decreased by the first of August--the term of enlistment of many of the
soldiers having expired--to six thousand; and it was with this number
that, having swept the south-west, and believing the enemy intended to
attack him at Springfield, he advanced to meet them at Dug Springs. The
army of the enemy was larger and their position a strong one, but they
were unable to hold it, and, after a sharp skirmish, fled in disorder,
while Gen. Lyon continued his march toward Springfield. His situation
had now become a critical one. The reinforcements for which he had
telegraphed in vain, and in vain sent messengers to entreat from the
chief of the department, Gen. Fremont, then in St. Louis, did not
arrive. His army was subsisting on half rations, and wearied with
exhausting marches over the uneven country in the extreme heat of
midsummer. And now, for the first time, hope seemed to desert the
general. Under his direction the cause had hitherto triumphed in
Missouri. Now, with zeal unabated and courage unflinching, he must fall
before the enemy he had so successfully opposed, or retreat where
retreat was disaster, disgrace, and defeat. No wonder that, as from day
to day he looked for the expected aid as men in drought for the clouds
that are to bless them, he grew restless and perplexed and despairing;
no wonder that the face that had never before worn the lines of
indecision, should now lose its accustomed cheerfulness and glance of
calm purpose, and challenge sympathy and pity for the heart that had
never before asked more than admiration and respect. He felt that the
hour had its demands, and that they must be met. Action, even in the
face of disaster, was less a defeat than an inglorious retirement. The
public, surely unaware of the fearful odds against him, clamored for an
engagement; the State expected it of its hero; the government awaited
it, and with a brave heart, but no hope, Gen. Lyon prepared for the
attack. The result all the world knows. Was it a victory where the
conquerors were obliged to retire from the field, and carry out their
wounded under a flag of truce? Was it a defeat where the enemy had been
thrice repulsed, once driven from the ground, had burned their baggage
train, and made no pursuit of the retreating army?
But most mournful are those last moments of the faithful soldier's life;
most solemn those last tones of his voice as his orders rang out on that
misty morning amid the smoke and shouts of the battle-field. He stands
here bare-headed, the blood streaming from two wounds which he does not
heed, the cloud of perplexity settling over his face like a pall, his
troubled eyes fixed upon the enemy. He turns to head a regiment which
has lost its colonel--"Forward! men; I will lead you!" A moment, and he
lies there: no more striving for victory here; no more anxious hours of
weary watching for the succor that never came; no more goadings from an
exacting public, nor any more appeals to an unheeding chief. Even the
triumphant hush of life could not smooth out those lines cut by unwonted
care upon his face, or answer the mute questioning of that painful
indecision there. So from the West they brought him, by solemn marches,
to the East, and colors hung at half-mast, and bells were tolled as the
flag-draped hero was borne slowly by. And to the music of tender dirges,
he, whose whole life had been, inspired by the whistling of fifes and
rolling of drums, was laid to rest. A handful of clods falling upon his
breast, their hollow sound never thrilling the mother heart that lay
again so near her son's, a volley fired over the grave, and all was
over. Of all the brave men gone, no fate has seemed to us so sad.
Winthrop, young and ardent, with the tide of great thoughts rashing in
upon his princely heart, died in the flush of hope with the fresh
enthusiasm of poetry and undimmed patriotism shining in his eyes, and we
laid our soldier to sleep under the violets. Ellsworth fell forward with
the captured flag of treason in his hand, and the whole nation cheering
him on in his early sally upon the 'sacred' Virginia soil. Brave and
honorable, with fine powers cultured by study and earnest thought, death
took from him no portion of the fame life would have awarded him. Baker
rode into the jaws of death in that fatal autumn blunder; but the
ignominy of defeat rested upon other shoulders. His only to obey, even
while 'all the world wondered.' But he did not fall before the honor of
a country's admiration and the meed of her grateful thanks were his.
Soldier, orator and statesman, he had gained in a brilliant career a
glory earned by few, and could well afford to die, assured of a memory
justified from all reproach. But to Lyon, whom there were so few to
mourn, death in the midst of anticipated defeat was bitter indeed. No
time to retrieve the losses and disasters the cruel remissness of others
had entailed upon him; the fruit of the anxious toil of months wrested
from him even as it began to ripen; all his glad hopes chilled by
suspicion, but his faith, we may well believe, still strong in the
ultimate success of the cause he loved. A whole life he had given to his
country, and she had not thought it worth while to redeem it from
disgrace with the few thousands that he asked. He had outlived the
elasticity of youth, when wrongs are quickly remedied, and new impulses
spring, like phoenixes, from the ashes of the old. Uncertain whether he
were the victim of a conspiracy, the tool of a faction, or the martyr to
some unknown theory, he died, and as the country had been to him wife
and children, he left her his all.
It was known to but few that the soldier, whose career had been rather
useful than brilliant, had, when the scheming of politicians and their
doubly-refined arguments threatened to deceive and ruin the country,
put by his sword and taken up the pen. In a series of articles, short,
concise, and to the point, he effectually canvassed the State. They are
addressed to thinking men everywhere. Free from all trickery, strictly
impartial, relying entirely upon the soundness of his premises for
success,--for elegance of diction he had not, and he was too honest even
to become a sophist,--these papers manifest at once the true patriot and
the intelligent man. Thousands of adherents the Republican cause had in
1860, but not one more indefatigable or more heartily in earnest than
Lyon. Outside the limits of party interests, and uninfluenced personally
by the predominance of either faction, he had worked out in his own way
the problem of national life, and now spread its solution before his
readers. 'Our cause,' said he, 'is to honor labor and elevate the
laborer.' Here we have the kernel of the whole matter; the spirit, if
not the letter, of the whole republican system of government. The secret
that philosophers have elaborated from the unconquerable facts of
physics, ethics, and psychology, that men of genius have evolved with
infinite difficulty from the mass of crude aesthetic associations that
cluster around every object of nature or of art, Lyon, working and
thinking alone as a citizen, has discovered, with the sole aid of common
sense and the habit of practical observation. Carey and Godwin have
proved by statistics for unbelievers the reasonableness of the doctrine
enunciated by Lyon. Now, thanks to the untiring efforts of a few
stout-hearted patriots, it is no new one to the North; but in the late
presidential contest it was a strange weapon glittering in strong hands.
Our society, diluted and weakened by the Southern element, revolted at
first from the creed that is to prove its salvation. Not alone in our
border States had the dragon crept, searing our fair institutions with
his hot breath, but even upon the sturdy old Puritan stock were
engrafted many of the petty notions that pass for 'principles' in Dixie.
True, we were educated, all of us, into a sort of decent regard for the
good old element of labor,--we call it industry,--more antique, since
antiquity is a virtue, than aristocracy, for it began in Paradise. But
this was a feature of our Northern character that was to be hurried out
of sight, ignominiously buried without candle or bell, when the giant of
Southern chivalry stalked across our borders. The bravado and
gentlemanly ruffianism of youthful F.F.V-ism at college, and the
supercilious condescension of incipient Southern belledom in the
seminary, impressed young North America with a respect that was indeed
unacknowledged, but that grew with its growth and strengthened with its
strength. But this mock romance of ancestry, this arrogant assumption by
the South of all the social virtues and courtesies of which the nation,
or indeed the universe, could boast, was like the flash of an expiring
candle to Lyon. He had little to do with first families North or South;
his mission was to the _people_. His practical mind gathered in, sheaf
after sheaf, a whole harvest of political facts. He saw that the
government of the United States, originally intended to be administered
by the people, had been for years in the power of the minority. Against
this perversion of the purpose of the founders of the republic, this
outrage to the memory of men who labored for its defense and welfare, he
entered his earnest protest. The shallow effort of the Democratic party
to establish upon constitutional grounds the monstrous phantom of
justice they called government, was met by his hearty indignation. He
says, 'With the artfulness of a deity and the presumption of a fiend,
our own Constitution is perversely claimed by the Democracy as the aegis
for the establishment of a slave autocracy over our country.'
No element more fatal to our growth or freedom could Lyon conceive than
this slave autocracy. It sapped the very foundations of republicanism,
and, stealthily advancing to the extreme limits of the law, enjoyed the
confidence of the people, while it plotted their subjugation. All the
varied machinery of the new social system, falsely styled government,
had for its object the extinction of individual rights and the
deification of capital. Church and state united in the unholy effort to
Crush the masses, and intriguing politicians, by dint of dazzling
rhetoric and plausible promises, lured the people on to secure their own
downfall at the polls. The only remedy for this Lyon saw in the
elevation of the masses. 'It is the greatest political revolution yet to
be effected,' he says, 'to bring the laboring man to know that honest
industry is the highest of merits, and should be awarded the highest
honor; and, properly pursued, contributes to his intelligence and
morality, and to the virtues needed for official station.' 'The
calamity,' says an eminent writer from his far Platonean heights, 'is
the masses;' but liberty is a new religion that is to sweep over the
world and regenerate them. And to this end Lyon boldly advocated
emancipation for the sake of the white man. If to-day, when patriotism
is at a premium, men tremble before the acknowledged necessity of this
measure, and are either too cowardly or too indolent to meet the demands
of the times, it required no little boldness in 1860 to advance a theory
so decided, even in a Kansas newspaper. But Lyon knew the inefficiency
of half-way measures, and the moral degradation they inevitably entail
upon the community so weak or so deluded as to adopt them. The hue and
cry of abolitionism did not disturb him; he was not afraid of names.
Conservatism that sat in state at Washington, and pulled the wires all
over the country,--a tremendous power, none the less fearful in that it
was only a galvanized one,--was a dead letter to him, its dignity
departed with the age that had demanded it. Conservatism would have
resented no impositions, established no new landmarks, asserted no
independence; would carry its mails on horseback, creep over the ocean
in schooners, fight by sea in piked brigantines, and by land with spear
and battle-axe; it would have emancipated no slaves in Great Britain and
France, and no serfs in Russia. But if freedom means anything, it means
_Progress_,--liberty to advance, never to retrograde. 'Nothing in the
world will ever go backward,' said the old lizard to Heine. All the
authority of a new Areopagus could never sanction that; and yet this
liberty the South claims, nay, has already acted upon, so that the world
may see the result of the experiment, and against its continuance Lyon
protests. In the long silent years of preparation for the fray he has
nursed strange thoughts on the ultimate destiny of man. He has seen in
dreams, prophetic of a mighty accomplishment, his country growing great,
and vigorous, and powerful, extending to struggling humanity everywhere
the protection of her friendship, building up noble institutions,
encouraging science and the useful arts, and leading the van in the
world's great millennial march; and this not through any miraculous
interposition of Providence, but by means of an exalted intelligence and
the power of thought stimulating to action, and that of the noblest
kind.
But you argue the unfitness of the masses for this destiny. Lyon
answers,--not in any musically-rounded sentences, in phrases nicely
balanced; the man is plain and outspoken,--'This is a truth of
philosophy and political economy, that man rises to a condition
corresponding to the rights, duties and responsibilities devolved upon
him; and therefore the only true way to make a man is to invest him with
the rights, duties and responsibilities of a man, and he generally rises
in intellectual and moral greatness to a position corresponding to these
circumstances.' It is a mistake to suppose the great body of the people
ignorant of their position, or unconscious of their growing importance
and dignity as representatives of a mighty empire. Vice and poverty have
indeed well-nigh quenched humanity in thousands in our great cities,
but these are but a drop in the ocean. Behind lies our vast West, with
its teeming population, sturdy, active and energetic. All our mountain
districts are alive with men who, thanks to the press, are beginning to
feel their power. Every advantage of physical development their hardy
life gives them, and the growing consciousness and comprehension of
freedom, blooming under a munificent free-school dispensation, will do
the rest. Our internal manufacturing and agricultural elements at the
North, already powerful and irrepressible, will soon exercise a
tremendous influence in our government. Shall it be the influence of
ignorance played upon by the sophistry of demagogues and helping to
rebuild the vicious doctrines that have stood firmly for so many years,
or the healthful influence of intelligent industry tending to our
greatness and prosperity? This our war is to decide. No peaceful
solution of the great question could be made. This Lyon foresaw in the
truckling of politicians North to win the unit of Southern political
sympathy: the main end and aim of the South being the appointment of
Southern men to the Presidency, 'as security on the one hand against
unfavorable executive action toward slavery, and on the other against
executive patronage adverse to its interests, the democratic party North
succeeded, by trimming party sails and decking party leaders, in suiting
their fastidious Southern leaders.' The question once at issue, even a
peaceful separation was impossible, though an amendment of the
Constitution should sanction it. War was inevitable. The great bugbear
of slavery would still exist; fugitive slave laws be forever upon the
political carpet; formidable jealousies spring up between two nations
founded upon such diverse principles, yet united by very natural
circumstance of language and climate; internal wrangling would destroy
all unity, conspiracies give the death-blow to all prosperity and all
hope of advancement. All this if there were no great party at the North
to rise upon the vast ground of humanity, claiming for its millions the
privilege of an unfettered life, for its children a fair start in the
future. Only one remedy Lyon knew, and he stood there, the early apostle
of Emancipation, and preached it. His doctrine was not accepted then, it
is not accepted now; but the time must come, when millions shall have
been expended, and blood shall have flowed like water only to delay it,
when we will fly to it for salvation. Let those who still cry 'Peace,
peace,' when there is no peace, learn what is to be its
price--Emancipation. It will be a bitter draught; well, so was the
independence of her colonies to England. And every day makes it more
bitter; the gall in the cup rises to the brim; a few more months and it
will overflow; the people will take the matter into their own hands and
legislate slavery into the swamps of Florida.
It is a lame and blind philanthropy that cries for a respite. 'A little
more sleep, a little more slumber. After us the deluge.' And meanwhile
the damnable lies gain ground, and a new generation is lost to its due
development. Have we yet to learn that we are no longer individuals, but
parts of a mighty nation, and responsible in some sort, every one, women
and men, for its destiny? Poland has learned this lesson. Her eyes are
upon us now. Shall she, still struggling, find that blood and treasure,
and all the thousand dear blessings of peace, have been sacrificed in
vain? If you cry 'War is an evil!' we grant it; but is it reserved for
the nineteenth century to discover a creed for which there shall be no
martyrs? What great gift has the world ever won that was not bought with
blood? When has independence of action or thought been purchased
otherwise than at the cost of persecution,--more revolution? Then let us
not slander revolutions. They are the throes of nature undergoing her
purification; if it is as by fire, oh! let us have courage and stand
beside her in her hour of trial. St. George will not fight forever; the
dragon of oppression is dying.
'Yes, although so slowly, he _is_ dying;
Many thousand years have fled in darkness,
Since the sword first cut his scaly armor,
And the red wound roused him into madness;
But the good knight is of race immortal,
Ever young, and passionate and fearless;
And the strength which oozes from the dragon,
Blooms reviving in the glorious warrior.'
And, after all, the demon of war is not so black as we have painted him.
We do not shudder to-day as we read of the siege of Troy or the downfall
of Carthage, or the Romance of the Cid. The song of Deborah, 'of the
avenging of Israel _when the people willingly offered themselves_,' is
one glorious burst of praise to God and gratitude to the martyrs. There
was war in heaven when ambition was cast out:--what quiet pastoral
appeals to our noblest impulses as Paradise Lost does? Wisely and well
speaks the English clergyman when he says:--
'But the truth is that here, as elsewhere, poetry has reached the truth,
while science and common sense have missed it. It has distinguished--as,
in spite of all mercenary and feeble sophistry, men ever will
distinguish--war from mere bloodshed. It has discerned the higher
feelings which lie beneath its revolting features. Carnage is terrible.
The conversion of producers into destroyers is a calamity. Death, and
insults to women worse than death--and human features obliterated
beneath the hoof of the war-horse--and reeking hospitals, and ruined
commerce, and violated homes, and broken hearts--they are all awful. But
there is something worse than death: cowardice is worse. And the _decay
of enthusiasm and manliness is worse_. And it is worse than death, aye,
worse than one hundred thousand deaths, when a people has gravitated
down into the creed, that the "wealth of nations" consists, not in
generous hearts, "fire in each breast, and freedom on each brow," in
national virtues, and primitive simplicity, and heroic endurance, and
preference of duty to life--not in _men_, but in silk and _cotton_, and
something that they call "capital." Peace is blessed--peace arising out
of charity. But peace springing out of the calculations of selfishness
is not blessed. If the price to be paid for peace is this, that wealth
accumulate and men decay, better far that every street, in every town of
our once noble country, should run blood.'[K]
As we write, every telegram proves the vaunted unity of the South a
sham, a visionary political bugbear, no longer strong or hideous enough
to frighten the most inveterate conservative dough-face. But a few
victories do not end the war; still earnestness and effort and
sacrifice, for the sick man of America will fight even when his 'brains
are out.' Not until we have proved to Breckenridge, the traitor, that we
are not 'fighting for principles that three-fourths of us abhor,' and
that the Union is not only 'a means of preserving the principles of
political liberty,' but that in it is irrevocably bound up every living
principle of all liberty, social, religious and individual; that in its
shelter only we have security against wrong at home and insult from
abroad; not until Emancipation has instituted a new order of things in
society as well as in politics, will the death of the out-spoken patriot
and brave man, Lyon, be avenged, and the Struggle be at an end. 'Genius
is patient,' but patience has had her perfect work, and the days of
Rebellion are numbered. On with the crusade!
* * * * *
MACCARONI AND CANVAS.
II.
The voice of Rome is baritone, always excepting that of the Roman
locomotive,--the donkey,--which is deep bass, and comes tearing and
braying along at times when it might well be spared. In the still night
season, wandering among the moonlit ruins of the Coliseum, while you
pause and gaze upon the rising tiers of crumbling stone above you,
memory retraces all you have read of the old Roman days: the forms of
the world-conquerors once more people the deserted ruin; the clash of
ringing steel; hot, fiery sunlight; thin, trembling veil of dust pierced
by the glaring eyes of dying gladiators; red-spouting blood; screams of
the mangled martyrs torn by Numidian lions; moans of the dying; fierce
shouts of exultation from the living; smiles from gold-banded girls in
flowing robes, with floating hair, flower-crowned, and perfumed; the hum
of thrice thirty thousand voices hushed to a whisper as the combat hangs
on an uplifted sword; the--
Aw-waw-WAUN-ik! WAW-NIK! WAUN-KI-w-a-w-n! comes like blatant fish-horn
over the silent air, and your dream of the Coliseum ends ignominiously
with this nineteenth-century song of a jackass.
At night you will hear the shrill cry of the screech-owl sounding down
the silent streets in the most thickly-populated parts of the city. Or
you will perhaps be aroused from sleep, as Caper often was, by the
long-drawn-out cadences of some countryman singing a _rondinella_ as he
staggers along the street, fresh from a wine-house. Nothing can be more
melancholy than the concluding part of each verse in these rondinellas,
the voice being allowed to drop from one note to another, as a man
falling from the roof of a very high house may catch at some projection,
hold on for a time, grow weak, loose his hold, fall, catch again, hold
on for a minute, and at last fall flat on the pavement, used up, and
down as low as he can reach.
But the street-cries of this city are countless; from the man who brings
round the daily broccoli to the one who has a wild boar for sale, not
one but is determined that you shall hear all about it. Far down a
narrow street you listen to a long-drawn, melancholy howl--the voice as
of one hired to cry in the most mournful tones for whole generations of
old pagan Romans who died unconverted; poor devils who worshiped wine
and women, and knew nothing better in this world. And who is their
mourner? A great, brawny, tawny, steeple-crowned hat, blue-breeched,
two-fisted fish-huckster; and he is trying to sell, by yelling as if his
heart would break, a basket of fish not so long as your finger. If he
cries so over anchovies, what would he do if he had a whale for sale?