VIEW OF MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA, SHOWING THE STATE CAPITOL.
FROM A SKETCH MADE IN 1861.

THE CONFEDERATE GOVERNMENT AT MONTGOMERY.
BY R. BARNWELL RHETT (EDITOR OF THE CHARLESTON "MERCURY," 1860-62).

TWENTY-SIX years have passed since the delegates of six States of the South that had seceded from the Union met in a convention or Provisional Congress, at the Capitol, at Montgomery, Alabama. Twenty-one years have elapsed since the close of the war between the States of the North and the eleven States of the South that entered the Confederate Government then and there organized. Most of the men who participated in the deliberations of that convention are dead, and the few now left will before long be laid away. Of the debates of that body there is no record, and the proceedings of the Congress of the United States were open, and at the North there was an intelligent, well-informed, powerful public opinion throughout the war. Not so at the South. Secret sessions were commenced at Montgomery, and at Richmond almost all important business was transacted away from the knowledge and thus beyond the criticism of the people. Latterly, accounts of the battles fought have been written from every standpoint; but of the course and policy of the Confederate Government, which held in its hands all the resources of the Southern people, and directed their affairs, diplomatic, financial, naval, and military, little has been said. During the war scarcely anything was known except results, and when the war terminated, the people of the South, though greatly dissatisfied, were generally as ignorant of the management of Confederate affairs as the people of the North. The arrest and long imprisonment of the President of the Confederacy made of him a representative martyr, and silenced the voice of criticism at the South. And up to this time little has been done to point out the causes of the events which occurred, or to develop the truth of history in this direction. It very well suits men at the South who opposed secession to compliment their own sagacity by assuming that the end was inevitable. Nor do men identified with the Confederacy by office, or feeling obligation for its appreciation of their personal merits, find it hard to persuade themselves that all was done that could be done in "the lost cause." And, in general,