the wrongs of generations, our constituted authorities have been moving
on steadfastly to the same end. Military necessity has emancipated
thousands of slaves, and civil power has pressed ever nearer and nearer
to the abolition of slavery. In all the confusion of war, the
trumpet-tones of justice have rung through our national halls with no
uncertain sound. With a pertinacity most exasperating to tyrants and
infidels, but most welcome to the friends of human rights, Northern
Senators and Representatives have presented the claims of the African
race. With many a momentary recession, the tide has swept irresistibly
onward. Hopes have been baffled only to be strengthened. Measures have
been defeated only to be renewed. Defeat has been accepted but as the
stepping-stone to new endeavor. Cautiously, warily, Freedom has lain in
wait to rescue her wronged children. Her watchful eyes have fastened
upon every weakness in her foe: her ready hand has been upraised
wherever there was a chance to strike. Quietly, almost unheard amid the
loud-resounding clash of arms, her decrees have gone forth, instinct
with the enfranchisement of a race. The war began with old customs and
prejudices under full headway, but the new necessities soon met them
with fierce collision. The first shock was felt when the escaping slaves
of Rebel masters were pronounced free, and our soldiers were forbidden
to return them. Then the blows came fast and furious, and the whole
edifice, reared on that crumbling corner-stone of Slavery, reeled
through all its heaven-defying heights. The gates of Liberty opened to
the slave, on golden hinges turning. The voice of promise rang through
Rebel encampments, and penetrated to the very fastnesses of Rebellion.
The ranks of the army called the freedman to the rescue of his race. The
courts of justice received him in witness of his manhood. Before every
foreign court he was acknowledged as a citizen of his country, and as
entitled to her protection. The capital of our nation was purged of the
foul stain that dishonored her in the eyes of the nations, and that gave
the lie direct to our most solemn Declaration. The fugitive-slave
acts that disfigured our statute-book were blotted out, and
fugitive-slave-stealer acts filled their vacant places. The seal of
freedom, unconditional, perpetual, and immediate, was set upon the broad
outlying lands of the republic, and from the present Congress we
confidently await the crowning act which shall make slavery forever
impossible, and liberty the one supreme, universal, unchangeable law in
every part of our domains.
What we have done is an earnest of what we mean to do. After nearly four
years of war, and war on such a scale as the world has never before
seen, the people have once more, and in terms too emphatic to be
misunderstood, proclaimed their undying purpose. With a unanimity rarely
equalled, a people that had fought eight years against a tax of
threepence on the pound, and that was rapidly advancing to the front
rank of nations through the victories of peace,--a people jealous of its
liberties and proud of its prosperity, has reelected to the chief
magistracy a man under whose administration burdensome taxes have been
levied, immense armies marshalled, imperative drafts ordered, and
fearful sufferings endured. They have done this because, in spite of
possible mistakes and short-comings, they have seen his grasp ever
tightening around the throat of Slavery, his weapons ever seeking the
vital point of the Rebellion. They have beheld him standing always at
his post, calm in the midst of peril, hopeful when all was dark, patient
under every obloquy, courteous to his bitterest foes, conciliatory where
conciliation was possible, inflexible where to yield was dishonor. Never
have the passions of civil war betrayed him into cruelty or hurried him
into revenge; nor has any hope of personal benefit or any fear of
personal detriment stayed him when occasion beckoned. If he has erred,
it has been on the side of leniency. If he has hesitated, it has been to
assure himself of the right. Where there was censure, he claimed it for
himself; where there was praise, he has lavished it on his subordinates.
The strong he has braved, and the weak sheltered. He has rejected the
counsels of his friends when they were inspired by partisanship, and
adopted the suggestions of opponents when they were founded on wisdom.
His ear has always been open to the people's voice, yet he has never
suffered himself to be blindly driven by the storm of popular fury. He
has consulted public opinion, as the public servant should; but he has
not pandered to public prejudice, as only demagogues do. Not weakly
impatient to secure the approval of the country, he has not scorned to
explain his measures to the understanding of the common people. Never
bewildered by the solicitations of party, nor terrified by the menace of
opposition, he has controlled with moderation, and yielded with dignity,
as the exigencies of the time demanded. Entering upon office with his
full share of the common incredulity, perceiving no more than his
fellow-citizens the magnitude of the crisis, he has steadily risen to
the height of the great argument. No suspicion of self-seeking stains
his fair fame; but ever mindful of his solemn oath, he seeks with clean
hands and a pure heart the welfare of the whole country. Future
generations alone can do justice to his ability; his integrity is firmly
established in the convictions of the present age. His reward is with
him, though his work lies still before him.
Only less significant than the fact is the manner of his reflection. All
sections of a continental country, with interests as diverse as latitude
and longitude can make them, came up to secure, not any man's
continuance in power, but the rule of law. The East called with her
thousands, and the West answered with her tens of thousands. Baltimore
that day washed out the blood-stains from her pavement, and free
Maryland girded herself for a new career. Men who had voted for
Washington came forward with the snows of a hundred winters on their
brows, and amid the silence and tears of assembled throngs deposited
their ballot for Abraham Lincoln. Daughters led their infirm fathers to
the polls to be sure that no deception should mock their failing sight.
Armless men dropped their votes from between their teeth. Sick men and
wounded men, wounded on the battle-fields of their country, were borne
on litters to give their dying testimony to the righteous cause.
Dilettanteism, that would not soil its dainty hands with politics, dared
no longer stand aloof, but gave its voice for national honor and
national existence. Old party ties snapped asunder, and local prejudices
shrivelled in the fire of newly kindled patriotism. Turbulence and
violence, awed by the supreme majesty of a resolute nation, slunk away
and hid their shame from the indignant day. Calmly, in the midst of
raging war, in despite of threats and cajolery, with a lofty, unspoken
contempt for those false men who would urge to anarchy and infamy, this
great people went up to the ballot-box, and gave in its adhesion to
human equality, civil liberty, and universal freedom. And as the good
tidings of great joy flashed over the wires from every quarter, men
recognized the finger of God, and, laying aside all lower exultation,
gathered in the public places, and, standing reverently with uncovered
heads, poured forth their rapturous thanksgiving in that sublime
doxology which has voiced for centuries the adoration of the human
soul:--
"Praise God, from whom all blessings flow!
Praise Him, all creatures here below!
Praise Him above, ye heavenly host!
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost!"
So America to the world gives greeting. So a free people meets and
masters the obstacles that bar its progress. So this young republic
speaks warning to the old despotisms, and hope to the struggling
peoples. Thus with the sword she seeks peace under liberty. Striking off
the shackles that fettered her own limbs, emerging from the thick of her
deadly conflict, with many a dint on her armor, but with no shame on her
brow, she starts on her victorious career, and bids the suffering
nations take heart. With the old lie torn from her banner, the old life
shall come back to her symbols. Her children shall no longer blush at
the taunts of foreign tyrannies, but shall boldly proclaim her to be
indeed the land of the free, as she has always been the home of the
brave. Men's minds shall no longer be confused by distinctions between
higher and lower law, to the infinite detriment of moral character, but
all her laws shall be emanations from the infinite source of justice.
Marshalling thus all her forces on the Lord's side, she may inscribe,
without mockery, on her silver and gold, "In God we trust." She may hope
for purity in her homes, and honesty in her councils. She may front her
growing grandeur without misgiving, knowing that it comes not by earthly
might or power, but by the Spirit of the Lord of Hosts; and the only
voice of her victory, the song of her thanksgiving, and her watchword to
the nations shall be, "Glory to God in the highest; and on earth peace,
good-will toward men."
REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.
_America and her Commentators:_ With a Critical Sketch of
Travel in the United States. By HENRY T. TUCKERMAN. New
York: Charles Scribner. 8vo. pp. 460.
If a little late, we are none the less sincere in extending to this
timely and excellent work a hearty welcome. It is full of varied
interest and valuable instruction. It is equally adapted to attract and
edify our own citizens, and to guide and inform those foreigners who
wish to know the history and facts of American society. The object of
the work is to present a general view of the traits and transitions of
our country, as they are reflected in the records made at different
periods by writers of various nationalities, and to discuss, in
connection with this exhibition, the temper and value of the principal
critics of our civilization, emphasizing and indorsing their correct
observations, pointing out and rectifying their erroneous ones. There
are obviously many great advantages in thus reverting to the past and
examining the present of American institutions and life by the help of
the literature of travel in America,--a literature so richly suggestive,
because so constantly modified by the national peculiarities and
personal points of view of the writers. Mr. Tuckerman has improved these
advantages with care and tact. In the preface and introduction,
characterized by an ample command of the resources of the subject, easy
discursiveness and lively criticism, he puts the reader in possession of
such preliminary information as he will like or need to have. The body
of the work begins with a portrayal of America as it appeared to its
earliest discoverers and explorers. The second chapter is devoted to the
Jesuit missionaries, who, reviving the spirit of the Crusades, plunged
into the wilderness to convert the aborigines to Christianity, and,
inspired by the wonders of the virgin solitude, became the pioneer
writers of American travels. Chapters third and fourth deal with the
French travellers who have visited and written on our country, from
Chastellux to Laboulaye. The similar list of British travellers and
writers is presented and discussed in the fifth and sixth chapters.
Chapter seventh is taken up with "English Abuse of America"; and the
subject has rarely been treated so fitly and firmly, with such a
blending of just severity and moderation. "Cockneyism," Mr. Tuckerman
says, "may seem not worthy of analysis, far less of refutation; but, as
Sydney Smith remarked, 'In a country surrounded by dikes, a rat may
inundate a province'; and it is the long-continued gnawing of the tooth
of detraction, that, at a momentous crisis, let in the cold flood at
last upon the nation's heart, and quenched its traditional love." The
eighth chapter depicts the views and characterizes the qualities of the
Northern European authors who have travelled in America and written
concerning us. In the ninth chapter our Italian visitors and critics are
treated in like manner. And in the tenth chapter the same task is
performed for the Americans themselves who have journeyed through and
written on their own country. Then follows the conclusion,
recapitulating and applying the results of the whole survey. And the
work properly closes with an index, furnishing the reader facilities for
immediate reference to any passage, topic, or name he wishes to find.
For the task he has here undertaken Mr. Tuckerman is well qualified by
the varied and comprehensive range of his knowledge and culture, the
devotion of his life to travel, art, and study. His pages not only
illustrate, they also vindicate, the character and claims of American
nationality. He shows that "there never was a populous land about which
the truth has been more generalized and less discriminated." His
descriptions of local scenery and historic incidents recognize all that
is lovely and sublime in our national landscapes, all that is romantic
or distinctive in our national life. His humane and ethical sympathies
are ready, discriminating, and generous; his approbations and rebukes,
vivid and generally rightly applied. These and other associated
qualities lend interest and value to the biographic sketches he presents
of the numerous travellers and authors whose works pass in review. The
pictures of many of these persons--such as Marquette, Volney,
D'Allessandro, Bartram--are psychological studies of much freshness and
force.
_Biographical Sketches of Loyalists of the American
Revolution:_ With an Historical Essay. By LORENZO SABINE.
Two Volumes. Boston: Little, Brown, & Co. 8vo. pp. 608, 600.
Mr. Sabine has attempted in these volumes to present in a judicial
spirit a chapter of our Revolutionary history which usually bears the
most of passion in its recital,--believing, as he does, that
impartiality is identical with charity, in dealing with his theme. The
first edition of his work, in a single volume, has been before the
public seventeen years. The zeal and fidelity of his labor have been
well appreciated. So far as his purpose has involved a plea or an
apology for the Loyalists of the American Revolution, his critics who
have at all abated their commendation of him have challenged him on the
side where he might most willingly have been supposed to err, that of an
excess of leniency. As to the class of men with whom he deals generally
in his introductory essay, and individually in the elaborate
biographical sketches which follow, the same difficulty presents itself
which is encountered in all attempts to canvass the faults or the
characteristics of any body of men who bear a common party-name or share
a common opinion, while in the staple of real virtue or vice, of honor
or baseness, of sincerity or hypocrisy, they may represent the poles of
difference. The contemporary estimate of the Tories, and in large part
the treatment of them which was thought to be just, were, in the main,
adjusted with reference to the meanest and most malignant portion. Mr.
Sabine, while by no means espousing the championship even of the best of
them, would have the whole body judged with the candor which comes of
looking at their general fellowship in the light of its natural
prejudices, prepossessions, and embarrassments. It is to be considered
also that the best of the class were a sort of warrant for the worst.
Those who are tolerably well read in the biographies and histories of
our Revolutionary period are aware that Dr. Franklin, who, about most
exciting and passion-stirring subjects, was a man of remarkably moderate
and tolerant spirit, was eminently a hater of the Tories, unrelenting in
his animosity towards them, and sternly set against all the measures
proposed at the Peace for their relief, either by the British Government
to enforce our remuneration of their losses, or by our own General or
State Governments to soften the penalties visited upon them. The origin
and the explanation of this intense feeling of animosity toward the
Loyalists in the breast of that philosopher of moderation are easily
traced to one of the most interesting incidents in his residence near
the British Court as agent for Pennsylvania and Massachusetts. The
incident is connected with the still unexplained mystery of his getting
possession of the famous letters of Hutchinson, Oliver, etc. Franklin
was living and directing all his practical efforts for enlightening and
influencing those whom he supposed to be simply the ignorant plotters of
mischief against the Colonists, under the full and most confident belief
that those plotters were merely the stupid and conceited members of the
British Cabinet. He never had dreamed that he was to look either above
them to the King, or behind them to any unknown instigators of their
mischief. With perfect good faith on his own part, he gave them the
benefit of their own supposed ignorance, wrong-headedness, wilfulness,
and ingenuity, such as it was, in inventing irritating and oppressive
measures which, he warned them, would inevitably alienate the hearts and
the allegiance of the Colonists. He records, that, while he had never
had a thought but such as this imagined state of the facts had favored,
a Liberal member of Parliament, an intimate friend of his, coming to
him for a private interview, had told him that the Ministry were not the
prime movers in this mischief, but were instigated to it by parties whom
Franklin little suspected of such an agency. When the Doctor expressed
his incredulity, the friend promised to give him decisive evidence of
the full truth of his assertion. It came to Franklin in a form which
astounded him, while it opened his eyes and fixed his indignation upon a
class of men who from that moment onward were to him the exponents of
all malignity and baseness. The evidence came in the shape of the
originals, the autographs, of the above-named letters, written by
natives of the American soil, office-holders under the Crown, who, while
pampered and trusted by their constituents on this side of the water,
were actually dictating, advising, and inspiriting the measures of the
British Ministry most hateful to the Colonists. Franklin never overcame
the impression from that shock. When he was negotiating the treaty of
peace, he set his face and heart most resolutely against all the efforts
and propositions made by the representatives of the Crown to secure to
the Tories redress or compensation. He insisted that Britain, in
espousing their alleged wrongs, indicated that she herself ought to
remunerate their losses; that they, in fact, had been her agents and
instruments, as truly as were her Crown officials and troops. Their
malignant hostility toward their fellow-Colonists, and the sufferings
and losses entailed on America by their open assertion of the rights of
the Crown, and by the direct or indirect help which oppressive measures
had received from them, had deprived them of all claim even on the pity
of those who had triumphed in spite of them. At any rate, Franklin
insisted, and it was the utmost to which he would assent,--his irony and
sarcasm in making the offer showing the depth of his bitterness on the
subject,--that a balance should be struck between the losses of the
Loyalists and those of the Colonists in the conflagration of their
sea-ports and the outrages on the property of individual patriots.
The views and feelings of Franklin have been essentially those which
have since prevailed popularly among us regarding the old Tories. Of
course, when hard-pressed, he was willing to recognize a difference in
the motives which prompted individuals and in the degrees of their
turpitude. Mr. Sabine gives us in his introductory essay a most
admirable analysis of the whole subject-matter, with an accurate and
instructive array of all the facts bearing upon it. No man has given
more thorough or patient inquiry to it, or has had better opportunities
for gathering materials of prime authority and perfect authenticity for
the treatment of it. In the biographical sketches which crowd his
volumes will be found matter of varied and profound interest,
alternately engaging the tender sympathy and firing the indignation of
the reader. One can hardly fail of bethinking himself that the moral and
judicial reflections which come from perusing this work will by and by,
under some slight modifications, attach to the review of the characters
and course of some men who are in antagonism to their country's cause in
these days.
_Broken Lights: An Inquiry into the Present Condition and
Future Prospects of Religious Faith._ By FRANCES POWER
COBBE. Boston: J. E. Tilton & Co.
Among the countless errors of faith which have misled mankind, there is
none more dangerous, or more common, than that of confounding the forms
of religion with religion itself. Too often, alike to believer and
unbeliever, this has proved the one fatal mistake. Many an honest and
earnest soul, feeling the deep needs of a spiritual life, but unable to
separate those things which the heart would accept from those against
which the reason revolts, has rejected all together, and turned away
sorrowful, if not scoffing. On the other hand, the state of that man,
who, because his mind has settled down upon certain externals of
religion, deems that he has secured its essentials also, is worse than
that of the skeptic. The freezing traveller, who is driven by the rocks
(of hard doctrine) and the thorns (of doubt) to keep his limbs in
motion, stands a far better chance of finding his way out of the
wilderness than he who lies down on the softest bed of snow, flatters
himself that all is well, and dreams of home, whilst the deadly torpor
creeps over him.
If help and guidance and good cheer for all such be not found in this
little volume, it is certainly no fault of the writer's intention. She
brings to her task the power of profound conviction, inspiring a devout
wish to lead others into the way of truth. Beneath the multiform systems
of theology she finds generally the same firm foundations of
faith,--"faith in the existence of a righteous God, faith in the eternal
Law of Morality, faith in an Immortal Life." None enjoys a monopoly of
truth, although all are based upon it. Each is a lighthouse, more or
less lofty, and more or less illumined by the glory that burns within;
yet their purest rays are only "broken lights." The glory itself is
infinite: it is only through human narrowness and imperfection that it
appears narrow and imperfect. The lighthouse is good in its place: it
beckons home, with its "wheeling arms of dark and bright," many a
benighted voyager; but we must remember that it is a structure made with
hands, and not confound the stone and iron of human contrivance with the
great Source and Fountain of Light.
The writer does not grope with uncertain purpose among these imperfect
rays, and she is never confused by them. To each she freely gives credit
for what it is or has been; but all fade at last before the unspeakable
brightness of the rising sun. She discerns the dawn of that day when all
our little candles may be safely extinguished: for it is not in any
church, nor in any creed, nor yet in any book, that all of God's law is
contained; but the light of His countenance shines primarily on the
souls of men, out of which all religions have proceeded, and into which
we must look for the ever new and ever vital faith, which is to the
unclouded conscience what the sunshine is to sight.
Such is the conclusion the author arrives at through an array of
arguments of which we shall not attempt a summary. It is not necessary
to admit what these are designed to prove, in order to derive
refreshment and benefit from the pure tone of morality, the fervent
piety, and the noble views of practical religion which animate her
pages. It is not a book to be afraid of. No violent hand is here laid
upon the temple; but only the scaffoldings, which, as she perceives,
obscure the beauty of the temple, are taken away. Not only those who
have rejected religion because they could not receive its dogmas, but
all who have struggled with their doubts and mastered them, or thought
they mastered them, nay, any sincere seeker for the truth, will find
Miss Cobbe's unpretending treatise exceedingly valuable and suggestive;
while to any one interested in modern theological discussions we would
recommend it as containing the latest, and perhaps the clearest and most
condensed, statement of the questions at issue which these discussions
have called out.