In so many arid forms which states encrust themselves with, once in a
century, if so often, a poetic act and record occur. These are the jets
of thought into affairs, when, roused by danger or inspired by genius,
the political leaders of the day break the else insurmountable routine of
class and local legislation, and take a step forward in the direction of
catholic and universal interests. Every step in the history of political
liberty is a sally of the human mind into the untried Future, and has
the interest of genius, and is fruitful in heroic anecdotes. Liberty
is a slow fruit. It comes, like religion, for short periods, and in
rare conditions, as if awaiting a culture of the race which shall make
it organic and permanent. Such moments of expansion in modern history
were the Confession of Augsburg, the plantation of America, the English
Commonwealth of 1648, the Declaration of American Independence in 1776,
the British emancipation of slaves in the West Indies, the passage of the
Reform Bill, the repeal of the Corn-Laws, the Magnetic Ocean Telegraph,
though yet imperfect, the passage of the Homestead Bill in the last
Congress, and now, eminently, President Lincoln’s Proclamation on the
twenty-second of September. These are acts of great scope, working on
a long future and on permanent interests, and honoring alike those who
initiate and those who receive them. These measures provoke no noisy joy,
but are received into a sympathy so deep as to apprise us that mankind
are greater and better than we know.[168] At such times it appears as
if a new public were created to greet the new event. It is as when an
orator, having ended the compliments and pleasantries with which he
conciliated attention, and having run over the superficial fitness
and commodities of the measure he urges, suddenly, lending himself to
some happy inspiration, announces with vibrating voice the grand human
principles involved;—the bravos and wits who greeted him loudly thus far
are surprised and overawed; a new audience is found in the heart of the
assembly,—an audience hitherto passive and unconcerned, now at last so
searched and kindled that they come forward, every one a representative
of mankind, standing for all nationalities.
The extreme moderation with which the President advanced to his
design,—his long-avowed expectant policy, as if he chose to be strictly
the executive of the best public sentiment of the country, waiting only
till it should be unmistakably pronounced,—so fair a mind that none ever
listened so patiently to such extreme varieties of opinion,—so reticent
that his decision has taken all parties by surprise, whilst yet it is
just the sequel of his prior acts,—the firm tone in which he announces
it, without inflation or surplusage,—all these have bespoken such favor
to the act that, great as the popularity of the President has been, we
are beginning to think that we have underestimated the capacity and
virtue which the Divine Providence has made an instrument of benefit
so vast. He has been permitted to do more for America than any other
American man. He is well entitled to the most indulgent construction.
Forget all that we thought shortcomings, every mistake, every delay. In
the extreme embarrassments of his part, call these endurance, wisdom,
magnanimity; illuminated, as they now are, by this dazzling success.
When we consider the immense opposition that has been neutralized or
converted by the progress of the war (for it is not long since the
President anticipated the resignation of a large number of officers in
the army, and the secession of three states, on the promulgation of this
policy),—when we see how the great stake which foreign nations hold
in our affairs has recently brought every European power as a client
into this court, and it became every day more apparent what gigantic
and what remote interests were to be affected by the decision of the
President,—one can hardly say the deliberation was too long. Against all
timorous counsels he had the courage to seize the moment; and such was
his position, and such the felicity attending the action, that he has
replaced government in the good graces of mankind. “Better is virtue in
the sovereign than plenty in the season,” say the Chinese. ’Tis wonderful
what power is, and how ill it is used, and how its ill use makes life
mean, and the sunshine dark. Life in America had lost much of its
attraction in the later years. The virtues of a good magistrate undo a
world of mischief, and, because Nature works with rectitude, seem vastly
more potent than the acts of bad governors, which are ever tempered by
the good nature in the people, and the incessant resistance which fraud
and violence encounter. The acts of good governors work a geometrical
ratio, as one midsummer day seems to repair the damage of a year of war.
A day which most of us dared not hope to see, an event worth the dreadful
war, worth its costs and uncertainties, seems now to be close before
us. October, November, December will have passed over beating hearts
and plotting brains: then the hour will strike, and all men of African
descent who have faculty enough to find their way to our lines are
assured of the protection of American law.
It is by no means necessary that this measure should be suddenly marked
by any signal results on the negroes or on the rebel masters. The force
of the act is that it commits the country to this justice,—that it
compels the innumerable officers, civil, military, naval, of the Republic
to range themselves on the line of this equity. It draws the fashion to
this side. It is not a measure that admits of being taken back. Done,
it cannot be undone by a new administration. For slavery overpowers the
disgust of the moral sentiment only through immemorial usage. It cannot
be introduced as an improvement of the nineteenth century. This act makes
that the lives of our heroes have not been sacrificed in vain. It makes a
victory of our defeats. Our hurts are healed; the health of the nation
is repaired. With a victory like this, we can stand many disasters. It
does not promise the redemption of the black race; that lies not with
us: but it relieves it of our opposition. The President by this act has
paroled all the slaves in America; they will no more fight against us:
and it relieves our race once for all of its crime and false position.
The first condition of success is secured in putting ourselves right. We
have recovered ourselves from our false position, and planted ourselves
on a law of Nature:—
“If that fail,
The pillared firmament is rottenness,
And earth’s base built on stubble.”[169]
The government has assured itself of the best constituency in the world:
every spark of intellect, every virtuous feeling, every religious heart,
every man of honor, every poet, every philosopher, the generosity of the
cities, the health of the country, the strong arms of the mechanic, the
endurance of farmers, the passionate conscience of women, the sympathy of
distant nations,—all rally to its support.
Of course, we are assuming the firmness of the policy thus declared. It
must not be a paper proclamation. We confide that Mr. Lincoln is in
earnest, and as he has been slow in making up his mind, has resisted the
importunacy of parties and of events to the latest moment, he will be
as absolute in his adhesion. Not only will he repeat and follow up his
stroke, but the nation will add its irresistible strength. If the ruler
has duties, so has the citizen. In times like these, when the nation is
imperilled, what man can, without shame, receive good news from day to
day without giving good news of himself? What right has any one to read
in the journals tidings of victories, if he has not bought them by his
own valor, treasure, personal sacrifice, or by service as good in his
own department? With this blot removed from our national honor, this
heavy load lifted off the national heart, we shall not fear henceforward
to show our faces among mankind. We shall cease to be hypocrites and
pretenders, but what we have styled our free institutions will be
such.[170]
In the light of this event the public distress begins to be removed.
What if the brokers’ quotations show our stocks discredited, and the
gold dollar costs one hundred and twenty-seven cents? These tables are
fallacious. Every acre in the free states gained substantial value on
the twenty-second of September. The cause of disunion and war has been
reached and begun to be removed. Every man’s house-lot and garden are
relieved of the malaria which the purest winds and strongest sunshine
could not penetrate and purge. The territory of the Union shines to-day
with a lustre which every European emigrant can discern from far; a sign
of inmost security and permanence. Is it feared that taxes will check
immigration? That depends on what the taxes are spent for. If they go to
fill up this yawning Dismal Swamp, which engulfed armies and populations,
and created plague, and neutralized hitherto all the vast capabilities of
this continent,—then this taxation, which makes the land wholesome and
habitable, and will draw all men unto it, is the best investment in which
property-holder ever lodged his earnings.
Whilst we have pointed out the opportuneness of the Proclamation, it
remains to be said that the President had no choice. He might look
wistfully for what variety of courses lay open to him; every line but
one was closed up with fire. This one, too, bristled with danger,
but through it was the sole safety. The measure he has adopted was
imperative. It is wonderful to see the unseasonable senility of what
is called the Peace Party, through all its masks, blinding their eyes
to the main feature of the war, namely, its inevitableness. The war
existed long before the cannonade of Sumter, and could not be postponed.
It might have begun otherwise or elsewhere, but war was in the minds
and bones of the combatants, it was written on the iron leaf, and you
might as easily dodge gravitation. If we had consented to a peaceable
secession of the rebels, the divided sentiment of the border states made
peaceable secession impossible, the insatiable temper of the South made
it impossible, and the slaves on the border, wherever the border might
be, were an incessant fuel to rekindle the fire. Give the Confederacy
New Orleans, Charleston, and Richmond, and they would have demanded
St. Louis and Baltimore. Give them these, and they would have insisted
on Washington. Give them Washington, and they would have assumed the
army and navy, and, through these, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston.
It looks as if the battle-field would have been at least as large in
that event as it is now. The war was formidable, but could not be
avoided. The war was and is an immense mischief, but brought with it the
immense benefit of drawing a line and rallying the free states to fix
it impassably,—preventing the whole force of Southern connection and
influence throughout the North from distracting every city with endless
confusion, detaching that force and reducing it to handfuls, and, in the
progress of hostilities, disinfecting us of our habitual proclivity,
through the affection of trade and the traditions of the Democratic
party, to follow Southern leading.[171]
These necessities which have dictated the conduct of the federal
government are overlooked especially by our foreign critics. The popular
statement of the opponents of the war abroad is the impossibility of our
success. “If you could add,” say they, “to your strength the whole army
of England, of France and of Austria, you could not coerce eight millions
of people to come under this government against their will.” This is
an odd thing for an Englishman, a Frenchman or an Austrian to say, who
remembers Europe of the last seventy years,—the condition of Italy, until
1859,—of Poland, since 1793,—of France, of French Algiers,—of British
Ireland, and British India. But granting the truth, rightly read, of the
historical aphorism, that “the people always conquer,” it is to be noted
that, in the Southern States, the tenure of land and the local laws, with
slavery, give the social system not a democratic but an aristocratic
complexion; and those states have shown every year a more hostile and
aggressive temper, until the instinct of self-preservation forced us into
the war. And the aim of the war on our part is indicated by the aim of
the President’s Proclamation, namely, to break up the false combination
of Southern society, to destroy the piratic feature in it which makes it
our enemy only as it is the enemy of the human race, and so allow its
reconstruction on a just and healthful basis. Then new affinities will
act, the old repulsion will cease, and, the cause of war being removed,
Nature and trade may be trusted to establish a lasting peace.
We think we cannot overstate the wisdom and benefit of this act of the
government. The malignant cry of the Secession press within the free
states, and the recent action of the Confederate Congress, are decisive
as to its efficiency and correctness of aim. Not less so is the silent
joy which has greeted it in all generous hearts, and the new hope it has
breathed into the world. It was well to delay the steamers at the wharves
until this edict could be put on board. It will be an insurance to the
ship as it goes plunging through the sea with glad tidings to all people.
Happy are the young, who find the pestilence cleansed out of the earth,
leaving open to them an honest career. Happy the old, who see Nature
purified before they depart. Do not let the dying die: hold them back to
this world, until you have charged their ear and heart with this message
to other spiritual societies, announcing the melioration of our planet:—
“Incertainties now crown themselves assured,
And Peace proclaims olives of endless age.”[172]
Meantime that ill-fated, much-injured race which the Proclamation
respects will lose somewhat of the dejection sculptured for ages in their
bronzed countenance, uttered in the wailing of their plaintive music,—a
race naturally benevolent, docile, industrious, and whose very miseries
sprang from their great talent for usefulness, which, in a more moral
age, will not only defend their independence, but will give them a rank
among nations.[173]