dice were loaded with Northern lead. They framed their sham
constitution, appointed themselves to their sham offices, issued their
sham commissions, endeavored to bribe England with a sham offer of low
duties and Virginia with a sham prohibition of the slave-trade,
advertised their proposals for a sham loan which was to be taken up
under intimidation, and levied real taxes on the people in the name of
the people whom they had never allowed to vote directly on their
enormous swindle. With money stolen from the Government, they raised
troops whom they equipped with stolen arms, and beleaguered national
fortresses with cannon stolen from national arsenals. They sent out
secret agents to Europe, they had their secret allies in the Free
States, their conventions transacted all important business in secret
session;--there was but one exception to the shrinking delicacy
becoming a maiden government, and that was the openness of the
stealing. We had always thought a high sense of personal honor an
essential element of chivalry; but among the _Romanic_ races, by which,
as the wonderful ethnologist of _De Bow's Review_ tells us, the
Southern States where settled, and from which they derive a close
entail of chivalric characteristics, to the exclusion of the vulgar
Saxons of the North, such is by no means the case. For the first time
in history the deliberate treachery of a general is deemed worthy of a
civic ovation, and Virginia has the honor of being the first State
claiming to be civilized that has decreed the honors of a triumph to a
cabinet officer who had contrived to gild a treason that did not
endanger his life with a peculation that could not further damage his
reputation. Rebellion, even in a bad cause, may have its romantic side;
treason, which had not been such but for being on the losing side, may
challenge admiration; but nothing can sweeten larceny or disinfect
perjury. A rebellion inaugurated with theft, and which has effected its
entry into national fortresses, not over broken walls, but by breaches
of trust, should take Jonathan Wild for its patron saint, with the run
of Mr. Buchanan's cabinet for a choice of sponsors,--godfathers we
should not dare to call them.
Mr. Lincoln's Inaugural Speech was of the kind usually called "firm,
but conciliatory,"--a policy doubtful in troublous times, since it
commonly argues weakness, and more than doubtful in a crisis like ours,
since it left the course which the Administration meant to take
ambiguous, and, while it weakened the Government by exciting the
distrust of all who wished for vigorous measures, really strengthened
the enemy by encouraging the conspirators in the Border States. There
might be a question as to whether this or that attitude were expedient
for the Republican party; there could be none as to the only safe and
dignified one for the Government of the Nation. Treason was as much
treason in the beginning of March as in the middle of April; and it
seems certain now, as it seemed probable to many then, that the country
would have sooner rallied to the support of the Government, if the
Government had shown an earlier confidence in the loyalty of the
people. Though the President talked of "repossessing" the stolen forts,
arsenals, and custom-houses, yet close upon this declaration followed
the disheartening intelligence that the cabinet were discussing the
propriety of evacuating not only Fort Sumter, which was of no strategic
importance, but Fort Pickens, which was the key to the Gulf of Mexico,
and to abandon which was almost to acknowledge the independence of the
Rebel States. Thus far the Free States had waited with commendable
patience for some symptom of vitality in the new Administration,
something that should distinguish it from the piteous helplessness of
its predecessor. But now their pride was too deeply outraged for
endurance; indignant remonstrances were heard from all quarters, and
the Government seemed for the first time fairly to comprehend that it
had twenty millions of freemen at its back, and that forts might be
taken and held by honest men as well as by knaves and traitors. The
nettle had been stroked long enough; it was time to try a firm grip.
Still the Administration seemed inclined to temporize, so thoroughly
was it possessed by the notion of conciliating the Border States. In
point of fact, the side which those States might take in the struggle
between Law and Anarchy was of vastly more import to them than to us.
They could bring no considerable reinforcement of money, credit, or
arms to the rebels; they could at best but add so many mouths to an
army whose commissariat was already dangerously embarrassed. They could
not even, except temporarily, keep the war away from the territory of
the seceding States, every one of which had a sea-door open to the
invasion of an enemy who controlled the entire navy and shipping of the
country. The position assumed by Eastern Virginia and Maryland was of
consequence only so far as it might facilitate a sudden raid on
Washington, and the policy of both these States was to amuse the
Government by imaginary negotiations till the plans of the conspirators
were ripe. In both States men were actively recruited and enrolled to
assist in attacking the capital. With them, as with the more openly
rebellious States, the new theory of "Coercion" was ingeniously
arranged like a valve, yielding at the slightest impulse to the passage
of forces for the subversion of legitimate authority, closing
imperviously, so that no drop of power could ooze through in the
opposite direction. Lord De Roos, long suspected of cheating at cards,
would never have been convicted but for the resolution of an adversary,
who, pinning his hand to the table with a fork, said to him blandly,
"My Lord, if the ace of spades is not under your Lordship's hand, why,
then, I beg your pardon!" It seems to us that a timely treatment of
Governor Letcher in the same energetic way would have saved the
disasters of Harper's Ferry and Norfolk,--for disasters they were,
though six months of temporizing had so lowered the public sense of
what was due to the national dignity that people were glad to see the
Government active at length, even if only in setting fire to its own
house.
We are by no means inclined to criticise the Administration, even if
this were the proper time for it; but we cannot help thinking that
there was great wisdom in Napoleon's recipe for saving life in dealing
with a mob,--"First fire grape-shot _into_ them; after that, over their
heads as much as you like." The position of Mr. Lincoln was already
embarrassed when he entered upon office, by what we believe to have
been a political blunder in the leaders of the Republican party.
Instead of keeping closely to the real point, and the only point, at
issue, namely, the claim of a minority to a right of rebellion when
displeased with the result of an election, the bare question of
Secession, pure and simple, they allowed their party to become divided,
and to waste themselves in discussing terms of compromise and
guaranties of slavery which had nothing to do with the business in
hand. Unless they were ready to admit that popular government was at an
end, those were matters already settled by the Constitution and the
last election. Compromise was out of the question with men who had gone
through the motions, at least, of establishing a government and
electing an anti-president. The way to insure the loyalty of the Border
States, as the event has shown, was to convince them that disloyalty
was dangerous. That revolutions never go backward is one of those
compact generalizations which the world is so ready to accept because
they save the trouble of thinking; but, however it may be with
revolutions, it is certain that rebellions most commonly go backward
with disastrous rapidity, and it was of the gravest moment, as
respected its moral influence, that Secession should not have time
allowed it to assume the proportions and the dignity of revolution; in
other words, of a rebellion too powerful to be crushed. The secret
friends of the secession treason in the Free States have done their
best to bewilder the public mind and to give factitious prestige to a
conspiracy against free government and civilization by talking about
the _right_ of revolution, as if it were some acknowledged principle of
the Law of Nations. There is a right and sometimes a duty of rebellion,
as there is also a right and sometimes a duty of hanging men for it;
but rebellion continues to be rebellion until it has accomplished its
object and secured the acknowledgment of it from the other party to the
quarrel, and from the world at large. The Republican Party in the
November elections had really effected a peaceful revolution, had
emancipated the country from the tyranny of an oligarchy which had
abused the functions of the Government almost from the time of its
establishment, to the advancement of their own selfish aims and
interests; and it was this legitimate change of rulers and of national
policy by constitutional means which the Secessionists intended to
prevent. To put the matter in plain English, they resolved to treat the
people of the United States, in the exercise of their undoubted and
lawful authority, as rebels, and resorted to their usual policy of
intimidation in order to subdue them. Either this magnificent empire
should be their plantation, or it should perish. This was the view even
of what were called the moderate slaveholders of the Border States; and
all the so-called compromises and plans of reconstruction that were
thrown into the caldron where the hell-broth of anarchy was brewing had
this extent, no more,--What terms of _submission_ would the people make
with their natural masters? Whatever other result may have come of the
long debates in Congress and elsewhere, they have at least convinced
the people of the Free States that there can be no such thing as a
moderate slaveholder,--that moderation and slavery can no more coexist
than Floyd and honesty, or Anderson and treason.
We believe, then, that conciliation was from the first impossible,--that
to attempt it was unwise, because it put the party of law and loyalty
in the wrong,--and that, if it was done as a mere matter of policy in
order to gain time, it was a still greater mistake, because it was the
rebels only who could profit by it in consolidating their organization,
while the seeming gain of a few days or weeks was a loss to the
Government, whose great advantage was in an administrative system
thoroughly established, and, above all, in the vast power of the
national idea, a power weakened by every day's delay. This is so true
that already men began to talk of the rival governments at Montgomery
and Washington, and Canadian journals to recommend a strict neutrality,
as if the independence and legitimacy of the mushroom despotism of New
Ashantee were an acknowledged fact, and the name of the United States
of America had no more authority than that of Jefferson Davis and
Company, dealers in all kinds of repudiation and anarchy. For more than
a month after the inauguration of President Lincoln there seemed to be
a kind of interregnum, during which the confusion of ideas in the
Border States as to their rights and duties as members of the "old"
Union, as it began to be called, became positively chaotic. Virginia,
still professing neutrality, prepared to seize the arsenal at Harper's
Ferry and the navy-yard at Norfolk; she would prevent the passage of
the United States' forces "with a serried phalanx of her gallant sons,"
two regiments of whom stood looking on while a file of marines took
seven wounded men in an engine-house for them; she would do everything
but her duty,--the gallant Ancient Pistol of a commonwealth. She
"resumed her sovereignty," whatever that meant; her Convention passed
an ordinance of secession, concluded a league offensive and defensive
with the rebel Confederacy, appointed Jefferson Davis commander-in-chief
of her land-forces and somebody else of the fleet she meant to steal at
Norfolk, and then coolly referred the whole matter back to the people
to vote three weeks afterwards whether they _would_ secede three weeks
before. Wherever the doctrine of Secession has penetrated, it seems to
have obliterated every notion of law and precedent.
The country had come to the conclusion that Mr. Lincoln and his cabinet
were mainly employed in packing their trunks to leave Washington, when
the "venerable Edward Ruffin of Virginia" fired that first gun at Fort
Sumter which brought all the Free States to their feet as one man. That
shot is destined to be the most memorable one ever fired on this
continent since the Concord fowling-pieces said, "That bridge is ours,
and we mean to go across it," eighty-seven Aprils ago. As these began a
conflict which gave us independence, so that began another which is to
give us nationality. It was certainly a great piece of good-luck for
the Government that they had a fort which it was so profitable to lose.
The people were weary of a masterly inactivity which seemed to consist
mainly in submitting to be kicked. We know very well the difficulties
that surrounded the new Administration; we appreciate their reluctance
to begin a war the responsibility of which was as great as its
consequences seemed doubtful; but we cannot understand how it was hoped
to evade war, except by concessions vastly more disastrous than war
itself. War has no evil comparable in its effect on national character
to that of a craven submission to manifest wrong, the postponement of
moral to material interests. There is no prosperity so great as
courage. We do not believe that any amount of forbearance would have
conciliated the South so long as they thought us pusillanimous. The
only way to retain the Border States was by showing that we had the
will and the power to do without them. The little Bopeep policy of
"Let them alone, and they'll all come home
Wagging their tails behind them"
was certainly tried long enough with conspirators who had shown
unmistakably that they desired nothing so much as the continuance of
peace, especially when it was all on one side, and who would never have
given the Government the great advantage of being attacked in Fort
Sumter, had they not supposed they were dealing with men who could not
be cuffed into resistance. The lesson we have to teach them now is,
that we are thoroughly and terribly in earnest. Mr. Stephens's theories
are to be put to a speedier and sterner test than he expected, and we
are to prove which is stronger,--an oligarchy built _on_ men, or a
commonwealth built _of_ them. Our structure is alive in every part with
defensive and recuperative energies; woe to theirs, if that vaunted
corner-stone which they believe patient and enduring as marble should
begin to writhe with intelligent life!
We have no doubt of the issue. We believe that the strongest battalions
are always on the side of God. The Southern army will be fighting for
Jefferson Davis, or at most for the liberty of self-misgovernment,
while we go forth for the defence of principles which alone make
government august and civil society possible. It is the very life of
the nation that is at stake. There is no question here of dynasties,
races, religions, but simply whether we will consent to include in our
Bill of Rights--not merely as of equal validity with all other rights,
whether natural or acquired, but by its very nature transcending and
abrogating them all--the Right of Anarchy. We must convince men that
treason against the ballot-box is as dangerous as treason against a
throne, and that, if they play so desperate a game, they must stake
their lives on the hazard. The one lesson that remained for us to teach
the political theorists of the Old World was, that we are as strong to
suppress intestine disorder as foreign aggression, and we must teach it
decisively and thoroughly. The economy of war is to be tested by the
value of the object to be gained by it. A ten years' war would be cheap
that gave us a country to be proud of, and a flag that should command
the respect of the world because it was the symbol of the enthusiastic
unity of a great nation.
The Government, however slow it may have been to accept the war which
Mr. Buchanan's supineness left them, is acting now with all energy and
determination. What they have a right to claim is the confidence of the
people, and that depends in good measure on the discretion of the
press. Only let us have no more weakness under the plausible name of
Conciliation. We need not discuss the probabilities of an
acknowledgment of the Confederated States by England and France; we
have only to say, "Acknowledge them at your peril." But there is no
chance of the recognition of the Confederacy by any foreign
governments, so long as it is without the confidence of the brokers.
There is no question on which side the strength lies. The whole tone of
the Southern journals, so far as we are able to judge, shows the
inherent folly and weakness of the secession movement. Men who feel
strong in the justice of their cause, or confident in their powers, do
not waste breath in childish boasts of their own superiority and
querulous depreciation of their antagonists. They are weak, and they
know it. And not only are they weak in comparison with the Free States,
but we believe they are without the moral support of whatever deserves
the name of public opinion at home. If not, why does their Congress, as
they call it, hold council always with closed doors, like a knot of
conspirators? The first tap of the Northern drum dispelled many
illusions, and we need no better proof of which ship is sinking than
that Mr. Caleb Cushing should have made such haste to come over to the
old Constitution, with the stars and stripes at her mast-head.
We cannot think that the war we are entering on can end without some
radical change in the system of African slavery. Whether it be doomed
to a sudden extinction, or to a gradual abolition through economical
causes, this war will not leave it where it was before. As a power in
the state, its reign is already over. The fiery tongues of the
batteries in Charleston harbor accomplished in one day a conversion
which the constancy of Garrison and the eloquence of Phillips had
failed to bring about in thirty years. And whatever other result this
war is destined to produce, it has already won for us a blessing worth
everything to us as a nation in emancipating the public opinion of the
North.
GENERAL McCLELLAN'S REPORT
1864
We can conceive of no object capable of rousing deeper sympathy than a
defeated commander. Though the first movement of popular feeling may be
one of wrathful injustice, yet, when the ebb of depression has once
fairly run out, and confidence begins to set back, hiding again that
muddy bed of human nature which such neap-tides are apt to lay bare,
there is a kindly instinct which leads all generous minds to seek every
possible ground of extenuation, to look for excuses in misfortune
rather than incapacity, and to allow personal gallantry to make up, as
far as may be, for want of military genius. There is no other kind of
failure which comes so directly home to us, none which appeals to so
many of the most deeply rooted sentiments at once. Want of success in
any other shape is comparatively a personal misfortune to the man
himself who fails; but how many hopes, prides, sacrifices, and heroisms
are centred in him who wields the embattled manhood of his country! An
army is too multitudinous to call forth that personal enthusiasm which
is a necessity of the heart. The imagination needs a single figure
which it can invest with all those attributes of admiration that become
vague and pointless when divided among a host. Accordingly, we
impersonate in the general, not only the army he leads, but whatever
qualities we are proud of in the nation itself. He becomes for the
moment the ideal of all masculine virtues, and the people are eager to
lavish their admiration on him. His position gives him at a bound what
other men must spend their lives in winning or vainly striving to win.
If he gain a battle, he flatters that pride of prowess which, though it
may be a fault of character in the individual man, is the noblest of
passions in a people. If he lose one, we are all beaten with him, we
all fall down with our Caesar, and the grief glistens in every eye, the
shame burns on every cheek. Moralize as we may about the victories of
peace and the superiority of the goose-quill over the sword, there is
no achievement of human genius on which a country so prides itself as
on success in war, no disgrace over which it broods so inconsolably as
military disaster.
[Illustration: _General McClellan_]
There is nothing more touching than the sight of a nation in search of
its great man, nothing more beautiful than its readiness to accept a
hero on trust. Nor is this a feeble sentimentality. It is much rather a
noble yearning of what is best in us, for it is only in these splendid
figures which now and then sum up all the higher attributes of
character that the multitude of men can ever hope to find their blind
instinct of excellence realized and satisfied. Not without reason are
nations always symbolized as women, for there is something truly
feminine in the devotion with which they are willing to give all for
and to their ideal man, and the zeal with which they drape some
improvised Agamemnon with all the outward shows of royalty from the
property-room of imagination. This eagerness of loyalty toward
first-rate character is one of the conditions of mastery in every
sphere of human activity, for it is the stuff that genius works in.
Heroes, to be sure, cannot be made to order, yet with a man of the
right fibre, who has the stuff for greatness in him, the popular
enthusiasm would go far toward making him in fact what he is in fancy.
No commander ever had more of this paid-up capital of fortune, this
fame in advance, this success before succeeding, than General
McClellan. That dear old domestic bird, the Public, which lays the
golden eggs out of which greenbacks are hatched, was sure she had
brooded out an eagle-chick at last. How we all waited to see him stoop
on the dove-cote of Richmond! Never did nation give such an example of
faith and patience as while the Army of the Potomac lay during all
those weary months before Washington. Every excuse was invented, every
palliation suggested, except the true one, that our chicken was no
eagle, after all. He was hardening his seres, he was waiting for his
wings to grow, he was whetting his beak; we should see him soar at last
and shake the thunder from his wings. But do what we could, hope what
we might, it became daily clearer that, whatever other excellent
qualities he might have, this of being aquiline was wanting.
Disguise and soften it as we may, the campaign of the Peninsula was a
disastrous failure,--a failure months long, like a bad novel in weekly
instalments, with "To be continued" grimly ominous at the end of every
part. So far was it from ending in the capture of Richmond that nothing
but the gallantry of General Pope and his little army hindered the
Rebels from taking Washington. And now comes Major-General George B.
McClellan, and makes affidavit in one volume[1] octavo that he is a
great military genius, after all. It should seem that this genius is of
two varieties. The first finds the enemy, and beats him; the second
finds him, and succeeds in getting away. General McClellan is now
attempting a change of base in the face of public opinion, and is
endeavoring to escape the consequences of having escaped from the
Peninsula. For a year his reputation flared upward like a rocket,
culminated, burst, and now, after as long an interval, the burnt-out
case comes down to us in this Report.
[1] _Letter of the Secretary of War, transmitting Report on the
Organization of the Army of the Potomac, and of the Campaigns in
Virginia and Maryland under the Command of Major-General George
B. McClellan, from July 26, 1861, to November 7, 1862._
Washington: Government Printing-Office. 1864. 8vo, pp. 242.