The interest which foreign peoples take in our civil war proceeds from
two causes chiefly, though there are minor causes that help swell the
force of the current of feeling. The first of these causes is the
contemplation of the check which has been given by the war's occurrence
to our march to universal American dominion. For about seventy-two years
our "progress," as it was called, was more marvellous than the dreams of
other nations. In spite of Indian wars, of wars with France and England
and Mexico, of depredations on our commerce by France and England and
Barbary, of a currency that seemed to have been created for the
promotion of bankruptcy and the organization of instability, of biennial
changes in our tariffs and systems of revenue, of competition that ought
to have been the death of trade,--in spite of these and other evils,
this country, in the brief term of one not over-long human life,
increased in all respects at a rate to excite the gravest fears in the
minds of men who had been nursed on the balance-of-power theory. A new
power had intruded itself into the old system, and its disturbing force
was beyond all calculation. Between the day on which George Washington
took the Presidential oath and the day when South Carolina broke her
oath, our population had increased from something like three millions to
more than thirty-one millions; and in all the elements of material
strength our increase had far exceeded our growth in numbers. When the
first Congress of the old Union met, our territory was confined to a
strip of land on the western shore of the Atlantic,--and that territory
was but sparsely settled. When the thirty-sixth Congress broke up, our
territory had extended to the Pacific, on which we had two States, while
other communities there were preparing to become States. It did seem as
if Coleridge's "august conception" was about to become a great fact.
"The possible destiny of the United States of America," said that mighty
genius, "as a nation of a hundred millions of freemen, stretching from
the Atlantic to the Pacific, living under the laws of Alfred, and
speaking the language of Shakspeare and Milton, is an august
conception." To all appearance in 1860, there would be a hundred
millions of freemen here, and not far from twenty millions of slaves, at
the close of the nineteenth century; and middle-aged men were not
unreasonable in their expectation of seeing the splendid spectacle. The
rate of increase in population that we had known warranted their most
sanguine hopes. Such a nation,--a nation that should grow its own food,
make its own cloths, dig or pick up its own gold and silver and
quicksilver, mine its own coal and iron, supply itself, and the rest of
the world too, with cotton and tobacco and rice and sugar, and that
should have a mercantile tonnage of not less than fifteen millions, and
perhaps very much more,--such a nation, we say, it was reasonable to
expect the United States would become by the year 1900. But because the
thought of it was pleasing to us, we are not to conclude that it would
be so to European sovereigns and statesmen. On the contrary, they had
abundant reason to dread the accumulation of so much strength in one
empire. Even in 1860 we had passed the point at which it was possible
for us to have any fear of European nations, or of a European alliance.
We had but to will it, and British America, and what there was left of
Spanish America and Mexico, would all have been gathered in, reaped by
that mowing-machine, the American sword. Had our rulers of that year
sought to stave off civil war by plunging us into a foreign war, we
could have made ourselves masters of all North America, despite the
opposition of all Europe, had all Europe been ready to try the question
with us, whether the Monroe doctrine were a living thing or a dirty
skeleton from the past. But all Europe would not have opposed us, seeing
that England would have been the principal sufferer from our success;
and England is unpopular throughout Continental Europe,--in France, in
Germany, and in Russia. Probably the French Emperor would have preferred
a true cordial understanding with us to a nominal one with England, and,
confining his labors to Europe and the East, would have obtained her
"natural boundaries" for France, and supremacy over Egypt. The war might
have left but three great powers in the world, namely, France, Russia,
and America, or the United States, the latter to include Canada and
Mexico, with the Slave-Power's ascendency everywhere established in
North America. It was on the cards that we might avoid dissension and
civil strife by extending the Union, and by invading and conquering the
territories of our neighbors. Why this course was not adopted it is not
our purpose now to discuss; but that it would have been adopted, if the
Secession movement had been directed from the North against the rule of
the Democratic party, we are as firmly convinced as we are of the
existence of the tax-gatherer,--and no man in this country can now
entertain any doubt of his existence, or of his industry and exactions.
When, therefore, our Union was severed in twain by the action of the
Southern Secessionists, and the Confederacy was established, it was the
most natural thing in the world that most European governments, and by
far the larger part of the governing classes in most European nations,
should sympathize with the Rebels: not because they altogether approved
of what the Rebels avowed to be their principles, or of their scandalous
actions in the cause of lawlessness; but because their success would
break down a nation that was becoming too strong to have any regard for
European opinion, and the continuance and growth of which were believed
to be incompatible with the safety of Europe, and the retention of its
controlling position in the world. England was relieved of her fears
with regard to her North-American possessions; and Spain saw an end put
to those insulting demands that she should sell Cuba, which for years
had proceeded from Democratic administrations,--President Buchanan, in
the very last days of his term, and while the Union was falling to
pieces around him, persisting in a demand which then had become as
ridiculous as it had ever been wicked. Austria and Prussia could have no
objection to the breaking-up of a nation which had sympathized with
Poland, Hungary, and Italy, and which, so far as it acted at all, had
acted in behalf of European Liberalism. France, which would have been
willing to act with us, had we remained in condition to render our
action valuable, had no idea of risking anything in our behalf, and
turned her attention to Mexico, as a field well worthy of her
cultivation, and which our troubles had laid open to her enterprise and
ambition. The kingdom of Italy was of too recent birth to have much
influence; and, though its sympathies were with us, it was forced by
circumstances to conform to the example of France and England. Even
Russia, though unquestionably our friend, and sincerely anxious for our
success, probably did not much regret that something had here occurred
which might teach us to become less ready to prompt Poles to rebel, and
not so eager to help them when in rebellion. Most of the lesser
governments of Europe saw our difficulties with satisfaction, because
generally they are illiberal in their character, and our example was
calculated to render their subjects disaffected.
The feeling of which we speak is one that arose from the rapid growth of
this country, and of the fears that that growth had created as to the
safety of European States. It had nothing to do with the character of
our national polity, or with the political opinions of our people. It
would have existed all the same, if we had been governed by an Autocrat
or a Stratocrat, instead of having a movable President for our chief. It
would have been as strong, if our national legislature had been as
quiescent as Napoleon I.'s Senate, instead of being a reckless and an
undignified Congress. It owed its existence to our power, our growth,
our ambition, our "reannexing" spirit, our disposition to meddle with
the affairs of others, our restlessness, and our frequent avowals of an
intention to become masters of all the Occident. We might have been
regarded as even more dangerous than we were, had our government been as
firmly founded as that of Russia, or had it, like that of France, the
power that proceeds at once from the great intellect and the great name
of its chief. A Napoleon or a Nicholas at the head of a people so
intelligent and so active as Americans would indeed have been a most
formidable personage, and likely to employ his power for the disturbance
of mankind.
But in addition to the fear that was created by our rapid growth in
greatness, the rulers of foreign nations regarded us with apprehension
because of our political position. We stood at the head of the popular
interest of Christendom, and all that we effected was carried to the
credit of popular institutions. We stood in antagonism to the
monarchical and aristocratical polities of Europe. The greater our
success, the stronger was the testimony borne by our career against the
old forms of government. Our example was believed to have brought about
that French movement which had shaken the world. The French Revolution
was held to be the child of the American Revolution; and if we had
accomplished so much in our weak youth, what might not be expected from
our example when we should have passed into the state of ripened
manhood? Our existence in full proportions would be a protest against
hereditary rule and exclusiveness. Imitation would follow, and every
existing political interest in Europe was alarmed at the thought of the
attacks to which it was exposed, and which might be precipitated at any
moment. On the other hand, if our "experiment" should prove a failure,
if democracy should come to utter grief in America, if civil war, debt,
and the lessening of the comforts of the masses should be the final
result of our attempt to establish the sovereignty of the people, would
not the effect be fatal to the popular cause in Europe? Certainly there
would be a great reaction, perhaps as great, and even as permanent, as
that Catholic reaction which began in the generation that followed the
death of Luther, and which has been so forcibly painted by the greatest
literary artists of our time. This was the second cause of that interest
in our conflict which has prevailed in Europe, which still prevails
there, and which has compelled Europeans of all classes, our foes as
well as our friends, to turn their attention to our land. "The eyes of
the world are upon us!" is a common saying with egotistical communities
and parties, and mostly it is ridiculously employed; but it was the
soberest of facts for the three years that followed the Battle of Bull
Run. If that gaze has latterly lost some of its intensity, it is because
the thought of intervention in our quarrel has, to appearance, been
abandoned even by the most inveterate of Tories who are not at the same
time fools or the hireling advocates of the Confederate cause.
Intervention in Mexico, too, whatever its success, has proved a more
difficult and a more costly business than was expected, and has
indisposed men who wish our fall to be eager in taking any part in
bringing it about. It may be, too, that the opinion prevails in Europe
that the Rebels are quite equal to the work which there it is desired
should here be wrought, and that policy requires that both parties
should be allowed to bleed to death, perishing by their own hands. If
American democracy is bent upon suicide, why should European aristocrats
interfere openly in the conflict?
We admit that the inference which the European foes of freedom are
prepared to draw from our unhappy quarrel would be perfectly correct, if
they started from a correct position. If our polity is a democratic
polity, and if the end thereof is disunion, civil war, debt, immense
suffering, and the fear of the conflict assuming even a social character
before it shall have been concluded and peace restored, then is the
conclusion inevitable that a democracy is no better than any other form
of government, and is as bad as aristocracy or pure monarchy, under both
of which modes of governing states there have been civil wars, heavy
expenditures, much suffering for all classes of men, and great
insecurity for life and property. Assuredly, democracy never could hope
for a fairer field than has here existed; and if here it has failed, the
friends of democracy must suffer everywhere, and the cause of democracy
receive a check from which it cannot hope to recover for generations. As
"the horrors of the French Revolution" have proved most prejudicial to
the popular cause for seventy years, so must the failure of the American
"experiment" prove prejudicial to that cause throughout Christendom. Our
failure must be even more prejudicial than that of France; for the
French movement was undertaken under circumstances that rendered failure
all but certain, whereas ours was entered upon amid the most favoring
conditions, such as seemed to make failure wellnigh impossible. But we
do not admit that the position assumed by our European enemies is a
sound one, and therefore we hold that the conclusion to which they have
come, and from which they hope to effect so much for the cause of
oppression, is entirely erroneous. Whether we have failed or not, the
democratic principle remains unaffected. As we never have believed that
our example was fairly quotable by European democrats, even when we
appeared to be, and in most respects were, the most successful of
constitutionally governed nations, so do we now deny that our failure to
preserve peace in the old Union can be adduced in evidence against the
excellence of democracy, as that is understood by the advanced liberals
of Europe. As there is nothing in the history of the French Revolution
that should make reflecting men averse to constitutional liberty, so is
there nothing in the history of our war that should cause such men to
become hostile to that democratic idea which, as great observers assure
us, is to overcome and govern the world.
If we have failed, _if_ our conflict is destined to end in a "general
break-down," so unhappy a close to a grand movement will not be due to
the ascendency of democracy here, but rather to democracy having by us
been kept down and depressed. Our polity is not a democratic polity. It
was never meant that it should be a democratic polity. Judging from the
history of the doings of the national convention which made the Federal
Constitution, and of the State conventions which ratified it, we should
be justified in saying that the chief object of "the fathers" was to
prevent the existence of a democracy in America. Their words and deeds
are alike adverse to the notion that democracy had many friends here in
the years that followed the achievement of our nationality. What might
have happened, had the work of constitution-making been entered upon two
or three years later, so that we should have had to read of Frenchmen
and Americans engaged at the same time in the same great business, it
might be interesting to inquire, as matter of curiosity; but our
government under the Constitution had been fairly organized some days
before the last States-General of France met, and, much as this country
was subsequently influenced by considerations that proceeded from the
French Revolution, they did not affect our polity, while they largely
affected our policy. Some eminent men, who were much under the influence
of French ideas, and others who were democratically inclined by their
mental constitution, did not altogether approve of the polity which had
been formed and ratified, and they represented the extreme left of the
country,--as others, who thought that polity too liberal, (too feeble,
they would have said,) represented the extreme right. These men agreed
in nothing but this, that the Federal Constitution was but a temporary
contrivance, and destined to last only until one extreme party or the
other should succeed in overthrowing it, and substituting for it a
polity in which either liberty or power should embody a complete
triumph. Probably not one of their number ever dreamed that it would
have seventy-two years of unbroken existence, or that the first serious
attack made on it would proceed from the quarter whence that attack was
destined to come.
That our polity ever should have been looked upon as democratical in its
character, as well at home as abroad, is one of the strangest facts in
political history. Probably it is owing to some popular expressions in
the Constitution itself. "We, the People of the United States," are the
first words of the instrument, and they are represented as ordaining and
establishing the Constitution. Some of the provisions of the
Constitution are of a popular character, beyond doubt; but they are, in
most instances, not inspirations, but derived from English
experience,--and it will hardly be pretended that England was an armory
from which democracy would think of drawing special weapons. Our
fathers, as it were, codified English ideas and practices, because they
knew them well, and knew them to be good. The two legislative chambers,
the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus, the good-behavior tenure of
judges, and generally the modes of procedure, were taken from England;
and they are not of democratic origin, while they are due to the action
of aristocrats. The English Habeas-Corpus Act has been well described as
"the most stringent curb that ever legislation imposed on tyranny"; and
that act was the work of the English Whigs, the most aristocratical
party that ever existed, and it was as dear to Tories as to Whigs.
Democracy had no more to do with its existence than with the existence
of the earth. No democratic movement has ever aimed to extend this
blessing to other countries. In forming our judicial system, the men of
1787-'91 paid little regard to democracy, making judges practically
independent. There have been but two Chief Justices of the United States
for wellnigh sixty-four years, though it is well known that
Chief-Justice Marshall was as odious to the Jeffersonians of the early
part of the century as Chief-Justice Taney is to the ascendent party of
the last four years. Mansfield did not hold his seat more securely in
England than Marshall held his in America, though Mansfield was as
emphatically a favorite of George III. as Marshall was detestable in the
eyes of President Jefferson, who seems to have looked upon the Federal
Supreme Court with feelings not unlike to those with which James II.
regarded the Habeas-Corpus Act. Had he been the head of a democratic
polity, as he was the head of the democratic party, President Jefferson
would have got rid of the obnoxious Chief Justice as summarily as ever a
Stuart king ridded himself of an independent judge. And he would have
been supported by his political friends,--democrats being quite as ready
to support tyranny, and to punish independent officials, as ever were
aristocrats or monarchists.
The manner in which Congress is constituted ought alone to suffice to
show that our polity is thoroughly anti-democratic. The House of
Representatives has the appearance of being a popular body; but a
popular body it is not, in any extended sense. The right to vote for
members of the House is restricted, in some States essentially so. As
matters stood during the whole period between the first election of
Representatives and the closing days of 1860, a large number of members
were chosen as representatives of property in men, a number sufficiently
large to decide the issue of more than one great political question. In
the Congress that met in December, 1859, the last Congress of the old
_régime_, one eleventh part of the Representatives, or thereabout,
represented slaves! Could anything be more opposed to democratic ideas
than such a basis of representation as that? Does any one suppose it
would be possible to incorporate into a democratic constitution that
should be formed for a European nation a provision giving power in the
legislature to men because they were slaveholders, allowing them to
treat their slaves as beasts from one point of view, and to regard them
as men and women from another point of view? Even in the Free States,
and down to recent times, large numbers of men have been excluded from
voting for Members of Congress because of the closeness of State laws.
At this very time, the State of Rhode Island--a State which in opinion
has almost invariably been in advance of her sisters--maintains a
suffrage-system that is considered illiberal, if not odious, in
Massachusetts; and Massachusetts herself is very careful to guard the
polls so jealously that she will not allow any man to vote who does not
pay roundly for the "privilege" of voting, while she provides other
securities that operate so stringently as sometimes to exclude even men
who have paid their money. Universal suffrage exists nowhere in the
United States, nor has its introduction ever been proposed in any part
of this country. The French imperial system of voting approaches much
nearer to universality than anything that ever has been known in
America; and yet England manages to get along tolerably well with her
imperial and democratic neighbor. Perhaps imperialism sweetens democracy
for her, just as democracy salts imperialism in France.
But our House of Representatives, as originally constituted, was a
democratic body, when compared with "the upper chamber," the Senate. The
very existence of an "upper chamber" was an invasion of democratic
ideas. If the people are right, why institute a body expressly for the
purpose of checking their operations? Yet, in making our Constitution,
not only was such a body instituted, but it was rendered as
anti-democratic and as aristocratical as it could possibly be made. Its
members were limited to two from each State, so that perfect equality
between the States existed in the Senate, though one State might have
four million inhabitants, and its neighbor not one hundred thousand. How
this worked in practice will appear from the statement of a few facts.
The year before the war began, the three leading States of the Union,
New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, had, in round numbers, ten millions of
people, and they sent six members to the Senate, or the same number with
Delaware, Florida, and Oregon, which had not above a twelfth part as
many. Massachusetts had seven times as many people as Rhode Island, and
each had two Senators. And so on through the whole roll of States. The
Senators are not popularly elected, but are chosen by the State
legislatures, and for the long term of six years, while Representatives
are elected by the people, every two years. The effect was, that the
Senate became the most powerful body in the Republic, which it really
ruled during the last twelve years of the old Union's existence, when
our Presidents were of the Forcible-Feeble order of men. The English
have Mr. Mason in their country, and they make much of him; and he will
tell them, if asked, that the Senate was the chief power of the American
State in its last days. That it was so testifies most strongly to the
fact that our polity is not democratic. Yet it was to the peculiar
constitution of the Senate that the seventy-two years of the Union were
due; and had nothing occurred to disturb its formation, we should have
had no Secession War. There was no danger that Secession could happen
but what came from the existence of Slavery; and so long as the number
of Slave States and of Free States remained the same, it was impossible
to convince any large portion of the slaveholders that their beloved
institution could be put in danger. But latterly the Free States got
ahead of the Slave States, and then the Secessionists had an opportunity
to labor to some purpose, and that opportunity they did not neglect. It
was to preserve the relative position of the two "sections" that the
Missouri Compromise was repealed in 1854, in the hope and expectation
that several new States might be made that should set up Slavery, and be
represented by slaveholders. Had this nefarious scheme succeeded, it
would have saved us from the Secession War; but it would have brought
other evils upon the country, which, in the long run, might have proved
as great as those under which we are now suffering. We were reduced to a
choice of evils; and though we chose blindly, it is by no means certain
that we did not choose wisely. As in all other cases, the judgment must
depend upon the event,--and the judges are gentlemen who sit in
courts-martial.
The manner in which the President and Vice-President of the United
States were chosen was the reverse of democratical. Each State had the
right to cast as many Electoral votes as it had Representatives in
Congress, which was a democratic arrangement up to a certain point; but
as a score and upward of the Representatives owed their existence to the
existence of Slavery, the equality of the arrangement was more apparent
than real. Yet farther in the direction of inequality: each State was
allowed two Electors who answered to its Senators, which placed New
Jersey on a footing with New York, Delaware with Pennsylvania, and
Florida with Ohio, in utter disregard of all democratic ideas. The
simple creation of Electoral Colleges was an anti-democratic proceeding.
The intention of the framers of the Constitution was that the Electors
of each State should be a perfectly independent body, and that they
should vote according to their own sense of duty. We know that they
never formed an independent body, and that they became at once mere
agents of parties. This failure was in part owing to a sort of
Chalcedonian blindness in the National Convention of 1787. That
convention should have placed the choice of Electors where it placed the
choice of Senators,--in the State legislatures. This would not have made
the Electors independent, but it would have worked as well as the plan
for choosing Senators, which has never been changed, and which it has
never been sought to change. The mode of choosing a President by the
National House of Representatives, when the people have failed to elect
one, is thoroughly anti-democratic. The voting is then by States, the
small States being equal to the great ones. Delaware then counts for as
much as New York, though Delaware has never had but one Representative,
and during one decennial term New York's Representatives numbered forty!
Twice in our history--in 1801 and in 1825--have Presidents been chosen
by the House of Representatives.
The manner in which it is provided that amendments to the Constitution
shall be effected amounts to a denial of the truth of what is considered
to be an American truism, namely, that the majority shall rule.
Two-thirds of both Houses of Congress, or two-thirds of the legislatures
of the several States, must unite in the first instance, before
amendments can be proposed, or a convention called in which to propose
them. If thus far effected, they must be ratified by three-fourths of
the States, before they can be incorporated into the Constitution. The
process is as difficult as that which awaited the proposer of an
amendment to the legislation of the Locrian lawgiver, who made his
motion with a rope round his neck, with which he was strangled, if that
motion was negatived. The provisions of Article V. pay no more attention
to the mere majority of the people than Napoleon III would pay to a
request from the majority of Frenchmen to abdicate that imperial
position which he won for himself, and which it is his firm purpose
shall remain in his family.
It would be no difficult matter to point out other anti-democratic
provisions in our National Constitution; and it would be easy to show
that in the Constitutions of most of our States, if not in all of them,
there are provisions which flagrantly violate the democratic principle,
and of which European democrats never could approve. All through the
organic laws of the Nation and the States there are to be found
restraints on numbers, as if the leading idea of the Constitution-makers
of America were aversion to mere majorities, things that fluctuate from
year to year,--almost from day to day,--and therefore are not to be
trusted. We are stating the fact, and it does not concern our purpose to
discuss the wisdom of what has here been done. How happened it, then,
that our polity was so generally regarded as purely democratical in its
character? Partly this was owing to the extremely popular nature of all
our political action, and to the circumstances of the country not
admitting of any struggle between the rich and the poor. Because there
was no such struggle, it was inferred that the rich had been conquered
by the poor, when the truth was, that, outside of the cities and large
towns, there were no poor from whom to form a party. Degrees of wealth,
and of means below wealth, there were, and there were poor men; but
there was no class of poor people, and hence no material from which to
form a proletarian party. In all our great party-conflicts the wealth
and talents of the country were not far from equally divided, the wealth
and ability of the South being mostly with the democratic party, while
those of the North were on the side of their opponents; but to this rule
there were considerable exceptions. Foreigners could not understand
this; and their conclusion was that the masses had their own way in
America, and that property was at their mercy, as it is said by some
writers to have been at the mercy of the democracy of Athens.[J] We
were said to have established universal suffrage, when in fact suffrage
was limited in every State, and in some States essentially limited, the
abuses that from time to time occurred happening in great towns for the
most part. Most citizens were legal voters in the larger number of the
States; but this was owing, not altogether to the liberal character of
our polity or legislation, but to the general prosperity of the country,
which made tax-paying easy and intelligence common, and hence caused
myriads of men to take a warm interest in politics who in other
countries never would have thought of troubling themselves about
politics, save in times of universal commotion. The political appearance
presented by the country was that of a democracy, beyond all question.
America seemed to be a democratic flat to the foreigner. To him the
effect was much the same as follows from looking upon a map. Look upon a
map, and there is nothing but flatness to be seen, the most perfect
equality between all parts of the earth. There are neither mountains nor
villages, neither elevations nor chasms, nothing but conventional marks
to indicate the existence of such things. The earth is a boundless
plain, on which the prairie is as high as Chimborazo. The observer of
the real earth knows that such is not the case, and that inequality is
the physical world's law. So was it here, to the foreign eye. All
appeared to be on the same level, when he looked upon us from his home;
but when he came amongst us, he found that matters here differed in no
striking respect from those of older nations. Yet so wedded were
foreigners to the notion that we were all democrats, and that here the
majority did as it pleased them to do, that, but a short time before his
death,--which took place just a year before the beginning of the
Secession movement,--Lord Macaulay wrote a letter in which he expressed
his belief that we should fall because of a struggle between the rich
and the poor, for which we had provided by making suffrage universal! He
could not have been more ignorant of the real sources of the danger that
threatened us, if he had been an American who resolutely closed his
eyes, and then would not believe in what he would not see. When such a
man could make such a mistake, and supposed that we were to perish from
an agrarian revolt,--we being then on the eve of a revolt of the
slaveholders,--it cannot be matter for wonder that the common European
belief was that the United States constituted a pure and perfect
democracy, or that most Europeans of the higher classes should have
considered that democracy as the most impure and imperfect of political
things.[K]
The long and almost unbroken ascendency of the democratic party in this
country had much to do with creating the firm impression that our system
was democratic in its character,--men not discriminating closely between
that party and the polity of which it had charge. Originally, some
reproach attached to the word _Democrat_, considered as a party-name;
and it was not generally accepted until after the Jeffersonian time had
passed away. Men who would now be called _Democrats_ were known as
_Republicans_ in the early part of the century. But the word conquered a
great place for itself, and became the most popular of political names,
so that even respectable Whigs did not hesitate to appropriate it to
their own use. Whatever name it was known by, the democratic party took
possession of the Federal Government in 1801, and held it through an
unbroken line of Virginia Presidents for twenty-four years. The
Presidential term of Mr. J.Q. Adams was no breach of democratic
party-rule in fact, whatever it was in name, for almost every man who
held high office under Mr. Adams was a Jeffersonian democrat. In 1829
the new democratic party came into power, and held office for twelve
successive years. The Whig victory of 1840 hardly interrupted that rule,
as President Harrison's early death threw power into the hands of Mr.
Tyler, who was an ultra-Jeffersonian democrat, a Pharisee of the
Pharisees. Mr. Polk, a Jacksonian democrat, was President from 1845 to
1849. The four years that followed saw the Presidential chair filled by
Whigs, General Taylor and Mr. Fillmore; and those four years form the
only time in which men who had had no connection with the democratic
party wielded the executive power of the United States. General Pierce
and Mr. Buchanan, both democrats, were at the head of the Government for
the eight years that followed Mr. Fillmore's retirement. Thus, during
the sixty years that followed Mr. Jefferson's inauguration in 1801, the
Presidency was held by democrats for fifty-six years, President Harrison
himself being a democrat originally,--and if he is to be counted on the
other side, the counting would not amount to much, as he was President
less than five weeks. Even in those years in which the democrats did not
have the Presidency, they were powerful in Congress, and generally
controlled Federal legislation. It was natural, when the democratic
party was so successful under our polity, that that polity should itself
be considered democratic. In point of fact, the polity was as democratic
as the party,--our democrats seldom displaying much sympathy with
liberal ideas, and in their latter days becoming even servilely
subservient to Slavery. It is but fair to add, that down to 1854 their
sins with respect to Slavery were rather those of position than of
principle, and that their action was no worse than would have been that
of their opponents, had the latter been the ruling party. But, as the
democratic party did rule here, and was supposed to hold to democratic
principles, the conclusion was not unreasonable that we were living
under a democratic polity, the overthrow of which would be a warning to
the Liberals of Europe.
Our polity was constitutional in its character, strictly so; and if it
has failed,--which we are far indeed from admitting,--the inference
would seem fairly to be, that Constitutionalism has received a blow, not
Democracy. As England is the greatest of constitutional countries, our
failure, supposing it to have occurred, tells with force against her,
from whose system we have drawn so much, and not adversely to the cause
of European democracy, from whose principles and practice we have taken
little. To us it seems that our war bears hard upon no government but
our own, upon no people but ourselves, upon no party but American
parties. It is as peculiar in its origin as in its modes. It had its
origin in the existence of Slavery, and Slavery here existed in the
worst form ever known among men. Until Slavery shall be found elsewhere
in combination with Constitutionalism or Democracy, it would be unfair
to quote our contest as a warning to other liberally governed lands. We
were a nation with a snake in its bosom; and as no other nation is
similarly afflicted, our misfortune cannot be cited in the case of any
other community. Free institutions are to be judged by their effect when
they have had fair play, and not by what has happened in a republic
which sought to have them in an unnatural alliance with the most
detestable form of tyrannical oppression. REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.
_A Summer Cruise on the Coast of New England._ By Robert Carter. Boston:
Crosby & Nichols, pp. 261.
In these days, when the high price of paper makes it easy for authors to
sell by the pound what no one would take by the single copy, he is
luckiest who has made the heaviest book. Our morning newspaper nowadays
is a kind of palimpsest, and one cannot help wondering how many dead
volumes, how many hopes and disappointments, lie buried under that
surface made smooth for the Telegraph (sole author who is sure of
readers) to write upon. We seem to detect here and there a flavor of
Jones's Poem or Smith's History, something like the rhythm of the one
and the accuracy of the other. _Quot libras autore summo invenies?_ is
the question for booksellers now.
In a metaphysical sense, one is apt to find many heavy books for one
weighty one, and it is as difficult to make light reading that shall
have any nutriment in it as to make light bread. Mr. Carter has
succeeded in giving us something at once entertaining and instructive.
One who introduces us to a new pleasure close by our own doors, and
tells us how we may have a cheap vacation of open air, with fresh
experience of scenery and adventure at every turn, deserves something of
the same kind of gratitude as he who makes two blades of grass grow
where one grew before. Americans, above all other men, need to be taught
to take a vacation, and how to spend one so as to find in it the rest
which mere waste of time never gives. Mr. Carter teaches us how we may
have all the pleasure without any of the responsibilities of yachting,
and, reversing the method of our summer migration, shows us the shore
from the sea.
Hakluyt and Purchas have made us familiar with, the landscape of our
coast to the early voyagers,--with its fringe of forest to the water's
edge, its fair havens, its swarms of wild fowl, its wooded islets
tangled with grape-vines, its unknown mountains looming inland, and its
great rivers flowing out of the realm of dream; but its present aspect
is nearly as unfamiliar to us as to them. We know almost as little of
the natives as Gosnold. Mr. Carter's voyage extends from Plymouth to
Mount Desert, and he lands here and there to explore a fishing-village
or seaport town, with all the interest of an outlandish man. He
describes scenery with the warmth of a lover of Nature and the accuracy
of a geographer. Acting as a kind of volunteer aide-de-camp to a
naturalist, he dredges and fishes both as man of science and amateur,
and makes us more familiarly acquainted with many queer denizens of
fin-land. He mingles with our fishermen, and finds that the schoolmaster
has been among them also. His book is lively without being flippant, and
full of information without that dulness which is apt to be the evil
demon of statistics. The moral of it is, that, as one may travel from
Dan to Beersheba and see nothing, so one needs but to open his eyes to
the life and Nature around him to find plenty of entertainment and
knowledge.
_Azarian_: An Episode. By Harriet E. Prescott, Author of "The Amber
Gods," etc. Boston: Ticknor & Fields.
If one opened the costly album of some rare colorist, and became
bewildered amid successive wreaths of pictured flowers, with hues that
seemed to burn, and freshness that seemed fragrant, one could hardly
quarrel with a few stray splashes of purple or carmine spilt heedlessly
on the pages. Such a book is "Azarian"; and if few are so lavish and
reckless with their pigments as Harriet Prescott, it is because few have
access to such wealth. If one proceeds from the theory that all life in
New England is to be pictured as bare and pallid, it must seem very
wrong in her to use tints so daring; but if one believes that life here,
as elsewhere, may be passionate as Petrarch and deep as Beethoven, there
appears no reason why all descriptive art should be Quaker-colored.
Nature and cultivation gave to this writer a rare inventive skill, an
astonishing subtilty in the delineation of character, and a style
perhaps unequalled among contemporaries in a certain Keats-like
affluence. Yet her plots have usually been melodramatic, her characters
morbid, and her descriptions overdone. These are undoubtedly great
offences, and have grievously checked her growing fame. But the American
public, so ready to flatter early merit, has itself to thank, if that
flattery prove a pernicious atmosphere. That fatal cheapness of
immediate reputation which stunts most of our young writers, making the
rudiments of fame so easy to acquire, and fame itself so
difficult,--which dwarfs our female writers so especially that not one
of them, save Margaret Fuller, has ever yet taken the pains to train
herself for first-class literary work,--has no doubt had a transient
influence on Harriet Prescott. Add to this, perhaps, the common and
fatal necessity of authorship which pushes even second-best wares into
the market. It is evident, that, with all the instinct of a student and
an artist, she has been a sensation-writer against her will. The whole
structure of "Azarian," which is evidently a work of art and of love,
indicates these higher aspirations, and shows that she is resolved to
nourish them, not by abandoning her own peculiar ground, but by training
her gifts and gradually exorcising her temptations. Like her "Amber
Gods," the book rests its strength on its descriptive and analytic
power, not on its events; but, unlike that extraordinary story, it is
healthful in its development and hopeful in its ending. The name of "An
Episode" seems to be given to it, not in affectation, but in humility.
It is simply a minute study of character, in the French style, though
with a freshness and sweetness which no Frenchman ever yet succeeded in
transferring into language, and which here leave none of that bad taste
in the mouth of which Charlotte Brontè complained. The main situation is
one not new in fiction, being simply unequal love and broken troth, but
it is one never to be portrayed too often or too tenderly, and it is not
desecrated, but ennobled by the handling. It is refreshing to be able to
say for Miss Prescott that she absolutely reaches the end of the book
without a suicide or a murder, although the heroine for a moment
meditates the one and goes to the theatre to behold the other. The
dialogue, usually a weak point with this writer, is here for better
managed than usual, having her customary piquancy, with less of
disfigurement from flippancy and bad puns. The plot shows none of those
alarming pieces of incongruity and bathos which have marred some of her
stories. And one may fancy that it is not far to seek for the originals
of Azarian, Charmian, and Madame Sarator.
It is the style of the book, however, to which one must revert with
admiration, not unmingled with criticism, and, it may be, a trifle of
just indignation. There are not ten living writers in America of whom it
can be said that their style is in itself a charm,--that it has the
range, the flexibility, the delicacy, the ease, the strength, which
constitute permanent power,--that it is so saturated with life, with
literary allusion, with the symbolism of Nature, as to make us dwell on
the mere sentences with delight, apart from all thought of argument or
theme. This it is to be a literary artist; and as Miss Prescott may
justly claim to rank among these favored ones, she must be tried by the
code which befits her station. There is not, perhaps, another individual
among us who could have written the delicious descriptions of external
Nature which this book contains,--not one of the multitude of young
artists, now devoting their happy hours to flower-painting, who can
depict color by color as she depicts it by words. We hold in our hands
an illuminated missal, some Gospel of Nature according to June or
October, as the case may be. The price she pays for this astonishing
gift is to be often overmastered by it, to be often betrayed into
exuberant and fantastic phrases, and wanderings into the realm of words
unborn. One fancies the dismay of the accomplished corrector of the
University Press, as his indignant pencil hung over "incanting" and
"reverizing" and "cose." Yet closer examination always shows that she,
too, has studied grammar and dictionary, algebra and the Greek alphabet;
and her most daring verbal feats are never vague or wayward, for there
is always an eager and accurate brain behind them. She dares too much to
escape blunders, yet, after all, commits fewer in proportion than those
who dare less. The basis of all good writing is truth in details; and
her lavish wealth of description would be a gaudy profanation, were it
not based on a fidelity of observation which is Thoreau-like, so far as
it goes. "Sabbatia sprays, those rosy ghosts that haunt the Plymouth
ponds,"--"the cardinal, with the very glitter of the stream it loves
meshed like a silver mist behind its scarlet sheen,"--"the wide rhodora
marshes, where some fleece of burning mist seemed to be fallen and
caught and tangled in countless filaments upon the bare twigs,"--such
traits as these are not to be found in the newspapers nor in the
botanies. With all her seeming lavishness, she rarely wastes a word.
Though she may sometimes heap upon a frail hepatica some greater
accumulation of fine-spun fancies than its slender head will bear, she
yet can so characterize a flower with a touch that any one of its lovers
would know it without the name. If she hints at "those slipshod little
anemones that cannot stop to count their petals, but take one from their
neighbor or leave another behind them," it is because she knows how
peculiarly this fantastic variableness belongs to the rue-leaved
species, so unlike the staid precision of its cousin, the wind-flower,
from which not one pedestrian in a hundred can yet distinguish it. If
she simply says, "great armfuls of blue lupines," she has said enough,
because this is almost the only wild-flower whose size, shape, and
abundance naturally tempt one to gather it thus: imagine her speaking of
armfuls of violets or wild roses! From this basis of accurate fact her
fancy can safely unfold its utmost wings, as in her fancied
illustrations for the Garden-Song in "Maud," or in the wonderful
descriptions of Azarian's lonely nights on the water. "He leaned over
his boat-side, miles away from any shore, a star looked down from far
above, a star looked up from far below, the glint passed as instantly,
and left him the sole spirit between immense concaves of void and
fulness, shut in like the flaw in a diamond." How the subscribers to the
Circulating Library of the enterprising Mr. Loring must catch their
breaths in amazement, when that courteous gentleman hands them for the
last new novel--sandwiched between "Pique" and "Woodburn"--thoughts of
such a compass as that!
There are sometimes fictitious writers who sweep across the land in a
great wave of popularity and then pass away,--as Frederika Bremer twenty
years ago,--and leave no visible impression behind. But Harriet
Prescott's fame rests on a foundation of sure superiorities, so far as
she possesses it; and no one has impaired or can impair it, except
herself. If it has not grown as was at first anticipated, it has been
her own doing, and "Azarian" has come none too soon to give a better
augury for the future. There is no literary laurel too high for her to
grasp, if her own will, and favoring circumstances, shall enable her to
choose only noble and innocent themes, and to use canvas firm and pure
enough for the rare colors she employs.
_The Wrong of Slavery, the Right of Emancipation, and the Future of the
African Race in the United States_. By Robert Dale Owen. Philadelphia:
J.B. Lippincott & Co. 12mo.
"Book, Sir, book! It's the _title_!" This is the reputed saying of
Longman, the publisher, when asked for the key to bookselling. It is a
pity that Mr. Owen's book has so cumbrous a name to carry; for
everything else about it is compact and portable. Few American works on
statistics or political economy possess either brevity or an index, and
this combines both treasures. "In this small volume, which a busy man
may read in a few hours," the author condenses an immense deal,--and it
is a blessed sign, if a man who has been in Congress can still be so
economical of words. If his brother Congressmen would only imitate his
precious example, what a blessed hope! How gladly would one subscribe
for the "Congressional Globe," with the assurance that it would
henceforth be the only tedious book in his library, that all the chaff
would hereafter be safely winnowed into that, and all the sense put into
comfortable little duo-decimos like this!
Mr. Owen's opportunities, as Chairman of the American Freedmen's
Commission, have been very great, and he has used them well. The history
of slavery and the slave-trade,--the practical consequences of
both,--the constitutionality of emancipation,--the present condition of
the freed slaves, and their probable future,--all this ground is
comprehended within two hundred and fifty pages. The points last named
have, of course, the most immediate value, and his treatment of these
is exceedingly manly and sensible. He shows conclusively that the whole
demeanor of the freed slaves has done them infinite credit, and that the
key to their successful management is simply to treat them with justice.
That this justice includes equal rights of citizenship he fully asserts,
and states the gist of the matter in one of the most telling paragraphs
of the book. "God, who made the liberation of the negro the condition
under which alone we could succeed in this war, has now, in His
providence, brought about a position of things under which it would seem
that a full recognition of that negro's rights as a citizen becomes
indispensable to stability of government in peace." For, as Mr. Owen
shows, even if under any other circumstances we might excuse ourselves
for delaying the recognition of the freedman's right to suffrage,
because of his ignorance and inexperience, yet it would be utterly
disastrous to do so now, when two-thirds of the white population will
remain disloyal, even when conquered. We cannot safely reorganize a
republican government on the basis of one-sixth of its population, and
shall be absolutely compelled to avail ourselves of that additional
three-sixths which is loyal and black. Fortunately, as a matter of fact,
there are no obstacles to the citizenship of the Southern negro greater
than those in the way of the average foreign immigrant. The emancipated
negro is at least as industrious and thrifty as the Celt, takes more
pride in self-support, is far more eager for education, and has fewer
vices. It is impossible to name any standard of requisites for the full
rights of citizenship which will give a vote to the Celt and exclude the
negro.
Much as has been written on this point, Mr. Owen has yet some
astonishing facts to contribute. He shows, for instance, by the official
statements, that, amidst the great distress produced in the city of St.
Louis at the beginning of the war, by the gathering of white and black
refugees from all parts of the State, when ten thousand persons received
public aid, only two out of that whole vast number were of negro blood.
These two were all who applied, one being lame, the other bedridden, and
both women. He shows, upon similar authority, that the free colored
people of Louisiana, under serious civil disabilities, are, on the
average, richer, by seven and a half per cent., than the people of the
Northern States. Their average wealth in 1860 was five hundred and
twenty dollars, while the average wealth in the loyal Free States is
only four hundred and eighty-four dollars. Such facts show how utterly
gratuitous is the frequent assumption that the emancipated slave does
not sufficiently know the value of a dollar.
Upon some disputed points Mr. Owen does not, perhaps, make his facts
quite cover his inferences, as, for instance, on the vexed question of
the vigor and vitality of the mulatto, upon which the more extended
observations of the last three years have as yet shed little light. It
is the same with the whole obscure problem of amalgamation; indeed, he
slips into an absolute contradiction, in pronouncing judgment rather too
hastily here. "I believe," he says, "that the effect of general
emancipation will be to discourage amalgamation. It is rare in Canada."
(p. 219.) But, however it may be in Canada, he has already admitted,
four pages before, that "the proportion of mulattoes among the free
colored is much greater than among the slaves," which is, doubt less,
true, except, perhaps, in a few large cities of the South. It is a
subject of common remark that the Southern colored regiments are
generally of far darker complexion than those recruited at the North,
and this is inexplicable except on the supposition that freedom, even
more than slavery, tends thus far to amalgamation. What further step in
reasoning this suggests, it is, fortunately, not needful to inquire;
like all other mysteries of human destiny, this will safely work itself
out. It is not for nothing that the black man thrives in contact with
the white, while the red man dies; and there certainly are practical
anxieties enough to last us for a month or two, without borrowing any
from the remoter future.
_Enoch Arden_, etc. By ALFRED TENNYSON, D.C.L., Poet-Laureate. Boston:
Ticknor & Fields.
In his new volume Tennyson has thrown out some verses, graceful,
defiant, triumphant, and yet a little touched with sadness, in which he
assails the thieves who have stolen his seed of poetry, and made the
flower so common that the people call it--as, indeed, they did when
first it blossomed--a weed. It may be for the reason here indicated that
he has chosen for his later poems a form--that of the Idyl--the
versification, construction, and use of which he has made his own by a
delicate and yet indisputable stamp of sovereignty: whatever may be the
reason, let us be thankful for the choice. He has worked in no field of
whose resources he was more completely master, or which has yielded him
more full and varied development of his rare genius. The work of his
riper years, with the results of his fidelity in discipline, his
generous culture, his catholic and earnest intercourse with men, and his
clear and thoughtful observation lying ready for his use, he has crowned
the green glory of his past with a chaplet that will grow more sure of
permanence with the scrutiny of every succeeding year. In his "Idyls of
the King" we recognized the best moral qualities of many of his previous
works; and in "Enoch Arden," which gives the title to his last volume,
he has turned the full light of his perfected genius on the simple
scenes of domestic joy and sorrow.
We have always deemed it one of the greatest of Tennyson's great and
good qualities, that he is unfaltering in the tribute of honor which he
pays to the sterling virtues and to the beauty and heroism which he
rejoices to point us to in the daily walk of the humblest life. A
blameless character, pure desire, manly ambition, a fervent faith, and a
strong will, resting on the firm innermost foundation of a Christian
spirit, are as real to him in the fisherman as in the peerless prince.
The temptations, the strength, and the temper of the hero are so common
to both, and so clearly brought out in each, that we feel the Man in the
Prince, and the high aim of the Prince in the true Man. There is the
"grand, heroic soul" in Enoch as in Arthur,--
"Who reverenced his conscience as his king;
Whose glory was redressing human wrong;
Who spoke no slander, no, nor listened to it;
Who loved one only, and who clave to her."
Our poet never strays from Nature; which has for him two sides,--the old
duality, which is also forever,--the real and the ideal. To the one he
brings the most patient fidelity of study; the other he reflects in
every part of his poems in glowing imagery. "Enoch Arden" contains
scenes which a Pre-Raphaelite might draw from,--as that "cup-like hollow
in the down" which held the hazel-wood, with the children nutting
through its reluctant boughs, or the fireside of Philip, on which Enoch
looked and was desolate. On the other hand, no poet has so planted our
literature with gorgeous gardens from which generations of lesser
laborers will be enriched and prospered. The figures in which Tennyson
uses Nature are not, moreover, strained or artificial; they do not
distort or cover the inner meaning, but bloom from it, revealing its
beauty and its sweetness. All bear the mark of loving thought,--now so
delicate that its very faintness thrills and holds us, now strong and
spirited and solemn.
In this latest poem we find also the old surpassing skill of language, a
skill dependent on the faculty of penetrating to the inmost significance
both of words and of things, so that there is no waste, and so that
single words in single sentences stamp on the brain the substance of
long experiences. Witness this: Enoch lies sick, distant from home and
wife and children; here is one word crowded with pathos, telling of the
weary loss of livelihood, the burden slowly growing more intolerably
irksome to the bold and careful worker wrestling with pain, and to the
fragile mother of the new-born babe:--
"Another hand _crept_, too, across his trade,
Taking her bread and theirs."
See, again, how one line woven in the context shows where the tears
came. Enoch, wrecked, solitary, almost hopeless, found that
"A phantom made of many phantoms moved
Before him, haunting him,--or he himself
Moved, haunting people, things, and places known
Far in a darker isle beyond the line:
The babes, their babble, Annie, the small house,
The climbing street, the mill, the leafy lanes,
The peacock-yewtree and the lonely Hall,
The horse he drove, the boat he sold, the chill
November dawns and dewy glooming of the downs,
The gentle shower, _the smell of dying leaves_,
And the low moan of leaden-colored seas."
We know of no more perfect rendering of an unlearned and trustful faith
in God than this which Tennyson puts in the mouth of Enoch as he departs
on the voyage from which he never returns to his wife:--
"If you fear,
Cast all your fears on God: that anchor holds.
Is He not yonder in those uttermost
Parts of the morning? if I flee to these,
Can I go from Him? And the sea is His,
The sea is His: He made it."
In the repetition in the last line one can almost hear the sob welling
up from the heart of the strong sailor, as he speaks of God to one
beloved, in time of trial,--the feeling of bitterness in parting
starting with the impulse of the stronger faith.
In "Enoch Arden," as in "In Memoriam," Tennyson shows the sweet and sure
sympathy which informs him of all the ways of grief. In its sacred
experiences, where the slightest variance from the simplicity of actual
feeling would jostle all, he holds his way unquestioned.
It is a test, unembarrassed and complete, of genius, this treatment of
grief, the emotion which least of all brooks exaggeration or
sentimentalism. It is the test of human purity, too, and the hand must
be very tender and very clean which leaves thus exact and clear the
picture of the crowning phase of human life. If "In Memoriam" has
appropriated to itself, by its sublime supremacy, a phrase which, though
in daily use, is never heard without suggesting the poem, Tennyson shows
in "Enoch Arden" that he understands the sad and perfect reign of grief
in the life of the sailor and of the sailor's wife struck with a great
sorrow for the loss of the latest born, as well as in the broad and
varied range of his own cultured nature.
Coupled with the knowledge of grief is this of prayer,--"that mystery
when God in man is one with man-in-God,"--which is said when Enoch had
resolved to surrender his Annie rather than to break in upon her
happiness:--
"His resolve
Upbore him, and firm faith, and evermore
Prayer, from a living source within the will,
And beating up through all the bitter world,
Like fountains of sweet water in the sea,
Kept him a living soul."
And so we close the poem, which touches us again more than we deemed
possible, till each renewal of the reading stirs again the depths of
passionate sympathy. A pure manhood among the poets, a heart simple as
the simplest, an imperial fancy, whose lofty supremacy none can
question, a high faith, and a spirit possessed with the sublimest and
most universal of Christ's truths, a tender and strong humanity, not
bounded by a vague and misty sentiment, but pervading life in all its
forms, and with these great skill and patience and beauty in
expression,--these are the riper qualities to which "Enoch Arden"
testifies. They are qualities whose attainment and retention are
singularly rare, and whose value we cannot easily overrate.
And thus much having been said of "Enoch Arden," we find no space for
consideration of the other poems contained in the new volume. "Aylmer's
Field" is in some respects, perhaps, more remarkable than the poem which
precedes it, since the poet never loses sight of England, in its course,
nor the old familiar scenes, but tugs at the fetid roots of shallow
aristocracy with the relentless clutch of one of God's noblemen laboring
for the right.
Shut in these few pages we find the substance of a three-volume novel;
and while the mind sways slowly to the music of its "sculptured lines,"
the lives of men move on from birth to death, leaving their meaning
stamped in rhythmic beauty on our heart and brain.
Nor must we forget, while contemplating the two principal poems in the
volume,--finished heroic lessons of the poet's mature life,--the songs,
singing themselves like summer ripples on the strand, which are their
melodious companions. Among them we dare to mention "In the Valley of
Cauteretz,"--
"Sweeter thy voice, though every sound is sweet."