In these exciting times, when our country is enduring the throes of
political convulsion, and every time-honored institution, every
well-regulated law of society seems tottering from the broad foundation
of the past, how few are there who ask themselves the question, What is
to be our future? For the past two years we have lived in a state of
extraordinary and unnatural excitement, beside which the jog-trot
existence of the former days, with all its periodical excitements, its
hebdomadal heavings of the waves of society, pales into insignificance.
Like the grave, with its eternal 'Give! give!' our appetites, stimulated
to a morbid degree by their daily food of marvels, cry constantly for
more; and a lull of but a few brief months in the storm whose angry
pinions are constantly bringing new wonders to our view, begets an
almost insupportable _ennui_ in the public mind, and a restlessness
among the masses, such as our history has never before shown. Nor will
the craving be satiated so long as the war shall last; for the stirring
events, following so closely upon each other, and filling every hour of
our national life, will keep up the unnatural excitement, even as the
stimulating effect of alcoholic drinks is prolonged by repeated
draughts. Only when the source is entirely cut off will the stimulus
pass away; and then, when peace is established, and we drop again into
the ruts and grooves of the olden days, the reaction will set in, and
happy shall we be if it is not followed by a political _delirium
tremens_.
To-day we are living in and for the present alone. Men's minds are so
completely absorbed in the wonderful events that are constantly passing
around them, in the startling _denouements_ that each day brings forth,
that their attention is entirely distracted from that future to which we
are inevitably tending. And this not because that future is of little
importance, but because nearer and more vital interests are staring us
in the face, in which it is involved, and upon which it depends--a
nearer and more portentous future, which we must ourselves control and
shape, else the farther state will be utterly beyond our influence,
fixed in the channel of a malignant and ever-grovelling fate. The great
question now is, how soonest to end the war prosperously to ourselves;
and until this problem, involving our very existence, is solved, the
future, with all its prospects, good or bad, is left to take care of
itself, and rightly, too; for in the event of our present success, our
future will be in our own hands, while, if we fail, it will be fixed and
irrevocable, without the slightest reference to our interests or our
exertions. And yet, natural as this fact may seem, it is a little
singular that, while thousands of minds are eagerly searching for light
upon the question of the future of the American negro, few are found to
inquire what is to be our own. Strange that one exciting topic should so
fill men's minds and monopolize their sympathies as to entirely exclude
other questions of greater importance, and bearing more directly upon
our present and vital interests. Yet so it is, and so it has been in all
ages of the world, though, happily, the hallucination does not last for
any very extended period; for there is a compensation in human as well
as in inanimate nature, which, in its own good time, brings mind to its
proper balance by the harsh remedy of severe and present necessity, and
so retrieves the errors of a blind past.
Yet, absorbed as is the popular mind in the stirring events of the war,
and dull as all other themes may seem in comparison, it may not be
without interest to examine, in connection with our future, some of
those facts which are now floating about at random on the surface of
society, waiting for some hand to gather and arrange them in the
treasure house of prophecy. And in so doing, let it be premised that we
proceed entirely upon the hypothesis--which to every truly loyal mind is
already an established truth--of the ultimate success and complete
triumph of the North in the present contest. For in any other event all
these facts are dumb, and the inferences to be drawn from them vague and
unsatisfactory, absolutely no better than mere random conjecture. And as
the war has now become the great fact in our history, and its effects
must modify our whole social life for many years to come, its results
must not be neglected in an investigation of this kind, but, on the
contrary, claim our first attention.
First and foremost, then, among the lasting results of the war, will be
the _arousing of our nationality_. To the majority of readers it will
seem the climax of heresy to assert that hitherto we have not known a
pure and lofty nationality. What! you will ask, did not our ancestors,
by their sufferings and strivings in that war which first made our land
famous throughout the civilized world, bestow upon us a separate, true,
and noble national existence? Have we not twice humbled the pride of the
most powerful nation upon earth? Have we not covered the seas with our
commerce, and brought all nations to pay tribute to our great staples?
Have we not taken the lead in all adventurous and eminently practical
enterprises, and is not our land the home of invention and the foster
mother of the useful arts? Has not the whole world gazed with admiring
wonder at our miraculous advancement in the scale of national existence?
In a word, have we not long since become a great, established fact, as
well in physical history as in the sublime record of that intellectual
progress whereby humanity draws constantly nearer to the divine? And as
for patriotic feeling, do we not yearly burn tons of powder on the
all-glorious Fourth of July, and crack our throats with huzzas for the
'star-spangled banner' and the American eagle? And a caviller might
perhaps go farther, and ask the significant question, Are we not known
all over the world as a race of arrant braggarts?
Grant all these things, and we are yet as far from that true, firm,
self-relying, high-toned nationality which alone is worthy of the name,
as when the Pilgrims landed upon Plymouth rock. Our patriotism has
hitherto been too utterly heartless--too much a thing of sounding words
and meaningless phrases--too much of the 'sounding brass and tinkling
cymbal.' We have built too much upon the exploits of our ancestors,
reposed too long upon their laurels, forgetting that their efforts were
but the initiatory step in the great contest that was to be carried on
by succeeding generations; forgetting that we have still a destiny to
work out for ourselves, a niche to secure in the great temple of
humanity, obstacles to surmount, difficulties to overcome, bitter and
deadly foes to vanquish. And how totally devoid of heart have been even
our celebrations of our great national birthday and holiday! While we
have amused ourselves with the explosion of crackers and blowing off of
our neighbors' arms by premature discharges of rusty cannon, while we
have rent the air with squibs, shouts, and exclamations, and listened to
the periodical and hackneyed outbursts of oratorical gas, how few of us
have remembered the deep significance of the day, and felt our hearts
swell with genuine patriotic emotion! How few of us have realized that
we were celebrating not merely the establishing of a form of government,
the severing of galling bonds which bound us to the servitude of the old
world, not merely the birthday of independence and of a nation, but the
birthday of an immortal principle, whose beneficent effects were not
more for us than for the generations of all succeeding time! The masses
saw in that day but an universal _fete_, a day of national relaxation
and enjoyment, and neither thought or cared much about its deep meaning;
while to the few, the thinking men alone, appeared the principle which
underlay all this festivity and vociferation. Henceforth this will not
be so. We have lived so long and so undisturbed in the enjoyment of our
political blessings, that we have not appreciated our favored lot; but
now, when for the first time in our history treason has boldly lifted
its head, and traitors have endeavored to deprive us of all our most
cherished blessings--to strike at the very root of all that is good and
pure in our political system--now for the first time do we see those
blessings in their true light, and realize their inestimable value. Now
that the prestige of our greatness threatens to depart from us, do we
first see the glorious destiny which the great God of nature has marked
out for us. Now for the first time do we realize that we have a purpose
in life--that we are the exponents of one of the great truths of the
universe itself, and appreciate the awful responsibility that rests upon
us in the development of our great principle, as well as in protecting
it from the inroads of error and corruption. And herein lies the great
secret of all true national life. For no nation was ever yet truly great
that had not constantly before it some lofty and ennobling object to
direct all its strivings, some great central truths at its very core,
continually working outward through all the great arterial ramifications
of society, keeping up a brisk and healthy circulation by the force of
its own eternal energy. Lack of a noble purpose, in nations as well as
individuals, begets a vacillating policy, which is inevitably followed
by degeneration and corruption. The soldier, who has passed many a weary
month in the monotony of the camp, enduring all the hardships of
rigorous winters and scorching summers, of fatigue and privation, and
who has shed his blood upon many a hard-fought field, will learn to
appreciate as he never has before the true value of that Government for
which he has suffered so much, and, with the return of our armies to
their homes, this sentiment will be diffused among the masses, and the
lessons they have learned will be taught to their fellows: and this,
together with the recognition of our true end and aim in existence--of
the part which our country is destined to play in the great drama of
life, will beget a noble, self-relying national pride, the very opposite
pole to that senseless, loud-mouthed self-laudation which has too much
characterized us in the days gone by. The boaster betrays the
consciousness of the very weakness he wishes to conceal; while 'still
waters run deep,' and the man of true courage and strength is the man of
few words and great deeds. So that arrant bragging which has hitherto
been our besetting sin, and which, so long as our real importance in the
affairs of the world was unacknowledged, was somewhat excusable, and
perhaps even necessary to sustain a yet unestablished cause, will be
necessary no longer when we have proved ourselves worthy of the position
we claim, and will, with the newborn consciousness of our power and
strength, pass away forever, and we shall work steadily on in our
appointed course, leaving it to others to recognize and proclaim our
worth, to sound the trumpet which we have so long been industriously
blowing for ourselves, content to let our reputation bide its time and
rest upon sterling deeds rather than upon pompous declamations and empty
oratorical phrases. The deeds of our ancestors were great indeed, and
their patriotism and self-sacrificing devotion to a noble cause beyond a
parallel: but even those will pale beside the present struggle of a
full-grown nation at the very crisis of its fate; and the results which
followed their efforts will be as nothing to those which shall flow from
our battle of to-day. For while it was theirs to initiate, it is ours to
develop and firmly establish; theirs to deliver the nation from the womb
of centuries, ours to educate, to guard from danger through childhood
and youth, to nurse through disease, to tone down the crudities of
national hobble-de-hoy-dom, to fix and strengthen by judicious training
the iron constitution, both mental and physical, which shall resist the
ravages of disease and error for all time to come. How much more
important, then, appears our mission than theirs! how much greater the
responsibility which rests upon us to faithfully fulfil that mission!
And this will be the feeling of every true American. This will be the
knowledge, gained by the bitterest experience, which will give us that
nationality we have so long lacked.
And not a little conducive to the development of that new-found
nationality will be the respect and admiration, not to say applause,
which the display of our latent power and resources, the prosperous
conduct and successful close of this the most gigantic struggle of
history, will win for us from the nations of the Old World. And this
brings me to the second beneficial effect of this war upon our future,
namely, the establishment of our position among the great powers of the
earth, and our relief from all future aggressions, encroachments, and
annoyances of the mother country. From the day when our independence was
declared, America has been an eyesore to all the leading Governments of
Europe--the object of detraction and bitter hostility, of envy, hatred,
and malice, and all uncharitableness. And though these feelings have
been partially concealed under the cloak of studied politeness and
false, hollow-hearted friendship, occasions enough have been given for
them to break forth in sufficient intensity to establish beyond a
question the fact of their existence. The apostles of despotic power
have suffered no opportunity to escape of dealing a blow at our national
existence: even the low and disreputable weapon of slander has been
brought to bear against us, and we have been held up to mankind as a
race of visionaries, of fanatical reformers, whose efforts have ever
been to destroy all the honored landmarks of the past, and lead humanity
back over the track of ages to the socialism of primitive existence. And
it was but natural for us to expect little sympathy from their hands,
for in our success lay the triumph of a principle which was deadly to
all their cherished institutions--a principle which, once firmly
established, must in time inevitably spread beyond the waters, to the
utter and eternal downfall of aristocracies and dynasties, since it is
founded in one of the very first truths of universal human nature--in
the recognition of the rights of the individual, and of the total
dependence of the governing upon the governed. And yet they could not
withhold their admiration of the indomitable energy and perseverance of
the American race, and their wonder at our miraculous growth in
enlightenment and power. Taught wisdom by the past, they dared not
combine to crush us by brute force, and so they have waited and hoped
for the downfall which they sincerely believed would, sooner or later,
overtake us. England and France have ever hung about us like hungry
wolves around the dying buffalo, waiting patiently for the hour when
they might safely step in and claim the lion's share of the spoil. The
crisis of our fate which they have so long awaited, they now fondly
believe to be upon us; and old England, false, treacherous, cowardly,
piratical England, fearful lest our native resources may enable us to
weather the storm, has at last dropped the mask of a century, and openly
encourages and abets the rebels and traitors who are desperately
striving for our dismemberment, even furnishing them with the very bone
and sinews of war, that they may compass their unholy ends, and effect
the ruin which will give to her another fat colonial province. While the
more wily French emperor, looking to our possible success, and anxious
for a subterfuge beneath which he may skulk in that event, and so escape
the retribution which will assuredly fall upon his head, has really
outwitted his island rival, in his Mexican expedition, whereby he hoped
to 'kill two birds with one stone,' securing, in either event, the
richest portion of the American continent, and thereby establishing a
foothold, that, in case of our ruin, he may be first 'in at the death,'
and carry off the larger share of the booty. And what will be the
result? Checked, defeated, disgraced on the very threshold of his
undertaking, his chosen and hitherto invincible legions, furnished with
all the appliances of warlike invention, and perfected in the boasted
French skill and discipline, baffled and routed by the half-civilized
Mexicans, to whose very capital our own raw volunteers marched in a
single season, he will be by no means anxious to measure his strength
with ours when we shall have emerged from a war in which the lessons of
military science, learned by hard experience, have been widely diffused
among our hitherto peaceful people, and when we shall have nearly a
million of trained troops ready to spring to arms at an hour's call;
troops who will fight a foreign foe with double the courage and
desperation which has characterized the present war. If he cannot subdue
the rude Mexicans, can he conquer us?
The development of those latent resources of which even ourselves were
ignorant, the display of wealth and power at which we are astonished no
less than foreign nations, the energetic prosecution of more than two
years of war on such a magnificently extended and expensive scale,
without even feeling the drain upon either our population or treasure,
have taught Great Britain a lesson which she will not soon forget, and
of which she will not fail to avail herself. What nation ever before,
without even the nucleus of a standing army, raised, equipped, and put
into the field, within a brief six months, an army of half a million of
men, and supported it for such a length of time, at the cost of a
million dollars per day, while scarcely increasing the burden of
taxation upon the people? And yet this was done by a portion only of our
country--the Northern States; and that, too, by a people totally of and
hitherto unaccustomed to warlike pursuits. If such are our strength and
resources when divided, what will they be united and against a foreign
foe? England cannot fail to see the question in this light, and in the
future she will find her interest in courting our friendship and
alliance, rather than in continual encroachment and exasperation. We
shall hear no more of Bay Islands or northwestern boundaries, of San
Juan or rights of search; and the Monroe doctrine will perforce receive
from her a recognition which she has never yet accorded to it. She will
recognize as the fiat of destiny our supremacy on the western
hemisphere. Foreign nations have respected us in the past; they must
fear us in the future. And while they will have no cause to dread our
interference with the affairs of the Old World, they will be cautious of
tampering with a power which has proved itself one of the first, if not
the very first, on the face of the earth.
For--and this is another effect of the war which may be noticed in this
connection--for many years to come we shall be a military nation. The
necessity of guarding against a similar outbreak in the future will
prompt the increase of our standing army; while the same cause, as well
as the taste for military pursuits which our people will have acquired
during this war, will keep the great mass of the people prepared to
respond to the first call in the hour of danger. The militia laws will
be revived, revised, and established on a firmer basis than ever before,
and the antiquated militia musters and 'June trainings' will again
become our most cherished holidays. Independent military organizations
will spring up and flourish all over the land, and he who aforetime wore
his gorgeous uniform at the heavy cost of running the gauntlet of his
neighbors' sneers and gibes as a holiday soldier, will now be honored in
enrolling his name among the 'Independent Rifles' of his native village.
The youth will labor to acquire the elements of military knowledge and
reduce them to practice, not with a view to holiday parades, but with an
eye to the possible exigencies of the future, knowing that when the hour
of trial shall come, the post of honor and of fame will be open to all,
and that he who has most cultivated the military art in time of peace
will bid fair to win in the race for preferment. Military schools will
derive a new importance in our country; they will be patronized by high
and low, and most of our institutions of learning will, ere many years,
have a military as well as a scientific and classical department. And
thus will the knowledge of the art of war become so universally diffused
among the people, that in the event of another great struggle, we shall
not be left, as heretofore, to depend upon raw and undisciplined
volunteers, but an army of well-trained troops will spring like magic to
the field, ready to march at once to victory, without the necessity of
'camps of instruction' and twelve months' delays. And when that day does
come, woe to that potentate who shall have the temerity to provoke a war
with our race of soldiers: his legions will be swept away like chaff
before the whirlwind, and only defeat and disgrace will settle upon his
banners.
Again, the stimulus which this contest has applied to warlike invention
has already placed us in that respect far ahead of the most warlike
nation on earth. France has hitherto been known as the great originator
in all military science: probably she will yet, for many years, retain
the palm in the province of tactics and executive skill. But as an
originator and perfecter of the engines and defences of war, America has
already robbed her of her crown, and stands to-day unsurpassed. No
greater proof is needed of our superiority in this respect than the fact
that in two short years of civil strife we have revolutionized the whole
art of war as it has existed for ages, rendering absurd the maxims and
useless the experience of the olden days, while filling their places
with systems and theories whose practical results are so clear as to
overwhelmingly sustain the new order of things, and compel not only the
admiration but the support and adoption of the onlooking world. The
antiquated weapons of warfare are harmless to-day, and their places are
supplied by new and more destructive engines, which Europe must perforce
adopt in self-defence, and thus bow to the genius of American invention,
whereby the old is so entirely and radically supplanted by the new, that
the Napoleons and Wellingtons of a past age would be but tyros in our
battles of to-day. The lesson of the Monitors is not the only one Europe
has learned from us within the last two years. And we have more to teach
her yet, more marvels yet to be evolved from that inexhaustible mine of
invention--the Yankee brain. For as long as the war shall last,
furnishing not only a promise of a golden harvest in the future, but a
present and substantial support to inventive genius, at the same time
that a new stimulus is being constantly supplied by the events and
experience of each succeeding day, the work will go on, and weapon after
weapon, engine after engine, will be thrown into the world's great
market, constantly approaching nearer to the perfection of destructive
power. And as there is no poison without its antidote, so the
originating faculties of the American mind will be as fully exerted in
the creation of defences against those very engines of destruction.
Armed thus at all points, and containing within ourselves not only a
source of future supply, but even the very fount of originating faculty
in this speciality, we shall be a power with which it is dangerous to
trifle--a power with which others will not care to come in collision in
any other form than that of an overwhelming combination, which, thank
God! has become in these days one of the impossibilities of political
manoeuvring. Nor will they be anxious, on any slight provocation, to
again arouse that inventive faculty which furnishes us with material of
war far in advance of the rest of the world. We have within ourselves
every element of strength, every quality necessary to inspire and compel
respect from all nations. In our own God-given faculties lie both the
'_Procul, procul, este profani!_' and the 'Tread not on me, or I bite,'
which in all ages have constituted so-called national honor and pride,
and which will be to us the broad aegis of protection when the
storm-cloud of war darkens the horizon of the world. If this fail, the
fault will be our own; we shall be unworthy custodians of the treasure;
our downfall will be merited as it is sudden and sure, and few will be
found to mourn over us.
As the effervescence of new wine brings all impurities to the surface,
casting off those noxious superfluities whose presence is pollution to
the liquid and disease and death to the partaker, so the present war is
but the effervescence of our as yet new and unpurified political system,
whereby all errors and impurities are thrown to the surface of society,
ready to be skimmed off by the hand of the people, who are themselves
the vintners and the rectifiers. No system of government is without
radical defects, and it was not to be expected that our own would be
free from error, founded as it is upon a principle new to the world, or
only known as having totally failed in the past through the clumsiness
of its originators and subsequent custodians--a system which had little
aid from the experiences of the past, and must necessarily grope in the
darkness which surrounds all new experiments of this kind, lighted only
by the few, meagre, _a priori_ truths of deductive reasoning. Our
ancestors, hampered as they were by the lack of this great experience of
social life, legislated for the men and circumstances of their time; and
though they had ever an eye to the future, yet, conscious of the
fallibility of human wisdom and foresight, they themselves did not
expect their work to stand unchanged for all time. New circumstances
would arise--the people themselves would change with time, and with them
must necessarily change the laws that govern their actions. Law and
government must keep pace with the progress of humanity, else the nation
itself becomes effete, superannuated, deteriorated. Many errors there
doubtless are in our system, taking their rise as well in the very
commencement of our existence as from the fluctuations of society. Of
these, some have hitherto lain inert and concealed, from the very lack
of circumstances to induce their development, and from the lack of a
field of action. Others have worked so slowly and insidiously as to have
remained totally concealed from our view, as well from the fact of their
never having as yet been productive of any decided and palpable evil
effect, as from our becoming gradually accustomed to them and their
workings, and from the preoccupation of the public mind with more
exciting questions. But in all times of popular excitement and tumult,
of revolutionary ideas and attempted violent reform, errors spring forth
in dazzling brightness from the darkness of the past, like Minerva from
the brain of Jove, armed with the full panoply of destructive war,
clothed in the garb of maturity, and endowed with gigantic strength.
Such has been the case in our day. As the early spring sun, warming the
long-frozen soil and heating the foul moistures of the earth, brings to
life and to the surface of the ground swarming myriads of noxious
insects and reptiles, who, during the long winter months, have slept
silent and torpid far down within the oozy depths, and hatches the
thrice-told myriads of eggs deposited in seasons passed away, and which
have long waited for his life-giving influence to pour forth their
swarming millions to the upper air; even so this war has hatched the
eggs of error, and brought forth the torpid defects of long gone-by
decades, affording them a broad field of operation in their work of
destruction; while it has at the same time torn away the veil which has
hitherto blinded our eyes, and shown us, in the disasters of to-day, the
culmination of the evil effects of causes which have for long years been
working secretly at the very core of the body politic. But not alone has
it brought forth error and corruption; for the same harsh influence has
also revivified the seeds of virtue and awakened the sleeping lion of
justice, uprightness, and national honor, which shall act as healthful
counterbalances to all the evil, and supplant the monsters of
destructive error.
For in the [Greek: gnothi seauton] of the Greek philosopher lies the
secret of all reform. To know one's faults is already one half the
battle to correct them. He who becomes conscious that health of body and
mind are steadily yielding to the inroads of an insidious foe, is worse
than a fool if he do not at once apply the knife to the seat of disease,
however painful may be the operation. And though to-day we hear but
little of reform, and all parties seem striving which shall display the
most devotion to the cause of the past, the most affection for the
unchanged and unchangeable _status quo ante bellum_ in all things, yet
is the popular mind not the less earnestly though silently working.
To-day we have a task which occupies all our attention, absorbs all our
powers and resources, and there is no time for reform: the all-absorbing
and vital question being the establishing of things upon the old
footing. But, peace restored, and the deathblow given to treason, the
work of reform will commence. Then will become manifest the workings of
the great mind of the nation during all this trying and bloody war. To
acknowledge our defects and miscomings now, is but to give a handle to
the enemies of our cause: but, this danger removed, the axe will at once
be laid at the root of those evils which have come nigh to working our
destruction; all the unsightly excrescences which have for years been
accumulating upon the trunk of our goodly tree will be carefully pruned
away, and the result will be a healthier and more abundant fruit in the
days to come. And these reforms will be brought about quietly, yet with
a firm and vigorous hand, and in a manner that will show to the world
our determination henceforth to leave no loophole for the entrance of
the destroyer.
No race of _thinkers_ can ever be enslaved. Hitherto we have been too
unreflecting, too much governed by momentary impulses, too much carried
away by party cries and unhealthy enthusiasm, and hence completely
beneath the sway of designing demagogues. We have left the politicians
to do our thinking for us, and accepted too unhesitatingly their
interested dicta as our rules of political action. The press has
hitherto led the people, and so mighty an engine of political power has
been eagerly seized and controlled by party leaders as a means of
accomplishing their ends. All this will be done away with. We shall do
our thinking for ourselves, and those who shall hereafter be put forward
as the prominent actors upon the great stage of politics will become,
what they have never before been save in name, the servants of the
people. The press of America, like that of England, must hereafter
follow, not lead, the sentiments of the nation. And while true 'freedom
of the press' will be religiously conserved, that unrestrained license
which has always too much characterized it will be restrained and
brought within its true limits, not by statutes or brute force, but by
the much more powerful agency of public opinion--by the danger of
tampering with the cherished and elevated sentiments of the reading
masses.
And as a result of this newborn faculty of thought, we shall see the
disappearance of extreme views and the birth of charity in our midst.
Men will give due weight to the opinions and respect more the natural
prejudices of their fellows. While ultra conservatism is the rust which
eats away the nation's life, radicalism is the oxygen in which it
consumes itself too rapidly away. Or perhaps, a better simile would be
found in the components of atmospheric air--nitrogen and oxygen; the one
a non-supporter of combustion, the other giving it a too dazzling
brilliancy at the expense of the material upon which it feeds; yet both,
properly combined, so as in a measure to neutralize each other,
supporting the steady and enduring flame which gives forth a mild and
cheering light and heat, neither dazzling nor scorching. So conservatism
and radicalism, properly intermingled and exercising a restraining
influence upon each other, are the very life of a great and free people.
And never, in the history of the world, have these principles been more
thoroughly demonstrated, more clearly manifested to the eyes of even the
unlearned and humble, than in the present war, in which one or the other
of these two great mental phases has been the originator of every great
movement, to make no mention of the palpable effect, now appearing upon
the face of society, of their action in the past. And hence, in the
future, we shall see in a noble, far-reaching, broadly spreading,
heaven-aspiring _conservative radicalism_ the prevailing characteristic
of American life and progress.
Hitherto the very prime principle of self-government, an intelligent
cognizance of public affairs and a reflective insight into the
fundamental principles of liberty, has been totally neglected in our
land. And if the events of these years shall really teach our people to
think--I care not how erroneously at first, for the very exercise of the
God-given faculty will soon teach us to discriminate between true and
false deductions, and restore Thought to her native empire,--then the
blood and treasure we have so lavishly poured out, the trembling and the
mourning, the trials, the toils, and the privations we have suffered,
even the mighty shock which the society of the whole civilized world has
received, will be but a small price to pay for the blessing we shall
have gained, and our future prosperity will have been easily purchased
even at so tremendous a cost. God grant it may be so.
There is no land on earth where treason may work with such impunity as
in our own. And this is owing as well to the greater latitude conceded
to political speculations by the very nature of our system, as to the
fact that our ancestors, having, as they thought, effectually destroyed
all those incentives to treason which exist in more despotic lands, and
little anticipating the new motives which might with changing men and
times spring up in our midst, neglected to ordain the preventives and
remedies for a disease which they imagined could never flourish in our
healthy atmosphere. And while they imposed an inadequate penalty, they
at the same time made so difficult the proof of this the greatest of
crimes, that when at last the monster reared its head and stalked boldly
through the land, there was no power to check or destroy it. It will be
ours to see, in the future, that this impunity is taken away from this
worse than parricide, and that, while a more awful penalty is affixed to
the crime, the plotter shall be as amenable to the law and as easy to be
convicted as he who takes the murderous weapon in his hands.
And for the accomplishment of this and similar ends, doubtless greater
power will be conceded by the States to the Federal Government. The day
has gone by when the people were frightened at the bare idea of giving
to the central Government the necessary power to maintain its own
integrity. The pernicious doctrine of State sovereignty as paramount to
the national, has in this war received its deathblow at the hands of
those who have always been its most zealous supporters. The South,
starting out upon the very basis of this greatest political heresy of
our age, had no sooner taken the initiatory step in severing completely
all the ties and bonds which held them to the Union, than they discarded
the very doctrine which had been their strongest weapon in forcing their
people to revolt: well knowing that no government founded upon such a
basis could stand for a single year; that the upholding of such a
principle was neither more nor less than political suicide. And though
at the commencement of our struggle there were many at the North in
whose minds the dogma had taken deep root, few are found to-day to
uphold the pernicious doctrine, and those few men of more than
questionable loyalty. And not this principle only, but every other which
is inconsistent with republican ideas, antagonistic to the growth of the
giant plant of human freedom, has come to its death at the hands of the
god of war. Great commotions are the test of great ideas, and that
principle either of government or of human action which can withstand
the shock of such an upheaving as the present, and come unharmed through
the war of such conflicting elements, may well claim our support as
founded in eternal truth. The penetrating glance of human intellect,
sharpened by the perilous exigencies of the times, and by the quick
succession of startling events, even as the inventive faculties are said
to be rendered more acute by the presence of danger, at such times sees
clearly the fallacies which perhaps have blinded mankind for years, and
recognizes, with unerring certainty, the misfortunes and disasters of
to-day as the evil effects of theories which aforetime were only
considered capable of good.
And with these theories must inevitably fall their supporters and
promulgators. The men who have persistently misled the public mind and
falsified the experience of the past as well as the deductions of
abstract reasoning, and who, consequently, if not the originators, are
at least the aggravators, of all our misfortunes, need expect no mercy
at the hands of the people. They must share the fate of their doctrines,
and consent to be quietly shelved, buried beyond the hope of a
resurrection: and it is to be hoped that their places will be filled by
good, earnest, and true men, who have proved themselves devoted to the
cause of our country's advancement rather than to that of personal
preferment. In this war, the men of the future must make their record,
and whenever they shall come before the people for the posts of honor
and distinction, they will be judged according as they have to-day
sacrificed personal prejudices and partisan feeling upon the altar of
unity and freedom. For years to come the first question concerning a
candidate will be, Was he loyal in the troublous times? was he earnest
and true? There will be no distinction between the truly loyal Democrat
and the earnest Republican. Those who have to-day stood shoulder to
shoulder in the common cause will, whatever may be their difference in
shades of opinion, be sworn friends in the future; while he who has in
these times been only noted for a carping, cavilling spirit, for
activity in endeavors to hamper and thwart the constituted authorities
in their efforts to restore and maintain the integrity of the
Government, will to their dying day wear the damning mark of Cain upon
their brows: their record will bear a stain which no subsequent effort
can wipe away. And though in the days to come other exciting questions
will arise to divide the people into strongly opposing parties, which,
indeed, are necessary to all true national life, preserving the balance
of political power, acting as a check upon injudicious and interested
legislation, and, above all, evolving truths by the very attrition of
conflicting ideas, yet the intimate association of the past, bringing
about a thorough acquaintance with the virtues and patriotism of the
great mass of those who profess radically different ideas and opinions,
as well as the wearing off of the sharp corners of those ideas
themselves by a closer and more impartial observation, will tend to
smooth away the asperities of partisan conflict, and beget greater
charity and more respect for the opposing opinions of others, based upon
a knowledge of the purity of intention and loftiness of purpose of
political opponents. The evils of sectional feeling and sectional
legislation, so clearly manifested in present events, will be avoided in
the future, as the Maelstrom current which sucks in the stoutest bark to
inevitable destruction: and while we shall still retain that natural
love of home which binds us most closely to the place of our abode, the
principle will be recognized that the well-being of the whole can only
lie in the soundness and prosperity of each particular part, and we
shall know no dividing lines in our love of country, but all become
members of one great brotherhood, citizens of one common and united
country. The experience of the past will teach us to religiously avoid
the snares and pitfalls that beset our path, the hidden rocks and shoals
upon which our bark had wellnigh stranded; and the science of politics
will henceforward have a broader sweep, a loftier appreciation of
national responsibility, a purer benevolence, a sublimer philanthropy.
Among the influences which will greatly modify the future of American
politics, not the least is the lately enacted banking law. Hitherto we
have been divided in our finances as no nation ever was before. Every
individual State has had not only its own system of banking, but its own
separate and distinct currency; a currency oftentimes based upon an
insufficient security, and possessing only a local par value. The
traveller who would journey from one portion of the country to another
was driven to the alternative of converting his funds into bills of
exchange, or of shopping from broker to broker to procure the currency
of the particular localities which he proposed to visit. Not to mention
the inconvenience of such a state of things, it is productive of many
dire evils, which it is not my purpose to enumerate, since they are
already familiar to the majority of my readers. Suffice it to say that
such a diversity in a point so vital to all enlightened nations, is
antagonistic to the very spirit of our institutions, under a government
whose existence depends upon the principle of unity, in a land whose
prosperity depends upon the consolidation of all its constituent parts
into one homogeneous whole. Not only is this diversity in the money
market forever destroyed by the establishment of a uniform currency, but
from the peculiar nature of the law, the stability of the Government is
made a matter of direct self-interest to every individual citizen, than
which no surer or more enduring bond of union can be devised. For
self-interest, the Archimedean lever that moves the world, loses no jot
of its influence when even honor and patriotism have withered away.
Every dollar of the security upon which the currency is based must be
deposited in the treasury vaults: in other words, the wealth of every
individual citizen is under Government lock and key. Should, then, in
the future, any misguided portion of our people see fit to withdraw from
our communion, irretrievable ruin not only stares them in the face, but
is actually upon them from the moment the bond is severed. On the one
side is devotion to the country, and a firm, secure currency, which at
any moment will bring its full value in gold; on the other, secession,
with the inevitable attendant of a circulation, not depreciated, but
utterly worthless, and that, too, with no other to fill its place, since
the operation of the law must soon drive out of existence every dollar
of the present local bank circulation: patriotism and prosperity arrayed
against rebellion and ruin. The business men all see this, and in the
event of any threatened disruption, they, the most influential part of
community, because controlling that which is the representative of all
value, will be found firm and unwavering on the side of the duly
constituted authority. Thus we shall have all the benefits of a funded
national debt, with none of its attendant evils. And what a bond of
union is this!--a bond which involves our very meat and drink, a bond
which there can be no possible motive to sever so powerful as the
incentive to union and mutual cooperation.
Again, the financial crises with which our country has been afflicted at
regular periods of her existence, lowering thousands at one moment from
a condition of ease and comfort to one of the most pinching want,
changing merchant princes to beggars, and spreading ruin far and wide,
have owed their origin, not to a wild spirit of speculation, but to the
over inflation of bank issues, which is itself the cause of that
reckless speculation. This evil, too, will be done away with in the
future, for the issue must and will be regulated by the demands of the
community. The Government, in whose hands are the securities, and who
furnish the circulation based thereon, will control this matter and
restrain the issue to its proper bounds. And even if it should run
beyond that point, there will be less danger, since there can be no
spurious basis, every dollar being secured by a tangible deposit in the
Government vaults. The only escape from this view is in open and
barefaced fraud, which will be easy of conviction, and no more to be
feared than the ordinary operations of counterfeiters, and which will be
effectually provided against. So carefully drawn are the provisions of
the bill that no loophole is left for speculation; and he who shall
hereafter succeed in flooding the country with a 'wildcat' currency,
will be a shrewder financier and a more accomplished villain than the
world has yet seen. The people, too, will repose such a confidence in
the banks as they have never done before. We shall hear little hereafter
of 'runs upon the banks;' for the currency holders, well knowing that
the Government holds in its hands the wherewithal to redeem the greater
portion of the circulation of every bank in the land in the event of the
closing of its doors, the only 'runs' will be upon the deposits, and
this only in cases of the grossest and most patent fraud and
mismanagement on the part of the banks themselves. Hence, in times of
financial peril we shall see the people combining to sustain the banks
of their own locality, rather than, as is the case to-day, hastening to
accelerate the ruin of perfectly solvent institutions which, but for
their ill-timed fright, might weather the storm. Again I say, there
could be no greater element of union and strength than this, which has
grown out of our necessities and tribulations. In spite of all the
confusion and ruin and bloodshed, in spite of all the mourning, and
suffering, and sundering of ties, and upheaving of the very foundations
and apparent total disruption of American society, no greater blessing
could have befallen us than this same war, which has roused us to a new
life, to the consciousness of defects and determination of reform,
thereby planting us firmly on the true road to prosperity and happiness
and power.
The wonderful display of our power and resources has given a
reputation--call it notoriety, if you will--among the middle and lower
classes of the old world, which in long years of peace we could not have
attained. And our success in withstanding the terrible tempest which has
assailed us, in maintaining the integrity of our political system, will
spread that reputation far and wide, and give us a prestige whose effect
will be seen in the increased tide of immigration that will flow in upon
us upon the reestablishment of peace. The teeming soil and salubrious
climate of the far West, together with the prospect it affords, not only
of wealth, but of social advancement, both of which are forever denied
them in their own country, and extremely difficult of attainment even in
our own Eastern States, where the population is dense and every branch
of industry crowded to repletion, will allure the hardy laborers of
Europe by thousands and tens of thousands to the prairie land. In the
immense unsettled tracts west of the Mississippi there is room for the
action of men inured to toil, and promise of quick and abundant returns
for their labor. There they will be free from the disastrous competition
of their superiors in education and enlightenment, and have
opportunities such as no other portion of the earth presents, for the
founding of communities of their own, and the practical realization of
their own ideas of social progress. Comparatively few years will pass
after the restoration of peace before the West will be peopled by the
very bone and sinew of all civilized nations. And these men will come to
our shores imbued with the bitterest hatred of monarchical institutions,
and an unbounded admiration and love of our own. Hence the new country
will be intensely republican in its tendencies, and this will be another
strong bond of union--another mighty element of strength and perpetuity
to republicanism. For, as the movement goes steadily on, in time the
balance of political power will rest with them. And it will be ours to
see that the strong bias in favor of antiquated customs, laws, and
usages, the result of centuries of unopposed tyranny, is eradicated from
the minds of these men. They must be properly instructed in the
principles of true liberty and self-government. They must be
familiarized with the workings of free institutions and put to school in
the experience of our century of experiment. Our very safety requires
it; for so great is the field and so quickly will it be filled, that if
we are not alive to the work, a mighty nation will soon have sprung up
on our borders, and almost in our midst, which will be entirely beyond
our control, and threaten the very existence of our race, and of the
principles we most cherish. For the danger is that, suddenly released
from all the restrictions of their own feudal climes, they will fly to
the other extreme, and become lawless, reckless, and turbulent. For many
years to come all legislation must have an eye to the possible and
probable capacities and immense importance of the yet unsettled West,
and to the exigencies arising from causes which at present we know not
of save by conjecture. We have a future before us such as the past has
never known, and an incentive, nay, rather a necessity, for more
vigorous action than we have yet been called upon to display, and for a
deeper and more far-sighted wisdom than has ever yet pervaded our
councils.
The religious future of this portion of our country is veiled in the
deepest obscurity. Here we shall have the free-thinking German, the
bigoted Roman Catholic, the atheistic Frenchman, and the latitudinarian
Yankee, in one grand heterogeneous conglomeration of nations and ideas
such as the world has never seen. Whether these diverse peculiarities
will by close contact and mutual attrition, by the advancing light of
education and refinement as well as by the progress of intellect, be in
time softened down, assimilated, and fused into a pure, elevating
religion, or aggravated till they result in a godless, materialistic
race, God only knows. For no man was ever yet able to prognosticate of
religion, or prophecy with the remotest degree of its future action. For
it is a thing of God, under his exclusive care, and subject to none of
the influences of human action. In His hands we must leave it, in the
earnest hope and belief that He will not suffer His divine purposes to
be thwarted, and this people, to whom He has intrusted the task of the
world's regeneration, to forget and deny their God, who has led them on
to power and prosperity and happiness, to go back upon the scale of the
soul's eternal progress, and become a race of wicked, corrupt, and
God-defying sensualists.
Yet there is no maxim more true than that 'the gods help those who help
themselves,' and in this great work of religious advancement we have
nevertheless a part to act, a duty to perform. And the day is not far
distant when the work of the missionary in our own land will overshadow
that of the teacher in African climes. Here will be an ample field for
all our exertions, all our contributions; and if we do our duty by our
own people, we shall be forced, for a time at least, to leave the task
of instructing the heathen of foreign lands to the Christian nations of
the Old World. Our greatest responsibility is here, and it behooves us
to look well to the religious culture of our own rapidly increasing
population, that in after times they may be fitted for the task of
Christianizing the world.
Every nation has its crisis, when its existence trembles in the balance,
and through which it must safely pass before it can be firmly
established as a great fact in history, a tangible landmark of progress,
a controlling influence in the affairs of humanity. Nor is this crisis
ever a mere fortuitous circumstance, but the necessary consequence of
conflicting ideas and of untried systems. It is that point in the great
process of assimilation when different and hitherto almost discordant
elements tremble on the verge either of a harmonious blending for all
time, or of flying off into eternal divergence and hostility. Hence it
was not to be imagined that we could escape the common lot: our crisis
was to be expected, and now that it has come upon us it is to be
manfully met, and so controlled by an iron will, a loftiness of
determination, and a purity of aim, that it leave us not stranded among
the breakers of disunion and political death. And if we shall succeed in
so controlling the mighty current of affairs, we may rest assured that
we shall be purified by the trial, and shall have established a position
on earth that no subsequent events can shake, until God, in His own good
time, shall bid us give way to some higher development of mankind, if
such shall be His will. With a noble and worthy nationality; with an
incontestable position of strength and political influence, a widely
diffused skill and experience in military affairs, a fund of warlike
invention, and unbounded physical resources, which shall free us from
all annoyances and intermeddlings at the hands of foreign nations; with
a purification from the errors of the past, and a deeper insight into
the capabilities as well as the exigencies of the present and the
future; with a regenerated and higher-toned press; with an _anathema
maranatha_ for treason, in whatever shape it may assume; with a purer
charity for the opinions of others, and a more graceful yielding of the
obnoxious characteristics of our own; with a firmly established and
health-giving system of finance; with a rapidly increasing population,
bringing with it an increase of responsibility, and furnishing a broader
field for the development of our energies and resources; with a glorious
past behind and a golden future before us, we shall sweep majestically
on upon the waves of time, an object of admiration to the world and of
justifiable pride to ourselves--a great, and glorious, and, above all, a
free, happy, united, and prosperous people. God grant it may be so! God
grant that we may be true to the trust reposed in us, and that the
glorious cause of human liberty--the cause in which are bound up the
hopes of the whole world--may not again fall to the earth through the
blindness and weakness and incompetence of us, who are to-day its only
exponents. May we of this day and generation live to see the crowning of
all these hopes; and when our sun goes down in the shadows of eternity,
may we be able to look back and thank God for the trials and sufferings
and losses and mournings of to-day, as the refining fire through which
we have come strong and bright, the sharp knife whereby the gnawing
worms of error, and corruption and inevitable death have been cut from
the heart of our goodly tree.