"But if, unhappily, we should be involved in war, in civil war, between

the two parts of this Confederacy, in which the effort upon the one

side should be to restrain the introduction of slavery into the new

territories, and upon the other side to force its introduction there,

what a spectacle should we present to the astonishment of mankind, in an

effort, not to propagate right, but--I must say it, though I trust it

will be understood to be said with no design to excite feeling--a war to

propagate wrong in the territories thus acquired from Mexico. It would

be a war in which we should have no sympathies, no good wishes, in which

all mankind would be against us; for, from the commencement of the

Revolution down to the present time, we have constantly reproached

our British ancestors for the introduction of slavery into this

country."--HENRY CLAY, _Congressional Globe_, Part II., Vol. 22, p.

117.]

Sick at heart, as the future of the nation stood to his dim vision

through the present, the writer found his way to his hotel. At this

time the North was silent, apparently apathetic, unbelieving, almost

criminally allowed to be undeceived by its presses and by public men who

had means of information, while this volcano continued to prepare itself

thus defiantly beneath the very feet of a President sworn to support the

laws!

* * * * *

The formal interview with the Honorable R.M.T. Hunter was sought in

company with two other students of New-England colleges. We had hoped to

meet Mr. Mason at the same apartments, but were disappointed. The great

contrast of personal character between Mr. Hunter and Mr. Toombs made

the concurrence of the former in the chief views presented by the

latter the more significant. The careful habits of thought, the

unostentatiousness, and the practical common sense for which the

Virginian farmer is esteemed, and which had made his name a prominent

one for President of a Central Confederacy, in case of the separate

secession of the Border States, were curiously manifested both in

his apartments and his manner. The chamber was apparently at a

boarding-house, but very plainly furnished with red cotton serge

curtains and common hair-cloth chairs and sofa. The Senator's manner of

speech was slow, considerate,--indeed, sometimes approaching awkwardness

in its plain, farmer-like simplicity. One of the first questions was the

central one, concerning the chief grievance of the South, which had been

presented to Mr. Toombs.

"Yes," was Mr. Hunter's reply, somewhat less promptly given, "it may be

said to come chiefly from that,--the non-recognition of our property

under the Constitution. We wish our property recognized, as we think the

Constitution provides. We should like to remain with the North."

He spoke without a particle of expressed passion or ardor, though by

no means incapable, when aroused, as those who have seen his plethoric

countenance and figure can testify, of both.

"We are mutually helpful to each other. _We want to use your navy and

your factories. You want our cotton. The North to manufacture, and the

South to produce, would make the strongest nation_. But, if we separate,

we shall try to do more in Virginia than we do now. We shall make mills

on our streams."

His language was chiefly Saxon monosyllables.

"The climate is not as severe, the nights are not as long with us as

with you. I think we can do well at manufacturing in Virginia. The

Chesapeake Bay and our rivers should aid commerce. As for the slaves,

I think there is little danger of any trouble. There may be some," he

said, with a frankness that surprised us slightly, but in the same

moderate, honest way, his hands clasped upon his breast, and the

extended feet rubbing together slowly, "in the Cotton States, where they

are very thick together; but I think that there is very little danger in

Virginia. The way they take to rise in never shows much skill. The last

time they rose in our State, I think the attempt was brought on by some

sign in an eclipse of the moon."

Nearly all that passed of political interest is contained in the

foregoing sentences, except one honest reply to a question concerning

his opinion of the probability of the North's attempting coercion.

"If only three States go out, they may coerce," said Mr. Hunter; "but if

fifteen go, I guess they won't try."

At the present period of the Rebellion, this indication of the

anticipations of its leaders in engaging in it must be of interest.

It must be understood that the writer and his companions presented

themselves simply as students, with no fixed exclusive predilections for

either of the public parties in politics,--which, in the writer's case

at least, was certainly a statement wholly true,--and that this evident

freedom from political bias secured perhaps an unusual share of the

confidence of the Southern Senators. It will be remembered, also, that

in every conversation, however startling the revelation of criminal

purpose or absurd motive, the manner of these Senators was always

totally devoid of any approach to that vulgar intellectual levity which

too often, in treating of public affairs, painfully characterizes

the fifth-rate men whom the North sometimes chooses to make its

representatives. The manner of the Southern leaders was to us a

sufficient proof of their sincerity.

* * * * *

At the house of the Honorable Jefferson Davis, now in the world's

gaze President of the then nascent Confederacy, the writer, in the

intelligent and genial company of the graduate of Harvard and the

student of Amherst before mentioned, called formally, on the evening

of the New Year's reception-day. A representative from one of the

Southwestern States was present, but we were soon admitted to the front

of the open blazing grate of the reception-parlor. We had before seen

Mr. Davis busy in the Senate.

The urbanity, the intellectual energy, and the intensely shrewd

watchfulness and ambition, combined with a covertly expressed, but

powerful native instinct for strategy and command, which have made Mr.

Davis a public leader, were evident at the first glance. The Senator

seemed compact of ambition, will, intellect, activity, and shrewdness.

A high and broad, but square forehead; the aquiline nose; the square,

fighting chin; the thin, compressed, but flexible lips; the almost

haggardly sunken cheek; the piercing, not wholly uncovered eye; the

dark, somewhat thinning hair; the clear, slightly browned, nervous

complexion, all well given in the best current photographs, were united

to a figure slightly bent in the shoulders, of more respiratory than

digestive breadth, in outlines almost equally balancing ruggedness and

grace, of compactness wrought by the pressure of perhaps few more than

fifty summers, not above medium height, but composed throughout of silk

and steel. A certain similarity between the decorations of the parlor

and the character of the owner, perhaps more fanciful than real, at once

attracted attention. Everything was simple, graceful, and rich, without

being tropically luxuriant; the paintings appeared to be often of airy,

winged, or white-robed figures, that suggested a reflective and not

unimaginative mind in the one who had chosen them. This was the leader

whom Mr. Calhoun's fervent political metaphysics and his own ambition

for place and power had misled. His conversation was remarkable in

manner for perfect unostentatiousness, clearness, and self-control, and

in matter for breadth and minuteness of political information. In the

whole conversation, he never uttered a broken or awkwardly constructed

sentence, nor wavered, while stating facts, by a single intonation. This

considerable intellectual energy, combined with courtesy, was his

chief fascination. Yet, underneath all lay an atmosphere of covert

haughtiness, and, at times, even of audacious remorselessness, which,

under stimulative circumstances, were to be feared. Undoubtedly, passion

and ambition were natively stronger in the countenance than reason,

conscience, and general sympathy,--an observation best felt to be true

when the face was compared in imagination with the faces of some of the

world's chief benefactors; but culture, native urbanity, and a powerful

reflective tendency had evidently so wrought, that, though conscience

might be imperilled frequently by great adroitness in the casuistry of

self-excuse, justice could not be consciously opposed for any length of

time without powerful silent reaction. The quantity of being, however,

though superior, was not of so high a measure as the quality, and the

principal deficiencies, though perhaps almost the sole ones, were

plainly moral. In his presence, no man could deny to him something of

that dignity, of a kind superior to that of intellect and will, which

must be possessed by every leader as a basis of confidence. But mournful

severe truth would testify that there was yet, at times, palpably

something of the treacherous serpent in the eye, and it could not

readily be told where it would strike.

In reply to a reference to a somewhat celebrated speech by Senator

Benjamin of Louisiana, which we had heard the day previous, he said that

we might consider it, as a whole, a very fair statement both of the

arguments and the purposes of the South. Perhaps a speech of more

horrible doctrine, upheld by equal argumentative and rhetorical power,

has never been heard in the American Senate. In reply, also, to the one

central question concerning the chief grievance of the South, he gave in

substance the same answer, uttered perhaps with more logical calmness,

that had been given by Mr. Hunter and Mr. Toombs, that it was

substantially covered by Mr. Calhoun's old complaint, the

non-recognition of slave-property under the Federal Constitution. Of

course we were as yet too well established in the belief that slavery in

the United States is upheld by the Constitution only very remotely and

indirectly, under local or municipal law, to desire, even by questions,

to draw on any debate.

In reply to a question by the gentleman from Harvard, he spoke of a

Central Confederacy as altogether improbable, and thought, if Georgia

seceded, as the telegrams for the last fortnight had indicated she

would, Maryland would be sure to go. "I think the commercial and

political interests of Maryland," he remarked, in his calm and simple,

but distinct and watchful manner, manifesting, too, at the same time,

a natural command of dignified, antithetical sentences, "would be

promoted, perhaps can be only preserved, by secession. Her territory

extends on both sides of a great inland water communication, and is at

the natural Atlantic outlet, by railway, of the Valley of the West.

Baltimore in the Union is sure to be inferior to Philadelphia and New

York: Baltimore out of the Union is sure to become a great commercial

city. In every way, whether we regard her own people or their usefulness

to other States, I think the interests of Maryland would be promoted by

secession."

"But would not Maryland lose many more slaves, as the border member of a

foreign confederacy, than she does now in the Union?"

The reply to this question we looked for with the greatest interest,

since no foreign nation, such as the North would be, in case of

the success of the attempted Confederacy, ever thinks of giving up

fugitives, and since the policy of the South upon this point, in case

she should succeed, would determine the possibility or impossibility of

peace between the two portions of the Continent.

Mr. Davis's reply was in the following words, uttered in a tone of equal

shrewdness, calmness, and decision:--

"I think, for all Maryland would lose in that way she would be more than

repaid by reprisals. While we are one nation and you steal our property,

we have little redress; _but when we become two nations, we shall say,

Two can play at this game_."

We breathed more freely after so frank an utterance. The great

importance of this reply, coming from the even then proposed political

chief of the Confederacy, as indicating the impossibility of peace, even

in case of the recognition of the South, so long as it should continue,

as it has begun, to make Slavery the chief corner-stone of the State,

will be at once perceived.

"But," the writer ventured to inquire, "what will become of the Federal

District, since its inhabitants have no 'State right of secession'?"

"Have you ever studied law?" he asked.

The gentleman from Amherst confessed our ignorance of any point covering

the case.

"There is a rule in law," continued Mr. Davis, "that, when property is

granted by one party to another for use for any specified purpose, and

ceases to be used for that purpose, it reverts by law to the donor.

Now the territory constituting at present the District of Columbia was

granted, as you well know, by Maryland to the United States for use as

the seat of the Federal capital. When it ceases to be used for that

purpose, it, with all its public fixtures, will revert by law to

Maryland. But," and his eye brightened to the hue of cold steel in a

way the writer will never forget, as he uttered, in a tone perfectly

self-poised, undaunted, and slightly defiant, the words, "_that is a

point which may be settled by force rather than by reason_."

This was January 1, 1861, only eleven days after South Carolina had

passed her Act of Secession, and shows that even then, notwithstanding

the professed desire of the South to depart in peace, the attack not

only upon the national principles of union, but upon the national

property as well, was projected. Mr. Davis, loaded with the benefits of

his country, yet occupied a seat in the Senate Chamber, under the most

solemn oath to uphold its Constitution, which, even if his grievances

had been well founded, afforded Constitutional and peaceful remedies

that he had never attempted to use. Presenting regards, very formal

indeed, sick at heart, indignant, and anxious, we left the house of the

traitor.

The historical conclusions to be drawn from the above slight sketches

are important in several respects. Mr. Davis, Mr. Toombs, and Mr. Hunter

are among the strongest leaders of the Rebellion. Representing the

Northern, Southeastern, and Southwestern populations of the disaffected

regions, their testimony had a wide application, and was perhaps as

characteristic and pointed in these brief conversations, occurring just

upon the eve of the bursting of the storm, as we should have heard in a

hundred interviews. That they spoke frankly was not only evidenced to

us by their entire manner, but, as it is not unimportant to repeat,

has been proved by subsequent events. The conversations, therefore,

indicate,--

1. That the grand, fundamental, legal ground for the Rebellion was a

view of Constitutional rights by which property in human beings claimed

equal protection under the General Government with the products of Free

Labor, and to be admitted, therefore, at will, to all places under the

jurisdiction of the Federal power, and not simply to be protected under

local or municipal law,--rights which the South proposed to vindicate,

constitutionally, by Secession, or, in other words, by the domination of

State over National sovereignty: an entire view of the true intent of

the Federal compacts and powers, which, in the great debates between Mr.

Webster and Mr. Calhoun, to say nothing of elucidations by previous and

subsequent jurists and statesmen, has been again and again abundantly

demonstrated to be absurd.

2. That the immediate, comprehensive pretext for the Rebellion was the

success of a legal majority having in its platform of principles the

doctrine of the non-extension of involuntary human bondage in the

territories over which the Constitution had given to the whole people

absolute control, a doctrine which the mass of the Southern populations

were educated to believe not only deadly to their local privileges, but

distinctly unconstitutional.

3. That the leaders of the Rebellion frankly admitted, that, excepting

this one point of Constitutional grievance, the interests of the

populations which they represented would be better subserved in the

Union than out of it.

4. That the leaders of the Rebellion appear not to have anticipated

coercion; but yet, from the earliest days of Secession, contemplated

the spoliation of the Southern National property, and particularly the

seizure of the Federal capital.

5. That, even should the independence of the South be acknowledged,

peace could not result so long as Slavery should continue: their avowed

system of reprisals for the certain escape of slaves precluding all

force in any but piratical international law.

6. That the spirit of the Rebellion is the haughty, grasping, and,

except within its own circle, the remorseless spirit universally

characteristic of oligarchies, before the success of whose principles

upon this continent the liberties of the whites could be no safer than

those of the blacks.

"We are the gentlemen of this land," said the Georgian senator, "and

gentlemen always make revolutions in history." And just previously he

had said, with haughty significance, "_Your_ poor population can hold

ward-meetings, and can vote. But _we_ know better how to take care of

ours. They are in the fields, and under the eye of their overseers."

In these two brief remarks, taken singly, or, especially, in

juxtaposition, from so representative a source, and so characteristic

of oligarchical opinions everywhere, appears condensed the suggestive

political warning of these times, indeed of all times, and which a

people regardful of civil and religious liberty can never be slow to

heed.

Let the pride of race and the aristocratic tendencies which underlie the

resistance of the South prevail, and we shall see a new America. The

land of the fathers and of the present will become strange to us. In

place of a thriving population, each member socially independent,

self-respecting, contented, and industrious, contributing, therefore,

to the general welfare, and preserving to posterity and to mankind a

national future of inconceivable power and grandeur, we shall see a

class of unemployed rich and unemployed poor, the former a handful, the

latter a host, in perpetual feud. The asylum of nations, ungratefully

rejecting the principles of equality, to which it has owed a career

of prosperity unexampled in history, will find in arrested commerce,

depressed credit, checked manufactures, an effeminate and selfish,

however brilliant, governing class, and an impoverished and imbruted

industrial population, the consequences of turning back upon its path of

advance. The condition of the most unfortunate aristocracies of the Old

World will become ours.

But the venerated principles partially promulgated in our golden age

forbid such unhappy auspices. Undoubtedly gentlemen make revolutions in

history; but since all may be Christians, may not all men be gentlemen?

At least, have not all men, everywhere, the sacred and comprehensive

right of equal freedom of endeavor to occupy their highest capacities?

_Does not the Creator, who makes nothing in vain, wherever He implants a

power, imply a command to exercise that power according to the highest

aspiration, and is not responsibility eternally exacted, wherever

power and command coexist?_ By that fearful sanction, may not all men,

everywhere, become the best they can become? What that may be, is not

free, equal, and perpetual experiment, judged by conscience in the

individual and by philanthropy in his brother, and not by arrogance

or cupidity in his oppressor, to decide? To secure the wisdom and

perpetuity of this experiment, are not governments instituted? Is not

a monopoly of opportunity by any single class, by all historical and

theoretical proof, not only unjust to the excluded, but crippling

and suicidal to the State? Nay, is not the slightest infringement of

regulated social and political justice, liberty, and humanity, in

the person of black or of white, that makes the greatest potential

development of the highest in human nature impossible or difficult, to

be resisted, as a violation of the peace of the soul, endless treachery

to mankind, an affront to Heaven? Would not the very soil of America,

in which Liberty is said to inhere, cry out and rise against any but an

affirmative answer to such questions?

A near future will decide.

* * * * *

THE HOUR AND THE MAN.

The Twenty-Second of September, 1862, bids fair to become as remarkable

a date in American history as the Fourth of July, 1776; for on that day

the President of the United States, availing himself of the full powers

of his position, declared this country free from that slaveholding

oligarchy which had so long governed it in peace, and the influence of

which was so potently felt for more than a year after it had broken up

the Union, and made war upon the Federal Government. Be the event what

it may,--and the incidents of the war have taught us not to be too

sanguine as to the results of any given movement,--President Lincoln has

placed the American nation in a proper attitude with respect to that

institution the existence of which had so long been the scandal and

the disgrace of a people claiming to be the freest on earth, but whose

powers had been systematically used and abused for the maintenance and

the extension of slave-labor.

It was our misfortune, and in some sense it was also our fault, that we

were bound to uphold the worst system of slavery that ever was known

among men; for we must judge of every wrong that is perpetrated by the

circumstances that are connected with it, and our oppression of the

African race was peculiarly offensive, inasmuch as it was a proceeding

in flagrant violation of our constantly avowed principles, was continued

in face of the opinions of the founders of the nation, was frankly

upheld on the unmanly ground that the intellectual weakness of the

slaves rendered it safe to oppress them, and was not excused by that

general ignorance of right which has so often been brought forward in

palliation of wrong,--as slavery had come under the ban of Christendom

years before Americans could be found boldly bad enough to claim for it

a divine origin, and to avow that it was a proper, and even the best,

foundation for civil society. Our offence was of the rankest, and its

peculiar character rendered us odious in the eyes of the nations, who

would not admit the force of our plea as to the great difficulties that

lay in the way of the removal of the evil, as they had seen it condemned

by most communities, and abolished by some of their number.

The very circumstance upon which Americans have relied for the

justification of their form of slavery, namely, that it was confined to

one race, and that race widely separated from all other races by

the existence of peculiar characteristics, has been regarded as an

aggravation of their misconduct by all humane and disinterested persons.

The Greek system of slavery, which was based on the idea that Greeks

were noblemen of Heaven's own creating, and that they therefore were

justified in treating all other men as inferiors, and making the same

use of them as they made of horses; the Roman system, which was based on

the will of society, and therefore made no exceptions on the score of

color, but saw in all strangers only creatures of chase; the Mussulman

system, brought out so strongly by the action of the States of Barbary,

and which was colored by the character of the long quarrel between

Mahometans and Christians, and under which Northern Africa was filled

with myriads of slaves from Southern Europe, among whom were men of

the highest intellect,--Cervantes, for example;--all these systems

of servitude, and others that might be adduced, were respectable in

comparison with our system, which proceeded upon the blasphemous

assumption that God had created and set apart one race that should

forever dwell in the house of bondage. If, in some respects, our system

has been more humane than that of other peoples in other times, the fact

is owing to that general improvement which has taken place the earth

over during the present century. The world has gone forward, and even

American slaveholders have been compelled to go with it, whether they

would or not.

It was a distinctive feature of slavery, as here known, that it tended

to debauch the mind of Christendom. So long as all men were liable to be

enslaved, and even Shakspeare and Milton were in some danger of sharing

the fate of Cervantes,--and the Barbary corsairs did actually carry

off men from the British Islands in the times of Milton and

Shakspeare,--there could not fail to grow up a general hostility to

slavery, and the institution was booked for destruction. But when

slavery came to be considered as the appropriate condition of one race,

and the members of that race so highly qualified to engage in the

production of cotton and sugar, tobacco and rice, the danger was, not

only that slavery would once more come into favor, but that the African

slave-trade would be replaced in the list of legitimate commercial

pursuits, and become more extensive than it was in those days when it

was defended by bishops and kings' sons in the British House of Lords.

That this is not an unfounded opinion will be admitted by those who

recollect that the London "Times," that representative of the average

English mind, but recently published articles that could mean nothing

less than a desire to revive the old system of slavery, with all that

should be necessary to maintain it in force; that Mr. Carlyle is an

advocate of the oppression of negroes; and that the French Government

at one time seemed disposed to have resort to a course that must, if

adopted, have converted Africa into a storehouse of slaves.

Our slaveholders were not blind to this altered state of the European

mind, of which they availed themselves, and of which, in a certain

sense, they had the best of all rights to avail themselves, for it was

largely their own work. At the same time that England abolished slavery

in her dominions, the chief Nullifiers, who were the fathers of the

Secession Rebellion, assumed the position that negro slavery was good in

itself, and that it was the duty of white men to uphold and to extend

it. This was done by Governor McDuffie, of South Carolina, in 1834,

and it was warmly approved by many Southern men, as well out of South

Carolina as in that most fanatical of States, but generally condemned by

the Democrats of that time, though now it is not uncommon to find men

in the North who accept all that the old Nullifier put forward as a new

truth eight-and-twenty years ago. Earnestly and zealously, and with no

small amount of talent, the friends of slavery labored to impose their

views upon the entire Southern mind,--and that not so much because they

loved slavery for itself as because they knew, that, if the slaveholding

interest could be placed in opposition to the Federal Union, that Union

might be destroyed. They were fanatics in their attachment to slavery,

but even their fanaticism was secondary to their hatred of that

power which, as represented by Andrew Jackson, had trampled down

Nullification, and compelled Carolina and Calhoun to retreat from cannon

and the gallows. Mr. Rhett, then Mr. Barnwell Smith, said, in the

debates in the Convention on the proposition to accept the Tariff

Compromise of 1833, that he hated the star-spangled banner; and

unquestionably he expressed the feelings of many of his contemporaries,

who deemed submission prudent, but who were consoled by the reflection

that slavery would afford them a far better means for breaking up the

Union than it was possible to get through the existence of any tariff,

no matter how protective it might be. All the great leaders of the first

Secession school had passed away from the earth, when Rhett "still

lived" to see the flag he hated pulled down before the fire that was

poured upon Fort Sumter from Carolina's batteries worked by the hands

of Carolinians. Calhoun, Hamilton, McDuffie, Hayne, Trumbull, Cooper,

Harper, Preston, and others, men of the first intellectual rank in

America, had departed; but Rhett survived to see what they had labored

to effect, and what they would have effected, had they not encountered

one of those iron spirits to whom is sometimes intrusted the government

of nations, and who are of more value to nations than gold and fleets

and armies. All that we have lately seen done, and more, would have been

done thirty years since, had any other man than Andrew Jackson been at

that time President of the United States. There was much cant in those

days about "the one-man power," because President Jackson saw fit to

make use of the Constitutional qualified veto-power to express his

opposition to certain measures adopted by Congress; but the best

exhibition of "the one-man power" that the country ever saw, then or

before or since, was when the same magistrate crushed Nullification,

maintained the Union, and secured the nation's peace for more than a

quarter of a century. We never knew what a great man Jackson was, until

the country was cursed by Buchanan's occupation of the same chair that

Jackson had filled,--a chair that he was unworthy to dust,--and by his

cowardice and treachery which made civil war inevitable. One man, at the

close of 1860, could have done more than has yet been accomplished by

the million of men who have been called to arms because no such man was

then in the nation's service. The "one hour of Dundee" was not more

wanting to the Stuarts than the one month of Jackson was wanting to us

but two years ago.

The powerful teaching of the Nullifiers was successful. The South, which

assumed to be the exclusive seat of American nationality, while the

North was declared given up to sectionalism, with no other lights on its

path than "blue lights," became the South so devoted to slavery that

it could see nothing else in the country. Old Union men of 1832 became

Secessionists, though Nullification, the milder thing of the two, had

been too much for them to endure. They not only endured the more hideous

evil, but they embraced it. Between 1832 and 1860 a change had been

wrought such as twice that time could not have accomplished at any

earlier period of human history. The old Southern ideas respecting

slavery had disappeared, and that institution had become an object of

idolatry, so that any criticisms to which it was subjected kindled the

same sort of flame that is excited in a pious community when objects of

devotion are assailed and destroyed by the hands of unbelievers.

The astonishing material prosperity that accompanied the system of

slave-labor had, no doubt, much to do with the regard that was bestowed

upon the system itself. That was the time when Cotton became King,--at

least, in the opinion of its worshippers. The Democratic party of the

North passed from that position of radicalism to which the name of

_Locofocoism_ was given, to the position of supporters of the extremest

Southern doctrines, so that for some years it appeared to exist for no

other purpose than to do garrison-duty in the Free States, the cost of

its maintenance being supplied by the Federal revenues. Abroad the same

change began to be noted, the demand for cotton prevailing over the

power of conscience. Everything worked as well for evil as it could

work, and as if Satan himself had condescended to accept the post of

stage-manager for the disturbers of America's peace.

To take advantage of the change that had been brought about was the

purpose of the whole political population of the South. But though that

section was united in its determination to support the supremacy of

slavery, it was far from being united in its opinions as to the best

mode of accomplishing its object. There were three parties in the South

in the last days of the old Union. The first, and the largest, of these

parties answered very nearly to the Southern portion of the Democratic

party, and contained whatever of sense and force belonged to the South.

It was made up of men who were firmly resolved upon one thing, namely,

that they would ruin the Union, if they should forever lose the power to

rule it; but they had the sagacity to see that the ends which they had

in view could be more easily achieved in the Union than out of it.

They were not disunionists _per se_, but were quite ready to become

disunionists, if the Union was to be governed otherwise than in the

direct and immediate interest of slavery. Slavery was the basis of their

political system, and they knew that it could be better served by the

American Union's continued existence than by the construction of

a Southern Confederacy, provided the former should do all that

slaveholders might require it to do.

The second Southern party, and the smallest of them all, was composed

of the minions of the Nullifiers, and of their immediate followers, men

whose especial object it was to destroy the Union, and who hated the

subservient portion of the Northern people far more bitterly than they

hated Republicans, or even Abolitionists. They would have preferred

abolition and disunion to the triumph of slavery and the preservation of

the Union. It was not that they loved slavery less, but that they hated

the Union more. Even if the country should submit to the South, the

leaders of this faction knew that they would not be the Southrons to

whom should be intrusted the powers and the business of government. Few

of them were of much account even in their own States, and generally

they could have been set down as chiefs of the opposition to everything

that was reasonable. A remarkable proof of the little hold which this

class of men had on even the most mad of the Southern States, when at

the height of their fury, was afforded by the refusal of South Carolina

to elect Mr. Rhett Governor, her Legislature conferring that post on Mr.

Pickens, a moderate man when compared with Mr. Rhett, and who, there

is reason for believing, would have prevented a resort to Secession

altogether, could he have done so without sacrificing what he held to be

his honor.

The third Southern party consisted of men who desired the continuance

of the Union, but who wished that some "concessions" should be made, or

"compromises" effected, in order to satisfy men, one portion of whom

were resolved upon having everything, while the other portion were

resolute in their purpose to destroy everything that then existed of a

national character. This third party was mostly composed of those

timid men whose votes count for much at ordinary periods, but who in

extraordinary times are worse than worthless, being in fact incumbrances

on bolder men. They loved the Union, because they loved peace, and were

opposed to violence of all kinds; but their Unionism was much like

Bailie Macwheeble's conscience, which was described as never doing him

any harm. What they would have done, had Government been able to send a

strong force to their assistance at the beginning of the war, we cannot

undertake to say; but they have done little to aid the Federal cause in

the field, while their influence in the Federal councils has been more

prejudicial to the country than the open exertions of the Secessionists

to effect the nation's destruction.

Of these parties, the first had every reason to believe that it could

soon regain possession of Congress, and that in 1864 it would be able to

elect its candidate to the Presidency. Hence it had no wish to dissolve

the Union; and if its leaders could have had their way, the Union would

have been spared. But the second party, making up for its deficiency in

numbers by the intensity of its zeal, and laboring untiringly, was too

much for the moderates. Hate is a stronger feeling than love of any

kind, stronger even than love of spoils; and the men who followed Rhett

and Yancey, Pryor and Spratt, hated the Union with a perfect hatred.

They got ahead of the men who followed Davis and Stephens, and the rest

of those Southern chiefs who would have been content with the complete

triumph of Southern principles in the Republic as it stood in 1860. As

they broke up the Democratic party in order to render the election

of the Republican candidate certain, so that they might found on his

election the _cri de guerre_ of a "sectional triumph" over the South, so

they "coerced" the Southern people into the adoption of a war-policy. We

have more than once heard Mr. Lincoln blamed for "precipitating matters"

in April, 1861. He should have temporized, it has been said, and so

have preserved peace; but when he called for seventy-five thousand

volunteers, he made war unavoidable. The truth is, that Mr. Lincoln did

not begin the war. It was begun by the South. His call for volunteers

was the consequence of war being made on the nation, and not the cause

of war being made either on the South or by the South. The enemy fired

upon and took Fort Sumter before the first call for volunteers was

issued; and that proceeding must be admitted to have been an act of war,

unless we are prepared to admit that there is a right of Secession.

And Fort Sumter was fired upon and taken through the influence of the

violent party at the South, who were resolved that there should be war.

They knew that it was beyond the power of the Federal Government to send

supplies to the doomed fort, and that in a few days it would pass into

the hands of the Confederates; and this they determined to prevent,

because they knew also that the mere surrender of the garrison, when

it had eaten its last rations, would not suffice to "fire the Northern

heart." They carried their point, and hence it was that war was begun

the middle of April, 1861. But for the triumph of the violent Southern

party, the contest might have been postponed, and even a peace patched

up for the time, and the inevitable struggle put off to a future day.

As it was, Government had no choice, and was compelled to fight; and it

would have been compelled to fight, had it been composed entirely of

Quakers.

War being unavoidable, and it being clear that slavery was the cause of

it as well as its occasion, and that it would be the main support of our

enemy, it ought to have followed that our first blow should be directed

against that institution. Nothing of the kind happened. Whatever

Government may have thought on the subject, it did nothing to injure

slavery. But for this forbearance, which now appears so astonishing, we

are not disposed to blame the President. He acted as the representative

of the country, which was not then prepared to act vigorously against

the root of the evil that afflicted it. A moral blindness prevailed,

which proved most injurious to the Union cause, and from the effect of

which it may never recover. It was supposed that it was yet possible to

"conciliate" the South, and that that section could be induced to "come

back" into the Union, provided nothing should be done to hurt its

feelings or injure its interests! Looking back to the summer of 1861, it

is with difficulty that we can believe that men were then in possession

of their senses, so inconsistent was their conduct. The Rebels were at

least as sensitive on the subject of their military character as they

were on that of slavery; and yet, while we could not be sufficiently

servile on the latter subject, we acted most offensively on the former.

We asserted, in every form and variety of language, our ability to "put

them down;" and but for the circumstance that not the slightest atom of

ability marked the management of our military affairs, we should

have made our boasting good. Men who could not say enough to satisfy

themselves on the point of the right of the chivalrous Southrons to

create, breed, work, and sell slaves, were equally loud-mouthed in their

expressed purpose to "put down" the said Southrons because they had

rebelled, and rebelled only because they were slaveholders, and for the

purpose of placing slavery beyond the reach of wordy assault in the

country of which it should be the governing power. There has been much

complaint that foreigners have not understood the nature of our quarrel,

and that the general European hostility to the American national cause

is owing to their ignorance of American affairs. How that may be we

shall not stop to inquire; but it is beyond dispute that no European

community has ever displayed a more glaring ignorance of the character

of the contest here waged than was exhibited by most Americans in the

early months of that contest, and down to a recent period. The war

was treated by nearly the whole people as if slavery had no possible

connection with it, and as if all mention of slavery in matters

pertaining to the war were necessarily an impertinence, a foreign

subject lugged into a domestic discussion. Three-fourths of the people

were disposed querulously to ask why Abolitionists couldn't let slavery

alone in war-time. It was a bad thing, was Abolitionism, in time of

peace; but its badness was vastly increased when we had war upon our

hands. Half the other fourth of the citizens were disposed to agree with

the majority, but very shame kept them silent. It was only the few who

had a proper conception of the state of things, and they had little

influence with the people, and, consequently, none with Government. Had

they said much, or attempted to do anything, probably they would have

found Federal arms directed against themselves with much more of force

and effectiveness in their use than were manifested when they were

directed against the Rebels. When a Union general could announce that

he would make use of the Northern soldiers under his command to destroy

slaves who should be so audacious as to rebel against Rebels, and the

announcement was received with rapturous approval at the North, it was

enough to convince every intelligent and reflecting man that no just

idea of the struggle we were engaged in was common, and that a blind

people were following blind leaders into the ditch,--even into that

"last ditch" to which the Secessionists have so often been doomed, but

in which they so obstinately continue to refuse to find their own and

their cause's grave.

That Government was not much ahead of the people in 1861, and through

most of the present year, respecting the position of slavery, is very

evident to all who know what it did, and what it refused to do, with

regard to that institution. With a hardiness that would have been

strongly offensive, if it had not been singularly ridiculous, Mr. Seward

told the astonished world of Europe that the fate of slavery did not

depend upon the event of our contest,--which was as much as to say that

we should not injure it, happen what might; and no one then supposed

that the Confederates would willingly strike a blow at it, either to

conciliate foreign nations or to obtain black soldiers. The words of the

Secretary of State did us harm in England, with the religious portion of

whose people it is something like an article of faith that slavery is

an addition to the list of deadly sins. They injured us, too, with the

members of the various schools of liberal politicians over all Europe;

and they furnished to our enemies abroad the argument that there really

was no difference between the North and the South on the slavery

question, and that therefore the sympathies of all generous minds

should be with the Southrons, who were the weaker party. Our cause was

irreparably damaged in Europe through the indiscretion of the Honorable

Secretary, who cannot be accused of any love for slavery, but who was

then, as he appears to be up to the present hour, ignorant of the nature

and the extent of the contest of which his country is the scene. Other

members of the Administration had sounder ideas, but their weight in it

was not equal to that of the Secretary of State.

It is but fair to the President to say, that his conduct was such that

it was obvious that he did not favor slavery because he had any respect

for it. He pulled so hard upon the chains that bound him, that his

desire to throw them off was clear to the world; but they were too

strong, and too well fastened, to be got rid of easily. He feared that

all the Unionists of the Border States would be lost, if he should adopt

the views of the Emancipationists; and the fear was natural, though in

point of fact his course had no good effect in those States, beyond that

of conciliating a portion of the Kentuckians. North Carolina, under the

old system the most moderate of the Slave States, was as far gone in

Secession as South Carolina, and furnished far more men to the Southern

armies than her neighbor. The Virginians and Missourians who went with

us would have pursued the same course, had the President's opinions

on slavery been as radical and pronounced as those of Mr. Garrison.

Maryland was kept from wheeling into the Secession line only by the

presence on her soil, and in her vicinity, of strong Federal armies. In

Tennessee, at a later period of the war, as in North Carolina, Federal

power extended as far as Federal guns could throw Federal shot, though

Tennessee had not been renowned for her extreme attachment to slavery.

But the heavy weight on the Presidential mind came from the Free States,

in which the Pro-Slavery party was so powerful, and the nature of the

war was so little understood, that it was impossible for Government to

strike an effective blow at the source of the enemy's strength. Before

that could be done, it would be necessary that the Northern mind should

be trained to justice in the school of adversity. The position of the

President in 1861 was not unlike to that which the Prince of Orange held

in 1687. Had William made his attempt on England in 1687, the end would

have been failure as complete as that of Monmouth in 1685. It was

necessary that the English mind should be educated up to the point of

throwing aside some cherished doctrines, the maintenance of which stood

in the way of England's safety, prosperity, and greatness. William

allowed the fruit he sought to ripen, and in 1688 he was able to do with

ease that which no human power could have done in 1687. So was it with

Mr. Lincoln, and here. Had the Proclamation lately put forth been issued

in 1861, either it would have fallen dead, or it would have met with

such opposition in the North as would have rendered it impossible to

prosecute the war with any hope of success. There would probably have

been _pronunciamientos_ from some of our armies, and the Union might

have been shivered to pieces without the enemy's lifting their hands

further against it. We do not say that such would have been the course

of events, had the Proclamation then appeared, but it might have taken

that turn; and the President had to allow for possibilities that perhaps

it never occurred to private individuals to think of,--men who had no

sense of responsibility either to the country, to the national cause, or

to the tribunal of history. He would not move as he was advised to move

by good men who had not taken into consideration all the circumstances

of the case, and who could not feel as he was forced to feel because he

was President of the United States. Probably, if he had been a private

citizen, he would have been the foremost man of the Emancipation party;

but the place he holds is so high that he must look over the whole land,

and necessarily he sees much that others can never behold. He saw that

one of two things would happen in a few months after the beginning of

active warfare, toward the close of last winter: either the Rebels would

be beaten in the field, in which event there would be reasonable hope

of the Union's reconstruction, and the people could then take charge

of slavery, and settle its future condition as to them should seem

best,--or our armies would be beaten, and the people would be made to

understand that slavery could no longer be allowed to exist for the

support of an enemy who had announced from the beginning of their

war-movement that their choice was fixed upon conquest, or, failing

that, annihilation.

It was written that we should fail in the field. We sought to take

Richmond, with an army of force that appeared to be adequate to the

work. We were beaten; and after some months of severe warfare, the

country had the supreme felicity of celebrating the eighty-sixth

anniversary of its Independence by thanking Heaven that its principal

army had escaped capture by falling back to the fever-laden banks of a

river on which lay a naval force so strong as to prevent the further

advance of the victorious Southrons. The exertions that were made to

remove that army from a place that threatened its total destruction

through pestilence led to another series of actions, in which we were

again beaten, and the Secession armies found themselves hard by the very

station which they had so long held after their victory at Bull Run.

Had their numbers been half as large as we estimated them by way of

accounting for our defeats, they could have marched into Washington,

and the American Union would have been at an end, while the Southern

Confederacy would have taken the place which the United States had

possessed among the nations. Fortunately, the enemy were not strong

enough to hazard everything upon one daring stroke. General Lee was

as prudent, or as timid, after his victories over General Pope, as,

according to some authorities, Hannibal was after winning "the field

of blood" at Cannae. What he did, however, was sufficient to show

how serious was the danger that threatened us. If he could not take

Washington, which stood for Rome, he might take Baltimore, which should

be Capua. He entered Maryland, and his movements struck dismay into

Pennsylvania. Harrisburg was marked for seizure, and the archives of the

second State of the Union were sent to New York; and Philadelphia was

considered so unsafe as to cause men to remove articles of value thence

to her ancient rival's protection. That the enemy meant to invade the

North cannot well be doubted; but the resistance they encountered,

leading to their defeat at South Mountain and Antietam, forced them to

retreat. Had they won at Antietam, not only would Washington have been

cut off from land-communication with the North, but Pennsylvania would

have been invaded, and the Southrons would have fattened on the produce

of her rich fields. While these things were taking place in Virginia and

Maryland, Fortune had proved equally unfavorable to us in the South and

the Southwest. We had been defeated near Charleston, and most of our

troops at Port Royal had been transferred to Virginia. Charleston and

Mobile saw ships constantly entering their harbors, bringing supplies to

the Secession forces. Wilmington and Savannah were less liable to attack

than some Northern towns. An attack on Vicksburg had ended in Federal

failure. By the aid of gunboats we had prevented the enemy from taking

Baton Rouge, and destroyed their iron-clad Arkansas; but our soldiers

had to abandon that town, and leave it to be watched by ships, while

they hastened to the defence of New Orleans, a city which they could not

have held half an hour, had the protecting naval force been withdrawn.

The Southwest was mostly abandoned by our troops, and the tide of war

had rolled back to the banks of the Ohio. Nashville was looked upon as

lost, Louisville was in great danger of being taken, and for some days

there was a perfect panic throughout the country respecting the fate of

Cincinnati, the prevailing opinion being that the enemy had as good

a chance of getting possession of that town as we had of maintaining

possession of it. There was hardly a quarter to which a Unionist could

look without encountering something that filled his mind with vexation,

disappointment, shame, and gloom. All that the most hopeful of loyal men

could say was, that the enemy had been made to evacuate Maryland, and

that they had not proceeded beyond threats against any Northern State:

and that was a fine theme for congratulations, after seventeen months

of warfare, in which the Rebels were to have been beaten and the Union

restored!

Such was the state of affairs, when, six days after the Battle of

Antietam, President Lincoln issued his Proclamation against slavery.

Some persons were pleased to be much astonished when it appeared. They

said they had been deceived. They were right. They were self-deceived.

They had deceived themselves. The President had received their pledge

of support, which they, with an egotism which is not uncommon with

politicians, had construed into a pledge from him to support slavery at

all hazards, under all circumstances, and against all comers. He had

given no pledge either to them or to their opponents. Plainly as man

could speak, he had said that his object was the nation's safety,

either with slavery or without it, the fate of slavery being with him a

secondary matter. If any construction was to be put upon his words to

Mr. Greeley beyond their plainest possible meaning, it was that he

preferred the destruction of slavery to its conservation, for it was

known that he had been an anti-slavery man for years, and he had been

made President by a party which was charged by its foes with being

so fanatically opposed to slavery that it was ready to destroy the

Constitution in order to gain a place from which it could hope to effect

its extermination. But Mr. Lincoln meant neither more nor less than what

he said, his sole object being the overthrow of the Rebels. He has done

no more than any President would have been compelled to do who should

have sought to do his duty. Mr. Douglas could have done no less, had he

been chosen President, and had rebellion followed his election, as we

believe would have been the fact. The Proclamation is not an "Abolition"

state-paper. Not one line of it is of such matter as any Abolitionist

would have penned, though all Abolitionists may be glad that it has

appeared, because its promulgation is a step in the right direction,--a

step sure to be taken, unless the first Federal efforts should also have

been the last, because leading to the defeat of the Rebels, and the

return of peace. The President nowhere says that he seeks the abolition

of slavery. The blow he has dealt is directed against slavery in the

dominions of the Confederacy. That Confederacy claims to be a nation,

and some of our acts amount to a virtual recognition of the claim which

it makes. Now, if we were at war with an old nation of which slavery was

one of the institutions, it could not be said that we had not the

right to offer freedom to its slaves. Objection might be made to

the proclamation of an offer of the kind, but it would be based on

expediency. England would not accept a plan that was formed half a

century ago for the partition of the United States, and which had for

its leading idea the proclamation of freedom to American slaves; but

her refusal was owing to the circumstance that she was herself a great

slaveholding power, and she had no thought of establishing a precedent

that might soon have been used with fatal effect against herself. She

did not close her ears to the proposition because she had any doubt

as to her right to avail herself of an offer of freedom to slaves,

or because she supposed that to make such an offer would be to act

immorally, but because it was inexpedient for her to proceed to

extremities with us, due regard being had to her own interests. Had

slavery been abolished in her dominions twenty years earlier, she would

have acted against American slavery in 1812-15, and probably with entire

success. President Lincoln does not purpose going so far as England

could have gone with perfect propriety. She could have proclaimed

freedom to American slaves without limitation. He has regard to the

character of the war that exists, and so his Proclamation is not threat,

but a warning. In substance, he tells the Rebels, that, if they shall

persist in their rebellion after a certain date, their slaves shall be

made free, if it shall be in his power to liberate them. He gives

them exactly one hundred days in which to make their election between

submission and slavery and resistance and ruin; and these hundred days

may become as noted in history as those Hundred Days which formed the

second reign of Napoleon I., as well through the consequences of the

action that shall mark their course as through the gravity of that

action itself.

Objections have been made to the time of issuing the Proclamation. Why,

it has been asked, spring it so suddenly upon the country? Why publish

it just as the tide of war was turning in our favor? Why not wait, and

see what the effect would be on the Southern mind of the victories won

in Maryland?--We have no knowledge of the immediate reasons that moved

the President to select the twenty-second of September for the date of

his Proclamation; but we can see three reasons why that day was a good

one for the deed which thereon was done. The President may have argued,

(1,) that the American mind had been brought up to the point of

emancipation under certain well-defined conditions, and that, if he

should not avail himself of the state of opinion, the opportunity

afforded him might pass away, never to return with equal force; (2,)

that foreign nations might base acknowledgment of the Confederacy on the

defeats experienced by our armies in the last days of August, on the

danger of Washington, and on the advance of Rebel armies to the Ohio,

and he was determined that they should, if admitting the Confederacy

to national rank, place themselves in the position of supporters of

slavery; and, (3,) that the successes won by our army in Maryland,

considering the disgraceful business at Harper's Ferry, were not of that

pronounced character which entitles us to assert any supremacy over the

enemy as soldiers. Something like this would seem to be the process

through which President Lincoln arrived at the sound conclusion that the

hour had come to strike a heavy blow at the enemy, and that he was the

man for the hour.

Thus much for the Proclamation itself, the appearance of which indicates

the beginning of a new period in the Secession contest, and shows that

the American people are capable of conquering their prejudices, provided

their schooling shall be sufficiently severe and costly. But the

Proclamation itself, and without any change in our military policy,

cannot be expected to accomplish anything for the Federal cause. Its

doctrines must be enforced, if there is to be any practical effect from

the change of position taken by the country and the President. If the

same want of capacity that has hitherto characterized the war on our

part is to be exhibited hereafter, the Proclamation might as well have

been levelled against the evils of intemperance as against the evils

of slavery. Never, since war began, has there been such imbecility

displayed in waging it as we have contrived to display in our attacks on

the enemies of the Union. It used to be supposed that Austria was the

slowest and the most stupid of military countries; but America has

got ahead of Austria in the art of doing nothing--or worse than

nothing--with myriads of men and millions of money. We stand before the

world a people to whom military success seems seldom possible, and,

when possible, rarely useful. If we win a victory, we spend weeks in

contemplating its beauties, and never think of improving it. Had one of

our generals won the Battle of Jena, he would have rested for six weeks,

and permitted the Prussian army to reorganize, instead of following it

with that swiftness which alone can prevent brave men from speedily

rallying after a lost battle. Had one of them won Waterloo, he would

not have dreamed of entering France, but would have liberally given to

Napoleon all the time that should have been necessary for his recovery

from so terrible a defeat. They have nothing in them of the qualities

even of old Blücher, who never was counted a first-class commander.

Forbearance has never ceased to be a virtue with them. Whether their

slackness is of native growth, or is the consequence of instructions

from Government, it is plain that adherence to it can never lead to

the conquest of the Southrons. There is now a particular reason why

it should give way to something of a very different character. The

Proclamation has changed the conditions of the contest, and to be

defeated now, driven out of the field for good and all, would be a far

more mortifying termination of the war than it could have been, if we

had already failed utterly. We have committed the unpardonable sin

against slavery, and to fail now would be to place ourselves in the same

position that is held by the commander of a ship of war who nails his

colors to the mast, and yet has to get them down in order to prevent his

conqueror from annihilating him. The action of the Confederate Congress

with reference to the Proclamation, so far as we have accounts of it,

shows that the President's action has intensified the character of the

conflict, and that the enemy are preparing to fight under the banner of

the pirate, declaring that they will show no quarter, because they

look upon the Proclamation as declaring that there shall be no quarter

extended to them. The President of the United States, they say, has

avowed it to be his purpose to inaugurate a servile war in their

country, and they call fiercely for retaliation. They mean, by using

the words "servile war," to convey the impression that there is to be

a general slaying and ravishing throughout the South, on and after the

first of next January, under the special patronage of the American

President, who has ordered his soldiers and his sailors, his ships and

his corps, to be employed in protecting black ravishers of white women

and black murderers of white children. All they say is mere cant, and

is intended for the European market, which they now supply as liberally

with lies as once they did with cotton. Our foolish foes in England

accept every falsehood that is sent them from Richmond, and hence the

torrent of misrepresentation that flows from that city to London. Let

it continue to flow. It can do us no harm, if our action shall be in

correspondence with our cause and our means. If we succeed, falsehood

cannot injure us; if we fail, we shall have something of more importance

than libels to think of. We should bear in mind that our armies are not

to succeed because the slaves shall rise, but that the slaves are to be

freed as a consequence of the success of our armies. That our armies may

succeed, there must be more energy displayed both by their commanders

and by Government. The Proclamation must be enforced, or it will come to

nought. There is nothing self-enforcing about it. Its mere publication

will no more put an end to the Rebellion than President Lincoln's first

proclamation, calling upon the Rebels to cease their evil-doings and

disperse, could put an end to it. Its future value, like that of all

papers that deal with the leading interests of mankind, must depend

altogether upon the future action of the men from whom it emanates, and

that of their constituents. It stands to-day where the Declaration of

Independence stood for the five years that followed its promulgation,

waiting for its place in human annals to be prepared for it by its

supporters. Of what worth would the Declaration of Independence be now,

had it not been for Trenton and Princeton, Saratoga and Yorktown? Of

no worth at all; and its authors would be looked upon as a band of

sentimental political babblers, who could enunciate truths which neither

they nor their countrymen had the capacity to uphold and practically

to demonstrate. But the Declaration of Independence is one of the

most immortal of papers because it proved a grand success; and it was

successful because the men who put it forth were fully competent to the

grand work with the performance of which they were charged. It is for

Mr. Lincoln himself to say whether the Proclamation of September 22,

1861, shall take rank with the Declaration of July 4, 1776, or with

those evidences of flagrant failure that have become so common since

1789,--with the French Declaration of the Rights of Man, and Mexican

Constitutions. That it is the people's duty to support the President is

said by almost all men; but is it not equally the duty of the President

to support the people? And have they not supported him,--supported him

with men, with money, with the surrender of the enjoyment of some of

their dearest rights, with their full confidence, with good wishes and

better deeds, and with all the rest of the numerous moral and material

means of waging war vigorously and triumphantly? And if they have

done and are doing all this, who will be to blame, if the enemy shall

accomplish their purpose?

The President and his immediate associates are placed so high by their

talents and their positions that they must be supposed open to the love

of fame, and to desire honorable mention in their country's annals,

especially as they have to do with matters of such transcendent

importance, greater even than those that absorbed the attention of

Washington and Hamilton, of Jefferson and Madison, of Jackson and

Livingston. It is for themselves to decide what shall be said of them

hereafter, and through all future time,--whether they shall be blessed

or banned, cursed or canonized. The judgment that shall be passed upon

them and their work will be given according to the result, and from it

there can be no appeal. The Portuguese have a well-known proverb, that

"the way to hell is paved with good intentions;" but it is not

the laborers on that broad and crowded highway who gain honorable

immortality. The decisions of posterity are not made with reference to

men's motives and intentions, but upon their deeds. With posterity,

success is the proper proof of merit, when nothing necessary to its

winning is denied to the players in the world's great games. Richmond is

worshipped, and Richard detested, not because the former was good and

great, and the latter wicked and weak, for Richard was the better and

the abler man, but for the reason that the decision was in Richmond's

favor on Bosworth Field. The only difference between Catiline and

Caesar, according to an eminent statesman and scholar, is this: Catiline

was crushed by his foes, and Caesar's foes were crushed by him. This

may seem harsh, but we fear that it is only too true,--that it is in

accordance with that irreversible law of the world which makes success

the test of worth in the management of human affairs. If Mr. Lincoln

and his confidential officers would have the highest American places in

after-days as well as to-day, let them win those places by winning the

nation's battle. They can have them on no other terms. That is one of

the conditions of the part they accepted when they took upon themselves

their present posts at the beginning of a period of civil convulsion. If

they fail, they will be doomed to profound contempt. In the words of the

foremost man of all this modern world, uttered at the very crisis of his

own fortunes,--Napoleon I., in the summer of 1813,--"To be judged by the

event is the inexorable law of history."

HOW TO CHOOSE A RIFLE.

_To the Editors of the_ ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

Some thirty years ago, a gentleman who had just returned from Europe was

trying to convey an idea of the size and magnificence of St. Peter's

Church to a New-England country-clergyman, and was somewhat taken aback

by the remark of the good man, that "the Pope must require a very

powerful voice to fill such a building."

The anecdote has been brought to my mind by the unexpected position in

which I am placed, as the recipient of such a multitude of letters,

and from such widely separated portions of the country, elicited by my

article on Rifle-Clubs in the "Atlantic" for September, that I find

myself called upon to address an audience extending from Maine to

Minnesota. Fortunately for me, however, the columns of the "Atlantic"

afford facilities of communication not enjoyed by the Pope, and through

that medium I crave permission to reply to inquiries which afford most

gratifying proof of the wide-spread interest which is awakened in the

subject.

Almost every letter contains the inquiry, "What is the new

breech-loading rifle you allude to, and where is it to be had?"--but a

large proportion of them also ask advice as to the selection of a rifle;

and with such evidence of general interest in the inquiry, I have

thought I could not do better than to frame my reply specially to this

point.

The rifle above alluded to is not yet in the market, and probably will

not be for some time to come. Only three or four samples have been

manufactured, and after being subjected to every possible test short

of actual service in the hands of troops, it has proved so entirely

satisfactory that preparations are now making for its extensive

production. Thus far it is known as the Ashcroft rifle, from the name of

the proprietor, Mr. E.H. Ashcroft of Boston, the persevering energy

of whose efforts to secure its introduction will probably never be

appreciated as it deserves, except perhaps by those who have gone

through the trial of bringing out an idea involving in its conception a

great public benefit.

Lieutenant Busk, in hid "Hand-Book for Hythe," says, "I cannot imagine a

much more helpless or hopeless position than that of an individual who,

having determined to expend his ten or twenty guineas in the purchase

of a rifle, and, guided only by the light of Nature, applies to

a respectable gun-maker to supply his want. I never hear of an

inexperienced buyer in search of a rifle without being reminded of the

purchaser of a telescope, who, on asking the optician, among a multitude

of other questions, whether he would be able to discern an object

through it four miles off, received for reply, 'See an object _four_

miles off, Sir? You can see an object four-and-twenty thousand miles

off, Sir,--you can see the moon, Sir!' In like manner, if you naïvely

inquire of a gun-maker whether a particular rifle will carry two hundred

yards, the chances are he will exclaim, emphatically, 'Two hundred

yards, Sir? It will carry fifteen hundred.' And so no doubt it may. The

only question, is, How?"

The questions which have been addressed to me for a few weeks past have

given me a keen appreciation of the difficulties alluded to, in which

multitudes are at this moment plunged, to whom I shall be but too happy

if it is in my power to extend a helping hand.

At the outset, however, it is but fair to declare my conviction that

no man who has any just appreciation of the subject would attempt to

_choose_ a gun for another, any more than he would a horse, or, I had

almost said, a wife; but he may lay down certain general rules which

each individual must apply for himself, exercising his own taste in the

details. Thus, I have elsewhere declared my own predilection for Colt's

rifle; and I hold to it notwithstanding a strong prejudice against it

which very generally exists. I do not mean to assert that it is a better

shooter than many others, and still less would I urge any one else to

procure one because I like it, but I simply say that its performance is

equal to my requirements, and that the whole construction and getting-up

of the gun suit my fancy; and the fact that another man dislikes it is

no reason why I should discard it.

I have known men who were continually changing their guns, and seemed

satisfied only with novelties. With such a taste I have no sympathy,

but, on the contrary, my feeling of attachment to a trusty weapon

strengthens with my familiarity with its merits, till it becomes so near

akin to affection that I should find it hard to part with one which had

served me well, and was associated in my mind with adventures whose

interest was derived from its successful performance.

The first piece of advice I would offer to a novice in search of a gun

is, "Don't be in a hurry."

The demand is such that a buyer is constantly urged to close a bargain

by the assurance that it may be his last chance to secure such a weapon

as the one he is examining,--and great numbers of mere toys have thus

been forced upon purchasers, who, if they ever practise enough to

acquire a taste for shooting, will send them to the auction-room, and

make another effort to procure a gun suited to their wants. Several new

patterns of guns have been produced within the last year, some of which

are very attractive in their appearance, and to an inexperienced person

seem to possess sufficient power for any service they may ever be called

upon to perform. They are well finished, compact, light, and pretty.

A Government Inspector, indeed, would be apt to make discoveries of

"malleable iron," which would cause their instant rejection, but which

in reality constitutes no ground of objection to guns whose parts are

not required to be interchangeable. They might be described as "well

adapted for ladies' use, or for boys learning to shoot;" but it gave me

a sickening sense of the inexperience of many a noble-hearted youth who

may have entered the service from the purest motives of patriotism, when

a dealer, who was exhibiting one of these parlor-weapons, with a calibre

no larger than a good-sized pea, informed me that he had sold a great

many to young officers, being so light that they could be carried slung

upon the back almost as easily as a pistol. It is with no such kid-glove

tools as these that so many of our officers have been picked off by

Southern sharp-shooters. At a long range they are useless; at close

quarters, which is the only situation in which an officer actually needs

fire-arms, a revolver is far preferable. I know of no rifle so well

adapted to an officer's use as Colt's carbine,--of eighteen or

twenty-one inch barrel, and not less than 44/100 of an inch calibre. It

may be depended upon for six hundred yards, the short barrel renders

its manipulation easy in a close fight, and the value of the repeating

principle at such a time can be estimated only by that of life.

In a perfectly calm atmosphere, the light guns I have alluded to will

shoot very well for one or two hundred yards; but no one can conceive,

till he proves it by actual trial, what an amazing difference in

precision is the result of even a very slight increase of weight of

ball, when the air is in motion. Even in a dead calm no satisfactory

shooting can be done beyond two hundred yards with a lighter ball than

half an ounce, and any one who becomes interested in rifle-practice will

soon grow impatient of being confined to short ranges and calm weather.

This brings us, then, to the question of calibre, which I conceive to be

the first one to be decided in selecting a gun, and the decision rests

upon the uses to which the gun is to be applied. If it is wanted merely

for military service, nothing better than the Enfield can be procured;

but if the purchaser proposes to study the niceties of practice, and to

enter into it with a keen zest, he will need a very different style of

gun. A calibre large enough for a round ball of fifty to the pound, or

an elongated shot of about half an ounce, is sufficient for six hundred

yards; and a gun of that calibre, with a thirty-inch barrel, and a

weight of about ten pounds, is better suited to the general wants of

purchasers than any other size. In this part of the country it is by no

means easy to find a place where shooting can be safely practised even

at so long a range as five hundred yards,--which is sixty yards more

than a quarter of a mile. It is always necessary to have an attendant

at the target to point out the shots, and even then the shooter needs

a telescope to distinguish them. For ordinary purposes, therefore, the

calibre I have indicated is all-sufficient; but if a gun is wanted for

shooting up to one thousand yards, the shot should be a full ounce

weight. These are points which each man must determine for himself, and,

having done so, let him go to any gun-maker of established reputation,

and, before giving his order, let him study and compare the different

forms of stocks, till he finds what is required for his peculiar

physical conformation,--and giving directions accordingly, he will

probably secure a weapon whose merits he will not fully appreciate

till he has attained a degree of skill which is the result only of

long-continued practice.

But never buy a gun, and least of all a rifle, without trying it; and do

not be satisfied with a trial in a shop or shooting gallery, but take it

into the field; and if you distrust yourself, get some one in whom you

have confidence to try it for you. Choose a perfectly calm day. Have a

rest prepared on which not only the gun may be laid, but a support may

also be had for the elbows, the shooter being seated. By this means, and

with the aid of globe- and peek-sights, (which should always be used in

trying a gun,) it may as certainly be held in the same position at every

shot as if it were clamped in a machine. For your target take a sheet of

cartridge-paper and draw on it a circle of a foot, and, inside of that,

another of four inches in diameter. Paint the space between the rings

black, and you will then have a black ring four inches wide surrounding

a white four-inch bull's-eye, against which your globe-sight will be

much more distinctly seen than if it were black. Place the target so

that when shooting you may have the sun on your back. On a very bright

day, brown paper is better for a target than white. Begin shooting

at one hundred yards and fire ten shots, with an exact aim at the

bull's-eye, wiping out the gun after each shot. Do not look to see where

you hit, till you have fired your string of ten shots; for, if you

do, you will be tempted to alter your aim and make allowance for the

variation, whereas your object now is not to hit the bull's-eye, but to

prove the shooting of the gun; and if you find, when you get through,

that all the shots are close together, you may be sure the gun shoots

well, though they may be at considerable distance from the bull's-eye.

That would only prove that the line of sight was not coincident with the

line of fire, which can be easily rectified by moving the forward sight

to the right or left, according as the variation was on the one side

or the other. Having fired your string of ten shots, take a pair of

dividers, and, with a radius equal to half the distance between the two

hits most distant from each other, describe a circle cutting through the

centre of each of those hits. From the centre of this circle measure the

distance to each of the hits, add these distances together and divide

the sum by ten, and you have the average variation, which ought not to

be over two inches at the utmost, and if the gun is what it ought to be,

and fired by a good marksman, would probably be much less. This is a

sufficient test of the precision for that distance, and the same method

may be adopted for longer ranges. But if the gun shoots well at one

hundred yards, its capacity for a longer range may be proved by its

penetrating power. Provide a number of pieces of seasoned white-pine

board, one inch thick and say two feet long by sixteen inches wide.

These are to be secured parallel to each other and one inch apart by

strips nailed firmly to their sides, and must be so placed that when

shot at the balls may strike fairly at a right angle to their face.

Try a number of shots at the distance of one hundred yards, and note

carefully how many boards are penetrated at each shot. The elongated

shots are sometimes turned in passing through a board so as to strike

the next one sideways, which of course increases the resistance very

greatly, and such shots should not be counted; but if you find generally

that the penetration of those which strike fairly is not over six

inches, you may rest assured the gun cannot be relied on, except in

a dead calm, for more than two hundred yards, and with anything of a

breeze you will make no good shooting even at that distance. Nine inches

of penetration is equal to six hundred yards, and twelve inches is good

for a thousand.

A striking proof of the prevailing ignorance of scientific principles in

rifle-shooting is afforded by the fact that it is still a very common

practice to vary the charge of powder according to the distance to be

shot. The fact is, that beyond a certain point any increase of the

initial velocity of the ball is unfavorable both to range and precision,

owing to the ascertained law that the ratio of increase of atmospheric

resistance is four times that of the velocity, so that, after the point

is reached at which they balance each other, any additional propulsive

power is injurious. The proper charge of powder for any rifle is about

one-seventh the weight of the ball, and the only means which should ever

be adopted for increasing the range is the elevating sight.

In conclusion, I would impress upon the young rifleman the importance

of always keeping his weapon in perfect order. If you have never looked

through the barrel of a rifle, you can have no conception what a

beautifully finished instrument it is; and when you learn that the

accuracy of its shooting may be affected by a variation of the

thousandth part of an inch on its interior surface, you may appreciate

the necessity of guarding against the intrusion of even a speck of rust.

Never suffer your rifle to be laid aside after use till it has

been thoroughly cleaned,--the barrel wiped first with a wet rag,

(cotton-flannel is best,) then rubbed dry, then well oiled, and then

again wiped with a dry rag. In England this work may be left to a

servant, but with us the servants are so rare to whom such work can be

intrusted that the only safe course is to see to it yourself; and if you

have a true sportsman's love for a gun, you will not find the duty a

disagreeable one.

* * * * *

THE PRESIDENT'S PROCLAMATION.

In so many arid forms which States incrust themselves with, once in a

century, if so often, a poetic act and record occur. These are the jets

of thought into affairs, when, roused by danger or inspired by genius,

the political leaders of the day break the else insurmountable routine

of class and local legislation, and take a step forward in the direction

of catholic and universal interests. Every step in the history of

political liberty is a sally of the human mind into the untried future,

and has the interest of genius, and is fruitful in heroic anecdotes.

Liberty is a slow fruit. It comes, like religion, for short periods, and

in rare conditions, as if awaiting a culture of the race which shall

make it organic and permanent. Such moments of expansion in modern

history were the Confession of Augsburg, the plantation of America, the

English Commonwealth of 1648, the Declaration of American Independence

in 1776, the British emancipation of slaves in the West Indies, the

passage of the Reform Bill, the repeal of the Corn-Laws, the Magnetic

Ocean-Telegraph, though yet imperfect, the passage of the Homestead

Bill in the last Congress, and now, eminently, President Lincoln's

Proclamation on the twenty-second of September. These are acts of

great scope, working on a long future, and on permanent interests, and

honoring alike those who initiate and those who receive them. These

measures provoke no noisy joy, but are received into a sympathy so deep

as to apprise us that mankind are greater and better than we know. At

such times it appears as if a new public were created to greet the

new event. It is as when an orator, having ended the compliments and

pleasantries with which he conciliated attention, and having run over

the superficial fitness and commodities of the measure he urges,

suddenly, lending himself to some happy inspiration, announces with

vibrating voice the grand human principles involved,--the bravoes and

wits who greeted him loudly thus far are surprised and overawed: a new

audience is found in the heart of the assembly,--an audience hitherto

passive and unconcerned, now at last so searched and kindled that they

come forward, every one a representative of mankind, standing for all

nationalities.

The extreme moderation with which the President advanced to his

design,--his long-avowed expectant policy, as if he chose to be strictly

the executive of the best public sentiment of the country, waiting only

till it should be unmistakably pronounced,--so fair a mind that none

ever listened so patiently to such extreme varieties of opinion,--so

reticent that his decision has taken all parties by surprise, whilst

yet it is the just sequel of his prior acts,--the firm tone in which he

announces it, without inflation or surplusage,--all these have bespoken

such favor to the act, that, great as the popularity of the President

has been, we are beginning to think that we have underestimated the

capacity and virtue which the Divine Providence has made an instrument

of benefit so vast. He has been permitted to do more for America than

any other American man. He is well entitled to the most indulgent

construction. Forget all that we thought shortcomings, every mistake,

every delay. In the extreme embarrassments of his part, call these

endurance, wisdom, magnanimity, illuminated, as they now are, by this

dazzling success.

When we consider the immense opposition that has been neutralized or

converted by the progress of the war, (for it is not long since the

President anticipated the resignation of a large number of officers in

the army, and the secession of three States, on the promulgation of this

policy,)--when we see how the great stake which foreign nations hold in

our affairs has recently brought every European power as a client into

this court, and it became every day more apparent what gigantic and

what remote interests were to be affected by the decision of the

President,--one can hardly say the deliberation was too long. Against

all timorous counsels he had the courage to seize the moment; and such

was his position, and such the felicity attending the action, that he

has replaced Government in the good graces of mankind. "Better is virtue

in the sovereign than plenty in the season," say the Chinese. 'Tis

wonderful what power is, and how ill it is used, and how its ill use

makes life mean, and the sunshine dark. Life in America had lost much of

its attraction in the later years. The virtues of a good magistrate undo

a world of mischief, and, because Nature works with rectitude, seem

vastly more potent than the acts of bad governors, which are ever

tempered by the good-nature in the people, and the incessant resistance

which fraud and violence encounter.

The acts of good governors work at a geometrical ratio, as one midsummer

day seems to repair the damage of a year of war.

A day which most of us dared not hope to see, an event worth the

dreadful war, worth its costs and uncertainties, seems now to be close

before us. October, November, December will have passed over beating

hearts and plotting brains: then the hour will strike, and all men of

African descent who have faculty enough to find their way to our lines

are assured of the protection of American law.

It is by no means necessary that this measure should be suddenly marked

by any signal results on the negroes or on the Rebel masters. The force

of the act is that it commits the country to this justice,--that it

compels the innumerable officers, civil, military, naval, of the

Republic to range themselves on the line of this equity. It draws the

fashion to this side. It is not a measure that admits of being taken

back. Done, it cannot be undone by a new Administration. For slavery

overpowers the disgust of the moral sentiment only through immemorial

usage. It cannot be introduced as an improvement of the nineteenth

century. This act makes that the lives of our heroes have not been

sacrificed in vain. It makes a victory of our defeats. Our hurts are

healed; the health of the nation is repaired. With a victory like this,

we can stand many disasters. It does not promise the redemption of the

black race: that lies not with us: but it relieves it of our opposition.

The President by this act has paroled all the slaves in America; they

will no more fight against us; and it relieves our race once for all of

its crime and false position. The first condition of success is secured

in putting ourselves right. We have recovered ourselves from our false

position, and planted ourselves on a law of Nature.

"If that fail,

The pillared firmament is rottenness,

And earth's base built on stubble."

The Government has assured itself of the best constituency in the world:

every spark of intellect, every virtuous feeling, every religious heart,

every man of honor, every poet, every philosopher, the generosity of the

cities, the health of the country, the strong arms of the mechanics, the

endurance of farmers, the passionate conscience of women, the sympathy

of distant nations,--all rally to its support. Of course, we are

assuming the firmness of the policy thus declared. It must not be a

paper proclamation. We confide that Mr. Lincoln is in earnest, and, as

he has been slow in making up his mind, has resisted the importunacy of

parties and of events to the latest moment, he will be as absolute in

his adhesion. Not only will he repeat and follow up his stroke, but the

nation will add its irresistible strength. If the ruler has duties, so

has the citizen. In times like these, when the nation is imperilled,

what man can, without shame, receive good news from day to day, without

giving good news of himself? What right has any one to read in the

journals tidings of victories, if he has not bought them by his own

valor, treasure, personal sacrifice, or by service as good in his own

department? With this blot removed from our national honor, this heavy

load lifted off the national heart, we shall not fear henceforward

to show our faces among mankind. We shall cease to be hypocrites and

pretenders, but what we have styled our free institutions will be such.

In the light of this event the public distress begins to be removed.

What if the brokers' quotations show our stocks discredited, and the

gold dollar costs one hundred and twenty-seven cents? These tables are

fallacious. Every acre in the Free States gained substantial value on

the twenty-second of September. The cause of disunion and war has been

reached, and begun to be removed. Every man's house-lot and garden

are relieved of the malaria which the purest winds and the strongest

sunshine could not penetrate and purge. The territory of the Union

shines to-day with a lustre which every European emigrant can discern

from far: a sign of inmost security and permanence. Is it feared that

taxes will check immigration? That depends on what the taxes are spent

for. If they go to fill up this yawning Dismal Swamp, which engulfed

armies and populations, and created plague, and neutralized hitherto

all the vast capabilities of this continent,--then this taxation, which

makes the land wholesome and habitable, and will draw all men unto

it, is the best investment in which property-holder ever lodged his

earnings.

Whilst we have pointed out the opportuneness of the Proclamation, it

remains to be said that the President had no choice. He might look

wistfully for what variety of courses lay open to him: every line but

one was closed up with fire. This one, too, bristled with danger,

but through it was the sole safety. The measure he has adopted was

imperative. It is wonderful to see the unseasonable senility of what is

called the Peace party, through all its masks, blinding their eyes to

the main feature of the war, namely, its inevitableness. The war existed

long before the cannonade of Sumter, and could not be postponed. It

might have begun otherwise or elsewhere, but war was in the minds and

bones of the combatants, it was written on the iron leaf, and you

might as easily dodge gravitation. If we had consented to a peaceable

secession of the Rebels, the divided sentiment of the Border States made

peaceable secession impossible, the insatiable temper of the South made

it impossible, and the slaves on the border, wherever the border might

be, were an incessant fuel to rekindle the fire. Give the Confederacy

New Orleans, Charleston, and Richmond, and they would have demanded St.

Louis and Baltimore. Give them these, and they would have insisted on

Washington. Give them Washington, and they would have assumed the army

and navy, and, through these, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston. It

looks as if the battle-field would have been at least as large in that

event as it is now. The war was formidable, but could not be avoided.

The war was and is an immense mischief, but brought with it the immense

benefit of drawing a line, and rallying the Free States to fix it

impassably,--preventing the whole force of Southern connection and

influence throughout the North from distracting every city with endless

confusion, detaching that force and reducing it to handfuls, and, in the

progress of hostilities, disinfecting us of our habitual proclivity,

through the affection of trade, and the traditions of the Democratic

party, to follow Southern leading.

These necessities which have dictated the conduct of the Federal

Government are overlooked, especially by our foreign critics.

The popular statement of the opponents of the war abroad is the

impossibility of our success. "If you could add," say they, "to your

strength the whole army of England, of France, and of Austria, you

could not coerce eight millions of people to come under this Government

against their will." This is an odd thing for an Englishman, a

Frenchman, or an Austrian to say, who remembers the Europe of the last

seventy years,--the condition of Italy, until 1859,--of Poland, since

1793,--of France, of French Algiers,--of British Ireland, and British

India. But, granting the truth, rightly read, of the historical

aphorism, that "the people always conquer," it is to be noted, that,

in the Southern States, the tenure of land, and the local laws, with

slavery, give the social system not a democratic, but an aristocratic

complexion; and those States have shown every year a more hostile and

aggressive temper, until the instinct of self-preservation forced us

into the war. And the aim of the war on our part is indicated by the

aim of the President's Proclamation, namely, to break up the false

combination of Southern society, to destroy the piratic feature in it

which makes it our enemy only as it is the enemy of the human race, and

so allow its reconstruction on a just and healthful basis. Then new

affinities will act, the old repulsions will cease, and, the cause

of war being removed, Nature and trade may be trusted to establish a

lasting peace.

We think we cannot overstate the wisdom and benefit of this act of the

Government. The malignant cry of the Secession press within the Free

States, and the recent action of the Confederate Congress, are decisive

as to its efficiency and correctness of aim. Not less so is the silent

joy which has greeted it in all generous hearts, and the new hope it has

breathed into the world.

It was well to delay the steamers at the wharves, until this edict could

be put on board. It will be an insurance to the ship as it goes plunging

through the sea with glad tidings to all people. Happy are the young who

find the pestilence cleansed out of the earth, leaving open to them

an honest career. Happy the old, who see Nature purified before they

depart. Do not let the dying die: hold them back to this world, until

you have charged their ear and heart with this message to other

spiritual societies, announcing the melioration of our planet.

"Incertainties now crown themselves assured,

And Peace proclaims olives of endless age."

Meantime that ill-fated, much-injured race which the Proclamation

respects will lose somewhat of the dejection sculptured for ages in

their bronzed countenance, uttered in the wailing of their plaintive

music,--a race naturally benevolent, joyous, docile, industrious, and

whose very miseries sprang from their great talent for usefulness,

which, in a more moral age, will not only defend their independence, but

will give them a rank among nations.

* * * * *

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.

_History of Friedrich the Second, called Frederick the Great._ By THOMAS

CARLYLE. In Four Volumes. Vol. III. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1862.

Although History flows in a channel never quite literally dry, and for

certain purposes a continuous chronicle of its current is desirable,

it is only in rare reaches, wherein it meets formidable obstacles to

progress, that it becomes grand and impressive; and even in such cases

the interest deepens immeasurably, when some master-spirit arises to

direct its energies. The period of Frederick the Great was not one of

these remarkable passages. It was marked, however, with the signs that

precede such. Europe lay weltering and tossing in seemingly aimless

agitation, yet in real birth-throes; and the issue was momentous and

memorable, namely: The People. From the hour in which they emerged from

the darkness of the French Revolution, they have so absorbed attention

that men have had little opportunity to look into the causes which

forced them to the front, and made wiser leadership thenceforth

indispensable to peaceful rule. The field, too, was repulsive with the

appearance of nearly a waste place, save only that Frederick the Second

won the surname of "Great" by his action thereon. And it may be justly

averred that only to reveal his life, and perhaps that of one other, was

it worthy of resuscitation. To do this was an appalling labor, for the

skeleton thereof was scattered through the crypts of many kingdoms; yet,

by the commanding genius of Mr. Carlyle, bone hath not only come to

his bone, but they have been clothed with flesh and blood, so that the

captains of the age, and, moreover, the masses, as they appeared in

their blind tusslings, are restored to sight with the freshness

and fulness of Nature. Although this historical review is strictly

illustrative, it is altogether incomparable for vividness and

originality of presentation. The treatment of official personages is

startlingly new. All ceremony toward them gives place to a fearful

familiarity, as of one who not only sees through and through them, but

oversees. Grave Emptiness and strutting Vanity, found in high places,

are mocked with immortal mimicry. Indeed, those of the "wind-bag"

species generally, wherever they appear in important affairs, are so

admirably exposed, that we see how they inevitably lead States to

disaster and leave them ruins, while their pompous and feeble methods of

doing it are so put as to call forth the contemptuous smiles, yea, the

derisive laughter, of all coming generations. In fine, the alternate

light and shade, which so change the aspect and make the mood of human

nature, were never so touched in before; and therefore it is the saddest

and the merriest story ever told.

In bold and splendid contrast with this picture of national life flow

the life and fortunes of Frederick. If the qualities of his progenitors

prophesied this right royal course, his portrait, by Pesne, shows him

to have been conceived in some happy moment when Nature was in her most

generous mood. What finish of form and feature! and what apparent power

to win! Yet in what serene depths it rests, to be aroused only by some

superb challenger! No strength of thought or stress of situation seems

to have had power to line the curves of beauty. Observe, too, the

full-blown mouth, which never saw cause to set itself in order to form

or fortify a purpose. When it is remembered that in opening manhood this

prince was long imprisoned under sentence of death for attempting to

escape from paternal tyranny, and that his friend actually died on the

gallows merely for generous complicity in this offence against the state

of a king, and that neither of the terrible facts left permanent trace

on his countenance or cloud on his spirit, it should create no surprise

that nothing but the march of time was ever visible there. Though

trained in such a school, and in the twenty-eighth year of his age when

he reached the throne, he yet gave a whole and a full heart to his

subjects, and sought to guide them solely for their good. From this

purpose he never swerved; and though his somewhat too trustful methods

were rapidly changed by stern experience, his people felt more and more

the consummate wisdom of his guidance, and they became unconquerable

by that truth and that faith. Almost on the first day of his reign, he

invited Voltaire, the greatest of literary heroes, the most adroit and

successful assaulter of king-craft and priest-craft that ever lived, to

his capital and to his palace; and in a most friendly spirit consulted

him on the advancement of art and letters, exhausted him by the

touchstone of superior capacity, and even fathomed him by a glance

so keen and so covert that it always took, but never gave, and then

complimented him home in so masterly a manner that he was lured into the

fond belief that he had found a disciple. A mind so capacious and so

reticent is always an enigma to near observers. Hence it is that the

transcendently great may be more truly known to after-ages than to

any contemporary. By the patient research and profound insight of Mr.

Carlyle, Frederick the Great is thus rising into clear and perennial

light. What deserts of dust he wrought in, and what a jungle of false

growths he had to clear away, Dryasdust and Smelfungus mournfully hint

and indignantly moralize,--under such significant names does this new

Rhadamanthus reveal the real sins of mankind, and deliver them over to

the judgment of their peers. Frederick, indeed, is among them, but not

of them. The way in which he is made to come forth from the mountains of

smoke and cinders remaining of his times is absolutely marvellous. As

some mighty and mysterious necromancer quickens the morbid imagination

to supernatural sight, and for a brief moment reveals through rolling

mist and portentous cloud the perfect likeness of the one longed for

by the rapt gazer, so Frederick is restored in this biography for

the perpetual consolation and admiration of all coming heroes. In

comprehension and judgment of the actions and hearts of men, and in

vividness of writing, not that which shook the soul of Belshazzar in the

midst of his revellers was more powerful, or more sure of approval and

fulfilment. It is not only one of the greatest of histories and of

biographies, but nothing in literature, from any other pen, bears any

likeness to it. It is truly a solitary work,--the effort of a vast and

lonely nature to find a meet companion among the departed.

1. _The Rejected Stone; or, Insurrection vs. Resurrection in America._

By a Native of Virginia. Second Edition. Boston: Walker, Wise, & Co.

1862.

2. _The Golden Hour._ By MONCURE D. CONWAY, Author of "The Rejected

Stone." _Impera parendo._ Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 1862.

Seldom have political writings found such accomplices in events as

these, whose final criticism appears in the great Proclamation of the

President. Two campaigns have been the bloody partisans of this earnest

pen: the impending one will cheerfully undertake its final vindication.

Not because these two little books stand sole and preëminent, the

isolated prophecies of an all but rejected truth, nor because they have

created the opinion out of which the President gathers breath for his

glorious words. Mr. Conway would hardly claim more, we think, than to

have spoken frankly what the people felt, the same people which hailed

the early emancipationing instinct of General Fremont. We see the fine

sense of Mr. Emerson in his advice to hitch our wagon to a star, but

there must be a well-seasoned vehicle, with a cunning driver to thrust

his pin through the coupling, one not apt to jump out when the axles

begin to smoke.

At the first overt act of this great Rebellion, anti-slavery men

perceived the absurdity of resisting a symptom instead of attacking the

disease. They proclaimed the old-fashioned truth, that an eruption can

be rubbed back again into the system, not only without rubbing out

its cause, but at the greatest hazard to the system, which is loudly

announcing its difficulty in this cutaneous fashion. But Northern

politicians saw that the inflammatory blotches made the face of the

country ugly and repulsive: their costliest preparations have been well

rubbed in ever since, without even yet reducing the rebellious red;

on the contrary, it flamed out more vigorously than ever. Their old

practice was not abandoned, the medicines only were changed. The wash

of compromise was replaced by the bath of blood. And into that dreadful

color the tears and agony of a million souls have been distilled, as if

they would make a mixture powerful enough to draw out all our trouble

by the pores. The very skin of the Rebellion chafed and burned more

fiercely with all this quackery.

If Slavery is our disease, the Abolition of Slavery is our remedy. Our

bayonets only cupped and scored the patient, our war-measures in and out

of Congress only worked dynamically against other war-measures far more

dogged and desperate than our own. The sentence of Emancipation is the

specific whose operation will be vital, by effecting an alteration in

the system, and soon annihilating that condition of the blood which

feeds our fevers and rushes in disgusting blotches to the face. "No,"--a

Northern minority still says,--"every fever has its term; only watch

your self-limiting disease, keep the patient from getting too much hurt

during his delirium, and he will be on 'Change before long."

No doubt of that. He loves to be on 'Change; of all the places in the

country, out of his own patriarchal neighborhoods, not even Saratoga

and Newport were ever so exhilarating to him as Wall Street and State

Street, and he longs to be well enough to infest his whilom haunts.

Slavery is a self-limited disease, for it suffers nothing but itself to

impose its limits. In that sense the North would soon have his old crony

on the pavement again, with one yellow finger in his button-hole, and

another nervously playing at a trigger behind the back. For the North

was paying roundly in men and dollars to renew that pleasurable

intercourse, to get the dear old soul out again as little dilapidated as

possible, with as much of the old immunities and elasticities preserved

as an attack so violent would allow.

The President said to the deputation of Quakers, "Where the Constitution

cannot yet go, a proclamation cannot." This was accepted by a portion of

the North as another compact expression of Presidential wisdom. It was

the common sense, curtly and neatly put, upon which our armies waited,

and for whose cold and bleached utterances our glorious young men were

sent home from Washington by rail in coffins, red receipts of Slavery to

acknowledge Northern indecision. It was the kind of common sense which,

after every family-tomb has got its tenant, and wives, mothers, sisters

tears to be their bread and meat continually, would have jogged on

'Change snugly some fine morning arm in arm with the murderer of their

noble dead.

For, though neither the Constitution nor a proclamation can quite yet go

down practically into Slavery, Slavery might come up here to find the

Constitution in its old place at the Potomac ferry, and without a toll

or pike to heed.

It seemed so sensible to say, that, where one document cannot go,

another cannot! And yet it depends upon what is in the document. If the

Constitution _could_ go South now, it would be the last thing we should

want to send, at this stage of the national malady. It contains the

immunity out of which the malady has flamed. Its very neutrality is the

best protection which a conquered South could have, and a moral triumph

that would richly compensate it for a military defeat. Would it not have

been quite as sagacious, and equally aphoristic, if the President had

said, "Where a proclamation cannot go, the Constitution never can

again"? He has said it! And if the proclamation goes first, the

Constitution will follow to bless and to save.

Both of these little books of Mr. Conway are devoted to showing the

necessity for a proclamation of emancipation, as simple justice, as

military policy, as mercy to the South, to put us right at home and

abroad, to destroy at once the cause of the Republic's shame and sorrow.

He combats various objections: such as that a proclamation of that

nature would send home instantly the pro-slavery officers and men who

are now fighting merely to enhance their own importance or to restore

the state of things before the war: that a proclamation of emancipation,

finding its way, as it surely would, to the heart of every slave, would

breed insurrections and all the horrors of a servile war: that such

a document would not be worth the paper which it blotted, until the

military power of the South was definitively broken: that it would

convert the Border States into active foes, and make them rush by

natural proclivity into the bosom of Secession. Mr. Conway disposes well

of a great deal of trash which even good Republican papers, upon which

we have hitherto relied, but can do so no longer, have vented under all

these heads of objections.

He writes with such enthusiasm, and is so plainly a dear lover and

worshipper of the justice which can alone exalt this nation, that we are

carried clear over the wretched half-republicanism which has been trying

all the year to say eminently sound and unexceptionable things, we

forget the deceit and expediency whose leaded columns have been more

formidable than those which rolled the tide of war back again to the

Potomac. Great is the animating power of faith, when faithfully brought

home to the universal instinct for righteousness. Mr. Conway was born

and bred among slaveholders, knows them and their institution, knows

the slave, and his moral condition, and his expectations: so that these

inspiriting prophecies of his are more than those of a lively and

talented pamphleteer.

His earnest purpose in writing lifts us pretty well over some things in

his style which seem to us discordant with his glorious theme. He has

a way, as good as the President's, to whom much of his matter is

addressed, of making his apologues and stories tell; they are apt, and

give the reader the sensation of being clinched. One feels like a nail

when it catches the board. But sometimes the transition to a grotesque

allusion from a fine touch of fancy or from the inbred religiousness

of the subject is abrupt. Jean Paul may offer you, in his most glowing

page, a quid of tobacco, if he pleases; the shock is picturesque, and

sometimes lets in a deep analogy. But the hour in which Mr. Conway

writes, the height of faith from which his pen stoops to the mortal

page, the unspeakable solemnity of the theme, which our volunteers are

rudely striving to trace upon their country's bosom with their blood,

and our women are steeping in their tears, ought to drive all flippancy

shuddering from the lines in which sarcasm itself should be measured and

awful as the deaths which gird us round.

But the two volumes are full of power and feeling. They are written

so that all may read. Their effect is popular, without stooping

deliberately to become so. They are among the brightest and simplest

pages which this exciting period has produced. It would be a great

mistake to gauge their effect by what they bring to pass in the minds of

cabinet-officers, editors, and party-leaders: for they put into plain,

stout language the growing instinct of the people to get at the cause of

the war which lays them waste.

Some of the most effective pages in these volumes are those which lament

the dread alternative of war, and which show that emancipation would be

merciful to all classes at the South. It is no paradox that to free the

slaves to-morrow would restore health to the South and regenerate its

people.

And we are glad that Mr. Conway speaks so emphatically against that

measure of colonization, whether the proposition be to deport the

contrabands to Hayti, or to tote them away to Central America under the

leadership of intelligent colored representatives of the North. All

these are plans which look to the eventual removal of the only men

at the South who know how to labor, and who are now the only

representatives there of the country's industrial ideas. We pray you,

Mr. President, to use the money voted for colonizing purposes to rid the

country of the men in the Border and Cotton States who cannot or will

not work, slave-owners and bushwhackers, who kill and harry, but who

never did an honest stroke of work in their lives, and whom, with or

without slavery, this Republic will have to support. Take some Pacific

Island for a great Alms-House, and inaugurate an exodus of the genuine

Southern pauper; he is only an incumbrance to the industrious and

humble-minded blacks, from whose toil the country may draw the staples

of free sugar and free cotton, raised upon the soil which is theirs by

the holy prescription of blood and sorrow. "If it were not for your

presence in the country," says the President to the colored men, "we

should have no war!" If it were not for silverware and jewelry, no

burglaries would be committed! Don't let us get rid of the villains, but

of the victims; thereby villainy will cease!

Let Mr. Pomeroy be sent to annex some of the Paumotu or Tongan groups,

where spontaneous bread-fruit would afford Mr. Floyd good plucking, and

Messrs. Wigfall, Benjamin, and Prior could even have their chewing done

by proxy, for the native pauper employs the old women to masticate his

Ava into drink. There they might continue to take their food from other

people's mouths, with the chance now and then of a strong anti-slavery

clergyman well barbecued, a luxury for which they have howled for many a

year. That is the place for your oligarchic pauper, where the elements

themselves are field-hands, with Nature for overseer, manufactures

superfluous and free-trade a blessing, and plenty of colored persons to

raise the mischief with. That is the sole crop which they have raised at

home. Let their propensities be transferred to a place unconnected with

the politics or the privileges of a Christian Republic.

But let this great Republic drive into exile the wheat-growers of the

West, the miners and iron-men of Pennsylvania, and the farmers of New

England, as soon as these men who have created the cotton-crop which

clothes a world, and who only wait for another stimulus to supersede the

lash. Let them find it, as in Jamaica, in a plot of ground, their seed

and tools, their hearth-side and marriage, their freedom, and the

shelter of a country which wants to use the products of their hands.

If it be an object to stretch a great band of free tropical labor across

Central America, to people those wastes with ideas which shall curb

the southward lust of men, and nourish a grateful empire against the

intrigues of European States, let that be done, if the colored American

of the Border States is willing to advance the project. Let the project

be clearly understood, and its prospective upholders frankly invited to

become men, and aid their country's welfare. But never let colonization

be opened like an artery, through whose "unkindest cut" some of the best

blood of the country shall slip away and be lost forever. We want the

cotton labor even more extensively diffused, to conquer John Bull with

bales, as at New Orleans. Let no cotton-grower ever budge.

_The Life and Letters of Washington Irving._ By his Nephew, PIERRE M.

IRVING. Vols. I and II. New York: G.P. Putnam.

If to be loved and admired by all, to have troops of personal friends,

to enjoy a literary reputation wide in extent and high in degree, to

be as little stung by envy and detraction as the lot of humanity will

permit, to secure material prosperity with only occasional interruptions

and intermissions, make up the elements of a happy life, then that of

Washington Irving must be pronounced one of the most fortunate in the

annals of literature. It is but repeating a trite remark to say that

happiness depends more upon organization than upon circumstances, more

upon what we are than upon what we have. Saint-Simon said of the Duke of

Burgundy, father of Louis XV., that he was born terrible: it certainly

may be said of Washington Irving that he was born happy. Some men

are born unhappy: that is, they are born with elements of character,

peculiarities of temperament, which generate discontent under all

conditions of life. Their joints are not lubricated by oil, but fretted

by sand. The contemporaries of Shakspeare, who for the most part had

little comprehension of his unrivalled genius, expressed their sense

of his personal qualities by the epithet gentle, which was generally

applied to him,--a word which meant rather more then than it does now,

comprising sweetness, courtesy, and kindliness. No one word could

better designate the leading characteristics of Irving's nature and

temperament. No man was ever more worthy to bear "the grand old name

of gentleman," alike in the essentials of manliness, tenderness, and

purity, and in the external accomplishment of manners so winning and

cordial that they charmed alike men, women, and children. He had the

delicacy of organization which is essential to literary genius, but it

stopped short of sickliness or irritability. He was sensitive to beauty

in all its forms, but was never made unhappy or annoyed by the shadows

in the picture of life. He had a happy power of escaping from everything

that was distasteful, uncomfortable, and unlovely, and dwelling in

regions of sunshine and bloom. His temperament was not impassioned; and

this, though it may have impaired somewhat the force of his genius,

contributed much to his enjoyment of life. Considering that he was an

American born, and that his youth and early manhood were passed in a

period of bitter and virulent political strife, it is remarkable how

free his writings are from the elements of conflict and opposition. He

never put any vinegar into his ink. He seems to have been absolutely

without the capacity of hating any living thing. He was a literary

artist; and the productions of his pen address themselves to the

universal and unpartisan sympathies of mankind as much as paintings

or statues. His "Rip Van Winkle" and "Legend of Sleepy Hollow" are

pictures, in which we find combined the handling of Teniers, the

refinement of Stothard, and the coloring of Gainsborough.

Fortunate in so many other things, Irving may also be pronounced

fortunate in his biographer, whom he himself designated for the trust.

His nephew has performed his labor of love in a manner which will

satisfy all but those who read a book mainly for the purpose of finding

fault with it. In his brief and tasteful preface he says: "In the

delicate office of sifting, selecting, and arranging these different

materials, extending through a period of nearly sixty years, it has

been my aim to make the author, in every stage of his career, as far as

possible, his own biographer, conscious that I shall in this way best

fulfil the duty devolved upon me, and give to the world the truest

picture of his life and character." To this purpose Mr. Pierre M.

Irving has adhered with uniform consistency. He makes his uncle his own

biographer. To borrow a happy illustration which we found in a newspaper

a few days since, his own portion of the book is like the crystal of

a watch, through which we see the hands upon the face as through

transparent air. And luckily he found ample materials in his uncle's

papers and records. Washington Irving was not bred to any profession,

and had a fixed aversion, not characteristic of his countrymen, for

regular business-occupation; his literary industry was fitful, and not

continuous: but he seems to have been fond of the occupation of writing,

and spent upon his diaries and in his correspondence a great many hours,

which he could hardly have done, if he had been a lawyer, a doctor, or

even a merchant, in active employment. His warm family-affections, too,

his strong love for his brothers and sisters, from most of whom he was

for many years separated, were a constant incitement to the writing of

letters, those invisible wires that keep up the communication between

parted hearts. For all these peculiarities of nature, for all these

accidents of fortune, we have reason to be grateful, since from these

his biographer has found ample materials for constructing the fabric of

his life from the foundation.

Many of Irving's letters, especially in the second volume, are long and

elaborate productions, which read like chapters from a book of travels,

or like essays, and yet do not on that account lose the peculiar charm

which we demand in such productions. They are perfectly natural in tone

and feeling, though evidently written with some care. They are not in

the least artificial, and yet not careless or hasty. They have all that

easy and graceful flow, that transparent narrative, that unconscious

charm, which we find in his published writings; and we not unfrequently

discern gleams and touches of that exquisite humor which was the best

gift bestowed upon his mind. Brief as our notice is, we cannot refrain

from quoting in illustration of our remark a few sentences from a letter

to Thomas Moore, written in 1824:--

"I went a few evenings since to see Kenney's new piece, 'The Alcaid.' It

went off lamely, and the Alcaid is rather a bore, and comes near to be

generally thought so. Poor Kenney came to my room next evening, and

I could not have believed that one night could have ruined a man so

completely. I swear to you I thought at first it was a flimsy suit of

clothes had left some bedside and walked into my room without waiting

for the owner to get up, or that it was one of those frames on which

clothiers stretch coats at their shop-doors, until I perceived _a thin

face, sticking edgeways out of the collar of the coat like the axe in

a bundle of fasces._ He was so thin, and pale, and nervous, and

exhausted,--he made a dozen difficulties in getting over a spot in the

carpet, and never would have accomplished it, if he had not lifted

himself over by the points of his shirt-collar."

The illustration we have Italicized is rather wit than humor; but be it

as it may, it is capital; and the whole paragraph has that quaint and

grotesque exaggeration which reminds us of the village-tailor in "The

Sketch-Book," "who played on the clarionet, and seemed to have blown his

face to a point," or of Mud Sam, who "knew all the fish in the river by

their Christian names."

We think no one can read these volumes without having a higher

impression of Washington Irving as a man. There was no inconsistency

between the author and the man. The tenderness, the purity of feeling,

the sensibility, which gave his works an entrance into so many hearts,

had their source in his mind and character. It is a very truthful record

that we have before us. The delineation is that of a man certainly not

without touches of human infirmity, but as certainly largely endowed

with virtues as well as with gifts and graces. It is very evident that

it is a truthful biography, and that the hand of faithful affection has

found nothing to suppress or conceal. When we have laid down the book,

we feel that we know the man. And we can understand why it was that he

was so loved. Enemies, it seems, he had, or at least ill-wishers; since

we learn--and it is one of the indications of his soft and sensitive

nature--that he was seriously annoyed by a persecutor who persistently

inclosed and forwarded to him every scrap of unfavorable criticism he

could find in the newspapers: but the feeling that inspired this piece

of ill-nature must have been envy, and not hatred,--the bitterness which

is awakened in some unhappy tempers by the success which they cannot

themselves attain. No man less deserved to be hated than Irving, for no

man was less willing himself to give heart-room to hatred.

We need hardly add that these volumes--of which the larger part is

by Irving himself--are very entertaining, and that we read them from

beginning to end with unflagging interest. Sketches of society and

manners, personal anecdotes, descriptions of scenery, buildings, and

works of art, give animation and variety to the narrative. The whole is

suffused with a golden glow of cheerfulness, the effluence of a nature

very happy, yet never needing the sting of riot or craving the flush of

excess, and finding its happiness in those pure fountains that refresh,

but not intoxicate.

The close of the second volume brings us down to the year 1832, and his

cordial reception by his friends and countrymen after an absence of

seventeen years; so that more good things are in store for us.