GEOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE ISLAND
I had intended writing some of my first impressions about Jamaica,
particularly its negro population. But I find, on reviewing my residence
of five years and a half in the tranquil island, that first impressions
melt so imperceptibly into final conclusions, that it appears best not
to attempt a too formal separation of them. Before recounting the
results of my own experience, however, in any form, it will not be amiss
to attempt some general description of the island and of its population,
and to give a slight sketch of its history.
The parallel of 18° N lat. passes through the island of Jamaica, which
has thus a true tropical climate. It is 160 miles in length and 40 in
average breadth, having thus a plane area of 6,400 square miles, being
about equal to the united area of Connecticut and Rhode Island. Although
the third in size of the Greater Antilles, it comes at a great remove
after Hayti, the second, being not more than one-fourth as large. Nor
does it compare in fertility with either Hayti or Cuba. The former
island is the centre of geological upheaval, and the great rounded
masses, sustaining a soil of inexhaustible depth, run off from thence
splintering into sharp ridges, which in Jamaica become veritable knife
edges, sustaining a soil comparatively thin. The character of the island
is that of a mountain mass, which, as the ancient watermark on the
northern coast shows, has at some remote period been tilted over, and
has shot out an immense amount of detritus on its southern side, forming
thus the plains which extend along a good part of that coast, varying in
breadth from ten to twenty miles, besides the alluvial peninsula of
Vere. In the interior, also, there is an upland basin of considerable
extent, looking like the dry bed of a former lake, which now forms the
chief part of the parish of St. Thomas-in-the-Vale. The mountain mass
which makes the body of the island, running in various ranges through
its whole length, culminates in the eastern part of it in the Blue
Mountains, whose principal summit, the Blue Mountain Peak, is 7,500 feet
high. It is said that Columbus, wishing to give Queen Isabella an
impression of the appearance of these, took a sheet of tissue paper, and
crumpling it up in his hand, threw it on a table, exclaiming, 'There!
such is their appearance.' The device used by the great discoverer to
convey to the mind of the royal Mother of America some image of her
new-found realms, forcibly recurs to the mind of the traveller as he
sails along the southeastern coast, and notices the strange contortions
of the mountain surfaces. But seen from the northern shore, at a greater
distance, through the purple haze which envelops them, their outlines
leave a different impression. I shall always remember their aspect of
graceful sublimity, as seen from Golden Vale, in Portland, and of
massive sweetness, as seen from Hermitage House, in the parish of St.
George. The gray buttresses of their farthest western peak, itself over
5,000 feet in height, rose in full view of a station where I long
resided, and the region covered by their lower spurs, ranging in
elevation from seven to ten and twelve hundred feet, is that which
especially deserves the name of the 'well-watered land,' or, as it is
poetically rendered, the 'isle of springs,' of which Jamaica, or perhaps
more exactly Xaymaca, is the Indian equivalent. There you meet in most
abundance with those crystal rivulets, every few hundred yards threading
the road, and going to swell the wider streams which every mile or two
cross the traveller's way, laving his horse's sides with refreshing
coolness, as they hurry on in their tortuous course from the mountain
heights to the sea. Farther west the mountains and hills assume gentler
and more rounded forms, particularly in the parish of St. Anne, the
Garden of Jamaica. I regret that I know only by report the scenes of
Eden-like loveliness of this delightful parish. It is principally
devoted to grazing, and its pastures are maintained in a park-like
perfection. Grassy eminences, crowned with woods, and covered with herds
of horses and the handsome Jamaica cattle, descend, in successive
undulations, to the sea. Over these, from the deck of a vessel a few
miles out, may be seen falling the silver threads of many cascades.
Excellent roads traverse the parish, which is inhabited by a gentry in
easy circumstances, and by a contented and thriving yeomanry. St. Anne
appears to be truly a Christian Arcadia.
In respect of climate and vegetation, there are three Jamaicas--Jamaica
of the plains, Jamaica of the uplands, and Jamaica of the high
mountains. The highest summit of the mountain region, is below the line
at which snow is ever formed in this latitude, and it is disputed
whether an evanescent hoarfrost even is sometimes seen upon it. As high
as four and five thousand feet there are residences, which, however,
purchase freedom from the lowland heats at the expense of being a large
part of the time enveloped in chilling fogs. Here the properly tropical
productions cease to thrive, and melancholy caricatures of northern
vegetables and fruits take their place. You see in the Kingston market
diminutive and watery potatoes and apples, that have come down from the
clouds, and on St. Catherine's Peak I once picked a few strawberries,
which had about as much savor as so many chips. The noble forest trees
of the lower mountains, as you go up, give way to an exuberant but
spongy growth of tree-ferns and bushes. Great herds of wild swine,
descended from those introduced by the Spaniards, roam these secluded
thickets, and once furnished subsistence to the runaway negroes who,
under the name of Maroons, for several generations annoyed and terrified
the island.
In these high mountains the sense of deep solitude is at once heightened
and softened by the flute-like notes of the solitaire. I shall never
forget the impression produced by first hearing this. It was on the top
of St. Catherine's Peak, fifty-two hundred feet above the sea, in the
early morning, when the mountain solitude seemed most profound, that my
companion and I heard from the adjacent woods its mysterious note. It
was a soft and clear tone, somewhat prolonged, and ending in a
modulation which imparted to it an indescribable effect, as if of
supernal melancholy. It seemed almost as if some mild angel were
lingering pensively upon the mountain tops, before pursuing his downward
flight among the unhappy sons of men.
The uplands of the island, from 800 to 1,500 feet above the sea, are a
cheerful, sunny region, in which the tropical heat is tempered by
almost constant refreshing breezes, and, in the eastern part at least,
by abundant showers. Some of the western parishes not unfrequently
suffer terribly from drought. There are two or three which have not even
a spring, depending wholly upon rain water collected in tanks. These
sometimes become dry, causing unutterable distress both to man and
beast. We hear even sometimes of poor people starving during these
seasons of drought. But our more favored region in the east scarcely
knows dearth. Our mighty mountain neighbors seldom permitted us even to
fear it, and were more apt to send us a deluge than a drought.
In the uplands our winter temperature was commonly about 75° in the
shade at noon, and the summer temperature about ten degrees higher. The
nights are almost always agreeably cool, and frequent showers and
breezes allay the sultriness of the days. I never saw the thermometer
above 90° in the shade, and seldom below 65°. It once fell to 54°, to
the lamentable discomfort of our feelings and fingers. Of course, where
the sun for months is nearly vertical, and twice in the summer actually
so, the heat of his direct beams is intense. But those careful
precautions of avoiding travelling in the middle of the day, on which
some lay such stress, we never concerned ourselves with in Jamaica, and
I could not discover that we were ever the worse for it. An umbrella was
enough to stand between us and mischief.
On the whole, it may safely be said that there is no climate more like
that which we imagine of Eden than that of the highland region of
Jamaica during a large part of the year. It is true that after a while
northern constitutions begin to miss the stimulus of occasional cold.
But for a few years nothing could be more delightful. The chief drawback
is that at uncertain cycles there come incessant deluges of rain for
months together, making it dreary and uncomfortable both in doors and
out. Years will sometimes pass before there is any excessive amount of
these, and then sometimes for years together they will prevail to a most
disagreeable extent. They break up the mountain roads and swell the
mountain streams to such a degree as to render travelling almost
impossible, and in a country where your friends are few, you do not like
to be kept back from seeing them by the imminent risk of finding no road
at all on the side of a hill where at best there is barely room enough
between the bank and the gully for one horse to pass another, or of
finding yourself between two turns of a stream, with a sudden shower
making it impossible for you to get either forward or back. But during
my residence I had just enough of these adventures to give a pleasant
zest to life. And after a tremendous rain of hours, when the sun
reappeared, and the banks of fleecy cloud were once more seen floating
tranquilly in heaven, and the streams ran again crystal clear, and the
hills smiled again in all the glory of their brilliant green, and the
air had again its wonted temper, at once balmy and elastic, it was
enough to make amends for all previous discomfort.
Although no part of the island is peculiarly favorable to constitutions
of the European race, yet with prudence and temperance foreigners find
this midland region reasonably healthy. The missionaries, who have
mostly resided in the uplands, have but seldom fallen victims to fevers.
Foreigners must not expect to live here without occasional attacks of
fever; but with care, there need be little apprehension of a fatal
result, except to those of a sanguine temperament or of a corpulent
habit. And the general exemption from the dreadful ravages of
consumption may well be thought to compensate the somewhat greater risks
from fever. Even on the plains, that immense mortality of whites from
the mother country which once gave to Jamaica the ominous name of 'The
Grave of Europeans,' was caused as much by their reckless intemperance
as by any necessity of the climate. Or, rather, habits which in Great
Britain might have been indulged in with comparative impunity, in
Jamaica were rapidly fatal. It is said that another cause of the
excessive mortality among the overseers was that they were often
secretly poisoned by the blacks. On some plantations, I have heard it
said, overseer after overseer was poisoned off, almost as soon as he
arrived. In most cases, I dare say, it would be found that over-liberal
potations of Jamaica rum were the poison that did the mischief. But the
reports have probably some foundation in truth. An oppressed race,
seldom daring to strike openly, would be very apt to devise subtle ways
of vengeance. It will be remembered that one of the most frequent items
in our own Southern newspapers used to be accounts of attempts made by
slave girls to poison their masters' families. Arsenic, which they
commonly used, is a clumsy means, almost sure to be detected; but in the
West Indies, where the proportion of native Africans was always very
large, the African sorcerers, the dreaded Obi-men, who exercise so
baleful a power over the imaginations of the blacks, appear also to have
availed themselves of other than imaginary charms to keep up their
credit as the disposers of life and death, and to have often gained such
a knowledge of slow vegetable poisons as made them formidable helpers of
revenge, whether against their own race or against the race of their
oppressors. In a recent Jamaica story of Captain Mayne Reid's, the plot
centres in the hideous figure of an old Obi-man, who wreaks his revenge
for former wrongs in this secret way, destroying victim after victim
from among the lords of the soil. The piece is stocked with horrors
enough for the most ravenous devourer of yellow-covered literature, but
nevertheless it is so true to the conditions of life in the old days of
Jamaica, that it is well worth reading for a lively sense of the time
when the fearful influences of savage heathenism, slavery, and tropical
passion were working together in that land of rarest beauty and of
foulest sin. Evil enough remains, but, thank God, the hideous shadows of
the past have fled away forever.
But these tragical remembrances and suspicions belong rather to the
plains, into which we are about to descend. Here we feel distinctly that
we are in the tropics. The sweltering heat, tempered, indeed, by the
land and sea breezes, but still sufficiently oppressive, and almost the
same day and night, leaves no doubt of this fact. Vegetation, too,
appears more distinctly tropical. The character of the landscape in the
two regions is quite different. In the uplands the wealth of glowing
green swallows up peculiarities of form, and presents little difference
of color except the endless diversity of its own shades. There are,
however, some distinct features of the landscape. Conspicuous on every
hillside are the groves 'where the mango apples grow,' their mass of
dense rounded foliage looking not unlike our maples, and giving a
pleasant sense of home to the northern sojourner. The feathery bamboo,
most gigantic of grasses, runs in plumy lines across the country. Around
the negro cottages, here and there, rise groups of the cocoanut palms,
giving, more than anything else, a tropical character to the landscape.
On a distant eminence may perhaps be seen a lofty ceiba or cotton tree,
its white trunk rising sixty or seventy feet from the ground without a
limb, and then putting out huge, scraggy arms, loaded with parasites.
Every lesser feature is swamped in verdure, except that here and there
the whitewashed walls of a negro cottage of the better sort gleam
pleasantly forth from embowering hedges and fruit trees. I do not know
how Wordsworth's advice to make country houses as much as possible of
the color of the surrounding country may apply among the gray hills of
Westmoreland; but among the green hills of Jamaica, the white which he
deprecates forms a welcome relief to the splendid monotony of glowing
emerald. It is not amiss to call it emerald, for there are so many
plants here with glossy leaves, that under the brilliant sunlight the
lustre of the green is almost more than the eye can bear. To the
southward of Oberlin station, formerly belonging to our mission, rises a
range of verdant hills, which in some lights has so much the pure,
continuous color of a gem, as almost to realize Arabian fables to the
eye. Indeed, I have gazed at it sometimes with such a feeling as Aladdin
had when the magician had left him confined in the Hall of Jewels, and
have almost wished for an earthquake to cleave its oppressive superbness
and give a refreshing sight of the blue sea beyond.
But on descending to the plains, where there is less moisture, and where
vegetation therefore is scantier, we find the unwonted forms of growth
more distinct, and have the full sense of being in a southern land. Here
the thorn palms, the cactus hedges, the penguin fences, resembling huge
pineapple plants, and various trees and shrubs, being seen more
isolated, make a stronger impression of the peculiarities of tropical
forms. Here too we meet in greater abundance with the cocoanut tree,
occasionally forming long avenues of lofty palms on the estates. And
here we see more frequently the huge squares of many acres, heavy with
the luxuriant wealth of the cane, and thronged by dusky laborers. The
heat, which in the uplands is pleasant, though rather too steady in the
plains, becomes oppressive and enervating. The distinction between the
wet and dry seasons, also, is much more distinctly marked, and, in
short, everything corresponds more fully with the usual idea of a
tropical land.
The luxuriance and the glory of nature are the same now as ever; but
everywhere over the island the traveller sees the melancholy evidences
of the decay of former wealth. You may travel over miles and miles on
the plains once rich with the cane, or ridge after ridge in the uplands
once covered with the dark-green coffee plantations, which now are
almost a wilderness. To quote the language of another, 'ridges,
overgrown with guava bushes, mark the cornfields; rank vegetation fills
the courtyard, and even bursts through the once hospitable roof. A curse
seems to have fallen upon the land, as if this generation were atoning
for the sins of the past. For while we lament the ruin of the present
proprietors, we cannot forget the unrequited toil which in times gone by
created the wealth they have lost; nor that hapless race, the original
owners of the soil, whose fate darkens the saddest page in history.'
A passing traveller will see little to compensate the sadness occasioned
by old magnificence thus in ruins, strewing the whole island with its
melancholy wrecks. What there is to set off against it, we shall
consider hereafter.
What survives of the agriculture and commerce of Jamaica is still, as
formerly, mainly dependent on the two great staples, sugar and coffee;
the former being raised chiefly in the plains and valleys, the latter in
the uplands and mountains. There was, it is said, an indigenous sugar
cane in the West Indies, when first discovered; but if so, it has long
been supplanted by the Mauritius cane, which is now cultivated. The
joints of the cane, being cut and laid horizontally in furrows, which
are then covered over, spring up in a crop which comes to maturity in
about a year; and when this is cut, the roots rattoon, or send up shoots
for five or six years in succession. This is one reason why Jamaica
sugar planters find it so hard to compete with Cuban production. On the
deep soil of Cuba the cane rattoons, it is said, not five or six, but
forty years in succession.
The coffee plant is a beautiful shrub. Left to itself, it would grow
twenty or thirty feet high; but it is kept down to such a height as that
the berries can easily be picked by the hand. Its glossy, dark-green
leaves resemble a good deal the jessamine; and the resemblance is
increased during the time of flowering, by the beautiful white blossoms,
of a faint, delicate fragrance, which are scattered over the branches
like a light powdering of snow. It thrives well in a moist air; and
coffee plantations may be seen clothing the sides of mountains three,
four, and even five thousand feet above the sea. The history of the way
in which coffee was introduced to the West Indies is really quite a
little romance, though an authentic one. It is well known that Holland
used to practise the most odious commercial monopoly ever known among
Christian nations. Her spice islands were guarded with a cruel jealousy
rivalling the fables of the dragon that guarded the golden apples; and
her great coffee island, Java, was equally locked up from the world. To
give a spice plant or a coffee plant to a stranger, was an offence
inexorably punished with death. A single coffee plant, however, was
allowed to come to Europe as an ornament to the conservatory of a
wealthy Amsterdam burgomaster. This was still more jealously watched
than its fellows in the East Indies; but at length a French visitor
managed to secrete a living berry, and, taking it with him to Paris, to
raise a plant. From this again a young plant was taken to Martinique,
one of the French West Indies. When the young stranger, freighted with
such possibilities of wealth, arrived there, it was found that the
exposure of the voyage had nearly extinguished its vitality. It was
tended with the most anxious care; but for two or three years it
continued to languish, and threatened by an untimely death to give Dutch
selfishness a triumph after all. At last, however, it took a happy
start, and from that plant the whole West Indies have derived their
coffee. It was introduced into Jamaica in 1720, and Temple Hall, one of
the two estates which I have mentioned as being in the beautiful valley
between Kingston and the American Mission, has the honor of showing the
oldest coffee walk in the island.
Jamaica coffee is of an excellent quality; the berries, it is said, if
kept two years, being equal to the best Mocha. As some one laments that
the cooks and grooms of the Romans spoke better Latin than even Milton
among the moderns could write, so I can boast in behalf of the Jamaica
negroes, that even Delmonico, unless he could secure the services of one
of them who understands the true method of reducing the browned berry to
an impalpable powder, by pulverizing it between a flat stone and a round
one, must give up all hopes of presenting his guests with the ideal cup
of coffee. I would give the whole process by which an amber-colored
stream, of perfect flavor, might be poured out, without a trace of
sediment, to the very last drop, did I not reflect with pity that
probably in all the wide extent of my country there is neither the
apparatus of grinding nor the sable domestic with skill to use it. Nay,
even in Jamaica, where one would think they could afford to be slow
_for_ a good thing, since they are so amazingly slow _to_ every good
thing, I grieve to say that the barbarous mill, hacking and mangling the
fragrant berry, has almost universally supplanted the more laborious
ancient method by which it was gently reduced to its most perfect
attrition, yielding up every particle of its aromatic strength. Thus the
modern demon of expedition, to whom quickness is so much more than
quality, has invaded even the slumberous repose of our fair island,
bringing under his arm, not a locomotive, but a coffee mill. There are,
to be sure, two or three locomotives on the twelve-mile railway between
Kingston and Spanishtown, but it would be a cruel sarcasm to intimate
that the genius of expedition ever brought them.
There are several other vegetable products of Jamaica, which it owes
likewise to a happy accident. The mango, for instance, which now grows
in such profusion on uplands and plains, that if the groves should be
cut down, the face of the country would seem naked, was a spoil of war,
being brought from a French ship destined for Martinique, somewhere
about 1790. At first it is said the mangoes sold for a guinea a piece,
with the express stipulation that the seed should be returned. Now, in a
good bearing season, I have actually seen a narrow mountain road fetlock
deep with decaying mangoes, besides the thousands consumed by man and
beast. During the summer, in the good years, they furnish the main
subsistence to the negro children, and a large part of the subsistence
of the adults, and make a grateful and wholesome change from the yam and
salt fish which constitute the staples of their diet the rest of the
time. It is this, probably, which has given rise to the absurd report
that the negroes live principally on fruits spontaneously growing.
The young leaves of the mango are of a brownish red; and amid the
general profusion of green, they impart a not ungrateful relief to the
eye. Even their russet blossoms have a pleasant look. But in a good
season, when the fruit is ripe, the groves have a magnificently rich
appearance. Rows upon rows of yellow fruit look like lines of golden
apples. Most people are extravagantly fond of them; but for myself I
must say that, excepting the superb 'No. 11'--so named from being thus
numbered on the captured French ship--and one or two other rare kinds, I
concur with the late Prof. Adams, of Amherst, in thinking that a very
good mango might be made by steeping raw cotton in turpentine, and
sprinkling a little sugar over it.
Another fortuitous gift to Jamaica, so far as human intention is
concerned, was the invaluable donation of the Guinea grass. Toward a
century ago some African birds were brought as a present to a gentleman
in the west of the island. Some grass seeds had been brought along for
their feed; and when they reached their journey's end, the seeds were
thrown away. After a while it was noticed that the cattle were very
eager to reach the grass growing on a certain spot, and on examination
it was found that the seeds thrown away had come up as a grass of
remarkable succulence and nutritiousness. It was soon distributed, and
now it is spread over the island. You pass rich meadows of it on every
lowland estate; and it clothes hundreds of hills to their tops with its
yellowish green. I do not see what the island would do without it. The
pens or grazing farms in particular have been almost wholly created by
it.
Jamaica has, of course, the usual West Indian fruits, the orange, the
shaddock, the lime, the pineapple, the guava, the nispero, the banana,
the cocoanut, and many others not much known abroad. But the
lusciousness of tropical fruits compares ill with the thousand delicate
flavors which cultivation has extended through our temperate clime;
while, at the same time, steam makes nearly all the best fruits of the
West Indies familiar to our markets. The resident of New York or
Philadelphia, and still more of Baltimore has small occasion to wish
himself in the tropics for the sake of fruit.
The great staple of negro existence, and therefore the great staple of
existence to the immense majority of the inhabitants, is the yam. There
are some indigenous kinds; but the species most in use appear to have
been brought in by the imported African slaves. This solid edible dwarfs
our potatoes, a single root varying in weight from five to ten pounds,
and sometimes even reaching the weight of fifty pounds. They are of all
shapes, globular, finger shaped, and long; and the latter, with their
thick, brown rinds, look more like billets of wood, crusted with earth,
than anything else. People in this country are apt to imagine them to be
a huge kind of sweet potato, with which they have no other connection
than that both are edible roots. The white yams, boiled and mashed, are
scarcely distinguishable from very superior white potatoes. Above ground
the plant is a vine, requiring to be trained on a pole, and a yamfield
looks precisely like a vineyard. But oh, the difference! while the
vineyard calls up a thousand recollections of laughing girls treading
the grape, and the sunny lands of story, a yamfield reminds you only
that under the ground is a bulky esculent, which some months hence will
be put into a negro pot, and boiled and eaten, with an utter absence of
poetry, or of anything but appetite and salt. It is plain that in this
case solid usefulness stands no chance with erratic and rather
loose-mannered brilliancy. And yet some kinds of yam in flower diffuse a
fragrance more exquisite, I am persuaded, than comes from any vineyard.
So that, after all, their homely prose has some flavor of poetry, which,
when African poets arise, will doubtless be duly canonized in song.
As yet the small freeholders have chiefly occupied themselves in raising
these 'ground provisions,' as yams, plantains, bananas, and the various
vegetables are called. But they are more and more largely planting cane
and coffee, greatly to their own advantage and that of the island.
If in this favored zone the earth is pleasant underneath, nothing can be
more glorious than the heavens above. Being under the parallel of 18° N.
lat., of course we have a full view of all the northern heavens, and of
all the southern heavens, except 18° about the South Pole. The rarefied
atmosphere gives peculiar brilliancy to the stars; and on a clear
night--and most nights are clear--the heavens are indeed flooded with
white fire, while, according to the season of the year, Orion and his
northern company appear with a lustre unwonted to us, or the Scorpion
unfolds his sparkling length, or the Ship displays its glittering
confusion of stars, or the Southern Cross rears aloft its sacred symbol.
Meanwhile, well down toward the northern horizon, the pole star holds
its fixed position, and the Great and the Little Bear, dipping toward
the ocean wave, but not yet dipping in it, pursue their nightly
revolutions. Long after sunset, and long before sunrise, night after
night, the faint, nebulous gleam of the zodiacal lights stretches up
toward the zenith. The shortness of the twilight frequently leaves the
fugacious planet, Mercury, so seldom seen at the north, in distinct
view. While Venus not merely casts a shadow in a clear night, as she
does with us, but when she is brightest, actually shines through the
clouds with an illumining power.
Alternating with these glories of the starry firmament, the moon at the
full fills the lower air with a soft, yet bright light, in which you can
read without difficulty the smallest print. Under this milder
illumination, the overpowering luxuriance of the landscape loses its
oppressiveness, the hills assume more rounded forms, and from the
general obscurity, the palms, a tree made for moonlight, stand out in
soft distinctness. At such a time we forget the foul crimes which
disfigure the past, and the vices which degrade the present of this fair
land, and can easily imagine ourselves in the garden where the yet
unfallen progenitors of mankind walked under a firmament 'glowing with
living sapphires,' and together hymned the praises of their Creator.
Daylight chases away this illusion, but brings back the reality of
Christian work, whose rugged but cheerful tasks replace the delicious
but ineffectual dreams of Paradise Lost, by the hope of contributing, in
some humble measure, toward restoring in a province of fallen earth the
lineaments of Paradise Regained.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 8: This was during the Crimean war.]
THE RESTORATION OF THE UNION.
God is on the side of our country. Let us reverently thank him that he
has favored the general march of our arms toward the sacred end of our
exertions--the defeat of the daring attempt against the unity of our
national power and the integrity of our free institutions. Not always in
human affairs has the cause of right and freedom prevailed. In the
gradual development of human society, as unfolded in the lapse of long
ages, the oppressor has generally triumphed, and history has full often
been compelled to record the failure of the noblest efforts, and the
downfall of the most righteous designs conceived for the benefit of man.
Such has been the experience of the race in those parts of the world
which have longest been the theatre of human enterprise and of
established government. But the American continent seems to present an
exception to this uniformity of sinister events: it is destined to be
the seat of civil liberty. The success of our institutions in
withstanding the awful trial to which they have just been subjected,
indicates the existence of providential designs toward our favored
country, not to be thwarted by any mortal agency at home or abroad. Such
a combination of hostile elements, so powerful and determined, has never
before assailed any political structure without overthrowing it. The
failure in the present instance shows that our great destiny will be
accomplished in the face of all obstacles, however insurmountable they
may appear to be.
Providence always accomplishes its ends by appropriate
instrumentalities; and in our case there are natural causes adequate to
the great result which seems to be inevitable. In North America the
principle of equal rights and of unobstructed individual progress has
become the fundamental law of society. It is needless to trace the
origin and growth of this principle; but its operation has been so
powerful and productive, so fully imbued with moral and intellectual
power, so solid and safe as a basis of national organization, as shown
in the marvellous history of the United States, that no uncongenial
principle is capable of resisting it, or even of maintaining an
existence by its side. This is true not only with regard to that
antagonistic principle which is now desperately but hopelessly waging a
suicidal war within the bosom of the great republic; but it is equally
true with regard to that insidious germ of despotism, which threatens to
push its way through the soil of a neighboring country, displacing the
free institutions which have long and sadly languished amid the civil
wars of a most unhappy people. The same vigorous vitality which will
renew the growth of our national authority and maintain it in the Union,
will, at the same time, establish its predominant influence on the
continent. Having overborne and rooted out every opposing principle
within the boundaries of our own imperial domain, its growth will be so
majestic that every unfriendly influence which may possibly have secured
a feeble foothold in its vicinity during its perilous struggle, will
soon wither in the shadow of its greatness and disappear from around it.
Foreign nations may exert their sinister authority in the Old World, and
plant their peculiar institutions in that congenial soil, with their
accustomed success; but no amount of skilful manipulation will preserve
these exotics when transplanted in the American soil. The prevailing
elements are not suited to their organization; they cannot be
naturalized and acclimated. This continent, with its peculiar population
and antecedents, has its own political _fauna_ and _flora_, fixed by
nature and destiny, which cannot be utterly changed at the will of any
human authority.
The most wicked and disastrous experiment of the age has been tried upon
the grandest scale. It was a bold undertaking to break up the American
Union, and to arrest the progress of its benign principles. To the great
relief and joy of almost universal humanity, the monstrous attempt is
about to result in disgraceful failure. Yet this prodigious enterprise
of destruction was initiated under the most favorable circumstances,
with the most auspicious promise for its fatal success. The malignant
envy of all the instruments of despotism throughout the whole civilized
world were brought to bear against us for the accomplishment of a work
of stupendous ruin--the annihilation of American nationality, American
power, and American freedom. All the bad, restless, retrogressive
elements of our own population sought alliance with the foreign enemies
of human liberty; and, for the most selfish and detestable of all social
and political schemes, attempted to prostrate the paternal government of
their country, before the expiration of the first century of its
unexampled career. Vast armies of deluded citizens, led by degenerate
sons of the republic--ingrates, educated at her own military
schools--have impiously defied her lawful authority, and sometimes
assailed her with unnatural triumph over her arms; while foreign
capital, subsidized by prospective piratical plunder, has filled the
ocean with daring cruisers to destroy her commerce, and thus to weaken
the right hand of her power. Feathers from the wing of her own eagle
have plumed the arrows directed at her heart; while the barb has been
steeled and sharpened by the aid of mercenary enemies in distant
lands--aid purchased by means of the robberies which have desolated one
half the land. Deep and dangerous have been the wounds inflicted on our
unhappy country through this shameless combination of traitors at home
and enemies of humanity abroad; but she still stands erect, though
bleeding, with her great strength yet comparatively undiminished, and
with her foot uplifted ready to be planted on the breast of her
prostrate foes. She holds aloft the glorious banner, its stars still
undimmed, and with her mild but penetrating voice, she still proclaims
the principles of universal freedom to all who may choose to claim it;
and with the sublimity of the most exalted human charity, she invites
even the fallen enemy--the misguided betrayers of their country--to
return to her bosom and share the protection of her generous
institutions. In the hour of her triumph she seeks no bloody vengeance,
but tenders a magnanimous forgiveness to her repenting children, wooing
them back to the shelter of re-established liberty and vindicated law.
All hail to the republic in the splendor of her coming triumph and the
renewal of her beneficent power!
It has not been within the ability of reckless treason and armed
rebellion to break down the Constitution of the country and permanently
destroy its institutions; so will it be as far beyond the capacity, as
it ought to be distant from the thoughts of the men now wielding the
Federal authority, to operate unauthorized changes in the fundamental
law which they have solemnly sworn to support. The strength of the
people has been put forth, through the Government--their blood has been
profusely poured out, for the sole purpose of maintaining its legitimate
ascendency, and of overthrowing and removing the obstacles opposed by
the hand of treason to its constitutional action. To uphold the
supremacy of the Constitution and laws, is the very object of the war;
and it would be a gross perversion of the authority conferred and a
palpable misuse of the means so amply provided by Congress, to use them
for the purpose of defeating the very end intended to be accomplished.
Neither the legislative nor the executive department of the Government
could legitimately undertake to destroy or change the Constitution, from
which both derive their existence and all their lawful power. It is true
that pending a war, either foreign or civil, the Constitution itself
confers extraordinary powers upon the Government--powers far
transcending those which it may properly exercise in time of peace.
These war powers, however, great as they are, and limited only by the
laws of and usages civilized nations, are not extra-constitutional; they
are expressly conferred, and are quite as legitimate as those more
moderate ones which appropriately belong to the Government in ordinary
times. But when there is no longer any war--when the Government shall
have succeeded in completely suppressing the rebellion--what then will
be the proper principle of action? Will not the Constitution of itself,
by the simple force of its own terms, revert to its ordinary operation,
and spread its benign protection over every part of the country? Will
not all the States, returning to their allegiance, be entitled to hold
their place in the Union, upon the same footing which they held prior to
the fatal attempt at secession? These are indeed momentous questions,
demanding a speedy solution.
If we say that the Federal Government may put the States upon any
different footing than that established by the existing Constitution,
then we virtually abrogate that instrument which accurately prescribes
the means by which alone its provisions can be altered or amended. But,
on the other hand, if we concede the right of each State, after making
war on the Union until it is finally conquered, quietly to return and
take its place again with all the rights and privileges it held before,
just as if nothing had happened in the _interim_, then, indeed, do we
make of the Federal Government a veritable temple of discord. We subject
it to the danger of perpetual convulsions, without the power to protect
itself except by the repetition of sanguinary wars, whenever the caprice
or ambition of any State might lead her into the experiment of
rebellion. Between these two unreasonable and contradictory
alternatives--the right of the Government to change its forms, and the
right of the rebellious State to assume its place in the union without
conditions--there must be some middle ground upon which both parties may
stand securely without doing violence to any constitutional principle.
The Federal Government is clothed with power, and has imposed upon it
the duty, to conquer the rebellion. This is an axiom in the political
philosophy of every true Union man, and we therefore do not stop to
argue a point disputed only by the enemies of our cause. But if the
Government has power to conquer the domestic enemy in arms against it,
then, as a necessary consequence, it must be the sole judge as to when
the conquest has been accomplished; in other words, it must pronounce
when and in what manner the state of internal war shall cease to exist.
This implies nothing more than the right claimed by every belligerent
power, and always exercised by the conqueror--that of deciding for
itself how far the war shall be carried--what amount of restraint and
punishment shall be inflicted--what terms of peace shall be imposed.
The Constitution of the United States does not seem to contemplate the
holding, by the Federal Government, of any State as a conquered and
dependent province; but in authorizing it to suppress rebellion, it
confers every power necessary to do the work effectually. It authorizes
the use of the whole military means of the Government, to be applied in
the most unrestricted manner, for the destruction of the rebellious
power. If a State be in rebellion, then the State itself may be held and
restrained by military power, so long as may be necessary, in order to
secure its obedience to the Federal laws and the due performance of its
constitutional obligations. It would be contradictory and wholly
destructive of the right of suppressing rebellion by military power, to
admit the irreconcilable right of the State unconditionally to assume
its place in the Union, only to renew the war at its own pleasure.
Acting in good faith, the Federal Government has the undoubted right to
provide for its own security, and to follow its military measures with
all those supplementary proceedings which are usual and appropriate to
this end. This principle surely cannot be questioned; and if so, it
involves everything, leaving the question one only of practical
expediency and of good faith in the choice of means.
But it is said there is and indeed can be no war between the Government
and any of the States; but only between the former, and certain
rebellious individuals in the States. We are well aware that in the
ordinary operation of the Federal Government, it acts directly on
individuals and not on States. The cause of this arrangement and its
purpose are well understood. But in case of war or insurrection, the
power must be coextensive with the emergency which calls it forth. If
States are actually in rebellion, then of necessity the Government must
treat that fact according to its real nature. The fiction of supposing
the State to be loyal when its citizens are all traitors, and of
considering it incapable of insurrection when all its authorities are
notoriously in open rebellion, would be not less pernicious in its folly
and imbecility than it would be absurd to the common sense of mankind.
Undoubtedly it may be true in some instances, that the rebellion has
usurped authority in the States. The will of the people may have been
utterly disregarded, and set aside by violence or fraud. The
insurrectionary government of the State may be only the government _de
facto_ and not _de jure_, using these terms with reference only to the
State and its people, and not with reference to the paramount authority
of the Union which, under all circumstances, deprives the
insurrectionary State organization of any legal character whatever. In
all cases of such usurped authority, the people of the States would have
the unquestionable right to be restored to the Union upon the terms of
their recent connection, without any conditions whatever. It would be
the solemn duty of the United States to defend each one of its members
from the violence which might thus have overthrown its legitimate
government. But, on the other hand, when the people of the States
themselves have inaugurated the insurrectionary movement and have
voluntarily sustained it in its war upon the Government, then no such
favor can reasonably be claimed for them. If excitement and delusion
have suddenly hurried them into rebellion against their better judgments
and their real inclinations, they are to be pitied for their misfortune,
and ought to be treated with great leniency and favor; but they cannot
claim exemption from those conditions which may be imperatively demanded
for the future security and tranquillity of the country.
If by possibility there might be some technical legal difficulty in this
view, there would be none whatever of a practical nature; for any mind
gifted with the most ordinary endowment of reason would not fail to be
impressed with the gross inconsistency and inequality of holding that
rebels may not only set aside the Constitution at their will and make
war for its destruction, but may set it up again and claim its
protection; while its defenders and faithful asserters must be held to
such strict and impracticable regard for its provisions that they may
not take the precautions necessary to preserve it, even in the emergency
of putting down a rebellion against it. Such an irrational predicament
of constitutional difficulties and political contradictions would soon
necessitate its own solution. The revolution on the one side would
induce a similar revolutionary movement on the other; attempted
destruction by violence would justify the measures necessary to the
restoration of the Government and to its permanent security in the
future. There would be little hesitation in adopting these measures in
spite of any doubt as to their regularity. The public safety would be
acknowledged as the supreme law, and they who had placed themselves in
the attitude of public enemies could not complain of the rigid
application of its requirements to them.
The most inveterate of the rebels certainly do not anticipate the
relaxation of this principle. They are careful to make known to the
Southern people the impossibility of returning to the Union, except upon
such conditions as may be prescribed by the conquering power. It is true
they do this to deter their followers from indulging the thought of any
restoration of their former Federal relations; but this fact of itself
shows their consciousness of the justice of the position. They have
betrayed their people into a situation from which they cannot reasonably
hope to escape without making important concessions to the Federal
Government. Their effort now is to convince the misguided population of
the South that the required concessions will be more intolerable than
the indefinite continuance of a hopeless and destructive civil war.
There is no necessity, however, to go beyond the limits of the
Constitution; nor is there any reason to believe that the Government, in
any event, will be disposed to exact terms inconsistent with the true
spirit of our institutions. A great danger, such as now threatens our
country, might, in some circumstances, justify a revolution, altering
even the fundamental laws, for the purpose of preserving our national
unity. The justification would depend upon the nature of the
circumstances--the extremity and urgency of the peril; and the change
would be recognized and defended as the result of violence, irregular
and revolutionary. At a more tranquil period, in the absence of danger
and excitement, it would be practicable to return to the former
principles of political action; or, in case of necessity, the sanction
of the people might be obtained in the forms prescribed by the
Constitution, and the change found necessary in the revolutionary period
would either be approved and retained, modified, or altogether rejected.
But fortunately no constitutional obstacle whatever stands in the way of
making such stipulations as may be appropriate between the Federal
Government and the States; nor would they at all imply any admission of
the right of secession, or of the actual efficacy of the attempted
withdrawal from the Union. On the contrary, any agreement with the State
would, _ex vi termini_, admit the integrity of its organization under
the Constitution. Special agreements are usually made whenever a new
State is admitted into the Union; and as all the States, old and new,
stand upon an equal footing, there can be nothing in the ordinances
usually adopted by the new States, conflicting with the principles on
which the Government is organized. The States are prohibited from
making 'any agreement or compact' with each other, without the consent
of the Federal Government; but there is no prohibition against making
such agreements with the Federal Government itself. What the new States
may do upon entering the Union, the old States may do at any time upon
the same conditions This principle was settled upon the admission of
Texas into the Union; it has been sanctioned in many other instances;
and we are not aware that there is or can be any question of its
soundness. Surely, if there could ever be an occasion proper for a
solemn compact between the General Government and any of the separate
States, it will be found at the conclusion of this unhappy war, when it
will be necessary to heal the wounds of the country, and provide for its
permanent peace and security. To quell an insurrection so extensive,
involving so many States in its daring treason, especially when it has
assumed an organized form and been recognized not only by other nations
but even by ourselves, as a belligerent entitled to the rights of war,
implies the necessity, in addition to the annihilation of its armies and
all its warlike resources, of removing the causes of its
dissatisfaction, and destroying its means of exciting disturbance. The
Government is by no means bound unconditionally to recognize the old
relations of States which, as such, have taken part in the rebellion;
which have themselves repudiated all their constitutional rights and
obligations; and which may again, at any time, renew the war, from the
same impulse and for the same cause. On the contrary, the close of the
disastrous contest will be a most favorable opportunity for compelling
the conquered insurrection to submit to terms such as will deprive it of
all capacity for similar mischief in the future. The insurrection will
not be effectually suppressed unless its active principle is destroyed.
Nothing can be plainer than the right and the solemn duty of the
Government in this great emergency.
Supposing these principles to be admitted, there still remains for
determination the most important question as to the nature of the
conditions which ought to be exacted of the returning States--a problem
of the most difficult character, involving the most delicate of all
considerations, and demanding for its solution the highest practical
statesmanship and the most profound wisdom, based upon moderation,
firmness, liberality, and justice. In this problem several elements
exist in complicated combination, and each one of these must be fairly
considered in the adjustment whenever it may be made. The measures of
safety which the Government has been compelled to adopt in the progress
of the war, and to which it may be committed without recall; the
condition of the rebellious States, and their demands and propositions;
and finally, the interests, rights, and just expectations of the African
race, which has become so intimately involved in this terrible
strife--all these must be weighed accurately in the scales of truth, and
with the impartial hand of disinterested patriotism. No mere partisan
considerations, no promptings of selfish ambition, and no miserable
sectional enmities or fierce desires for revenge, ought to be allowed to
mingle with our thoughts and feelings when we approach this great
subject of restoring peace and harmony to the people and States of this
mighty republic. Awful will be the responsibility of those men in
authority, who shall fail to rise to the height of this momentous
emergency in the history of our country--who shall be wanting in the
courage, the purity, the magnanimity necessary to save the nation from
disunion and anarchy.
What ought to be the conditions upon which the rebellious States are to
be reëstablished in their old relations, it is perhaps premature now to
attempt to determine. The war is not yet closed, although we are
sufficiently sanguine to believe that we have already seen 'the
beginning of the end.' But the still nearer approach of the final acts
in the great drama will give a mighty impetus to events, and many great
changes will be wrought in the condition of the Southern people, and in
their feelings toward the Union, against which too many of them are
still breathing hate and vengeance. They have scarcely yet been
sufficiently chastened even by the fiery ordeal through which they have
been compelled to pass. Every day, however, increases the bitterness of
the scourge under which they suffer, and if it does not avail to humble
them, it tends at least to convince them, in their hearts, of the
terrible mistake into which they have been led. We may well hope and
believe that the masses of the people will soon be brought to that
rational frame of mind which will incline them to acknowledge the
irresistible exigencies of their situation, and to make those
concessions that may be found indispensable to peace and union. As we
approach the moment of decisive action, experience will teach us the
solemn duty devolving upon us. While we may not at present anticipate
fully what will then be necessary, we can nevertheless determine some
few principles of a general nature which must control the adjustment.
We will be compelled to consider not only the duty which the Government
owes the people, in the matter of their own permanent security, but also
the obligations it has assumed, the promises it has made, and the hopes
it has excited in the bondsmen of the rebellious States. There must be
good faith toward the black man. It would be infamous to have incited
him to escape from slavery only to remand him again, upon the
restoration of the Union, to the tender mercies of his master. What
differences of opinion may have existed in the beginning as to the
legality and policy of the Proclamation and of employing the liberated
slaves as soldiers, the Government and people are too far committed in
this line of action to be able now to withdraw without dishonour and
foul injustice. Many of the consequences of the war may be remedied, and
even the last vestiges of them obliterated. Cities may be rebuilt,
desolated fields made to bloom again with prosperity, and commerce may
return to its old channels with even increased activity and volume. Many
wounds may be healed, and may separations may be brought to an end by
the renewal of friendships broken by the war; but the separation of the
slave from his mater, so far as it has been caused by any action of the
Government, can never be remedied. That must be an eternal separation,
resting for its security upon the humanity as well as the honor of the
American people. What! Shall we restore the States unconditionally, and
permit the fugitive slave law again to operate as it did before the
rebellion? Shall we consent to see the men whom we have invited away
from the South dragged back into slavery tenfold more severe by reason
of our act inducing them to escape? This is plainly impossible. Argument
is wholly out of place; felling and conscience revolt at the very idea.
It may be admitted that this question, with its peculiar complications,
presents the most difficult and dangerous of all problems; but there is
no alternative: we must meet and solve it at the close of this
rebellion. We have to combat the selfish interests of a class still
powerful, aided by the great strength of a popular prejudice almost
universal. The emergency will require the exertion of all our wisdom and
all our energy.
The vast body of slaves in the South have not yet been incited to
action, either by the movements of our armies or by the potency of the
Proclamation. Whether they will be, and to what extent, depends upon the
continuance of the war, and its future progress. The result in this
particular remains to be seen, and cannot now be anticipated. What legal
effect the measures of the Government may have upon the slaves remaining
in the South would be a question for the decision of the courts; and
doubtless most of them would be entitled to liberation as the penalty of
the treason of their masters, who may have participated in the
rebellion. But it is well worthy of consideration whether it would not
be wise and better for all parties, including the slaves, to commute
this penalty by a compact with the States for the gradual emancipation
of the slaves remaining at the time of the negotiation. The sudden and
utter overthrow of the existing organization of labor and capital in
those States, coming in addition to the awful devastation which the war
has produced, will deal a disastrous blow, not alone to those
unfortunate States, but to the commerce and industry of the whole
country.
But neither the Government of the United States alone, nor this together
with the Africans, liberated and unliberated, can prescribe their own
requirements, as the law of the emergency, without reference to other
great interests involved. The question must necessarily be controlled by
the sum of all the political elements which enter into it. It is
desirable to restore the States to the Union with as little
dissatisfaction as possible, and even with all the alleviation which can
properly be afforded to the misfortunes of the people who have so sadly
erred in their duty to themselves and to their country. After any
settlement--the most favorable that can be made--heavy will be the
punishment inflicted by the great contest upon the unhappy population of
the rebellious region. In many things, it is true, they will suffer only
in common with the people of all the States; but they will also have
their own peculiar misfortunes in addition to the common burdens. A
generous Government, in the hour of its triumph, will seek to lessen
rather than to aggravate their misfortunes, even though resulting from
their crimes. Having received them back into the bosom of the Union, it
will do so heartily and magnanimously, yielding everything which does
not involve a violation of principle, and endanger the future
tranquillity of the country. The harmony of the States, their
homogeneity, and their general progress in all that contributes to the
greatness and happiness of communities, ought to be, and doubtless will
be, the benign object of the Government in the settlement of the
existing difficulty. If these high purposes necessarily require in their
development a provision for the rapid disappearance of slavery, the
requirement will not arise from any remaining hostility to the returning
States; on the contrary, it will look to their own improvement and
prosperity, quite as much as to the peace and security of the whole
country. The day will yet arrive when these States themselves will
gratefully acknowledge that all the sacrifices of the war will be fully
compensated by the advantages of that great and fundamental change,
which they will undoubtedly now accept only with the utmost reluctance
and aversion.
WAS HE SUCCESSFUL?
'Do but grasp into the thick of human life! Every one _lives_
it--to not many is it _known_; and seize it where you will, it be
interesting.'--GOETHE.
'SUCCESSFUL.--Terminating in accomplishing what is wished or
intended.'--WEBSTER'S _Dictionary_.