right, and make it the imposition of mere penalty on the vanquished. Sumner did not seem to feel this em- barrassment, but others did. The fifteenth amendment of the Constitu- tion proved a more acceptable method of reaching the result, as saving self-respect and consistency in the North. The popular sentiment was in this more delicate than Mr. Sumner's. He failed to feel other incon- sistencies. His scheme excluded an educational qualification among the freed men, though he recognized the general desirability of such a test. Thaddeus Stevens put the reason crudely in saying that it was necessary to secure the dominance of his party in the country at large. Mr. Sum-
