This ideal element so predominates, in consequence of over or false
_culture_; by the reading of a spurious literature, which dwells in
the regions of fiction and romance, to the proportionate neglect of
the stirring incidents of our time, which actually go to make up true
history--which seem marvellous enough of themselves, without the
necessity of invention, or the aid of artificial novelties, except for
mere embellishment.
It would seem that the rise and progress of this Republic; the spread
of our ocean commerce; the building of a thousand cities; the rush of
the world to our shores; the peopling of our boundless plains; the
rapid birth of new States into our Union; the triumph of our arms; our
repeated accessions of territory; our maritime and commercial
superiority; our foreign discoveries; our inventions in mechanism; our
discoveries in science; the use of steam, and electricity; our
statesmanship, and foreign diplomacy; a thousand miraculous incidents
of individual enterprise and success; the discovery of gold, of
silver, and iron; our internal improvements and meliorations; our
national _prestige_; and finally, our greatness and glory as a
nation,--ought to suffice for any reasonable conception of the
marvellous, as they outstrip the more ignoble creations of fancy, and
absolutely invade the former domain of fiction and romance. Hence the
seeming puerility of fiction when contrasted with these more wondrous
phenomena of fact. The substitution of fiction for fact is, therefore,
unnecessary and absurd, as it defeats the very purpose intended, by
its own inferiority. Its chief effect, then, is but to mislead the
mind.
Let us, then, control the imagination; discard the _ideal_ in
practical affairs, hold it in its sphere, and adopt the REAL, in order
that by the exercise of right reason we may be enabled to consider the
present subject as it _is_, and not as it would be when weighed in the
scale of the ideal; for in this way, and this alone, can we come to
just conclusions, and our labors result in practical benefit to those
most concerned in the premises. In the spirit of truth, of candor, of
sober reality, let us, therefore, approach the subject of American
Slavery.