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THE
CONTINENTAL MONTHLY:
DEVOTED TO
LITERATURE AND NATIONAL POLICY.
VOL. II.--DECEMBER, 1862.--NO. VI.
THE UNION.
III.
On the 10th of April last, upon the recommendation of the President of
the United States, Congress offered pecuniary aid to such States as
would gradually abolish slavery within their limits. The colonization,
from time to time, of the manumitted slaves, with their consent, by the
Government, beyond our boundaries, was also contemplated as a part of
the system. By the President's proclamation of September last, this
offer is still made to loyal States, and practical measures suggested
for carrying it into execution. As to the States persisting in rebellion
after the close of this year, the President, as a military necessity,
has announced a different measure, that is, general emancipation in all
such States, with compensation only to loyal masters. Immediate
emancipation of all slaves, with compensation for all, costing, as it
would, twelve hundred millions of dollars, is now beyond the power of
the Government, burdened as it is by an enormous and increasing debt.
Nor was such a measure ever wise or expedient. That subject I will
discuss hereafter, but will speak now of the plan proposed by the
President, and sanctioned by Congress on the 10th of April last.
If this measure seems slow in securing total manumission and
colonization, it would be progressive and certain. God works out the
destiny of nations by no sudden or spasmodic action. His great and
beneficent changes are generally slow and gradual, but when he wills
destruction, it is sudden as the lightning's flash, the crash of the
earthquake, or the sweep of the hurricane, marked by ruin and
desolation. Would we avoid like disasters in solving this stupendous
problem, we must follow, in humble faith, the ways of God, and thus by
gentle, but constant and successive movements, reach the grand result.
History, however, exhibits a few extraordinary cases, in which man, as
an instrument in the hands of Providence, sometimes punishes great
crimes, eradicates great evils, and accomplishes great national reforms
by acts as sudden as the devastating career of the tempest in sweeping
away pestilential vapors. Such may be the case with the revolted States,
if they should persist in this wicked rebellion beyond the close of the
period of solemn warning.
The coming year may be the great crisis of human destiny. It may see our
rivers, like those of Egypt, turned into blood. It may witness similar
loathsome plagues, and pestilence, and fiery hail, and darkness
palpable. But may it never behold the dread work of the destroying angel
as of old, at the midnight hour, in every dwelling whose lintels were
unmarked by the typical blood of the Paschal sacrifice! Avoiding the
last dread scene of the great Egyptian drama, may we have, not the
Jewish Passover, but the grand American jubilee, when we may hail the
South redeemed from the curse of slavery, and forever united with the
North, as the one blessed home of universal freedom.
As the South was as earnest as the North in protesting against the
landing upon our shores of the first cargo of African slaves, and the
continuance of the traffic so long forced upon us under the British
flag, and as they all united in excluding the word 'slave' from the
Federal Constitution, so will they ultimately coöperate in expunging
from our system the institution of slavery.
I shall discuss this question as to the border States under no sectional
or party aspect, no influence of passion or prejudice, or any motive but
the desire to promote the good of my country. Our national and material
interests must be fully considered, as also those great moral principles
and intellectual developments which exalt and dignify the character of
man. I shall examine the subject inductively and deductively, the facts
and the causes.
That a return to the Union with gradual emancipation and colonization by
the rebel States would be best for them and for us is certain. But in
justice to loyal citizens and communities, and to avoid the danger of
foreign intervention by prolonging the contest, it is our duty, after
the close of this year, to withdraw the slaves in the rebel States from
the culture of the crops used to support their armies, which can only be
done by general emancipation in such States persisting then in the
rebellion. This is a necessary war measure, designed, like battles or
blockades, to suppress the rebellion (alike ruinous to North and South),
and which must no longer be permitted to accumulate an immense debt and
oppressive taxation, and to exhaust our blood and treasure. The census
shows that very few slaves are held by the deluded masses of the South,
that the slaveholders are few in number; and full compensation is
contemplated by Congress and the President, in all cases of the
manumission by us of the slaves of loyal citizens.
By the census of 1790, all the sixteen States then enumerated held
slaves, except Massachusetts (then including Maine, although numbered
separately), where the institution was abolished by a judicial
construction of their constitution of 1780. The following table, from
the census, shows the gradual disappearance of slavery from seven of
these States, the remaining eight States still continuing the
institution:
1790 1800 1810 1820 '30 '40 '50 '60
N. Hamp. 158 8
R. Island 952 381 108 48 17 5
Conn. 2,759 951 310 97 25 17
Vermont 17
N. York 21,824 20,343 15,017 10,088 75 4
N. Jer. 11,423 12,422 10,851 7,657 2,254 674 236 18
Penn. 3,737 1,706 795 408 211 64
Illinois, by her constitution of 1818, continued slavery in the State,
but declared that 'children hereafter born shall be free.' An effort was
made in Congress to defeat the admission of Illinois, on the ground that
its constitution 'did not conform to the ordinance of 1787.' But it was
then decided by the House of Representatives (117 to 54) that 'the
ordinance did not extend to States.' In the Senate the vote was
_unanimous_. (See Niles's Register, vol. xix. p. 30.) Rhode Island
adopted the Pennsylvania system. Connecticut declared free, at the age
of 26, all born after the 1st March, 1784. Indiana pursued in its
results the course of Illinois. By the census, Illinois had 917 slaves
in 1820, 747 in 1830, 331 in 1840; and Indiana had 190 slaves in 1820, 3
in 1830, and 3 in 1840. New York in 1799 continued in bondage the
slaves then living, but those born _after_ the date of the law were
emancipated at the age of 28; and in New Jersey, the males at 25 and the
females at 21. This slow and gradual process in States having so few
slaves, should inculcate kinder and more indulgent feelings as to those
loyal communities where the slaves are so much more numerous, and the
time and mode of action so vital.
The great model act of gradual emancipation, drawn by Benjamin Franklin,
the great leader on this question, approved by the Quakers, and adopted
by Pennsylvania in 1780, liberated all the descendants of slaves born
after that date within the limits of the State. To avoid circumlocution,
I shall call those born before the date of emancipating laws the _ante
nati_, and those born after the date of such laws, _post nati_.
I shall consider first the question of gradual emancipation and
colonization in connection with Maryland, and afterward apply the same
principles to other States.
If the Pennsylvania system of liberating immediately only the post nati,
so much more liberal than that of most of the free States, were adopted
by Maryland, the cost of manumission there would be very small. In the
execution of the emancipation act of Congress in this District, infant
slaves were valued officially this year by sworn experts at $50 each.
Now by the census of 1860, the infant slaves of Maryland, under one year
old, surviving on the 1st June, 1860, numbered 2,391, which, at $50
each, would cost $119,550. This would be the actual expense for the
first year in Maryland, but decreasing every year, and ceasing
altogether in little more than a generation. Now the total number of
slaves under one year of age, born in all the slave States, and
surviving on the 1st June, 1860, was, by the census, 113,581, which, at
$50 each, would cost $5,679,050, for the first year, and decreasing
annually as above stated. The post nati numbered in Delaware 40, in
Kentucky 7,281, in Missouri 3,377, and in Virginia 13,850, making the
first year's cost as follows:
Maryland $119,550
Delaware 2,000
Kentucky 364,050
Missouri 168,850
--------
654,450
Virginia 692,500
----------
Total, $1,346,950
Now then, applying this principle to Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky, and
Missouri, the cost, the first year, would be $654,450, and, if we
included Virginia, $1,346,950. This sum, we have seen, would decrease
every year. According then to the annual tables, and those of
expectancies of life (as calculated for me), the sum of fifteen millions
of dollars of United States stock, issued now, and bearing interest at
the rate of six per cent, per annum, would make all the border States
free States, in the same sense in which Pennsylvania and other Northern
free States became so; and less than half this sum, if Virginia should
not adopt the measure. The case, then, as regards the border States,
presents no financial difficulty whatever. If this plan were adopted,
the same just and humane course would doubtless be pursued as in the
North, by which the emancipated post nati would remain apprentices until
they reached twenty-one years of age, under the same regulations,
mainly, as were applicable to white children, bound out by the overseers
of the poor. Should the border States consent to proceed more rapidly, I
have no doubt the Government would cheerfully pay to loyal masters such
additional sum as would give freedom to _every slave_ in all the border
States, on the 4th of July, 1876, our first centennial anniversary of
the Declaration of American Independence. That day, then, already so
distinguished in the annals of humanity, would become the great epoch in
the history of our race.
And now let us examine the cost of all these measures. If the seceded
States, including Virginia, should persist in the rebellion until after
the close of this year, the sum to be paid the loyal owners of slaves
manumitted under the President's war proclamation would probably reach
$100,000,000. The emancipation of the post nati, in the four remaining
border States, would cost §7,288,132. The manumission in those States,
of all the surviving slaves, on the 4th July, 1876, according to the
same tables and estimates, would cost a sum equal to $65,000,000, issued
now as United States six per cent. stock, making a total for _complete
emancipation in all the slave States_ of $172,288,132. This is a smaller
sum than four months' cost of the war, whilst wholly and forever
removing the discordant element which produced the rebellion, commencing
a new and glorious career of material, moral, and intellectual progress,
greatly exalting the character of the nation, invoking the blessing of
God, securing the future harmony and perpetuity of the Union, and the
ultimate fraternity of man. Never, before, would any nation have made so
grand an investment in the gratitude of emancipated millions, the thanks
of a world redeemed from bondage, the applause of the present age and of
posterity--the exchequer of time and eternity. It would live forever in
history, and the recording angel would inscribe it in God's eternal
archives. Statesmen, scholars, savans, philosophers, poets, patriots,
orators, and divines would proclaim its glory. The new drama of man's
political redemption would be witnessed by the audience of the world.
Music would chant its praise in every clime, and all peoples would swell
the chorus. The painter would give it immortality, and the sculptor
monuments more enduring than the pyramids, statues more godlike and
sublime than ever crowned Grecian Parthenon, or adorned with Parian
marble the temples of Augustan Rome. The press would glow with
enthusiasm, and the procession of nations march in the grand ovation,
not to national airs, or under national banners, but under the world's
new flag, and to the music of the world's new anthem of universal
freedom and regenerated man.
The census proves that our progress as a nation has been greatly
retarded by slavery. If the North had retained, and the South had
abolished slavery, their relative positions would have been reversed.
Virginia would have taken the place of New York, Maryland of
Massachusetts, Delaware of Rhode Island, Kentucky of Ohio, Missouri of
Illinois, and Tennessee of Indiana.
I begin with Maryland, because, in proportion to her area, she has
greater natural advantages than any one of the thirty-four States, and,
if the comparison with the free States is most unfavorable to her, it
will be more so as to any other Southern State, as the census shows
that, from 1790 to 1860, and from 1850 to 1860, Maryland increased in
population per square mile more rapidly than any other slaveholding
State.
Maryland borders for two hundred miles the great free State of
Pennsylvania, and Delaware one hundred and thirty miles, whose slaves
have decreased from 8,887 in 1790, to 1,798 in 1860, and where slavery
now exists in name only. Delaware, like Maryland, is also a loyal State,
and would be the last to leave the Union, which it was her glory first
to enter under the Constitution of 1787. On the west, Maryland is
bounded by Preston county, Virginia, containing in 1860 a free
population of 13,312, and 67 slaves only. Western Virginia, bordering
Maryland on the south, has voted with great unanimity to become a free
State, and all appearances indicate that slavery will disappear from
Virginia with the close of this year. Maryland then would be surrounded
entirely by non-slaveholding States.
Within the heart of Maryland stands this District, where slavery is now
abolished, producing serious losses and embarrassments to the State. The
two counties of Prince George and Montgomery, adjoining this District,
contained in 1860, 17,790 slaves, being more than one fifth of the
slaves of the State. How long can slavery endure, and of what value is
it in these counties, where every slave brought or sent to the District
is free, and where it is already seriously contended that the language
of the Constitution, 'slaves in one _State_, escaping into _another_,'
cannot apply to this District? With the feeling so intensified already
by this rebellion against slavery, it cannot long exist in Maryland. By
advancing legislation, and public sentiment, the fugitive slave law is
becoming inoperative, and slaves in Maryland are now held by a most
precarious tenure. Indeed, unforeseen events, as this terrible rebellion
progresses, may sweep slavery from Maryland without compensation or
colonization.
But, independent of present or future perils, it is proposed to prove,
mainly by the census, that all the material interests of Maryland would
be greatly promoted by her prompt acceptance of the offer of Congress.
We must consider the area, soil, climate, mines, hydraulic power,
location, shore line, bays, sounds, and rivers, and such other causes as
affect the advance of wealth and population.
The relative progress of Maryland has been slow indeed. The population
of the Union, by the census of 1790, was 3,929,827, of which Maryland,
containing then 319,728, constituted a twelfth part (12.29). In 1860,
the Union numbered 31,445,080, and Maryland 687,034, constituting a
forty-fifth part (45.76). In 1790, the free States numbered 1,968,455,
Maryland's population then being equal to one sixth (6.12); but, in
1860, the population of the free States was 18,920,078, Maryland's
number then being equal to one twenty-seventh part (27.52). But, if
Maryland had increased as rapidly from 1790 to 1860 as the whole Union,
her proportion, one twelfth part, would have made her numbers in 1860,
2,620,315; and if her proportional increase had equalled that of the
free States, her ratio, one sixth, would have made her population in
1860, 3,153,392. She might not have reached either of these results;
but, before closing these articles, it will be proved that, in the
absence of slavery, her population, in 1860, would have been at least
1,755,661, or the same per square mile as Massachusetts; and Baltimore,
bearing the same ratio to this number as to Maryland's present
population, would have contained in 1860, 542,000, instead of 212,000,
her present number.
I take the areas from the able report (November 29, 1860) of the Hon.
Joseph S. Wilson, then Commissioner of the General Land Office, where
they are for the first time accurately given, 'excluding the water
surface.' The population is taken from the census, the tables of 1850
and 1860 being compiled with great ability, by the present
superintendent, the Hon. J. C. G. Kennedy. I compare first Massachusetts
and Maryland, because they are maritime and old States, and both in 1790
had nearly the same population, but, as will be shown hereafter, with
vastly superior natural advantages in favor of Maryland.
Area of Maryland, 11,124 square miles; shore line, by tables of United
States Coast Survey, viz.: main shore, including bays, sounds, &c., 503
miles, islands 298, rivers to head of tide water 535; total, 1,336
miles.
Area of Massachusetts, 7,800 square miles; shore lines, by tables of
United States Coast Survey, viz.: main shore, including bays, sounds,
&c., 435 miles, islands 259, rivers to head of tide water 70; total, 764
miles. When we mark the Potomac and its tributaries, the lower
Susquehanna, the deep and numerous streams of the Chesapeake, the
commercial advantages of Maryland over Massachusetts are vast indeed.
Looking at the ocean shore of Maryland, and also at the Chesapeake bay,
the largest and finest estuary in the world, indented with numerous
sounds and navigable inlets, three fourths of its length for both shores
being within Maryland, and compare this deep and tranquil and protected
basin, almost one continuous harbor, with the rock-bound coast of
Massachusetts, lashed by the stormy Atlantic, the superiority of
Maryland is striking.
Mortality in Maryland, by the late census, viz.: deaths from 1st June,
1859, to 31st May, 1860, 7,370 persons. Same time in Massachusetts,
21,303; making the ratio of deaths to the number living in Maryland, one
to every 92, and in Massachusetts one to every 57; and the percentage of
deaths in Maryland 1.09, and in Massachusetts 1.76. This rate of
mortality for Massachusetts is confirmed by the late official report of
their Secretary of State to the Legislature.
As to area, then, Maryland exceeds Massachusetts 43 per cent.; as to the
shore line, that of Maryland is nearly double that of Massachusetts,
having 68 miles more of main shore, bays, and sounds, 38 miles more for
islands, and nearly eight times the number of miles for rivers to head
of tide water. As to climate, that of Maryland, we have seen, is far the
most salubrious. This is a vast advantage, not only in augmented wealth
and numbers, from fewer deaths, but also as attracting capital and
immigration. This milder and more salubrious climate gives to Maryland
longer periods for sowing, working, and harvesting crops, a more genial
sun, larger products, and better and longer crop seasons, great
advantages for stock, especially in winter, decreased consumption of
fuel, a greater period for the use of hydraulic power, and of canals and
navigable streams. The area of Maryland fit for profitable culture is
more than double that of Massachusetts, the soil much more fertile, its
mines of coal and iron, with the fluxes all adjacent, rich and
inexhaustible; whereas Massachusetts has no coal, and no valuable mines
of iron or fluxes. When we reflect that coal and iron are the great
elements of modern progress, and build up mighty empires, this advantage
of Maryland over Massachusetts is almost incalculable. The hydraulic
power of Maryland also greatly exceeds that of Massachusetts. Such are
the vast natural advantages of Maryland over Massachusetts. Now let us
observe the results. Population of Maryland in 1790, 319,728; in 1860,
687,034; increase 367,300. Population of Massachusetts in 1790, 378,717;
in 1860, 1,231,065--increase 852,348; difference of increase in favor of
Massachusetts, 485,048; excess of Massachusetts over Maryland in 1790,
58,989, and in 1860, 544,031. This result is amazing, when we regard the
far greater area of Maryland and her other vast natural advantages. The
population of Maryland in 1790 was 28 to the square mile (28.74), and in
1860, 61 to the square mile (61.76); whereas Massachusetts had 48 to the
square mile in 1790 (48.55), and 157 to the square mile in 1860
(157.82). Thus Massachusetts had only 20 more to the square mile in
1790, and 96 more to the square mile in 1860. But if the areas of
Maryland and Massachusetts had been reversed, Massachusetts, with the
area of Maryland, and the population of Massachusetts of 1860 to the
square mile, would have numbered then 1,755,661, and Maryland, with the
area of Massachusetts and the population of Maryland of 1860 to the
square mile, would have had then a population of only 481,728 upon that
basis, leaving Massachusetts in 1860, 1,273,393 more people than
Maryland. Thus is the assertion in a former part of this article now
proved, 'that in the absence of slavery, the population of Maryland in
1860 would have then been at least 1,755,661, and Baltimore at least
542,000.' But, in view of the many other natural advantages of Maryland,
as shown in this article, viz.: in climate and salubrity, in shore line
and navigable rivers, in fertility of soil, and hydraulic power, in a
more central location for trade with the whole Union, and especially
with the West, and nearer supplies of cotton, and, above all, in coal
and iron, it is clear, in the absence of slavery, Maryland must have
contained in 1860 a population of at least two millions. By the census
of 1790, Massachusetts was the fourth in population of all the States,
and Maryland the sixth; but in 1860, Massachusetts was the seventh, and
Maryland the nineteenth; and if each of the thirty-four States increases
in the same ratio from 1860 to 1870, as from 1850 to 1860, Maryland will
be only the twenty-fifth State.
These facts all conclusively attest the terrible effects of slavery on
Maryland, and this is only one of the dreadful sacrifices she has made
in retaining the institution. As to wealth, power, and intellectual
development, the loss cannot be overstated.
Nor can manufactures account for the difference, as shown by the still
greater increase of the agricultural North-West. Besides, Maryland
(omitting slavery) had far greater natural advantages for manufactures
than Massachusetts. She had a more fertile soil, thus furnishing cheaper
food to the working classes, a larger and more accessible coast, and
nearly eight times the length of navigable rivers, greater hydraulic
power, vast superiority in mines of coal and iron, a far more salubrious
climate, cotton, the great staple of modern industry, much nearer to
Maryland, her location far more central for trade with the whole Union,
and Baltimore, her chief city, nearer than Boston to the great West,
viz,: to the Ohio at Pittsburg and Cincinnati, the Mississippi at St.
Louis, and the lakes at Cleveland, Toledo, and Chicago, by several
hundred miles. Indeed, but for slavery, Maryland must have been
a far greater manufacturing as well as commercial State than
Massachusetts--and as to agriculture, there could be no comparison.
But Massachusetts did not become a manufacturing State until after the
tariff of 1824. That measure, as well as the whole protective policy,
Massachusetts earnestly opposed in 1820 and 1824, and Daniel Webster, as
her representative, denounced it as unconstitutional. From 1790 to 1820
Massachusetts was commercial, not manufacturing, and yet, from 1790 to
1820, Massachusetts increased in numbers 144,442, and Maryland in the
same time only 87,622. Yet, from 1790 to 1820, Massachusetts, the most
commercial State, was far more injured by the embargo and the late war
with England than any other State.
It is clear, then, that the accusation of the secession leaders that the
North was built up at the expense of the South, by the tariff, can have
no application to the progress of Massachusetts and Maryland, because
the advance of the former over the latter preceded by more than thirty
years the adoption of the protective policy, and a comparison of the
relative advance of the free and slave States, during the same period,
exhibits the same results.
There is one _invariable law_, whether we compare all the slave States
with all the free States, small States with small, large with large, old
with old, new with new, retarding the progress of the slaveholding
States, ever operating, and differing in degree only.
The area of the nine free States enumerated in 1790, is 169,668 square
miles, and of the eight slaveholding States 300,580 square miles, while
the population of the former in 1790 was 1,968,455, and of the latter,
1,961,372; but, in 1860, these nine free States had a population of
10,594,168, and those eight slave States only 7,414,684, making the
difference in favor of these free States in 1860 over those slave
States, 3,179,844, instead of 7,083 in 1790, or a positive gain to those
free States over those slave States of 3,172,761. These free States,
enumerated in 1790 and 1860, were the six New England States--New York,
New Jersey, and Pennsylvania; and the slave States were, Delaware,
Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, and
Kentucky--yet we have seen that the area of those slave States was
nearly double that of those free States, the soil much more fertile, the
climate more salubrious, as shown by the census, and the shore line,
including main shore, bays, and sounds, islands and rivers, to head of
tide water, was, for those free States, 4,480 miles, and for those slave
States, 6,560 miles. Thus, it is clear, that the increase of population
of these slave States should have far exceeded that of those free
States. The population of these slave States per square mile in 1790 was
six (6.52), and in 1860, 24 (24.66), and of those free States in 1790,
was 11 per square mile (11.60), and in 1860, 62 per square mile (62.44).
Thus, while the increase of those slave States from 1790 to 1860 was
only 18 per square mile, that of those free States was nearly 51 per
square mile (50.84), or in very nearly a triple ratio, while in wealth
and education the proportionate progress was much greater.
No cause except slavery can he assigned for this wonderful difference,
for the colonists of Maryland were distinguished for education,
intelligence, and gentle culture. Lord Baltimore was a statesman and
philanthropist, and his colony was a free representative government,
which was the first to repudiate the doctrine of taxation without
representation, and the first to introduce religious toleration. While
Maryland has produced many of the most eminent soldiers, statesmen, and
jurists, her relative decline in power, wealth, and population, has been
deplorable, and is attributable exclusively to the paralyzing effect of
slavery.
While the advance of Massachusetts, with her limited area and sterile
soil, especially in view of the thousands of her native sons who have
emigrated to other States, is one of the wonders of the world, yet, the
relative increase of the population of New Jersey, from 1790 to 1860,
compared with that of Maryland, is still greater than that of
Massachusetts. The law is inflexible wherever slavery disappears.
Population of New Jersey in 1790, 184,139, in 1860, 672,035, being an
increase of 264 per cent. (264.96) for New Jersey, of 225 per cent.
(225.06) for Massachusetts, and for Maryland 114 per cent. (114.88). The
ratio of increase per square mile from 1790 to 1860 was: Massachusetts,
48.55 in 1790, and 157.82 in 1860; Maryland, 28.74 in 1790, and 61.76 in
1860; and New Jersey, 22.01 in 1790, and 80.70 in 1860. Thus, while
Maryland from 1790 to 1860, little more than doubled her ratio of
increase per square mile (28.74 to 61.76), and Massachusetts a little
more than tripled her ratio (48.55 to 157.82), New Jersey very nearly
_quadrupled_ hers (22.01 to 80.70). It must be conceded, however, that
the natural advantages of New Jersey are far greater than those of
Massachusetts, whose material and intellectual progress, in defiance of
such serious obstacles, now is, and, most probably forever will be,
_without a parallel_. Now the area of New Jersey is but 8,320 square
miles; the soil of Maryland is far more fertile, the hydraulic power
much greater, the shore line much more than double, viz.: 531 for New
Jersey, to 1,336 for Maryland; while New Jersey, with rich iron mines,
has no coal, and one third of her area is south of the celebrated Mason
and Dixon's line, the northern boundary of Maryland. The comparison,
however, which I shall present hereafter, of New York and Virginia, will
be the most astounding, while little less remarkable will be found that
of North Carolina with Pennsylvania, Kentucky with Ohio, Tennessee with
Indiana, Georgia and Missouri with Illinois, Arkansas with Michigan,
Alabama and Texas with Iowa or Minnesota, Mississippi and Louisiana with
Wisconsin, Delaware with Rhode Island, South Carolina with Maine or
Vermont. All, however, prove the _same law_, and exhibit the same
paralyzing effect of slavery. While the free States have accomplished
these miracles of progress, they have peopled seven vast Territories
(soon by subdivision to become many more States), immigration to which
has been almost exclusively from the North, as compared with the South.
It is clear, that if the South retains the institution, it will, before
the close of this century, sink into comparative insignificance, and
contain less than a sixth in population of the Union. After the
calamities which slavery has brought upon the South, the ruin and
desolation the rebellion has already accomplished there, who from the
North or from Europe would hereafter immigrate to any State retaining
the system?--while thousands of the native sons of the South have
already fled North or to Europe, and hundreds of thousands will follow.
The slave State which has increased _most_ rapidly to the square mile of
all of them from 1790 to 1860, has had a smaller augmentation per square
mile than that free State which has increased most _slowly_ per square
mile during the same time of all the free States, and the result is the
same as to wealth and education also. Under the _best_ circumstances for
the slave States, and the _worst_ for the free States, this result
proves the uniformity of the rule (like the great law of gravitation),
knowing no exception to the effect of slavery, in depressing the
progress of States in population, wealth, and education. Would we then
in all these advance more rapidly, we must remove slavery and negroism,
the retarding cause. I know it is asked, how shall we then cultivate the
cotton lands of the South without slaves? This does not apply to the
border States; but before closing these letters, I will prove
conclusively, by the census and other statistics, what, from long
residence in the South, and from having traversed every Southern State,
I know to be true, that cotton is now raised there most extensively and
profitably by non-slaveholders, and upon farms using exclusively white
labor. Indeed the cotton raised on small farms in the South where there
are no slaves and exclusively by free white labor, commands a price from
five to ten per cent. greater than the slave grown cotton. In Texas,
especially, it is a great truth, that skilled, educated, persevering,
and energetic free labor, engaged voluntarily for wages or its own use,
would, in time, when aided by improved culture and machinery, produce
much larger crops and better cotton than now raised by the forced and
ignorant labor of slaves, and at a much cheaper rate, at a far greater
profit, than any crop now produced in the North, and in a more
salubrious climate. In western Texas, counties on the same parallel with
New Orleans, and a little north and south, cultivated mainly by Germans
without slaves, produced large quantities of the best cotton, and the
supply with augmented labor might be increased almost indefinitely.
Having thrice visited Texas, and traversed nearly the whole State,
north, south, east, and west, I speak from personal knowledge. In one
county, I observed first rate wheat, cotton, and sugar cane growing in
adjacent fields, and the soil and climate well adapted for all three
crops. In Texas, the product of wheat has increased from 41.79 bushels
in 1850, to 1,464,273 bushels in 1860, and the number of bales of cotton
from 58,072 in 1850, to 405,100 bales in 1860, far exceeding the rate of
increase in any other State. (See table of Census, No. 36, pp. 200,
210.) Having very nearly six times the area of New York, Texas, when
cultivated by free labor, can produce cotton enough to clothe the people
of the world, and supply all Europe with wheat also. The rapid
colonization of Texas by freemen ought to add to our wealth, in this
decade, a sum equal to the present debt of the United States, and
terminate in our favor the effort to supplant us in the supply of cotton
for the world.
The isothermals of the great Humboldt (differing so widely from
parallels), which trace the lines of temperature on the earth's
surface, prove, as to heat, the climate of the South (running a line
from Charleston to Vicksburg) to be substantially the same as that of
Greece and Italy--each, in its turn, the mistress of the world. I know,
when, the term _isothermal_ was used in my inaugural as Governor of
Kansas, it was represented by some of our present rebel leaders, to the
masses of the South, as some terrible monster, perhaps the Yankee sea
serpent; but I now use the term again in no offence, from its important
application to the present case, and knowing that what I now advise
would produce incalculable benefits to the whole country, but especially
to the South. Indeed, if Texas, with her 274,356 square miles of area,
with her salubrious climate, and fertile soil, already worked to a great
extent by free labor, were a free State, she would, in time, contain a
larger population than any State of the Union. Texas has much more than
five times the area of England proper, and, with the same population to
the square mile, would contain more than one hundred millions of people.
Having, in 1837, offered in the Senate of the United States, and
carried, the resolution, recognizing the independence of Texas, first
proposing in my letter of the 8th January, 1844, the mode, by _compact_
(alone practicable), by which, on my motion, Texas was admitted into the
Union, distinctly advocating, in this letter, the reannexation of Texas,
with, a view to secure the ultimate disappearance of slavery and
negroism from the whole country, in opposition to the object officially
avowed by Mr. Calhoun, to annex Texas for the purpose of perpetuating
slavery, I shall, in a future letter, discuss this subject, involving
not only our furnishing a certain abundant supply of cheap cotton, but
securing the real monopoly of this great product, due to our _peculiar_
soil and climate, and thus ultimately increasing our products and
manufactures thousands of millions of dollars, and giving us the control
of the commerce of the world.
If Maryland would only initiate this policy, and come now to the rescue
of the Union from rebellion and foreign intervention, she would inscribe
her name first of all the States on the page of history and in the
gratitude of our country and mankind. The position of Maryland upon the
Chesapeake, the Potomac, the Susquehanna, and Atlantic, is most
commanding. She surrounds the Capitol. It was her own noble donation,
and she is its natural guardian and sentinel. Her waters, cutting the
Blue mountains and the Alleghany, flow into the Atlantic and
Mississippi, thus making her an eastern and a western State. Throughout
all her borders, not a citizen would lose anything by the change
proposed, but all would be enriched. Take down the barriers of slavery,
and a new and unprecedented current of population and capital would flow
into the State. Property would rise immensely in value, the price of her
lands would soon reach those of Pennsylvania, new towns and cities would
spring into life, Cumberland would soon equal the great manufacturing
sites of the North, and the railroad to Pittsburg would soon be
completed. Baltimore would fulfil her mighty destiny, and the present
canal _up the Susquehanna_, easily enlarged, so as to equal the grand
work of New York, would connect her with Lakes Erie and Ontario. That
canal already unites the Susquehanna from the Chesapeake with the lakes
by the Seneca route (as it should by the Chenango also), and only
requires to be enlarged to the extent of the Erie Canal, and the locks
also, as wisely proposed in regard to that great work. This would at
once develop the great iron and coal mines of the Susquehanna
(anthracite and bituminous), supply western and central New York, and
the great region of the lakes, and the Chesapeake with these articles,
so essential in war and peace. Let the locks of the Erie Canal be
enlarged as proposed, and the ship canal from the Illinois river to
Chicago constructed; but in justice to Pennsylvania and Maryland, as
vastly important for commerce and revenue, and as a war measure for the
cheap construction of iron-clad gunboats in the great coal and iron
region, and the defence of the lakes, the Chesapeake, the Delaware, the
Albemarle, and of the _capital of the Union_, let this canal be enlarged
also.
While this system of gradual emancipation would greatly promote the
material interests of Maryland, and of all the border States, the
President does not overstate its influence in crushing the rebellion and
restoring peace.
Maryland, the border States, and the South would then indeed commence a
new career of progress, by removing slavery and negroism; and their
augmented wealth, and that of the whole country, would soon return to
the Government, in increased revenue, a sum far exceeding the cost of
gradual emancipation and colonization. Indeed, if, as a mere financial
question, I was devising the most effective plan for liquidating the
national debt and reducing our taxes, it would be thus vastly to augment
our wealth and population by adopting this system.
The census of 1860 exhibits our increase of population from 1790 to 1860
at 35.59 per cent., and of our wealth 126.45. Now, if we would increase
the wealth of the country only one tenth in the next ten years, by the
gradual disappearance of slavery and negroism (far below the results of
the census), then, our wealth being now $16,159,616,068, the effect of
such increase would be to make our wealth in 1870, instead of
$36,593,450,585, more than sixteen hundred millions greater, being more
than three times our present debt, and in 1880, instead of
$82,865,868,849, over three billions six hundred millions more, or more
than seven times our present debt.
Before the close of this letter, it will be shown that the difference,
_per capita_, of the annual products of Massachusetts and Maryland
exceeds $120. As to the other Southern States, the excess is much
greater. Now, if the annual products of the South were increased $120
each _per capita_ (still far below Massachusetts) by the exclusion of
slavery, then multiplying the total population of the South, 12,229,727,
by 120, the result would be an addition to the annual value of the
products of the South of $1,467,567,240, and in the decade,
$14,675,672,400; the first amount being three times our debt on the 1st
July, 1862, and the last sum thirty times our debt on that day. This
change would not be immediate, but there can be no doubt that, with the
vastly greater natural advantages of the South, the superiority of free
to slave labor, the immense immigration, especially from Europe to the
South, aided by the Homestead bill, and the conversion of large
plantations into small farms, an addition of at least one billion of
dollars would be made, by the exclusion of slavery, to the value of the
products of the South, in the ten years from 1870 to 1880, which sum is
more than double our public debt on the 1st July last.
Having considered the relative progress in population of Massachusetts
and Maryland, I will now examine their advance in wealth.
By tables 33 and 36, census of 1860, the value of the products of
Massachusetts that year was $283,000,000; and of Maryland, $65,583,000.
Table 33 included domestic manufactures, mines, and fisheries (p. 59);
and table 36, agricultural products. Dividing these several aggregates
by the total population of each State, the value of that year's product
of Massachusetts was $229.88 _per capita_, and of Maryland, $95.45,
making the average annual value of the labor of each person in the
former greatly more than double that of the latter, and the gross
product more than quadruple. This is an amazing result, but it is far
below the reality. The earnings of commerce and navigation are omitted
in the census, which includes only the products of agriculture,
manufactures, the mines, and fisheries. This was a most unfortunate
omission, attributable to the secession leaders, who wished to confine
the census to a mere enumeration of population, and thus obliterate all
the other great decennial monuments which mark the nation's progress in
the pathway of empire.
Some of these tables are given as follows:
_First, as to Railroads._--The number of miles in Massachusetts in 1860
(including city roads) was 1,340, and the cost of construction
$61,857,203 (table 38, pp. 230, 231). The value of the freight of these
roads in 1860 was $500,524,201 (p. 105). The number of miles of railroad
in Maryland at the same time was 380, the cost of construction
$21,387,157, and the value of the freight (at the same average rate)
$141,111,348, and the difference in favor of Massachusetts $359,412,883.
The difference must have been much greater, because a much larger
portion of the freight in Massachusetts consisted of domestic
manufactures, worth $250 per ton, which is $100 a ton above the average
value.
The passengers' account, not given, would vastly swell the difference in
favor of Massachusetts.
The tonnage of vessels built in Massachusetts in 1860 was 34,460 tons,
and in Maryland, 7,798 tons (p. 107).
The number of banks in Massachusetts in 1860 was 174; capital,
$64,519,200; loans, $107,417,323. In Maryland, the number was 31;
capital, $12,568,962; loans, $20,898,762 (table 34, p. 193).
The number of insurance companies in Massachusetts 117; risks,
$450,896,263. No statement given for Maryland, but comparatively very
small, as the risks in Massachusetts were nearly one sixth of all in the
Union.
Our exports abroad, from Massachusetts, for the fiscal year ending 30th
June, 1860, were of the value of $17,003,277, and the foreign imports
$41,187,539; total of imports and exports, $58,190,816; the clearances
746,909 tons, the entries 849,449; total entered and cleared, 1,596,458
tons. In Maryland, exports $9,001,600, foreign imports $9,784,773; total
imports and exports, $18,786,323; clearances, 174,000 tons; entries,
186,417; total of entries and clearances, 360,417 (table 14, Register of
Treasury). Thus, the foreign imports and exports abroad, of
Massachusetts, were much more than triple those of Maryland, and the
entries and clearances very largely more than quadruple. The coastwise
and internal trade are not given, as recommended by me when Secretary of
the Treasury, but the tables of the railroad traffic indicate in part
the immense superiority of Massachusetts.
These statistics, however, prove that, if the earnings of commerce and
navigation were added, the annual value of the products of Massachusetts
_per capita_ would be at least $300, and three times that of Maryland.
In estimating values _per capita_, we must find the earnings of commerce
very large, as a single merchant, in his counting house, engaged in an
immense trade, and employing only a few clerks, may earn as much as a
great manufacturing corporation, employing hundreds of hands. Including
commerce, the value _per capita_ of the products and earnings of
Massachusetts exceeds not only those of _any State in our Union_, BUT OF
THE WORLD; and would, at the same rate, make the value of its annual
products three hundred millions of dollars; and of our own country,
upward of nine billions of dollars per annum. Such, under great natural
disadvantages, is the grand result achieved in Massachusetts, by
education, science, industry, free schools, free soil, free speech,
_free labor_, free press, and free government. The facts prove that
freedom is progress, that 'knowledge is power,' and that the best way to
appreciate the value of property and augment wealth most rapidly, is to
invest a large portion of it in schools, high schools, academies,
colleges, universities, books, libraries, and the press, so as to make
labor more productive, because more skilled, educated, and better
directed. Massachusetts has achieved much in this respect; but when she
shall have made high schools as free and universal as common schools,
and the attendance on both compulsory, so as to qualify every voter for
governing a State or nation, she will have made a still grander step in
material and intellectual progress, and the results would be still more
astounding. She can thus still more clearly prove the fact, establish
the law, and give us the formula demonstrating that taxes for the
increase and diffusion of knowledge are the best investment for the
increase of national, state, and individual wealth. Then all would
acknowledge the harmony of labor and capital, their ultimate association
in profits for mutual benefit. This social as well as political union,
together with the specializing and differentiation of pursuits, and
observing duties as rights, would falsify the gloomy dogma of Malthus,
founded on the doctrine of the eternal and ever-augmenting antagonism of
wages and money, and solve, in favor of humanity, the great problem of
the grand and glorious destiny of the masses of mankind. The law of
humanity is progress, onward and upward, and will, in time, crush all
opposing obstacles. If all--_all_ were fully educated, what miracles
would be accomplished, how great the increase of important inventions
and discoveries, and how many new and sublime truths in science,
sociology, and government would be developed! Would not the progress of
the State or nation approximate, then, a ratio depending on its numbers?
If all the States had contributed as much as Massachusetts to the
treasury and diffusion of knowledge, our whole country, North and South,
would have been advanced a century, and this rebellion, based upon the
ignorance, imperfect civilization, and semibarbarism produced by
slavery, could never have occurred.
By table 35 of the census, p. 195, the whole value of all the property,
real and personal, of Massachusetts, in 1860, was $815,237,433, and of
Maryland, $376,919,944. We have seen that the value of the products that
year in Massachusetts was $283,000,000 (exclusive of commerce), and of
Maryland, $65,583,000. As a question, then, of profit on capital, that
of Massachusetts was 34 per cent., and of Maryland 17 per cent. Such is
the progressive advance (two to one) of free as compared with slave
labor. The same law obtains in comparing all the free with all the slave
States. But the proof is still more complete. Thus, Delaware and
Missouri (alone of all the slave States) were ahead of Maryland in this
rate of profit, because both had comparatively fewer slaves; and all the
other slave States, whose servile population was relatively larger than
that of Maryland, were below her in the rate of profit. The law extends
to _counties_, those having comparatively fewest slaves increasing far
more rapidly in wealth and population. This, then, is the formula as to
the rate of profit on capital. First, the free States; next the States
and counties of the same State having the fewest relative number of
slaves. The census, then, is an evangel against slavery, and its tables
are revelations proclaiming laws as divine as those written by the
finger of God at Mount Sinai on the tables of stone.
For seventy years we have had these census tables, announcing these
great truths more and more clearly at each decade. They are the records
of the nation's movement and condition, the decennial monuments marking
her steps in the path of empire, the oracles of her destiny. They are
prophecies, for each decade fulfils the predictions of its predecessor.
They announce laws, not made by man, but the irrevocable ordinances of
the Almighty. We cannot, with impunity, refuse to obey these laws. For
every violation, they enforce their own penalties. From these there is
no escape in the present or the past, nor for the future, except in
conformity to their demands. These laws condemn slavery; and the
punishment for disobedience is recorded in the result of every census,
and finally culminated in the rebellion. Slavery and freedom are
antagonistic and discordant elements: the conflict between them is upon
us; it admits of no neutrality or compromise, and one or the other
system must perish.
We have seen that slavery is hostile to the progress of wealth and
population: let us now ascertain its influence on moral and intellectual
development.
By table 15 of the census of 1860, the result for that year was as
follows: In Massachusetts, value of books printed, $397,500; jobs,
529,347; newspapers, $1,979,069; total, $2,905,916. Same year in
Maryland, books printed, $58,000; jobs, $122,000; newspapers, $169,000;
total, $350,155. By table 37, census of 1860, Massachusetts had 222
newspapers and periodicals, of which 112 were political, 31 religious,
51 literary, miscellaneous, 28. Maryland had only 57, all political. The
whole number of copies issued in Massachusetts in 1860 was 102,000,760,
and in Maryland, 20,721,472. Of periodicals, Massachusetts has monthly,
1 political, 10 religious, 18 literary, 7 miscellaneous; quarterly,
religious 3, literary 2, miscellaneous 1, and 1 annual. Maryland had
_none_. Not a religious, literary, scientific, or miscellaneous
periodical or journal in the State! What terrible truths are unfolded in
these statistics! None but a political party press in Maryland, all
devoted, in 1860, to the maintenance, extension, and perpetuity of
slavery, which had 57 advocates, and not one for science, religion, or
literature.
We have seen that the circulation in 1860 of the press in Massachusetts
exceeded that of Maryland by more than eighty-one millions of copies.
These facts all prove that slavery is hostile to knowledge and its
diffusion, to science, literature, and religion, to the press, and to
free government.
For schools, colleges, libraries, and churches, I must take the tables
of the census of 1850, those of 1860 not being yet published. There were
in 1850, in Massachusetts, 3,679 public schools, 4,443 teachers, 176,475
pupils; native adults who cannot read or write, 1,861. In Maryland, 907
public schools, 1,005 teachers, 33,254 pupils; native adults who cannot
read or write, 38,426, excluding slaves, to teach whom is criminal.
Thus, then, slavery is hostile to schools, withholding instruction from
the children of the poor.
The number of public libraries in Massachusetts was 1,462, volumes
684,015. In Maryland, 124, and 125,042 volumes. Value of churches in
Massachusetts, $10,206,000. In Maryland, $3,947,884, of which $2,541,240
is in Baltimore (which has very few slaves), and the remainder is mainly
in the seven counties (from which slavery has nearly disappeared)
adjoining Pennsylvania.
As to schools, colleges, books, libraries, churches, newspapers, and
periodicals, it thus appears that Massachusetts is greatly in advance of
Maryland.
Now then, let us contrast loyal Maryland with rebel South Carolina, the
author of secession, and assuming for many years to instruct the nation.
By the census of 1860, she had a population of 703,708, of whom 402,406
were slaves; and Maryland, numbering 687,049, had 87,189 slaves. Now, by
the census of 1860, South Carolina had 45 journals and periodicals, and
her annual circulation was 3,654,840 copies. The circulation therefore
of Massachusetts exceeded that of South Carolina more than ninety-eight
millions of copies, while Maryland exceeded South Carolina more than
seventeen millions of copies. So much for South Carolina as a great
political teacher. As to schools in 1850: South Carolina had 724 public
schools, 739 teachers, 17,838 pupils. Massachusetts, then, had 158,637
more pupils at public schools than South Carolina, and Maryland 15,416
more pupils at public schools than South Carolina.
The press of Massachusetts, we have seen, circulated in 1860 upward of
one hundred and two millions of copies, equal to 279,454 per day,
including journals and periodicals, each read, on an average, by at
least two persons. This is independent of books and pamphlets, and of
the very large circulation of papers from other States and from Europe.
What a flood of light is thus shed daily and hourly upon the people of
Massachusetts! This intellectual effulgence radiates by day and night.
It is the sun in its meridian splendor, and the stars in an ever
unclouded firmament. It has a centre and a circumference, but knows no
darkness. Ignorance vanishes before it; wealth follows in its train;
labor rejoices in its association, and finds its products more than
doubled; freedom hails its presence, and religion gives it a cordial
welcome; churches, schools, academies, colleges, and universities
acknowledge its mighty influence. Science penetrates the secrets of
nature, and unfolds each new discovery for the benefit of man. Coal, the
offspring of the sun, develops its latent energy, and water contributes
its untiring hydraulic power. Machinery takes more and more the place of
nerves and muscles, cheapens clothing and subsistence and all the
necessaries of life, and opens new fields of industry, and more
profitable employment for labor. Steam and lightning become the slave of
man. He performs the journey of a day in an hour, and converses in
minutes around the globe. The strength of man may not have been much
increased, but his power is augmented a thousand-fold. His life may not
have been materially lengthened, but, in the march of knowledge, a year
now is as a century, compared with man's progress in the darkness of the
middle ages. The eternal advance toward omniscience goes on, but is like
that of the infinite approach of the asymptote, which never reaches the
hyperbolic curve. The onward march of science is in a geometrical ratio,
so that in time, the intellectual progress of a day in the future, must
exceed that of a century in the past. Knowledge is enthroned as a king,
and grand truths and new ideas are his ministers. Science takes the
diameter of the earth's orbit as a base line and unit of measurement,
and with it spans infinity, and triangulates the nebulous systems amid
the shadowy verges of receding space. Its researches are cosmical upon
the earth and the heavens, and all the elements minister to its
progress. Sink to the lowest mine, or fathom the ocean's depth, or climb
the loftiest mountains, or career through the heavens on silken wings,
and it is there also. On--on--on; nearer--nearer--still nearer it moves
forever and forever, with accelerated speed, toward the infinite
eternal. Such are the triumphs of knowledge; and he who diffuses it
among our race, or discovers and disseminates new truths, advances man
nearer to his Creator. He exalts the whole race; he elevates it in the
scale of being, and raises it into higher and still higher spheres.
It is science that marks the speed of sound and light and lightning,
calculates the eclipses, catalogues the stars, maps the heavens, and
follows, for centuries of the past and the future, the comet's course.
It explores the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms. With geology,
it notes the earthquake, upheaval of mountains, and, with mineralogy,
the laws of crystallization. With chemistry, it analyzes, decomposes,
and compounds the elements. If, like Canute, it cannot arrest the tidal
wave, it is subjecting it to laws and formulas. Taking the sunbeam for
its pencil, it pictures man's own image, and the scenery of the earth
and the heavens. Has science any limits or horizon? Can it ever
penetrate the soul of man, and reveal the mystery of his existence and
destiny? It is certainly exploring the facts of sociology, arranging
and generalizing them, and deducing laws. It regards man in his social
relations, in families, tribes, and governments, savage, semi-barbarous,
and civilized; beginning with the most simple, advancing to the chief,
the patriarch, the king, the feudal military, the regal aristocratic,
the pure democracy by popular assemblages, as in Athens and the school
towns of Massachusetts, rising higher to the central representative, and
to the highest, although necessarily more complex, the federal
constitutional representative, carrying out the organic division, and
the subdivision of legislative and administrative action--regarding the
state, the national, and international policy, and, in the lapse of
centuries, the confederacy, fusion, and unification of nations. The
constitution of empires, with the legislative, judicial, and executive
functions, furnish some of the elements of sociology. But we must take
the history of man, past, present, and future, note and arrange and
generalize the facts, and thence deduce laws and formulas. Sociology is
not a mere accidental and disconnected series of facts, but it has laws,
although far less known than those appertaining to the physical
sciences. The work is commenced, and progresses here and in Europe. But,
at this moment, at least in administrative action, Massachusetts is
ahead of all the world in the science of sociology.
Man, elevated by knowledge in the scale of being, controls the forces of
nature with greater power and grander results, and accumulates wealth
more rapidly. The educated free labor of Massachusetts, we have seen,
triples the products of toil, _per capita_, as compared with Maryland,
and quintuples them (as the census shows) compared with South Carolina.
One day's labor of a man in Massachusetts is equal to three in Maryland,
and five in South Carolina. So, if we take our savage tribes, with their
huts and tents, their rude agriculture, their furs, their few and simple
household manufactures, their hunting and fishing, the average product
of their annual labor, at four cents a day each, would be $14.60 a year,
or more than a fourth of that of South Carolina (56.91). So that
Massachusetts, in material progress, is farther in advance of South
Carolina than that State is of the savage Indians. Thus, we have the
successive steps and gradations of man: Massachusetts, with free labor
and free schools, having reached the highest point of civilization;
South Carolina, with slavery and ignorance (except the few), in a
semi-barbarous stage; and the lowest savage condition, called barbarous,
but nearer to South Carolina than that State to Massachusetts.
Slavery, then, the census proves, is hostile to the progress of wealth
and population, to science, literature, and education, to schools,
colleges, and universities, to books and libraries, to churches and
religion, to the press, and therefore to free government; hostile to the
poor, keeping them in want and ignorance; hostile to labor, reducing it
to servitude, and decreasing two thirds the value of its products;
hostile to morals, repudiating among slaves the marital and parental
condition, classifying them by law as chattels, darkening the immortal
soul, and making it a crime to teach millions of human beings to read or
write. And shall labor and education, literature and science, religion
and the press, sustain an institution which is their deadly foe?
_But slavery is the enemy of free government._ It has commenced and now
wages an unholy war against this Union, and thus assails the liberty of
our country and of mankind. It has framed a government based on the
eternity of chattel slavery, and demands in its name to rule the larger
portion of the Union. It seeks to sever the lakes from the gulf, and the
mighty Mississippi and its vast arterial tributary system. It asks to be
_let alone_ in the commission of all these heaven-daring crimes. In the
name of my bleeding country, of the millions whom it has doomed to
death, or wounds, or chains, or misery; in the name of the widows and
orphans it has made, whose bitter tears and agonizing sighs now fill our
land with sorrow; in the name of the free and blessed government it
seeks to overthrow, and the glorious Union it strives to dissolve; in
the name of God and man, of religion and liberty, the world arraigns the
criminal at the bar of justice. Now is the day of trial: humanity hopes
and fears, mankind await the verdict. It is rendered: _Guilty_ upon
every charge of the indictment; and heaven records the righteous
sentence--_Slavery must die, that the Union and liberty may live
forever!_
SOMETHING WE HAVE TO THINK OF, AND TO DO.
The President's order for a draft--aside from its immediate purpose--has
an important bearing in a more general view on the education of the
public mind. It is an impressive enforcement of the great principle that
every able-bodied man in the nation owes military service to his country
as sacredly as he owes obedience to his God. This is a principle which
probably few persons will hesitate to admit when plainly confronted with
it. But the conviction of it has slumbered in the mind of the people
during the long years of peace we have enjoyed. There has been almost
nothing to remind us of it for fifty years past. The draft is an
emphatic proclamation of it. It brings it home to the conscience of the
nation; and thousands, who might otherwise have scarcely thought of it,
will be led to recognize and to feel it.
It is to be hoped that we shall go further--that the quickened sense of
obligation will make us consider what we must do to make the discharge
of it of the greatest service to the nation; that we shall learn the
lessons of wisdom which the present struggle enforces on us, and see to
it, that in the future, by better military organization and instruction,
the able-bodied men of the country are rendered more capable of
effective military service at a moment's call.
Oar military system, and the enrolment of the people under it, goes
indeed upon this principle of the obligation of military service by
every able-bodied citizen--and so is a constant testimony to it; but in
point of fact it has done comparatively little toward cherishing the
military spirit, cultivating the military virtues, and securing an
effective military force, ready at any moment for active service in the
field. Dreading nothing from foreign nations on this side of the ocean,
counting on the obvious policy of the nations of the old world to keep
the peace with us, and never dreaming of such a rebellion as has broken
out in our midst--we have not only neglected but discountenanced the
cultivation of the military spirit. Our men of education and high social
position, instead of contributing to make the militia system respectable
by the personal performance of military duty, and by using all their
influence to give a high tone to the service, have evaded its
requirements on themselves, and done all they could to sink it into
disregard and contempt: a dereliction of duty as unwise as wrong.
It is a miserable thing for a country to have to get ready for war when
war is forced upon it. This was the case when the rebellion broke out.
We were not ready for it. There was indeed no lack of men. Hundreds of
thousands responded to their country's call; and the great body of the
people were carried away with the delusion that men with arms in their
hands are soldiers, and that massing them in great numbers makes them a
great army. Wise men--men of military judgment and experience--knew
better. But the popular clamor for onward offensive operations
prevailed; with disastrous result in the first instance. Not on the
whole perhaps to be regretted. It did what nothing else could have
done--it dispelled the popular delusion. It did something toward
teaching the nation a lesson indispensably necessary to be learned--that
a million men with arms in their hands without discipline, are nothing
but an armed mob, and that the discipline which alone makes an effective
army, implies a great deal more than is gotten in company trainings and
regimental parades under our old militia system.
Discipline--discipline--discipline; these are the first, second, and
third requisites to make men into soldiers. With it the poorest
materials can be made effective. Napoleon made good soldiers of the
Italian lazaroni--and a poorer material can scarcely well be conceived.
It is Napoleon that said: 'discipline is the first requisite for a
soldier--bravery is only secondary.' Indeed the more there is of bravery
in an army composed of such men as the New England States and the rural
districts of New York send to the war--'reasoning bayonets,' as Napoleon
called them, bayonets in the hands of men with heads on their shoulders,
and heads that have the habit of doing their own thinking--the more
there is of bravery in such a soldiery, the greater the need of
discipline. Not only thorough training in the use of arms, but a habit
of implicit obedience is indispensable to make good soldiers.
There can be no doubt this war is destined to make us a more military
people than we have been before. And good reason we should be. In the
first place, because the prevalence of a higher military tone and the
maintenance of a more effective military force are indispensable for the
national security and defence. Until the millennium comes we shall
always be liable to foreign invasions or internal rebellion. In either
case there is nothing before us but to fight, and nothing but successful
fighting can save us. But how can we fight successfully if we have only
raw recruits or an ill-trained militia, and officers better skilled to
handle the yard stick than the sword, to marshal a column of figures
than a body of men? In the nest place, because the military
virtues--courage, fortitude, endurance, subordination, and obedience;
the military habits--promptitude, vigilance, order, attention to
details; and the physical developments--health, strength, and heightened
muscular activity, which come from military discipline--all these are no
less valuable as elements of the _morale_ or general character of a
nation than indispensable in a merely military view, to a nation's
security and success in arms.
To form a disciplined army was the first thing we had to do when the
rebellion broke out. It was a great pity, and a sad necessity to have to
begin to do it then. We have paid dearly for our folly and neglect. If
we had been as well prepared for war as the Swiss always are, it would
have saved us millions of treasure, and many score thousands of lives.
Let us at least now not fail to learn the lesson of wisdom for our
future guidance which the past forces upon us. Let us look out for
having a good military organization--a permanent system that shall give
us hereafter not the show only but the reality of an effective force;
not muster rolls of names of companies, regiments, brigades, but
well-disciplined citizen soldiers, with good officers able to handle and
lead them. This is something that can be done--something that ought to
be done.
It is a matter for consideration what is the military system that will
best keep us ready for war if war be forced upon us, and at the same
time with the least detriment or danger to the people or the Government.
Is it a large regular force, a standing army, adequate to the defence of
the country always on foot and in the pay of the General Government? I
think not. The number of regular troops in the service of the Union
doubtless will and should be considerably increased. But to keep a large
standing army, as many of the great powers of Europe do, is what I hope
we shall never come to. I do not so much object to the great expense of
it--for that is not worth consideration if it be the only or the best
way to provide for the defence of the nation. But it is foreign to the
genius and spirit of our institutions, and involves dangers to our
liberties. Human nature is human nature--and is pretty likely to
continue to be. What history has recorded more than once, it may have to
record again.
Shall we then adhere to our present militia system? Not, it is to be
hoped, without very great modifications, additions, and improvements. If
we do, we shall show ourselves as incapable of learning by our own
experience as by the wisdom of history. At the same time, our militia
organization furnishes the basis of a military system adapted to the
genius of our institutions, fully adequate to our national defence, and
one that will save us from the expense and dangers of a standing army
large enough for the need of the country in a time of war.
In reorganizing our military system on this basis, I would go to
Switzerland for suggestions and guidance. The Swiss system, with certain
changes and with some features adopted from the English, is the one most
fitted for our country. In Switzerland the motto is: 'No regular army,
but every citizen, a soldier.' This motto lies at the basis of their
system. But then the system makes every citizen really a soldier. It is
a system that has shown itself adequate and admirably adapted for the
defence of the country against foreign foes and internal rebellion. Not
their mountains merely, but their hearts and arms--and a knowledge on
the part of their neighbors what those hearts and arms were capable
of--have preserved their independence. And as to internal safety, let
any one read the story of the rebellion of 1847, when under Jesuit
influence seven of the Swiss cantons formed a secession league
(_Sonder-Bund_), and rose in arms. Immediately an army of more than one
hundred thousand men from the loyal cantons was in the field, summoned
from their ordinary callings, and in seventeen days the whole struggle
was over, despite the strong force and almost impregnable position of
the rebels, and despite the menaces of Austria and her offers of help to
the insurgents. In seventeen days their citadels were taken, the
traitors' league broken, and the loyal army (all but nine thousand men
left to see to the expulsion of the Jesuit conspirators and the
restoration of order) disbanded to seek their homes and renew their
ordinary occupations.
I shall not pretend to go into the details of such a system as we should
adopt, but confine myself to such observations as every man of general
intelligence, moderately acquainted with military history, is competent
to appreciate.
In the first place, there can be no doubt of the importance of a good
system for the enrolment of the rank and file, with effective provisions
for a certain amount of instruction and drill every year.
The next thing, and which is of still greater importance, is the
adoption of a system that shall secure the formation of proper
officers. Dividing each State in the Union into a proper number of
military districts, there should be in every district a perfect
organization of officers, staff, brigade, regimental, and line--what the
French call _cadres_, the nucleus or skeleton of brigades and
regiments--with special provision for their thorough and effective
instruction and discipline in all their respective duties. This was a
great point in the policy of Napoleon. 'When a nation,' said he,
'possesses neither _cadres_ nor the principles of military organization,
it is extremely difficult to organize an army.' Attaching the rank and
file to these _cadres_--whenever and as often as there is need--they can
soon be made good soldiers, even if they have had but little training
before; and there is no way in which discipline can be so speedily and
effectively instilled. The _cadre_ is not only the frame, joint, or
articulation, but the system of veins and arteries and nerves of an
army. All the military systems of Europe rest upon this principle. To
prepare officers fit to be organized into these _cadres_, they have
schools for special instruction--the school of the staff, and of every
branch of service--including everything relating to the subsistence and
movement of armies.
This brings us to the consideration of a point of fundamental
importance. We have no such schools. We have nothing but West Point, and
that is nothing to the needs of the country. In every State there ought
to be schools to prepare officers for the _cadres_--special schools for
every department of military science and art, either separately or
united in one comprehensive institution. The rebels have been wiser than
we of the North. For twenty years past, looking forward to this day, the
conspirators and traitors now in arms for the overthrow of the
Government, and the dismemberment of the nation, have been assiduously
training officers. In nearly every Southern State they have had one, and
in some States more than one special military school, founded and
fostered by the State--beside introducing more or less of military drill
into their other schools, and in every way cultivating a military spirit
among the people. And they have reaped the advantage of having at the
outset of the contest a better supply of competent officers and
materials for officers than we had.
But not only should there be such special military schools--one in every
State, but there should also be institutions where a sufficient number
of young men can get the preliminary education necessary to fit them to
enter the schools of officers--an education which, beside being as
complete and thorough a literary one as officers ought to have, should
also be such in point of military discipline and instruction as shall
lay a good foundation for building themselves up and perfecting
themselves as officers by subsequent instruction and experience. It is
not absolutely necessary to establish institutions exclusively or
specially for this purpose. The end might be attained, if sufficient
amount of military instruction, drill, and discipline were added to the
present course of education in the schools, academies, and colleges of
the land. This perhaps would be the best way. It would accomplish the
object of preparing a sufficient number of young men to enter the State
schools of officers, and would beside tend to diffuse throughout the
body of the educated class of the people something of military knowledge
and of the spirit of the military virtues--to the great advantage of the
nation in any times, but especially in critical emergencies demanding
great and heroic sacrifices.
So horrible a thing is war, and so dreadful are its inevitable miseries,
that there is at first thought something shocking to many persons, in
the idea of making military instruction a part of the system of public
education--in cultivating the military spirit, and training the children
and youth of a nation to science and skill in the arts of carnage. The
kind and gentle-hearted find little consolation in being reminded that
war is one of God's agencies. They acknowledge that the earthquake, the
pestilence, the tornado, are His agencies. They find no difficulty in
saying, with WORDSWORTH, in regard to these:
'We bow our hearts before Thee, and we laud
And magnify Thy Name, Almighty God!'
Yet when he adds:
'But Thy most dreaded instrument
In working out a pure intent,
Is man arrayed for mutual slaughter--
Yea, Carnage is Thy daughter.'
they shrink from the thought and the image. It is too dreadful for ready
acquiescence.
But there is another side to the subject, and a deeper view. See how the
hero preacher, the saintly-hearted ROBERTSON--as pure and tender a
spirit as ever breathed--puts the matter:
'Take away honor and imagination and poetry from war, and it
becomes carnage. Doubtless. And take away public spirit and
invisible principles from resistance to a tax, and Hampden becomes
a noisy demagogue. * * * * Carnage is terrible. 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 a
hundred thousand deaths--when a people has gravitated down into the
creed that the wealth of nations consists not in generous hearts,
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 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 country should
run blood.'
Now it may be that it is God's purpose to save us by the war we are now
engaged in from such a 'gravitation'--to save us by war from calamities
far worse than any that war can bring upon us. But be this as it may,
one thing we must all admit, that horrible as war is, and dreadful as
are its miseries, no nation is fit to be a nation that will not defend
itself by arms, if war is forced upon it. And no nation is safe, or
worthy of a place among nations, if it is not prepared to maintain its
existence against invasion from without or rebellion from within.
Beside, to be prepared for war is one of the best securities against
war.
But the best, the only sufficient foundation for this preparation, must
be laid in _the education of the young_--an education not exclusively
military for any, but while professionally military for a sufficient
number, yet as to the rest, military in just and due proportion--an
education which, as JOHN MILTON says, 'fits a man to perform justly,
skilfully, and magnanimously, all the offices, both public and private,
of peace and of war.' 'The nation,' says WORDSWORTH, in the preface to
one of his grand odes, 'the nation would err grievously, if she suffered
the abuse which other states have made of the military power, to prevent
her from perceiving that no people ever was or can be independent, free,
or secure, much less great in any sane application of the word, without
martial propensities and an assiduous cultivation of the military
virtues.'
THE NOBLE DEAD.
'Those great spirits, that went down like suns
And left upon the mountain-tops of death
A light that made them lovely.'
CAMBRIDGE AND ITS COLLEGES.
I love Cambridge, and must write very kindly about it. For in the first
place, I met there with some of the best men I have ever known. And
secondly, it has educated some very noted geniuses and fine poets. I do
not envy the American who can linger in its cloisters, ramble in the
college walks and survey the colleges themselves with an unmoved spirit.
Out of its courts marched Bacon, Newton, Milton, and Jeremy Taylor;
Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Byron issued from it but the other day, for
what are a few years in the biography of genius? And was it not but
yesterday that Tennyson wrote his prize poem there? It was hallowed
ground to me, worthy of not unmixed reverence, but of much reverence was
it worthy.
I went straightway to the residence of Dr. Whewell, master of Trinity
College, and he received me very cordially. His works are well known in
America, and I knew them, and directly made complimentary allusions to
them, which, did not displease him. 'Sir, you are welcome,' he said,
pressing my hand. 'You are very welcome, sir.' He proceeded to talk of
America, and spoke of Edward Everett, and his visit to Cambridge in
1842, and of the speech he made. Everett made a decidedly favorable
impression. 'We had a visit from another of your countrymen, last year,'
said Dr. W. 'Parker of Boston--Theodore Parker. A man of genius, but I
believe a rationalist in religion. He saw but few of our men, and,
indeed, we were not disposed to receive him. It would have created a
scandal. But he is a very clever man.' After tea, I repaired with the
Doctor to his study, and had a pleasant chat with him about American
literature. We discussed the merits of Longfellow, Bryant, Irving,
Cooper, Channing, Bancroft and Emerson. Of the last-mentioned writer, he
said, 'He is not like Carlyle, though the newspaper critics are
constantly associating them together. I have no sympathy with his
opinions, but I am refreshed by reading him. He is a strong man, sir,
and your country will be proud of him. Amongst our young men here his
opinions are making great strides. 'Tis the vice of the age. Germany has
had the disease, and is near recovery. England and America have caught
the epidemic. But pantheism, sir, will not live, though here and at
Oxford the students are reading Hegel, Strauss, Bruno-Bauer, and
Feuerbach. At Oxford,' he added, 'these pernicious doctrines are
demoralizing the university. Blanco White and John Sterling were but the
pioneers of a large party of university men, who are preparing to avow
their disbelief in Christianity.' The Doctor was right. Francis Newman,
brother of the Puseyite Newman, who seceded to the Romish Church, and
belongs now to the Oratory of St. Philip Neri,--Froude, brother of the
deceased Puseyite Froude,--Foxton, an ordained priest of the Church of
England, and Travers, another priest and vicar, have quitted Oxford and
the Church, and published heretical works, or are preaching heretical
doctrines; while, according to the testimony of Archdeacon Wilberforce,
and Dr. Vaughan of Harrow, the doctrines of the German theologists have
been embraced by half the undergraduates there.
The town of Cambridge is uninteresting. The streets are narrow and
dismal, nor have they any ancient buildings or architectural oddities,
except the Round Church, to arrest the stranger's attention, as
Shrewsbury and Chester have. The surrounding country is level as a
prairie, broken only toward the southeast, by the ridiculous dustheaps
called the Gog-Magog Hills. These hills belong to the curiosities of
Cambridge, and are as famous in university annals as the colleges
themselves. Robert Hale scarcely joked when he said to a friend who
visited him during his residence at Cambridge, and who asked him for
these hills, 'When that man yonder moves out of the way, you will see
them.' They are four miles from the town, and on the estate of the
Godolphin family, of which the Rev. Sydney Godolphin Osborne, the S. G.
O. of the London _Times_ newspaper, is the present representative.
I was greatly disappointed with the Cam. It is a narrow, muddy stream,
varying in depth from five to twenty feet. There is a deep pool near the
village of Grantchester, two miles from the town, in which Byron used to
bathe, and which bears his name. I would have the stranger that visits
Cambridge go to see Grantchester churchyard. It is reached by a pleasant
walk across fields, and is really a beautiful spot. Many students who
have died at college are buried here. Another walk of three miles along
the old coach road, leading to Oxford, will bring him to the Madingley,
with its park and mansion, the seat of the Cotton family. Before he
leaves this part of the country he should also visit Ely, distant twelve
miles, and see the venerable cathedral.
There are seventeen colleges and halls at Cambridge. The halls enjoy
equal privileges with the colleges, which is not the case at Oxford. The
colleges are: Trinity, St. John's, King's, Queen's, Jesus, Corpus
Christi, Caius (pronounced _Keys_), Sydney-Sussex, Magdalene (pronounced
_Maudlen_), Christ's, Pembroke, Emmanuel, St. Peter's and Downing. The
halls are: Trinity, Catherine, and Clare. Bacon, Newton, Byron,
Tennyson, and Macaulay were of Trinity College; Milton was of Christ's,
Gray of Pembroke, Wordsworth of St. John's, and Coleridge of Jesus.
There is an amusing anecdote of Byron current in the university, which I
do not remember to have seen in print. The roof of the library of
Trinity College is surmounted by three figures in stone, representing
Faith, Hope, and Charity. These figures are accessible only from the
window of a particular room in Neville's Court, which was occupied by
Byron during his residence at college. The adventurer after getting out
of this window has to climb a perpendicular wall, sustaining himself by
a frail leaden spout. He has then to traverse the sloping roof of a long
range of buildings, by moving carefully on his hands and knees, at the
imminent risk of being precipitated fifty feet into the court beneath.
When the library is gained, a stone parapet has to be crossed, a bare
glance at which sends a thrill through the spectator who surveys it from
below. This feat Byron performed one Sunday morning, while the heads of
the dons and dignitaries were yet buried in their pillows, 'full of the
foolishest dreams.' He had abstracted three surplices from the college
chapel, which he bore with him along the dangerous route I have
described. When the bell, at eight o'clock, rung out its deep-toned
summons to the usual morning devotions, and the fellows and
undergraduates hurried on their way to the chapel, they were startled to
behold Faith, Hope, and Charity clad in surplices which reached in snowy
folds to their feet, while their heads were surmounted, helmet-wise,
with bedchamber waterewers. An inquiry was instituted by the indignant
college authorities. A few select friends knew, and the rest of the
college guessed, that Byron was the author of the outrage, but it was
never brought home to him. No undergraduate beholds these statues now
without a hearty laugh.
When I was at Cambridge, the poet's statue by Thorwaldsen had just been
rescued from the cellar of the London custom house, where it had lain
for years amongst rubbish of all kinds, because the bigots of
Westminster Abbey would not permit it to be erected in the Poet's Corner
of that edifice. Dr. Whewell, much to his honor, though he is no
admirer of Byron's poetry, procured it for the library of the college,
where the poet was educated.
Many college anecdotes are related of Coleridge in Gilman's unfinished
life of him. (When will it be finished?) These, though they are not much
known in this country, I shall not repeat; but there is one current at
Cambridge which has never yet been published, from deference to the
feelings of the descendants of a vain, but otherwise worthy man.
Dr.----, the master of ---- College, it was known, aspired to a
bishopric, but for a long time he had been disappointed, though he had
assiduously paid court to the Tory ministry, and intimated, in various
ways, that he would have no objection to pronounce the _nolo
episcopari_. Was not Dr. Mansell, the master of Trinity, bishop of
Bristol? Watson, bishop of Llandaff, the apologist for the Bible, never
strove harder for the archbishopric of York than did Dr. ---- to get
appointed bishop of any see that might fall vacant. It happened that the
see of Durham, the richest in all England, worth at that time, $400,000
a year, did fall vacant, and Coleridge, with borrowed money, posted up
to London. In two days the master received a letter, offering him the
bishopric--it was a private, friendly letter from the first Lord of the
Treasury--on condition that he would support the ministry in more
liberal measures than they had yet resorted to. He assembled his
friends, and communicated the happy tidings. The next mail conveyed to
the Prime Minister his grateful acceptance of the dignity. He was
liberal at heart, and had always been so. His vote would be always at
the service of the minister and his party whether in or out of office.
The pleasing illusion was soon dissipated, and Dr. ----- never held up
his head again. Coleridge wrote the Prime Minister's private and
friendly letter.
I gathered anecdotes of Bulwer, Macaulay, and Tennyson, that are perhaps
not worth the telling. Bulwer was of Trinity Hall. He went one day to
bathe in the Cam at Grantchester, and was robbed of his clothes. Before
he could emerge from the water, the future dandy author of Pelham had to
borrow a suit of corduroys from a rustic. He crept down by-lanes till he
reached his rooms, but a friend met him, who teased him into an
explanation, and afterward spread the story. He was noted at Cambridge
for his foppishness, and for wearing scented kid gloves. Tennyson was
manly there, and gentlemanly, as he always is. I shall have something to
say about him hereafter.
Connop Thirlwall, the present bishop of St. David's, one of the
translators of Niebuhr's 'History of Rome,' and author of the best
history of Greece that had appeared before the publication of Mr.
Grote's magnificent work, used to say of the fellows of Trinity, when he
was tutor of that college, that they were the wittiest companions when
drunk, that he had ever met with. It is certain that, thirty years ago,
they used to drink to excess, and the Combination Room was the scene of
numerous debauches that would have discredited a common tavern.
Everybody has heard of Professor Person's reputation in this way. He was
a famous compounder of whiskey toddy, and under its influence scattered
puns and witticisms in the purest attic Greek. Since his day, the
drinking custom is abated, and even Dr. Thirlwall would find in the
present fellows of Trinity College a race of men altogether unlike those
who frequented the Combination Room, and called for their third bottle,
in his time.
I was at much pains to acquire correct information respecting the system
of education pursued in the university. The son of poor parents, I
found, has but a small chance of receiving classical instruction in
England. At Cambridge the sizars, and at Oxford the servitors, form the
lowest grade of students. Formerly menial tasks were imposed upon them,
and amongst other duties, they had to wait upon the fellows of their
colleges at the dinner table--to bear the dishes and fill the goblets.
This custom has long since been discontinued; nor are the sizars of
Trinity and St. John's any longer distinguished from the great body of
the students by any external mark of inferiority. At the small colleges,
however, they wear different gowns, and are recognized without
difficulty in the street. Of course, in aristocratic England they are
shunned by the richer students. Their expenses for the first year of
their college residence ought not to be over $300, and are frequently
kept below $200 by the prudence of the individual. If, at the first
annual examination of the college they obtain a place in either the
first, second, or third classes, they are entitled to receive assistance
from the college funds. So privileged, they pay no rent for their rooms,
and their commons, or food, is furnished to them free of expense. They
are, however, made to feel the humiliation of their position. They dine
off the remnant dishes of the fellows' table, after the latter have
risen. There is certainly no lack of provisions, which are of a
luxurious quality, and are cooked in the best style. The head cook of
Trinity College receives a salary of $3,500 a year, and has about thirty
assistants.
The educational system pursued at Cambridge is open, I think, to one
very grave objection. Unless the student is tolerably wealthy, he is
deprived of the advantages which his richer companions enjoy. The brief
lectures--of one hour's duration only--delivered daily by the college
tutors to a crowd of undergraduates, are ill calculated to benefit the
striving individual student. As far as the college is concerned, the
youth is left to himself. If he cannot afford the expense of a private
tutor, his attainments are due to solitary application, and he is self
taught within the very walls of a college. The private tutors reap a
rich harvest from this careless system. They are usually members of the
university who have recently taken their first degree, and prefer the
large recompense of tuition to the miserable stipend of a curacy. To
each of their pupils--and a popular private tutor has usually eight or
ten--they devote one hour daily, and their charge is $70 for the term.
As a term sometimes expires at the end of seven weeks, they receive
about $2 an hour. This sum is beyond the poor scholar's means, and he
has to run an unequal race at the examinations with his more fortunate
competitor.
If appearances are to be trusted, the Trinity undergraduates are not
untiring students. They seem to pass their days and nights in the
pursuit of pleasure. The great evil of the English universities is the
credit system, and though Dr. Whewell endeavored to show me that it was
thoroughly discountenanced by the college authorities, he did not
succeed in convincing me that they were dealing properly with the
difficulty. A student, in defiance of all the restrictions imposed upon
his intercourse with the tradesmen of the town, may contract debts to
almost any amount. It is notorious that parents are brought to the verge
of ruin every year by their sons' misconduct at college, unless they
choose to contest the demands of the tradesmen in a court of law, by
pleading the infancy of the debtor when he has not attained his
majority. The college regulations demand that every tradesman licensed
by the university--and with none other is the student authorized to
deal--shall send to the tutor, at the expiration of each term, the bills
of the respective undergraduates who have been his customers. From the
position occupied in society by the friends of the student, the tutor is
enabled to judge whether he is exceeding his income. The expenditure
which would be excessive for the son of a clergyman, with a small
living, would be moderate for the heir to a peerage. It is further
required that the expenses of each term shall be paid before the
undergraduate recommences his studies, and any tradesman who is known to
withhold from the tutor's knowledge any debt, or portion of a debt,
owing him by any student, is immediately deprived of his license.
Nevertheless, all but a few of the more wealthy tradesmen conduct their
transactions with the students on the understanding that these
regulations are to be violated at pleasure. Thus, from term to term,
debt is added to debt, until the student is preparing to leave the
university. Then the tradesman becomes eager for a settlement. The
student endeavors to put him off with promises. The tradesman hurries to
a lawyer. A writ is issued, judgment is delivered, and the student has
to fly from the university without taking his degree, in order to escape
a prison. Or, if he is in his minority, proceedings are commenced
against his father, who, if he is a proud man, will rather pay the bill
than contest it, though the entire amount will seriously impair the
fortunes of his other children. Or he may deny his liability, plead that
his son is a minor, and that the articles furnished were not
necessaries. In this way, it has been argued by barristers on the
plaintiff's side that wine, cigars, jewels, and hired horses were
necessaries of life, and the presiding judge has sometimes ruled on one
side that they were, and sometimes on the other, that they were not.
Hundreds of young men have had their prospects in life blasted by this
system, and yet, no cure has been found. I heard of one instance, and it
was only one of many nearly similar, where an undergraduate had
contracted debts amounting to upward of $10,000 beyond his ability to
pay. Of this sum, I recollect some of the items: $1,000 was for cigars,
$3,000 for wine, $2,500 for the hire of horses, $1,900 for rings, pins,
and other trinkets, and only $200 for books. He had attained his
majority, and was sent to prison, his father resolutely refusing to pay
his debts. He languished in prison for two years, and died there.
Nor does it always follow that the undergraduate may be saved from this
disgrace and ruin by firmness and honorable principles. He is, for the
first time in his life, his own master. The superintendence of the
college tutor amounts to just nothing at all. Immediately he arrives at
the university, he is besieged by tradesmen. It is particularly
impressed upon him, that money is not necessary to conclude a bargain.
He can pay when he likes. Three years hence will do. The youth is sorely
tempted. He finds his new college acquaintance sailing under press of
canvas, over the sea of extravagance. They give splendid wine parties,
and invite him to the jovial board. He is bound to return the
hospitality of these prime fellows. One extravagance leads to another.
The port and sherry, that he could afford, shine no more upon his table.
He drinks hock now, and claret, and princely champagne, at two dollars
and fifty cents a bottle. He smokes cigars at $10 a pound. He is living
like a gentleman. Let the poor sizar toil over musty books; he will have
a race horse. 'Tis a fine life. How much better than a schoolboy's. He
speaks of his father as _the governor_, and talks in a flash manner of
the girls he is acquainted with. He thinks he will marry one of them,
but his choice is not determined. The college dons, professors, tutors,
fellows, know the temptations, know the risk, know the ruinous goal, but
no one arrests his career. Which is most to blame; the raw,
undisciplined boy, or the evil university system?
I passed a rare time at Cambridge. What delight it was in those cold
mornings to take a bracing walk into the country, and looking back over
miles of level land, to behold the chapel of King's College, and the
tower of St. Mary's church, which had been the land beacons of aspiring
students for so many generations! I verily believe that the chapel of
King's College is the finest piece of modern architecture in the world.
It is a poem in stone! Teaching so much--not of this earth, only; least
of this earth, perhaps. I never wearied of walking in it, and around it,
repeating Wordsworth's sonnet, and feeling that 'for a few white-robed
scholars only,' it was not built; but as an utterance of man's spirit,
more fervent than he could express in the articulate speech of man. The
soul of the individual, nurtured by any semblance of culture, who can
stand unmoved beneath that fretted roof, must be cold as the frozen
zone. It remains with me, like Niagara.
As a college, Trinity is the most interesting. The chapel is very
inferior to that of King's, but it is hallowed by the memory of Newton.
Roubiliac's statue of the philosopher is the chief object of interest,
and the Trinity men do not envy the scholars of King's their chapel,
when they behold that statue. The dean of Trinity, the Rev. W. Carns,
author of the 'Life of Simeon,' is the present possessor of the rooms
once occupied by Newton. The little watch tower where he pierced the
heavens with his telescope is still standing. One ascends it, and
surveys the firmament, not without a reverential feeling. Cambridge
abounds with the associations of genius. Chaucer studied here, and at
Oxford also, it is said; and in treading the great court of Trinity, one
cannot help thinking of Bacon. Milton's mulberry tree is yet standing,
and puts forth a few fresh leaves every spring in the garden of Christ's
College. His manuscript of 'Comus,' partly in his own writing, partly in
that of his amanuensis--of one of his daughters, it is probable--is in
the library of Trinity College, and may be seen by the curious. The
spirits of these venerable men still haunt the scenes of their studious
youth, and with their mighty shadows brooding over us, what is the value
of dollars and dimes?
A PHYSICIAN'S STORY.
'Phil, keep the office door shut and the windows open. None of your
sacrilegious games of marbles on the front steps. Behave yourself
respectably, and wash bottles till I come back, or I'll turn you off
to-morrow. Have an eye to Mrs. Thompson's gate, and if anybody _should_
call for me, you know where I am to be found, I suppose?
Phil responded by a grinning nod, the question was superfluous. It is an
attribute of boys of fourteen that they know everything they should
_not_ know, and if there be one of the class who excels his fellows in
useless knowledge, my Phil is that lad. Apparently busied forever in
those light but continuous labors which pertain to an office boy, he
contrived to keep a far more watchful eye upon my movements than I was
able to do upon his, and could tell (probably did) exactly in what
direction I usually bent my steps after the above formula, whether I
walked on the right or left hand side of the street, and how soon I
reached my destination--the number of times my tender knuckles came in
contact with a certain hard green door, and the reception that awaited
me inside it, the length of my stay--the only thing he had a legitimate
right to know--and the mien, cheerful or dejected, according to the
fortunes of the day, with which I returned to the empty office and full
bottles, over which he was supposed to mount guard during my absence.
Preferring not to notice the peculiarity of my assistant's manner, as it
might involve awkward explanations, I closed the door of his prison with
an authoritative bang, that shook the slate outside it, and strode with
hasty steps down the village street. There was no occasion for hurry,
the business I had on hand was not of a kind to demand it, and had been
pending a reasonable time; nor would any more haste on my part be lively
to advance it much, but would rather verify the old proverb, of 'less
speed.' I therefore walked fast purely as a matter of principle, in the
hope, that the village dames, who I knew were watching my progress from
behind the green paper curtains of their 'sittin' room' windows, might
possibly judge from my speed, that I had been called to a patient at
last. Vain hope! idle precaution! every one of those astute matrons knew
at least as well as myself the errand upon which I was bound, and far
better than I, as I own in all humility, the state of health in the
neighborhood, which precluded all possibility of any professional
exertion on my part.
And here I may remark, literally _en passant_, that the town in which I
had chosen to locate was salubrious to a painful and unnatural degree,
the very last place in the world for a young physician in ordinary
circumstances to seek his fortune, but my circumstances were
peculiar--it was not so much fortune that I sought--in short, I had my
reasons--and a large practice would have greatly interfered with my more
serious occupation. Still, I do not deny that a slight modicum of
professional business, just to fill up the intervening time and save
appearances, would not have been amiss, and I had been in fact rather
anxiously looking for some symptoms of the sort for a considerable time,
without any result at all. The inhabitants all took Hall's 'Journal of
Health;' they cherished Buchan's 'Domestic Medicine,' they studied the
'Handbook of Hygiene;' they were learned in the works of Fowler. Cold
water was cheap and plentiful, they used it externally and
internally--exercise was fashionable and inevitable, where every lady
was her own help, and every gentleman his own woodsawyer; food was just
dear enough to make surfeits undesirable, and medicine was so unpopular
that nobody before me ever ventured to open a drug store; the old ladies
dispensed a few herbs privately, and that was the end of it. People did
not seem to die; if anything was the matter with them, they
perseveringly 'kept on,' till it stopped, the disease retiring in
despair from their determination to be well. Fat parties, who ought to
have been dropsical, were not so at all--they grew fatter, and
flourished like green bay trees; lean persons, threatening to go off in
a decline, declining to do so, remained. Adventurous little boys,
falling from the tops of high trees to the stony ground, sustained no
injuries beyond the maternal chastisement and brandy-and-brown-paper of
home; babies defied croup and colic with the slender aid of 'Bateman's
Drops,' and 'Syrup of Squills,' dispensed by a wise grandma, and
children of mature years went through the popular infant disorders as
they went through their grammars, and with about as much result; mumps
and measles, chills and chicken pox, prevailed and disappeared without
medical assistance, and though all the children in the village whooped
like wild Indians, no anxious parent ever thought it necessary to call
in a physician. There was but one in the place before my advent, a
comfortable, elderly man, who selected the profession, as practised in
his native town, because it interfered less than any other with his
punctual habits of sleeping and eating, and was a gentlemanly sinecure,
possessing peculiar privileges. No patient of his ever dreamt of calling
him out at night, or keeping him away from his meals; the person to be
ill, chose a convenient hour between dinner and tea, and gave respectful
notice at a reasonable time beforehand. No extraordinary accidents,
requiring wonderful feats of surgery, were ever permitted in his
practice; no stranger shocked his nerves by dying suddenly at the
village hotel; no mysterious diseases, unknown of science, baffled his
skill, or defied it; the locality was too far south for bronchitis and
consumption, too far north for poisonous malaria fevers and _coups de
soleil_; and being inland, just inside the line of the coast scourges of
cholera and yellow Jack. In short, to quote the only epitaph in the
village churchyard, 'Physicians was in vain.'
It was a beautiful morning on which I took my way through this healthful
town--I mean, of course, professionally speaking, a very fine morning,
indeed. The air was warm and damp, as if laden with pleurisy and ague;
the ground soft and oozy, seemed a sure thing for rheumatism and
influenza. The sun unseasonably hot; fever and rush of blood to the
head. Old Captain Hopkins is constitutionally inclined to gout--he never
had a twinge through the rainy season, but it is just possible that
_this_ may settle him. Mother Hawks is rheumatic, is she? if she is
about, disseminating scandal to-day, I shall be avenged for her
slandering me; and the Sessions girls come out to get the news in all
weather. That vicious child of Mrs. Thompson, after keeping me in
suspense four months, will probably 'croup up' to-night, and its
grandmother Banks is off on a visit, and Dr. Coachey never goes out
after dark, and I live right over the way! With these encouraging
reflections, and a grateful glance upward, where a copper-colored sun
blazed through a sea of purple mist, I pursued my way to the mansion of
Colonel Marston, father to Miss Dora Marston, to whom I am honorary
cousin.
Colonel Marston's house is situated on a fine grassy knoll, shaded by
handsome trees, and inclosed with a well kept hedge; it is just out of
reach of village eyes and ears, but not beyond the pale of village
curiosity. Anybody there can tell you by what right I address good Mrs.
Marston as my aunt, and pretty Dora as my cousin, while being not in the
least related to either. My dear mother, now deceased, when a young
widow, possessed of some property and a little boy, married Miss Dora's
uncle, and became her aunt, thus making me, as I consider, virtually her
cousin. At any rate, for twenty years I have been a frequent visitor at
the dear old house, recognized in my cousinly capacity by the family,
and treated accordingly, and for more than half that time like a wolf in
sheep's clothing, have I sought the avuncular mansion with an eye to
Miss Dora, a fact she seems surprisingly unconscious of, considering how
many times, by hint and innuendo, by sigh and look, and tender courtesy,
and honest speech, I have shown her the place she occupies in my mind,
and given her, as it appears, the right to drive me out of it, if
possible. Tom Hayes is her favorite instrument of torture. He is the
young lawyer of the place, as I am the young doctor, and is advancing
about as fast in his profession. He is considered a good-looking fellow,
though I don't see it, and has undoubtedly a fine voice, upon which
pretext he spends about half his time twanging away upon Dora's guitar,
and waking Col. Marston from his afternoon nap. It would look better, I
must say, for a young man in his position, to be at home, waiting for
practice; but I have heard that he says the same of me, and perhaps with
equal justice. At all events, it was hard to find his horse already tied
to the gate post on that particular spring day, when warm and weary, I
arrived on the battle ground, prepared to put my fate to the touch at
once.
On one side of the house lay the broad white public road, from which one
deviated to approach this earthly paradise; on the other, a narrower
private one, a mere cart track, grass-grown, cool, and shady, leading
down to the mill stream that ran behind the grounds, brawling and
seething and swelled by the spring rains into quite a respectable
torrent. Down this path Dora always took me to walk when she wanted me
to say anything uncommonly foolish, which could serve her as food for
laughter, and down this path again we must always go when that villain
Hayes was of the party, and she wanted to play me off against him, or
him against me, or both against her womanly vanities. Accordingly I
found them equipped for a walk, loitering on the front piazza, not
waiting for me, however, as Dora took pains to explain, and as I could
readily believe, for they were flirting over a new song. Not in the best
of humor, I took the offered seat near them, wiped my heated brows, and
advised my fair cousin not to saunter through the damp woodland paths on
this most unhealthy morning. 'I advise you as a physician, mind you,'
said I, to give weight to the opinion which might be denied it in my
cousinly capacity; but she received it with utter contempt and ridicule
of my pretensions, gladly joined by Mr. Hayes, whose white teeth gleamed
wolfishly behind a long black mustache, at my expense. We had shaken
hands with great cordiality; I had inquired after his clients, he had
professed interest in my patients; I had asked him how he had enjoyed
the ride with Miss Julia Stevens last evening, and he had just
remembered seeing me, as he drove past Mrs. Hedge's in the front garden
with Anna Hedge; a reminiscence which went a thought too far, for I had
been, at the time of which he spoke, seated on this very piazza beside
the innocent young lady opposite, who now showed no tokens of the sweet
confusion, with which she listened to my broken confidence last night,
and only glanced from one to the other with guileless interest and
wondering simplicity.
Now I had said enough to her on that occasion to make me feel some
anxiety concerning her demeanor to-day, and some resolution concerning
my own. I had a right to expect, after the way in which she then treated
me, that if _my_ cheeks burned and my ears tingled, and my heart beat
faster, at the remembrance of that sweet meeting, hers would at least
betray some consciousness of the fact. But not a fleeting tremor shook
her little hand, not a shade of color deepened the rose of her round
cheek, not a passing emotion of bashfulness weighed down her curly
eyelashes. She was serenely self-possessed, superbly cool, and attentive
to the obnoxious Hayes, in proportion as she was disregardful of me.
Burning with suppressed indignation, I accepted her careless invitation,
and followed the precious pair into the shrubbery, there being no other
way of obtaining the explanation I was determined to have this morning.
I had often seen such demonstrations before, and borne them with
comparative patience, knowing how well worth the trouble of winning, how
true and tender after all, if only it could be reached under these
disguising caprices, was the wayward little heart that had tested my
love and tried my temper all these years. From her very cradle she
provoked me, from the frills of her baby cap she mocked me; and, grown
into the ranks of little girlhood, systematically aggravated me by
artful preference of all the little boys I most hated, for whose infant
attentions she unceremoniously deserted my elder claim and assured
protection. And yet, in all her childish troubles, from torn frocks to
Latin lexicons, she flew to me for aid, counsel, sympathy, and
protection, repenting of all her sins against me, and walking in a
straight path again, till between her sweet eyes, and her pretty
confessions, her helpless reliance, and gentle ministering to my vanity,
she had regained a larger place than before in my alienated heart, and
could afford to play the very deuce with it again.
'Twenty years of this sort of thing must have settled the question one
way or another,' I argued; 'there is no use in my putting up any longer
with this bewitched town, and my empty slate, Phil's nonsense, and Tom
Hayes's impudence, my aunt's sermons, and my uncle's lectures, and Miss
Dora's caprices; she has either flirted with me, or she has loved me
from her cradle.' I have sometimes thought the latter, but I greatly
suspect it is the former. Grand query, which is it? and I resolved to
know to-day.
It was in vain, however, that I tried during the shady walk to gain a
moment's conversation with Dora, a whisper in her ear, a look of her
eye, or a touch of her hand; such favors were reserved for the military
cavalier who walked at her side, exultant and triumphantly good-natured,
though I seemed to read sneering and defiance in the very cock of his
hat. Sullen and morose, as I saw her lifted over muddy places in his
proud arms, or climbing a stile by his gallant assistance, I followed
more slowly, and completing this pleasant party behind me and before me,
and about me, wherever he could get within stumbling reach, trotted my
favorite aversion, Rover, an ugly, awkward, senseless, and
ill-conditioned puppy, whom Dora had elected her prime pet and favorite,
for no better reason apparently than that we all hated him. The colonel
kicked him, Mrs. Marston chased him, the cook scalded him, the boys
stoned him, and I could hardly refrain from giving public utterance to
the anathemas that burned on my tongue, when the wretched animal, who
seemed to have an insane attraction to me, floundered about my legs as I
moved, or flapped his stump tail under my chair when I sat still. Dora
alone, with strange perversity, persisted in ignoring his bad habits,
his vulgar manners, his uselessness, his ugliness, and his impudence,
and set me at defiance when I objected to him, by pressing him in her
beautiful arms--happy cur that he was!--and laying her soft cheek
against his villainous bristles, till in very disgust and jealousy I
ceased to complain, and learned to submit quietly to his revolting
familiarities.
On the present occasion the few private kicks and pinches which I
ventured to bestow, availed nothing against his clinging affection, till
we drew near the water, and the sight of a rabbit's white tail further
up the bank effected my release from his attentions, for he immediately
galloped in pursuit of it, and a similar happy accident left me for a
moment free to approach Dora without the intervention of my friend, Mr.
Hayes, who had gallantly volunteered to scramble up a steep bank for a
cluster of pink flowers which Miss Dora persistently admired, as they
waved in inaccessible beauty above her head, though sister blossoms
bloomed all about her feet. Being thus freed from the attendance of both
puppies, as I suitably classed them in my mind, I approached the little
queen of my heart, who stood on the very verge of the wet sand, where
she had planted herself in express defiance of my professional warning,
with the water gently oozing up around her thin slippers.
'Don't come here, cousin! I'm afraid you'll wet your feet!' she called
out impertinently as I drew near; but her eyes were not lifted, and such
a rosy flush crept up her face as she said it, that I forgot my hot walk
and hotter indignation, and glowed less with anger and more with love. I
laid my hand lightly on her shoulder, looking down on her mocking lips,
and stooping, whispered something in her ear--in spite of female
coquetry (in her person), and her uneasy pretexts to escape, in spite of
Tommy Hayes, in spite of Rover, that marplot puppy, I had a moment's
hearing, and used it manfully, and as I whispered, my heart beat thick
with triumph, for she could not raise her eyes to mine, they were
pensively watching the source of the rippling flood, and bright tears
seemed quivering on the silken lashes, her cheeks wore a warmer scarlet,
her pretty lips trembled with the fateful answer, and I was sure it
wasn't no, and saw them pout, gracious heavens! to suit one of those
shrill female screams which more than trump of war or voice of cannon
strike panic into the bold heart of man, and unnerve him to the finger
ends. 'My dog, my puppy!' she sobbed, 'he'll be drowned, he can't swim!
He's coming down stream, tail first, poor fellow! I knew it was Rover!
Oh why don't you go and save him?'
This passionate appeal was addressed to the sympathizing Hayes, I being
in disgrace on account of an unfortunate ejaculation, wrung from me in
the first surprise, an impoliteness in strong contrast to the graceful
gallantry of the hero of the cliff, who supported the weeping maiden in
his arms, and tenderly soothed her excitement, as the unhappy Rover
wheeled and eddied toward us.
'Why don't you go?' she reiterated impatiently, stamping her little
foot, and as her eyes this time wandered toward me, I responded by
throwing off my cap and coat, and preparing to obey; it was of no use to
remonstrate or to explain to her that it was almost impossible to rescue
the dog, and that the attempt would involve great risk of my own
life--what did she care for that? The emotion I had so proudly
misinterpreted on her lovely face, was for a blundering senseless puppy;
the heart I had so faithfully served to win, was given to a miserable
dandy: what remained to me, but to finish a life devoted to an unworthy
object, by consistently sacrificing it in the same worthless cause; and
with the bitter hope that my failures would end here, I prepared to
plunge into the rushing water.
I could not help looking back at Dora, who, tightly clinging to her
lover's arm, had been hidden from me during my rapid preparations by his
tall figure and ample white linen robes. 'Don't _you_ go,' she had said
to him; 'let George go; if he can swear, he can swim--don't _you_ try,
Mr. Hayes!'
Mr. Hayes had no idea of trying; _he_ risk his life, a life so precious
to a world of spinsters, for a miserable fellow puppy! he wash the dye
from those perfumed whiskers--dear to the hearts of so many maidens--he
ruin those freshly laundered clothes, he abandon those new French boots!
Ridiculous! He glanced down into his companion's pale face with a smile
of exquisite amusement, as she said it, but Dora's eyes were tightly
shut, and she did not see him; so the sneer travelled to me, who was
about to drown in his stead for his lady's pleasure, and gave my heart
its last dying pang as I quitted the shore.
A cry of terror and recall, from what had been a dear voice, followed my
splashing descent into the deep water, and thrilled my nerves a moment;
but I struck out bravely for the whirlpool, where, plunging, yelping,
struggling, revolved the wretched beast, to whom my cousin had resolved
to sacrifice my life, and for whose sake she was crying on the beach.
Much time was lost in reaching, more in capturing the blundering fool,
who, mad with fear and fright, dreaded me more than the water, and when
I had him in my arms at last, we were rapidly shooting toward the cruel
wheel that splashed and creaked a hundred rods below, ready to suck us
in to certain death. Well, what would it matter? Dora would be sorry
perhaps, at least for the dog, and so desperately bitter and vengeful
was I that I was glad her clumsy pet, since she loved him so much, was
to drown in my company, that she too might feel what it was to mourn the
loss of something dearly loved, and that my death would be associated in
her mind with a painful event--in short, I despised the weakness and
felt my mad folly, but it _would_ have its way. I closed my eyes upon
the shifting scene, and tried to prepare for death, unconscious that the
current was bearing me close to the shore, and that my only chance of
escape was near. Something struck my face, a thrilling voice called my
name, I raised my heavy gaze, and there, clinging to the farthest
branches of an old tree that had fallen over into the water, and
stretching out her arms to me, was Dora, her cheeks wet, her lips pale,
her eyes imploringly fixed on me, or on the burden I carried, regardless
of the rushing flood that saturated her floating dress and tiny feet,
and threatened to bear her away from the frail support to which she
clung. Feeble, exhausted, despairing, as I was, there was a magnetic
power in that dear voice, in that beautiful pale face, that inspired me
with hope, and drew me back to life.
A few strokes impelled me nearer, the stream drifted me among the
sweeping branches, I was clasped in those beautiful arms, then seized
and dragged along by a stronger gripe, and presently lay half senseless
and wholly exhausted on the sandy beach.
I was content to lie there while I fancied I felt soft hands press mine,
warm tears baptize my face, and gentle touches extricate the gasping
Rover from my drowning gripe on his hair; but after he was removed, I
seemed to be more roughly handled by less tender fingers, and opened my
eyes to find the zealous Mr. Hayes kneeling by my side, and, under his
fair mistress's orders of course, doing his duty toward my
resuscitation, while at a safe distance stood Dora, her dripping
favorite sneezing and floundering in her arms, and her happy face
beaming rosier and fairer than ever, by contrast with her soiled and
bedraggled garments, as she pressed the precious rescued treasure to her
heart, and received her lover's congratulations on its restoration, with
only an occasional furtive glance at me, as I lay slowly coming back to
life under his active treatment.
So the tears, the pallor, the heroism, the daring rescue, were for the
sake of that worthless dog. I was saved incidentally with her
interesting favorite, as I might have drowned in his cause, and no
questions asked, and having accomplished my high mission, and preserved
the stupid brute, lay untended and uncared-for on the sand, dependent on
the kind offices of my successful rival! The blood rushed back to my
heart, the fiery strength to my nerves, as I slowly drank in the
bitterness of this cup.
'Your cousin's better, Miss Dora,' said the benignant Hayes. 'Aren't you
going to thank him?'
She moved nearer in instinctive obedience to him, bashful, tearful,
trembling, confused, but radiant and lovely as I had never seen her, and
lifting her timid eyes to his, as it seemed for further instructions,
with a gentle deprecating grace, while she carefully averted them from
me. I could bear it no longer, and with an energetic oath sprang up,
knocking the astonished Tom back into my place, and extorting a little
cry of surprise from Miss Dora, as I strode away toward the village,
determined to shake its dust from my feet, and never again look upon the
faces of the precious couple I had left. I rushed through my aunt's
kitchen like a whirlwind, on my way, and bade her good-by.
'Good-by, Georgy? what does the boy mean?' said she. She was phlegmatic
and slow.
'I mean I shall never see you again, aunty. God bless you, I'm going
away.'
'Hoity-toity, nonsense!' said she; 'some folly of yours and Dora's;
never mind her, a silly girl! you'll be my own boy yet, my dear; but
you're dripping wet, George; you have been in the water, you'll take
cold, child; here swallow this,' and mingling spirituous with spiritual
comfort, the good old lady poured a fiery glass of brandy down my
throat, and I poured out my sorrowful story into her motherly ear, as I
had done when an orphan boy, and all my life since, waxing warm with
anger and contempt as I told it, while her benignant face showed no
symptom of the indignation that glowed in mine; she pitied and soothed
me, but made no comment.
'So good-by, aunty,' said I, as I finished, in a tone tremulous with
weakness and wrath; '_you_ love me, if Dora does not, and _you_ will
remember me kindly I know.' I wrung her hand and kissed her cheek, but
she never shed a tear; she had been wont to weep like a watering pot
when I went back to school or college after a visit, and I had always
left her, loaded with biscuits and blessings, thankless prodigal that I
was! and disposed to laugh at her display of maternal sorrow. How
grateful to my wounded and sorrowful spirit, my outraged heart, would
such a demonstration of love now have been! but all were alike heartless
and cold to-day, and she smiled serenely under my parting kiss, and
said, as I ran down the steps, 'Promise me not to go before you are well
rested in the morning, Georgy; the coach does not pass through till
eleven, and you'll come back, if I have occasion to send for you--before
then--professionally?'
I bowed assent; what could I do? and, cut to the heart, went slowly and
wearily home. I do not know how or by which way I arrived there, or whom
or what I passed upon the road; I saw nothing but the darkness of my
fortune, and felt nothing but the terrible sorrow that consumed my
heart. Phil was astonished at the gentleness of the reproof he received
for being discovered with a crowd of young vagabonds playing pitch-penny
in my very office; but I was too broken in spirit to administer justice
on him--how could I expect him to be true when all others were
faithless?--and quite subdued and conscience-stricken he waited upon me
assiduously, till my last bottle was packed at midnight and I sent him
to bed, with orders to call me at sunrise. The stage came through at
eleven, and I usually rose at nine; but I scorned to comply with my
aunt's injunction, to take my ordinary rest, and was bent upon the
additional misery of rising early in the morning.
What weary, dreary hours! I heard every one of them strike, as I lay
tossing on the patent spring mattress, in that darkly shaded and
sacredly secluded room, where I was wont to sleep the sleep of the
sluggard, until I saw the day break, for the first time in my life, I
think, and the novelty put me to sleep, and thence into a dismal dream,
from which I was awakened by a tremendous thumping at the office-door,
and the shrill voice of my Phil, in communication with the person
outside.
'I shan't open the door for nobody,' that faithful janitor was
announcing, 'and if you don't stop knockin' on it, I'll come out and
make ye. He's asleep, I tell yer; goin' away to-day, and wants to get up
in time for the stage, but I shall let him oversleep hisself, and he'll
think better of it by to-morrow. Come this afternoon if you want to see
him; that'll do for _you_.'
'But I tell you it _won't_ do,' returned a gruff voice, which I
recognized as that of Colonel Marston's hired man. 'Miss Dora's sick
with pleurisy, she catched her death of cold yesterday, fishin' her
puppy out of the river. Dr. George was in it, too, and you'd better let
me in, for he'll be ravin' when he knows she is out of her head with a
fever this mornin', and Mrs. Marston sent me herself, and told me to
bring him back, and no excuse.'
I sprang out of bed, and was down stairs questioning the messenger
before Phil could invent any more excuses for keeping him out. Dora sick
of a fever, and I called in? my pride rebelled at entering the house
again, after the treatment I had received from its inmates; but I had
promised Mrs. Marston to return whenever 'sent for professionally,' and
my promise was sacred; the other doctor was worse than useless, and if
Dora should be dangerously ill--lovely, brave Dora, who perilled her
life for mine yesterday--for mine and the dog's-but never mind that now,
she was heartless, but could I find it in my heart to turn away from her
in her sorrow? Alas! I was still so weak, that my love drew me more than
my pledged word, along the well-known road that yesterday I had vowed
never to tread again.
My aunt met me at the door. I was breathless and agitated, but she
seemed more cheerful than I had expected; her eyes were full of tears,
for she had just come from the sick room, but there was a smile on her
kind face as it looked pleasantly into mine. 'Is she very ill?' I
stammered.
'Not very,' she said, coolly; 'come here a moment, Georgy,' and taking
my hand, she drew me into her own little sitting-room, and shut the
door. 'My dear boy,' she continued, placing both her soft hands on my
shoulders, 'I sent you rather an urgent message, for fear you wouldn't
come back in spite of your promise, and I want this settled about you
and Dora; you have tormented each other long enough, you with your
exactions and jealousy, she with her flirting and all that; I don't say
she was not the worst of the two, but that's over. No, she's not very
sick--don't interrupt me! She caught cold yesterday, as I thought she
would, in that foolish, wicked business you were all engaged in,
tempting of Providence I call it, but I hope it will do you good, and
learn you a lesson. What, Georgy! you expected a wild, shy young girl to
show you her heart without asking? you expected a spoiled, flattered
child, whom you have done the most to spoil and flatter, not to tease
and torment you when she had it in her power, and could you not bear it
better from your little wayward favorite, who, you know, was always
true-hearted after all? Pshaw, my dear boy, I needn't plead for our dear
baby. Poor Dora has a sore heart, for she thinks you have gone away in
anger forever, and her sins against you are all badly punished already.
I think you'll forgive her, and I won't tell you if it's worth your
while. She looks dreadfully, and feels badly, and as she has hardly been
sick a day in her life, thinks she is going to die, or she never would
have told me what she did tell me. I'm her mother, it's not for me to
betray her; but you're my son, too, and I wish you both happy. Go in now
and forgive your old aunty's long speeches; do what you can for my poor
little girl, and don't ever give me reason to repent putting so much
power into your hands. Georgy, my dear, bless you.'
She gave me an affectionate kiss, under more excitement than I had ever
seen her, and fluttered into an inner room, just as the stage rolled by
the door; to be saluted by a burst of sobs, and a strange muffled voice
asking, hardly intelligibly, 'Wasn't that the coach, mother?'
'Yes, dear.'
'Then he's gone, mother; George is gone, and he'll never come back--do
you think he ever will? I treated him so badly; I have been so hateful
to him you don't know, even when he nearly drowned saving Rover's life.'
'Poor Rover! he wants to come in and see you.'
'Don't let him in, don't you, mother; I hate the sight of him, ugly,
awkward fellow! he nearly drowned poor George, yesterday, and I never
can bear to see him again now George is gone; beside, I believe I only
loved Rover to plague poor George. Oh! oh, I feel so dreadfully, mother;
do you think I'm going to die?'
'Not just yet, my dear. Shall I send for the doctor?'
'No, ma'am, I don't want any doctor. I had as lief die as not, I'm so
miserable; beside, if I hadn't, Dr. Coachey would kill me, poking and
preaching over me. Oh, if George was only here!'
'George _is_ here, Dora.'
'Oh, is he really?' and she cried harder than ever. 'Well, I can't see
him, mother;' after a pause: 'Does he want to see me?'
'No, I sent for him professionally. I can tell him to go away.'
'No, wait a minute, mother; do I look so _very_ badly? Please make the
room darker; oh, I don't want to see him at all! I'm ashamed to see him,
but I will. I must beg his pardon for all my wickedness, before I get
worse, or he poisons me with his dreadful drugs; he hasn't had a patient
yet, and he'll be glad of the chance to practise on me, I know; he will
dose me with everything. And, mother, if George is coming in, please
turn in Rover.'
Quietly laughing, my aunt came out and ushered me with due ceremony
beyond the door, and shut it after her. In a darkened chamber, dim and
dismal, before a lowly, slowly smouldering fire, in a great stuffed
chair of state, sat poor little Dora, swathed in blankets, and muffled
in shawls. Her tiny feet were wrapped in a woollen bundle, and rested on
hot bricks, and her aching head was tied up in red flannel bandages that
smelled of brandy; she had a mustard plaster on her chest, a cayenne
pepper 'gargle' for her throat, and a cup of hot ginger tea stood at her
elbow; her pretty nose was swollen out of shape, her bright eyes were
red and inflamed, and little blisters had broken out all over those
kissable lips; a very damp white handkerchief lay in her lap, and two
great tears, that it had not yet wiped away, ran down her flushed
cheeks. Poor child! she put up both her small hands when I came in, to
hide her little red face; but I could see the 'salt pearls' that rolled
between her slender fingers, and melted my heart at once. Sorry and
ashamed, and afraid to speak, but more hopeful and happy than I had
often felt, I went quietly, and stood behind her chair.
'George!' she said presently, in her poor little broken voice. 'Are you
there?'
'Yes, Dora.'
'Are you very angry with me?'
I put one of my hands down over the chair-back, and drew both hers away
from before her face, and then came round and kissed it; I could not
think of anything better to do.
'Yon are not going away?'
I shook my head. 'That is not for me to say.'
'Who then? Will you please tell me what you mean, George?' She was very
gentle and submissive, but the coaxing voice trembled painfully, and the
burning hand I touched began to grow cold.
'It is for you to say, Dora, dear! Did you need to ask me that, after
all these years?'
Without a single word, but with a fond impulsive movement, that answered
quite well instead, she turned to me, and putting both her little arms
around my neck, laid her feverish cheek against mine, and cried, as if
her heart were breaking.
'My dearest! what is the matter?'
'I thought you were angry with me, and had gone for good; I though I had
worn your patience out at last, and you would never forgive me or come
back again. Why did you come back, Georgy?'
'Because I loved you, Dora, and couldn't stay away.'
'Yes, you would, if I had not been sick--mother told me so. I had
treated you too shamefully, and wounded you too cruelly; but it hurt me,
too, and I deserved to have you not forgive me for all I must have made
you suffer. You were proud, but you were very patient, Georgy; how long
have I plagued you?'
'Twenty years!'
'Then I have loved you twenty years, and tried not to let you know it. I
was very proud, very wicked, very mean, but I am sorry now. I was
ashamed to have you or anybody see how much I liked you; but now I don't
care, I'll tell the truth before I die. I am glad I am sick, George; for
if I don't get well, you will remember what I said, and will have
thought better of me; and if I live--'
'My dear Dora, you are to marry me in three weeks, so don't let us talk
about dying; you have a little cold, that is all, and I'll give you time
to get over it, and recover your voice, and get those ugly blisters off
your face.'
'Is it _very_ ugly?' she whispered, hiding it against my shoulder.
'Very ugly, indeed, and I hope it will stay so, till we are married;
then we shall have no more flirting with Tom Hayes; I would like to
have murdered him yesterday, when--when you wanted me to drown, and not
him, Dora.'
'Oh, George! I didn't know the dreadful danger till it was too late, and
you were gone. I knew you were brave, and could swim, and he wasn't or
couldn't; I thought you would do it easily, and never dreamed you could
be drowned, till you were in the water, and he told me, and then--'
'And then my little heroine risked her life to save me.'
'I wouldn't have cared to live without!'
'And cried over me when I was landed?'
'I was so glad and thankful, dear George.'
'But was ashamed to let Tom Hayes see it afterward.'
'No, only ashamed to speak to you, because I had behaved so badly;
afraid you would order me away from your sight forever, as soon as you
were able. I am bad, I know; but indeed, indeed I am not so bad as you
think me!'
Ah! how easy it was to believe it, with that sweetly humble voice
whispering in my ear; those pleading eyes truthfully looking into mine;
the new charm of her timid, deprecating manner, going straight to my
unfortunate, yielding heart, and conquering at once all the territory
that had not succumbed to her earlier graces, when in health and
spirits. Yet I had seen something of this 'death-bed repentance' before,
and I should have preferred to marry her at once, while the swelled nose
and the weakened eyes disabled her from coquetry, rather than to use my
humble skill to restore her to health and beauty, and the society of Mr.
Hayes--rewarded by having my marriage indefinitely postponed, and my
promised bride infinitely tormenting me. A physician is accustomed to
see promises, made in sickness, unperformed in health, and the debt of
gratitude, or otherwise, to the medical attendant left unacknowledged
and unpaid: he is obliged to calculate the chances of his fees pretty
closely, you see. These thoughts I was weakly about to reveal to Dora,
when a tumbling and snorting at the door announced Rover, and happily
prevented me.
'Shall I let him in?' I politely inquired of the invalid.
'Just as you please, dear,' she gently answered; 'if he is so
disagreeable to you, perhaps I had better give him away,' she added
timidly.
Heavens! what a change! I was completely subdued by that last convincing
proof of affection; though as to giving him away, what mortal in his
senses would take him? Of course he remained, to become a member of my
family, growing _dearer_ to us both as he broke uncounted crockery,
involved us in innumerable quarrels with our neighbors, and fattened
upon meat at ten cents a pound, like the favorite of a Chinese epicure.
At the very altar, or rather, I should say, the piano, before which we
stood to be married, he interfered with the happy arrangement of the
bridal party, with his ill-timed blandishments; but afterward did rue
good service by getting under the feet of my groomsman, Mr. Hayes, and
endangering his equilibrium as he was about to salute the bride.
'Poor Hayes!' I said, pityingly alluding to this failure afterward with
her.
'Oh you needn't pity him,' she answered spitefully, but fortunately
proving that the offence which produced the spite was not mine, by
standing on tiptoe to kiss me; 'he'll be married to Julia Stevens before
the month is out.' And so he was.
* * * * *
Some time has elapsed since the occurrence I have here narrated, gave me
my first patient, and decided me to remain in this neighborhood, with or
without others; it is fortunate I did so, for the spell is broken that
held us in supernatural health, and no invalid reader of the
CONTINENTAL need address me for the proper name of the locality, with a
view of removing to its salubrious air. My practice is increasing
rapidly, in spite of Mrs. Thompson's baby, which has hitherto
disappointed my expectations of croup, but promises in time a beautiful
case of hereditary asthma. Captain Hopkins is on his last legs with the
gout, unless he soon resolves to spend part of his income in improving
mine; and nine of the Sessions girls have had the scarlet fever.
Rheumatism begins to rage among the old ladies, and 'neurology' is
greatly in vogue among the young ones; the late fine fruit season has
produced much cholera infantum among the juvenile population, with a
special tendency to cramps in the cases of the little boys; and the
recent fall in the prices of provisions has induced a similar decline in
health with certain of the rural economists. A railroad is projected
through our midst, which will bring foreign diseases and habits among
us, and turn our peaceful Arcadia into a miniature New York. I see, in
imagination, a busy and prosperous future in store for me; I see my
handsome and hitherto unused sets of surgical instruments often taken
from their case, for 'disasters,' 'collisions,' 'smashes,' and 'shocking
accidents.' I see fashion reigning in our humble streets, with her
neuralgic little bonnets, her consumptive thin shoes, her
lung-compressing corsets, and fever-tempting bodices, her unseasonable
hours, and unreasonable excitements and unnatural quantities and
qualities of food and drink; I see my little stock of drugs increased to
a mighty establishment; my Phil, of some use at last, dispensing them
rapidly, and Rover, hoarse with barking at the ringing of the night
bell. I see Dr. Coachey retiring in despair to his whist and his
sangaree, and myself sole autocrat of the village health; and brightest
of all these bright visions, I see my pretty Dora, the beautiful spirit
of all light and love in my household, infinitely lovelier and more
charming than even in her girlish days, but without the faintest symptom
of the coquetry that marked her then--blind to all fascinations but
mine, and such a tender wife, that she upholds my whiskers (which are
inclined to be reddish) to be of the finest auburn, and does not envy
Mrs. Tom Hayes the sable splendors which adorn her husband's face; in
short, I see daily more occasion to thank heaven for all the happy
consequences of Dora's cold.
THE TIDE.
The rising tide sighs mournfully
Under the midnight moon;
The restless ocean scornfully
Dashes its surging billows down
On a jewelled beach, at the dead of night,
That in the soft and silvery light
That flits and fades, is sparkling bright,
Laved by the changing sea!
LA VIE POÉTIQUE.
He is not blind who seeth nought;
Or dumb, who nothing can express;
And sight and sound are something less
Than what is inwardly inwrought.
So seems it foremost of my joys,--
Not ranking those that from above
Assume on earth the name of Love,
The feast which never ends or cloys.
Nor is it less a feast to me
If he, my neighbor, cannot break
The bread with me, or with me take
The wine of all my mystery.
Not less a feast, if so well off
He deems himself in worldly goods,
That at unseen beatitudes
He blindly flings an aimless scoff.
Not theirs the blame who thus disown
The wealth they see not as they walk,
Nor mingle in their household talk
What all to them is all unknown.
Mine be the greater joys that tend
To give me what I cannot give,
And what in living makes me live,
And what _I_ best can comprehend.
And though, amid the daily dust
Of moving men, I move a moat
Within the sunbeam where we float,
With mutual needs and mutual trust,--
Though outward unto outward shows
The kindred claims of sympathy,
And hand to hand and eye to eye
The generous meed of Faith bestows,--
Yet am I conscious that I bear
A something in me dumb and blind
To all the rest of human kind,
And which but one can partly share.
Though in the turbulent stream of change,
The pressing wants of flesh and sense
Conceal my inward opulence,
And clog the life that else would range;
Yet am I conscious that below
The turbid tide, as through the straits
Of Bab-el-Mandeb's tearful gates,
Strong counter currents constant flow.
Nor do I love that man the less,
Because, in our companionship
There lieth behind the eye and lip,
That something, neither can express.
For inasmuch as mortal love,
Being mortal, cannot fill our need,
I feel the Goodness that can feed
With droppings from the feast above.
Whereby, in Heaven's perfected plan,
Which saves from spoil of worldly flaw,
I read the inevitable law
Of compensation unto man.
Thus, though I grope in darkest night,
Of what men call a world of ills,
The closer concentration fills
My inmost with benignant light.
And though I sit in dull routine
Schooled to the scholarship of books,
My truant spirit outward looks
And Fancy fills the village green!
Yet not in pride, oh, understand,
Not pride of merit do I boast,
Of that, which at its uttermost,
Is of me part, like eye or hand.
In awe, not pride, doth Fancy wield
The sceptre of her gorgeous realm,
Whose revelations overwhelm
With sense of greatness unrevealed.
Thus, whatsoever good is gained
In fantasies of fresh delights,
But wings us to diviner flights
Unto the ever unattained.
Nor need I more than this to show
All proof of that astounding bliss,
Which from the world of worlds to this,
Through lowliest mind, sends conscious glow.
Not clearer through the density
Of darkling woods, do I behold
The intervening flecks of gold
Reveal unseen intensity.
In this deep truth I hold the key
That locks me from a world of pain,
And opens unto boundless gain
Of sweet ideal mystery.
And though I may not hope to climb
Above the level commonplace,
Or touch that vital growth of grace
Which shapes the fruit of deathless rhyme,
Yet, will I bless the Gracious Power
Which giveth strength to walk the mead,
And catch the sometime wafted seed
That ripens to the quiet flower.
Or, when, foot-weary with the day,
My longing spirit only feels
The tremor of the distant wheels
That bear some poet on his way;
I'll deem it very kindly chance
That gives the apprehension clear
To feel the pageant, far or near,
That moves to other's utterance.
And if I can but feebly keep
With reverent grace my share of good,
And kneeling, gather daily food
By gleaning, where my betters reap,
Yet will I bless the Hand Divine
That with the appetite for least,
Transforms into perpetual feast
The homely bread, the household wine;
And place it foremost of my joys,--
Not ranking those that from above
Assume on earth the name of Love,--
That feast, which never ends or cloys.
THE ASH TREE.
'The Ash for nothing ill.'--SPENSER.
'The Ash asks not a depth of fruitful mould
But, like frugality, on little means
It thrives; and high o'er creviced ruins spreads
Its ample shade, or on the naked rock,
That nods in air, with graceful limbs depends.'--BIDLAKE'S _Year_.
'Nature seems t' ordain
The rocky cliff for the wild Ash's reign.'--DRYDEN'S VIRGIL.
Those who would seek the primitive signification of all objects in
Nature, unroll their symbolism, and thereby attain the first historical
groundwork of poetry, must bear in mind that this system was formed,
and, indeed, ripely developed, in an age anterior to all written records
of humanity. By ascertaining what words are common to the Indo-Germanic
languages, we may easily find how far in civilization those had
progressed who spoke the old Aryan, the common mother of the languages
of Europe, India, and Persia, ere they parted to form new tribes, with
new tongues. So, by comparing the mythologic legends of these later
races, we may, with strictest accuracy, determine what was the parent
stem. That the religion of the British Celts had striking points of
resemblance with that of the Ph[oe]nicians and the Baal-worshipping
Shemitic races, with India and Scandinavia and the Greek and Roman
systems, is apparent enough to any one who will compare the names,
customs, and legends common to all. It was something more than a mere
coincidence which gave to Bal of the East and Bal-der of the West the
same significant syllable.
Yet it must be remembered that the further back we go to the primæval
age of one language and one religion, the more obscure becomes our
medium of vision. We see that tribes intermingled, exchanging and
distorting traditions of their gods; that migrations disturbed the local
force of legends; that the time for celebrating the birth of Spring in
the far South or East became sadly misplaced when transplanted to the
North; and that, finally, the deep reverence and strange tales attached
to trees, flowers, and minerals, being too deeply seated to perish, were
fed by being transferred to other objects more or less similar. Thus
Christmas, derived from the old heathen Yule or Wheel feast of the
Seasons and of Time, and which, like all feasts, was founded in the
celebration of the revival of Spring, was actually held at last in
mid-winter. So the holly and ivy, expressive of the male and female
principles of generation, and of the great mystery of reproduction and
revival most in force during the Spring, were substitutes for other
symbols--possibly the fig leaves, lettuce, and roses which in milder
climes had at that season been employed to set forth the loves of Venus
and Adonis--of reviving and of receptive nature.
The most striking illustration of this transfer of earnest religious
devotion to such objects is furnished by the ASH TREE. In the far East,
men had, during the course of ages, learned to attach extraordinary
significance to trees, which, growing, decaying, and dying like man, yet
outliving him by centuries, seemed, like animals, to be both far below
and yet far above him in many of the conditions of life. In those
glowing climes the Banyan was regarded as the tree of trees, and the
mighty centre of vegetating life. Hence it was worshipped with such deep
reverence that even in modern botany we find it named the _ficus
religiosa_; and it was called by the earlier Christians the Devil's
Tree, in accordance with their belief that all heathen rites were
offered to Satan. For it was beneath the Banyan that Vishnu was born,
and under it that Buddha taught his sacred lore; it is in it that
Brahmins love to dwell; it is the living, green cathedral of GOD--the
leafy cloister of sacred learning, ever holy, ever beautiful, never
dying. Like GOD and NATURE, it is ever re-born; it falls drooping to
earth to take fresh root, and is, on that account, as well as from its
immense size, a wonderfully apt symbol of God renewing himself--of
revival and of eternity. It is named from some saint, whose soul is
believed to flit through its solemn shades, nay, to animate the tree
itself: no wonder that in the laws of MENU it was made the sacred,
never-to-be-injured monument of a boundary.[1]
Time rolled on--for the world was old then, though thousands of years
have since faded--and from the East there was a mighty emigration to
lands far away. What were the causes of this mighty movement--what was
it which transplanted the seeds of new nations and new races into the
distant Norway and Sweden? As yet, only dim, very dim conjecture can be
made. The Mahabharata tells us of a mighty battle which sent forth
hero-sages with their armies into the wide world; others have traditions
of divisions between the worshippers of the Lingam and Yoni, who
alternately contended for the supremacy of the male or female principle
in creation. Whatever the causes may have been--priest warring with
soldier for power, or a newer and a milder code casting off the older
and more aristocratic rulers into outer darkness--one thing is certain,
that they went forth strong in faith, fearless of destiny; for the
religion of primeval times was terrible and tremendous. It was such
religion, such absolute, undoubting slavery to faith, which wore away
millions on millions of lives in carrying out in dim, old, barbarous
days the rock sculptures of the temples of Ellora--which dug Sibyls'
grots, and piled together Cyclopean walls, and pierced Cimmerian caves
of awful depth and solid gloom, in the fair isles of the Mediterranean;
and which, it may have been at the same time, it may have been at a
later day, massed together the miracles of Stonehenge, the enormous
dragon rows of Brittany, and the almost indentically similar serpent
mounds of our own West. They are all of one faith.
Westward went the Æsir--the children of Light--from the land of the
Banyan--_In die weite weite Welt hinaus_--out into the wild, brave
world! Some went Greekward. There is a curious book, by an English
scholar, attempting to prove that the names of hill and valley, mountain
and seas, in Greece, and of the countries which lead eastward to it, are
all those of India but little changed. A problem awaiting the scientific
accuracy of a Max Muller or a Grimm, and not to be handily tossed into
shape by a poetic _Faber_, or guessed at by a wild-Irish O'Brien or
Vallancey, or a lunatic Betham. It is, however, worth noting that over
those South Slavonian provinces, _via_ Greece, flowed for many centuries
northward a strangely silent stream of Orientalism, but little disturbed
by the outer or upper currents of history. He who has dabbled in
Servian-Croat-Illyrian--twin sister to Bohemian--has doubtless been
amazed at the wealth of Sanscrit words it contains, albeit he may not go
so far as Pococke, who asserts that with Sanscrit alone one may travel
in those countries and be understood. Over this path it was, however,
even down to the middle ages, that a rich store of Oriental heresies and
forbidden lore flowed into freemasonry, into Waldense and Albigense
sects, into many a hidden doctrine and strange brotherhood now
forgotten or veiled under some horrible outbreaking of stifling passion
and terrible ante-Protestantism. Over this path, on which, in earlier
ages, the mitre and rosary and violet robe and confessional, and
doctrines of celibacy and monkery and nun-nism, and bell and consecrated
taper, and still deeper dogmas or doctrines, wandered from the East into
the Church, came also heresies, terrible as Knights Templars', which in
due time warred against the Church, and cleft it in twain. The doctrines
of wild sects, more or less Manichæan, which came forth strangely to
upper life during the fever of the Crusades, all seem to tend obscurely
from a Slavonic source. The vices with their adepti were reproached by
the Church, gave to most of the languages of Europe a revolting word,
modified from the name 'Bulgarian.' The origin of the earlier Bohemian
Hussite sects, with their strange devil-worship and doctrine of
transmigration, was manifestly Oriental. At a later date the very name
of the mystic Jacob Böhme--Jacob the Bohemian--indicates some secret
alliance with Slavonian associations; and if the connection of the name
with strange Oriental speculations be obscure, that of the teachings of
'the inspired shoemaker' with those of the East is not--witness the
often marvellous identity of tone of The Aurora with that of Hermes
Trismegistus. It is worth while in this connection to trace the
influence of Böhme-ism on 'the fierce sectaries of Lower Germany,' on
Anabaptism, and on the _illuminati_ of the ultra Puritans in England,
bringing forth Independent Fifth Monarchy men, George Fox, Flood, Law,
and Pordage. The seeds of this mystical heresy were obscurely
transmitted to New England, which has always had some 'GOD-Smith,' or
Mathias with his 'Impostures,' lurking among the vulgar. I have no doubt
that, through traditional influence at least, a Joe Smith and the
beginning of Mormonism might be found to have a direct descent from the
doctrines of early times.
Let the reader pardon the digression. I am about to speak of the Ash
tree--the successor of the Banyan--which has also its connection with
English popular superstition. However it was, when the wave of Oriental
emigration reached the utmost limits of Northern Europe, it changed its
character with the climate. From a vast pantheism of fire, it became one
of ice and of snow. In the grammar of its mythology, only a little of
the vocabulary was retained, but the grand system of construction
remained on the whole unchanged. There is the same stupendous
ground-plan of a cosmogony founded on a sublime view of the powers of
Nature, and the same exquisitely poetic elaboration of details in the
Edda as in the Sacred Books of India, though the one is illumined by the
burning sun of the tropics, and the other by the Northern Lights of a
winter midnight.
So the children of Odin needed a tree signifying All Creation, All Time,
All Nature, and they chose the Ash. Its picturesque beauty, its
lightness and easy flowing lines, combined with great strength, and at
times with enormous size; its elegant depending foliage and lithe vigor
in its prime, and its gnarled, ancient expression when old, well fitted
it to set forth the extremes of existence. The firm hold of these trees
in the earth, 'their obstinate and deep rooting--_tantus amor terræ_,'
as Evelyn expresses it, gives us a reason why the Ash of their mythology
was fabled to reach down to hell; while its stern vitality, expressed by
Horace, fitted it to be called the tree of life:
'Per damna, per cædes, ab ipso
Ducit opes animumque ferro.'
'By havoc, wounds, and blows
More lively and luxuriant grows.'
So the Ash became the Banyan of Northern faith, and the great meeting
place of the gods--as the reader may see in the following extracts from
the Edda:
GANGLER demanded: 'Which is the capital of the Gods, or the sacred
city?' HAR answereth: 'It is under the Ash-tree YDRASIL, where the
Gods assemble every day and administer justice.' 'But,' sayeth
GANGLER, 'What is there remarkable about that place?' 'That Ash,'
answereth JARNHAR, 'is the greatest and best of all trees. Its
branches extend themselves over the whole world, and reach above
the heavens. It hath three roots, extremely different from each
other; the one of them is among the Gods; the other among the
Giants, in that very place where the abyss was formerly; the third
covereth Neflheim, or Hell, and under this root is the fountain
Vergelmer, whence flow the infernal rivers: this root is gnawed
upon below by the monstrous serpent Nidhoger. Under that root which
stretcheth out toward the land of the Giants, is also a celebrated
spring, in which are concealed Wisdom and Prudence. He who hath
possession of it is named MIMIS: he is full of wisdom, because he
drinketh thereof every morning. One day the Universal Father
(AL-FADER) came and begged to drink a cup of this water; but he
was obliged to leave in pledge for it one of his eyes, according as
it is said in the Voluspa: 'Where hast thou concealed thine eye,
ODIN? Lo! I know where; even in the limpid fountain of MIMIS. Every
morning doth MIMIS pour Hydromel upon the pledge he received from
the Universal Father. Do you, or do you not understand this?' The
third root of the Ash is in Heaven, and under it lieth the holy
fountain of Time-Past (_fons præteriti temporis--Urdar Brun_). 'Tis
here that the Gods sit in judgment. Every day they ride hither on
horseback, passing over the Rainbow, which is the Bridge of the
Gods. * * * * As for _Thor_, he goeth on foot to the tribunal of
the Gods, and fordeth the rivers Kormt and Gormt. These he is
obliged to cross every day on foot, on his way to the Ash Ydrasil,
for the Bridge of the Gods is all on fire. * * * *
'Near the fountain which is under the Ash, stands a very beautiful
city, wherein dwell three virgins, named URDA, or the Past;
VERDANDI, or the Present; and SOKULDA, or the Future. These are
they who dispense the ages of men; they are called Norn[=a]s, that
is, Fates. But there are indeed very many others besides these, who
assist at the birth of every child, to determine his fate. Some are
of celestial origin; others descend from the Genii, and others from
the dwarfs.' * * * *
'GANGLER proceeds, desiring to know something more concerning the
Ash. HAR replied: 'What I have farther to add concerning it is,
that there is an eagle perched upon its branches, who knows a
multitude of things, but he hath between his eyes a sparrow-hawk
(_qui Vederloefner vocatur_). A squirrel runs up and down the Ash,
sowing misunderstanding between the eagle and the serpent, which
lies concealed at its root. Pour stags run across the branches of
the tree, and devour its rind. There are so many serpents in the
fountain whence spring the rivers of hell, that no tongue can
recount them, as is said in these verses:
'_Fraxinus Ygdrasil plura patitur,
Quam ullus mortalium
Cogitatione assequi valeat.
Cervus depascitur inferius (rectius cacumen)
Sed circa latera putrescit.
Nidhoggius_ (the serpent) _arrodit subtus._'
'The Destinies, who reside near the fountain of the Past, draw up
water thence, with which they bedew the Ash, to prevent its
branches from growing withered and decayed. Of so purifying a
nature is that water, that whatever it touches becomes as white as
the film which is within an egg.
'Fraxinum novi stantem,
Vocatem Ygdrasil
Proceram et sacram albe luto,
Hinc venit ros,
Qui in valles cadit,
Stat super virente
Urdar fonte.'
'Men call this the honey-dew, and it is the food of bees. There are
also in this fountain two swans, which have produced all the birds
of that species.'
Does the reader care to know the meaning of all this? It is hardly worth
while, since to those who feel its grotesque poetry quite enough of the
symbolism is already revealed. But let the plodding German FRIEDREICH
'have his say.' 'The name of the Ash, Yggdrasil,' he tell us, 'signifies
God's Horse, from YGGR, a name of the god Odin, and _drasil_, the poetic
term for a horse. With this name one hath GOD'S rule over all things,
since he ruleth them even as a rider controls his steed, and by
_Yggdrasil_ is consequently signified the almighty power of GOD. The Ash
is the Universe, its twigs are the Ether, spread over the World-all; the
eagle is the Infinite glance, penetrating heaven and earth; and the
squirrel the medium by which the deeds and condition of the Gods are
brought to men. The stags, whose swiftness betokens the restless, rapid
passions of man, are the ailments of the soul; and the green leaves
which they devour, are sound, healthy thoughts.' According to Hauch
(_Die Nordische Mythenlehre_, Leipsic, 1847, p. 28), these swift stags
are the four winds of heaven which scatter the leaves. The snake is the
destroying force in Nature, and in the clear fountain lies wisdom--which
at least teaches us the highly respectable origin of the assertion that
'truth lies at the bottom of a well.' In the next spring lies the
knowledge of the future--hinting at much fortune telling by means of
pools, and faces of future husbands in basins of water and mirrors;
while the three virgins are the _Parcæ_--the goddesses of destiny. You
know these ladies, reader; but here they are grander, gloomier, diviner
than were our old friends Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos. And the endless
strife between the eagle and the serpent, stirred up by the squirrel, is
the 'ever-battling, interchangeable action between Spirit and Matter,
the ever hence-and-hither rolling, as of waves, to good or evil in the
human heart.'
Quaint enough, yet strong, wild, and beautiful. One more explanation is
however worth the giving. In all countries and in all ages, writers,
from Pliny and Dioscorides down to the genial poet-author of 'Elsie
Venner,' have said or hinted that the Ash is abhorred by serpents--an
antipathy ridiculed by Evelyn, yet which I have heard maintained to be
true by an eminent botanist. In our Edda legend, we find an enmity
between the Serpent--the evil principle, and a foe to life and
peace--and the Ash--the tree of fresh, vigorous life; the first ever
striving to destroy the latter. Is this the origin of the old belief? So
in the 'Arcana against Enchantment,' a German book of 1715, we are told
that 'the antipathy between the Ash tree, blessed of God, and the
Serpent, which so hateth man, is so great that a serpent would rather
spring into the fire than into the shadow of an Ash tree.' And in
_Froschmäusler_ the same idea is expressed in these quaint verses:
'Ich bin von den Alten gelart,
Der Eschenbaum hab diese Arth,
Dass keine Schlang unter ihm bleib;
Der Schatten sie auch hinweg treib,
Ja die Schlang eher ins Feuer hinleufft,
Ehe sie durch seinen Schatten schleyfft.'
'I have been by ancients told,
The Ash tree hath this gift of old,
That snake may never 'neath it stay,
The shadow drives it, e'en, away.
Sooner a snake in fire would dash,
Than through the shadow of an Ash.'
There is yet another strange superstition connected with the Ash, which
one hardly cares to grapple with--so vast is the mass of obscure myths
and doctrines which it involves. Let it suffice to say, that from
tradition and monuments, in vast variety, it appears that in very
ancient times the Passing Through anything was a ceremony of deepest
significance and solemnity. To go through a door, to put on a ring, to
pass between upright stones (as for instance, the _dolmen_, or those of
the serpent circle of Stonehenge), to wear armlets, all referred to
going from death into life, from ignorance to knowledge, from an
unregenerate condition to reconciliation. It referred to the life
passing into the womb and coming forth as birth. Going into an ark and
quitting it, was one form of this Passing Through. Caves were also very
holy, because they furnished apt illustrations of it. Spring was
typified as going down into the womb or cave or ark or casket or goblet
of the earth, and coming forth or being poured out again in fresh
beauty. Hence it came that marriage was surrounded in earliest times by
symbols of _transit_, or Passing Through. Lovers plighted their troth in
Great Britain, as is yet done in some remote districts of Scandinavia,
by joining their clasped hands through holes in the so-called Odin
stones. As the Regenerate in the mysteries were obliged to pass through
passages in rocks, it was naturally enough believed that those who were
ill might be benefited in like manner. Of course the Ash--the tree of
Odin and of all the gods--was hallowed in popular belief by healing
virtues; and Evelyn tells us that 'the rupture, to which many children
are obnoxious, is healed by passing the infant through a wide cleft made
in the hole or stem of a growing Ash tree. It is then carried a second
time round the Ash, and caused to repass the same aperture as before.'
This act of being borne or passing around a stone or stick against the
course of the sun, is a ceremony common to certain rites among almost
all nations. It was known to Druids and Hindoos--traces of it may be
found even among the debased Fetishism which lingers among American
negroes. According to the old philosophy of planetary influences, the
Ash tree is peculiar to the sun; whereas serpents are consecrated to
dark and gloomy Saturn--another cause for the antipathy between them,
and illustrative of the reason why the ailing child should be borne
around in reference to the imaginary sympathetic solar rays of the tree.
All trivial enough, doubtless; no longer a matter worthy of deep
research and wise marvelling. It is not even worth the while now for
scholars to inveigh against the folly of such superstition. There was
indeed enough of it. It was believed that by boring a hole in an ashen
bough and imprisoning a mouse in it, a magic rod was obtained which
would cure lameness and cramps in cattle--the ailments being transferred
to the poor mouse, who was the supposed cause of them all. 'There is a
proverb, says Loudon (_Arboretum et Fruticetum Britannicum_, p. 1223,
edition of 1838), 'in the midland countries, that if there are no keys
on the Ash trees, there will be no king within the twelvemonth.'
Lightfoot says that in many parts of the Highlands of Scotland, at the
birth of a child, the nurse or midwife puts one end of a green stick of
this tree into the fire, and, while it is burning, gathering in a spoon
the sap or juice, which oozes out at the other end, administers this as
the first spoonful of food to the newly-born baby.' Trivial enough, yet
worth noting as the fragments and humble remains of what was once the
mighty mythology of the Northmen, hinting at the faith in the
life-giving and life-preserving qualities of the great tree of life--the
tree of knowledge of good and evil--the _eritis sicut Deus_ of Runic
lore.
Among the strangest and most beautiful after-echoes of this old Norse
faith in the magic Ash as the great tree of life, is to my mind, one
which has been preserved by Grimm in his 'Mythology' (2d edition, 2d
book, page 912), and which the German poet Hoffmann has happily turned
in a poem full of spirit and grace. The legend is as follows:
In the churchyard at Nortorf will one day be an Ash,
No human eye hath seen it, yet silently it grows
Among the graves, and every year it bears a single sprout.
Each New Year's night a rider white upon a snow-white steed,
Comes silently among the graves to hew the sprout away;
But there comes a coal-black rider upon a coal-black horse,
And he strives to save the new-born tree and drive the foe afar:
Long they fight till the New Year's dawn--until black knight yields,
And the foeman hews away the twig, and rides into the dawn,
But there will come a time,'tis said, when the white knight must yield,
And the twig will grow and its leaves will blow until the trunk is
great:
So great that a proud war horse 'neath its lower branch may go.
And when the branch is grown and blown will come the world's great
fight;
The fiercest of her battles, the last great strife of dread;
And the war horse of the mighty king will stand beneath the tree,
And the king will win, and all the world will be his heritage.
'The White Knight,' saith a commentator, 'is Freyr, one of the most
glorious among Norse Asen, or children of the gods--he who rules over
rain, sunshine, and earth's fruitfulness. His adversary is Surtur, the
Black Demon--a pitiless foe of the Asen, who in the great battle will
fight with the evil Loki--'the curse and shame of gods and men'--and set
heaven and earth afire. But then there will come a new heaven and a new
earth, in which eternal justice shall reign, and the 'GREAT KING'--he
whose steed shall wait beneath the Ash of Life--'will rule forever in
peace and holiness.'
Dear reader, the battle between Freyr and Surtur is ever raging--in your
heart as in all the world. But whenever a great strife for freedom and
truth and man's rights is battled out, _then_ the branch has grown, and
the horse of the Great King is saddled beneath the Ash, and his rule
draws nearer than ever. Even as I write the battle rages, as it never
raged before on earth, between the infernal Loki and Surtur and the
glorious Asen--the great children of light and of truth. You, soldier of
the Lord, who read these lines--you, whose musket is borne in defence of
the Union, are as true a child of the great race of light as was ever
Odin or Balder, and you are in this great fight fulfilling the
prophecies of a thousand years aforetime, which foretold the final
battle of freedom. _You_ too are of the Northmen, the children of Odin
and of Freyr, the inexhaustible race of warriors and of workmen--the
free laborers who forged the swords they wielded against the dark and
wily fiend who stole his weapons from the foe ere the war began. And the
Horse so easily ruled--the all-powerful WILL--stands bridled beneath the
eternal Ash Tree of Life; and while he lives and the tree grows, hope
need not perish, and freedom cannot die.
In a Floral Lexicon I find it stated that the Ash tree signifies
'grandeur.' _E ben trovato_--it is not badly imagined--but its real
meaning is _life_, and that not mere existence, but fresh, vigorous,
exuberant life, the life of action and of enjoyment. The shaft of the
Greek spear, which healed the wound given by the point, was, I doubt
not, made of Ash, even as was that which slew Achilles. Thus the Ash, it
will be seen, was an important letter in the ancient alphabet of the
mysteries. May I hope that when you next sit beneath its graceful
boughs, you will recall some of the lore which hallows it, and makes it
a strange, living antique, not less curious than coin, weapon, or gem.
Read it in all the significance, all the strange spirit of the old
mythology, and then think what Nature must have been--or what it may yet
be--to men finding as deep a symbol as even the Ash in every high place
above the valleys, in every stream, cave, and rivulet, and in every
green tree.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: 'On an island of the river Nerbudda, twelve miles beyond
Broach, in the presidency of Bombay, stands the Banyan-tree, long since
mentioned by MILTON, and more recently described by HEBER. It is called
KUREOR BUR, after the Hindu saint who planted it.'
<sc>Dierbach, _Flora Mythologica_, page 22.]
THE DRUM.
[RÜCKERT.]
'On, the drum--it rattles so loud!
There's no such stirring sound
Is heard the wide world round,
As the drum----.'
AN ENGLISHMAN IN SOUTH CAROLINA.
DECEMBER, 1860, AND JULY, 1862.
CHAPTER FIRST.
'The happiest people on the face of the earth, sir!'
I had heard the assertion in almost all of the slave States, and knew
something of the institution on which it was based: I was now listening
to the familiar sentence at an epoch that has become historical. I sat
in Charleston, South Carolina, during Secession time, December, 1860.
'They are better fed and better treated than any peasantry in the
civilized world. I've travelled in Europe and seen for myself, sir. What
do you think of women--white women--working in the fields and living on
nothing better than thin soup and vegetables, as they do in France, all
the year round? And a man, with a family of nine children to support,
breaking stones on the high road, in winter, for eight English shillings
a week? Such a thing couldn't happen in South Carolina--in all the
South, sir!'
'Perhaps not!' I didn't add that worse social wrongs might and did occur
daily, in the eulogized region; knowing the utter unprofitableness of
any such discussion, not to mention its danger at a period rife with
excitement.
'You are an Englishman,' continued my interlocutor--a portly,
middle-aged, handsome man, to whom I had been introduced just before the
hotel dinner, toward the close of which our colloquy occurred--'and
therefore a born abolitionist--as a matter of sentiment, that is. You
know nothing at all about the workings of our institution, excepting
what the d--d Yankees please to write about us, and the word _slavery_
shocks you. Call it servitude, vassalage, anything else, it might be
endurable enough. One of the advantages, by the way, that Secession is
going to bring with it is, that the world will be brought into direct
contact with us, and thus see us as we are, not through the eyes of the
North.'
'You are in earnest about Secession, then?'
'In earnest! by ---- I should think we were! Don't you _know_ we are,
from what you have seen here?'
I did, and a moment's reflection might have checked my thoughtless
inquiry. I said so.
'Yes, South Carolina's going out of the Union, with or without backers,
and she intends to stay out, too; never were people more unanimous. The
North has got so far toward being abolitionized as to elect a man
avowedly hostile to our institutions, and we are only providing for our
safety by seceding. It's quite time. Essentially we are a different
people: we shall be the best friends in the world separate. It's all a
question of difference of opinion about labor; the North prefers a
system regulated by the mercenary dictates of traffic, ruled by capital,
and subject to the chronic difficulties of strikes and starvation; the
South, a simpler relation, binding master and slave together for their
mutual benefit, abolishing pauperism, and dividing society into two
unmistakable, harmonious classes--the well-fed, well-cared for, happy
negro, and the wealthy, intelligent slaveowner.'
I thought I had read something very like the speaker's sentiments in
that morning's _Mercury_, but didn't say so. I thought also of the
existence of another class at the South besides the two so favorably
characterized, of which I had seen a good representative in a coarse,
half-inebriated, shabbily dressed individual, who, just after
breakfast, had reeled through the crowd always assembled in the large
hall of the hotel to exchange and discuss the news, boasting that a son
of his had 'cut a man's throat the other day, down on the island,' and
admiringly wondering whether it was the paternal or maternal side that
he got his bravery from. I deemed it, however, advisable to be reticent
on this head. And my reward followed.
'Come, Mr.----, you have been in most of the Mississippi States, I
believe, but were never in the Carolinas before, so you don't know how
we old-fashioned folks live on our plantations. Suppose you pay me a
visit at my place on ---- Island, and see? I come of English blood,
myself; my grandfather was a Tory in the Revolution'--with a laugh--'and
you'll find us a good deal more British than you think possible here in
America. England and South Carolina are mother and daughter, you know;
and under the influence of free trade, we're bound to be very intimate.
All we of the South ask is that our institutions shall speak for
themselves, and I can trust a Britisher's proverbial love of fair play
to report us as he finds us. What do you say? I'm going down to the
island for a week on Wednesday; will you spend your Christmas with me?'
The invitation was given with an offhand cordiality decidedly
prepossessing. Expressing my thanks, I at once accepted it in the spirit
it was offered.
'That's right! you're my guest, then;' and the Colonel--he had been
presented to me by that military designation--shook me by the hand.
'Will you walk?' And we strolled out together into the hall before
mentioned.
If I were writing an article on Charleston in Secession time, now, here
was an opportunity for description. What a strange, what a memorable
period it was! involuntarily reminding one of an historic parallel in
the roseate aspect presented by the early days of the first French
revolution, when everybody had hailed as the dawning of a celestial
morrow the putrescent glow of old corruption blending into the lurid
fire of the coming _sans-culottic_ hell. In this case also an infernal
_ignis fatuus_ had arisen to tempt its deluded followers toward a
selfish fool's paradise, only to be obtained by wading through seas of
fratricidal blood. And how they believed in this impossible future in
'the cradle of the rebellion!' Only a minority of darker conspirators
apprehended--hoped for--war, thinking it necessary to precipitate the
remainder of the Southern States into revolution, and the establishment
of a separate nationality; the great majority of South Carolinians
accepting Secession with an enthusiasm (or rather self-exaltation) and
confidence astounding to witness. There would be no collision; the North
could not and dared not push it to the extreme issue; she must endure
the punishment due to her 'fanaticism' in inevitable bankruptcy and
beggary, while the South, the seat of 'a great, free, and prosperous
people, whose renown must spread throughout the civilized world, and
pass down to the remotest ages' (I quote from the ordinance of
Secession), had infinite possibilities before it. Jack Cade's
commonwealth, Panurge's 'world, in which all men shall be debtors and
borrowers,' Gonzalo's imaginary kingdom in the _Tempest_, were not a
whit more extravagant than what was hourly talked of and expected from
this longed-for slaveholding confederacy at this time in Charleston. But
enough of digression on a subject merely incidental to this narrative.
Three days after my conversation with the Colonel, when the city was
jubilant with the passage of the act of Secession, I accompanied him to
the plantation spoken of. It involved a little steamboat journey, sundry
rides in chaise or buggy, and the crossing of more than one of the many
creeks or rivers intersecting the low, sandy, swampy coast. I purposely
abstain from particularizing the locality. It was toward the close of a
mild, humid day when we reached the Colonel's residence.
Suppose an old-fashioned two-story house, one of a very common pattern
in this region, built of wood, and standing on an open foundation of
brick, with a tall, formal chimney projecting at either end, a broad
piazza, and a great flight of wooden steps in front and rear, the latter
looking seaward. Like the house of Chaucer's Reeve, in summer it must
have been all 'yshadowed with greene trees,' the cedar, the cottonwood,
the liveoak, fig, mulberry, and magnolia, growing in the sand or light
soil accruing from vegetable decomposition; and as the evergreens
predominated, its winter aspect was yet pleasant and rural,
notwithstanding a certain air of dilapidation and decay, so common in
Southern dwellings that the inhabitants seem to be unconscious of it.
Adjacent, beyond the short avenue of orange trees by which we had
approached, was a double row of negro huts, with little gardens between
them, forming a rustic lane; farther on, corn and cotton fields. The
geography of the island might be stated as follows: interior woods,
girdled by plantations, with houses on the seaboard or shores of the
river or inlets; a road circumscribing it, and one running across it.
We were welcomed by the appearance of two or three decently clad
house-servants, mulattoes, and an athletic negro, of average
nigritude,[2] every tooth in whose head glistened, as his black face
rippled into a laugh, when his master favored him with some familiar and
approving jocularity. Officiously taking charge of the horse and buggy,
he conveyed them to a spacious but dilapidated stable (the door of
which, I remarked, hung only by its lower hinge), while the servants
were equally zealous in transporting what little baggage we had into the
house. There the Colonel presented me to his daughters, two tall and
rather handsome girls of the ages of eighteen and twenty, dressed in
deep mourning (their mother had died but recently), their aunt, a staid,
elderly matron, who seemed installed as housekeeper, and a fat, careless
gentleman in shirt sleeves, with a cigar in his mouth, who impressed me
as an indolent and improvident poor relation of my host, as, indeed, he
proved. There was present, also, the child of a neighbor, a little
fair-haired girl, called Nelly, who, hearing my nationality mentioned,
would not approach me, which the Colonel accounted for by surmising that
she had received 'Tory' impressions of Britisher's from her parent's
negroes.
A sincere, if a quiet welcome, and an excellent dinner, comprising fish,
game, chickens, bacon, hominy, corn and wheaten bread, and sweet
potatoes of a succulence and flavor only attainable in Dixie, all served
by decorous and attentive negroes, made me feel very contented with my
position. Nor were the surroundings inharmonious. We sat by a wood fire,
burning in a fireplace which contained, instead of a grate,
old-fashioned iron dogs: most of the furniture, with the exception of a
handsome piano, was ancient, and the room ornamented with books,
pictures, and mineral curiosities. Among the former I noticed a row of
volumes of British parliamentary debates in old print, contemporary with
the age succeeding Johnson. Really, as my host had boasted, his
household gods were decidedly English--_colonial_ English; and I began
to understand the peculiar, ante-revolutionary, patrician
characteristics on which he and his class evidently prided themselves.
He showed me a portrait of an ancestor who had held high office in the
days of Governor Oglethorpe, an old-fashioned miniature on ivory,
charmingly painted, in the style of Malbone, and one could easily
recognize in it the features of his descendant. In conversing, too, on
the early history of the State, of which he had much to say that I
found interesting, he always assumed that a popular, democratic form of
government was rather a mistake than otherwise,[3] and, without
absolutely condemning the Revolution, implied that South Carolina had
been moved to her limited share in it against her direct interests, by a
high-spirited patriotism and sympathy with the at present ungrateful and
venal North. I do not think that the fact of my nationality influenced
him in this; he evidently spoke his convictions.
The ladies were at first reserved, acting, I believe, under the
impression that their father's brief knowledge of me hardly warranted my
introduction to his family; indeed, I am sure it was exceptional, from
all I have since learned of South Carolinian society. The casual
mention, however, of the names of a few mutual acquaintances, of
unexceptional 'blue blood,' and the fact that both ladies had visited
Europe, establishing topics of conversation, they presently warmed into
cordiality. I found them well informed and agreeable, less demonstrative
in their self-assertion than their Northern sisterhood, but latently
wilful, and assumptive of a superior elevation hardly justified by their
general air of languid refinement. It reminded me, on the whole, of what
I had heard complacently eulogized in Charleston as a tendency toward
'Orientalism' on the part of the women, of which the characteristics
were repose, fastidiousness, and exclusiveness--one of the many
admirable results of the fundamental institution.
The ladies were, of course, ardent secessionists, expressing themselves
with a bitterness, an acrimony, an unreasonableness, which might have
astonished me, had I been capable of such a feeling on the subject.
Inevitably we slid on to it, when I learnt that their only brother was
away doing military duty on Sullivan's Island, and so zealous in the
discharge of his assumed obligations that he intended to spend his
Christmas in camp, not, as usual, upon the plantation.
'You'll be sorry to hear that, Pomp,' said the Colonel to an evidently
favorite servant, who had waited upon us most assiduously, and who was
then kneeling before the fat gentleman, and putting a pair of slippers
on his feet. He, by the way, had contributed very little to the
conversation, only assenting, smiling, and looking the picture of ease
and good humor, as he sat lazily beaming behind a tumbler full of
Bourbon whiskey and water.
'Yes, sar!' the negro answered, 'too bad, mass' Philip not come home for
de holidays. All de people 'spect him.'
'That's a first-rate boy,' said his master, as the negro left the room
to fetch something; 'I wouldn't take two thousand dollars for him.'
(Every one familiar with the South, must have heard similar encomiums
hundreds of times: each household appears to pride itself on the
possession of some singularly admirable negro, whose capacity, honesty,
and fidelity are vaunted with an air of conscious magnanimity edifying
to witness. The desired inference is that the institution, productive of
so much mutual appreciation, _must_ be excellent. It never seems to
occur to the eulogists that the good is exceptional, or that the praised
characteristics might be alleged as an argument for emancipation.)
'That boy has been North with me,' the Colonel continued, 'to
Washington, Philadelphia, and as far as New York. The abolitionists got
hold of him at the last place, and wanted to run him off to Canada, but
Pomp preferred old Carolina. You don't want to be free, do you, Pomp?'
This was a leading question. The slave hesitated a moment, grinned, and
evaded it,
''Pears like de colored people at de Norf was mostly a mis'able set,' he
answered: _'can't shum!'_
'You can't see it!' said his master, delighted, and translating a very
popular negro phrase for my benefit. And incontinently he launched into
a defence and eulogium of slavery, which I shall not oblige my readers
to skip by recording. The topic is one on which Southerners are never
wearied; and a more uneasy people on the subject than South Carolinians
it would be impossible to imagine: long before Secession, they existed
in a state of chronic distrust and suspicion about it amounting to
monomania.
* * * * *
Next day I accompanied the Colonel over his plantation. It was a large
one, somewhat over seven hundred acres, inclusive of forest land, about
two thirds being reclaimed upland swamp soil growing seaisland cotton.
An old family estate, most of the negroes belonging to it had been born
there or in the immediate vicinity; there were about two hundred of
them, some living near their master's house, as has been mentioned, the
rest in a sort of colony at the other end of the plantation, under the
eye of the overseer. These negro settlements merit a paragraph of
description.
Their huts were of wood, separate, and standing in little gardens, in
which each family enjoyed the privilege of cultivating patches of corn,
sweet potatoes, and such vegetables as they chose, a street of about a
hundred feet wide dividing the houses. Midway, under the shade of a
magnificent liveoak, whose branches were mournful with the funereal moss
(always suggestive to my fancy of the 'little old woman,' whose
employment in the nursery legend is 'to sweep the cobwebs out of the
sky,' having executed her task in a slovenly manner), was a simple
apparatus for grinding corn, consisting of two heavy circular stones,
placed horizontally in a rude frame under a shed, to be worked by manual
power, by upright wooden handles. This served as a mill for the entire
negro population.
Entering their huts, you were first conscious of a large brick
fireplace, in which a fire was almost constantly burning, though it
scarcely lit up the generally dark interior, always much, more
picturesque than comfortable, for negroes have little if any notion of
ventilation, and can hardly be too warm: they will kindle great blazing
fires to lie down by or to heat their food, in the open fields in
summer. A few roughly fashioned seats and tables, and a ladder
staircase, leading upward to an attic or cockloft, completes the
inventory of the interior.
We had passed the inhabitants of these huts, at work in the fields,
under the direction of the overseer, a strong, spare man, in a suit of
homespun, who rode about among them on horseback, carrying in his hand a
cowhide whip, which he had exhibited to me with a smile, and the remark
that 'that was the thing the Yankees made so much noise about.' It was a
sufficient instrument of punishment, I thought and said, adding that I
trusted he found infrequent occasion for the exercise of it.
'Well, they're a pretty well behaved lot generally,' he answered, with
that peculiar accent derived from almost exclusive association with
negroes common throughout the South; 'but sometimes it 'pears as if the
devil had got in among 'em, and I has to lay on all round. A nigger will
be a nigger, you know.'
The subjects of this ethical remark were rather raggedly dressed, the
men in coarse jackets and trousers, the women in soiled and burnt gowns
of indefinite color, generally reefed up about the hips for convenience
in working. (Their dilapidation, it may be remarked, was due to the
close of the year; they would get new clothes, the Colonel remarked, at
Christmas.) They seemed, however, well fed, not too hardly tasked, and,
from a sensual point of view, happy and contented. The Colonel spoke to
those nearest him patronizingly, asked after absent or sick members of
their families, joked about the coming Christmas, and the 'high time'
impending, and inquired how many marriages were to come off on the
occasion--the negroes generally deferring their nuptials till the great
holiday of the year. He was answered by a perfect shout of negro
laughter, hearty, infectious, irresistible.
'Come, how many is there to be?' he repeated, joining in their mirth.
'Six!' the overseer responded, seeing that the negroes did not reply
except by continued guffaws.
'Yes, sa! _ya! ya_ bound to have a high old _Secesshum_ time dis
Christmas! _ya! ya!_' added a gray-headed old darky, quite overcome with
merriment.
'Why, you'll ruin the young ladies in finding frocks for the girls!'
said the Colonel; 'who are these future happy couples, eh?'
'Sal's Joe, sa!' 'Polly's Sue!' 'Big Sam!' 'Pinckney!' 'Cal!' 'Peter!'
'Jule!' and a variety of names were shouted out, not by the owners of
them. With a great deal of shyness and simpering and half-suppressed
grinning, and real or affected modesty on the part of the women, and
equal mirth and awkward self-consciousness on that of the aspirant
bridegrooms, the candidates for matrimony--or at least such of them as
were present, one couple and a 'boy' being away--were got together and
ranged in a row before us, hoes in hand, where they stood, to their own
and the boisterous delight of their colaborers. They appeared generally
young, healthy, and well-looking negroes, some of them handsome in an
African sense. The Colonel surveyed them with much good nature and
satisfaction; he was evidently gratified at the prospect of so many
marriages among his own negroes; unions 'off the plantation' being
looked on with disfavor by proprietors, for obvious reasons.
'Well,' he said, after addressing a few remarks to them, individually;
'I must talk with the young ladies, and see what we can do for you. If
Bones (the sobriquet of a negro-preacher, belonging to the estate) won't
be jealous, I think I'll try and get Mr. ---- over, to marry the whole
batch of you in high style, eh?'
The prospect of a white clergyman, an honor generally reserved only for
the marriages of favorite house-servants, seemed to afford unmitigated
satisfaction to the field hands. They laughed again, thanked their
master, assured him of the perfect willingness of their colored pastor
to resign his functions for the time being, in view of the superior
dignity accruing to the occasion from the presence of Mr.----, and we
rode off amid a chorus of jubilations.
'What would an abolitionist say to that scene, do you think?' asked the
Colonel, as we galloped homeward to dinner.
'Probably he'd admit that slavery has its pleasant side, but insist on
looking at both,' I answered.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 2: An inquiry instituted by Gen. Hunter, at Hilton Head, S.
C., during the past summer, for eight negroes of unmixed African
descent, resulted in the total failure of the discovery of even one. So
much for practical Southern amalgamation.]
[Footnote 3: It was generally credited in Charleston, that, subsequent
to Secession, the convention had debated the advisability of attempting
some monarchical experiment.]
WHO BEAT?
But warlike casuists can't discuss,
If we beat them, or they beat us;
We swear we beat, they swear we lie--
We'll tell you more on't _by and by_!
THE CAUSES OF THE REBELLION.
When Jefferson Davis and his coadjutors so defiantly and with so much
apparent confidence entered on the path of rebellion, they probably did
not foresee the abyss into which they were about to plunge. They rushed
eagerly forward at the first call to battle; but they hardly paused to
consider how fearful a thing it is to light the flames of civil war
among a people long accustomed to peace and security; to marshal
opposing armies drawn from the late happy dwellings of the same
community, arraying in deadly conflict father against son, and brother
against brother; to add fiery devastation and reckless destruction of
property horrid carnage and the saddest bereavements of all kinds; and
to replace brotherhood of a common country, a common ancestry, and a
glorious history, with the relentless enmities engendered by rebellion
and revolution. What wrongs and sufferings, endured by our brethren of
the South, or likely to imposed on them by the National Government,
would have been sufficient to steel their hearts against the heavy
calamities they have encountered and inflicted, or to justify the
immense waste desolation already suffered in both sections, in
consequence of this most unnatural and fratricidal war? The most
ordinary charity would lead to the belief, that if the mighty woes which
have followed in the bloody path of the rebellion could have been
anticipated, even the bold, bad leaders, and still more the infatuated
people, would have suffered much and hesitated long before assuming the
dread responsibility. Hate itself, though reënforced and supported by
all other passions of a fiendish nature, would have stood aghast at the
overwhelming avalanche of horrors which hung ready to be precipitated on
our unhappy country. It is hardly within the limits of human depravity,
that evils of such magnitude, attended by such world-wide results,
should be attributable to the deliberate will and arbitrary action of
even the worst members of the human family. For the credit of our common
humanity, let it be admitted that the authors of the fatal movement did
really believe In their avowed doctrine of peaceable secession, and that
they could not have had the least idea of the immense proportions the
civil war was destined to assume, nor of the extent of ruin and misery
it would necessarily drag in its horrid train. And if the prominent
leaders did not intend all the sad consequences of their wicked act of
treason, still less can they be considered personally responsible for
the fatal popular enthusiasm which has so thoroughly sustained them in
their section. Though full of hate and animated by a spirit of infernal
mischief, they had not the capacity to stir a nation so profoundly,
except from the fact that they were dealing with minds already well
prepared for their impassioned appeal, and with elements which had been
wrought into discord by causes long preëxisting.
In the midst of this stupendous conflict, individuals seem to be as
insignificant and powerless to control it, as if they stood, awed and
subdued by the warring elements of nature, and compelled to wait until
these should expend their fury and of themselves subside. Thirty
millions of people have been suddenly and unexpectedly divided, and the
sundered parts have been thrown into fierce and deadly antagonism.
Belligerent passions rage and boil among them with all the ungovernable
power of the angry waves when the sea is lashed by the destructive
tempest. The throes of the suffering nation are as terrible as those of
the trembling earth, when, by some internal convulsion, its very
foundations seem to be rocked on the fiery waves of the central abyss,
and every living creature on its surface becomes agitated with profound
dismay. States have been temporarily but rudely torn from their long and
peaceful connections with sister States, and great rents in the
political soil, filled with the bodies of slaughtered citizens, mark the
lines of separation. Vast armies have been assembled and organized, and
have met each other in the shock of battle, on fields made slippery with
fraternal blood, where tens of thousands have fallen to rise no
more--swept down by the relentless storm of iron hail with which brother
has greeted brother in this most unholy war. The measured tramp of the
armed hosts has shaken the continent; and the vengeful cries of the
unnatural strife have disturbed the inmost peaceful recesses of its
great central plains and mountains. From California to Texas; from
Colorado to New Mexico; from Maine to New Orleans; from the great lakes
to the coasts of the Carolinas; and along the measureless length of 'the
father of waters' and his great tributaries, the gathering armies have
marched or sailed, and swarmed to the beat of the drum and the sound of
the trumpet. More than a million of men, on both sides, have been
engaged in these tremendous movements, which unhappily correspond too
well in their unexampled magnitude with the physical character of our
magnificent country. Civil war has sacrilegiously usurped the mighty
instrumentalities of modern peaceful life; and the bloody and
destructive work of these vast armies is not less gigantic in scale than
have been the ordinary operations of our wonderful industry and our
ever-increasing commerce. The sacrifice of life, the destruction of
property, the desolation of extensive regions of beautiful and fertile
country, the vast expenditure of public means, all concur to
characterize this as the grandest and most terrible phenomenon of the
kind that has ever occurred in the history of man. To us, who are in the
midst of it, and destined to be involved in its results, whatever they
may be, it is a subject of deep and awful interest; and while the scenes
of the momentous drama are continually shifting around us and presenting
new spectacles of slaughter and disaster every day, it is hardly
possible to maintain the calmness necessary for an impartial
appreciation of the causes which have been sufficiently powerful to turn
the destructive energies of so great a nation upon itself, causing it to
rend and destroy its own body politic, so recently rejoicing in
unexampled prosperity and happiness. Some gigantic power, wielding
strength enough to produce the tremendous results already visible, must
be somewhere hidden at the source of these grand phenomena. In the
physical world, a small quantity of water or a few kegs of powder,
flashing into steam or gas by the application of heat, may be used to
overthrow the most stupendous material fabrics which the labor and
genius of men have ever been able to erect. What fatal means of
destruction, and what traitorous hand have been employed to drill and
charge the solid columns, or to mine the deep foundations of that
beautiful and majestic structure of liberty, which our fathers reared
for us with so much labor and sacrifice?
There is only one force adequate to the destructive work--the force of
false and mischievous ideas. Ideas have in them the elements of all
power. They alone move the moral and social world. Penetrating every
crevice of the social structure, they have the force of attraction and
repulsion; they consolidate and strengthen, or, like frost and heat,
they rend and crumble the hardest material, either slowly or suddenly,
as circumstances and conditions may permit or require. They have in them
all the terrible might, with all the explosive and dangerous quickness,
which belong to the most destructive of physical forces. When, in any
community, ideas are harmonious, they have an organizing power wholly
independent of their soundness or of their ultimate stability; but when
discordant and conflicting, they produce disorganization, ruin, and
chaos.
Unfortunately for our country, opposite and hostile ideas have been
growing up among us from the beginning of our national existence--nay,
from the very hour when the first cargo of slaves was landed on our
shores in the earliest days of our colonial history. Conflicting systems
have naturally grown out of these hostile ideas, which have thus
embodied themselves in the visible forms appropriate to their respective
natures. The colonial authorities protested against the policy of
importing slaves, which the mother country persisted in maintaining,
until powerful interests were gathered around it, and opinions were thus
nurtured to support and defend the fatal error. Slaveholding communities
arose out of this sinister beginning; they flourished and became
powerful States; and they finally presented the anomaly of maintaining a
noble struggle for national independence, avowedly based upon the
broadest principle of human right. They aggregated themselves,
eventually, into a federal union--a political nationality founded on
'the corner stone' of liberty, and not of slavery. In view of all the
circumstances, this was a wonderful result; but the old original
opposition, which had been incapable of resisting slavery in the days of
colonial infancy and weakness, had not yet been subdued on the day when
the nation arrived at its majority and assumed the rights of manhood.
The venerable patriots of the revolution were men of the most
enlightened and liberal views on the subject; so much so, indeed, as to
shame the degeneracy of their unworthy successors in those States which
still retain the slave institution. With the general consent, in the
Constitution of 1787, the germs of freedom were planted, while at the
same time, apparently as a matter of course, the flourishing tree of
slavery was effectually girdled, and the axe was already laid at its
root. Three very simple provisions effectually secured this momentous
result. The provision for stopping the slave trade in 1808, and the
antagonist clause for opening wide the gates of our country to the
immigration of free white men, together with that which restricted the
representation of slave populations in the proportion of three to
five--these cardinal provisions marked the certain doom of slavery. In
the lapse of time, and with the operation of ordinary social causes, the
result was as certain and inevitable as any other effect of natural
laws. In spite of the universal prevalence of slavery at first, free
labor pushed itself forward and won its way, until, in more than half
the original States, slave labor had receded before it and disappeared
forever. The wisdom of those great fundamental provisions of our
Constitution has been fully vindicated by the results of eighty years'
experience. They have worked smoothly and progressively, in perfect
conformity with that universal social law which, has made slavery a
temporary and transitional institution wherever it has existed among
civilized nations.
That such a law exists can hardly be questioned. Its operation is
apparent, not only in the partial experience of our own country, but in
that of all others where the natural social tendencies have had
unimpeded sway. No one has ever denied its existence among the white
races; for there it has operated invariably to bring certain
emancipation, whenever any nation has reached the proper position in the
scale of progress. The rule is universal; history presents no exception.
But it has been supposed that slavery of the African to the white man is
not subject to this great historical law, on account of the difference
of race, whether that difference be fundamental and ineradicable, or
whether it be only the consequence of material conditions operating
through successive centuries. Neither reason nor experience, however,
can be invoked to sustain this supposed exception to the general law.
Except in Spanish America, African slavery has disappeared from the
dependencies of European powers; and even there, every one knows, the
conditions of slavery are far more favorable to emancipation than in
the United States. Yet here, a majority of the original thirteen
colonies have wholly discarded slavery, and given themselves up to the
dominion of free white men; while others among those known as border
States, notwithstanding their apparent immobility, have long been
unconsciously preparing to follow in the same path of safety. Even
without the rebellion, it is demonstrable, we believe, that the border
States could not long have resisted the necessity for gradual, but
complete emancipation. The civil war makes it more speedy, not more
certain.
In order to establish the principle that slavery, in any part of the
United States, is destined to be an exception to that general law which
decrees universal emancipation as a certain result, it would be
necessary to show the negro to be incapable of improvement; for if he be
destined to progressive existence at all, it follows that, sooner or
later, he will reach a condition in which he no longer can or ought to
be held in subjection or subordination of any kind; and this, too,
without the supposition of any moral change or improvement on the part
of the slave owner. Indeed, the most usual and plausible, if not also
the most truly substantial of all excuses or justifications for
enslaving the African, in any form, has, from the beginning, been
predicated on the fact that his subordination to the superior
intelligence of the white man is calculated to improve him physically,
morally, and intellectually. The capacity of improvement thus admitted,
the logical result must be eventual liberation. This result is bound up
in the very nature of things, and must inevitably be developed at some
time or other, as proved by all history, as well as by any rational
analysis of human character and intellect. But, only one half the
argument has been employed to bring the mind to this irresistible
conclusion. We have omitted all examination of the subject in that other
aspect which has reference to industrial, economical, and moral
considerations affecting the vital interests of the superior race. We
need not say how much the discussion of these would serve to strengthen
the argument and confirm the conclusion already stated.
Now, it is apparent, this reasoning being admitted, that the attempt to
perpetuate slavery, which in its nature is temporary and transitional,
is contrary to the palpable laws of social existence and progress, and,
if persisted in beyond a certain point, must inevitably lead to violence
and disorder. Nature, the supreme authority, by her unalterable laws,
wills and decrees one thing; man, in his ignorance and audacity,
attempts the opposite. Conflict must necessarily follow; but the decrees
of the higher power will be inexorably enforced; they will sweep away
every structure, great or small, which man, in all the pride of his puny
strength and glimmering wisdom, may vainly seek to place as an
obstruction in their path. But, when the Southern people adopted this
false idea, that slavery could be perpetuated and made the foundation of
stable institutions, they not only placed themselves in conflict with
the decrees of natural law, which was the most important and fatal
error, but they also indicated hostility to those vital provisions of
the Constitution to which reference has already been made. No thoughtful
observer of events in this country will require evidence to sustain this
assertion. The constant evasion of the law prohibiting the slave trade,
and the impunity with which it was frequently and sometimes openly
violated, as well as the known public opinion throughout the South on
this subject and on that of European immigration, are quite sufficient
to establish it. The violent resistance, by fraud and even bloodshed, to
the settlement of the Territories by free white men, and the determined
effort to establish the law of slavery in every region, against even the
vote of the majority, and without any actual interest or necessity for
so doing, evince too plainly that the Southern people were not prepared
to accept the results of the proper workings of the Constitution, which
gave preponderance, in the number of States and in Federal
representation, to the ever-increasing free white men, against the
relatively diminishing numbers of the slaves and their owners. This
inequality of power was continually becoming greater, and evidently
could not be avoided or remedied under the Constitution, without a
complete reversal of the policy of its framers, and of the
contemporaneous construction which they placed on it.
Thus it is plain that by the legitimate and intended operation of the
Constitution, slavery had come to that stage of its existence, when it
must either prepare for its own gradual decline and ultimate
disappearance, or it must provide means for invigorating and prolonging
its life. There was only one way in which its power could be increased
and for some time yet firmly established, viz.: by the reopening of the
infamous and almost universally condemned African slave trade. This
would have accomplished a double purpose. It would have increased the
numbers of the South, and enabled them measurably to balance the
representation of the North, as well as to extend their dominion over
the Territories, and lay the foundations of new States; or, in case of
their success in destroying the Union, it would enable them to carry out
their cherished schemes of empire, as an independent power. But, what
was, perhaps, more important, it would tend to prolong, if not to
perpetuate slavery, by infusing new supplies of barbarism among the
African race, lowering their present grade of civilization, retarding
their improvement on the whole, and thus postponing the inevitable day
of their liberation.
There are strong indications, in the early proceedings of the
conspirators, that they seriously entertained the design of replenishing
their gangs of laborers from the shores of Africa. It was only after the
contest had assumed a serious aspect, and the immense difficulties of
their position began to dawn upon them, that they were compelled
ostensibly to abandon that design. They were compelled to conciliate the
border States, which were all opposed to the foreign slave trade.
Virginia, whose chief annual income was derived from the sale of her
slave population, rather than from the productions of their labor, was
an indispensable ally to the rebellion, and she would hardly assent to
the importation of Africans, in competition with her own supply.
Moreover, it began to be obvious that the aid of foreign powers would be
desirable; and their intervention, if to be obtained at all, could not
be solicited or hoped for, without the most explicit disavowal of an
intention to reëstablish a traffic which had already been denounced as
infamous and piratical by the leading powers of the world. The rebels,
therefore, were compelled by the exigencies of their condition to
prohibit the slave trade in their permanent constitution. Doubtless they
would never have done this, had they not been vigorously assailed by the
Federal Government, and forced to modify their purposes with a view to
conciliate support at home and abroad.
Thus it is apparent that, at the outset of their treason, the objects of
the conspirators, however since modified, were utterly hostile to the
letter and spirit of our Constitution, and could never be successfully
carried out without the overthrow of the Government. The conflict,
therefore, of opposite ideas, involved not only the laws of nature,
which cannot be altered or arrested, but, also, established institutions
of the most sacred character, which could hardly be expected to succumb
to the hostile doctrine without a fearful struggle.
In what manner this conflict of opinions and purposes becomes
transformed into physical combat and culminates in bloody war, is to be
easily understood when the relations of human intellect and passion are
duly considered. All philosophy teaches that the intellect is the weaker
and less active part of human nature. Passion generally predominates in
action, and men are usually more disposed to resist with violence all
unwelcome ideas, than to study and estimate them fairly by the laborious
exercise of reason. Hence, from the early historical ages, when nations
were but imperfectly enlightened, wars have been the principal means of
propagating ideas; and most of the great social truths gradually
unfolded to man, have been written in blood for his instruction and
improvement. Doubtless, if human nature had been different, if passion
and intellect in his constitution had been mingled in other proportions,
it would have been easier, if not better, to have disseminated great
truths by the more peaceful means of argument and friendly communication
of thought; and it is to be hoped that the time is not far distant when
reason will everywhere take the place of passion, and brutal force no
longer be necessary for the work of intellectual conviction and moral
enlightenment. But, evidently, this time has not yet arrived for the
people of our Southern States, whatever may be the condition in this
respect of the more civilized and enlightened portions of mankind. Nor,
indeed, could any different disposition of the Southern people he
expected in their present social condition. One third of their
population is composed of African slaves, semicivilized, systematically
deprived of knowledge, and subjected to physical coercion, instead of
being incited to usefulness by the higher motives of self-interest and
laudable ambition. To say that this is a degraded class, is only to
recognize their supreme misfortune, and not to reproach or insult them
on account of their unhappy condition. But this degradation does not
affect them alone. It reaches their oppressors also, and involves them
in its unavoidable consequences. By that inevitable law of action and
reaction which prevails alike in moral and social as in physical
phenomena, the community which has so large a portion of its members in
a condition of ignorance and brutality, must, throughout its whole body,
partake of the degradation which exists within it, and must be affected,
by the very contact, in all its feelings, sentiments, and purposes,
through the gross and ignorant passions which such an association cannot
fail to arouse. The moral level of the whole society is lowered to the
average condition of its constituent parts. To expect the controlling
power of such a community to be accessible to reason and conciliation,
would indeed argue an utter ignorance of the whole slave system and of
its influence upon the minds and hearts of those who sustain it. War is
the normal condition of those communities which cherish slavery; and
although such an institution, misplaced in connection with the
civilization of the nineteenth century, may seem to have changed its
original nature in accordance with existing circumstances, yet, when its
purposes are thwarted, it is ever ready for military violence. It is
like a native barbarian, schooled and trained to apparent civilization,
but ever inclined, at the first temptation, to fall into his natural
habits of wild and savage life. The Southern organization has already
proved itself to be peculiarly fitted for warlike operations; it has
been correspondingly unsuited to modern industrial pursuits, except for
the simplest and most primitive of all labors, those of agriculture.
Indeed, these were always the principal occupations of slaves, even in
those early stages of human progress when these classes were left at
home to till the soil, while the masters followed their ordinary
occupation of war. The same constitution of society at the present day
leaves the masters free, it is true, to engage in more humane and
elevated occupations, but not without an evident inclination or easy
adaptation for those bold and bad pursuits from which slavery originally
arose, and which it afterwards contributed so much to sustain and
prolong.
But, notwithstanding this natural inclination of slaveholders toward
commotion and war, it is not to be denied, on the other hand, that in
civil conflicts like ours, in which discordant opinions and important
local interests are involved, the issue of peace or war may to a great
extent be controlled by that party which has the right of the
controversy. Its conduct may be forbearing and conciliatory, or it may
be insulting and calculated to invite resistance. A magazine may be
dangerous in itself, for an accidental spark or an unintended friction
of apparently harmless substances may cause it to explode; but, at the
same time, the catastrophe may be brought on by the wilful folly of
those whose duty it is to provide the necessary precautions against
danger. The North has unquestionably been right in the contest on
slavery, as to all the moral and economical aspects of the question; and
generally, too, us to all the political principles involved. But has she
not been violent and abusive--so offensively obtruding into the local
affairs of the opposite section, as unnecessarily to arouse the angry
passions of the South, rather than to encourage the calm exercise of
reason? The answer to this question is by no means so obvious and easy
as may at first be supposed. The whole subject has been so complicated
with party movements, that it becomes impossible to follow the
ramifications of influence, and to determine what share individuals or
parties, on one side or the other, may have had in the responsibility
for the angry controversy, its aggravating incidents, and its general
results. This, however, is certain: the slaveholders have for many years
controlled the Democratic party, and that organization has held the
power of government in its hands during far the greater part of our
national existence. Important concessions have been made to their
interests, from time to time, during the whole period; and no single
instance of actual wrong to the South, by the violation, of any
acknowledged constitutional right, can be designated, in the whole
action of the Federal Government from the time of its establishment down
to the commencement of this rebellion.
Nor can it be denied, that while in power with the Democratic party and
ascendant in its counsels, the South has been exacting in the extreme,
and has often made demands wholly incompatible with the true interests
of liberty and humanity. Witness the offensive form in which the
fugitive slave law was passed, and its execution enforced in the North,
wholly regardless of the natural and irrepressible sympathies of a
humane people; and, on the other hand, the unnecessary and sinister
excitement deliberately aroused and kept up, in the extreme Southern
States, on this subject of fugitives, although it is well known that no
considerable losses of that kind have ever been suffered in that
quarter. So likewise as to slavery in the Territories. It has often been
admitted by Southern statesmen of the extreme school, that the
Territories recently organized, over which so much bitter controversy
has occurred, are altogether unsuited in climate and productions for the
employment of slave labor; and few will deny, whether those Territories
be physically adapted or not adapted to the labor of Africans, that the
South had not the means of populating them without an increase of slaves
from their native continent, or by a resort to some other source of
ample supply. Here, then, was a most violent and persistent effort to
secure the acknowledgment of a right to do what they had not the means
to accomplish, and what they could not obtain the means of doing without
the actual overthrow of the Government, as well as a flagrant violation
of the moral sentiments of mankind.
On this score, therefore, the account seems to be tolerably well
balanced; for if Northern men have sometimes wantonly started hostile
and injurious agitation, calculated to arouse fierce passions and to
close the ears of the Southern people to the voice of reason; these, on
the other hand, are liable to equal or greater censure for having made
impossible demands, as unnecessary as they were inadmissible, and liable
from their very extravagance to be considered as mere pretexts,
deliberately adopted with a view to aggravate the quarrel and prevent a
reconciliation. It is difficult to admit any other explanation of the
extraordinary policy of the Southern leaders. It is not improbable that
they will henceforward acknowledge such to have been the motive of their
principal political acts for many years past. The terrible events now
passing before our saddened eyes, are too solemn and weighty, not to be
understood in all their past relations and in all their present import.
They stand forth in stern and awful reality, glaring in the lurid light
of the past and casting dark shadows over the future, while they sweep
away all false pretences, and lay bare the real motives which, from the
beginning, have actuated the men who are prominent in performing the
great drama.
But these questions of transient passions and objurgatory provocation
are trivial and unimportant. They do not touch the real causes of the
difficulty; they are but the froth on the surface of the deep and mighty
current of events, which was rushing on to the gulf of rebellion. The
time had come, in the history of our country, when, by the necessary
working of its institutions, the most solemn question of the age was to
be determined. Slavery must either accept its inevitable doom and
prepare for ultimate extinction, or it must provide new means for
prolonging its existence and reëstablishing its waning power. In three
quarters of a century, the Constitution of 1787 had done its work. It
had suppressed the immigration of Africans; it had established that of
Europeans. Free white labor had demonstrated its superiority and
achieved a complete victory over slavery; and the political power, long
wielded by the Southern men, had passed forever out of their hands, as
the representatives and supporters of the slave policy. In the Senate,
in the House of Representatives, in the great majority of States, in all
the Territories, and, finally, in the very citadel of their former
power, the presidential mansion, their almost immemorial superiority had
been utterly overthrown. The Government was about to assume its true
character, as the home of liberty and the veritable asylum of humanity.
Slavery, fallen into the minority, was about to experience an
accelerated decline and eventually to disappear. To resist this doom,
was to fight against the Constitution and against destiny.
The people of the Southern States were wholly unwilling to accept the
condition to which the legitimate workings of the Constitution had
fairly brought them. Being a minority in numbers and in representative
weight, they rose up in rebellion against this unalterable fact. They
foresaw it, and, by every possible device, resisted it before it came.
When it arrived, they resisted still more madly, even to the extent of
self-destruction. The minority was arrayed not merely against the
majority, but also against the necessary results of our institutions and
against the decrees of nature: that is to say, against the law of man,
and against the law of God. The majority was expected to give way, and
to permit the engine of national progress to be reversed, our eighty
years of glorious history to be undone, and humanity itself to be turned
back upon the dreary path of its earliest and saddest struggles. This
refused, the alternative was the destruction of the Government.
It was wholly impossible for the majority to make any satisfactory
concessions to a minority infatuated with such ideas. Compromise was
impracticable, so long as the rebellious States made the perpetuity of
slavery and the predominance of its power an indispensable condition of
any arrangement. Their demands were forever inadmissible so long as they
remained in the Union; and to permit them to effect their purposes as an
independent confederacy, was equally out of the question. There is no
longer any division of sentiment on this point, whatever doubts may have
been expressed in the beginning. Separation of the States would be
disastrous and fatal to all the fragmentary governments which would take
the place of this majestic Union. The nation instinctively feels that
its unity is its salvation--that disunion will be destructive of all its
long-cherished and glorious hopes. Its permanent peace, its prosperity
and progress, its greatness, its honor, and its influence among
civilized nations--all depend on its unity. These, which are the glory
of our country to every patriotic heart, were the stumbling blocks to
the conspirators. Slavery was ambitious and discontented with its
appointed lot; it was determined; it rushed headlong to its fatal
purpose. The nation stood in its path, and would not, could not get out
of the way. This is the central fact of the whole controversy. National
unity is on the one side--the disintegration and anarchy which slavery
demands, are on the other. These are the contending forces; they are
engaged in mortal combat, and one or the other must be utterly
overthrown and destroyed. Slavery must succumb and consent to disappear,
or the Union of our fathers must go down in the dust, never again to
rise.
Can the enemies of the United States, at home or abroad, suppose that
these vital questions can ever he yielded? That the nation can
voluntarily abdicate its authority, confess the failure of its work for
three quarters of a century; permit all the purposes of its creation to
be utterly thwarted, and tamely and basely surrender all those hopes of
a glorious destiny, which we have ever been taught to cherish as the
goal of our unexampled freedom? The Southern people have been the sport
of many delusions and infatuations; but the belief of these incredible
and impossible suppositions, is the crowning folly of them all. These
restless and daring men occupied the fairest region of the globe, with a
virtual monopoly of the cotton culture. The unexampled increase of the
cotton trade and manufacture, if it had not filled their coffers with
unbounded wealth, had at least given them lavish returns for the labor
of their slaves and enabled them to live in unlimited profusion. That
under such a system they should have little provident care, but should
indulge unbounded confidence in the future, was natural enough, for they
conceived their prosperity, which cost them so little labor or anxiety,
to be in its nature permanent. When, therefore, they saw gradually
approaching the certain downfall of their power, they could not
understand that this was the result of natural causes, but attributed it
to the malignant enmity of the Government. A social organization, so
agreeable, so full of pleasures and advantages, conferring not only ease
and luxury, but also station and authority, must necessarily be right in
itself, and worthy of every effort and every sacrifice to perpetuate it.
What was the Government of the United States, that it should presume to
erect itself as an obstacle to the progress of this rich and powerful
organization? Was not the whole fabric of human industry dependent on
it, and would not foreign nations be compelled by the very helplessness
of their starving people to sustain and defend it? Why should there be
anything sacred in the institutions of the country, when they evidently
tended, by their spirit and operation, to overthrow the power of
slavery? Washington was weak, with all his goodness; Jefferson was a
demagogue; Madison had not forecast enough to see the necessary results
of his political combinations. We have grown wiser; then let us sweep
away the obstacles which were placed in our path by the weakness and
folly of our deluded forefathers. Let us prostrate the clumsy fabric
which they constructed, since the Yankees have taken possession of it,
and are working it for the benefit of Irish and German immigrants and
their descendants, and not for that of African traders and negro
masters. By some terrible fatality, it was the misfortune of the
Southern leaders to believe these delusions. They have gone so far as to
act upon them, and have seduced their people into fatal coöperation; and
these are now reaping the bloody fruits of an error so profound and
awful.
The rebellious States not only thought it practicable to overthrow the
National Government; they, doubtless, also held that result necessary to
their safety and success. This followed as a logical conclusion from
their established dogma that the slavery of the laboring class is the
only firm foundation of social order. They convinced themselves that
white men could not perform the labor necessary on cotton and sugar
plantations. The negro alone was capable of standing the fierce rays of
the Southern sun, and of successfully resisting the deadly malaria which
prevails in that region. The Southern people firmly believed this
doctrine, although their very eyes, in all parts of their territory,
except perhaps in the rice fields of South Carolina and Georgia,
thousands of white men were and are daily occupied in this very work. So
remarkable a delusion, contradicted by their own daily experience, is by
no means uncommon under similar circumstances. When the passions of men
are aroused and their interests, real or imaginary, involved, they
seldom comprehend the true significance, nor do they stop to estimate
deliberately the actual conditions, of what is going on around them.
Much less do they understand the character and tendency of great social
movements, in which they themselves are actively engaged. The strongest
intellects, in such circumstances, do not often escape the prevailing
prejudices and delusions. A sort of common moral atmosphere pervades the
whole society; opinions become homogeneous; and even the worst abuses,
sanctioned by time and by universal custom, lose all their enormity, and
command the support and approval even of good men. Palpable errors of
fact, and, indeed, every available sophistry in argument, have been
adopted by the Southern men to sustain the system of slavery.
The deluded victims of these false ideas could not conceive a different
organization of labor as possible for them. It was perhaps even natural
for them to consider the opposite system in the Northern States, as
hostile to their interests and dangerous to their peculiar property in
labor. Nor were they in fact mistaken: not that the Northern social
system need have interfered violently to overthrow their institutions;
but there was an instinctive feeling that the two could not exist
together and flourish in the same community. It was obscurely felt that
one must give way before the other, whether peacefully or violently, and
it was impossible to doubt which of the two was destined to succumb,
under the gradual but inevitable operation of our established political
forms and principles. Under the dominion of excited and unreasoning
prejudices, the Southern mind could see no distinction between the
necessary and irresistible operation of principles and the intentional
hostility of their hated rivals. Thus, with a fixed conviction of the
inevitable end of their system under the Constitution, it was vainly
expected to avoid that unwelcome fate, by destroying the Government of
the United States, which had been deliberately created by its founders
with a view to the ultimate extinction of slavery.
But, alas! this expedient has proved to be a fatal error--none more
fatal has ever misled and ruined a prosperous and gallant people.
Instead of overthrowing the Government--a consummation never to be
admitted or even thought of, with any toleration, for a single
moment--they will only bring the cherished object of their bloody
sacrifices to a sudden and disastrous end. Slavery never could have
had--never ought to have had any better security than was afforded by
the Constitution of this country, administered fairly, as it always has
been, if not with evident partiality, toward this exacting interest.
Take away from it the support of the Constitution, and, under any
circumstances, it would most assuredly fall. But the Government
assaulted, in the interest of slavery, for the increase and perpetuity
of slavery--that presents an emergency which admits of no hesitation,
and in which those who have been most tolerant toward the system, and
most ready to yield its unreasonable exactions to save the Government,
will be the first to strike it down for the same end. The nation must
survive; its enemies must succumb or perish.
Can any one deny that the Federal Government was compelled to take up
the gage of battle which the rebels had so vauntingly thrown down? Not
merely the interests of civil authority and order, but the preponderance
of freedom, and the claims of humanity on this continent, required the
most determined resistance to be made, and forbade the possibility of
quietly surrendering the destinies of the nation into the hands of the
traitors who sought to destroy it, What a spectacle of imbecility and
miserable failure in the hour of great peril would have been presented
to the indignant world, if, in this great crisis, the national
authorities had been so far beneath the occasion as to have declined the
proffered contest and basely betrayed their trust, at the first demand
of the seceding States! The everlasting scorn of mankind would have
overwhelmed and blasted the dastard and degenerate race, who would thus
have sacrificed the highest and most sacred interests of humanity.
Rather than this, welcome the civil war, with all its sacrifices!
Welcome privations, labors, taxes, wounds, death, and all the nameless
horrors that swarm along the red path of civil strife! Thousands of
precious lives and billions of treasure have already been expended, and
yet no patriotic heart thinks of turning back from the battle field,
until the Union established by our fathers shall be restored to its
integrity.
Compelled to admit the conclusions already stated, let us not do
injustice even to the men who are prominent in this iniquitous
rebellion. The most difficult of all moral problems is to determine how
far individual agency can control social or political events, and what
degree of responsibility attaches to those who have been apparently
influential in producing disastrous results. An impartial study of
history will serve to establish the truth that prominent men who, in any
age, may seem to have produced great changes by their individual will,
were merely the instruments of society by which irresistible tendencies
were carried out to their necessary ends. The very conceptions of such
men are the offspring of their times, and in order that they should have
power to accomplish their designs, the great social forces of the
community must be at their disposal, ready and inclined to perform the
work. A great rock or a mighty glacier may be so balanced at the
mountain top, that a small force--the sound of a trumpet, a mere breath
of air--may dislodge it, and cause it to descend, carrying destruction
into the valley. But the force of gravitation is necessary to bring it
down and give it the impetus of ruin. So the might of a great people may
be poised on some lofty pinnacle of human destiny; but unless there he
involved in the existing sentiments and convictions, the situation and
surroundings of that people, the elements of force and action, for good
or evil, no individual agency and no combination of men can impart the
power which they lack. All that was required among the Southern people,
for the initiation of this gigantic rebellion, was some universal
animating idea, capable of binding them together in unanimous accord,
imparting the necessary force and velocity in the direction of treason,
when started and impelled by the efforts of their leading men. Slavery
was just such a principle; it was the gravitating power which hurled
them down the precipice, and gave the tremendous impetus of ruin which
they have exerted in their awful descent. But, in truth, this
mischievous power has been accumulating ever since the Government was
founded. It grew out of the antecedents of existing society; and the
present generation is not wholly responsible for it. The misfortunes of
our fathers, their omissions and errors as well as ours, have left this
fatal legacy to descend into our hands. We may not have dealt with it
wisely, but assuredly the framers of the Constitution did not intend
slavery to be perpetual, nor did they provide for it the power to
overthrow the Government.
ON GUARD.
In the black terror-night,
On yon mist-shrouded hill,
Slowly, with footstep light,
Stealthy, and grim, and still,
Like ghost in winding sheet
Risen at midnight bell,
Over his lonely beat
Marches the sentinel!
In storm-defying cloak--
Hand on his trusty gun--
Heart, like a heart of oak--
Eye, never-setting sun;
Speaks but the challenge-shout,
All foes without the line,
Heeds but, to solve the doubt,
Watchword and countersign.
Camp-ward, the watchfires gleam
Beacon-like in the gloom;
Round them his comrades dream
Pictures of youth and home.
While in his heart the bright
Hope-fires shine everywhere,
In love's enchanting light
Memory lies dreaming there.
Faint, through the silence come
From the foes' grim array,
Growl of impatient dram
Eager for morrow's fray;
Echo of song and shout,
Curse and carousal glee,
As in a fiendish rout
Demons at revelry.
Close, in the gloomy shade--
Danger lurks ever nigh--
Grasping his dagger-blade
Crouches th' assassin spy;
Shrinks at the guardman's tread,
Quails 'fore his gleaming eyes,
Creeps back with baffled hate,
Cursing his cowardice.
Naught can beguile his bold
Unsleeping vigilance;
E'en in the fireflame, old
Visions unheeded dance.
Fearless of lurking spy,
Scornful of wassail-swell,
With an undaunted eye
Marches the sentinel.
Low, to his trusty gun
Eagerly whispers he,
'Wait, with the morning sun
March we to victory.
Fools, into Satan's clutch
Leaping ere dawn of day:
He who would fight must watch,
He who would win must pray.'
Pray! for the night hath wings;
Watch! for the foe is near;
March! till the morning brings
Fame-wreath or soldier's bier.
So shall the poet write,
When all hath ended well,
'Thus through the nation's night
Marched Freedom's sentinel.'
RAILWAY PHOTOGRAPHS.
On a fair, sunny morning in July, 1862, I started from--no matter where;
and taking my seat in a comfortable rail car, turned my face toward the
borders of Vermont.
As the road, for the greater part of the way was an up-grade, and as
there is on that particular route a way station about every two miles,
at each of which the cars unduly stop, our progress was rather slow, and
I had ample time to observe alike the wild and rugged scenery through
which we were passing, and the countenances and actions of my fellow
passengers.
For a time the picturesque character of country engaged my attention;
but getting tired, at last, of the endless succession of green
mountains, clothed to their summits with dark pine and hemlock; of
rocky, tortuous streams, their channels run almost dry by the excessive
drought; of stony fields, dotted with sheep or sprinkled with diminutive
hay cocks, or coaxed by patient cultivation into bearing a few hills of
stunted Indian corn, I began to find the interior of the car a much more
interesting field of observation. And it is wonderful how many different
aspects of human nature one can see in the course of a day's journey in
a railroad car.
The first person who attracted my notice, was a young man sitting
opposite to me. His appearance was prepossessing, not so much from
beauty of form or feature, as from the pleasant expression of his fair,
open face, adorned with side whiskers of a reddish hue, of the
_mutton-chop_ genus and _pendent_ species. He looked like an Englishman
or Anglicized Scotchman; but from some words he let drop, I am inclined
to believe he was a Western man. Be that as it may, he was evidently a
tourist, travelling for pleasure through a country that was new to him,
and desirous of gaining all the information he could concerning it.
On the hooks above him, hung a heavy blanket shawl, an umbrella, and a
little basket. In his hand he held one of Appleton's Railway Guides,' to
which he made constant reference, reading from it the names of the
places through which we passed, in tones so loud and distinct, that most
of his fellow passengers participated in the information. On the seat
beside him lay a large book in red binding, which proved to be another
guide book, and to which he referred when the smaller one failed him.
Immediately behind him sat a saturnine-looking gentleman (also provided
with a railway guide), with whom he frequently conversed, addressing him
as 'John,' and who seemed to be his travelling companion.
It was impossible not to feel interested in the movements of the
tourist. To gentlemanly manners and an air of refinement, there was
added a certain boyish simplicity that was quite refreshing to
contemplate. He seemed to fraternize with everybody, conversing freely,
first with one passenger, then with another; and apparently imparting to
all a portion of the genial good humor with which his nature was
flooded.
I was amused with a colloquy that took place, in regard to a field of
ripening grain, near which the train had stopped.
'Is that a field of wheat?' asked 'John' of his friend.
'Well, really,' said the tourist, ingenuously, 'I don't know the
difference between wheat and rye.' Then bending toward the person who
sat in front of him, he said, in an earnest manner, 'Pray, sir, can you
tell me whether that field is wheat or rye?'
The other glanced at the field rather dubiously, I thought; but answered
promptly:
'That's wheat, sir.'
It was rye, nevertheless.
I observed that the tourist had, by affability, completely won the heart
of the conductor. Whenever that official was at liberty--which, by the
way, was only for a few minutes at a time, in of the numerous stopping
places--he would sit down until the scream of the whistle summoned him
again to his duty, when he would hurry through his task, again to his
favorite seat.
The gentleman was much struck with the large quantities of wild
raspberries, that clothed the fences on either side of the track. 'There
were no raspberries,' he said, 'where he came from. At the very next
station I saw the conductor go out (although it was now raining), break
off a branch, loaded with ripe fruit, from a raspberry bush, and
returning to the car, smilingly present it to his friend. The gentleman
thanked him warmly; but instead of selfishly devouring the fruit
himself, generously shared it with all within reach of his arm, with a
diffusive benevolence that put me in mind of the free-hearted Irishman,
who, as he gave his friend the half of his potato, said: 'You're welcome
to it, if 'twere _twice as little_.'
At another place the tourist himself got out, and returned with a
handful of wayside flowers. Selecting from them a fine, blooming clover
head, and a little weed of the bulrush family, he placed them between
the leaves of his guide book, saying to his neighbor, as he did so:
'I like to preserve such little mementoes of the places I visit. Once,
when travelling at the South, I gathered a cotton bud; and would you
believe it, in the course of three months it expanded to a perfect
flower, and actually ripened its seeds?'
'Why, then,' said the other, laughingly, 'we need be at no loss for
cotton, if it can be cultivated as easily as that.'
In striking contrast to this passenger, was another, who sat a few seats
in front of him. His appearance was _not_ prepossessing, on the
contrary, 'quite the reverse.' He was a coarse, heavy-looking,
thick-set, dirty, Irish soldier, redolent of whiskey and tobacco. His
looks inspired me with profound disgust and dislike, which were not at
all lessened when I saw him take from the hands of a comrade a black
bottle, and applying it to his lips, solace himself with a 'dhrop of the
cratur.'
But I found, ere long, that there was a heart beneath that dirty
uniform, a soft kernel inside of the rude, unpromising husk. His family
were on the car; and as he sat in a lounging attitude, conversing with
his comrade (they had both been discharged, I heard them say, from the
'6th New York'), a little girl came staggering along the passage way,
holding herself up by the seats on either side. As she neared him, she
sprang to him, and placed herself between his knees; and the coarse,
weather-beaten face beamed down upon her with _such_ a smile--so full of
warm, tender, earnest affection, that I felt rebuked for my previous
poor opinion of that man.
Nor was this all. At C----, the little girl, accompanied by her mother
and several brothers and sisters, got out; while the soldier himself,
having seen them all safely deposited on the station platform, and
treated them to a hearty smack all round, returned to the car, and
resumed his seat. As the train began to move, he started up, thrust his
head out of the window, and greeted the group on the platform with
another of those bright, loving smiles, that made my heart warm to the
rough, sun-burnt soldier, in spite of tobacco, and whiskey, and dirt.
About noon we reached the pretty village of Rutland, Vt.; and there the
stentorian voice of the conductor rang out:
'Passengers for Boston, change cars!'
I hastened to obey the mandate; and the last I saw of the genial-hearted
tourist (who was going to Montreal), he was shaking hands with his
friend the conductor, whose 'beat' extended no further; and bidding him
a warm and hearty 'good-by.'
In the car in which I now found myself, no talkative tourist or
companionable conductor enlivened the way; a much more 'still-life'
order of things prevailed. But here, too, I soon found objects of
interest.
Near me sat a young officer in undress uniform, with a cicatrized bullet
wound in his cheek. He had doubtless been home on 'sick leave,' and,
though now quite restored to health, was apparently in no hurry to go
back. Far from it. Very different thoughts, I fancy, occupied his mind
than cutting rebel throats, or acquiring distinction in the 'imminent
deadly breach.' There was a lady by his side, with whom, judging by
appearances, his relations were of an extremely tender character. They
were either newly married, or about soon to 'undergo the operation.' I
incline to the latter belief; for in reply to a remark from the lady
that they would be late in arriving at their destination, I overheard
the gentleman smilingly say:
'Well, at all events, nothing can be done until _we_ get there.'
And here, in passing, I would respectfully suggest to all couples in the
peculiarly interesting position of my young fellow travellers, that a
railroad car is not the most suitable place in the world, in which to
lavish endearments on each other. However delightful the 'exercise' may
be to them, truth compels me to say that it is, to cool, uninterested,
dispassionate lookers-on, decidedly nauseating.
At the time of which I am writing, the War order, recalling all
stragglers, had not been promulgated; and no one, in travelling, could
fail to be struck with the predominance of the military element among
the population. It was unpleasant to observe, at every railroad station,
at every wayside grocery store, groups of idle, lounging soldiers,
smoking and gossiping, and having, apparently, no earthly object except
to kill time; and to know that these men, wearing their country's
uniform, and drawing their pay from her exhausted exchequer, were
lingering at home on various pretexts, and basely and deliberately
shirking their duty, while rebellion still reared its horrid front, and
the Government required every arm that could be raised in its defence.
That energetic document put a stop to all this; but the question here
arises, Can the men be in earnest? Can that patriotism be genuine which
needs to be driven to the battle field?
Ah! here is one brave fellow, who, though still lame from a recent
wound, is hastening back to the scenes where duty calls him. He comes
into the cars with his sword in one hand, and his overcoat, neatly
strapped, in the other. He looks grave and serious--doubtless he is
thinking of home, and of the dear ones he has just left. Doubtless, from
that cause springs a singular restlessness, that impels him to get out
at every stopping place, and pace backward and forward with unequal
steps, till the train starts again. As he passes and repasses me, I try
to read his countenance. There is no flinching there--no shrinking from
duty in that brave soul. In the expressive language of Scripture, he has
'put his life in his hand,' and is ready to offer it at the shrine of
his country. As I mark his firm lip, his thoughtful eye, his look of
steadfast determination, there come into my mind those grand
soul-stirring lines of Percival:
'Oh! it is great for our country to die; when ranks are contending,
Bright is the wreath of our fame; glory awaits us for aye:
Glory, that never is dim, shining on with a light never ending,
Glory, that never shall fade, never, O never, away.'
At the first station beyond Rutland, a woman with a baby--there is
always a woman with a baby in the cars--got out. In addition to the
baby, she had a carpet bag, a band box, a basket, and several paper
parcels. How she managed to carry them all, I know not; but as she was
stumbling along, thus overloaded, a lady, just entering the car with
some others, with a sudden, generous impulse, took the baby in her arms,
and, at the risk of losing her own passage, carried it to the door of
the waiting-room. Then, without stopping to receive the thanks of the
grateful mother, she rejoined her friends, smiling at her own exploit,
and all unconscious of the admiration her beautiful action had excited
in some of her fellow travellers. At the picturesque village of Bellow's
Falls, on the Connecticut river, we entered the 'Old Granite State,' but
too far south to see the 'native mountains' in their wildest grandeur
and magnificence. One specimen, however, greets us as we leave the
village--a huge, perpendicular mass of granite, rising sheer up from the
railroad to the height of a thousand feet or more; while the river, a
wild receptacle of tumbled rocks and broken falls, stretches along the
other side of the track, far beneath us. The labor expended in the
construction of this mountain road (the Cheshire Railroad) must have
been enormous, and affords a striking proof of the indomitable energy
and enterprise of the New England character. The high places have
literally been brought low, and the valleys exalted. Not once, but many
times, the train rushes through between two perpendicular walls of solid
granite, so high that not a glimpse of the sky can be seen from the car
windows; while beyond, some hollow chasm or rugged gulley has been
bridged over, or filled up with the superabundant masses of stone
excavated from the deep cuts.
It gives one a feeling of dizzy exaltation to be whirled, at the rate of
thirty or forty miles an hour--for as there is for a good part of the
way a descending grade, the velocity is tremendous--along the verge of a
mountain, and to see other mountains, with valleys, rivers, villages,
and church steeples, spread out beneath you, as if on a map. But
gradually the face of the country changes; the mountains become less
lofty, the granite formations disappear; here stretches a wide, dismal
pond of stagnant water, yellow with water lilies (_Nuphar_), and there a
field that has been burnt over, leaving the scorched and branchless
trees standing like a host of hideous spectres, until at last the
fertile and highly cultivated fields of Massachusetts smile upon us with
a pleasant, cheerful aspect.
But, pleasing as it is to contemplate well-cultivated farms and thriving
homesteads, it must be confessed that to the eye of the traveller wild
mountain scenery has a far stronger attraction; and insensibly, as the
train speeds on through the now level country, veiled in a thin,
drizzling, mist-like rain, I find my gaze and my thoughts coming back
from the outside world, and resting once more on my co-inmates of the
car.
Not far from me sits a beautiful young girl, fair haired and blue eyed,
and of a peculiarly interesting and lady-like appearance. She has a look
of bright intelligence; and on her lap lies a book, the title of which I
can read from here: 'English Literature.' But she is deaf and dumb, as
is plainly betokened by the rapid, chirological conversation going on
between her and a young man, evidently her brother, who sits beside her.
Behind them is seated an elderly lady, who seems to have charge of her,
and with whom she occasionally converses in writing.
The young man is not, like her, deprived of the organs of speech; but
his proficiency in the finger-language is perfectly marvellous. It
surpasses even her own in rapidity of movement and graceful ease. It is
most interesting to watch them, as, their eyes glancing from hand to
face, they carry on their silent conversation; the dumb girl
occasionally bursting into a hearty laugh, at some remark of her
companion. Nothing could exceed the devoted and tender attention of the
brother. Whenever any object worthy of notice in the scenery presented
itself, he would touch her lightly on the shoulder to attract attention,
and then with a few rapid movements of his fingers, direct her eyes to
it, and give an explanation of it. If she required refreshment, he
would hurry from the car, and hurry back again, with art anxious, eager
look, as if he feared something might have befallen her in his absence.
She seemed to repose implicit confidence in him; and well was he worthy
of it. Heaven's blessing rest upon you, noble young man! for your
earnest devotion to that afflicted one.
At one place, where the cars stopped, I witnessed an affecting scene--a
soldier parting from his children. Two young girls, the one about
fifteen, the other some years younger, stood in the door of the station
room, their faces swoln and discolored with weeping. Their mother, pale
and sad, stood near them; while the father, a fine looking,
strongly-built man of forty, in the uniform of an artilleryman, went
forward to see to the stowage of his knapsack and other 'traps.'
The eldest girl had succeeded in subduing her grief into 'a kind of
quiet;' but the younger--poor thing! how my heart bled to see her! She
did not sob, or cry out; but every muscle of her face quivered with
irrepressible emotion, and her trembling limbs seemed scarcely able to
support her. There was more than the sorrow of parting there; there was
of ever seeing her father again. Her sister tried to soothe hers. Her
mother spoke sharply to her; then, with true maternal instinct, went
forward to the baggage car, and brought her father back to her. The
mother herself did not shed a tear; but _her_ parting time had not come,
for she was to accompany her husband on his journey.
"Oh, father!" sobbed the poor girl; and that was all she could say, as
she flung her arms around his neck, and clung to him with a convulsive
grasp.
He spoke to her soothingly, reasoned with her, sought to calm her; but,
in the midst of his tender offices, the inexorable whistle sounded; and
tearing himself from her embrace, he sprang into the cars, accompanied
by his wife, and took a seat just in front of me. Something rose in my
throat as I looked at them, and the unbidden tears sprang to my eyes.
The man's fine, expressive countenance, sun-burnt and heavily bearded,
grave yet calm, gave evidence of the suffering the past scene had cost
him. But the face of the woman was a study. She was evidently determined
not to weep. She was resolved, by at least an outward cheerfulness, to
sustain her husband in his noble self-sacrificing patriotism. How it
would be when her own parting hour arrived, heaven knows; but then the
thought of _that_ was resolutely driven away. As we rode along, they
conversed much together, and I saw her more than once in calling back a
smile to the grave, sad face of her husband.
Brave man! tearing asunder your heart's dearest chords, to deliver your
country from the parricidal stroke of fierce rebellion. Brave woman!
concealing with Spartan fortitude the sorrow in your heart, that your
gallant husband may be strengthened in his noble aim--shall these things
be done and suffered in vain? No, no; believe it not. The clouds may
gather, reverses may come, but of this be well assured: The right _will_
triumph!
Toward the latter part of my journey, the monotony of the scene was
enlivened by a row in the cars. Cause--a woman.
During our short pause in the city of P., two men, who had been seated
together, went out, leaving some of their travelling gear on the seat.
While they absent, a lady, accompanied by a little boy, entered the car;
and, contrary to the etiquette of railroad travel, displaced their
baggage, and took possession of the seat. She was a rather
coarse-looking woman of about thirty; richly but not very appropriately
attired, in a handsome black silk dress, with a sacque or outer garment
of the same material, reaching almost to her feet. Her jet black hair
hang in thick, short curls all around her head, and was surmounted by
one of those little round hats, familiarly known as 'jockeys,' which
are so pretty and becoming on young girls, so hideous on elderly women.
Very soon, the two men came in, and claimed their seat. But the lady
refused to move. My attention was first directed to them by hearing one
of the men exclaim, in loud and angry tones:
'It's no use talking. _Your_ business, ma'am, is to _get out!_'
But an image carved in ebony could not have been more immovable than the
lady in the black silk dress.
In vain the aggrieved gentlemen represented to her that the seat was
theirs, that their baggage was there, that she had no right to take it,
etc.; she paid no attention to them.
The cars started; and the two men, there being no seat vacant, stood
over her, with wrath and defiance in their looks, waiting in grim
silence until she should comply with their request. But she gave no sign
of compliance.
After a while the conductor made his appearance. To him they excitedly
stated their grievance, but received, apparently, no redress.
Some time had elapsed, and I had forgotten the circumstance, when my
attention was suddenly aroused by seeing one of the men, now worked up
into an ungovernable passion, seize the lady by the shoulder, and
attempt to put her out by force. In a moment all was uproar and
confusion. The lady screamed. The little boy roared with fright. Every
man in the car started to his feet, and loud cries of 'Put him out!'
'Knock him down!' 'Shame! shame! to touch a woman!' resounded on every
side. Half a dozen rough hands seized the man by the collar and arms,
and amid the most indescribable noise and tumult, he was unceremoniously
hustled out of the car.
The lady seemed to regard herself as a martyr. I heard her excitedly
narrating her wrongs to one of her neighbors, finishing off with:
'I was never treated so before; never! never!'
'H'm!' said the person addressed, as if not quite coinciding with her
views of the case.
An elderly man, who sat beside me, and whose appearance and manners
plainly indicated his title to
'The grand old name of gentleman,'
had started to his feet with the rest, but having been out when the
affair commenced, was unable to comprehend what the row was about. As he
turned to me with a bewildered and inquiring look, I explained to him
the cause of the trouble, at the same time expressing my opinion that
the man had been unjustly thrust out, and that the lady was entirely to
blame.
'Certainly she was,' said he, with emphasis, 'but the conductor was
still more so. He ought to have given the men their seat, and found
another for the lady.' Then glancing contemptuously at her, the old
gentleman said:
'Oh, she's no lady--she's some common person--no _lady_ would behave in
that manner.'
As I was more than half of the old gentleman's opinion, I did not
gainsay him. After a pause, he continued, with a self-complacency that
amused me:
'Ah, I am a pretty good judge of women; and I don't believe that any
_lady_ would travel with _a thing like that_ on her head. No, no; she's
some common person, depend upon it.'
It was evident to me that the old gentleman felt very strongly on the
subject of 'jockeys;' for, not content with this sweeping thrust, he
shortly afterward renewed the subject. It happened that in this
particular car there was an appendage affixed to the back of each seat,
for the purpose of adding to the comfort of passengers, but which
signally failed of that end, as far as the bonnet-wearing part of the
community was concerned. As I was much incommoded by it, I requested the
old gentleman to turn it down for me. As he did so, he glanced again at
our neighbor in the black silk dress, who had taken off her 'jockey,'
and was comfortably reposing her raven locks on the aforesaid
appendage, and said, jocularly:
'Now, if you would wear such a thing as _that_, you could take it off,
and be quite comfortable.'
And he laughed, quietly but heartily, at what he evidently considered
the preposterousness of such an idea.
'Why is it,' continued the old gentleman, who was evidently a
philosopher, 'why is it that women must all dress exactly alike? Why
can't they dress to suit themselves, as men do? Now just look around
this crowded car--no two men have the same kind of head-covering,' It
was true; there were hats of every shape and hue; hats of felt, hats of
beaver, hats of straw, caps, military and civil--an endless variety.
'But the womens' bonnets,' added he, 'are all just alike in shape.'
'No, there are some exceptions,' said I, with a sly glance at the owner
of the jockey.' On which the old gentleman laughed again, and was about
to reply; when arrival of the train at its destination brought our
conversation to a sudden stop, and the motley assemblage, whether
crowned with hat or cap, bonnet or 'jockey,' parted company, never to
meet again on this side of the Dark River.
THE OBSTACLES TO PEACE.
A LETTER TO AN ENGLISH FRIEND.
MY DEAR SIR:--I have your late letter inquiring, as did several of its
predecessors, how soon this terrible Civil War is to end, and why we do
not close it at once by consenting to Disunion. These inquiries are
natural from your point of view; I have briefly answered them already;
but the subject is of vast importance, and we have good reason for our
desire that correct views respecting it should prevail among the
enlightened and just in Europe. We feel that we are entitled to the
earnest and active sympathy of such men as you are in every country and
of every creed. We feel that we have unjustly, by artful
misrepresentations, been deprived of this, and that we have suffered
grievously in consequence. Let me endeavor, then, to restate our
position somewhat more fully, and to show wherein and why we impeach the
justice of the criticisms to which we have been subjected even by humane
and fair-minded Englishmen.
I need not, at this late day, prove to you that Slavery is the animating
soul of the Rebellion. The fact that no compromise or adjustment of the
quarrel was proposed from any quarter during the inception and progress
of Secession, which did not relate directly and exclusively to Slavery,
is conclusive on this point. Projects for arresting the impending
calamity were abundant throughout the winter of 1860-61. Congress was
gorged with them; a volunteer 'Peace Congress' was simultaneously held
on purpose to arrest the dreaded disruption, and attended by able
Delegations from all the Border Slave and most of the Free States, many
of the former now fighting in the Rebel ranks; but no one suggested that
any conceivable legislation on any subject but Slavery was desired or
would be of the least avail. Mr. Alexander H. Stephens, the
Vice-President of the Southern Confederacy, and, perhaps, the ablest man
in it, who resisted Secession until overborne and carried away by the
swelling tide, in his first elaborate speech justifying the movement,
ably and candidly set forth the natural fitness, justice, humanity,
beneficence, and perpetuity of Slavery as the corner-stone of the new
National edifice. The 'Peace Convention' presented the Crittenden
Compromise,--that is, the positive establishment by act of Congress of
Slavery in all present and future Territories of the United States,
south of the parallel of 36° 30' north latitude--as its sole panacea for
our national ills. Nobody suggested in that Congress or any similar
conference that a permanent abolition of all duties on imports, or any
other measure unrelated to slavery, would be of the least use in
reclaiming the States which had seceded, or in arresting the secession
of others. The sole pretext for the Rebellion was and is that the Free
States had not been faithful in spirit and letter to their
constitutional obligations respecting Slavery, and could not be trusted
to do better in the future than they had done in the past. We are
involved in deadly war precisely and only because the Free States,
through the action at the ballot-box of a majority of their citizens,
refused to coöperate in or make themselves a voluntary party to the
further extension or diffusion of Human Slavery.
Bearing this fact in mind, I think you will more readily realize the
moral impossibility of our assent, save under the impulse of a last dire
necessity, to a Disunion Peace, and for these reasons:
I. Such a peace will naturally secure to Slavery the precise object, for
which the Rebellion was fomented. If we consent to divide our country,
the victorious Rebels will very fairly say, 'Give us our share of the
Federal Territories.' In other words, 'Surrender to Slavery, through
Disunion, the very thing which you refused to concede to it to prevent
Disunion.' And that demand, if we concede the right and the fact of
Secession, can with difficulty be resisted. Yet its concession involves
the moral certainty that Mexico and Cuba will in time be overrun,
conquered, absorbed, and devoted to Slavery, by the martial, aggressive,
ambitious despotism to 'which we shall have succumbed. Read Prof.
Cairnes's recent essay on 'The Slave Power,' and you will have a clearer
idea of the wolf we now hold by the ears, and which is far less
dangerous while so held than he must be if let go.
II. The boundary which Secession proffers is an unnatural and impossible
one. It not only alienates from the Union Western Texas, East Tennessee,
and other regions wherein a majority have ever been and still are
devoted to the old flag, but insists on wresting from us West
Virginia--that is, that portion of the old State of Virginia which
slopes toward the Ohio river--a region larger in area than three of the
States left in the Union put together--a region which, never having been
practically slaveholding save to a very limited extent, has ever been
preponderately and earnestly loyal--a region mainly held to-day, as it
has almost uniformly been held, by the Unionists--a region which, if
surrendered to the Confederacy, interposes a wedge of foreign territory
between Pennsylvania and Ohio, the East and the West--leaving them
connected by a shred (see map) not one hundred miles broad, and
rendering a farther and more fatal disruption of the Union wellnigh
inevitable. When the Baltimore and Ohio railroad shall traverse for the
most part a foreign country--when the Mississippi, through all the lower
part of its course, shall have been surrendered by us to a power
inevitably hostile to our growth and jealous of our prosperity--when
Wheeling and Memphis shall have become foreign ports, and Cincinnati and
St. Louis frontier cities--the gravitation of the Free West toward the
country to which her rivers are hastening and through which her bulky
staples find their natural outlet to the great highway of nations, will
be all but irresistible.
III. And this brings me to a vital point, which Europeans have seemed
determined not to comprehend--that of the extremely artificial and
fragile character of the political structure which our architects of
national ruin are laboring to construct. Mr. Chancellor Gladstone is
pleased to favor us with his opinion that Slavery cannot long survive
the recognition and perfect establishment of the Southern Confederacy. I
beg leave to assure him, in turn, that the Confederacy would not long
survive the downfall of Slavery. Let Slavery fall, and a million of
bayonets could not keep the North and South disunited even twenty years.
Apart from Slavery and its fancied necessities, there is not a
Disunionist between New Brunswick and Mexico, Canada and Cuba. The Union
is the darling of our affections, the seal of our security, the
palladium of our strength. No American ever tolerated the idea of
disunion except as he intensely loved or hated Slavery, and regarded the
Union as an obstacle to the realization of his wishes respecting it.
Were Slavery universal and supreme among us, or were it abolished and
its influence effaced, you could find more Thugs in Scotland than
Disunionists in America.
IV. And here your statesmen are making a mistake which some of them will
live to realize and rue. They suppose that our country, once fairly
divided and arrayed under two hostile governments, recognizing and no
longer at war with each other, must ever thereafter _remain_ divided.
They never reckoned more wildly. Were their wishes fully realized this
day, and the Confederacy an undisputed fact, a party would instantly
arise--nay, a party already exists--throughout the country, demanding
reunion on any terms. Archbishop Hughes has already in either hemisphere
struck the keynote of this cry. He truly says that our country cannot be
permanently divided. He unworthily adds that, if it cannot be united
under the old Constitution, it must be under a new one--in other words,
under that of the Confederacy. The Democratic party of the Free States,
abandoning the creed of its founders, which has lately ruled the Union
by virtue of a close alliance with the Slave Power of the South,--would,
the day after we had made peace by acknowledging the Southern
Confederacy, reorganize and reagitate under the banner of
'Reconstruction.' Hatred to negroes is the talisman whereby it secures
the votes by pandering to the prejudices of the most ignorant and
vicious Whites--by hostility to negro immigration (from the South),
negro suffrage, negro competition in the labor market, and to negro
humanity in general. That Slavery is the natural and fit condition of
negroes everywhere and at all times--that the abolition of Southern
Slavery would be a great calamity to the white laborers of the
North--such is the political philosophy assiduously dispensed and
greedily imbibed in the grogshops and 'back slums' of every Northern
city, and which politicians and journalists pretending to sense and
decency do not hesitate for their party's and their ambition's sake to
indorse and disseminate. And there are clashes less debased, though
scarcely more heartless, who countenance this inhuman logic. The average
mercantile sentiment of this and other great Northern cities runs thus:
'True, Slavery is unjust and barbarous--it is at once a wrong and a
mistake--but it is not _our_ blunder. Its perils are braved and its
evils endured by those who cherish it, hundreds of miles away; while _to
us_ it is a positive advantage. By obstructing the mechanical and
manufacturing development of the South, it dooms her products, her
commerce, her navigation, to build up Northern marts and factories; by
its restriction of Southern industry mainly to the plantation, it opens
broad avenues for the disposal of our wares. The sin and the sorrow are
monopolized by the South: the gain and the good enure to the North.' How
short-sighted and fallacious is this calculation, I need not here
demonstrate: suffice it that it is very generally made, and that the
result is not merely a general mercantile callousness to the iniquities
of the slave-holding system, but a current sentiment which regards it
with active and positive favor.
V. Disunion being an accepted fact, and peace restored on that basis,
the Republican party, which has ineffectually resisted the aggressions
of the Slave Power and directed the national effort to maintain and
preserve the Union, is beaten and prostrate. The Democratic party
rallies under the banner of 'Reunion at any price.' What price will be
accepted? Simply and obviously, _Adoption of the Montgomery
Constitution, and application for admission under it into the Southern
Confederacy_. True, that Constitution inexorably prescribes that
'The citizens of each State shall have the right of transit and
sojourn in any State of this Confederacy with their slaves and
other property; and the right of property in said slaves shall not
thereby be impaired.'
'Sojourn in any State,' you perceive--'not for a day, but for all time.'
That clause alone makes Slavery universal and imperative throughout the
Confederacy, and no State can evade or override it. But again:
'The Confederate States may acquire new territory * * * * in all
such territory, negro slavery, as it now exists in the Confederate
States, shall be recognised and protected by Congress and by the
territorial government; and the inhabitants of the Confederate
States and Territories shall have the right to take to such
territory any slaves lawfully held by them in any of the States or
Territories of the Confederate States.'
There are more provisions like these; but they are not needed to make
every State that adheres to the Confederacy a Slave State, and every
foot of territory which may be conceded to or acquired by it, slave
soil.
To abasement at the footstool of this triumphant wickedness, everything
venal and sordid in the yet Free States would inevitably and intensely
gravitate: commerce seeking customers; manufactures eager for markets;
shipping greedy of cargoes and freights; but, above all, Democratic
politicians hungry for power and pelf, and having the strong instinct of
American unity and nationality as their fulcrum. They would gradually
but surely undermine the mutilated fabric of our once glorious Union,
and tear away its pillars to strengthen and extend the pile whereof
Slavery is the acknowledged corner-stone. The Union would gradually
crumble and disappear, and the slaveholders' Confederacy be built up
from its ruins; the Slave Power would resume its arrested march toward
the equator, dragging the Republic behind its triumphal chariot wheels;
Mexico, Central America, Cuba, Hayti, &c., would be gradually 'annexed'
by it; domestic opposition to its dictates would be summarily suppressed
as treason or 'abolition;' the masses of our people would become like
the Roman populace under the Cæsars; the forms of a republic might for a
season be preserved, but the essence would speedily evaporate, leaving a
vast, powerful, rapacious Slave Empire, ruled by some master spirit of
the slaveholding oligarchy, and wielding all the power of the nation for
the gratification and aggrandizement of that grasping, unscrupulous
aristocracy. Having ceased to be the refuge of the hunted and the
cynosure of the oppressed, this country would thenceforth awe the
nations of the Old World by its military power, and shock them by its
profligacy, whereof the Ostend Circular and the murders and forgeries of
Kansas were but foretastes, until God in His righteous wrath should
bring upon it some visitation like the present, and hurl it from its
pinnacle in mercy to mankind.
My friend! we must fight on till we conquer. We have no alternative but
absolute ruin. Our triumph is far nearer than it seems, if we can but
animate the loyal States to put forth their whole strength for the
contest. Our armies are mustered; our leaders are chosen; our munitions
provided; and the Proclamation of Freedom is an immense make-weight
thrown into the right scale. We must and shall conquer, and save the
civilized world from a scourge more baleful than any Alaric or Attila.
Yours, truly,
HORACE GREELEY.
THANK GOD FOR ALL.
AIR--'They tell me thou'rt a favored guest;' or,' _Seht ihr drei Rosse
vor dem Wagen_.'
Look back upon the vanished years,
When all men pointed at our shame;
Think on the curses and the jeers
Which rung and clung around our name:
A byword and a mocking call--
And we may thank the South for all.
The foulness of their Southern slime
Was cast upon our Northern hands;
The curse of murder, craft, and crime
Clung to our fame in foreign lands:
Men thought us prompt to thieve or brawl--
And we may thank the South for all.
Britannia smiles on DAVIS now,
And blesses all his bayonets;
There was a time when on _our_ brow
She set the shame of Southern debts:
_We_ wore the chain--we dragged the ball--
And we may thank the South for all.
Men spoke of slaves in bitter tone,
When pointing to the stripes and stars;
'The constellation is your own,
The negro gets the bloody scars,
And yet of equal rights you bawl!'
Well--we may thank the South for all.
They stole our starlight--made us blind,
As did of old the Norland elves:
Prometheus stole it--for mankind,
But they--they kept it for themselves,
And held us like their slaves in thrall--
And we--we thanked them for it all.
Thank GOD! the pact is rent in twain!
Thank GOD! the light is all our own!
We've burst the bonds and rent the chain,
And drawn the sword, unhelped, alone:
And, holding Freedom's carnival,
We'll thank the South for that and all.
The morning-red is on our brow,
The brand, the curse grows pale with night;
The sword is in our hands, and now
All gleams in glory's golden light:
We're _free_! Ye nations, hear the call--
We see! and now thank GOD for all!
A MERCHANT'S STORY.
'All of which I saw, and part of which I was.'
CHAPTER VII.
It was nine o'clock at night, when the stage halted before the door of
that purgatory for Southern pilgrims, the 'Washington House,' Newbern.
As we dismounted from the box, Preston said to me:
'You order supper and a room, while I attend to Phyllis and the chidren.
I'll join you presently.'
Seeing that our luggage was safely deposited on the piazza, I entered
the hotel in quest of the landlord. The 'office' was a long, low, dingy
apartment, with tobacco-stained floor, blackened ceiling, and greasy
brown walls, ornamented here and there with advertisements of runaway
slaves, auction notices of 'mules, negroes, and other property,' a few
dusty maps, and a number of unframed wood cuts of prominent political
characters. Among the latter, Calhoun, in bristling hair, cadaverous
face, and high shirt collar, looked 'the unkindest cut of all.' Behind
the bar, which extended across the further end of the room, was drawn up
a whole regiment of glass decanters, and stout black bottles, full of
spirit, and ready for active service. A generous wood fire roared and
crackled on a broad hearthstone, and in a semi circle around it, in
every conceivable attitude, were collected about twenty planters' sons,
village shopkeepers, turpentine farmers, itinerant horse dealers, and
cattle drovers. Some had their heels a trifle higher than their heads,
some were seated on the knees of others, some were lounging on the arms
of chairs, and some were stretched at full length on a pile of trunks
near by; but all were too much engaged in smoking, expectorating, and
listening to a horse-trading narrative, which one of their number was
relating, to heed my entrance.
'Wall, ye see,' said the story teller, 'Dick come the possum over him;
made b'lieve he was drunk, though he warn't, no more'n I ar; but he tuk
darned good keer ter see the ole man get well slewed, he did. Wall, wen
the ole feller wus pooty well primed, Dick stuck his arm inter his'n,
toted him off ter the stable, and fotched out a ole spavin'd,
wind-galled, used-up, broken-down critter, thet couldn't gwo a rod,
'cept ye got another hoss to haul him; and says he: 'See thar; thar's a
perfect paragone o' hossflesh; a raal Arab; nimble's a cricket; sunder'n
a nut; gentler'n a cooin' dove, and faster'n a tornado! I doan't sell
'im fur nary fault, and ye couldn't buy 'im fur no price, ef I warn't
hard put. Come, now, what d'ye say? I'll put 'im ter ye fur one fifty,
an' it's less'n he cost, it ar!' Wall, the ole man tuk--swallowed the
critter whole--tuk him down without greasing, he did! ha! ha!'
'Ha! ha!' repeated the listening crowd, and 'Yah! yah!' echoed three or
four well-dressed darkies, who were standing near the doorway: 'Sarved
'im right; he'm a mean ole cuss, he am;' chimed in one of the latter
gentry, as he added another guffaw, and, swaying his body back and
forth, brought his hands down on his thighs with a concussion which sent
a thick cloud of tobacco smoke, of his own manufacture, circling to the
other side of the room.
When the merriment had somewhat subsided, I stepped toward the
assemblage, and inquired if the landlord were present. There was no
reply for a few moments; then one of the embryo planters, speaking to a
showily-dressed young man near him, remarked:
'Get up, and tend ter the stranger; ye arn't fit to tote vituals to a
nigger.'
The young man rose very deliberately, and said:
'Want ter see the keeper, do ye?'
'Yes, sir, I want, a room, and supper for two, at once.'
'Room and supper fur two?'
'Yes, a room with a fire and two beds.'
'Whar d'ye come from?'
'From Goldsboro'; just in by the stage.'
'Oh! stage's in, is it?'
'Yes, sir, the stage is in. You'll oblige me by attending to us at once;
we are hungry and tired.'
He looked at me for a moment without speaking, then leisurely walked out
of the front door. Two or three of the loungers followed, but the young
gentleman who had first spoken rose and politely tendered me a seat.
Thanking him, I took the chair vacated by the bartender, and proceeded
to warm my hands and limbs, which were thoroughly chilled by the long
ride in the cold air.
'Cold, riding after nightfall, sir,' said the young man, who I now
observed was the Mr. Gaston whom the trader had so unceremoniously
ejected from the shooting ground.
'Yes, sir, it _is_ cold riding on the box.'
'And our rattle-down coaches are so mighty slow; you don't have such
fixin's at the North.'
'No, sir; but why do you suppose I'm from the North? I've passed for a
Southerner to-day.'
'Oh, I know you Yankees all to pieces; I've lived among you.'
'At college, I suppose?'
'Yes, at Harvard.'
'You graduated early.'
'No, I didn't graduate, I _left_--left for my health. Ha! ha I' and he
broke into a merry fit of laughter, in which several of his companions
joined.
'Taken with sudden illness, as you were at the turkey-match, to-day?' I
inquired good humoredly, and in a tone that could not give offence.
'Yes, the same disease, I swear. Ha! ha!'
'Ha! ha!' echoed his companions,
'The stranger's inter ye, Gus--inter ye a feet! Come, ye must treat,'
shouted the teller of the horse story.
This last individual was tall, raw-boned, and squarely built, with
broad, heavy features, and dull, cold, snake-like eyes. His black,
unkempt hair, and long, wiry beard, fell round his face like tow round a
mop handle, and his coarse linsey clothes, patched in many places, and
smeared with tar and tobacco juice, fitted him as a shirt might fit a
bean pole. The legs of his pantaloons were thrust inside of his boots,
and he wore a fuzzy woollen hat with battered crown and a broad flapping
brim. He looked the very picture of an ex-overseer under a cloud, or an
itinerant sporting man, anxious for something to turn up.
I declined the proffered drink, but the company rose and approached the
counter, while the young planter bade the bartender, who had just
reëntered, 'trot out the consolation.'
'Down with the pewter, then, Mr. Gaston,' said the liquor vender. 'No
pay, no drinks, is the rule in this yere shanty.'
The young man tossed him a half-eagle. His companions proceeded to
imbibe a variety of compounds, while he poured out nearly a glass full
of raw whiskey, and drank it down at a swallow. As he replaced the glass
on the counter, a slatternly negro woman thrust her head in at the
doorway, saying:
'Dar's a 'ooman heah; a wite 'ooman, dat am 'ticler anxyus fur de honor
of Mister Mulock's 'quaintance. She'm in de sittin' room.'
'Thar's a call fur you, Bony,' said the young planter to the story
teller; 'some young woman with designs on your landed possessions; ha!
ha!'
Without replying, the other followed the serving woman from the room. He
was the absconding polygamist for whom the tobacco-chewing female had
ventured all the way from Chalk-Leod.
'Is supper ready, sir?' I asked of the bartender.
'Supper? I reckon so. Ye'd better go and see,' was the civil reply.
'Where's the dining room?'
'Over thar--'tother side the hall.'
Passing out of the room, I met Preston, and we proceeded together to the
supper table. When we were seated, I remarked:
'By the way, I have just seen the husband of our stage coach
acquaintance. He's a rum-looking customer.'
'Yes, I suppose he has taken to drinking again. The whipping and the
loss of Phylly have probably worked on him.'
'You don't mean to say _he_ is Phylly's husband?'
'Yes, didn't I tell you?'
'No. Two wives under one roof! Well, that's more than most white men can
afford.'
'That's a fact. It's an awkward business; what had better be done?'
'Done? Why, let him go. You'll be well rid of him. He's a worthless
fellow, or nature dosn't write English. I read 'scoundrel' all over his
face.'
'He has a bad nature; but Phylly's influence on him is good, and she
loves him.'
'_Loves_ him! Well, there's no accounting for tastes.'
'That's true,' replied the Squire; 'but we all love those whom we do
good to. She married Mulock after nursing him through a long illness,
and she has tamed him, though it was taming a wolf.'
We soon left the table. Preston went into the sitting room, while I
resumed my seat by the bar room fire.
I had nearly finished my evening cigar, when Preston came into the
office, Shaking hands with young Gaston and a number of the others, who
all greeted him with marked respect. He said to me:
'What shall I do? Mulock's wife will let him off if I pay her a hundred
dollars.'
'Pay her a hundred dollars!' I exclaimed.
'Yes; she'll release him to Phyllis for that--give a paper to that
effect. What would you do?
The idea was so ludicrous that, in spite of the Squire's serious manner,
I burst into a fit of laughter. Between the mirthful explosions I
managed to say:
'Pardon me, Preston; but I never before heard of selling a husband--at
so low a price. Ha! ha! Do not buy him; he isn't worth the money.' Then
seeing that he appeared hurt, I added: 'What does Phyllis say?'
'I haven't told her; she'll feel badly to have him go, but it's not
right for me to pay the money. I should pay my debts first.'
Mr. Gaston, whose attention had been attracted to our conversation by my
rather boisterous conversation, now said, making a strong effort to
appear serious:
'Excuse me, Squire, but what is it? Has Mulock two wives; and does one
offer to sell out for a hundred dollars?'
'Yes,' replied Preston, in a tone which showed a decided disinclination
to conversation with him.
'Buy him, then, Squire; I'll give you twenty-five dollars for the
bargain, on the spot; I will, I swear;' and, unable to contain himself
longer, he burst into an uproarious fit of merriment, in which the
by-sitters joined.
Preston's face darkened, and in a grave voice he said:
'Young man, you forget yourself. I am sorry to see you so wanting in
respect to others, and--yourself.'
'I beg your pardon, Mr. Preston,' replied Gaston, in an apologetic tone;
'I meant no offence, sir--upon my soul, I did not. If Mulock is for sale
for a--'here his risibilities again gave way--'for a hundred dollars,
I'll buy him; for it's cheap; I swear it's cheap, seeing he's a white
man.'
Preston, by this time really angered, was about to make a harsh reply,
when I interrupted him:
'Never mind, my friend, let Mr. Gaston buy him; he can afford it. Do it,
Mr. Gaston; it will be both a capital joke and a good action, do it _at
once_.'
The glass of raw whiskey had somewhat 'elevated' the young planter, and
my conscience demurred a little at the advice I gave him; but I
recovered my usual self-complacency on reflecting that he would
undoubtedly put the money to a much worse use.
Saying, 'D----d if I won't,' Gaston drew forth his purse, and counted
out a number of half eagles. Finding he had not enough, he turned to
another young planter, and said:
'Here, Bob, I'm short; lend me fifty dollars.'
'Bob' produced his wallet, and, without counting them, handed him a roll
of bills.
'Now, stranger, come along, I shall want you to draw up the papers and
witness the trade; ha! ha! Is she in the parlor, Squire?'
'Yes,' said Preston, taking the seat I had vacated.
The young man then put his arm into mine, and we proceeded to the
'sitting room.'
Mulock was seated before the fire, gazing intently at the blaze. His
wife sat opposite, speaking earnestly to him. She every now and then
wetted a short piece of wood with saliva, and dipping it into a snuff
bottle, mopped her teeth and gums with the savory powder. She was--as
her husband might have said--a perfect 'paragone' of 'poor white'
womanhood, with all the accomplishments of her class, smoking, chewing,
snuff dipping, and whiskey drinking.
As we approached, she lifted her eyes, and Gaston said to her:
'Are you the lady who has a man for sale--a likely white man?'
'Wall, stranger, I reckon I'm the 'ooman, Thet ar feller's my husband,
an' he karn't git off 'cept I git a hundred dollars.'
'Will you give a bill of sale, releasing all your right, title, and
interest in him to me, if I pay you a hundred dollars?'
'Yes, I wull--ter ye, or ter ony-body.'
'Wall, now,' continued Gaston, imitating her tone, 'karn't yo take a
trifle less'n thet--eighty or so?'
'No, stranger, nary dime under thet. I'm gol-durned ef I does.'
'Well, Mulock, what do you say? Are you willing to be sold?'
'I haint willin' ter be laff'd at by ye, nor nobody else,' replied
Mulock, rising, and turning fiercely on the planter. 'I'll larrup the
d----d 'ooman ony how, and ye, too, ef ye say much more.'
'Come, Mulock,' said the young man, coolly, but firmly, 'be civil, or
I'll let daylight through you before you're a minute older. I'm disposed
to do you a good turn, but you must be civil, by----.'
'Wall, do as ye likes, Gus; onything'll suit me,' replied Mulock,
resuming his previous position.
'But, d---- you, if I spend a hundred on you, you must go to work like a
man, and try to pay it. I wouldn't do it anyhow, if it warn't for
Phylly.'
'But Phylly's gone,' said Mulock in a dejected tone; 'gone--toted off by
thet d----d trader. If I hadn't a ben in the cussed jug, I'd a killed
him.'
'No she isn't gone; she's here--Preston's bought her.'
Mulock sprang to his feet; his dull, cold eye lighted, and seizing the
young man by the arm, he exclaimed:
'Doan't ye lie ter me, Gus; _is_ she yere?'
'Yes, so Bob says; he saw her get out of the stage.'
Mulock made no reply, but strode toward the door. Gaston said quickly:
'Hold on, Bony, don't vamoose just yet. D----d if I'll help you out of
this if you don't promise to work like an honest fellow to pay me.'
'I will, Gus; I'll leave off drinkin' ter onst; I'll work day and night,
I will.'
'Well, my rustic beauty, are you ready to sign a bill of sale?'
'Yas; but I reckon, bein's as ye set so high on Bony, ye kin go a trifle
more'n thet; jest the 'spences down yere?'
'Not another red,' said Gaston.
'Wall, he ain't of no account, nohow; I reckon he ain't wuth no more.
Count out th' pewter.'
I procured writing utensils from the bar room, and in a few moments drew
up a paper, by which, in consideration of one hundred dollars, to her in
hand, that day paid, Jane Mulock, of Chalk Level, in the county of
Harnet, and State of North Carolina, did sell, assign, transfer, make
over, convey, and forever quit claim unto Phyllis Preston, otherwise
known as Phyllis Mulock, of the town of Newbern, in the county of
Craven, and State aforesaid, all her right, title, and interest in and
to the body, soul, wearing apparel, and other possessions, of one
Napoleon Bonaparte Mulock, whom the said Jane charged with being her
husband; and also all claims or demands she had on him for a support,
she binding herself never to institute any suit or suits against him in
any court of the State of North Carolina, or of any other State, or of
the United States, for the crime of bigamy, or for any other crime,
misdemeanor, or abomination committed against herself at any time prior
to the date of said instrument. In testimony whereof she, the said Jane
Mulock, did sign the sign of the cross, and affix her seal to a half
sheet of dirty paper, whereto Gustavus A. Gaston, and the writer hereof,
were witnesses.[4]
Both Mulock and his wife thought the instrument a valid one. He again
took Phyllis to his bosom, and Jane, I have been told, married another
husband. In view of the latter fact, I have never been able to wholly
satisfy my conscience for the part I took in the transaction.