and the great work over. Its head gone, the Conspiracy was dead, and it
only remained to lay out its lifeless trunk for the burial. Yet, even as
it lay in death, men shuddered to look on the hideous thing out of which
had gone so many devils.
FOOTNOTES:
[D] See Fremantle's "Three Months in the Southern States," p. 148.
[E] Detective's description.
[F] Since the foregoing was written the Commandant's official report has
been published. In reference to these arrests, he says, in a dispatch to
General Cook, dated Camp Douglas, Nov. 7, 4 o'clock, A. M.:--
"Have made during the night the following arrests of Rebel
officers, escaped prisoners of war, and citizens in
connection with them:--
"Morgan's Adjutant-General, Colonel G. St. Leger Grenfell, in
company with J. T. Shanks, [the Texan,] an escaped prisoner
of war, at Richmond House; Colonel Vincent Marmaduke, brother
of General Marmaduke; Brigadier-General Charles Walsh, of the
'Sons of Liberty'; Captain Cantrill, of Morgan's command;
Charles Traverse (Butternut). Cantrill and Traverse arrested
in Walsh's house, in which were found two cart-loads of large
size revolvers, loaded and capped, two hundred stands of
muskets loaded, and ammunition. Also seized two boxes of guns
concealed in a room in the city. Also arrested Buck Morris,
Treasurer of 'Sons of Liberty,' having complete proof of his
assisting Shanks to escape, and plotting to release prisoners
at this camp.
"Most of these Rebel officers were in this city on the same
errand in August last, their plan being to raise an
insurrection and release prisoners of war at this camp. There
are many strangers and suspicious persons in the city,
believed to be guerrillas and Rebel soldiers. Their plan was
to attack the camp on election-night. All prisoners arrested
are in camp. Captain Nelson and A. C. Coventry, of the
police, rendered very efficient service.
"B. J. SWEET, Col. Com."
In relation to the general operations I have detailed, the Commandant in
this Report writes as follows:--
"Adopting measures which proved effective to detect the presence and
identify the persons of the officers and leaders and ascertain their
plans, it was manifest that they had the means of gathering a force
considerably larger than the little garrison then guarding between eight
and nine thousand prisoners of war at Camp Douglas, and that, taking
advantage of the excitement and the large number of persons who would
ordinarily fill the streets on election-night, they intended to make a
night attack on and surprise this camp, release and arm the prisoners of
war, cut the telegraph-wires, burn the railroad-depots, seize the banks
and stores containing arms and ammunition, take possession of the city,
and commence a campaign for the release of other prisoners of war in the
States of Illinois and Indiana, thus organizing an army to effect and
give success to the general uprising so long contemplated by the 'Sons
of Liberty.'"
[G] Chicago Tribune, Nov. 8, 1864.
REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.
1. _The Hillyars and the Burtons._ A Tale of Two Families.
By HENRY KINGSLEY. Boston: Ticknor & Fields.
2. _Christian's Mistake._ By the Author of "John Halifax."
New York: Harper & Brothers.
3. _Uncle Silas._ A Tale of Bartram-Haugh. By J. S. LE FANU.
New York: Harper & Brothers.
While the American popularity of Charles Kingsley has been rather
declining, the credit of his brother Henry has been gradually rising.
Those who have complained of something rather shallow and sketchy in
some of his former books will find far more solid and faithful work in
this. Indeed, he undertakes rather more than he can carry through, and
the capacious plot, well handled at first, gets into some confusion and
ends in a rather feeble result. To deal with two large families,
distributing part of each in England and part in Australia, to interlink
them in the most complicated way in all genealogical and topographical
relations, demands a structural genius like that of Eugene Sue; and
though Mr. Kingsley grapples stoutly with the load, he staggers under
it. His descriptions of scenery are as vivid as his brother's, and he
exhibits far less arrogance and no theology. There are in the book
single scenes of great power, and there has never, perhaps, been a more
vivid portraiture of lower-middle-class life in England, or of the
manner in which it has been galvanized into a semi-American development
in Australia. The results of that expatriation upon more cultivated
classes, however, appear such as we should be sorry to call even
demi-semi-American. Fancy discovering in California a young lady in
book-muslin, the daughter of cultivated parents, who remarks under
excitement,--"Well, if this don't bang wattle-gum, I wish I may be
buried in the bush in a sheet of bark! Why, I feel all over centipedes
and copper-lizards!" Still, there may be some confusion in the dialects
used in the book, as there is hardly a person in it, patrician or
plebeian, on either side of the equator, who does not address everybody
else as "old man" or "old girl," whenever the occasion calls for
tenderness. It may be very expressive, but it implies a slight monotony
in the language of British emotion.
There is rather a want of central unity to the book, but, so far as it
has a main thread, it seems to be the self-devotion of a sister who
prefers her brother to her lover. This furnishes a pleasant change from
the recent favorite theme of ladies who prefer their lovers to their
husbands.
To this latter class of novels, based on what may be called the
centrifugal forces of wedlock, "Christian's Mistake" perhaps belongs.
Its clear and practised style is refreshing, after the comparative
crudeness of some other recent treatises on the same theme; the
characters are human, not wooden, and the whole treatment healthful and
noble.
"Uncle Silas" is the climax of the sensational, and goes as far beyond
Mrs. Wood as she beyond Miss Braddon, or she beyond reason and
comfortable daylight reading.
_The Life and Times of Sir William Johnson, Bart._ By
WILLIAM L. STONE. Albany: J. Munsell.
We well remember the interest with which, more than twenty years ago, we
heard that Mr. William L. Stone was preparing a life of Sir William
Johnson. His collection of material was very large, comprising several
thousands of original letters, besides a great mass of other papers. He
had written, however, but a small part of his work, when death put a
period to his labors, and the documents which he had gathered with such
enthusiastic industry seemed destined to remain a crude mass of
undigested material. We think it fortunate for all students of American
history, that a son, bearing his name and inheriting in the fullest
measure his capacity for the work, has undertaken its completion, partly
from affection and a sense of duty, and partly, it is evident, from a
natural aptitude.
In the whole range of American history no other personage appears so
remarkable in character and so important in influence, and at the same
time so little known to general readers, as Sir William Johnson. The
reason is, that his great powers were exercised on a theatre which,
though vast and wellnigh boundless, was exterior to the familiar field
of political action. Yet on the single influence of this man depended at
times the prosperity and growth of all the British American colonies.
Could France have won his influence in her behalf, England could not
have broken that rival power in America without an exhausting
expenditure of men and treasure, and without leaders of a different
stamp from the blockheads with whom she long continued to paralyze her
Cisatlantic armies. At the darkest crisis of the last French War, the
influence of Johnson alone saved the English colonies from the miseries
which would have ensued from the enmity of the powerful confederacy of
the Six Nations; and for many years after, in his capacity of
Superintendent of Indian Affairs, he continued to exercise an
unparalleled power over the tribes of the interior, soothing their
jealousies, composing their quarrels, and protecting them with equal
justice, benevolence, and ability from the fraud and outrage of
encroaching whites.
Johnson settled on the Mohawk in his youth, and immediately fell into
relations with his savage neighbors. He was accustomed to join their
sports and assume their dress; and it is an evidence of the native force
and dignity of his character, that, in thus taking a course which
commonly provoked their contempt, he gained their affection, without
diminishing their respect and admiration. He gained a military
reputation--not unqualified--by the Battle of Lake George, in 1755,
where he commanded the British force; and he won brighter laurels by the
capture of Fort Niagara in 1759. His true fame rests, however, on his
civic achievements,--on the tact, energy, and judgment, the humanity and
breadth of views, with which he managed the important interest placed in
his hands. It would be hard to say whether the Indians or the Colonists
profited most by his influence; for while with a fearless adroitness he
overthrew the schemes of hungry speculators, he averted from peaceful
settlers many a peril of whose existence, perhaps, they were unaware. He
gave peace to the borders, and sweetened, as far as lay in the power of
man, that bitter cup which had fallen to the lot of the wretched races
of the forest.
Mr. Stone's book covers a period extending from a few years before the
French War of 1745 to the death of Johnson in 1774. In accordance with
its title, it is largely occupied with the "times" as well as with the
"life" of its subject. In fact, it is a history of the period, relating
with considerable detail contemporary events with which Johnson was
connected only indirectly. This detracts from its character as a work of
purely original research, to which, as far as regards the personal
history of its subject, it is preeminently entitled.
Johnson's vast correspondence relates chiefly to matters of public
interest, and supplies comparatively few of those details of private
life which give liveliness to pictures of scenes and character. The
book, in respect to execution, is perhaps necessarily unequal. The first
seven chapters were written by the father of Mr. Stone, who endeavored
to continue the work on its original plan. The attempt, always
difficult, to carry out a design conceived in the mind of another, seems
at the outset to have somewhat hampered the author; but as he proceeds
with his work, his excellent qualification for it becomes more and more
apparent. He is thorough and faithful in the use of his great store of
material, and clear, vigorous, and often picturesque in his narrative.
The period with which he deals is one of the most interesting and most
important in American history, and the treatment is worthy of the theme.
The hackneyed phrase, so often meaningless, is in the case of this book
emphatically true,--that no library of American history can be said to
be complete without it.
1. _The Rule and Exercises of Holy Living._ By JEREMY
TAYLOR, D. D. Boston: Little, Brown & Co.
2. _The Rule and Exercises of Holy Dying._ By JEREMY TAYLOR,
D. D. Boston: Little, Brown & Co.
The beautiful meditations of Jeremy Taylor, written in the intervals of
the great English civil war, seem appropriate enough amidst these
closing days of our own contest. While the English language remains, his
delicious sentences will find readers and lovers; and the endless
variety of choice learning with which his pages are gemmed would make
them always delightful, were his own part valueless.
This copiousness of allusion makes no small work for his American
editor, since even the latest English editions leave much to be
supplied. It is an enormous undertaking to verify and complete all these
manifold citations, and yet the present editor has been content with
nothing less. Editors so conscientious are not easily to be found; and
it is to the honor of Little, Brown & Company that they habitually
secure such services, and thus make their reprints almost as creditable
to our literature as if they were original works.
_History of the Methodist Episcopal Church in the United
States of America._ By ABEL STEVENS, LL. D., Author of "The
History of the Religious Movement of the Eighteenth Century
called Methodism," etc. Volumes I. and II. New York:
Carleton & Porter.
The history of a religions denomination is in itself a matter of no
small importance. Taken in connection with other ecclesiastical bodies
as a portion of the data in estimating the national development, it is
still more valuable. In the churches inhere almost exclusively the
sources of influence available for the moral culture of the people. The
pulpit, the pastorate, and the various other ecclesiastical appliances
are potent in effects which cannot be produced by other causes. The
higher educational institutions are under the direction of the religious
bodies; while our common schools, though properly excluding sectarian
influence, are yet indirectly and not improperly affected by the
religious character of the community. Not only does the man who
undertakes to write history, while ignoring the religious element, give
us an incompetent and false representation, but no one can become a
respectable student of history who does not carefully consider the
religious development of society as proceeding under the guidance of the
several denominational bodies.
Up to about the period of the Revolution the principal religious
establishments in this country were the Puritans, occupying practically
the whole field in New England, the Presbyterians preponderating in the
Middle Colonies, and the Episcopalians in the South. There were other
elements, as the Quakers and the Baptists. The former, though not
without a considerable influence in shaping the national character, were
less marked in their effect. The latter, though already an important
body and destined to become still more so, and though in fervor and
aggressiveness subsequently approximating the Methodists, were as yet so
little distinct from the Puritans that we may regard them as
substantially one with the latter.
Presbyterianism and Episcopalianism were then, as they have been ever
since, conservative in their character and tendencies. Puritanism was
radical in its views and sentiments, yet lacking that diffusive
propagandist power inhering in conventional bodies. Methodism, coming
in, supplied this lack, and at the same time appealed to vast masses
which had not before been reached by religious influences. An argument
might be found here, were any needed, in support of the voluntary system
of religious establishments, as more perfectly adapting themselves to
the various wants and peculiarities of the different classes of people.
Suggestions also arise concerning the equilibrium so necessary in a free
government, for the proper settlement of moral, social, and political
questions,--an equilibrium between the conservative and progressive
tendencies, which is far more likely to be attained when left free from
any direction by the state.
The present year completes a full century since the first Methodist
societies were formed in this country. The name of a church was not
assumed till some years later. It had been about thirty years since the
commencement of the remarkable religious movement in England, under the
Wesleys and Whitefield. It was introduced here by some Irish immigrants
of German ancestry. Missionaries were very soon sent over from England,
and in no long time native preachers were raised up. The time was
propitious and the field promising for the success of the simple, cheap,
and every way available appliances of the new religious agency. The
rapidly increasing and widely scattering population could not be
adequately supplied by any of the ecclesiastical bodies which operated
only through settled pastorates. These new propagandists, confined to no
locality, but going everywhere with their off-hand discourse, their
eagerness "to preach the word" to congregations of any size, of any
character, and in any place, with their rude, but vigorous style of
oratory, and direct, outspoken address, attracted and affected whole
communities to an extraordinary degree. It is true, they were not always
treated with much deference, and sometimes they were the objects of
abuse and violence, in which their lives were imperilled. But still
they pursued their way through the wilderness, seeking the lost sheep.
An anecdote illustrates the persistency of this class of preachers, and
also the grim humor with which, in spite of themselves, they sometimes
invested their rather startling announcements. In those early days there
was one Richmond Nolley, a preacher in the new Southern country. He was
a man of great zeal, energy, and courage, and omitted no opportunity of
doing good to persons of any color or condition in whatever obscure
corner he could find them. On one occasion, while travelling, he came
upon a fresh wagon-track, and following it, he discovered an emigrant
family, who had just reached the spot where they intended to make their
home. The man, who was putting out his team, saw at once by the bearing
and costume of the stranger what his calling was, and exclaimed,--
"What! another Methodist preacher! I quit Virginia to get out of the way
of them, and went to a new settlement in Georgia, where I thought I
should be quite beyond their reach; but they got my wife and daughter
into the church. Then, in this late purchase, Choctaw Corner, I found a
piece of good land, and was sure I should have some peace of the
preachers; but here is one before my wagon is unloaded."
"My friend," said Nolley, "if you go to heaven, you'll find Methodist
preachers there; and if to hell, I'm afraid you'll find some there; and
you see how it is in this world. So you had better make terms with us
and be at peace."
Dr. Stevens, who has acquired some celebrity by his excellent history of
the Wesleyan movement in England, has displayed in the present volume
the same marked abilities which made his previous work so popular. There
is not only evidence of laborious and conscientious diligence in
gathering up, sometimes from almost inaccessible sources, the requisite
materials, but the skill displayed in their arrangement and treatment,
so as to make the narrative an absorbingly attractive one, is eminently
praiseworthy. As a history, the work is not only creditable in a
denominational and ecclesiastical point of view, but it is a valuable
contribution to our national literature.
Much of this success doubtless may be attributable to the nature of the
subject; for it is not easy to conceive of any movement, and especially
a religious one, in which the melodramatic, mingled here and there with
both the tragic and comic, forms so large a natural element. There was a
new country, a rude society, daring adventures, great perils, marvellous
escapes, terrible hardships, the stern, harsh realities of pioneer life,
grand and unexpected successes, all which, seen from the distance of the
present, have a romantic coloring, and produce an exhilarating effect.
Any ordinary ability would have made a readable story out of such
materials; but to make a history worthy of the name required the hand of
a master.
There is something, perhaps, rather fanciful in the coincidence or
parallel which the author would make out between the enterprise of John
Wesley and that of James Watt. Yet it is not devoid of interest. While
the one, toiling in poverty and obscurity, was preparing an invention
which should incalculably multiply industrial productiveness and give a
mightier impulse to modern civilization than any other material element,
the other, incurring the opprobrium of his ecclesiastical order, and
regarded as a reprehensible agitator and fanatic, was inaugurating a
movement which should prove one of the most extraordinary and
far-reaching of any in modern times; and both these agencies--the one
employing a mighty material force in the interest of society, the other
setting in operation vast moral energies for the uplifting of the
masses--were to have their grandest results in the New World.
Dr. Stevens is especially happy in his sketches of character; only,
possibly, in indulging too much his inclination for this sort of
writing, he repeats himself, and in the recurrence of pet phrases
wearies the reader. Yet some of these are very good. The description of
Francis Asburey, the "Pioneer Bishop," is one not often excelled. He was
one of the early missionaries sent over by Wesley, and became the great
leader in the work and the principal organizer of the ecclesiastical
machinery. He was the first bishop ordained in the country,--and a very
unique and remarkable bishop he was. There was for him no splendid
palace, no magnificent cathedral, no princely income. His salary was
sixty-four dollars a year, his diocese a whole continent, to visit which
he must find his way without roads, through almost illimitable woods,
over nearly inaccessible mountains, floundering through swamps, wading
or swimming vast rivers, scorched by hot suns, bitten by winter frosts,
drenched with pitiless rains, smothered by driving snows, and often in
divers dangers of death. His travelling equipage was not a chariot and
four, but saddlebags and one. Often sick and suffering, he seldom
allowed himself to be detained from his appointments. He went wherever
he sent his preachers, and shared with them all the toils and privations
incident to the work. He annually made the tour of the States,
travelling never less than five thousand, and often more than six
thousand, miles a year. He usually preached once every day, and three
times on Sunday. A man, of course, of little literary culture, yet he
possessed great good sense, a genial spirit, and large ability as an
organizer. To him more than other men the denomination owes its early
efficiency and extraordinary success.
The two volumes before us embrace a period of scarcely twenty-five
years,--the period, as the author terms it, of the "Planting and
Training" of the church. Several other volumes will be required to
complete the history. But the future volumes can hardly be of so much
general interest as these already published.
_Arctic Researches and Life among the Esquimaux_; being the
Narrative of an Expedition in Search of Sir John Franklin in
the Years 1860, 1861, and 1862. By CHARLES FRANCIS HALL.
With Maps and One Hundred Illustrations. New York: Harper
and Brothers.
This book, with the Preface written on board the bark Monticello, June
30, 1864, when the writer was again bound for the Arctic regions, is in
some respects the most remarkable account yet rendered to us of life and
experiences near the North Pole. The purpose of the undertaking was to
find something yet more satisfactory with regard to the fate of the
hundred and five men who accompanied Sir John Franklin. Mr. Hall was
convinced that life among the Esquimaux was possible, and that in no
other way could trustworthy information be obtained from them. His
indomitable spirit in pursuing this object is beyond praise. He could
not be daunted. The result of this three-years' sojourn was the
discovery of relics of the Frobisher expedition, by which the
possibility of discovering news, at least, of the men of Franklin's
expedition was made clear. The unfortunate loss of his expedition-boat
made the journey to Boothia and King William's Land impossible; but Mr.
Hall's prolonged existence during nearly three years among the "Innuits"
determined his immediate departure again for those regions as soon as he
could return and be properly fitted out for a second trip from the
"States."