forward again, until every Malakoff of Wrong is reduced, and every
suffering Lucknow of our country hears the slogan of deliverance. You
have glorious successes to cheer you now. You can think of Somerset and
Donelson, and all the glorious battles of the war--of forts taken, of
enemies driven, of towns evacuated, of the great cities of the enemy in
our hands, of all the stirring, glorious successes of our army and our
flag--and even had you none of these to think of, you could think of our
cause, and this would be enough. Then let the bugles sound, the trumpets
clang, the drums beat, the cannons roar, and we will march, and rally,
and forward, and charge and charge and charge, until victory or death
crown our labors; and if death to us, so let it be--it will be victory
to our successors. This is the spirit of our Northern army. Sing
plaudits to it, ye sons of song. Let your eloquence be inspired by it,
ye golden-mouthed men--ye Everetts and Sumners. Write of them, ye gifted
who would live in the coming time. Weave garlands for them, ye
white-handed and lily-browed. Write anthems and oratorios for them, ye
men of music. Pray for them, each and all of you, night and day, with
heart and voice. But we can not, if we would, overlook the desolation
which the war has brought and must bring upon our favored land. We can
not conceal from ourselves the fact that, end when it will, or how it
may, it must bring desolation to thousands of happy households, and
inflict never-healing wounds upon thousands of happy hearts. For every
man who falls in battle some one mourns. For every man who dies in
hospital-wards, and of whom no note is made, some one mourns. For the
humblest soldier shot on picket, and of whose humble exit from the stage
of life little is thought, some one mourns. Nor this alone. For every
soldier disabled; for every one who loses an arm or a leg, or who is
wounded or languishes in protracted suffering; for every one who has
'only camp-fever,' some heart bleeds, some tears are shed. In far-off
humble households, perhaps, sleepless nights and anxious days are
passed, of which the world never knows; and every wounded and crippled
soldier who returns to family and friends, brings a lasting pang with
him. Oh! how the mothers feel this war! If ever God is sad in heaven, it
seems to me it must be when he looks upon the hearts of mothers. We who
are young, think little of it, know nothing of it; neither, I think, do
the fathers or the brothers know much of it; but it is the poor mothers
and wives of the soldiers. God help them! But the theme is too sad--let
us leave it. And amid this wild rush of war, let us not forget our
individual duties and responsibilities. Carlyle truly says: 'Each of us
here, let the world go how it will, and be victorious or not victorious,
has he not a little life of his own to lead? One life--a little gleam of
life between two eternities--no second chance to us for evermore.' Let
us not forget the loves, the amenities and charities of social life. Let
us not forget that the education of the world must go on as ever, that
the great virtues of charity and self-denial must more than ever be
exercised, and that the discipline and perfection of our own characters
is as ever our grand life-work. Then let the angry waves of tumult dash
up and froth at our feet, let the skies blacken and the tempest roar,
God is over all. This one thing we are to remember, and be cheerful.
Browning says:
'God's in his heaven--
All's right with the world.'
THE CRISIS AND THE PARTIES.
From two points of view, the great and preëminently _American_ nation
vibrates at present in a crisis of immense historical significance. The
first is, that of the war between the United and so-called Confederate
States, which is virtually a strife between Free Labor seeking to
enlarge its sphere and retain its power against agricultural aristocracy
maintained by slave labor. All the energies and theories of industrial
progress, of science, and of constant intellectual development; in a
word, all that is most characteristic of 'the spirit of the Nineteenth
Century,' is enlisted on the one side; all that is fading out and
wearing away, with all that characterizes the unwisest conservatism has
taken its last stand on the other. It is the old story of 'the
generation which comes and of that which goes,' reduced to the intense
form of a fierce fight. All of this--but little understood within a very
few years--has been of late made generally intelligible on this side of
the border, thanks, perhaps, as much to Mr. Hammond's word 'mudsill' as
to any other cause. In the short sentence which declared that there
should always exist, in every community, one ever-sunken and permanently
degraded class, the great point of difference between the South and
North was set forth in a form intelligible to the humblest capacity, and
it _was_ understood--how well has been shown in many a bloody field.
The other crisis in which we are at present involved is domestic and
purely political. It is the growth of opposing political parties, and
its existence is undoubtedly to be regretted, if we take only a
_superficial_ view of the causes of its birth. We could all wish for
some time to come--perhaps forever--to see only a single Union-party,
with all men, looking neither to the right nor the left, pushing
steadily on to the great goal of unity, commercial development, and
social progress. But we forget that so surely as night follows day, even
so surely, in every community, will there be a conservative section and
a progressive; the 'extreme right' of the former consisting of frozen
conservatives, advocating the preservation of every antiquated evil,
because it has acquired in their eyes a halo of 'respectability,' while
on the 'extreme left' of their opponents will be found the radical
innovators, for whom no extravagance of reform is too great; so that as
each molecule or group of atoms has its positive and negative electrical
point, and as each atom in turn obeys the same law, so we see the
positive and negative poles of North and South again reflected in the
rapidly increasing divisions among us of Conservatives, who, by a
singular fatality, still indicate the plebeian origin which they would
now so gladly disown by the term Democrats; and, on the other hand, of
Republicans, nick-named at present Radicals--somewhat unjustly; since
the term is strictly applicable only to a very limited portion of their
number.
There were men of high intelligence among the founders of the _old_
Democratic party; men who understood in many respects the true interests
of humanity and its inevitable tendency, under the influences of free
labor, free schools, and science. But with the masses, it owed its
growth to the old assumed 'natural antagonism' of labor to capital, or
of 'the poor against the rich.' It was essentially the same party as
that which was played upon by low demagogues like Cleon in the old Greek
day; by men who stirred up the poor and ignorant against the privileged
and rich, for their own selfish advantage. Of late years, more
enlightened and intelligent views have prevailed in all parties, and the
Cleons of the present day have been compelled to adventure more and more
among the lowest and most ignorant for dupes. For the workman is
gradually learning with his employer that there is a harmony of
interests and a gradual adjustment of the prices allotted to the
relative values of time, labor, brains, and capital, and that the most
serious obstacle to this adjustment is, the keeping up of a constant
warfare between laborers and employers. It is the skilled _employé_ who
becomes himself the capitalist in due time, under a peaceable and
well-organized system, as labor and brains rise in value, and the
greatest impediment to his rise is a settled state of war between
himself and the employer. Education and political equality, the
competition of capital, and the ever-increasing appreciation of
intelligence, are constantly promoting this harmony and enabling labor
to secure its rights.
It is easy to see how the ancient Democracy, or rather its leaders,
having for many years held political supremacy and shared the spoils,
actually took the place of their opponents, and, in their decline,
naturally enough, formed a coalition with the intensely aristocratic
South. Meanwhile, what became of the once aristocratic Opposition, with
its 'silk-stocking gentry,' as they were termed? Like the Democracy, it
died a natural death, so far as the active enforcement of its principles
was concerned, after those principles had no longer a foundation in the
social developments of the age. Here and there, an old and incurable
devotee to mere forms or party shibboleth, who could not comprehend the
new order of thought, went over to the 'Democratic' conservatives. Of
such were the old gentlemen who, in Philadelphia, voted for the white
waistcoat and immaculate snowy neck-tie of James Buchanan. They fled to
their ancient foes, that they might die happily in the holy odor of
respectability, quite ignorant that a new gospel of what may be termed
Respect Ability was being preached, and building up a higher and grander
order of nobility than they had ever dreamed of.
Meanwhile, the arrogance of the South and its desperate struggle to
secure political preponderance, by extending slavery to the territories,
developed in the North a free-soil and free-labor party, which received,
most appropriately, the name of Republican. The doctrine of free-labor
being intimately allied to every other form of social freedom, and of
active thought and social science, had a natural affinity for
'intellect.' The old Opposition, which had boasted, or been taunted
with, possessing 'all the dignity,' including that of superior culture,
swelled the ranks of this new party with writers and thinkers of
eminence. So it grew in power, taking in, of course, many varied
elements, both good and bad.
As might have been expected, the proper conduct of the war, and the
disposal of the enemy in case of victory, soon led to decided
differences between the Democracy, who could not--owing to ancient
custom--throw aside their love for the name, or their antipathy to the
new doctrines which threatened their power. The mass of them had grown
up in firm alliance with the South, and duped and cat's-pawed as they
had been--irritated as they were at the treachery of their old allies
and despite the noble service which many of them rendered, in fighting
the common foe--many have never been able to hate _ab imo pectore_ the
men of that false and foul feudal party which, when the rupture fairly
came, expressed for their old allies a scorn and contempt deeper even
than they felt for 'the Abolitionists.' In vain the South protested
fiercely that it meant disunion and nothing but disunion, and made its
words good by offering, both in Europe and in its own press, to
sacrifice, if need be, even slavery, rather than be longer bound to the
North; still, the remaining ultra Democracy could not, would not, even
now _will not_ believe that the South would or could be so unfriendly.
It was this hope of compromise and conciliation which lost us forts, and
ships, and millions of dollars in munitions of war; for it was said:
'The South is only boasting, and must not be driven to extremes.' With
eyes wide open to the thefts, the Democratic leaders smiled a languid,
cowardly assent, and let the enemy prepare for war. And war came. It
might have been prevented; it might, beyond all doubt, have been limited
and crushed; but the hand of the braggart South had been so long on the
throat of the doughfaces, that they dared not move, and the doughfaces
were in power. The country at large has had to pay dearly for that old
doughface love for the South; it is paying every day in lives and money.
Even now, it is amazing to see how the leaders among the Democracy,
while pecking the South with the bill, continue to fondle it with the
wing. Again and again, since the war began, they have humiliated the
North and encouraged the desperate foe by efforts at peace-parties,
conciliations, outcries for amnesty, and entreaties not to 'exasperate'
the enemy. They have urged and advocated the maintenance of slavery, the
great cause of Southern arrogance and secession, with as much zeal as
any Southron of them all, and fiercely deprecated any allusion to a
subject which can no more he kept from consciousness than can a deadly
and madly irritating cancer. Every suggestion, even the mildest and most
equitable, for arranging this difficulty, has been stigmatized by them
as out of place and time, while their press has, without exception, as
we believe, given currency to statements denouncing directly as
swindlers and prostitutes the innocent and well-meaning men and women
who went South with the sole object of clothing, nursing, and teaching
the disorganized masses of blacks set free by our army. In all of this,
we have a melancholy illustration of the difficulty with which
unthinking men of the blind mass which rolls itself away into 'parties,'
and follows its leaders, embrace new truths or shake off old habits of
slavery.
While the modern Democratic party firmly believed--as its majority still
seems to--that all this trouble was caused solely by the Abolitionists,
and simply for the sake of liberating some four millions of blacks, they
had at least some color for their iron conservatism. European humanity
did not agree with us; but we of America are more tropical in our
feelings, and so we made up our minds that it _was_ too bad to cut one
another's throats for the sake of benefiting certain 'fat and lazy
niggers,' who were probably rather better off as chattels than as free
men. But it is not from this point of view that the world is now
beginning to view the subject. Common-sense has ascertained clearly
enough that without the agitation of Abolition, the South would have
become intolerable and tyrannical--it was imperious, sectional, and
arrogant in the days of its weakness, while the Abolitionists scarcely
existed, and given to secession for any and every cause. The insolent,
individual independence which prompted the wearing of weapons, wild law
and wild life, free from mutual social obligations, contained within
itself the germs of withdrawal from a civilized and superior people and
a stable government. For such men, one pretense served as well as
another. They of South-Carolina employed Nullification long before they
dreamed of Anti-Abolition.
Still more absurd is the 'Democratic' opposition, since Abolition for
the sake of the Negro has been changed into the cry of _Emancipation for
the sake of the White Man_. Before this cry, before the inevitable and
mighty demand of the free white labor of the future on the territories
of the South, all protestations against 'meddling' with emancipation
shrivel up into trifles and become contemptible. The prayer of the ant
petitioning against the removal of a mountain, where a nation was to
found its capital, was not more verily frivolous and inconsiderable than
are these timid ones of 'let it alone!' And _why_ let it alone? The
Emancipation-for-the-sake-of-the-white-man party, as represented by
President Lincoln's Message, commending remuneration, asks for no undue
haste, no violent or sudden aggressive measures. It is satisfied to let
the South free itself when it shall be disposed so to do; simply
offering it a kindly aid when this measure shall become popular and
expedient. More than this we have never asked for in these columns; yet
it would be hard to imagine a term of 'newspaper abuse,' which has not
been given us by the 'Democratic' press. Yes, at a time when ninety-nine
men in a hundred in the free States avow that they would like to see
slavery 'out of the way,' if only to avoid the endless war which its
continuance _must_ entail, all mention of it is tabooed by the men who
claim to head the party of the virtual majority! No matter how far off
the friends of Emancipation and of the Administration are willing to
postpone the practical execution of the measure, 'it must not be
mentioned.' For the greater part, these Northern friends of the South at
present still earnestly desire the perpetual establishment of slavery
'on a constitutional basis.'
The contemptible efforts at Washington to build up a separate and
distinct Democratic party, when no party save that of the Union existed,
will condemn to everlasting opprobrium the Vallandighams, Carlisles,
Garret Davises, and other false friends of freedom, who at such a time
crowded together like hungry political cormorants, to hatch out the egg
of faction, and secure a prospective share of the spoils. Have these
'Conservatives' reflected on the disgraceful show which their names will
make _in history_, in after-years, when freedom shall have been
proclaimed throughout the land, and when those who opposed its progress
will appear like nothing else than traitors! Heaven help the men who, at
a time when others were gathering in full measure of glory in a holy
cause, were piling up naught but shame for their posterity. For it is
not more certain that God is just, than that the full measure of
iniquity will be heaped upon their names in the after-chronicles of
freedom.
Even to the present moment, the 'Conservative' alias the
'Democratic'--or the Black, alias the White--party struggles with might
and main to defend and protect its old Southern whippers-in, even at the
risk of dividing and distracting the Union. To effect this, it
has--almost successfully--insolently thrust the Commander-in-chief
forward as _its_ centre, and broadly slandered the Secretary of War and
President in no measured terms, as having toiled to defeat McClellan and
prolong the war. Through all the glossy web of lies, the light of truth
shines or will shine to their disgrace.
Chiefly and most unwisely is the conservative hand shown at present in
opposition to every proposition for confiscation or punishing the
rebels. After having hurried us by their cowardice and Southern
toad-eating into this war; after urging it by their contemptible
procrastination to its present tremendous proportions, they cry out
'humanity!' for the men who have murdered our relatives, and shake the
Constitution for protection over estates which have been directly used
to contribute to Southern war! While every mail from the South gives
fresh instances of desperation, and while we search in vain for a trace
of proof that there is the slightest hope of reconciliation, we are
still entreated to restore every thing in _statu quo ante bellum_, and
bear all the results of the war ourselves, as if forsooth we had been
after all in the wrong. And so the Vallandighams and Davises declare
that we were. 'Abolitionism caused it all,' they say, 'nothing but
Abolition.'
Meanwhile, the question urges itself on us every day with more pressing
power, how we are really to settle the whole difficulty? We see but one
course--the 'Northing' of the South. We are content to waive for the
present all theory or project of confiscation, save so far as promoting
the settlement of those soldiers and emigrants who may wish to settle in
the South is concerned. _This_ question demands consideration, and must
have it. Whether the lands to be appropriated for this purpose come
from rebel estates which have ministered to the war, or whether they are
to be taken from State property, they must be had; for the settlement of
the South and the proper rewarding of the army are matters of paramount
importance. The South can no longer exist in its present social
condition. People who believe, to use the language of their most
respectable journal, the Richmond _Whig_, that:
'Yankees are the most contemptible and detestable of God's
creation; vile wretches, whose daily sustenance consists in the
refuse of all other people; for they eat nothing that any body else
will buy;... who have long very properly looked upon themselves as
our social inferiors, as our serfs:'
People, we say, who believe this of us, must be taught to think
differently and truthfully. If they lived in China, it would be
otherwise; but linked to us as they are, we can no longer tolerate such
outrageous superciliousness as they manifest. Those among them who will
learn, may be taught; those who will not, must be supplanted by people
who are not too proud to work, who do not 'abominate the system of free
schools, because the schools are free,'[B] and revile free labor,
because it consists of 'greasy mechanics, filthy operatives, and
small-fisted farmers.' The task is great; but it must be accomplished.
The war is drawing to an end; but a greater and nobler task lies before
the soldiers and the free men of America--the extending of
_civilization_ into the South. Let us lift our minds above the narrow
limits of 'party,' and realize the mighty work which we have in hand.
Let the introduction of free labor to the South be in future the subject
to which every thinking American mind shall be devoted. Let them stream
in by millions!--the free laborers of all the world!--there is room for
them all; and the right of man to work never yet had such fair and just
opportunity to have justice done it. Agricultural aristocracy, supported
by involuntary servitude and unsupported by manufactures, has been
tried, and found worse than wanting. Let its place be filled as promptly
as possible by that truly higher aristocracy of industry and of culture
which is at present common to Europe and our own portion of America. The
turn of the North to rule has at length come. Let its reign be
inaugurated by great, noble, and philanthropic efforts to extend the
blessings of true civilization to all the continent.
I WAIT.
I wait--watching and weary, I wait;
You wander from the way!
My heart lies open, however late,
However you delay!
I wait--watching and weary, I wait;
But day must dawn at last!
Together, beyond the reach of fate,
Love shall redeem my past.
I wait, ah! forever I can wait;
Forever? I am brave:
Time can not fathom a love so great--
It waits beyond the grave!
TAKING THE CENSUS.
Moses Grant sat in his vine-grown arbor one fine afternoon in August. A
fine afternoon, I call it--a little sultry, to be sure, which made Moses
Grant's eyes heavy; but the hum of the bees that played around the white
clover-blossoms, and the sound of the leaves as they rustled in the warm
wind, and the richly colored clouds that floated around in the deep,
deep blue of the summer sky, and a thousand other things which I will
not pause to note, but which every observing reader has noted on many an
August day, made the afternoon I speak of as glorious as any afternoon
could be in all our glorious summer.
Moses Grant's eyes were heavy--or eye-lids, if the reader should be a
critic. He had brought a book from his daughter's book-case. He
remembered the volume--it was called _A Book of a Thousand Stories_--as
the one his daughter Mary read aloud one evening, when the witty turns
of speech put all the company into the best of humor. But, somehow, the
wit had now lost its point--the joke had lost its zest--and let him try
as he would to collect his scattered thoughts, and let him set his eyes
on his book never so firmly, his fancy would go on long journeys into
the past, and come back again, wearied more and more with each journey,
till at last it had sunk to rest, and Moses Grant's eyes were closed.
The bees buzzed on, the leaves quivered as before, and the great world
moved in its wonted way, yet our hero did not heed it; the world moved
on just the same, O reader! as it will one day move--one long, long
day--when you and I will not heed it.
Suddenly Moses Grant heard his name spoken. When aroused, he saw his
neighbor, Johnson, seated in the rustic chair that mated the one in
which he himself sat.
'Good-day, neighbor Johnson,' said Moses Grant. 'What in the world are
you doing with that great book?'
'I am taking the census.' And he began turning the leaves as if
searching for a lost place, remarking, laconically: 'Sultry.'
'Yes, a very close afternoon. But is it ten years since the census was
taken? It seems but as many months. Oh! well, time flies!'
And he looked at the beautiful sky and at the beautiful landscape, and
lingeringly at his own stately mansion, guarded by venerable trees that
his own hand had transplanted from the forest--and the great truth,
half-realized, yet almost as common as our daily life, that time was
sweeping all things into the dead past, day by day and year by year,
gave him a passing thought of how much he loved them.
The name of Moses Grant was duly inscribed in the book. Then the
question was asked by neighbor Johnson:
'When were you born?'
'In the year 1800--sixty years ago the day before yesterday--though I
declare I forgot all about my birthday.'
'Well, how much real estate shall I set down to you?'
'I _have_ said that I owned about fifty thousand dollars in that kind of
property, perhaps a little more, but not half as much as some persons
estimate.'
'Well, how much personal property?'
'I guess about twenty thousand will not go far out of the way, reckoning
mortgages and all.'
After a few minutes, which neighbor Johnson occupied by telling how Sime
Jones tried to get the appointment of census-taker by wriggling about in
an undignified way, and in talking about the prospects of his political
party, the visitor left the old man, (such we have a right to call him
since he has confessed his age,) and the old man (he would not thank us
for using the term so often, for he tries to think he is still
young--the old man, I must again repeat) fell a thinking. His eyes were
no longer closed, although his book _was_; he leaned forward in his
rustic chair, and commenced to talk aloud--which is said to be a growing
habit with most old men:
'Sixty years of human life!' The words were uttered slowly, as though
their full meaning were felt in the speaker's heart. After a little
while they were repeated: 'Sixty years of human life!' There was a
mournfulness in his voice now; it had sunk to the low, tender tones
that, years before, when his faithful wife vanished from earth, revealed
to all his friends that there was sadness in his heart, while there
seemed cheerfulness in his words. 'Welladay!' he continued; 'I have, at
any rate, been a _successful_ man. My business has prospered beyond my
expectations, and I am what people call a rich man. There was a time
when I feared I should come to want; but now, if I could but think so, I
have enough. And mine has been an industrious life. When I was elected
to the State Senate wasn't my name held up in the newspapers as an
example for young men? Wasn't my reputation admitted to be spotless?
Yes, I _have_ been a successful man--more successful than nearly all who
started with me.'