persistence in good nature, the tenacity with which the theories of the
erring brother and the prodigal son were clung to, despite all evidence
of facts to the contrary. There was a kind of boyishness in the rumors
which the newspapers circulated (not seldom with intent to dispirit),
and the people believed on the authority of reliable gentlemen from
Richmond, or Union refugees whose information could be trusted. At one
time the Rebels had mined eleven acres in the neighborhood of Bull Bun;
at another, there were regiments of giants on their way from Texas,
who, first paralyzing our batteries by a yell, would rush unscathed
upon the guns, and rip up the unresisting artillerymen with
bowie-knives three feet long, made for that precise service, and the
only weapon to which these Berserkers would condescend; again, for the
fiftieth time, France and England had definitely agreed upon a forcible
intervention; finally, in order to sap the growing confidence of the
people in President Lincoln, one of his family was accused of
communicating our plans to the Rebels, and this at a time when the
favorite charge against his administration was the having no plan at
all. The public mind, as the public folly is generally called, was kept
in a fidget by these marvels and others like them. But the point to
which we would especially call attention is this: that while the war
slowly educated the North, it has had comparatively little effect in
shaking the old nonsense out of the South. Nothing is more striking, as
we trace Northern opinion through those four years that seemed so long
and seem so short, than to see how the minds of men were sobered,
braced, and matured as the greatness of the principles at stake became
more and more manifest; how their purpose, instead of relaxing, was
strained tighter by disappointment, and by the growing sense of a
guidance wiser than their own. Nor should we forget how slow the great
body of the people were in being persuaded of the expediency of
directly attacking slavery, and after that of enlisting colored troops;
of the fact, in short, that it must always be legal to preserve the
source of the law's authority, and constitutional to save the country.
The prudence of those measures is now acknowledged by all, and
justified by the result; but we must not be blind to the deeper moral,
that justice is always and only politic, that it needs no precedent,
and that we were prosperous in proportion as we were willing to be true
to our nobler judgment. In one respect only the popular understanding
seems always to have been, and still to remain, confused. Our notion of
treason is a purely traditional one, derived from countries where the
question at issue has not been the life of the nation, but the
conflicting titles of this or that family to govern it. Many people
appear to consider civil war as merely a more earnest kind of political
contest, which leaves the relative position of the parties as they
would be after a Presidential election. But no treason was ever so
wicked as that of Davis and his fellow-conspirators, for it had no
apology of injury or even of disputed right, and it was aimed against
the fairest hope and promise of the world. They did not attempt to put
one king in place of another, but to dethrone human nature and discrown
the very manhood of the race. And in what respect does a civil war
differ from any other in the discretion which it leaves to the victor
of exacting indemnity for the past and security for the future? A
contest begun for such ends and maintained by such expedients as this
has been, is not to be concluded by merely crying _quits_ and shaking
hands. The slaveholding States chose to make themselves a foreign
people to us, and they must take the consequences. We surely cannot be
expected to take them back as if nothing had happened, as if victory
rendered us helpless to promote good or prevent evil, and took from us
all title to insist on the admission of the very principle for which we
have sacrificed so much. The war has established the unity of the
government, but no peace will be anything more than a pretence unless
it rest upon the unity of the nation, and that can only be secured by
making everywhere supreme the national idea that freedom is a right
inherent in man himself, and not a creature of the law, to be granted
to one class of men or withheld from it at the option of another.
What have we conquered? The Southern States? The Southern people? A
cessation of present war? Surely not these or any one of these merely.
The fruit of our victory, as it was always the object of our warfare,
is the everlasting validity of the theory of the Declaration of
Independence in these United States, and the obligation before God and
man to make it the rule of our practice. It was in that only that we
were stronger than our enemies, stronger than the public opinion of the
world; and it is from that alone that we derive our right of the
strongest, for it is wisdom, justice, and the manifest will of Him who
made of one blood all the nations of the earth. It were a childish view
of the matter to think this is a mere trial of strength or struggle for
supremacy between the North and South. The war sprang from the inherent
antipathy between two forms of political organization radically hostile
to each other. Is the war over, will it ever be over, if we allow the
incompatibility to remain, childishly satisfied with a mere change of
shape? This has been the grapple of two brothers that already struggled
with each other even in the womb. One of them has fallen under the
other; but let simple, good-natured Esau beware how he slacken his grip
till he has got back his inheritance, for Jacob is cunninger with the
tongue than he.
We have said that the war has given the North a higher conception of
its manhood and its duties, and of the vital force of ideas. But do we
find any parallel change in the South? We confess we look for it in
vain. There is the same arrogance, the same materialistic mode of
thought, which reckons the strength and value of a country by the
amount of its crops rather than by the depth of political principle
which inspires its people, the same boyish conceit on which even defeat
wastes its lesson. Here is a clear case for the interference of
authority. The people have done their part by settling the fact that we
have a government; and it is for the government now to do its duty
toward the people by seeing to it that their blood and treasure shall
not have been squandered in a meaningless conflict. We must not let
ourselves be misled by the terms North and South, as if those names
implied any essential diversity of interest, or the claim to any
separate share in the future destiny of the country. Let us concede
every right to the several States except that of mischief, and never
again be deceived by the fallacy that a moral wrong can be local in its
evil influence, or that a principle alien to the instincts of the
nation can be consistent either with its prosperity or its peace. We
must not be confused into a belief that it is with States that we are
dealing in this matter. The very problem is how to reconstitute safely
a certain territory or population as States. It is not we that take
anything from them. The war has left them nothing that they can fairly
call their own politically but helplessness and confusion. We propose
only to admit them for the first time into a real union with us, and to
give them an equal share in privileges, our belief in whose value we
have proved by our sacrifices in asserting them. There is always a time
for doing what is fit to be done; and if it be done wisely,
temperately, and firmly, it need appeal for its legality to no higher
test than success. It is the nation and not a section, which is
victorious, and it is only on principles of purely national advantage
that any permanent settlement can be based.
The South will come back to the Union intent on saving whatever
fragments it can from the wreck of the evil element in its social
structure, which it clings to with that servile constancy which men
often show for the vice that is making them its victims. If they must
lose slavery, they will make a shift to be comfortable on the best
substitute they can find in a system of caste. The question for a wise
government in such a case seems to us not to be, Have we the right to
interfere? but much rather, Have we the right to let them alone? If we
are entitled, as conquerors,--and it is only as such that we are so
entitled,--to stipulate for the abolition of slavery, what is there to
prevent our exacting further conditions no less essential to our safety
and the prosperity of the South? The national unity we have paid so
dearly for will turn out a pinchbeck counterfeit, without that sympathy
of interests and ideas, that unity of the people, which can spring only
from homogeneousness of institutions. The successive advances toward
justice which we made during the war, and which looked so difficult and
doubtful before they were made, the proclamation of freedom and the
arming of the blacks, seem now to have been measures of the simplest
expediency, as the highest always turns out to be the simplest when we
have the wit to try it. The heavens were to have come crashing down
after both those measures; yet the pillars of the universe not only
stood firm on their divinely laid foundations, but held us up also,
and, to the amazement of many, God did not frown on an experiment of
righteousness. People are not yet agreed whether these things were
constitutional; we believe, indeed, that the weight of legal opinion is
against them, but nevertheless events are tolerably unanimous that
without them we should have had a fine Constitution left on our hands
with no body politic for it to animate.
Laws of the wisest human device are, after all, but the sheath of the
sword of Power, which must not be allowed to rust in them till it
cannot be drawn swiftly in time of need. President Lincoln had many
scruples to overcome ere he could overstep the limits of precedent into
the divine air of moral greatness. Like most men, he was reluctant to
be the bearer of that message of God with which his name will be linked
in the grateful memory of mankind. If he won an immortality of fame by
consenting to ally himself with the eternal justice, and to reinforce
his armies by the inspiration of their own nobler instincts, an equal
choice of renown is offered to his successor in applying the same
loyalty to conscience in the establishment of peace. We could not live
together half slave and half free; shall we succeed better in trying a
second left-handed marriage between democracy and another form of
aristocracy, less gross, but not less uncongenial? They who before
misled the country into a policy false and deadly to the very truth
which was its life and strength, by the fear of abolitionism, are
making ready to misrule it again by the meaner prejudice of color. We
can have no permanent peace with the South but by Americanizing it, by
compelling it, if need be, to accept the idea, and with it the safety
of democracy. At present we seem on the brink of contracting to protect
from insurrection States in which a majority of the population, many of
them now trained to arms, and all of them conscious of a claim upon us
to make their freedom strong enough to protect them, are to be left at
the mercy of laws which they have had no share in enacting.
The gravity of this consideration alone should make us pause. The more
thought we bestow upon the matter, the more thoroughly are we persuaded
that the only way to get rid of the negro is to do him justice.
Democracy is safe because it is just, and safe only when it is just to
all. Here is no question of white or black, but simply of man. We have
hitherto been strong in proportion as we dared be true to the sublime
thought of our own Declaration of Independence, which for the first
time proposed to embody Christianity in human laws, and announced the
discovery that the security of the state is based on the moral
instincts and the manhood of its members. In the very midnight of the
war, when we were compassed round with despondency and the fear of man,
that peerless utterance of human policy rang like a trumpet announcing
heavenly succor, and lifted us out of the darkness of our doubts into
that courage which comes of the fear of God. Now, if ever, may a
statesman depend upon the people sustaining him in doing what is simply
right, for they have found out the infinite worth of freedom, and how
much they love it, by being called on to defend it. We have seen how
our contest has been watched by a breathless world; how every humane
and generous heart, every intellect bold enough to believe that men may
be safely trusted with government as well as with any other of their
concerns, has wished us God-speed. And we have felt as never before the
meaning of those awful words, "Hell beneath is stirred for thee," as we
saw all that was mean and timid and selfish and wicked, by a horrible
impulsion of nature, gathering to the help of our enemies. Why should
we shrink from embodying our own idea as if it would turn out a
Frankenstein? Why should we let the vanquished dictate terms of peace?
A choice is offered that may never come again, unless after another
war. We should sin against our own light, if we allowed mongrel
republics to grow up again at the South, and deliberately organized
anarchy, as if it were better than war. Let the law be made equal for
all men. If the power does not exist in the Constitution, find it
somewhere else, or confess that democracy, strongest of all governments
for war, is the weakest of all in the statesmanship that shall save us
from it. There is no doubt what the wishes of the administration are.
Let them act up to their own convictions and the emergency of the hour,
sure of the support of the people; for it is one of the chief merits of
our form of polity that the public reason, which gives our Constitution
all its force, is always a reserve of power to the magistrate, open to
the appeal of justice, and ready to ratify the decisions of conscience.
There is no need of hurry in readmitting the States that locked
themselves out of the old homestead. It is not enough to conquer unless
we convert them, and time, the best means of quiet persuasion, is in
our own hands. Shall we hasten to cover with the thin ashes of another
compromise that smouldering war which we called peace for seventy
years, only to have it flame up again when the wind of Southern
doctrine has set long enough in the old quarter? It is not the absence
of war, but of its causes, that is in our grasp. That is what we fought
for, and there must be a right somewhere to enforce what all see to be
essential. To quibble away such an opportunity would be as cowardly as
unwise.
THE PRESIDENT ON THE STUMP
1866
Mr. Johnson is the first of our Presidents who has descended to the
stump, and spoken to the people as if they were a mob. We do not care
to waste words in criticising the taste of this proceeding, but deem it
our duty to comment on some of its graver aspects. We shall leave
entirely aside whatever was personal in the extraordinary diatribe of
the 22d of February, merely remarking that we believe the majority of
Americans have too much good sense to be flattered by an allusion to
the humbleness of their chief magistrate's origin; the matter of
interest for them being rather to ascertain what he has arrived at than
where he started from,--we do not mean in station, but in character,
intelligence, and fitness for the place he occupies. We have reason to
suspect, indeed, that pride of origin, whether high or low, springs
from the same principle in human nature, and that one is but the
positive, the other the negative, pole of a single weakness. The people
do not take it as a compliment to be told that they have chosen a
plebeian to the highest office, for they are not fond of a plebeian
tone of mind or manners. What they do like, we believe, is to be
represented by their foremost man, their highest type of courage,
sense, and patriotism, no matter what his origin. For, after all, no
one in this country incurs any natal disadvantage unless he be born to
an ease which robs him of the necessity of exerting, and so of
increasing and maturing, his natural powers. It is of very little
consequence to know what our President was; of the very highest, to
ascertain what he is, and to make the best of him. We may say, in
passing, that the bearing of Congress, under the temptations of the
last few weeks, has been most encouraging, though we must except from
our commendation the recent speech of Mr. Stevens of Pennsylvania.
There is a pride of patriotism that should make all personal pique seem
trifling; and Mr. Stevens ought to have remembered that it was not so
much the nakedness of an antagonist that he was uncovering as that of
his country.
[Illustration: _Andrew Johnson_]
The dangers of popular oratory are always great, and unhappily ours is
nearly all of this kind. Even a speaker in Congress addresses his real
hearers through the reporters and the post-office. The merits of the
question at issue concern him less than what _he_ shall say about
it so as not to ruin his own chance of reelection, or that of some
fourth cousin to a tidewaitership. Few men have any great amount of
gathered wisdom, still fewer of extemporary, while there are unhappily
many who have a large stock of accumulated phrases, and hold their
parts of speech subject to immediate draft. In a country where the
party newspapers and speakers have done their best to make us believe
that consistency is of so much more importance than statesmanship, and
where every public man is more or less in the habit of considering what
he calls his "record" as the one thing to be saved in the general
deluge, a hasty speech, if the speaker be in a position to make his
words things, may, by this binding force which is superstitiously
attributed to the word once uttered, prove to be of public detriment.
It would be well for us if we could shake off this baleful system of
requiring that a man who has once made a fool of himself shall always
thereafter persevere in being one. Unhappily it is something more easy
of accomplishment than the final perseverance of the saints. Let us
learn to be more careful in distinguishing between betrayal of
principle, and breaking loose from a stupid consistency that compels
its victims to break their heads against the wall instead of going a
few steps round to the door. To eat our own words would seem to bear
some analogy to that diet of east-wind which is sometimes attributed to
the wild ass, and might therefore be wholesome for the tame variety of
that noble and necessary animal, which, like the poor, we are sure to
have always with us. If the words have been foolish, we can conceive of
no food likely to be more nutritious, and could almost wish that we
might have public establishments at the common charge, like those at
which the Spartans ate black broth, where we might all sit down
together to a meal of this cheaply beneficial kind. Among other
amendments of the Constitution, since every Senator seems to carry half
a dozen in his pocket nowadays, a sort of legislative six-shooter,
might we not have one to the effect that a public character might
change his mind as circumstances changed theirs, say once in five
years, without forfeiting the confidence of his fellow-citizens?
We trust that Mr. Johnson may not be so often reminded of his late
harangue as to be provoked into maintaining it as part of his settled
policy, and that every opportunity will be given him for forgetting it,
as we are sure his better sense will make him wish to do. For the more
we reflect upon it, the more it seems to us to contain, either directly
or by implication, principles of very dangerous consequence to the
well-being of the Republic. We are by no means disposed to forget Mr.
Johnson's loyalty when it was hard to be loyal, nor the many evidences
he has given of a sincere desire to accomplish what seemed to him best
for the future of the whole country; but, at the same time, we cannot
help thinking that some of his over-frank confidences of late have
shown alarming misconceptions, both of the position he holds either in
the public sentiment or by virtue of his office, and of the duty
thereby devolved upon him. We do not mean to indulge ourselves in any
nonsensical rhetoric about usurpations like those which cost an English
king his head, for we consider the matter in too serious a light, and
no crowded galleries invite us to thrill them with Bulwerian
commonplace; but we have a conviction that the exceptional
circumstances of the last five years, which gave a necessary
predominance to the executive part of our government, have left behind
them a false impression of the prerogative of a President in ordinary
times. The balance-wheel of our system has insensibly come to think
itself the motive power, whereas that, to be properly effective, should
always be generated by the deliberate public opinion of the country.
Already the Democratic party, anxious to profit by any chance at
resuscitation,--for it is extremely inconvenient to be dead so
long,--is more than hinting that the right of veto was given to the
President that he might bother and baffle a refractory Congress into
concession, not to his reasons, but to his whim. There seemed to be a
plan, at one time of forming a President's party, with no principle but
that of general opposition to the policy of that great majority which
carried him into power. Such a scheme might have had some chance of
success in the good old times when it seemed to the people as if there
was nothing more important at stake than who should be in and who out;
but it would be sure of failure now that the public mind is
intelligently made up as to the vital meaning of whatever policy we
adopt, and the necessity of establishing our institutions, once for
all, on a basis as permanent as human prudence can make it.