Produced by Joshua Hutchinson, Janet Blenkinship and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
(This file was produced from images generously made
available by Cornell University Digital Collections)
THE
CONTINENTAL MONTHLY:
DEVOTED TO
Literature and National Policy.
VOL. V.
JANUARY-JUNE, 1864.
New York:
JOHN F. TROW, 50 GREENE STREET,
(FOR THE PROPRIETORS.)
1864.
ENTERED, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, by JOHN F. TROW,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the
Southern District of New York.
INDEX TO VOLUME V.
Ænone; a Tale of Slave Life in Rome, 287, 385, 500, 619
American Finances and Resources. By Hon. Robert J. Walker, 40, 249,
324, 489
An Army: Its Organization and Movements. By Lieut.-Col.
C. W. Tolles, A. Q. M., 707
An Hour in the Gallery of the National Academy of Design--Thirty-ninth
Annual Exhibition, 684
An Indian Love-Song. By Edwin R. Johnson, 361
Aphorisms. By Rev. Asa Colton, 413, 450, 482, 595, 680, 706
A Pair of Stockings. From the Army, 597
Aspiro--A Fable, 158
A Summer's Night. From the Polish of Count S. Krasinski, translated
by Prof. Podbielski, 543
A Tragedy of Error, 204
A Universal Language. By S. P. Andrews, 595
A Vigil with St. Louis. By E. Fonton, 70
Benedict of Nursla, and the Order of the Benedictines.
By Rev. Ph. Schaff, 451
Buckle, Draper, and a Science of History. By Edward B. Freeland, 161
Carl Friedrich Neumann, the German Historian of our Country.
By Professor Andrew Ten Brook, 295
Clouds. By Mrs. Martha Walker Cook, 265
Diary of Frances Krasinska; or, Life in Poland during the 18th
Century, 27, 180
Dr. Fox's Prescription. By E. R. Johnson, 717
Editor's Table, 118, 245, 354, 487, 605, 721
English and American Taxation. By Egbert Hurd, 405
Ernest Renan's Theory. By Hugh Miller Thompson, 609
'Feed My Lambs,' 663
Glorious! By L. G. W., 459
Hannah Thurston, 456
Hints to the American Farmer, 584
Jefferson Davis and Repudiation of Arkansas Bonds. By Hon.
Robert J. Walker, 478
Language a Type of the Universe. By Stephen Pearl Andrews, 691
Lies, and How to Kill Them. By Hugh Miller Thompson, 437
Literary Notices, 116, 243, 362, 483, 601, 719
Madagascar. By W. H. Whitmore, 65
Music a Science. By Lucia D. Pychowska, 575
National Friendships, 239
North and South. By Charles Wm. Butler, 241
'Nos Amis les Cosaques.' By M. Heilprin, 216
'Our Article,' 20
Our Domestic Relations; or, How to Treat the Rebel States.
By Charles Russell, 511
Our Government and the Blacks. By William H. Kimball, 431
Out of Prison. By Kate Putnam, 436
Palmer, the American Sculptor. By L. J. Bigelow, 258
Petroleum. By Rev. S. M. Eaton, 187
Reason, Rhyme, and Rhythm. Compiled and written by Mrs. Martha
Walker Cook, 14
Retrospective. By Rev. Dr. Henry, 1
Sir Charles Lyell on the Antiquity of Man. By a Presbyterian
Clergyman, 369
Sketches of American Life and Scenery. By Lucia D. Pychowska, 9, 270, 425
Sleeping. By Hugh Miller Thompson, 716
Temptation. From the Polish of Count Sigismund Krasinski, 53
The Andes. By William G. Dix, 229
The Angels of War, 203
The Conscription Act of March 3d, 1864. By L. M. Haverstik, 110
The Decline of England. By S. J. Bayard, 48
The Development of American Architecture. By A. W. Colgate, 466
The Dove. By Mrs. Martha Walker Cook, 625
The English Press. By Nicholas Rowe, London, 100, 139, 564
The Great American Crisis. By Stephen P. Andrews, 87, 300
The Great Lakes to St. Paul. By Robert Dodge, 397
The Great Struggle, 34
The House in the Lane. By Miss Virginia Townsend, 573
The Isle of Springs. By Rev. C. C. Starbuck, 461
The Issues of the War. By John Stahl Patterson, Quarter-master
Sergeant, 20th Ohio Battery, 287
The Lessons of the Wood. By George W. Bungay, 26
The Love Lucifer. By S. Leavitt, 319, 414
The March of Life. By Clarence Frederick Buhler, 649
The Mechanical Tendency in Modern Society. By John A. French, 351
The Mississippi River and its Peculiarities. By De B. R. Keim, 629
The Mound Builder. By January Searle, 517
The Red Man's Plea, 160
The Treasury Report and Mr. Sec'y Chase. By Hon. Frederick
P. Stanton, 151
The Unkind Word, 690
The War a Contest for Ideas. By Henry Everett Russell, 578
The Wild Azalea. By E. W. C., 596
The Young Author's Dream. By Edwin R. Johnson, 395
Thistle-Down. By Frances Lamartine, 318
Thomas De Quincey and His Writings. By L. W. Spring, 650
Thomas Jefferson, as Seen in the Light of 1863. By J. Sheldon, 129
Thought. By Virginia Vaughan, 577
Union Not to be Maintained by Force. By Hon. Frederick P. Stanton, 73
Was He Successful? By Richard B. Kimball, 80, 221, 341, 445
THE
CONTINENTAL MONTHLY:
DEVOTED TO
LITERATURE AND NATIONAL POLICY.
VOL. V.--JANUARY, 1864.--No. I.
RETROSPECTIVE.
Time makes many dark things clear, and often in a wonderfully short and
decisive way. So we said hopefully two years and more ago in regard to
one of the unsolved problems which then pressed on the minds of
thoughtful men--how, namely, it was to fare with slavery in the progress
and sequel of the war. The history of our national struggle has
illustrated the truth and justified the hope. Time has quite nearly
solved that problem and some others almost equally perplexing. The
stream of historical causes has borne the nation onward on the bosom of
its inevitable flow, until we can now almost see clear through to the
end; at any rate, we have reached a point where we can look backward and
forward with perhaps greater advantage than at any former period. What
changes of opinion have been wrought! How many doubts resolved! How many
fears dispelled! How many old prejudices and preconceived notions have
been abandoned! How many vexed questions put at rest! How many things
have safely got an established place among accepted and almost generally
acceptable facts, which were once matters of loyal foreboding and of
disloyal denunciation! No man of good sense and loyalty now doubts the
rightfulness and wisdom of depriving the rebels of the aid derived from
their slaves, and making them an element of strength on our side; while
the fact that the enfranchised slaves make good soldiers, is put beyond
question by an amenability to military discipline and a bravery in
battle not surpassed by any troops in the world.
HAS THE WAR GONE SLOWLY?
The work of subduing the rebellion has gone slowly as compared with the
impatient demands of an indignant people at the outset; but not slowly
if you consider the vast theatre of the war, the immense extent of the
lines of military operations, and the prodigious advantages possessed by
the rebels at the beginning--partly advantages such as always attend the
first outbreak of a revolutionary conspiracy long matured in secret
against an unsuspecting and unprepared Government, and partly the
extraordinary and peculiar advantages that accrued to them from the
traitorous complicity of Buchanan's Administration, through which the
conspirators were enabled to rob the national treasury, strip the
Government of arms, and possess themselves of national forts, arsenals,
and munitions of war, before the conflict began.
NOT TOO SLOW--WHY? SLAVERY.
But either way the war has not gone too slowly with reference to its
great end--the establishment of a durable peace. If the rebellion had
been crushed at once by overwhelming force, it would have been crushed
only to break out anew. Slavery would have been left unimpaired, and
that would inevitably have entailed another conflict in no long time. In
the interest of slavery the rebels have drawn the sword; let slavery
perish by the sword. In the interest of slavery they have attempted to
overthrow the National Government and to dismember the national domain;
let slavery be overthrown to maintain the Government and to preserve the
integrity of the nation. Let the cause of the war perish with the war.
Not until slavery is extinguished can there be a lasting peace; for not
until then can the conditions of true national unity begin to exist.
What wise and good man would wish to save it from extinction? It is as
incompatible with the highest prosperity of the South as it is with a
true national union between the South and the North. Once extinguished,
there will be a thousand-fold increase in every element of Southern
welfare, economical, social, and moral; and possibilities of national
wealth and strength, greatness and glory, above every nation on the
globe, will be established. Let slavery go down. Let us rejoice that in
the progress and sequel of this war, it must and will go down.
EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION.
Looking back, we can now see that much that was trying to the patience
of the loyal masses of the North in the early stages of the war, has
only served to make it more certain that what ought to be will be. Time
has done justice to the idiotic policy of fighting the rebellion with
one hand and with the other upholding the institution that constituted
at once its motive and its strength. Time has brought policy and justice
to shake hands together at the right moment on the same road, and made
that respectable and acceptable as a military necessity which was once
repudiated as a fanaticism. Time has brought out the President's
Emancipation Proclamation, and established it on a firm basis in the
judgment and consent of all wise and true loyal men, North and South--to
the great discomfiture of sundry politicians--the utterances of some of
whom not long ago can be no otherwise taken than as the revelation and
despairing death wail of disconcerted schemes. Strange that men whose
whole lives have been passed in forecasting public opinion for their
political uses, should have rushed upon the thick bosses of the great
shield of the public will, which begirts the President and his
Emancipation Proclamation;--for certainly all the railing at
_radicalism_, which we heard in certain quarters last summer, was in
fact nothing but the expression of disappointment and chagrin at the
emancipation policy of the President, and that too at a time when that
policy had come to be accepted by the great body of the loyal people of
the nation (including all the eminent Southern loyalists), as not only
indispensable to the national salvation, but desirable in every view.
Strange that at such a time, and among those once active and influential
in the formation of the Republican party--a party born of the roused
spirit of resistance to slavery aggressions--there should have been
found a single person unable to discern and to accept the inevitable
logic of events which was to make the extinction of slavery the only
wise, practicable, and truly loyal stand point. Strange that any
Republican should be disposed to put a stop to the 'irrepressible
conflict.' It was too late in the day to attempt the organization of a
great, victorious Conservative party by splitting up the old
organizations. The old organizations may fall to pieces. It is best,
perhaps, they should--but not to form a Conservative party. Conservatism
is not now to the popular taste. It means nothing but the saving of
slavery, and the great body of the loyal people now feel absolved from
all obligation to save it; they do not care to have it saved; and the
vaticinations of those prophets of evil who predicted disaster and ruin
to the national cause from the emancipation policy of the Government
excite no consternation in the loyal heart of the nation.
In a review of the conduct of the war, how little reason appears for
regret and how much for satisfaction in regard to all the great measures
of the Government!
THE FINANCIAL SYSTEM.
The successful working of the _financial system_ has demonstrated the
wisdom of its principles. Instead of following the old wretched way of
throwing an immense amount of stocks into market at a sacrifice of
fifteen to thirty per cent., the Government has got all the money it
wanted at half or a little more than half the usual rate of interest. It
would have been better if the currency had been made to consist wholly
of United States legal-tender notes, fundable in six per cent.,
bonds--with a proper provision for the interest and for a sinking fund.
But the financial system adopted is a matter of satisfaction, apart from
its admirable success in furnishing the Government with the means to
carry on the war: it is the inauguration of sounder principles on
currency than have heretofore prevailed, which, if unfolded and carried
legitimately out, will give the country the best currency in the
world--perfectly secured, uniform in value at every point, and liable to
no disastrous expansions and contractions. The notion that any great
industrial, manufacturing, and commercial nation can conduct its
business--any more than it can carry on a great war--with a specie
currency alone, is indeed exploded; but the notion that a paper currency
to be safe must be based on specie, still prevails--although the
currency furnished by the thousands of banks scattered throughout the
country has never been really based upon the actual possession of specie
to the extent of more than _one fifth_ of the amount in circulation. It
may be the doctrine will never come to prevail that a specie basis in
whole or in part is no more indispensable to a sound and safe paper
currency than an exclusive specie currency is possible or desirable in a
country like this. It may be that the people will never come to believe
that a legal-tender paper currency, issued exclusively by the National
Government--based upon the credit of the nation, constituting a lien
upon all the property of the country, and proportioned in amount of
issue to the needs of the people for it as an instrument of
exchange--would, for all home uses, possess in full perfection the
nature, functions, and powers of money. It is a subject we do not
propose to discuss. It is enough now to say that the notes of the United
States, fundable in national six per cent. bonds, and drawing interest
as they do semi-annually in gold, must be admitted by everybody to be as
safe a currency as the banks as a whole have ever supplied, and to
possess other advantages which make them incomparably a better currency
than that of local banks.
The high price to which gold has been carried by gambling speculators,
is not to be taken as indicating a proportionate want of confidence in
the success of the national cause and in the intrinsic value of the
national securities. It indicates nothing of the sort--at any rate,
whatever it may be taken to indicate, it is none the less true that
United States six per cent. bonds were from the first eagerly sought for
and taken as investments at the rate of a million a day--faster indeed
than the Government could at first supply them; with a constantly
augmenting demand, until in the last week of October _thirty-six_
millions were disposed of--leaving only one hundred and fifty millions
unsold, which will doubtless all be taken before this paper is
published. Comment on this is entirely needless.
OUR FOREIGN RELATIONS.
In the conduct of our _foreign relations_, certain official declarations
in the early part of the war on the policy and purpose of Government in
carrying it on, are to be regretted as gratuitous and unfortunate. It is
to be regretted also that the capture of the _Trent_ and the seizure of
Mason and Slidell was not at once disavowed as being contrary to our
doctrine on neutral rights, and the rebel emissaries surrendered without
waiting for reclamation on the part of the British Government; or, if it
was thought best to await that reclamation as containing a virtual
concession of our doctrine, it would have been better--more dignified
and effective--if the reply had been limited to a simple statement that
the surrender was necessitated by the principles always maintained by
our Government, and not by a reclamation which the British Government,
by its own construction of public law and by its own practice, was not
entitled to make, but which being made, might now, it was to be hoped,
be taken as an abandonment in the future of the ground heretofore
maintained by that Government.
CONCESSION OF BELLIGERENT RIGHTS TO THE REBELS.
There has been some dissatisfaction with the conduct of our official
communications with Great Britain and France respecting the question on
belligerent rights and neutral obligations which the rebellion has
raised. But there are points of no inconsiderable difficulty and
delicacy involved in these questions, which a great many people, in
their natural displeasure against the English and French, have failed to
consider. Our Government deserves the credit of having consulted the
interests without compromising the dignity of the nation. Admitting the
conduct of the British and French Governments in recognizing the rebels
as belligerents to be as unfriendly and as unrequired by the obligations
of public law as it is generally held to be among us, that would not
make it right or wise for our Government to depart from the tone of
moderation. We can no more make it a matter for official complaint and
demand against these Governments, than we could the unfriendly tone of
many of their newspapers and Parliamentary orators. We might say to
them: We take it as unkindly in you to do as you have done; but if they
will continue to do so, we have nothing for it but to submit. Even if we
could have afforded it, we could not rightly have gone to war with them
for doing what we ourselves--through the necessity of our
circumstances--have been compelled in effect to do, and what they,
though not forced by any such necessity, had yet a right--and in their
own opinion were obliged--by public law to do. We could not have made it
a cause of war, and therefore it would have been worse than idle to
indulge in a style of official representation which means war if it
means anything.
THE REBEL CRUISERS.
The question of the rebel cruisers on the high seas is a question by
itself. The anger excited among us by the injuries we have suffered from
these vessels is not strange; nor is it strange that our anger should
beget a disposition to quarrel with Great Britain and France for
conceding the rights of lawful belligerents to the perpetrators of such
atrocities. The rebels have no courts of admiralty, carry their prizes
to no ports, submit them to no lawful adjudication--but capture,
plunder, and burn private vessels in mid ocean. Such proceedings by the
laws of nations are undoubtedly piratical in their nature. We have a
right so to hold and declare. We may think that Great Britain and France
are bound so to hold and declare. But what then? Should they have
ordered their men of war to cruise against these rebel cruisers or to
capture every one which they might chance to encounter, and to send them
home for trial? We may think they were bound in vindication of public
law to do so; but could we make their not doing so a matter of formal
complaint and a cause of war? There are a number of things to be well
considered before any one should permit himself to quarrel with our
Government for not quarrelling with Great Britain and France on this
matter.
BRITISH VIOLATION OF NEUTRAL OBLIGATIONS.
But the conduct of the British Government in allowing her ports to be
made the basis of these nefarious operations--in permitting vessels of
whose character and purpose there could be no doubt to be built in her
ports--not to be delivered in any Confederate port, but in effect armed
and manned from her ports to go immediately to cruise against our
commerce on the high seas--is an outrageous violation of the obligations
of neutrals, for which that Government may justly be held responsible.
It is a responsibility which no technical pleading about the
insufficiency of British laws, either in matter of prohibition or rules
of evidence, can avoid. Great Britain is bound to have laws and rules of
evidence which will enable her effectually to discharge her neutral
obligations; whether she has or not, does not alter her responsibility
to us. Her conduct may rightfully be made a matter of official
complaint, and of war too--if satisfaction and reparation be refused. It
is a case in which our rights and dignity are concerned; and it is to be
presumed that our Government will not fail to vindicate them.[1]
LEGISLATION--THE CONFISCATION LAW.
The action of _Congress_ has in everything been nobly patriotic in
spirit, and in nearly everything it has wisely and adequately met the
exigencies of the crisis.
But we are compelled to hold the Confiscation Act, in the form in which
it was passed, as a mistake.[2] If the clause of the Constitution
prohibiting 'attainder of treason to work forfeiture except during the
life of the person attainted,' be necessarily applicable to the
Confiscation Act, it seems to us impossible to avoid the conclusion that
the act is unconstitutional. So far as the language of the prohibition
is decisive of anything, it must be taken to include all sorts of
property, real as well as personal--the term _forfeiture_ certainly
having that extent of application in the old English law and practice,
from which the framers of our Constitution took it, and there is nothing
elsewhere in the Constitution or in its history to warrant any other
construction. So the Congress of 1790 understood it in the act
declaring the punishment of treason and some other high crimes. As to
the _perpetuity_ of forfeiture, it seems equally necessary to hold that
it is prohibited by the clause of the Constitution in question. Such is
undeniably the first and obvious meaning of the terms. It has been
argued indeed that it was not the intention of the framers of the
Constitution to prohibit perpetual forfeiture of property from being
'declared' by Congress, but only to prohibit 'attainder of treason' from
'working' of itself that effect by necessary consequence--as it did
under the Common Law of England. It has also been argued that the
constitutional restriction does not relate to perpetuity of forfeiture,
but only requires that the forfeiture or act of alienation take place,
have effect, and be accomplished 'during the life of the person
attainted,' and not after his death.
But this reasoning is more subtile than satisfactory. A fair
consideration of the subject leaves little room for doubt that the
framers of the Constitution had in view and intended to prohibit
everything which under the old English common law followed upon
'attainder of treason'--to prohibit forfeiture in perpetuity of property
of every sort, no less than 'bills of attainder,' 'corruption of blood,'
and barbarities of punishment, such as disembowelling, quartering, etc.
If therefore the constitutional restriction on forfeiture apply to the
Confiscation Law, it makes the law unconstitutional, in so far as it
enacts the _perpetual_ forfeiture of the personal estate of rebels; and
the discrimination made in regard to their real estate does not save the
constitutionality of the act.
If, therefore, the Confiscation Law is to be held as constitutional, it
can be so, as it seems to us, only on the ground that it does not fall
within the scope of the constitutional prohibition in question. This
ground may be maintained by asserting that the constitutional
prohibition of perpetual forfeiture applies only to cases of 'attainder
of treason,' that is, according to Blackstone, of 'judgment of death for
treason,' and that cases under this act are not such; that the
limitations applicable to ordinary judicial proceedings against traitors
are not applicable here; that the Confiscation Act seizes the property
of rebels not in their quality of criminals, but of public enemies; that
it is not an act for the punishment of treason, but for weakening and
subduing an armed rebellion, and securing indemnification for the costs
and damages it has entailed--in short, not a penal statute, but a war
measure; and that the Constitution which gives Congress the right to
make war for the suppression of the rebellion, and to subject the lives
of rebels to the laws of war, gives it the right to subject their
property also to the same laws--putting both out of the protection of
the ordinary laws; and finally that all the objects aimed at by the
measure are legitimated by the principles of public law.
If these views can be sustained, it follows that Congress was justified
not only in enacting the perpetual confiscation of the _personal_
property of rebels, but need not, and should not, have passed the
explanatory clause prohibiting 'forfeiture of _real_ estate beyond the
natural life' of the rebel. So far as weakening the rebellion,
indemnifying the nation for costs and damages, or the rights and
interests of the heirs of rebels, are concerned, there is no reason in
justice or in policy for the discrimination made between personal and
real estate; if it is right and wise to take the one in perpetuity, it
is equally so to take the other. In our judgment, it is right and wise
to do both.
MILITARY ADMINISTRATION--NO ARMY OF RESERVE.
In looking over the war, we can all now see a very great error in the
_military_ administration--the neglect, namely, to provide and keep up
a proper reserved force. It is the grand mistake of the war. Two years
and a half of war, and no army of reserve! Eighteen months ago, a force
of reserve of at least two hundred thousand men should have been formed.
It could probably then have been formed of volunteers. From it,
vacancies made in the armies in the field by battle, disease, or
expiration of time of service, could have been filled with drilled and
disciplined soldiers, and reinforcements drawn to meet any special
exigency. The victory of Gettysburgh might have resulted in the total
destruction of Lee's army before he could recross the Potomac; and
Rosecrans might have been strengthened without weakening the Army of the
Potomac or any other. Whether the cost of forming and keeping up such a
force of reserve would have greatly exceeded the cost of the recent
draft, we do not pretend to know. We are inclined to think it would not.
But that is a question of little moment. Money wisely spent is well
spent: money unwisely saved is ill saved. With such a force, the recent
draft might not have been necessary--at all events there would have been
no necessity for suspending active military operations in Virginia, and
awaiting the slow completion of the draft, at a moment when, large
additions to the forces in the field were precisely the one thing
needful. The army of reserve would at once have supplied disciplined
soldiers, and their places in the camps of instruction and reserve could
have been filled with the new conscripts as fast as they were collected.
CONSOLATION--ENFORCEMENT OF THE DRAFT IN NEW YORK.
But grave as the error is which we have signalized, there is something
that might well console us for greater misfortunes than it has entailed,
and which gives us another illustration of the truth that God and Time
often work for us better than we for ourselves, and out of our errors
bring good that we could not forecast.
It would not be wise to assert that the not having such a reserved force
necessitated the recent draft, and thereby occasioned the horrible
outbreak in New York. But if it may even be safely suggested as possibly
true, the successful enforcement of the draft becomes all the more a
matter for boundless joy and congratulation. Important as its
enforcement throughout the country was as a means of filling up the
ranks of our armies, the outbreak in New York made it a thousand times
more important as the only adequate assertion of the supremacy of
national law.
There can be no doubt as to the nature, origin, and purpose of that
outbreak. It was the result of a long-prepared traitorous conspiracy in
the interest of the rebels. The enforcement of the draft against mob
violence instigated by treason, was indispensable not only to the
successful prosecution of the war against the rebels of the South, but
to the maintenance of the supreme authority and power of the National
Government, and of the foundations of social order at the North. Not to
have enforced it might have insured the triumph of the rebellion and the
independence of the South; it certainly would have rendered the North no
longer a country fit for any decent man to live in. Such and so great
was the significance of the crisis. The responsibility of the
Administration was immense. The President met it nobly. He took care
that a sufficient military force--not under the control of Governor
Seymour, but of a well-tried patriot--was present in New York. He
carried out the draft there and everywhere else. He crushed the schemes
and hopes of the traitorous conspirators--more guilty than the rebels in
arms-and gave a demonstration of the _strength of the National
Government_, as grand in its majesty as it was indispensable to the
national salvation in this crisis and to its security in all future
time. The Government has triumphed in the quiet majesty of its
irresistible force over factious and traitorous opposition at the North,
springing from treasonable sympathy with the rebels, or, from what, in a
crisis like this, is equally wicked, the selfishness of party spirit,
preferring party to country. More than this, it has triumphed over the
dangerous and destructive notions on State sovereignty, which traitors
and partisans have dared invoke. It is impossible to overestimate the
importance for the present and for the future of this victorious
assertion of the _supremacy of the National Government_.
SUMMARY REVIEW.
In a review, then, of this gigantic struggle, we have every reason to be
content and confident--no reason to bate one jot of heart or hope. The
triumph over Northern treason, achieved by the force of the Government,
has been followed by a moral triumph at the polls, no less grand in its
significance. The country is not oppressed by the stupendous expenses of
the war. The money is all spent at home. It stimulates the productive
industry of the country, and the nation is all the time growing rich.
The rebels have been disastrously repulsed in two attempts at invasion,
and do not hold one inch of Northern soil. One third of the States
claimed by them at the outset, are gone from them forever: Maryland,
Missouri, Kentucky, are securely in the Union; Virginia we have cut in
two--nearly one half of its territory, by the will of its inhabitants,
now constituting a loyal member of the Union as the new State of West
Virginia--while of its eastern half we securely hold its coast, harbors,
and fortresses, and a considerable number of its counties. Tennessee is
ours, and cannot, we think, be wrenched away. We have New Orleans, and
the uncontrolled possession of the Mississippi river--cutting the
territory of the rebels in two, destroying their communications, and
giving us a considerable portion of the States bordering that river. In
North Carolina and South Carolina we have a hold, from which it will be
hard to drive us. On the Atlantic and Gulf coast nearly every fortress
is in our possession; there is not a port which is not possessed by us,
or else so blockaded that (except in the peculiar case of Wilmington) it
is a hazardous affair for any vessel to attempt going in or coming out;
and the rebels are utterly unable to raise the blockade of a single
port. In fine, they have lost more than one third of their territory
forever, and of the remaining portion there is not one considerable
subdivision over which in some part the flag of the Union does not
securely wave. What title to recognition as an independent power can the
Confederate rebels present to the neutral powers of the world?
SKETCHES OF AMERICAN LIFE AND SCENERY.
While American tourists are delightedly visiting and minutely describing
the most hidden recesses of beauty among the mountains, plains, seas,
lakes, and rivers of Europe, there are, close within their reach,
innumerable spots well worthy of consideration, and hitherto entirely
unknown to the great mass of pleasure and scenery seeking travellers.
These fair but hidden gems have become of the more importance that the
grand struggle convulsing our country has rendered foreign travel
difficult, even when advisable, and has roused within our people a love
for their own land, a pride in its loveliness, much more rarely felt
before the attempt to dismember and ruin it had awakened dormant
patriotism and completed the severance between the recent _province_ and
the historically renowned mother country. American painters are worthily
illustrating American life and landscape; American poets, and no less
poetical prose writers, are singing the forests, skies, flowers, and
birds of their native land; and the inquisitive traveller should surely
not fail to add his humbler mite in the way of discovery and
description. The following sketches are founded upon actual observation,
and the delineations of scenery and manners therein contained are
strictly in accordance with the personal experience of the author.
I.--A SUMMER EXCURSION.
'All very well,' said Aunt Sarah; 'I have no doubt the excursion would
be charming; but who will accompany you?'
'We do not require an escort; we can take care of each other,'
'Can it be that you, Lucy, a staid married woman of thirty-six, and you,
Elsie, a demure young girl of twenty, are suddenly about to enter the
ranks of the strong minded?'
'Why, dear aunt,' said Lucy D----, 'you would not have us weak minded,
would you? I think I heard you say no longer ago than yesterday that
half the domestic miseries in this world were due to the weak nerves and
feeble intellects of poorly educated women.'
'True; but the technical expression, 'strong minded,' does not mean
strong in mind--rather the contrary.'
'In other words, strong minded means weak minded, is that it, auntie?'
laughed Elsie.
'I see, Aunt Sarah,' said Lucy, 'we shall be forced to call upon you for
that most difficult of tasks, a definition. What is meant by the term,
'strong-minded woman'?'
'A monster,' replied Mrs. Sarah Grundy, 'who lectures, speaks in public,
wants women to vote, to wear men's garments; in a word, one who would
like to upset religion, social life, and the world in general.'
'Well,' dear auntie, 'we surely do not purpose committing any of these
enormities; our intentions simply embrace a short excursion of some
forty miles in search of fine scenery, health, and a little amusement.
We have no confidence in our power to influence the public, even if we
thought we had aught to say which they do not already know; we do not
see that voting has a very beneficial effect upon men, witness election
days; as for their garments, they are too hideously ungraceful for us to
covet; in faith, we are of the most orthodox; we confess, we do think
social life needs sundry reforms, more charity and forbearance, less
detraction and ostentation, etc., etc.; and as for the world in general,
we think it very beautiful, and only wish to overlook some few
additional miles of its lovely mountains, lakes, and streams.'
'Well, well, girls, young people always can talk faster than old ones;
but do you really think it safe for you to venture without escort? You
do not even know the name of the place which you wish to visit; you have
been informed that on the summit of yonder mountain is a lake, said to
be picturesque; but of its cognomen, and of the proper means to reach
it, you are utterly ignorant. You will have to ask questions of all
sorts of people.'
'Suppose we do--being women, we will certainly in America receive civil
answers.'
'But if some person unknown to you should speak to you?'
'Little danger, dear aunt, of dread unknowns, if we comport ourselves
properly; I have travelled much in all kinds of public conveyances, and
never yet have been improperly addressed. Did you ever have an adventure
of the sort'?
'Once only,' replied Aunt Sarah, 'and then the fault was my own. I was
young and giddy; Cousin Nancy was with me, and we were in a rail-car. In
a near seat sat a very good-looking young man; Nancy looked toward him
once or twice and, meeting his eye, began to giggle: I foolishly joined
her; thus encouraged, our young gentleman opened a conversation. Nancy
laughed immoderately; but I, being a few years older, soon controlled my
silly giggling; and by the tone of my reply speedily silenced our
would-be admirer. He turned his back upon us, and, so far as I know, in
less than five minutes had forgotten our very existence.'
'Decidedly a case in our favor! And if the boat should blow up, or the
car roll down an embankment, in what would we be benefited by the fact
of having an escort also to be scalded or have his head broken?'
'Ye maun even then gang your ain gait. I wish you a pleasant journey and
a safe return.'
'Thank you, auntie, and you will not call us strong minded?'
'Certainly not, unless I find you merit the appellation.'
The little trunk was soon packed, and one fine July morning the two
travellers set off in search of the beautiful lake, whose name is not to
be found in the guide books. They knew it was to be looked for in a
sharp and peculiar dent in the Shawangunk mountain, which dent, so far
as they could judge from the hills near their dwelling on the northern
slope of the Highlands, must be nearly opposite Poughkeepsie. Neither
map nor gazetteer could they procure; the neighbors could give them no
information, and they were forced to proceed with only the
above-mentioned meagre stock of knowledge.
The first stage was of five miles, in a carriage to Newburg, where they
took the day boat for Albany. Our novices felt more or less anxiety
regarding the fidelity of the porter intrusted with their two small
articles of baggage; but said articles appearing somewhat late, though
still in season, and being duly marked for Poughkeepsie, the first
question asked was as to the existence of such a place as New Paltz
Landing, opposite the above-named city, and the facilities for crossing
the river. None of those in authority knew certainly of a ferry, but
supposed it highly probable. The wharf at Poughkeepsie was suggested as
a proper place to obtain information; and, once there, our travellers
soon found themselves in the hands of an intelligent contraband, who
promised to place them safely on the desired ferry boat. As they neared
the dock, a great rock, with an upset wagon for foreground, furnished an
encouraging picture for two lone lady tourists. The boat proved neat and
comfortable, and here again inquiries were made. The very polite captain
had heard of a lake on the Shawangunk mountain, but knew neither its
name nor exact location. He advised them to have their baggage sent to
the little inn at the landing, where they might dine and await a stage
expected to pass in about an hour on its way to New Paltz, a village
nine miles west of the river. At the inn they fancied they must
certainly learn something definite regarding the final object of their
undertaking. A large map of Ulster county hung in the sitting room, and
gave promise of some decided information. Unfortunately, it was not of a
recent edition: a nameless lake on the Shawangunk mountain, about five
miles from New Paltz, seemed to be the object of their search; but the
landlord, who had heard of a lake in that direction, could not tell how
it was to be reached, or whether shelter could there be found in any
decent tenement; his impression was that there had been a public house
on top of the mountain, but that it had recently been destroyed by fire.
Certainties were evidently still unattainable.
Finally, the stage arrived--a vehicle drawn by two horses, and intended
to seat four persons. In it were already two ladies, with bags and
bundles, two trunks, a champagne basket, numberless packages, and about
fifty bottles of soda water, laid in among the straw covering the bottom
of the accommodating conveyance. The driver, a good-natured, intelligent
man, gave our travellers his bench, and arranged a seat for himself and
the champagne basket on a sort of shelf overhanging the tails of the
horses. At the top of the first hill is the village of Houstonville,
where they stopped at the post office to leave the mail, and where two
ladies appeared as claimants for seats in the stage. The driver at first
demurred; but, finding the ladies persistent, he drew forth a board,
and, fastening it at either end to a perpendicular prop, constructed a
third bench, on which the two new passengers took their places.
The stage was by this time more than well packed; but ere long the
process of lightening up commenced, as first the champagne basket, then
packages, bundles, and newspapers, were left at various dwellings along
the roadside. One novelty especially striking was the wayside post
office, consisting of a box on a pole, intended to contain the daily
newspaper therein thrust to await the coming of the owners.
Of course the driver was plied with numerous questions regarding the
thus far nameless lake. He had been up the Shawangunk mountain fishing,
but that was years before; there was a lake, but he had never heard any
name given to it; he had understood a house had been built since his
last visit; but he did not know if it was intended to accommodate
visitors during the night. Of one thing, however, he was quite certain,
and that was, the impossibility of finding a horse in New Paltz to take
the ladies up that evening. The inns had none to let; there were no
livery stables, and his own pair were too greatly fatigued by their
twenty-mile drive to venture up so steep an ascent; but he thought a
conveyance might be found for the following morning. The views along the
road were charming; and the sharp, jagged crest known as Paltz Point,
overhung the well-cultivated rolling valley beneath, giving a fair
promise of an extended and characteristic view.
The inn, to which the travellers were driven, proved very neat and
comfortable. It was a new edifice, with an accommodating landlord and
landlady, the latter of which personages seemed quite mystified by the
advent of two lorn ladies in search of an unknown lake. In the entry
hung a new map of Ulster county, on which appeared a lake nestling under
the cliffs of Paltz Point, but still without a name. Paltz Point!--that
must be the very jagged pile of rock visible from the Cornwall hills,
and the lake at its foot more than probably the object of the journey.
The landlord was quite positive as to the existence of a house, but
doubted its capacity in regard to sleeping accommodations; he also
corroborated the testimony of the driver respecting the difficulty of
obtaining a vehicle, every horse being engaged haying. The ladies
announced that, as the distance was only six miles, it could be walked,
in case this difficulty proved insuperable. An individual at the tea
table proposed that the travellers should be taken up some time in the
middle of the night, that the horse might return by six o'clock in the
morning; but this suggestion was unanimously frowned down. The chief
reason for requiring a horse and wagon lay in the little trunk, which,
as it contained the painting box of our Elsie, who thought the lake and
vicinity might offer some picturesque studies, could not possibly be
left behind. After tea, a walk was taken, and the vicinage of New Paltz
duly inspected. The Wallkill, here a quiet stream, runs through rich,
green meadows, bordered by the noble range of the Catskills and the
singular, broken ridges of the Shawangunk. The sun set clear, casting
pale gold streams of light over the meadows, and leaving a long,
lingering, rosy twilight. The young art-student drank in beauty with
every breath. The cows were driven home; the ducks came slowly up out of
the stream, and all the winged creatures went to roost. Night came, and
repose was welcome after the pleasures and fatigues of the day's
journey.
At eight the following morning, a steady black pony, with a light open
wagon, appeared at the door; and by ten o'clock the travellers reached
the mountain top. Their steed showed marvellous endurance in the way of
slow pacing down steep hills, which they afterward found had been
acquired in leading sad trains of mourners to the modest graveyards,
wherein rest the earthly remains of the peaceful dwellers in this
pastoral vale. The first four or five miles of road were excellent, but
the last one or two so rough and stony, that they were quite willing to
walk. On top of the mountain stands a little inn, commanding a
magnificent view in several directions. As they neared the end of their
journey, they rejoiced to see a white house gleaming through the trees,
and promising food and shelter. The sound of coming wheels brought out
the land-lady, who gave the travellers a hearty welcome, and assured
them of her ability to harbor them for the night. The end was
accomplished--the goal reached! And what a goal! Nowhere among all the
beautiful scenery in the Middle and Eastern States is there a spot more
characteristic and interesting than Paltz Point, and the lake that lies
under its shadow--that lake, whose name was a mystery, even to the
inmates of the house built upon its brink. Its waters are clear, and of
a deep green hue; its depth is said to be great, and its rocky shores
rise in perpendicular cliffs of from ten to two hundred feet. The
highest point stands three or four hundred feet above the surface of the
water; but in that part the cliffs are no longer perpendicular. The
length of the lake is about a mile, and the width perhaps half that
distance. The rocks are gray sandstone or quartz conglomerate, making
the cliffsides, except where covered by black lichens, of a glittering
white. On one side, the rocks rise in steep, precipitous masses, while
on the other they are shattered into every imaginable form. The clefts
are deep and narrow, great hemlocks rise from the bottoms of the
fissures, and the vast masses of fallen or split rock lie piled and
cloven, confusedly tossed about, gigantic memorials of the great
convulsion that in days long gone by heaped up the long ridge of the
Shawangunk, and shattered its northern dip into such majestic and
fantastic cliffs. The deepest and wildest chasm is filled by the weird,
green lake. Straying along the tops of the precipices bordering the
water, our travellers beheld lovely vistas of the far-away country,
north, south, east, or west, stealing in through rocky or leafy
openings. An easy ascent of about half a mile leads to the summit of the
Point. Blueberries were ripe, and beguiled the pair into many a moment's
dallying by the wayside. Not until they reached the very top were they
quite sure they had after all found the place they came to seek; but one
view down the jagged line of the Shawangunk, convinced our Elsie that no
other spot could have furnished the sketch seen in the studio, where she
had been advised to seek 'the lake on the Shawangunk mountain.'