Hardly had I got warm in my place when the mutterings of war were in
the air. During the autumn of 1859, on the 16th of October, John Brown
planned his attack on Harper's Ferry. His was a portentous figure. His
position in history--greater than his achievements would warrant--was
due partly to his position as herald of the coming strife, but mainly to
his personal qualities. These were colossal; however much one may
criticise his particular deeds, or the details of his motive, these
qualities can not be exalted too highly. His courage, heroism, patience,
fortitude, were most extraordinary. Even Governor Wise, the man whose
duty it was to see him tried and executed as a felon, said of him; "They
are mistaken who take Brown to be a madman. He is a bundle of the best
nerves I ever saw; cut and thrust and bleeding and in bonds. He is a man
of clear head, of courage, fortitude, and simple ingenuousness. He is
cool, collected, indomitable; and it is but just to him to say that he
was humane to his prisoners, and he inspired me with great trust in his
integrity as a man of truth." Colonel Washington, another Virginia
witness, testified to the extraordinary coolness with which Brown felt
the pulse of his dying son, while he held his own rifle in the other
hand, and cheered on his men. His character made his prison cell a
shrine. On the day of his execution, December 2, 1859, he stood under
the gallows with the noose round his neck for full ten minutes while
military evolutions were performed; he never wavered a moment, and died
with nerves still subject to his iron will. He was a Calvinistic
believer in predestination; a real Covenanter, more like the Scotch
Covenanters of two centuries ago than anything we know of to-day. He was
an Old-Testament man, and like all fanatics was indifferent to death,
either that of other men or his own. His anti-slavery zeal began in his
youth. He early took an oath to make war against slavery, and, it is
said, called his older sons together on one occasion and made them
pledge themselves, kneeling in prayer, to the anti-slavery crusade. This
purpose he always bore in mind, whatever else he was doing; he even
chose the spot for his attempt--the mountains which Washington had
selected as a final retreat should he be defeated by the English. Nearly
nine years before his own death, he exhorted the members of the "League
of Gileadites" to stand by one another and by their friends as long as a
drop of blood remained and be hanged, if they must, but to tell no tales
out of school.
Then came the war. Though its physical aspect,--the loss of treasure and
of blood--was most affecting, I cannot but think that its mental and
moral aspect has been underrated. Its whole justification lay in its
moral character, and I must believe that full justice has never been
done to those who were obliged to stay at home and uphold this feature.
The preacher of the Gospel of Peace had as much as he could do to
overcome the horrors of war; and the preacher of Righteousness was
engaged all the time in promoting the cause of justice. They who went to
the front had the excitement of battle, the pleasures of camp-life, the
assistance of comradeship, the comfort of sympathy. The preacher had
none of these. Every day rumors were reaching his ears; "extras" were
flying about in the silence; he had to comfort people under defeat, to
humble them in hours of victory; to interpret the conflict in accordance
with the principles of equity; to keep alive the moral issues of the
struggle. This was an incessant weariness and anxiety; to fight foes one
could not see, and to uphold a cause that was discredited, fell to his
portion; it is no wonder that when the war was over he was spent and
aged.
An illustration of a part of what he had to contend with is found in
the riot of the summer of 1863. This was an anti-abolitionist riot, a
fierce protest against the conscription, and at the same time an
uprising against the government, which was supposed to maintain a war of
the blacks against the whites. The riot was directed against the negroes
and the abolitionists, and was pitiless and ferocious in the extreme. It
was my lot to be in New York in that dreadful week in July. I was
visiting friends in the upper part of the town when the uproar began. As
I walked home down Madison Avenue a group of rough men met me; one of
them snatched at my watch chain, and I should have been maltreated had
not more attractive game in the shape of people in a buggy drawn away
the attention of my assailants. I reached my home in safety. The next
morning, as I walked about the city, there were groups of men standing
idle, or armed with missiles, in almost every street. Had the mob been
organized then it might have done more mischief than it did, for the
inhabitants of the city were unprepared and unprotected. As I stood at
night on my roof, I could see the fires in different parts of the town,
and hear the shots. An arsenal stood on Seventh Avenue, near my house,
full of arms and ammunition which the insurgents wanted. When the United
States troops arrived, they defended this arsenal. Cannons were pointed
up and down the street, guards were posted, officers with their clanking
swords marched up and down before my door. The riot lasted three
days,--from the 13th to the 16th. On the following Sunday a sermon was
preached which gives expression to the better thoughts of the wisest
people, and from which accordingly extracts are made:
Of all the dreadful and melancholy passages in the history of human
progress, none, to a thoughtful man, are more dreadful or
melancholy than those which tell how men have resisted, pushed
away, reviled, cursed, beaten, mobbed, crucified their benefactors.
It does seem, as we read them, as if the most dreaded thing on
earth had been the personal, the domestic, the social welfare; as
if the deepest anxiety on the part of men of all sorts was an
anxiety to escape from their health and salvation; as if the
profoundest dread was a dread of mending their estates, and their
utmost horror was a horror of heaven! It does seem, as we read, as
if happiness, prosperity, success, were the pet aversion of
mankind; as if the signs that were looked for with the most
agonized apprehension were the signs that the kingdom of heaven was
at hand.... We saw this conspicuously and dismally exemplified in
the events of the past week. The one man who, before and above all
others, was a mark for the rage of the populace, the one man whose
name was loud in the rabble's mouth, and always coupled with a
malediction, the one man who was hunted for his blood as by wolves,
who would have been torn in pieces had the opportunity been
afforded, and on whose account the dwelling of a friend was
literally torn in pieces, was a man who had been the steadfast
friend of these very people who hungered for his blood; their most
constant, uncompromising, and public friend; thinking for them,
speaking for them, writing for them; pleading their cause through
the press, in the legislature, from the platform; excusing their
mistakes and follies, asserting and reasserting their substantial
worth and honesty and rectitude, advocating their claims as working
people, vindicating their rights as men; proposing schemes for the
safety of their persons, the healthfulness of their houses, the
saving and increase of their earnings, the education of their
children, the exemption of their homesteads from seizure in cases
of debt, the enlargement of their sphere of labor, the transferring
of their families from the crowded city, where they could do little
more than keep themselves alive by arduous toil, to the fruitful
lands of the West, where they could become noble and
self-respecting men and women. This was the man whose blood was
hungered for. I need not speak his name,--you know whom I mean,
Horace Greeley,--a man whom some call visionary, but whose visions
are all of the redemption of the people; whom some call "fool," but
who, if he seem a fool, is foolish that the people may be wise;
whom some call "radical," but whose radicalism is simply a
determination that the popular existence shall have a sound, sure,
and deep root in natural law and moral principle; at all events, a
man who has lived for the people and suffered for the people, and
been laughed at when he suffered and because he suffered. _This_
was the man whose blood was hungered for. And yet the most
moderate, kind, considerate of all the papers, the last week, was
his paper. And I believe he, even had he fallen into the hands of
his enemies, would have said, "Forgive them, they know not what
they do."
Indulge me in one more personality. I said that the dwelling of a
friend was pillaged by the mob, under the impression that Mr.
Greeley lived there. What was this dwelling? Who was this friend?
The dwelling was one the like of which is rare in any city, a
dwelling of happiness and peace, a home of the tenderest domestic
affections, a house of large friendliness and hospitality, a refuge
and abiding-place for the unfortunate and the outcast. There was no
display of wealth there--there was no wealth to display; yet the
house was full of things which no wealth could buy. It was crowded
with mementos. The pieces of furniture in the rooms had family
histories connected with them; chairs and tables were precious from
association with noble and rare people who had gone. Pictures on
the walls, busts in the parlor, engravings, photographs, books,
spoke of the gratitude or love of some dear giver. One room was
sacred to the memory of a noble boy, an only son, who had died some
years before. There was his bust in marble, there were his books,
there were the prints he liked, the little bits of art he was fond
of, and all the dear things that seemed to bring him back. The
whole house was a shrine and a sanctuary.
And who were the inmates? The master, a man whose sympathies were
always and completely with the working-people, a man of steady and
boundless humanity; the mistress, a woman whose name is familiar to
all doers of good deeds in the city of New York, and dear to
hundreds of the objects of good deeds. To the orphan and friendless
and poor, a mother; to the unfortunate, a sister; to the wretched,
the depraved, the sinful, more than a friend. In the city prison
her presence was the presence of an angel of pitying love; at
Blackwell's Island she was welcome as a spirit of peace and hope.
The boys at Randall's Island looked into her face as the face of an
angel. Again and again had she rescued from the life of shame the
countrywoman, and possibly the kindred of these very people who
plundered her house. For the better part of a year and more she has
been in camp and city hospitals, nursing their brothers and sons,
performing every menial office. At this moment she is at Point
Lookout, doing that work, amid discomforts and discouragements that
would daunt a less resolute humanity than hers, giving all she has
and is to the _people_, to the wounded, crippled, bleeding, and
broken people; giving it for the sake of the people--giving it that
the people may be raised to a higher social level! And she,
forsooth, must be selected to have her house pillaged! She must be
stabbed to her heart of hearts, stabbed through and through, in
every one of her affections, by these people for whom her life had
been a perpetual process of dying! Why, if they had but known this
that I have been telling you, or but a tenth part of it, those men
would have defended with their bodies every thread of carpet she
trod on. But so it was, and so it must be! Only the best names are
ever taken in vain on human lips, and they are so taken because
they are the best, and best is worst to those who cannot understand
it. Theodore Winthrop was shot by a negro. Did he know what he
did?... In thinking of it one's bosom is torn with distracting
emotions, and between feeling for the persecuted and feeling for
the persecutors, one almost loses the power of feeling. Could
anything be more pitiful? Yes, one thing more pitiful there
was--the savage hunting down and persecution of the negroes, as if
they, too, were the enemies of these working-people. The poor,
inoffensive negroes, most innocent part of the whole population!
Most quiet, harmless, docile people, who could not stand in the way
of the white people if they would, and who never thought of
anything but of keeping out of their way! These the enemies of
white labor! As if they had not, for these very white people, borne
the burden and heat of the tropical day, raising the cotton by
which we are clothed, and the rice by which we are fed! As if to
these and the like of these, the white people did not owe a large
share of the manufacturing towns where they get their bread! As if
the lowest foundation stones of this very New York of ours were not
cemented by their bloody sweat! As if there were too many of them
in the country now for the country's needs, supposing the country
ever to fall into a settled and civilized condition again! As if
all there are might not by and by be _required_ to do the work
which white labor can not for a long time, if it can ever, safely
undertake! Strange complications of things! Strange cross-purposes
of human nature! The Southern people would revive the slave trade,
because they have not black laborers enough, and their allies among
ourselves would banish or kill all the black people, because they
interfere with white labor! A mutual stabbing at each other's
hearts! And on each side a stabbing to its own heart!... It is a
very mysterious thing in history, this alliance between the most
turbulent and the most tyrannical, the most depraved and the most
despotic portions of society. The most undisciplined, barbarous,
savage members of a community are ever in a league with the most
overbearing, insolent, imperious, and domineering members of it.
They who are under the least self-control bow most deferentially
before those who rule others with the most cruel rod. The people
who were proudest of having turned out to a man, in London, for the
maintenance of law and order, on the day of the great Chartist
demonstration there, were the most immoral class in the
city--proved by the criminal returns to be nine times as dishonest,
five times as drunken, and nine times as savage as the rest of the
community. (See Spencer's "Social Statics," p. 424.)
In Boston, on the occasion of the rendition of Anthony Burns, all
the thieves, burglars, cut-throats, swarmed from their dens and
volunteered with alacrity to enforce the fugitive-slave law. And
now the leaders of the Southern Confederacy count, and count
securely, on the Northern populace. The fiercest allies of the only
absolutely despotic class in the country are the outlaws of
society. The men who are fighting for the privileges of the
extremest tyranny, the privileges not of ruling merely, but
literally of owning the laboring class, these men have the
implicit, unquestioning, fanatical loyalty of the people who are at
the opposite end of the social scale--the people who own nothing
either of fortune, position, influence, or character, and whose
sole relation towards the despots they worship is that of mad,
savage slaves.
In Europe this alliance between the despotic and the lawless may
be fortunate for the peace of the community. In our Southern States
it is eminently conducive to the tranquillity they desire. But when
the lawless are here and the despotic are there, when the barbarism
is in New York and the tyranny in Richmond, when the elements of
discord and turbulence in our Northern cities fly to support their
iron-handed rulers in the seceded States, there ensues a state of
things, especially in time of war, that is calculated to shake
society to its foundations, and fill every loyal heart with dread.
The unruly, as if they felt instinctively their lack of
self-control, seek a ruler--fly to the strongest to save them from
themselves, worship the sternest, the most high-handed, the
cruellest, and by that natural sympathy with brutality are
maintained in subjection to law.
Heaven speed the time when these heedless, reckless, licentious
children of humanity may feel sensible of the weight of power
without its brutality, may reverence authority when it is neither
beastly nor cruel, may yield obedience to Order, whose symbol is
not the sword, and to Law, whose badge is not the bayonet. But till
that time comes, we, with thoughtful minds and sad hearts and sober
consciences, and souls full as we can make them of human charity
and good-will, must hold in our hands those terrible symbols, and
in the Christian spirit do the ruler's part.
The insurrection did not last long. As soon as the United States troops
appeared the trouble was over and order was restored. There was
fighting; there was pillage; but how many lives were lost and how much
property was destroyed was never exactly known. On the whole, the riot
strengthened the hands of the government, increased pity for the victims
of outrage, and excited sympathy for the negroes and the abolitionists.
The priests, as I well remember, helped in the work of pacification. On
the second day of the uprising, as I was visiting a friend in his studio
on Fifth Avenue, the mob came along, shouting, yelling, brandishing
clubs, on their way to the archbishop's palace, to hear an address by
him. The prelate appeared on the balcony dressed in full canonicals, in
order to impress the people, and delivered a most ingenious and
persuasive address. Beginning "Men of New York," he flattered their
self-esteem, paid a tribute to their sense of power and exalted
influence, and advised them against cruelty and anarchy. The effect of
this speech was surprising in soothing and quieting the crowd. They had
come there in a mood of tumult--they separated peacefully and went to
their own homes, satisfied. From that hour the soul of the riot was
broken.
The incidents of the war cannot be detailed here. The story has been
told too often, and is altogether too long for my space. And after all
the moral issues of the war were the most interesting though not the
most pathetic. The sentiment of union, the establishment of the national
supremacy, the authority of the reign of law, the emancipation of a
degraded race, the new inspiration imparted to a great people, and the
advent of a universal republicanism were most significant. It is quite
likely that the modern uprising of labor and the urgent claims of women
for recognition and civil power were aided, if not suggested, by this
overwhelming triumph of order and enlightenment. It is more than likely
that the position of the United States, as a power among the nations of
the earth, was due mainly to the victory that was achieved by the powers
of liberty.