_Six Months in the Federal States_. By EDWARD DICEY. In Two Volumes.
London and Cambridge: Macmillan & Co.
This is a very _gentlemanly_ book. Whatever excellence of commendation
belongs to the adjective we have Italicized must be awarded to Mr.
Dicey. And it is ill-adapted to the manufactures of most British
tourists who have preceded him. For, to make no mention of the vulgar
buffooneries of Bunn or Grattan, we hold that neither the exalted and
irrepressible prosiness of Dr. Charles Mackay, nor the cleverish
magic-lantern pictures of that good-natured book-maker, Mr. Anthony
Trollope, would be perfectly fitted with this polite addition. It is no
mean praise to say that the word _gentlemanly_ naturally applies itself
to a traveller's work. And it is necessary to allow that the majority of
Americans who have printed their impressions of a scamper over Europe
have fallen as hopelessly below it as a few have risen far above it.
Some word of deeper meaning must characterize the sterling sentences of
"English Traits"; some epithet of more rare and subtile significance is
suggested by those exquisitely painted scenes of foreign life with which
Hawthorne is even now adorning the pages of the "Atlantic." But after
the manner in which such a well-informed, modest, humane man as we would
emphatically credit as an American _gentleman_ might speak of six months
in England, so has Mr. Dicey spoken of his six months in the Federal
States.
And, at this present time, far better than all curious delineations or
"stereographic" descriptions are the sober testimonies concerning us
which Mr. Dicey offers to his countrymen. To such loyal Americans as
these volumes may reach they will give a heart not to be found in Dr.
Russell's pictorial neutrality, in the dashing effects of popular Mr.
Trollope, nor even--making all allowance for the sanative influence of
counter-irritation--in the weekly malignity of that _ex_-Moral Minstrel
whom the London "Times" has sent to the aid of our insurgent
slave-masters. For, instead of gloating over objections and picking out
what petty enigmas may not be readily soluble, Mr. Dicey has a manly,
English way of accepting the preponderant evidence concerning the crisis
he came to study. He seldom gets entangled in trivial events, but knows
how to use them as illustrations of great events. It is really
refreshing to meet with a British traveller who is so happily delivered
from the haunting consciousness of a personal identity. The reader is
not called upon to bemoan the tribulations of temperance-taverns, the
hardships of indiscriminate railroad-carriages, nor the rapacity of
New-York hackmen. There is scarcely an offence against good taste or
good feeling in Mr. Dicey's volumes; and whatever American homes may
have been opened to him would doubtless reopen far more readily than to
most publishing tourists from the mother-land.
Mr. Dicey clearly exhibits the bearing of the Rebellion upon the fate of
the servile population of the South, and confesses that his deep
sympathy with the Federal cause came from the conviction that the
supremacy or overthrow of Slavery was intimately connected with the
success or failure of Secession. In acknowledging the necessity that was
upon loyal Americans of defending the fundamental law of their society,
he is not disposed to adopt the lamentation of some of our foreign
well-wishers who are troubled by the fear of a military despotism in the
Free States. He has the sagacity to perceive that the genius and
development of the graduates of Northern school-houses are totally
opposed to a military rule. Mr. Dicey cordially recognizes the
democratic idea which sanctifies our convulsion, and displays a careful
observation in noting "the self-restraint, the moderation, and the
patience of the American people in the conduct of the people's war." He
is not over-disturbed because this same people loved law and order more
than freedom itself, and with few murmurs committed high principles to
the championship of whatever petty men happened to represent them.
Indeed, one of the best sayings he reports is that of an old Polish
exile, who congratulates himself that there will be no saviours of
society, no fathers of their country, to be provided for when the war
is over.
Throughout these two volumes British readers may discern something more
than the barren facts of our struggle: they may catch glimpses of its
energy and movement; they may see it as reflected from the most generous
American minds. For it seems to have been Mr. Dicey's good fortune in
this country to have gained admission to the society of men and women of
high intelligence, in whom the religious sentiment was living and
powerful; and he appears to estimate the full weight of testimony such
persons offered in sending their loved ones to Virginia to fall beneath
the rifle of some Southern boor. It is this silent public opinion of the
North which our foreign critics have generally failed to comprehend.
They have been so long accustomed to parody the rhetorical elation of
our third-rate political speakers, and to represent this as a universal
American characteristic, that they signally failed to estimate the
genuine emotion with which it is never connected. When the cherished
barbarism of slaveholders arose and threatened our Western civilization,
those who most felt and have best wrought for their country were
cautious in their speech. They knew that the principle underlying the
struggle must submit itself to the checks and counter-checks of
constitutional law. While the fire of liberty burned at the heart of
citizens of abiding loyalty, it seemed best, that, like the Psalmist,
they should hold their peace even from good words. Many thought it an
act of necessary self-restraint to dwell only upon the Union as a symbol
of that universal freedom which they felt the Union must finally
represent. The dread of overleaping the restraints of law, which,
perchance, has prolonged the conflict, has been most creditable to the
genuine democracy we have represented. We are proud to remember many
intelligent soldiers who used no language of passionate denunciation
towards the guilty institution which called them to the field, yet who
knew the end when they gave their lives to a cause utterly antagonistic
to its despotic claims.
By the representations of Secessionists encountered in the Free States,
as well as from disloyal newspapers which the "Lincoln despotism" never
sought to suppress, Mr. Dicey was convinced that the sole purpose of the
Rebellion was to get possession of the vast regions which lie west of
the Mississippi, wherein to establish Slave States and Territories. "The
North," he declares, "is fighting against, the South is fighting for,
the power of extending slavery across the American continent; and if
this was all that could be said, it is clear on which side must be the
sympathies of any one who really and honestly believes that slavery is
an evil and a sin." But it is not here that Mr. Dicey rests the case of
the North as appealing to the Christian sentiment of the world. He shows
that the inexorable logic of facts must work the overthrow of slavery
where it now exists. The suppression of the slave-trade, the recognition
of Hayti, abolition in the District of Columbia, and finally the
Proclamation of January have one tendency and can have but one result.
We state these views as one more confirmation of the fact, that, whether
agreeable to us or not, the sympathies of liberal men in Europe are to
be had on the sole ground that ours is an anti-slavery war.
Mr. Dicey's predilections lead him to make a generous, although
discriminating, estimate of those men who, in time past, have endeavored
to serve their country by leaving the level commonplaces of respectable
citizenship. It is no slight praise to say that his chapter upon the
New-England Abolitionists is clear and just. Their points of
disagreement with the Republican party are stated with no common
accuracy. Careful sentences give the precise position of Garrison and
his adherents: the intrinsic essence of the movement of these reformers
is divested of the subordinate and trivial facts so often put forward to
misrepresent it. Although Mr. Dicey endeavors not to commit himself upon
the vital differences in the agitation of anti-slavery sentiments by the
Abolitionists and by the Republican party, it is very evident that he
inclines to the belief that the former, in their advocacy of disunion,
acted not from a perverse and fanatical philosophy, but from the logical
compulsions of a critical understanding, stimulated by an intense
conviction of the national sin.
We have dwelt thus upon Mr. Dicey's views of the war, and of the great
moral question with which it is connected, because these portions of his
volumes are most pertinent to us, as well as creditable to him. His
sketches of public characters are good common-sense grasps at them,
which generally get their externals, and occasionally something more.
The description of the President is forcible, though a little too
graphic for perfect courtesy. Caleb Cushing impresses the traveller as
one of the ablest of our public men, and Wendell Phillips as by far the
most eloquent speaker he ever heard. General Butler, however, is not to
Mr. Dicey's taste. Indeed, he is hardly behind the "Saturday Review" in
the terrible epithets he bestows upon the man who he acknowledges "was
associated with the grandest triumph of the Federal arms, and by some
means or other preserved New Orleans to the Union with but little cost
of either men or money." It is rather late to renew discussion about the
notorious order relating to the women of the subjected city. But Mr.
Dicey chooses to express his belief in an infamous intention of General
Butler at the time of its issue,--though he declares that "the strictest
care was taken lest the order should be abused," and that the "Southern
ladies [?] were grossly insulting in their behavior to the Union
soldiers, using _language and gestures_ which, in a city occupied by
troops of any other nation, would have subjected them, _without orders_,
to the coarsest retaliation." To which we have only to reply, that
General Butler may be a villain, but that he is certainly not a fool.
Nobody doubts that he has military or civil aspirations for the future,
and, for such ends, if for nothing else, wishes the approbation of his
loyal countrymen. Now Mr. Dicey testifies to "the almost morbid
sentiment of Americans in the Free States with regard to women": he
tells us that "it renders them ridiculously susceptible to female
influences"; also, that this same "sentiment" among us "protects women
from the natural consequences of their own misconduct." These
characteristics of his countrymen are just as familiar to General Butler
as they are patent to Mr. Dicey; and we hold it to be simply incredible
that one who is at least a very shrewd politician used language which
_he intended_ should convey a meaning that must necessarily consign his
future career to privacy and infamy. It is perhaps not wonderful that
men who have deluged their country in blood, to propagate a system which
consigns unborn millions to enforced harlotry, should put an evil
interpretation upon the indignant stigma applied to _acts_ which, in
civilized States, come from one class of women, and are designed for one
purpose. Neither is it very astonishing that such persons as have been
employed to pump the New-York sewers into the _cloaca maxima_ which sets
towards us from Printing-House Square should share the sensitive
chastity of the slave-masters whose work they are put to do. But it is
passing strange that a gentleman so fair and reasonable as Mr. Dicey,
one so appreciative of the moral tone which Northern society demands of
its representatives, should join in an accusation whose absurdity is
only lost in its infinite offence.
There are small inaccuracies, as well as occasional instances of
carelessness or repetition, in these volumes, which, had circumstances
allowed time for revision, might have been avoided. It would require the
"Pathfinder" himself to discover "Fremont Street" in the city where we
write; the "Courier" is _not_ "the most largely circulated of any Boston
paper"; and our Ex-Mayor "Whiteman" requires no fanciful orthography to
free his name from the obloquy of an over-devotion to the interests of
colored citizens. These are local illustrations of mistakes which are
excusable in view of the commendable expedition with which the work was
issued,--for, in the late crisis of our affairs, an Englishman who had
any good words to give us fulfilled the proverb by giving twice in
giving quickly. But, whatever trifling details might be subjected to
criticism, the total impression of what Mr. Dicey has written bears
honorable testimony to the accuracy of his observation, as well as to
his powers of comparison and judgment.
As has been already remarked, we cannot be blind to the fact that our
only supporters in England are those men who recognize at the heart of
our contest that genuine principle of Liberty which is not to be limited
to caste or to race. And it is only by hastening to justify their
confidence that we can win to our cause the great people they address.
If we cannot gain the national sympathy of England, we must do without
the true sympathy of any nation. It was, indeed, remarked by De
Tocqueville, that, "in the eyes of the English, the cause which is most
useful to England is always the cause of justice." But the rare insight
of the philosopher assigns the phenomenon, not to a political
Machiavelism, but to a "laudable desire to connect the actions of one's
country with something more stable than interest." The English have a
peculiar gift of fixing their whole attention upon certain traits or
single circumstances which they desire to see. We doubt not that a
portion of their sympathy with the energy and endurance of those in arms
against their country is estimable according to its light. But as the
dignity of our mission in this struggle becomes more and more apparent,
the moral intelligence of England will be forced to unite itself with
the Government of the United States. Let that day come when it will,
posterity will remember its obligations to those Englishmen who did so
much to avert the hideous calamity of a war between the two liberal
powers of the world. And to us of this present generation it is grateful
to know that our brave and generous young men have not died wholly
unrecognized in the land of their ancestors. Mill, Ellison,
Hughes,--what need to name the rest?--have stood up to report them and
their cause aright to the unsatisfied: in which roll of the honorable
and honored we are glad to write the name of Edward Dicey.
* * * * *
_Hospital Transports_. A Memoir of the Embarkation of the Sick and
Wounded from the Peninsula of Virginia in the Summer of 1862. Compiled
and published at the Request of the Sanitary Commission. Boston: Ticknor
and Fields.
If pure benevolence was ever organized and utilized into beneficence,
the name of the institution is the Sanitary Commission. It is a standing
answer to Samson's riddle, "Out of the strong came forth sweetness." Out
of the very depths of the agony of this cruel and bloody war springs
this beautiful system, built of the noblest and divinest attributes of
the human soul. Amidst all the heroism of daring and enduring which this
war has developed, amidst all the magnanimity of which it has shown the
race capable, the daring, the endurance, and the greatness of soul which
have been discovered among the men and women who have given their lives
to this work shine as brightly as any on the battle-field,--in some
respects even more brightly. They have not the bray of trumpets nor the
clash of swords to rouse enthusiasm, nor will the land ever resound with
their victories. Theirs is the dark and painful side, the menial and
hidden side, but made light and lovely by the spirit that shines in and
through it all. Glimpses of this agency are familiar to our people; but
not till the history of its inception, progress, and results is calmly
and adequately written out and spread before the public will any idea be
formed of the magnitude and importance of the work which it has done.
Nor even then. Never, till every soldier whose last moments it has
soothed, till every soldier whose flickering life it has gently steadied
into continuance, whose waning reason it has softly lulled into quiet,
whose chilled blood it has warmed into healthful play, whose failing
frame it has nourished into strength, whose fainting heart it has
comforted with sympathy,--never, until every full soul has poured out
its story of gratitude and thanksgiving, will the record be complete;
but long before that time, ever since the moment that its helping hand
was first held forth, comes the Blessed Voice, "Inasmuch as ye have done
it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me."
An institution asking of Government only permission to live and
opportunity to work, planting itself firmly and squarely on the
generosity of the people, subsisting solely by their free-will
offerings, it is a noble monument of the intelligence, the munificence,
and the efficiency of a free people, and of the alacrity with which it
responds when the right chord is rightly touched. It is, however, not
unnatural that doubts should exist as to the success of a plan so
far-reaching in its aims and hitherto so untried. Stories have been
circulated of a mercenary disposition of its stores and trickery among
its officers. Where these stories have found considerable credence, they
have been tracked to their source and triumphantly refuted; but it would
indeed be hardly less than miraculous, if an institution ramifying so
widely, with agents so numerous, and resources so extensive, should have
no knaves among its servants, and no waste in its circulation. The
wonder is, that more leakage has not been proved than has ever been
suspected. All that is necessary to remove floating doubts, to convince
all heads of the wisdom which projected this Commission, and to warm all
hearts up to its continued and sufficient support, is a knowledge of
what it has done, is doing, and purposes to do. This information the
Commission has, at different times, and by piecemeal, furnished:
necessarily by piecemeal, since, as this book justly remarks, the
immense mass of details which a circumstantial account of its operations
in field and hospital must involve would prove nearly as laborious in
the reading as in the performance. In this little volume we have,
photographed, a single phase of its operations. It consists simply of
extracts from letters and reports. There is no attempt at completeness
or dramatic arrangement; yet the most elaborate grouping would probably
fail to present one-half as accurately a picture of the work and its
ways as these unpretending fragments. It delights us to see the--we can
hardly say cheerful, as that savors too much of the "self-sacrifice"
which benevolence sometimes tarnishes by talking about--but, rather, the
gay, lively, merry manner in which the most balky matters are taken hold
of. Men and women seem to have gone into the service with good-will and
hearty love and buoyant spirits. It refreshes and strengthens us like a
tonic to read of their taking the wounded, festering, filthy, miserable
men, washing and dressing them, pouring in lemonade and beef-tea, and
putting them abed and asleep. There is not a word about "devotion" or
"ministering angels," (we could wish there were not quite so much about
"ladies,") but honest, refined, energetic, able women, with quick brains
and quick hands, now bathing a poor crazy head with ice-water, to be
rewarded with one grateful smile from the parting soul,--now standing in
the way of a procession of the slightly wounded, to pour a little brandy
down their throats, or put an orange into their hands, just to keep them
up till they reach food and rest,--now running up the river in a
steam-tug, scrambling eggs in a wash-basin over a spirit-lamp as they
go,--now groping their way, at all hours of the night, through torrents
of rain, into dreadful places crammed with sick and dying men, "calling
back to life those in despair from utter exhaustion, or again and again
catching for mother or wife the last faint whispers of the dying,"--now
leaving their compliments to serve a disappointed colonel instead of his
dinner, which they had nipped in the bud by dragging away the stove with
its four fascinating and not-to-be-withstood pot-holes;--and let the
sutler's name be wreathed with laurel who not only permitted this, but
offered his cart and mule to drag the stove to the boat, and would take
no pay!
The blessings of thousands who were ready to perish, and of tens of
thousands who love their country and their kind, rest upon those who
originated, and those who sustain, this noble work. Let the people's
heart never faint and its hand never weary; but let it, of its
abundance, give to this Commission full measure, pressed down, shaken
together, and running over, that, wherever the red trail of war is seen,
its divine footsteps may follow,--that, wherever the red hand of war is
lifted to wound, its white hand may be lifted to heal,--that its work
may never cease until it is assumed by a great Christian Government, or
until peace once more reigns throughout the land. And even then,
gratitude for its service, and joy in its glory, shall never die out of
the hearts of the American people.
* * * * *
_The History of the Supernatural, in all Ages and Nations, and in all
Churches, Christian and Pagan, demonstrating a Universal Faith_. By
WILLIAM HOWITT. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co.
There has been a great change of late years in connection with the
science of Pneumatology and with the manner of treating it. There was a
revolution of opinion on this subject in the middle of the last century;
there is a counter-revolution to-day.
The superstitions and credulities of the Middle Ages eventuated, during
the course of the eighteenth century, in the Encyclopædism of French
philosophy. The grounds upon which the Church based her doctrine of the
supernatural were fiercely attacked. The proofs brought forward to prove
the insufficiency of such grounds were assumed to prove more than lack
of logic in the Church; they were taken as proofs, that, in the nature
of things, there is no evidence for the supernatural, in any sense of
the term; in other words, that there is no knowledge within the reach of
mortals, except that which relates to the physical,--to this earth, as
the only phase of existence,--to the vital body, as the all of the human
being. Emotional and intellectual phenomena were but results of material
organization, as heat is the result of combustion: they exhibited
themselves so long as vitality continued; they disappeared when death
supervened, as the warmth from a fire dies out with the cessation of
combustion. No hypothetical soul was needed to account for the thousand
phenomena of thought or of sensation. Pneumatology was no science, but
the mere fancy of an excited imagination.
Not to the literature and the social life of France alone was this
materialistic influence confined. The mind of Germany, of England, and,
more or less, of the rest of Europe, and of America, was pervaded by it.
The tendency, all over the civilized world, was towards unbelief, not
merely in miracles, but in all things spiritual. Science, with her
strict tests and her severe inductions, lent her aid in the same
direction.
It does not seem to have occurred to the philosophers of the
Encyclopædian school that a doctrine is not necessarily false because an
insufficient argument is brought forward to prove it. It does not appear
to have occurred to skeptical physicists that there may be laws of
Nature regulating ultramundane phenomena, as fixed, as invariable, as
those which decide the succession of geological phenomena and the
products of chemical combinations.
Here is a theory which is worth considering. May it not be that God
adapts the proofs of that which it is important that man should know to
the intellectual progress of mankind? Is it certain that the same
evidence which sufficed for the foundation of religious faith five
hundred years ago will suffice equally well to-day? Truths are eternal;
laws of Nature vary not. But of the world's thoughts there is a
childhood, a youth, a manhood; and there may be various classes of
arguments suited to various stages of progress.
Again, assuming that the materialist takes a contracted view of the
economy of human life, ignoring every portion of it except its present
phase, (that phase being but the preparation for another and a higher,)
may it not be, that, as the world advances, men may gradually be
permitted, occasionally and to a limited extent, to become aware of
influences exerted from a more advanced phase of existence over this?
May it not be that the links connecting the two phases of existence are
gradually to become more numerous and apparent?
Such are the general views which William Howitt's work is intended to
illustrate and enforce. He selects, as a title-page motto, an axiom from
Butler's "Analogy,"--"There are two courses of Nature: the ordinary and
the extraordinary." By the supernatural he does not mean phenomena out
of the course of Nature, but such comparatively rare phenomena as are
governed by laws with which we are unacquainted, and as are, therefore,
to us something extraordinary, something to be wondered at,--miracles.
The author travels over a vast extent of ground,--more, we think, than
can be properly explored in the compass of two duodecimo volumes. All
ages, all countries, all faiths, furnish their quota towards his
collection. It is curious, interesting, suggestive, rather than
conclusive. It exhibits more industry than logic. It consists rather of
abundant materials for others to use, than of materials worked up by the
collector. It gives evidence of learning, research, and a comprehensive
study of the subject. It is a _thesaurus_ of pneumatological knowledge,
collected with German assiduity. It will set many to thinking, though it
may convince but few, except of the one truth, that the faith in the
supernatural has been a universal faith, pervading all nations,
persisting through all ages.
The number of those who take an interest in the subject treated of in
Mr. Howitt's book, and who believe that great truths underlie popular
superstitions, increases day by day; and the work will probably have a
wide circulation.