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The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 3, March, 1864

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Title: The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 3,  March, 1864

Author: Various


        
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Language: English

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THE

CONTINENTAL MONTHLY:

DEVOTED TO

LITERATURE AND NATIONAL POLICY

VOL. V.--MARCH, 1864.--No. III.




AMERICAN FINANCES AND RESOURCES.

LETTER NO. III. OF HON. ROBERT J. WALKER.


                          LONDON, 10 Half Moon Street, Piccadilly,
                                          _December 3d_, 1863.

It is generally believed, even when the American rebellion should be
suppressed, that there would be a great loss of wealth and resources on
the part of the United States. As an economical question the great truth
is not disputed by me, that, as a general rule, wars by a waste of
property, by large expenditures, and by the withdrawal of so much labor
from the pursuits of industry, impair the material interests of the
nation. The influence of such considerations in the United States is not
denied; but there are in the cause of this contest, as well as in its
effects and consequences, results which will more than compensate for
such losses. Slavery was the sole cause of this rebellion, and the
result will be the reconstruction of the Union, with slavery everywhere
extinguished. On this assumption, the question is, whether the
substitution of free for slave labor throughout every State and
Territory of the Union will not, as a question of augmented wealth and
invigorated industry, far more than compensate for the losses incurred
in the contest. Reasoning inductively, it might well be supposed that
the willing labor of educated and energetic freemen would be far more
productive than the forced labor of ignorant, unwilling, and uneducated
slaves. In the realm of science, as well as in the direction of labor,
knowledge is power, education is wealth and progress; and that this is
applicable to the masses who compose a community, and especially to the
working classes, is demonstrated by our American official Census. In
proof of this position, I will proceed by a reference to the official
tables of our Census of 1860, to show not only in particular Slave
States, as compared with other Free States, whether old or new, Eastern
or Western, or making the comparison of the aggregate of all the Slave
with the Free States, the annual product of the latter _per capita_ is
more than double that of the Slave States. I begin with Maryland as
compared with Massachusetts, because Maryland, in proportion to her
area, has greater natural advantages than any one of the Slave or Free
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, as well as from 1850 to 1860, Maryland
increased in population per square mile more rapidly than any other
slaveholding State.

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.

I take the areas from the report (November 29, 1860) of the 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 Tables. 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 lines, by tables of United
States Coast Survey, viz.: main shore, including bays, sounds, etc., 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,
etc., 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 comparing this deep and tranquil and
protected basin, almost one continuous harbor, with the rockbound 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. 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 area 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.

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 Northwest. 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, that 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 6
(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 be assigned to 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 percent. (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 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 shoreline 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. While the Free
States have accomplished these miracles of progress, they have peopled
eleven 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.

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.

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.

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 (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, and in 1880, instead of
$82,865,868,849, over three billions six hundred millions, or more than
three 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 $150. As to the other Southern States, the excess is much
greater. Now, if the annual products of the South were increased $150
each _per capita_ (still far below Massachusetts) by the exclusion of
slavery, then multiplying the total population of the South, 12,229,727,
by 150, the result would be an addition to the annual value of the
products of the South of $1,834,456,050, and in the decade,
$18,344,580,500. 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 in a decade, by the
exclusion of slavery, to the value of the products of the South.

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 $287,000,000; and of Maryland, $66,000,000.
Table 33 included domestic manufactories, 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 $235 _per capita_, and of Maryland, $96, 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,
$64,619,200; 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,
$450,886,263. 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 billions 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.

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 that
of Maryland, $376,919,944. We have seen that the value of the products
that year in Massachusetts was $287,000,000 (exclusive of commerce), and
of Maryland, $66,000,000. As a question, then, of profit on capital,
that of Massachusetts was 35 per cent., and of Maryland 17 per cent.
Such is the progressive advance (more than 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 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 slaves
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 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 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 immensity, 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 heliographs 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.

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,
doubles the products of toil, _per capita_, as compared with Maryland,
and quadruples them (as the Census shows) compared with South Carolina.
One day's labor of a man in Massachusetts is more than equal to two in
Maryland, and four 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?

The discussion will be continued in my next letter.
                                                R. J. WALKER.




PALMER, THE AMERICAN SCULPTOR.


Sculpture as an art is probably anterior to painting. Form being a
simpler quality than color, the means of imitation were found in a
conformity of shape rather than hue. The origin of sculpture is somewhat
obscured in the thickening mists of antiquity, but it was no doubt one
of the earliest symbols of ideas made use of by man. In fact, in its
primitive development, there is considerable evidence to show that it
was the first essay at a recorded language. The Egyptian hieroglyphics,
those mysterious etchings upon the rock, representing animals, men, and
nondescript characters, were unquestionably rude attempts to hand down
to posterity some account of the great events of those forgotten ages.
The next remove in the history of this art is its employment in the
production of the images of idolatrous worship; and, when confined to
this purpose, it never attained any appreciable excellence. The purely
heathen mind was incapable of conceiving those forms of ideal beauty
which are born of the contemplation of a divine and spiritual beauty
revealed in the word of God and the teachings of his immaculate Son.

The grotesque Egyptian images worshipped on the Nile before the building
of the pyramids, are, judging from the best preserved antiquities, not
very much inferior to the gilded deities to be seen to-day in the
thousand pagodas of heathen lands.

Take for example a Chinese idol of modern make: while it is less angular
and more elaborately finished than the ancient monstrosities found in
Egypt, still, so far as perfection of form or beauty of expression is
concerned, there is little to choose between the two. Each is a fitting
type of the degree of civilization and soul culture of the peoples that
produced them. It must not be urged that the success of sculpture in
Greece and Rome disproves the proposition that the art could not develop
itself among a strictly idolatrous race.

The splendid mythologies of the Greeks and Romans must not be considered
as the highest forms even of the worship of idols or inanimate things.
The gods and goddesses of these mythological systems were principally
the powers that were supposed to preside over the different forces and
elements of nature, and were invested with the celestial attributes of a
higher order of beings. Neptune ruled the sea, Pluto was director of
ceremonies in the infernal regions, while Jupiter was emperor of the sky
and king of all the lesser gods.

These deities were the invention of a cultivated intellect, a refined
taste and polished civilization, and furnish a striking proof of man's
longing after the Infinite, unguided by the star of revelation.

The imaginative Greeks did not worship the statues of the gods _per se_,
but only admired them as the fitting representations of those mysterious
forces that hold sway over earth, air, fire, and water, or reverenced
them as the symbols of noble sentiments or sublime passions. The thing
itself, the cunning but lifeless figure, was only incidental, while the
idea thus typified was the real incentive to worship. This was also the
age that produced hero worship, and the great man who won the praise and
admiration of the people by his exalted qualities, or his prowess in
arms, was considered as a demigod, or one in favor with the tenants of
Olympus, and his statue was accordingly erected, to stand beside that,
perhaps, of Mars, Apollo, or Mercury.

Thus we trace the history of sculpture in its steady progress from its
use as a chronicler of events to its employment in the production of the
objects of idolatry, and thence to the mythological period, when it
became the medium of æsthetic expression, attaining its highest
perfection in the palmy days of Greece.

In no people of which the records of the past give any account, can we
find such an active sense of the beautiful as that which permeated the
minds of the polished Greeks. The admiration of physical beauty became
an almost absorbing passion, and its attainment was sought after in
every process which human ingenuity could devise.

The Lacedemonian women were accustomed to place the statues of beautiful
gods or goddesses in their rooms, to the end that the children they
should give birth to, would, by nature's mysterious methods, assimilate
the artistic graces of these celestial models. Perfection of form and
manly strength were the pride of the wisest and most learned men of the
nation, denoting that physical excellence was considered the necessary
concomitant of moral or intellectual worth. Authentic annals tell us
that Plato and Pythagoras appeared as wrestlers at the public games; and
who shall say that these philosophical gymnasts did not derive much of
their mental vigor from this exciting exercise? In this age it is easy
to see that sculpture must have received every incentive to full
development. In the people about him the artist saw the most excellent
models for his chisel, while the national taste was educated to the
highest degree in the beauties of form and the harmonies of proportion.

But the grand conceptions of Phidias, full of majesty and of grandeur as
they are--the matchless finish of the works of Apelles and Praxiteles,
ravishing the senses with their carnal beauty, still lacked one element,
without which art can never reveal itself in the full perfection of its
latent capabilities.

Mere physical beauty, which contains no spiritual element, no drawing of
the immortal soul, no suggestion of purer and nobler sentiments
struggling for expression in the cunning marble, can never satisfy the
requirements of the Christianized taste of modern times.

The Venus de Medici was undoubtedly the ideal type of womanly perfection
in the age which produced it, but now the sex would hardly feel
themselves flattered by so poor an interpretation. The form is all that
could be desired, but the head and features are positively insipid, and
a phrenologist would tell you by the development of the cranium that
female education was not a part of the Grecian policy. There is in this
statue a certain air of wantonness, a perceptible consciousness of being
valued and admired solely for physical beauty, which just as plainly
tells the estimate placed upon woman in those times as we can read the
fact in history.

Thus we perceive sculpture as a representative art has become a
chronicler of the world's advancement, so that those who accept the
theory of human progression would naturally look for purer and more
spiritual conceptions in the artist's soul, with a corresponding
nobility in the creations of his genius. The æsthetic principle in its
higher manifestations is not the product of pagan mind, because ideal
beauty and the rules governing its expression can only be conceived by
him to whom Faith has opened the glorious possibilities of our existence
beyond the grave. In no classic picture or statue is there anything akin
to that divine affinity that is apparent in the Madonnas of the Italian
masters of the sixteenth century, investing them with a charm that
lingers like an autumn sunset In the recollection of long-departed
years. Compare the loveliest of the Madonnas of Correggio and Raphael
with the Venus of Cos, and we perceive the inferiority of mere physical
perfection to that spiritual beauty that exalts the soul of the
beholder, and awakens the slumber of his immortal longings.

Faultless finish, harmonious outlines, and voluptuous proportions are
only the result of mechanical skill, that a good imitator or copyist can
for the most part achieve by the aid of his master's model. But the
sentiment, emotion, passion, the _character_, so to speak, of the
statue, is the creation of the artist, the offspring of his quickened
brain.

It is to express the æsthetic idea struggling in the soul of genius,
that the marble takes its form, the canvas its color, sweet sounds
combine in melody, and language weaves itself into the wreath of song.
The same divine impulse, the same grasping after a higher excellence
inspires the sculptor, the painter, the composer, and the poet, but some
chance bent of nature has decided them to choose different mediums of
expression.

Some critic has written, had Coles' 'Voyage of Life' been executed in
verse, instead of a series of pictures, it would have ranked as one of
the grandest poems of the age. High art, then, whatever its kind, is the
language of the æsthetic feeling in man--it symbolizes the god-like
element in his nature. Cumulative and progressive, it keeps even pace
with an improving civilization, and should therefore furnish fairer
products to-day than in any period of the past. It assimilates the
spirit of the times in which it is exercised; for as Ralph Waldo Emerson
remarks in his subtle, essay: 'No man can quite emancipate himself from
his age and country, or produce a model in which the education, the
religion, the politics, usages, and arts of his times shall have no
share.'

So we see from the very necessity of this truism, that if our painters
and sculptors would not be mere imitators of the exponents of another
age, there would be soon established a national school of art. We do not
mean by this a mere conventional type in finish and mode of treatment,
but certain marked, characteristic excellences and features that would
identify it with the history of our country and the peculiarities of our
people. There are a few native artists who have struggled to achieve
this consummation, and preëminent among these is Erastus D. Palmer, the
American sculptor.

The history of his career, his origin, his process of study, his choice
of subjects in all his great works, his rise and triumph as an artist,
all entitle him to this distinctive appellation. He commenced life as a
carpenter and joiner, but, while practising his trade in Utica, N. Y.,
his eye accidentally fell on a cameo likeness, and as the dropping of an
apple suggested to Newton the laws of gravitation, so the sight of this
little trifle was the talisman that revealed to Palmer the artistic
capabilities of his genius. Being thus led to attempt the portrait of
his wife upon a shell, he executed his task--which was in a twofold
sense a labor of love--with such fidelity to nature, such bold outline,
and delicacy of finish, that connoisseurs detected in it the hand of a
master. Thus encouraged, he for two years made cameo cutting his
business, and followed it with remarkable success, till, his eyes
becoming affected by the exercise of this talent, he was obliged to
relinquish it, with the expectation of returning to his old trade. But
happily he was induced to try his skill at modelling in clay, and then
he discovered what was in him. Taking his little girl for a model, he
produced a bust, styled the 'Infant Ceres,' which, when finished in
marble, immediately took rank as one of the gems of art. The sweet
_naïvete_ of budding childhood, the timid eyes and dimpled cheek, all
refined and sublimated by the ideal graces added by the magic wand of
genius, combined to make this earliest bust of our sculptor one of the
most felicitous products of his chisel.

Soon after this satisfactory experiment, Palmer removed to the city of
Albany, where he has since remained and won his well-deserved fame. His
two allegorical pieces, 'Resignation' and 'Spring,' we cannot forbear to
describe, familiar as they are to the _virtuoso_ of art, and well known
even to the great public.

The latter is a female bust, her hair bound with a fillet of grass and
half-developed grain, her face wearing an expression of modest coquetry,
quite in keeping with the capricious, 'celestial maid;' while the gently
swelling bosom suggests the latent forces of nature which only reach
their fulness in the summer sun. And about the eyes there is a look of
joy and freshness in which you fancy you can see

            'the flowers begin to spring,
  The skies to brighten, and the birds to sing.'

The 'Resignation' represents the refined voluptuousness of riper
womanhood. The features are exquisitely cut, and represent a type of
beauty fit for angelic spheres. The head, so finely proportioned, and
crowned with luxuriant, waving hair, inclines gracefully to one side, as
in submission to the chastenings of Providence. But in the downcast,
sorrowful eyes, there is an expression of mingled hope and patient
endurance such as Mary might have worn at the foot of the cross. The
marble is eloquent of that Christian sentiment: 'He doeth all things
well.' The religious feeling of the sixteenth century, which gave to art
both its inspiration and theme, never found so fair a mould as in this
bust of 'Resignation.'

Both of these works are entirely free from all explanatory accessories,
and interpret themselves to the most sluggish soul.

Another of Palmer's compositions, and one of the most purely ideal, is
the 'Dream of the Spirit's Flight.' This is a large bas-relief, executed
in medallion style. To give any idea by mere words of the spirit of this
performance is impossible. It is the half figure of a peri-like girl,
with tresses swaying in the higher air, with butterfly wings, arms and
drapery gracefully disposed, and all the parts uniting to impress you
with a sense of upward, soaring motion! There is a divine beauty about
the face reflected from a brighter world. Sculptured in pure white
marble, it seems a very soul just escaped from its prison house of clay,
and, listening to those 'sounds seraphic,' bearing away to the great
Beyond.

While gazing on this airy sprite, the beholder feels an exhilarating
influence steal over him, and involuntarily there goes up from his
heart, like incense, that yearning prayer:

  'So grant me, God, from every care,
    And stain of passion free,
  Aloft through virtue's purer air
    To hold my course to Thee!'

We cannot speak separately of his 'Morning and Evening,' 'Immortality,'
'Sleeping Peri,' his statue and bas-relief of 'Faith,' busts, and other
works, which are grouped in odd companionship about his studio. But the
'Indian Girl' and 'White Captive,' the crowning achievements of Palmer's
genius, and the ones that give a thoroughly American character to his
reputation, demand an elaborate consideration--not to explain their
merits, but to show what materials for art exist in our history, when
appropriated by the master's hand.

Romance and poetry have not often been successful in treating of the
character and customs of our aborigines, for the elements of true
heroism in the savage nature are so exceptional and few, that the red
man is a very poor subject for the higher manifestations of art. Cooper
and Longfellow alone have come back from this field with the trophies of
praise. But Palmer, with a striking originality and a subtle perception
of spiritual influences, sees in the effect of Christianity on the
'untutored mind' of the Indian, a theme to inspire his plastic clay. So
from this idea he evolves the 'Indian Girl,' standing in an attitude of
perfect repose, holding in her right hand a crucifix, on which her eyes
are bent pensively in a sweet, absorbing reverie, which shuts out the
consciousness of the external world. In the other hand, which hangs
listlessly by her side, she barely touches rather than holds a bunch of
feathers, evidently gathered to adorn her person, and which she forgets
in the contemplation of the story of the Cross. The artist supposes she
has found this crucifix, which the early Catholic missionaries were wont
to attach to the forest trees, and having heard from some of these
zealous teachers an exposition of Christ's mission, the better life has
already begun to dawn in her soul, and her whole aspect tells that this
mysterious influence is upon her.

The features are Indian, fair and comely--we do not say beautiful,
because this term expresses the highest excellence, and ought as a
descriptive phrase to be more sparingly used. The face is idealized, as
the rules of true art always require, but still preserves its fidelity
to the natural type. The form is nude to the waist, the drapery arranged
with unrivalled grace, the hair is clubbed so as to reveal the neck and
shoulders, while the perfection of contour and the completeness of
development satisfy the most critical eye for the study of detail. The
'Indian Girl' forms one of the landmarks in the history of American
sculpture.

But Palmer's grand, characteristic work, in which his genius seems to
have reached its noblest expression, is the 'White Captive,' which we
believe to be one of the most perfect creations of ancient or modern
art. It is something more than the nude figure of a surpassingly
beautiful woman, bound to the stake, and defying the gaze of her
barbarous captors--it is not merely an exciting incident in pioneer
life, but it has a grand symbolical meaning that reaches beyond a
literal interpretation of the situation.

We see in this statue the contact of civilization with savage instinct,
and in the expression of the 'White Captive,' peering through maiden
timidity, and rising triumphant above physical fear in a look of
intellectual and religious strength, before which the swarthy warrior
feels himself in the presence of a superior power--a ruler! As we gaze
on in mute admiration, we behold the race of the red man receding
westward before that same power pictured in this wonderful face: now the
Indian tribes pass the Rocky mountains, they come within the roar of the
Pacific, and, growing less and less, they at last vanish away into the
uncertain mists of the ocean--a lost people, who have served the purpose
for which they were created, and disappeared from our continent to make
room for a nobler humanity. It is this melancholy fate, this glorious
triumph, that Palmer has recorded in a language more forcible than
history, more eloquent than song, more ravishing than the lyre! To
define how the statue spreads before you this great vision, eludes the
acutest analysis; but there it is, told just as plainly as the Falls of
Niagara or the eternal stars tell the omnipotence of God.

The longer one studies this marvellous work, the more he sees to admire,
to reflect upon. There is something in the general effect that makes the
beholder forget the perfect nudity of the figure, which necessarily
grows out of the circumstances of the case, and which is entirely unfelt
by the captive in her terrible realization of the peril which surrounds
her. Thus two great difficulties that embarrass the execution of
undraped statuary are entirely overcome:

1. The nudity is only incidental to the general effect, and the subject
seems entirely unconscious of the fact.

2. The nudity is accounted for by the situation--the captive is tied
unclad to a tree, to be burned alive, according to Indian custom.

Thus a criticism that has been frequently made (and not unjustly) on the
_morale_ of certain works of art, has no application to this.

Of the details of this ideal creation--its matchless finish, the
graceful undulations of the perfect form, the firmness expressed in the
clenched fingers, the instinctive shudder gathered on the fair brow, the
lofty defiance of the eyes and half-parted lips, the radiant beauty of
the face--we can only say they live in our memory, but too deep for
words. We believe the truth of the artist's conception, that the
revengeful savages acknowledged the divinity of her beauty and Christian
reliance, and the 'White Captive' went free--the spirit of civilization
triumphed!

As a man's character is always more or less associated with his
achievements, the reader may wish to learn something of Mr. Palmer as a
man. In all kinds of soul-work, there is ever perceptible a certain
flavor of the mind which produces it, and the things thus created
usually suggest the qualities of the creator. So the works of the
sculptor are to some degree the exponents of his character, the
expressions of his inner life.

Therefore in Mr. Palmer we should expect moral and intellectual worth of
a high order, added to the purest and most exalted motives. He is in
spirit a reformer, taking an interest in every measure for the
improvement of our race, and sympathizing with every struggle of our
aspiring manhood.

The eccentricities, excuses, and conventional affectations of many real
and pretended geniuses he entirely eschews, feeling himself one of the
people, and laboring for their elevation.

Neither does he deem it any part of genius to neglect his family, forget
to pay his butcher's bill, and ignore the claim of his tailor. His ample
house and neat atelier, at the north end of Eagle street, in the city of
Albany, are the fruit of his patient and inspiring toil--his chisel has
won him moderate fortune as well as world-wide fame.

Photographs of the 'Palmer Marbles' are seen in the show windows of
Paris, London, and Berlin, while in this country they help to fill the
portfolios of the _virtuoso_, adorning the walls of the parlor and the
private gallery.

Though in youth Palmer did not receive an average common-school
education, he converses like a man of liberal culture, showing that he
belongs to the class of self-made men.

He has never visited the interminable art palaces of Europe, nor
studied, in the sense in which that term is used, the 'old masters;'
still he has appropriated all the valuable hints to be obtained from the
classic models, without regarding them as the _ne plus ultra_ of
artistic execution, and therefore to be only imitated, to the exclusion
of the higher ideals of an advanced civilization.

He has an intelligible and correct theory in regard to the fidelity of
art to nature. For instance, he insists that he should _represent_, not
imitate; and in making a bust of a man, the sculptor should express the
higher moods of his subject, and show him with his better qualities
brought to the surface. So the forms of nature should be idealized in
the direction of their primitive tendency, and thus art help to express
that ineffable longing of the soul, that reaching upward for a
perfection that is approximated on earth, but never attained. This
idealization is like the humor of Dickens, something more than nature in
its grotesqueness, yet a stimulated growth of the natural quality.
Palmer always takes nature for his model, and then assimilates it to
that ideal beauty which dwells in his imagination and sheds a spiritual
halo over the creation of his chisel.

Like every true disciple of genius, he feels that he has a mission to
perform, and that he is responsible for the influence he exerts on the
tastes and æsthetic culture of the people. As you chat with him in his
studio, dressed in his blouse and cap, his dark eye glowing with
enthusiasm for his art, or sparkling with playful humor, standing before
you tall and vigorous, you see in him one of the earnest workers for the
elevation of our humanity.

The utilities of the world will take care of themselves: let us foster
the beautiful, because, like all divine attributes, man reaches it
through striving, and is made better by its contemplation.

Palmer does not look older than forty, and has perhaps not yet attained
the fulness of his powers, but has in him the elements of a healthy
growth.

Work on, thou almoner of sweetest joys, thou pilgrim in that fairy realm
whence come the high ideals of life; work on, striver for the perfect
type of beauty and of truth, and in thy progress let the people trace
our human nature rising to diviner heights--expanding to sublimer
bounds!




CLOUDS.

RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED TO PROFESSOR GUYOT.


  High and fathomless above us vaults the pure aerial sky,
  Solemn bends its arch of Beauty round a world where all things die.

  On the dome through which Earth's swinging, spun of palpitating air,
  Angel artists fresco vapors into pictures passing fair.

  No cold canvas of dead color has the Mighty Master given:
  Trembles with His Infinity the azure vault of Heaven.

  On and in the lucent background float the ever-changeful forms,
  Sometimes glowing into glory, sometimes glooming into storms.

  God's blest seal is on creation; signs and symbols throng the sky,
  Though too dull to read their meaning droops the stolid human eye.

  Over mountain, over valley throng the clouds to soothe the sight;
  Through the dim walls of the city gleam they buoyant, fleeting, bright.

  Gentle, dreadful, or fantastic--nearer, farther as we gaze;
  Varied, spiritual, tender, forms and melts the surging haze.

  'Heavenly secrets' breathe around us--lowly flowers on the sod,
  Cloudland's curves and grading colors veil the Infinite of God.

  The Infinite--we shudder! but wild longings through us steal
  As we vainly strive to grasp It till our failing senses reel.

  Ever longing, never grasping, though in tenderness It stoop
  To shade the scented cups of flowers, to bend them as they droop.

  For through infinite gradations pass the changeful hues of light,
  That the infinite through color may send greetings to the sight.

  Through ne'er-returning, endless curves, flowers, trees, clouds,
      mountains pass,
  That man may see the Infinite through nature's magic glass.

  Oh, tender stooping! soothing! Infinite Love must be
  The cause, aim, end, the burning heart of everything we see.

  Earth may cover deep her dying, parted hearts chant weary dirge,
  But we _feel death is but seeming_ in the Cloudland's evening surge.

       *       *       *       *       *

  _CIRRI._

  Floating high above the mountains, in the fields of upper air,
  Multitudinous throng the Cirri, ranged in order, heavenly fair.

  Rank upon rank in glory lie the transverse, plumy bars;
  Tranquil beauty rules the union which disorder never mars.

  Perfect symmetry, obedience, mark their finely chiselled lines--
  In the highest sphere of being flexile _grace_ with _law_ combines.

  Now they break in fleecy ripples as innumerably they press;
  Shines the blue of Heaven between them as they fly the Wind's caress.

  Millions fleck the face of Heaven, but no two alike are ever:
  Restless mirror of the Infinite, form seems exhausted never.

  Are they lambs 'mid Heaven's blue pastures? are they swans with
      downy breast
  Floating through that azure ocean round the region of the Blest?

  Are they snowy wings of Cherubs gathering round the Throne above,
  As the vesper hymn of Heaven rises to the Eternal Love?

  Gazing on their wavy ripples, they seem mingling with the sky,
  Yet the heavenly little islets still innumerable lie.

  How the fleecy cloudlets glitter as they sail so clear and high!
  Is light curdling into snowflakes as it streams athwart the sky?

  Freezing? No--warm and glowing, ambient, changeful, feathery, bright,
  Rather seem the floating vapors melting into roseate light.

  With the white flame in their bosoms, and the pure blue depths above,
  When the sunset rays dart kisses, how they kindle into love!

  See, with every shaft electric flash the bright hues deeper, higher,
  Till the chaste and snowy cloudlets fleck the Blue of Heaven with fire.

  How they flush and how they quiver! how the virgin drifts of snow
  Drink the sunset's dying passion, catch his ardent parting glow!

  Love weaves close in chords harmonic all the finely fretted dome,
  Blue, white, purple, gold, and crimson, fringe, melt, ripple into foam.

  Thus the angels drape God's footstool with soft vapor, wind, and sun:
  Does His smile rest on the artists when their pleasant work is done?

  Do they see Him bend the Heavens, riding swiftly on the clouds,
  Heat His Heart, and Light the shadow which His inner Glory shrouds?

  Seraphs, cherubs, thronging round Him, shall our hearts no raptures move?
  Shall we prove dull links reluctant in the chain of endless love?

  No. We feel the electric secret flashing through the Perfect Whole,
  'Bliss eternal' telegraphing upon every faithful soul.

       *       *       *       *       *

  _CUMULI._

  Leave we now the upper regions
    With their wonders pure and high,
  Gone the barred and fleecy Cirri--
    Mountain Cumuli storm the sky.
  High the calmness floats above us,
    Tears and rain lie far below,
  As we sail the middle Cloudland,
    Where the vapors come and go.

  Throbs a wilder pulse of passion,
    Stronger individual life,
  Rapid, energetic motion
    Tells of elemental strife.
  Nearer seem they to the human,
    Rearing dizzy forms on high,
  Than the order-loving Cirri
    Barring the translucent sky.

  Lovingly they crest our mountains,
    Hovering o'er them all the day,
  Copying all the soaring outlines
    In artistic, skilful play;
  Following close on the horizon,
    Dip, break, gap, and lofty peak,
  As to build Earth into Heaven
    Would the haunting vapors seek.

  Drifting swiftly through the azure,
    Chase they shadows over Earth:
  Flying footsteps, soft and silent,
    Flit o'er grassy graves in mirth.
  Shudder not--the bearded harvest
    Quivers not, so light the tread:
  Let it glide o'er moss and violet--
    Would its touch could wake our dead!

  Piling now, the tossing vapors,
    With a wild exultant power,
  Rise in turrets, towers, mountains,
    Changing with the changing hour.
  Glittering, gleaming, dazzling, snowy,
    Heart-tossed shadows in them lie;
  Broken, scattered, wind-torn, foamy,
    Haunt they through Earth's panting sky.

  Luminous jets of boiling vapor
    Topple into sudden rifts,
  Open into yawning chasms,
    Break in tortured whirling drifts,
  Panting, surging, rocking, reeling,
    Cradling in their hearts the storm,
  Spirit, power, passion flashing,
    Lightning bares each secret form.

  Banding now in groups colossal,
    Piling o'er the mountain crest,
  Sweeping down his rocky summit,
    Crashing through his wooded breast,
  Shattering fall his pines and larches,
    Rain, hail, tumult onward swell,
  Lightning scathes the shuddering forest,
    Thunder frights the leafy dell.

  Sunset fires the whirling vapors,
    Now they sway and rock in light,
  Toppling crests fling back the radiance,
    Through the rifts it glitters bright,
  Gloomy clouds are ruby kindling,
    Rippling fringed with molten gold,
  Rosy streams of color pouring,
    Through the tempest's blackness rolled.

  Surging weird in fitful beauty,
    Every moment fraught with change,
  Every break and mystic chasm
    Opening up a Heaven-range:
  Now the eastern peaks are kindling
    Glow as though the Morning's heart
  Throbbed against them, while the formless
    Clouds to phantom being start.

  Thus through storm-tost human bosoms
    God oft sends His rays divine;
  Passionate errors, when forgiven,
    Lead us on to trust sublime.
  God rays light through moral tempests,
    Brings repentance out of crime;
  'Much forgiven' ploughs the spirit,
    Former faults as beacons shine.

  Through our ruins Love is gleaming,
    Rippling o'er in molten gold,
  Rosy streams of life are pouring
    Through our tempest's blackness rolled.
  Glittering thus in growing beauty,
    Every moment fraught with change,
  Through each rift and shattered chasm
    We may see the Heaven-range.

  Thus the angels build the pictures
    In the vext or tranquil skies,
  Of our changeful human passions,
    Stormful fall and heaven-won rise.
  Thus they write in love and pity,
    Radiant with their heaven-dyes,
  Lessons for the lost, the erring,
    Hope for weary, dying eyes.

       *       *       *       *       *


  _RAIN CLOUDS._

  High float the Cirri,
    Passionless, pure;
  Wild pile the Cumuli,
    Never secure;
  Low sweep the Rain Clouds
    Over the sky,
  Glooming the sunshine,
    Slow trailing by.

  Mystical region
    Typifies Earth--
  Light in the bosom
    Of darkness has birth;
  Magical mingling
    Of beauty and gloom,
  Calm follows tempest
    As Heaven the tomb.

  Shrouding the distance,
    Legions of mist
  Glide down the river
    Joining the list
  Of the shadowy army
    Hurrying on
  Over wide waters
    To welcome the sun.

  Catching his gleaming,
    Faster they run,
  Roseate surging,
    Roll into one;
  Filling the valley,
    Luminous haze,
  Heavenward soaring,
    Rocks as we gaze;

  Lifting strange columns
    Of light in the air,
  Weaves golden sunshine
    Fitful and fair
  Through the cloud pillars
    Thrown to the sky,
  Like the Dream-ladder
    Jacob slept by.

  Trailing o'er treetops,
    Shadowing graves,
  Gloomily weeping
    While the wind raves,
  Blurring the landscape
    Rain clouds press on,
  Lowering on nature
    With leaden-hued frown.

  Sulphurous, lurid,
    Thunder is near;
  Sobbings and mutterings
    Fill us with fear.
  Palls with wild fringes
    Stream on behind--
  Death may be riding
    The wings of the wind.

  Jagged clouds hanging
    Formless and black,
  Hurtle the whirlwind
    Fast o'er their track;
  Fiery flashes
    Scathe the green plain;
  Cataracts falling
    In torrents of rain.

  Thunder and lightning
    Crash through the sky;
  Whirlwinds are carding
    The clouds as they fly!
  Nature is reeling,
    Sin at our heart,
  Heaven is angered--
    Well may we start!

  God throws His shadow
    Into the gloom;
  The raindrops have caught it,
    And break into bloom!
  His light on Earth's teardrops
    Gems Bliss on her clouds,
  His rainbow of color
    Paints Hope on her shrouds.

  Tender and lovely,
    Luminous, fair,
  Infinite Beauty
    Is bending through air,
  Breathing through color,
    Through Order, through Form,
  That infinite Love
    Rules the heart of the storm.

  Caught in soft meshes,
    Fractions the light,
  Gold, green, or ruby,
    Tremblingly bright.
  Through the torn chasms
    Smiles the lost blue--
  The wilder the drifting,
    The deeper the hue.

  Beauty above us,
    Beauty around,
  Clouds, stars gem the heavens,
    Trees, flowers paint the ground.
  Rapturous meaning
    Illumines the whole:
  God gives us Beauty,
    For Love is His Soul!

  High-floating Cirri,
    Passionless, pure;
  Wild-piling Cumuli,
    Never secure;
  Low-trailing Rain Clouds
    With rainbow-lit pall--
  Softly ye whisper
    That Love ruleth all!




SKETCHES OF AMERICAN LIFE AND SCENERY.

II.--THE CATSKILL MOUNTAINS.


Who, in ascending the Hudson River, has not watched for the first
glimpse of the Catskills, and followed with delight their gradual
development of peak and clove, until, near Hudson, they stood fully
revealed, flooded with sunshine, flecked with shadows, or crowned by
storm-laden clouds?

This region is noteworthy, not alone from its beauty and incalculable
utility, but also from the associations clustering around it through the
pen of poets and writers of romance, the brush of the artist, and the
memories of thousands of tourists, who have found health and strength
for both body and mind upon its craggy heights or beside its numberless
wild and beautiful mountain torrents. It comprises the whole of Greene
County, a portion of Delaware, and the neighboring borders of Ulster,
Schoharie, and Albany. It truly deserves the appellation of 'many
fountained,' giving rise to great rivers, such as the Delaware, and one
of the main branches of the Susquehanna, and to manifold smaller
watercourses, as the Schoharie, Catskill, and Esopus. Unlike the
Highlands of Northern New Jersey and Southern New York, and the region
of the Adirondacs, its lakes are few and very small. The best known are
the twin lakes near the Mountain House, and Shue's Lake, not far from
the summit of Overlook Mountain. These are all at a height,
approximately, of two thousand feet above the river, and add greatly to
the variety and interest of the landscape in their vicinity.

Names among these hills are a commodity so scarce that their paucity
presents a serious obstacle to intelligible description. Round Tops and
High Peaks are innumerable. We hope, when Professor Guyot completes his
cursory survey of heights, made eighteen months ago, he will strive to
do as in North Carolina, and supply the deficiency. Nomenclature is a
difficult matter, and requires a poet, a poetic man of science, or the
imaginative intuitions of a primitive people.

The main range of the Catskills finds its southerly corner in Overlook
Mountain, not far from Woodstock, and about seven miles (more or less)
west of the Hudson. One ridge extends northerly (a little east, parallel
with the river) from twelve to fourteen miles, and then, at the North
Mountain, making an obtuse angle, turns to the northwest, and passes
through Windham into Schoharie County: the other ridge, starting from
Overlook, runs in a westerly direction along the southern border of
Greene County, and finally in Delaware sinks into broken hill ranges of
less elevation. The space intermediate between these two main ridges is
at first narrow, but gradually widens as they diverge from the starting
point; its interior (northwesterly) slope is drained by the Schoharie (a
branch of the Mohawk) and its tributaries, the East, the West, and
Batavia Kills. Singular gaps or cloves intersect the range, affording
easy communication with the lowlands bordering its base. Each clove has
its own stream, and in the main ones on the river front are found the
countless and beautiful waterfalls which constitute the chief
characteristic of Catskill scenery. The more primitive rocks of the
Highlands, the Adirondacs, and the White Mountains do not offer such
numerous and picturesque sheets of falling water as the red sandstone of
the Catskills.

Starting from Overlook Mountain, whence the view is said to be
magnificent, and proceeding northward, we first reach the Plattekill
Clove, up whose steep and wooded cleft winds a wild road, chiefly used
for quarrying purposes, and down whose abrupt declivity the Plattekill
leaps from crag to crag in a series of fine falls and cascades. The
quantity of water during the summer months, except after considerable
rain, is small, but the rock formations are very interesting, reminding
the traveller of wild passes in the Tyrol. This is perhaps the grandest
of all the Catskill clefts, but human ingenuity has here afforded no aid
to the sightseer, and strong heads and agile limbs are needed for the
enjoyment of its hidden beauties.

The mountain to the north of the Plattekill Clove has two crests, known
as High Peak and Round Top. It was long thought to be the loftiest
summit of the Catskills, but must now yield to the Windham High Peak or
Black Head, 3,926 feet high, and perhaps to other elevations in the same
range. Professor Guyot gives its height at 3,684 feet, and that of the
Mountain House as 2,245 feet. This mountain has frequently been
ascended, although there is no regular path leading to the summit, but
the thick growth of wood on the top greatly hinders the satisfactoriness
of the view. Between Round Top and the nearest mountain to the north
lies the Kauterskill Clove, known preëminently as _The Clove_, the home
of artists and the theme of poets. Its springs are drained by the
Kauterskill Creek, a branch of the Catskill, and it is one of the
loveliest spots in America. The road through this clove is one of the
main arteries to the back mountain country, and, from the summit of the
clove, near Haines's sawmill, winds for about three miles to the base,
by the side of streams offering fifteen fine falls and cascades in a
distance of five miles, and between steep and wooded mountain slopes or
rocky crags lifted high in air, now swelling out into the sunlight, and
anon curving back into amphitheatres of shadow. The main Kauterskill
flows from the twin lakes already mentioned, and just below the Laurel
House falls over a precipice of 175 feet, which, with another dash of 80
feet, makes the entire depth of the stream's first grand plunge into the
wild ravine 255 feet. A short distance below is the Bastion Fall, and,
immediately following, the Terrace Cascade, the united height of the two
being certainly not less than 100 feet. These four fine falls are found
in an easy walk of three quarters of a mile leading down the ravine from
the Laurel House to the Clove road.

The Little Kauterskill flows into the main stream at a short distance
below the bridge where the Clove road first crosses that torrent. The
ravine through which it flows is incomparably beautiful, with the grand
plunge (Haines's Fall or Fawn's Leap) at the head, and the seven
graceful cascades, all visible from one projecting table rock, soon
after following. Below the above-mentioned bridge are the Dog Fall, the
cascade at Moore's Bridge, and the Dog Hole, with its steep cliffs and
foaming rapids. At the mouth of the Clove is Palensville, a little
manufacturing village, where town-wearied denizens find fresh air and
pleasant walks and drives during the summer months. To our taste,
however, the summer climate at the various sojourning places, about two
thousand feet above the sea level, is far preferable to that at the base
of the mountain.

Rising to the north of the Clove is the South Mountain, from whose
beetling crags are obtained some of the finest views offered by the
Catskills; then follows the Pine Orchard, where are the well-known
Mountain House, the twin lakes, and the Laurel House at the head of the
Kauterskill Falls; and finally, the North Mountain, which looks down
upon a graceful spur to the east, Kiskatom Round Top, and then sweeps
away to the northwest. Beyond the North Mountain is a considerable
depression, down which passes an execrable road, leading from East
Jewett, within the mountain range, to Cairo, at its foot. Finally, we
reach Windham High Peak,[1] and the fine road crossing the mountains
from Catskill to Delhi, and passing through Windham and Prattsville.

On the southern side of the range, west of Overlook, are two wild and
beautiful clefts, the one known as the Stony Clove, and the other as
West Kill or Bushnell Clove. The first begins as a narrow gorge with
lofty hemlock and moss-clad mountain sides, and gradually opens out, at
Phoenicia, upon the hills of Ulster and Esopus Creek. It is watered by
a trout stream, and its few but cosey farm cottages offer shelter
sufficient for amateur fishermen and artists, bewitched by its fairy
recesses and fine forest growth. In the narrow portion of this clove are
ice caves, where ice may be found at all seasons of the year, and whence
issue cooling winds appreciable in the warmest summer days.

The West Kill, or Bushnell Clove, is said to be still finer and more
alpine than the Stony Clove. The last-mentioned gap and that of the
Plattekill join the main or Kauterskill Clove between Tannersville and
Hunter, while the Bushnell Clove does not intersect the valley of the
Schoharie until the West Kill flows into that stream near the charming
village of Lexington, six miles south, a little west of Prattsville.

These geographical details may seem uninteresting, but if the writer had
possessed them eight years ago, when first making the near acquaintance
of the Catskills, many a mystification might have been avoided, and many
a pleasant excursion, now only known to the fancy, have been found
practicable. One great attraction of the Catskills is, that the greater
number of the spots chiefly interesting are within walking or driving
distance from the chief points of sojourn. Visitors in general confine
themselves to the Mountain House and its immediate vicinity, and hence
see but little of the beauties hidden among the cliffs and ravines of
the inner peaks. The view from the Mountain House plateau is extensive,
but tame and monotonous in character; the horizon is not interesting,
and the cloud scenery is far more impressive than that of the land
beneath. The views from the very easily ascended North or South
Mountains, where, in addition to the river valley, the eye embraces the
lakes, the opening of the Clove, and the distant mountains toward
Lexington, are far superior. Clum's Hill, a terraced eminence, visible
from many points among the Catskills, and the Parker Mountain, east of
Tannersville, both offer peculiar and interesting prospects; but the
king of views is that obtained from the cliffs of the South Mountain
overhanging the Clove. This vista has furnished sketches for two
remarkable pictures painted by that rare artist and genuine son of
Helios, S. R. Gifford. Looking toward the west is the rolling plateau of
the Clove, with the far-away mountains beyond Hunter, the Parker and
North Mountains, the openings to the Stony and Plattekill Cloves, Clum's
Hill, and the silver thread of Haines's Fall. At the foot of the cliffs,
more than a thousand feet below, lie Brockett's (classic ground for
artists), the Clove road, Moore's Bridge, the Dog Fall, and the brawling
Kauterskill. Directly opposite stands the wooded crest of Round Top. The
entire mountain side is visible, and the cleft is so narrow that the
trees can almost be counted as they rise one above another to a height
of 2,500 feet above the roaring stream, which here receives two slender
cascades that have threaded their way through the tangled forest. Toward
the east, the river is visible, and the sloping mountain declivities
frame a lovely picture of lowland country and far-away Connecticut or
Massachusetts hills. The effects of light and shadow are such as we have
never seen surpassed. This earth there seems made of gold or crimson
lights, of gray seas of mist, or of every imaginable combination of
beautiful hues.

These cliffs are reached by a charming walk through a beech wood, and
are distant about a mile from the Laurel House. A longer and still
somewhat rough path was opened thither last summer from the Mountain
House. But we should never end were we to characterize all the beautiful
spots, the entrancing walks and drives to be found amid these cool and
healthful slopes and plateaus. A difference of at least ten degrees is
felt between the mountain resorts and the villages on the river bank,
and the air is inexpressibly fresh and invigorating.

These mountains have also a very interesting flora. The oak, beech,
birch, chestnut, hickory, maple, ash, hemlock--pines, black, white, and
yellow--spruces, fir, and balsam, are among the most widely spread
trees; and of fruits, the blackberry, gooseberry, raspberry,
whortleberry or blueberry, and strawberry, grow in profusion and of fine
flavor. Violets, anemones, liverworts, the fairy bells of the Linnea
Borealis, the fragrant stars of the Mitchella or partridge berry, the
trailing arbutus, Houstonia, the laurel, honeysuckle, sarsaparilla,
wintergreen, bottle gentian, white and blue, purple orchids, willow
herb, golden rod, immortelles, asters in every variety, St. John's wort,
wild turnip, Solomon's seals, wild lilies of the vale, fire lilies,
Indian pipe, with other flowers, ground pines, and varieties of moss and
ferns innumerable, border the winding woodpaths and secluded roads.
There are many regions in America more grand than that of the Catskills,
but none, we think, more easily and gratefully compensatory to a careful
survey.

       *       *       *       *       *

  Within Gethsemane's Garden kneeling,
    Bends the Lord His sacred head,
  His soul, each human sorrow feeling,
    Quivers with keen shafts, sin-sped,
      Every human misery knows,
      Bears the burden of our woes.

  Perchance not men alone His sinking,
    Bleeding heart to weep is fain,
  But poor dumb creatures sees He drinking
    Deep the bitter cup of pain,
      Hears the wailing, anguished cry,
      Hears but curse and blow reply!

                                   L. D. P.




THE ISSUES OF THE WAR.


The life of the soldier is one of constant anxiety and suspense. He
never knows with any certainty to-day what he shall have to do
to-morrow. Upon seemingly the greatest calm may suddenly burst the most
terrific storm. There is little incentive to thought, except of that
practical kind which directs the activities of the soldier's perilous
life. Here we are, thousands of us, an acting mass rather than an
assemblage of thinking individuals. Indeed, it is not strictly military
to think; implicit and unquestioning obedience is the law. When the
order was finally given on Monday night (September 21st) for the whole
army to fell back on Chattanooga, the writer remarked:

'Well, if we shall not have to go any farther--if we can hold
Chattanooga, we are not defeated;--it is even a victory, and we have won
Chattanooga at the battle of Chickamauga.'

'We want none of your speculations,' retorted our Prussian commander;
'it is a soldier's business to obey, and not to think.'

But, it is hardly natural for an American soldier to execute a movement
without inquiring the wherefore. And if we are marched over mountains,
and down the Lookout at Alpine Pass, within a few miles of Rome; and
then marched back again, up the perilous steep, and northward to
Stevens's Gap, and down again;--why, even common soldiers, without the
evidence of brains which there is, or ought to be, in shoulder straps,
inquire of each other for the strategic value there may be in all this
marching and countermarching, and find it hard to believe that it was
all provided for in the original programme.

But in a still higher sense is the American soldier given to thinking.
He is quite likely to have an opinion as to the origin and cause of the
war--as to the issues involved therein, and the results which it is
likely to bring about. There is, moreover, a multiplicity of views, and
not the unanimity of dulness.

The causes, the issues, the results of the war--momentous themes! and
likely to be thoroughly canvassed by those whom they so vitally
concern--the American citizen and our citizen soldiery.

The causes, issues, and results of the war are so intimately related
that we can scarcely think of one without also thinking of the others.
The causes are more especially a thing of the past--they already belong
to history: the results belong more particularly to the future; the
issues pertain to the present. It is these with which we have more
immediately to do, and which it behooves us, as intelligent actors in
the great drama, to understand. We should not be indifferent to results,
and we are not; but if there are real issues of right and wrong involved
in the contest, and we are in the right, we may rest assured that the
results of a successful prosecution of the war will be worthy of all our
sacrifices, and honorable to us as a people and nation.

In the midst of a beleaguered camp, with no notes of former reading, or
books of reference, it is a poor place for the elaboration of one's
ideas;--the writer, nevertheless, proposes to make a brief inquiry into
the issues involved in this terrible war.

The fact exists that there is a war between the North and South, brought
about, as we believe, by unwarranted and aggressive acts of the Slave
Power. This slave oligarchy of the South either had, or affected to
have, a profound contempt for what they supposed was the want of spirit
in the Northern people. It was a current swagger that we should barely
furnish them with an opportunity to show their superior military
prowess. 'This war shall be waged on Northern soil,' they said. Events
have shown that they miscalculated; but the raids of Jackson, Lee,
Morgan & Co. show how great their will has been to carry out their
threats of invasion. When the rebel guns opened upon Sumter, there was
no alternative left us but fight now, or soon. Had we hesitated and
compromised then, the arrogant spirit of the insurgents would have been
still further flattered and puffed up, and their contempt for the
submissive North made genuine, whatever it may have been before. A
compromise then would have made no lasting peace; the South would soon
have become tired of being merely 'let alone;' her exactions and
aggressions would have become more and more insolent and intolerable,
till warlike resistance or ignoble submission and slavery would have
been our only alternative. This war is, therefore, on our part and in
one sense, a war in self-defence; and this may be regarded as one of its
issues.

Every loyal soldier is fighting for the security of our Northern homes;
and the issue resolves itself into this: The resistance of invasion; the
vindication of our manliness as a people; the protection of our own
firesides--else be overrun, outraged, desolated, enslaved by the minions
of a Southern oligarchy, which indulges the insane conceit that it is
born to rule.

       *       *       *       *       *

Unfortunately for our country, it embraces two distinct forms of
society, of dissimilar, if not of antagonistic character. It is a
heritage from our ancestors; but none the less an evil for its prestige
from the sanctities of time; and we are now reaping its bitter fruits in
the manifold and hideous forms of a great civil war. Taking human nature
as it is, there appears to be no escape from this cruel ordeal. We of
the North claim that we have transcended that type of society whose
vital and informing element is chattel slavery. There is natural and
irrepressible antagonism between the two forms of society; they cannot
subsist in peace and good feeling by the side of each other, and still
less under the same Government. Conflict was inevitable, and it came.

At this stage of the war and of elucidation respecting its cause and
origin, this may be only commonplace, yet necessary to fulness of
statement.

Slavery felt the necessity of efforts to save herself from impending
ruin; she became taunting and aggressive in her manners and acts, and
resorted at length to violence, reminding one of the oft-repeated
proverb, 'Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad.' History has
no readings for the comfort of slavery. There is a progress in human
affairs, and the tide of that progress is against her. Threatening
attitudes and impetuous dashes do not appear to come with salvation; and
the promise--of glory for freedom, and doom for her--now is that, as a
turbulent and rebellious power, she will be completely overthrown; a
sudden and deserved judgment, the legitimate consequence of her own
violence and desperation.

This struggle between a progressive and triumphant civilization, on the
one hand, and a crude, unprogressive, and waning one on the other--if
civilization it can be called--is another of the issues of this war. It
is but the ultimate, the closing catastrophe of the 'irrepressible
conflict.'

Involved in this feature of the war, there is much beside the naked
issue of freedom and slavery.

Slavery has no respect for the affections, as is evinced by the
mercilessness with which she sunders every family tie. The refining
culture of growth in civilization demands respect for the domestic
loves, even of an inferior race. Where chattel slavery exists, labor is
not held in honor, and just in proportion to the depth to which one
class sinks by industrial oppression, does the other sink through
enervating indolence and exhausting indulgence. Where there is chattel
slavery, there cannot be free speech: the utterance of truth may indeed
be incendiary, and the rickety, combustible institution standing out of
its time, must needs protect itself. There must not be free education or
free inquiry. It would never do to teach the slaves; and it is likewise
the interest of this form of society to retain the lower strata of the
nominally free population in ignorance equally dense and impenetrable. A
cringing servility must be generated and maintained on the one side, and
a haughty and exacting superciliousness on the other.

All these may be regarded as constituting minor issues, which are
dependent for their vitality on that which is greater; and when the fate
of the issue between chattel slavery and its antagonist shall have been
determined, there will be no further trouble with the collaterals. When
the main trunk is torn up by the root, the branches will all die.

But while the issue between slavery and freedom thus comprehends within
itself a class of issues which are subordinate, may there not be a still
greater issue which dwarfs that of slavery and freedom into a secondary,
and comprehends within itself this and other issues of equal magnitude
and importance?

Our Government has never given out that its object in the prosecution of
the war is the extinction of slavery. It claims to have adopted
emancipation only as a war measure; the great purpose of the war being
avowedly the recovery of Governmental possessions and the restoration of
the Union. Many moralists, failing, as we believe, to see the real
significance of the idea of political unity, have looked upon the
proposed object of the Government as a low and unworthy one; but have,
nevertheless, rejoiced that the hand of Providence is in the work, and
overruling it to bring out of these meaner aims a great and noble
result.

It may be well to recollect in this connection that it is not always
when great moral ends are the real aim and purpose of a movement that
the greatest good has been accomplished. The greatest moral results have
often followed when the movement proposed no moral end whatever; while
efforts having a direct moral aim have resulted in signal failure, and
sometimes in disaster even to the very end proposed. Well-meant efforts
to save the heathen in a spiritual way have sometimes resulted in their
physical destruction, through the stealthy obtrusion of the pests of
civilization.

It is by no means as yet a settled question that emancipation will
enhance the happiness of our negro population, or that it may not be the
beginning of a series of disasters to the race which will eventuate in
its extinction on this continent. The settlement of the slave question
may be the beginning of the negro question; and the end of one
difficulty the beginning of another.

It may be that sympathy for the negro is seeking to put in train a
series of changes which would terribly revulse those same sympathies, if
the end could be seen from the beginning. Yet these sympathies, even if
mistaken in their direct object, may be working to a great and desirable
end, which they do not as yet recognize. The Crusaders aimed at what
they considered a good, but, failing in that, accomplished a real good
of which they had no conception. They did not make themselves permanent
masters of the Holy Land, but through their intercourse with each other
and with the more cultivated people of the East, they nourished the
germs of a forthcoming civilization in the West.

In the natural history of the world we discover that certain tribes of
sentient beings prey upon certain other tribes; and this seems, on a
cursory view, to be very shocking to the finer sensibilities of our
nature; yet it is an arrangement which results in a larger amount of
sentient enjoyment than could otherwise obtain among these lower
denizens of our inexplicable world. The most vigorous--that which
embodies within itself the greatest and the most various elements of
vitality and power--the most vigorous, I say, prevails; and if the negro
race of our continent should begin to wane and finally go as the 'poor
Indian' has done--a fate which I do not here predict for him--the field
thus vacated will not be lost, but occupied at once, and in time to its
fullest extent, by a race of greater capabilities for culture, progress,
and enjoyment. The physical world has attained to its present advanced
geological condition through much of violence and pain; the same is true
in a moral sense of mankind at large; and there may be still quite a
great deal of this same career to run.

Sympathy of itself is blind, and may 'kill with kindness.' It has often
done so. But it is a noble emotion: let it play its role, since, in the
working out of destiny, 'the will may be taken for the deed,' and a good
accomplished which was not intended or foreseen.

Governments may not be greatly at fault for not proposing 'high moral
aims.' We need only recall the names of Watt, Fulton, Stevenson, Morse,
and others of that class, to perceive that great moral changes are
brought about when no moral purpose is intended. It is not affirmed that
these benefactors of mankind never thought of the moral consequences
which their purely physical labors would produce, but only that the
moral consequences were not the incentive to the mechanical achievement.
The genius of invention had to work out its legitimate results through
the innate force of its own peculiar constitution. The impetus was that
of essential genius, not of moral calculation.

The same thing is true of the cultivation of science for its own sake.
The stargazer with his telescope, the chemist with crucible and retort,
the physiologist with his chemical and optical aids, the purely
scientific thinker--all who prosecute science for the love of it--have
wrought out results which are breaking as light of the clear morning sun
upon the history of nations, thus enabling us to avail ourselves of the
past in order to comprehend the status of the present and the
possibilities of the future.

Great social and political results have thus been attained without
consciously intending them, or seeing how they were to be brought about.
Our Government, without professing great moral purposes, may yet
accomplish more in that direction, and this, too, by the relentless and
bloody hand of war, than has ever been the result of purely moral design
by the most approved moral means, on the part of any combination of
mankind. It may be a crisis in history, and the ushering in of a new
era.

Our Government proposes to recover lost possessions, and restore the
integrity of the Union. Wherefore? Ours is the most beneficent
Government upon the earth, blessing the most human beings, and it should
be sustained. The whole nation has contributed to the acquisition of
Southern territory, and it is not meet that the Northern people should
surrender their interest in the same. The Mississippi River belongs as
naturally to the great West as to the South, and it should be under the
control of the same sovereign power, to be used for the good of one
great people. There is no natural division line between the North and
South, and it would be fatal to the future peace and prosperity of this
continent to attempt to make one.

These are some of the reasons ordinarily given for the prosecution of
this war--for our great effort to reëstablish the Union. They are
practical, readily comprehended, and to urge them is well--enough,
really, for present practical purposes; but may there not be in the idea
of political unity a meaning--a philosophical significance, if you
please, which these practical and obvious considerations do not reveal?

It is the confirmed conviction of the Northern people, with certain
unnatural exceptions, that it is our true policy to maintain the
integrity of the Union at any cost, however great; the people of the
South evidently take a different view of it; the political thinkers of
Europe appear to be divided in their sympathies between the North and
South.

An article appears in a British quarterly to prove that it is the fate
of great empires to fall to pieces; and that China, Turkey, Russia, and
the United States show signs of approaching dissolution. It is observed
that French writers of authority in the Government have issued pamphlets
to prove that the peace and stability of nations require the
dismemberment of the United States. The 'fire eaters' of the South are
not the only people who would like to see the United States in
fragments. We have such even in the North; and in Europe, especially
near the thrones, 'their name is legion.'

The thinking world has not yet settled into the conviction that a great
continental policy, preserving internal peace, and enduring for an
indefinite period into the far-off future, is a possible thing. The fate
of nations and empires, as revealed in history, is apparently against
such an idea. Many empires have already appeared, risen to power, fallen
into decay, and become dismembered, having run their course and
disappeared. May it not be so with our own great confederacy of States?
The authority against a great, practical, enduring political unity is
respectable. May we not be fighting for an illusion? What guarantee have
we in history, science, and common sense, that our Federal Union will
not crumble as the empires of the past have done, and as the political
prophets of Europe, casting the horoscope of nations in the shadows of
their own political fragmentarism, have predicted for us? Even should
the rebels South be chastised, and the Union restored for the present,
have we solid reasons for believing in the permanency of our
institutions? What is the warrant for our faith that American destiny
comprehends the principle of American unity?

People contract habits of thought in a great measure from the nature of
the institutions which surround them. Europe could think nothing but
feudalism at one time; she had no conception of religion outside the
Church of Rome. The Turk thinks by the standard of political absolutism
and the Moslem faith. The reflections of every people are cast in the
national mould; it is so the world over, and has been so in all times.
Europe, or at least a very influential portion thereof, thinks that the
'balance of power' system will yet be inaugurated among the family of
nations yet to spring up on this continent. Her people think balance of
power, and the London _Times_ and like organs of the existing polity
write balance of power for our edification, and for the future of
America. They cannot conceive that there is any other way to get along
for any considerable length of time. In like manner is it
concluded--keeping up the old trains of thought--that if nations once
fell into fragments when shaken, they will do just so again.

Now, perhaps we have contracted habits of thought from the character of
our country and her institutions, and are deceiving ourselves with hopes
which have no real foundation. These, we believe, are considerations
which have engaged the attention of every reflecting man; and it
behooves us, as intelligent Americans and members of a young nation of
hitherto unexampled prosperity and promise, to be able to give a reason
for the faith that is in us.

There are changes and crises in the course and destiny of political
systems. The conditions of one period of time are different from the
conditions of another period. Different conditions necessitate different
political systems. Feudalism did not last always; European diplomacy is
only three hundred years old. If Europe, out of her peculiar situation,
originated the doctrine of balance of power, thus innovating upon the
past, may not we, owing to the novelty of our situation, originate a
continental system which will endure to the remotest periods of time, or
so long as political systems shall have place on the earth?

One empire may fall into fragments to-day; while another may not only
not suffer dissolution, but really grow stronger, and appropriate, in a
most legitimate manner, parts of the dismembered empire.

We must allow, not only for the difference of conditions with reference
to time, but, also, for the different situations at the same time of
different political structures. To assume, because nations have been
ground to atoms, or have fallen to pieces of their own weight, that
therefore Russia and the United States are about to go in the same way,
is a species of reasoning which is hardly warranted by scientific
methods. It may be that the empire of Great Britain is itself doomed to
dissolution at no very distant day; but it does not follow that the
United States are, therefore, liable to the same fate, now or ever. So
far from this, it is possible, if not highly probable, that as the
remote provinces of the British empire shall fall away, the central
political system of this continent may very naturally absorb at least
one of the fragments, and thereby become stronger as a Government, and
more potent for good to the people of an entire world.

There are laws of dissolution, and laws of segregation and combination
in the political as in the natural world. Great Britain may fall into
fragments because her geographical and political conditions render her
amenable to the laws of dissolution; while the United States may go on
enlarging their boundaries and becoming more stable and powerful from
the fact that their political status and local surroundings render them
the legitimate subject of the laws of political growth and geographical
enlargement. The British possessions are geographically too remote; they
may not be united together by the necessary bonds of political union.
The weakness of Great Britain may now be what the weakness of the
Spanish empire once was. Her geography is against her. The day is
gradually passing away when arbitrary power may hold distant regions in
subjection to a central despotism; the day is at hand which demands that
the bonds of union shall be natural and just, not arbitrary--bonds which
forever assert their own inherent power to unite and grow stronger, not
weaker, with the inevitable changes constantly being wrought out by the
busy hand of time.

Man's social and political life depends much on the physical conditions
by which he is surrounded. We have only to instance a mountain and
valley population. The former is isolated and out of the way, and the
people simple, uncouth, and uncultivated--contented, it is true, but,
nevertheless, enjoying but little of the abundance and variety in which
people of culture luxuriate. The valley population have a city,
villages, rich lands, trade, and commerce; they are wealthy, cultivated,
and realize far more the legitimate fruition of our entire nature.

Even missionaries, whose prejudices may be presumed to have been in
favor of purely moral means, tell us that that heathen can only be
permanently Christianized through changes in their physical conditions
which commerce alone can bring about.

Physical conditions affect the destiny of nations, and go far to
determine the extent and character of political organizations. It makes
a great difference whether a country has or has not the means of ready
communication and transportation from one section to another. While the
great body of Europe was comparatively uncultivated, with only the
natural channels of commerce, and these unimproved, there could be
little communication between the different sections of country; and
Europe had no political or social unity. The people of the entire
continent were in a fragmentary and disorganized mass, comparatively
isolated, and independent of each other. The jurisdictions of the great
barons and of the cities became at length united into kingdoms. The
increase of commerce brought these kingdoms into relations with each
other, and diplomacy grew out of national necessities. As the countries
improved and the facilities and occasions for intercommunication and
commerce increased, the principle of political unity must needs
comprehend a wider range. At first, it took in only the component parts
of kingdoms, and then the kingdoms in the form of great national leagues
of more or less permanence. This form of political unity may be very
imperfect, but it is nevertheless unity consummated in the best possible
manner which the system of separate thrones would permit. Changes in the
conditions and relations of peoples render changes in their political
forms an absolute necessity. The facilities for education,
intercommunication, travel, and commerce, are the great unitizers of
peoples and nations.

A great, overgrown empire, which has been built up by arbitrary power,
may fall to pieces, because it is not bound together by the ligaments
which an ubiquitous commerce affords. Another, because thus interlaced
and woven together, cannot be sundered. The dependence of part on part
and the facilities of transportation from one section to another, render
such an empire a really vital organism, which cannot be divided without
destroying the whole; but since nations, as individuals, are tenacious
of life, the whole cannot be destroyed, and the empire cannot be
divided. There is no place for division, and none can be made. This
principle, we believe, applies to our own country.

Lines for the transmission of intelligence, the highways of travel, the
channels of intercommunication and commerce--these connect remote
sections with each other, and, in connection with the specialization of
industry, cause them to become mutually dependent, and thus form a web
of unity knitting the many into one. The Mississippi River has been
characterized by some one as a great original Unionist. It is so.

The channels and highways of commerce are of two kinds: natural and
artificial. The natural are the seas, lakes, rivers; and these only
become the means of political union according to the extent of the use
which is made of them. The improvement of harbors and of rivers, and the
modern revolutions in the art of navigation, have greatly increased
their power to make one section necessary to another, and bind people to
people. Were not steam applied to locomotion, the great rivers of North
America would afford far less of promise for American unity than they
now do.

Since whatever facilitates communication and transportation makes one
class of people dependent on another, through the mutual exchange of
social opportunity and of industrial productions, and binds them more
firmly together; hence, also, the political and social values of the
artificial channels of commercial intercourse. Wagon roads, canals,
railroads, telegraphs, are all so many political unitizers; but the
railroad, with its accompaniment, the telegraph, may be regarded as the
chief of all.

Let us notice for a moment the political value of our rivers, with the
improved navigation of the same, and of our railroads, in the
suppression of the existing rebellion.

Had there been no navigable rivers and no railroads uniting the North
and South, the chances for the local division of our country would be
far greater than they are under existing circumstances. The South would
have been comparatively isolated from the North, and our armies could
not have reached her territory with the facility they now do. Prolonged
for years, as the war must have been under such circumstances, the North
would have grown weary of prosecuting it; the chances for intervention
would have been greater, and the establishment of a Southern nation by
no means an impossible thing.

With facilities for penetrating the country, it may be easier to reduce
a dozen rebel States than one quarter of the territory if held by
uncivilized Indians. We were longer subjugating the Seminole Indians
than we are likely to be in putting down the rebellion. The facilities
of transportation in the one case, and their absence in the other, make
part of the difference. Besides, these same facilities and their
accompaniments render Southern society a really vital and sensitive
thing, so that a wound in some vital part, as Vicksburg or Chattanooga,
is felt to the remotest ends of Secessia. It will not require
extermination of all the members; a few mere such wounds, and the
rebellious creature will have to yield.

The Tennessee River enabled us to drive the enemy out of Western
Tennessee and Northern Mississippi and Alabama. By means of the
Mississippi River we have cut away a considerable limb of the
'confederacy,' and we believe it can never be restored. Nashville has
become a depot of supplies for the army of the Cumberland, because of
the Cumberland River and the railroad to the Ohio River.

When we advanced from Murfreesboro', on the 24th of June last, the rains
fell almost incessantly, and the roads became at length really
impassable. We were at Tullahoma and beyond it, on short rations. Had
there been no means of transportation other than the army wagon and the
common road, it is doubtful whether, under the circumstances, General
Rosecrans could have held his advanced position so easily won. When some
of the teams could not draw empty wagons back to Murfreesboro', it is
not likely that such means of transportation would have been sufficient
for the subsistence of our army in and around Tullahoma. But in less
than ten days the joyful whistle of the locomotive was heard, and the
army was soon abundantly supplied.

Take our present situation. Had there been no railroad from Nashville to
the Tennessee River, the campaign of last fall could not have been
undertaken with any prospect of success. But allow that it had been
undertaken, and the result of the battle of Chickamauga what it was:
could our army have terminated its retreat at Chattanooga, and held this
important military position? By no means: it would have recrossed the
mountains, a broken, discouraged, and almost demoralized host. The
trains have run almost constantly from Nashville to Stevenson and
Bridgeport, and the army has been on half rations for nearly two months.
If wagons could not bring supplies fifty miles, much less one hundred
and fifty. And now (November 15th) that the distance for teams has, for
some days, been reduced to six or seven miles, we are still very short
of supplies.

Let the Nashville and Chattanooga Railroad receive due credit for the
part it has played in promoting the success of the campaign and 'saving
the Army of the Cumberland.' Railroads and all other channels of
commerce contribute most efficiently to the success of the great effort
of our Government to restore the integrity of the Union: let them
receive due credit, and be rightly remembered when the great conflict
is ended.

These facts may serve to suggest the value of the various commercial
facilities as means of political unitization. A country without the
means of travel and transportation may readily separate into independent
fragments whenever any arbitrary institution, as that of slavery,
develops antagonism between different geographical sections; and in that
case the arbitrary institution would triumph, and civilization would be
thrown backward. But in a country which speaks the same language, and is
checkered all over by the pathways of commercial and social
intercourse--since there is no place for division except by the rupture
of innumerable ligaments--the integrity of its oneness will maintain
itself; and if necessary to this end, the arbitrary institution, or
cause of attempted rupture, whatever It may be, will be swept out of
existence.

The vindication of national unity is the great issue; the abasement of
slavery a subordinate one.

Here, then, may we perceive some reasons why our labor and sacrifice for
the restoration of the Union are not given in vain; that we are not
struggling to sustain a structure which will be liable at any time to
pass into the history of the 'fall of empires.' We have the
encouragement of new conditions--of conditions which give a warrant,
wherever they obtain, for the permanence of political unity. Subdue the
present rebellion, reinstate the Union, multiply the facilities for
social intercourse and the mutual exchange of products, especially
railroads, wherever there is sufficient promise of a need; and our
country, thus knit together and united, has nothing to fear from the
madness of local factions. Permeate the body politic in all its members
by the nerves, veins, and arteries of a vital circulation, and it
becomes an organized unity which is not susceptible of division into
upper or lower, right or left, except by the destruction of the entire
organism.

But admitting that continental unity is to obtain some day, still the
question as to whether now is or is not the time for it to assume a more
distinct form, brings us by a rational necessity to a brief notice of
the influence of European diplomacy and the contingency of foreign
intervention.

It is very clear that the 'balance of power' system of Europe, and the
continental system which this war is waged on our part to sustain, are
very unlike, if not antagonistic systems. The tone, all through the war,
of a large portion of the British daily press, and of much of her
weightier literature; the intrigues of Napoleon and the outspeaking of
his minions, together with the measures which have been clandestinely
taken by persons of power and influence to advance the interests of
secession, show that there are influential classes in Western Europe,
allied by interest to her fragmentary political organizations, who would
gladly see the United States broken to pieces under the shock of
rebellion. Their sympathies have been with the rebellion all through the
war; and that they have not interfered more actively than they have, is
not to be attributed to their sincere love for justice and neutrality,
but to their own weakness--to the complicated nature of their own
diplomacy, and its critical status just now, when there is danger of
bursting volcanoes in their own midst.

It is a law of history that any political system of some degree of
prevalence seeks to extend itself; indeed, this is a law of all
movement, whether physical, chemical, social, or political. There is a
political leaven which permeates the whole mass, and brings it into the
same condition. It resulted once in the general prevalence of feudalism;
it afterward touched the cities of civilizing Europe, and they became
independent, and leagued together for a common purpose. It operated
again, and governments of organized and more orderly character came
into existence all over what was once feudal Europe. The prevailing
system, or that which is animated by the strongest and most active
principle, necessitates whatever is unlike it to become of the same
character with itself, even though it might seem like the surrender of
the better for the worse. This is very aptly shown by the fact that
under feudalism allodial titles were voluntarily surrendered for feudal
ones. This system subordinated even the church.

The question is legitimate: Have we nothing to fear from the leaven of
political fragmentarism in Europe? Is there not vitality enough in the
little-monarchy and balance-of-power system of Middle and Western Europe
to extend its influence into this country, contributing effectually to
the overthrow of American unity; and, by the operation of this political
'induction,' making the political system of America like the political
system of Europe? Or, has the time come for the more permanent
inauguration of the policy of continental unity--a system of very
different genius from that which prevails in the former centres of
civilization? We believe that there are the most rational grounds for
encouragement.

Political fragmentarism is comparatively a primitive condition. Europe
has bean growing out of it for hundreds of years. The grasp of political
unity has gradually taken hold of the nations, and brought them
organization and order out of isolation and anarchy. Even European
diplomacy is an expression of the unitizing tendency, since it seeks to
bind the nations together in leagues, making them as completely a unit
as may be consistent with the pride and interests of separate and
distinct sovereignties. Unitization is therefore in the line of
political development; it has gained strength with the march of
civilization and the growth of intelligence and freedom among the
people. Our struggle, therefore, would seem to be a spontaneous uprising
of the people for the security of a cardinal principle--a great torrent
of human movement, surging forward with the stream of political
development. History is, in its deepest heart, upon the side of unity,
and ours is a sure faith that victory will crown our efforts.

We are led further to hope that the time has come for unity, by the fact
that the European system has not as yet felt itself strong enough to
meddle in any direct manner in our affairs to the detriment of our
cause.

The fact that the political system of Europe is at present so completely
busied with its own complications, together with the fact that our own
country is so intersected by the natural and artificial channels of
commerce and general intercourse, and by the interrelation and
overlapping of interests, that there is no definite line for a fracture
to be found, while, at the same time, our armies can readily penetrate
into the enemy's country, and advance their base of supplies by means of
the great thoroughfares of trade; these are sources of encouragement,
and give us good reason to believe that the time has indeed come for the
ushering in of a new political era by the successful vindication of
American unity.

We repeat, this is the great issue of the war. Slavery has only sprung
upon us; and if slavery stands in the way of national unity and
political harmony, unity and harmony can only be secured by
subordinating the power of slavery.

       *       *       *       *       *

As to the importance and full significance of the principle of political
unity, it is not proposed to enter into a detailed discussion here; the
theme is too vast. A few suggestions must suffice in this connection.

One of the consequences of the want of political unity is national
dissensions and frequent wars, by which the resources of nations are
drained, property destroyed, countries devastated, the arm of industry
weakened, commerce crippled, and progress in the means of civilization
generally retarded. Political unity would do away with national
quarrels, so disastrous to human well-being; while the emulation of
states and sections will furnish all the incentive that is necessary to
urge a people on to honorable achievements.

It does not promise well for the pacific character of unity, that we
have a great civil war; but wherefore? An antiquated and misplaced
institution--a relic of a more primitive and barbarous form of
society--has led to the development of antagonism between two local
divisions of our country. The war grew out of this antagonism: destroy
the cause of sectional misunderstanding, and this cause of war will
never more give us trouble.

But a difficulty is suggested: Our people will never become alike, never
a homogeneous people; the differences of country and climate will
forever prevent this. Very good; we don't want sameness throughout the
society of a great empire. This is a distinctly marked feature of
primitive society. The more unlike as to industrial pursuits, the more
variety in the tastes and wants of the people of different sections, the
more dependent may these different sections become upon each other; and
with facilities for intercourse, the more intimately do they become
related. Unity develops itself through the specialization of parts and
functions. This specializing process, as in the gradual formation of the
vital organs in fetal development, is the very creation of unlikeness;
and unity is the mutual dependence and necessary coöperation of these
dissimilar organs. The more diversity the more complete the unity. It is
antagonism--a very different thing--that does the mischief. It is not
desirable that a people should be homogeneous; that would be a falling
back into barbarous conditions. Unity demands that the people shall be
heterogeneous and diversified, with heterogeneous and diversified
occupations, tastes, and habits; and then, with proper facilities for
mental intercommunication, travel, and transportation, they become a
coöperative and coalescent people. It is coalescence we want, and not
homogeneity.

If such be the conditions of unity, then surely it is not to be feared,
because New England manufactures, the Middle States mine, the Western
States farm, and the Southern States plant, that, therefore, they must
needs be under separate and distinct governments. This very
dissimilarity of soil, climate, occupation, and production enables the
sections to contribute to each other's welfare, and is a condition of
their unity. The heart, liver, lungs, stomach, brain, and nerves cannot
dispense with each other in the vital economy; it is the very dependence
of one special part upon another through the channels of circulation,
that renders the superior animal organism so completely a unit. It
cannot be repeated too often that it is not sameness of function, but
heterogeneity of function, that unity requires. Hence, through the
specialization of industries--one kind of manufactures here, and another
there; mining in one locality, and farming in another; the growing of a
certain product in one section, and the growing of a different product
in a different section--all these, together with, the increasing
facilities for correspondence and transportation, are preparing society
for larger, more complete, and inevitable unity.

There need be no fear of confirmed hostility of feeling between the
North and South when the war is over, should it end in the
reëstablishment of the Union. Southern journalists say:

     'If the North is successful in its mad scheme of conquest, we shall
     look upon ourselves as a subjugated people, and there never can be
     cordial union between the people of the two sections.'

Nonsense. With the coming of peace, there will also come a very
different spirit over the dream of the entire South. The great mass of
her people have been cruelly duped, and not less cruelly coerced; and
once the war is over, these people will become undeceived, and at once
relieved from the gyves of a remorseless conscription. There will be a
violent reaction in Southern sentiment, and a storm of indignation will
be hurled against the instigators of rebellion for all the torture and
agony and ruin they have brought to the millions of a once happy nation.
The war for the Union will yet find an altar in every Southern home; it
will become as truly appreciated there as here; the Southern people will
one day glory as greatly in its magnificent results. There will be no
longer a few thousand aristocrats, calling themselves 'the South,' and
teaching hatred to freedom and progress. This class will be shorn of
power and influence, as one of the consequences of the war; and being no
longer competent for good or mischief, they may, indeed, nurse their
gloom, and torture their lives to the bitter end with the wail, 'We are
a subjugated people.' But it will be the wail of selfishness for the
sceptre which has departed forever from their hands. There is nothing to
fear from these. Very soon after the Government shall have vindicated
its competence and extended its jurisdiction over the rebel States, will
the most influential and active of their people range themselves on the
side of the 'powers that be'--such is the charm of power, the magic of
interest, the welcome of peace. All the antagonism generated and
cherished by slavery will have totally disappeared; and the South will
soon be on the side of all freedom. There will be cordial coöperation
under free labor and free trade, between her people and our people; and
though diversified as to occupations, habits, and tastes, they will
constitute essentially one great political brotherhood.

When slavery, the cause of the present unhappy strife, is extinguished,
our country has little to fear, except, perhaps, from the Rocky
Mountains, which interpose so formidable a barrier between the Atlantic
and Pacific States of our great Federal Union. This mountain barrier and
the great distance by water may one day afford an occasion for the
encouragement of ambitious men to repeat the experiment of secession.
The antidote to this possible evil is the reduction of the most
formidable features of the barrier, and the shortening of the forbidding
interval. Span the mountains and intervening valleys with railroads and
lines of telegraph, and every wire and rail assumes the dignity of a
social and political power in the bonds of an indissoluble unity.

If there be so little to create apprehension for the future, may we not
rationally hope that the diminution of war, if not its ultimate
extinction, is one of the promises of political unity?

Great, strong, noble men--those who are great and noble in all the
elements of their nature--such are never pugilists, and never fight: it
is those of distorted and defective development--those who have not
completeness and integrality within themselves, that are turbulent and
break the peace.

Another value of comprehensive unity is that only in great coöperative
combinations of mankind can the _individual man_ find the fullest
expression for all the faculties of his nature. There is no unity
proper--no organization--in savage society; and life there is very
simple, with little variety of expression and little enjoyment. As man
becomes cultivated his wants increase, and he becomes a more social
being. His happiness becomes more and more dependent on others; hence
arise societies and organizations of various kinds. The more cultivated
any people and the more diversified their wants, the more various do
their relations become, and the more extensive their combinations. This
is given merely as a fact of history. The truly philosophic eye, we
believe, cannot be long in discerning that these larger combinations
and more comprehensive unities are only a necessary outgrowth of an
improving civilization, and indispensable to the fullest measure of
happiness; since in them only can the life of a cultured people find the
means of its best expression. The growth of unity, as revealed in
history, is not an arbitrary thing incident to a chance concurrence of
causes, but naturally growing out of the needs of a steady progress in
the education and freedom of the people.

To say that it is through great social and political institutions that
the individual finds the most ample means for the culture and
satisfaction of the faculties and wants of his nature, is but another
way of saying that it is through such institutions that he finds the
widest range for individual liberty. A very little observation of
history will show that as political unity has enlarged and political
organization become more distinctly marked, the radii of individual
freedom have at the same time swept a wider field.

Despotism curtails enterprise, and prevents the specialization of parts
and functions as the genuine condition of unity. The free play of
intelligence and interest is necessary to develop the diversity upon
which unity depends. Let the bare statement suffice. It must come to
every careful observer and clear thinker with the authority of a
self-evident proposition. Unity and individual freedom are necessary to
each other; they act and react, and one implies the other. They go hand
in hand; and national unity cannot be violated and broken, without, at
the same time, necessitating despotism, and curtailing the individual in
the exercise of his legitimate rights. Unity and liberty are mutually
dependent and forever inseparable. Hence the inestimable value of unity,
the leading issue of the war.

The issues of the war might be symbolized by the picture of a great
river; the smaller branches forming still larger ones, and these putting
into the main stream--unity--itself, as it descends, widening into the
great ocean of the future.

These issues might, also, be exhibited in a kind of formula. The
following is no doubt very imperfect, but it may be somewhat suggestive.
The first includes the second, the second the third:

    I.   Political unity _vs._ secession:

       { A progressive civilization _vs._ a stagnant one;
       { A republican form of government _vs._ an aristocratic one;
   II. { Personal freedom _vs._ chattel slavery;
       { General peace _vs._ diplomatic intrigue and war;
       { An enlarged individual freedom _vs._ espionage, censure,
       {  and restriction:

       { Common schools and general intelligence _vs._ partial
       {  culture and general ignorance;
       { Free inquiry _vs._ conventional stultification;
       { Free speech and a free press _vs._ the surveillance
       {  of a mercenary police;
       { The political equality of classes _vs._ the inequality of
       {  ruling, servile, and disfranchised classes;
       { Respect for the affections _vs._ disregard for ties of
       {  home and family;
       { Wages labor _vs._ compulsory labor;
  III. { The dignity of labor _vs._ the opprobrium and servility
       {  of labor;
       { A healthy industrial activity _vs._ indolence and
       {  crushing toil;
       { The continual specialization of industry _vs._ industrial
       {  sameness;
       { Incentives to invention and improvement _vs._ mechanical
       {  inactivity;
       { A constantly renewed soil _vs._ an exhausted one;
       { A great navy and flourishing commerce _vs._ general
       {  commercial apathy;
       { Great industrial prosperity _vs._ industrial
       {  stagnation;
       { Greater variety and versatility in life _vs._ a narrow
       {  and bigoted uniformity.

As I close the preparation of this article for the press (November
26th), it becomes positively known that General Bragg is in full
retreat. This is a great victory, and splendidly won. There has been no
'straggling to the rear,' no faltering, no serious reverse; the entire
three days' conflict, from first to last, has gone right on. A noble
victory, and worthy of a noble cause! Soldiers from every great section
of the Union--from every State almost--have stood by the side of each
other in the perilous conflict. Many have fallen a sacrifice to their
country's great cause, unity. Let homage and gratitude from the
deep-stirred heart of the nation be theirs; may they long be remembered;
and may those who survive, long live to enjoy the fruits of their
victory!

The South could ill afford to lose such a battle, here and now. Not long
can she hold out in her unnatural struggle against destiny. The tide of
a progressive civilization will roll over her, though for a time it must
needs be crimsoned with the blood of martyrs.




ÆNONE:

A TALE OF SLAVE LIFE IN ROME.


CHAPTER I.

When, in the second year of Titus Vespasian, the Roman general Sergius
Vanno returned from his armed expedition in the East, and asked for
public honors, there were some in the senate who made objection. It was
not fitting, they argued, that formal tokens of national commendation
should be too readily bestowed. It had not been so in the time of their
fathers. Long years of noble, self-sacrificing zeal and arduous service,
crowned with conquests of supreme importance, had then been the only
acknowledged title to the prize. It was scarcely proper that the same
distinctions which had hitherto been awarded for the acquisition of the
most valuable provinces should be granted for the annexation of a mere
strip of worthless territory upon the extreme borders of the
empire--wild, rugged, and inhospitable, and inhabited by nomadic tribes,
who could only be brought under a nominal authority, and who would never
prove otherwise than turbulent and unprofitable subjects. Nor was it a
matter to be mentioned with especial laudation that Sergius Vanno had
succeeded in repressing, with overwhelming force, a revolt in a few of
the Ægean islands. If exploits such as these were to be so liberally
recompensed, what honors could there be left to bestow upon deeds of
acknowledged brilliancy and importance?

So, with cautious discrimination, spoke some of the senators; and so, in
the secrecy of their hearts, most of them thought. But against all this
were brought to bear, not only the influence which Sergius naturally
commanded as a patrician of the highest rank, but also the far more
powerful pressure of popular clamor. Sergius was a favorite with the
people. His noble birth and lineage entitled him to their respect. He
was of a rare type of manly beauty--was wealthy, and used his gold with
liberality--gave abundant largesses to the poorer classes--was lavish in
his expenditure upon the arts--did not disdain, at times, to descend
from his natural station and associate with his inferiors, thereby
pleasing the fancy of the masses for social equality--patronized poets
and actors, who, in return, sang or spouted his praise, and thus still
further added to his fame--and was noted for a bold, frank, out-spoken
demeanor, which tended to conciliate all classes with him. These were
virtues not always to be found combined in one person. Moreover, he was
impulsively brave; and, though still young, was gifted with more than
ordinary military genius, and had carried on his campaign with that
rashly daring energy which, when rewarded with success, never fails to
commend its possessor to popular adulation. In addition to all this,
other considerations of a less personal character exerted their
influence. Many months had elapsed since Rome had enjoyed any great
civic festivity, and the people had begun to long for a new stimulant.
The completion of the colossal Flavian amphitheatre had been delayed
beyond public expectation; and though its speedy inauguration had been
announced, there was serious doubt whether the lower and more turbulent
orders of the populace, so long restrained, would possess themselves
with sufficient patience to await the occasion with proper calmness. In
fact, some outlet must be given to their excited appetite for novelty;
and therefore, after much solemn consideration, the senate yielded to
the public clamor, and voted an ovation.

As a token of national appreciation, therefore, the honor thus bestowed
upon Sergius Vanno was not one of the first order; nor were such
pageants a novelty to the Roman people. Several times before, within the
memory of that generation, victorious generals had entered the city with
myrtle wreaths upon their brows, and had exhibited to applauding throngs
the gathered wealth of conquered provinces. Nor had many years elapsed
since the present emperor--then prince--crowned with the richer and more
lavish glories of a triumph, had ridden through the Via Sacra, greeted
with welcoming acclamations as the destroyer of the Jewish
capital--displaying before him the spoils of the sacred temple, and
bringing in his train such thousands upon thousands of captives, that it
had seemed as though all Palestine was being emptied into Rome. Compared
with such exploits, those of Sergius were of trifling importance. But it
now entered little into the minds of the people to make these
comparisons. Whatever had been done in past time by other commanders,
was not worth considering at present. Whoever might have been renowned
before, Sergius Vanno was the hero of to-day. To him should be all the
honor which tens of thousands of ringing voices and applauding hands
could lavish. And therefore, once more, as in the days of the past, the
balconies of the palaces and villas lining the broad Sacra Via were
gorgeous with rich gold and purple tapestries--the Forum glowed bright
and resplendent with statues and decorated arches--altars smoked with
sacrifice in front of columned temples--and the walls and slopes of the
Palatine Hill were joyous with triumphal tokens, while, upon the summit,
the house of the Cæsars glittered with banners and brave devices, and
such costly adornments as were best fitted to grace the festivity and do
honor to the exploits of a much-esteemed subject.

We know the scene. At first--in the full blaze of the noonday
sun--standing silent and nearly deserted, except by a few workmen and
artisans, who here and there lingered to complete the festive
preparations, or by scattered parties of the prætorian guard, who, in
holiday armor, moved slowly to and fro, to watch that order was
maintained. Later--when the shadows deepened, and the air grew
cooler--the avenues and prominent positions along the established route
of the ovation beginning to fill with that great concourse of varied
nationalities and conditions which only the imperial city could display.
In the open streets a disorderly rabble of slaves and bondmen--pouring
in steady streams from their kennels behind the palaces and from the
unhealthy purlieus of such quarters as had been spared from the
architectural encroachments of the wealthy, and allowed to fester in
their own neglected corruption. Gathered together in close fraternity,
the Briton, the Goth, the African, and the Jew--each bearing his badge
of life-long servitude, some even wearing marks of recent chastisement,
but almost all awaiting the approaching spectacle with pleased and
animated countenances, and in seeming forgetfulness that so many of
their own number had graced former displays, and, by their degradation,
had afforded amusement to other equally unsympathetic concourses. Among
them, the lesser Romans--citizens in name, indeed, but, from their
poverty and the overbearing exactions of the patricians, almost as much
in slavery as those around them--disdainfully asserting their free
birth, and in turn contemned by the slaves themselves, as men to whom
liberty was but another title for slow starvation, and who would not
dare to resent the vilest insults heaped upon them by noble-owned and
protected menials--and now equally with the common herd obliged to
submit to the strong argument of sword and lance, as, every little
while, the soldiers along the line drove the whole writhing crowd,
without distinction, into smaller and more confined compass. Here and
there, knights and soldiers of high rank--riding up on horseback, and
pushing through the struggling mass of slaves to the front, or more
leisurely, but to equal purpose, waiting until their own menials had
gone before, and, with mingled threats and blows, had cleared out a
vacant space for them. Other crowds, standing in favorable positions
upon housetops and upon hastily constructed stagings; and more
especially upon the great amphitheatre, whose arches were blackened with
clusters of spectators, and whose summit, in place of the last few
layers of stone, so soon to be adjusted, had its deep human fringe. Upon
palace balconies, patricians and noble ladies, displaying a dazzling
array of gold and purple and rare jewelry, and attended by Ethiopian
slaves, who, in glittering armlets, stood behind, holding feathered
canopies to shield their mistresses from the sun. All this confusing
concourse of wealth and poverty each moment increasing in breadth, and
density, as every avenue emptied new swarms into the packed arena, until
it seemed as though not only all Rome, but half the empire had gathered
there.

Later yet, the music of flutes and hautboys--which, for a time, had been
only indistinctly heard--breaking upon the ear with a clearer sound, and
the van of the procession suddenly emerging into full view from behind
the Circus Maximus, and, accompanied by the ringing shout of thousands
spreading abroad new and louder welcomes, beginning to file past with
rapid steps. First in order, the magistrates in full official robes; the
spoils of war; the white sheep dressed for the sacrifice, and the
priests bearing the holy vessels of the altar; gay trappings, flaunting
standards, and all that could most readily inspire the heart with
elation and enthusiasm. After these, and guarded on either side by
detached parties of troops, the captives, of barbaric and Grecian origin
mostly, but here and there interspersed with men of other races--Jews,
Syrians, and Huns--who, through contiguity of place or love of arms or
self-interest, or a kindred hatred of the Roman rule, had been drawn
into the battle--and who, having bravely stood their ground, striving
for success, and with hearts well prepared for the consequences of
failure, had been overtaken by the usual defeat, and dragged into utter
and hopeless slavery. Among them, men of the Ethiopian race, also--who,
having been slaves in Greece, had fought, not for principle or for
freedom, but simply at their owners' bidding, and had thereby, upon
being overcome, merely changed one class of masters for another--owners
and slaves now knowing no difference in position, but standing involved
in the same common fate. Some appearing defiant, others downcast and
sullen, a few excited and curious, most of them walking with unfettered
limbs, but here and there one heavily chained, betokening a fierce and
unsubdued nature, upon which it was still necessary to put restraint.
All marching or being dragged along at an equal pace; sometimes with an
approximation to military exactness--at other points breaking into a
confused mass, as women and children clung despairingly together and
prevented the maintenance of any regular order. Around them, the
spectators closely pressing, with morbid curiosity, discussing with loud
approval the value of whatever of strength or beauty met their eyes, and
occasionally greeting some undersized and misshapen victim with jeers of
derision. And closing up the straggling line, more soldiers, marching in
well-formed ranks, poising aloft myrtle-decked lances, and, while
interchanging salutations with the eddying crowd, singing in measured
cadence their songs of victory.

And at last, as the sun sank yet lower toward the horizon, a yet
brighter brilliancy investing the scene, as far down the line new shouts
arose, and the struggling throng caught up the loud acclaim and carried
it onward like a great wave, betokening the speedy approach of the most
distinguished feature of the procession--the conqueror himself--hailed
Imperator by his troops--with his most noble friends clustered about
him, the myrtle wreath encircling his brow, and his earnest gaze fixed
upon the Capitol, the honorable termination of his route.

In every respect, indeed--except in the display of those few distinctive
formalities required to mark, as with a legal stamp, the actual and
comparative value of the honor--the same old familiar story, so often
hitherto rehearsed upon that line of Sacra Via and of Forum: incense
burning upon the altars, which had blazed for other heroes; garlands
hanging from the arches which had graced past festivities; and surging
crowds, heedful only of the present glory, and, with the customary
popular fickleness, ready to forget it all as soon as the fleeting
pageant should be over, now with indiscriminating zeal cheering the
march of Sergius Vanno as frantically as in other days they had greeted
the triumphal cars of Cæsar and of Vespasian.


CHAPTER II.

Gradually the sun approached and dipped below the blue line of extended
plain which lay between the city and the sea; the long shadows of
afternoon began to blend into the one deeper shade of evening; the
groups of distant buildings became more and more indistinct; the arches
of the Colosseum softly faded away, leaving but a broad mass of unbroken
wall; upon the Palatine Hill the great house of the Cæsars shone less
and less gloriously as the sky darkened behind the pile of decorated
roofs; here and there a light gleamed from some distant quarter; here
and there stars began to glisten in the sky.

Then the concourse of people, who had waited so long and patiently,
began to break apart. The pageant was not yet entirely over, for fresh
battalions of soldiers still marched past at rapid pace, tuning their
steady tramp to the cadence of their songs of triumph. But the great
feature of the occasion--the conqueror himself--had ridden by; and what
yet remained was but a faint recapitulation of the glories which had
gone before. Therefore the patricians retired from their balconies, the
horsemen abandoned their stations and plunged down the many streets
which led out from the Forum, and the crowd of slaves and menial
citizens, already rendered so indistinct in the fading light as to
resemble one writhing, struggling monster rather than separate beings,
began to stretch out its long arms into the narrow lanes and byways, and
so gradually to melt away.

Withdrawing from the front balcony of the Vanno palace, where, shielded
from the sun, she had sat and watched the procession pass by, Ænone, the
young and fair wife of the conqueror, now sought rest and retirement in
an inner apartment. Thither one of her women had preceded her, and had
drawn forward a cushioned lounge, had beaten up the silken pillows, had
placed a table near at hand, with a light repast spread upon it, had
trimmed and filled with fresh olive oil the large bronze lamp which
swung from the ceiling, and now stood by awaiting further orders.

Throwing herself upon the lounge, Ænone covered her face with her hands.
What unbidden thought was it that came creeping into her heart to
trouble her? Why was it that something of the bright joyousness of
spirit with which she looked forward to that day had vanished? Surely
nothing had occurred which of itself could bring to her either sorrow or
repining. All things had happened as she had anticipated. She had seen
her honored lord pass by with the myrtle wreath upon his brow, his most
worthy officers at his side, and his bravest guards around him. She had
seen that he was strong and without wound, as he had departed from her.
She had heard the shouts of applause which had welcomed his approach as
though he were a god; and, with her heart generously and unselfishly
alive only to his honor, and unable to realize that all this frantic joy
and adulation were not the passion of the nation's life, but were merely
one single, careless throb of its fevered pulse, she had rejoiced with
him, believing that he had indeed done what had made him the greatest of
all living men. And, better than all, amid this scene of triumph, he had
not seemed unmindful of her, for he had looked up and waved to her a
salute, which the responsive crowd had joined in and carried along with
redoubled acclamations, and he had sent to her his most trusty slave
with a loving message. What, then, could she ask more?

Nothing that she could name, or that if she named, to others, would have
seemed a reasonable desire. And yet at her heart there was a certain
dim, indistinct foreboding of evil, which she could not entirely
repress. Was it that, in his glance, as he rode by and beheld her
awaiting him, there was less of longing love than of gratified pride? Or
did that flush upon his bronzed face indicate too surely his enjoyment
of this pageant for its own sake rather than for the pleasure which he
might have supposed that she would derive from it? Was it from
forgetfulness of her that, after he had ridden past, he did not again
look back to wave one more recognition, but rather seemed to gaze
eagerly forward to where the assembled senators stood ready to greet
him? Or, on the contrary, were all these merely vague and empty
imaginings arising from the exhaustion and wearisomeness of long,
impatient waiting?

At length, raising her head, she saw her attendant bondwoman standing at
the distance of a few paces, with her hands crossed upon her breast. The
steady tramp of marching troops outside had ceased, for the last
battalion had passed; and now the only sound was the silver bubbling and
plashing of a little fountain that adorned the courtyard upon which the
window of the apartment looked out.

'The pageant is over now,' said Ænone, 'and he will soon be here. Let me
know as soon as my lord returns.'

The woman bowed her head in silence; and then, feeling that nothing more
was wanted of her, slowly turned to depart. As she did so, a new comer
entered the room--a male slave of Gallic birth, who, by reason of his
lofty stature as well as wonderful strength, had been promoted from the
lowest order of servitude to become Sergius Vanno's armor bearer and
chief attendant. In that capacity he had fought through the late
campaign, and had now returned, bearing among his fellows his own share
of honor for successful and daring exploits. He had been released from
personal attendance only a few moments before, and was now carrying back
his master's sword and buckler, to hang them up in their accustomed
place, and himself subside into well-earned idleness. Being the first
time, for many months, that he had seen his mistress, he muttered some
rough ejaculations expressive of servile devotion, and then stood in
lazy attitude awaiting her permission to speak further.

'Your master, Drumo?'

'Will not return to-night,' the man responded. 'The emperor demands his
presence.'

'And that will detain him--'

'He knows not how long. But immediately after that there is to be a
brave feast at the house of the poet Emilius, and it will doubtless be
morning before they separate.'

'He bade you tell me this?'

The giant nodded.

'It is well. That is all; you can go. You may both go, for I would be
alone.'

The armor bearer turned upon his heel and strode away, the sword and
buckler, together with his own rougher trappings, rattling at his back
as he passed down the hall; and behind him slowly crept away the
bondwoman. And Ænone, once more leaning back upon the lounge, gave
herself up to sombre reflection.

It was of course no more than proper, she mused, that her lord should
obey the behests of the emperor and wait upon him. Perhaps new honors
would then be showered down; and, at the least, it was no light
privilege to stand in the presence of the ruler of the world, and there
give personal narration of his exploits. But when that interview was
over, what need to join the revels of another household, instead of
hurrying back to place his newly won garlands at her feet?

She pondered upon the dubious reputation which attached to the house of
the poet Emilius, and recalled the terrible stories which, from time to
time, she had heard regarding it. What might be the realities of the
scenes there enacted, none could truly tell, except the few most
intimate frequenters of the place; but report gave no flattering
description of them. Even among the Roman ladies with whom she was
associated, and whose information was confined to such stray bits of
gossip as they had picked up from slaves and menials, and who, standing
in unconscious awe of her simple purity of heart, often forebore to
speak with her as freely and unguardedly as with each other, she had
occasionally heard such startling tales of the wild dissipations there
enacted, as surpassed conception, and left her horrified senses no calm
refuge except in unbelief. The gorgeous feasts, the night-long
libations, the social intimacy with dancing girls and gladiators, the
mockery of all that was pure and holy, the derisive insults to the gods
themselves--these were practices which the public voice connected with
the house of Emilius, not as occasional outbreaks of wild frivolity, but
as the fixed habits of his daily life. And if these things were true,
what claim of pride or policy could such a place advance to distract her
lord from the allegiance due to his own home alone?

But possibly these things might not be true. She reflected that the poet
was wealthy; and as long as the world continues to be envious, riches
will seldom fail to bring false report upon their possessor. He was a
man of genius, also; and all such can scarcely fail to find rivals who
will turn satirists and attack them in their homes and daily life.
Certainly, it is not difficult for slander to magnify the genial
gatherings of kindred spirits into scenes of wild debauchery. And it
was also true, that if mere outside appearance is of any value as an
index of what is hidden, the slight figure, the pale and almost girlish
face, and the winning and courteous demeanor of the poet were far from
indicating a man of low and debasing inclinations. Moreover, his
writings as surely spoke the contrary; and as she thus reasoned, Ænone
lifted from its case a vellum roll with which Emilius himself had
presented her, containing many of his poems, exquisitely engrossed.
These poems treated not upon the pleasures of wine and love--those
fruitful and ever-varying subjects of the Horatian school. Instead of
this, they pursued, in deep-sounding and majestically rolling dactyls,
the less favorite and trodden track of Socrates and Plato, and
discoursed upon temperance and honor--upon the satisfaction derived from
a well-spent life, and the delights attending a peaceful death--upon the
immateriality of the soul, and the reward bestowed by the gods upon
those who have honored them by leading a virtuous career. As Ænone
slowly turned over leaf after leaf of the parchment roll, she felt her
heart perplexed within her. She could scarcely believe that none of
those tales of reckless dissipation were true, for she remembered that
some of them had reached her ear attended by evidence so circumstantial
that it was impossible to reject them; but, if true, how account for
these grand maxims of lofty morality? What object could their author
have in thus uselessly playing the hypocrite, when amatory and
bacchanalian choruses would not only have been more consonant with his
own feelings, but doubtless more acceptable to the world? She had not
yet learned what it often takes the wisest man a lifetime to
discover--that every inconsistency of conduct is not hypocrisy, but that
it is one of the most common idiosyncrasies of the mind to write and
believe one thing, and as self-approvingly to feel and act the reverse.

With a sigh she closed the volume, and restored it to its place within
the case. Why ponder upon such things as these? The real character of
the poet Emilius was, after all, a matter of but little consequence to
her. Whether the meeting at his house was a wild, reckless orgy, or a
mere intellectual gathering of literary genius, it was none the less
certain that her lord was tarrying there, away from her side. But
perhaps, indeed, even this was a duty which he owed to his fame and
station; and her face brightened up with new hope as the suggestion
flashed upon her. It might be that at this feast there would be present
some poet of lofty epic powers, or historian of wondrous descriptive
talent, ranking as the brightest star of Roman literature; and either of
these, if properly conciliated, would doubtless celebrate her lord's
exploits so grandly that in future ages his campaign would shine with
far greater lustre than if simply committed to parchment in the dry
detail of unadorned fact, and so filed away in the national archives. It
was most fitting, therefore, that he should not permit his impatient
love for her to allow him to neglect the opportunity of cultivating, by
a wise and condescending courtesy, the world-renowned talents of these
men, and thereby redoubling the resplendence of his own bright fame.

Easily satisfying her mind with this pleasing reasoning, she retired for
the night into the innermost apartment--a retreat adorned with every
luxury which could gratify pride and administer to a cultivated taste.
The floor was covered with tesselated marbles of different shades and
arranged in ingenious and novel patterns. The ceiling was resplendent
with allegorical frescoes by the most celebrated masters of the day.
There were glowing paintings upon the walls, rich tapestries in the
windows, embroidered hangings upon the bed. Beside the tables stood
bronze figures holding forth lamps ready trimmed and lighted; fresh
flowers had been placed in their allotted vases, and weighed down the
air with perfume; and in a deep recess stood the bath ready filled, and
scented with carefully plucked rose leaves floating upon the water. But
all this display of magnificent luxury and elaborate taste, if regarded
by her at all, now seemed to affect her with weariness rather than with
pleasure.

Why, as she lay down upon her couch, and prepared to yield herself up to
pleasant slumber, did her thoughts wander back to the time when poverty
instead of luxury had been her lot? Why did those olden memories of the
past so strongly haunt her? They were, perhaps, never entirely absent
from her heart; but now they thronged about her with a force that would
not bear repression. Perhaps it was that the very magnificence and pomp
of power of which she was now the centre, recalled the memory of the
distant past, by virtue of strong contrast alone; perhaps that the
unsatisfied longing and vague foreboding of her soul necessarily
impressed upon her the consciousness that wealth and honor alone cannot
give perfect happiness, and thereby naturally led her thoughts back to
the time when she had found true content in poverty and loneliness.
However that might be, now, as she closed her eyes and shut out the view
of the costly adornments around her, more vividly than ever before were
pictured before her mind the scenes of her childhood: her father's
cottage on the outskirts of Ostia--the olive grove upon the slope
behind--the roadside well, where the villagers would sometimes gather
about some invalided soldier from the German army, and listen to his
tales of the last campaign--and in front, the bay, sparkling in the
bright glare of the sun and laden with the corn-freighted ships of
Alexandria.

And there, too, was the old wave-worn rock--the scene of her life's only
romance--where, stealing out from her father's cabin at the evening
hour, and seating herself so close to the waterline that the spray of
the tideless sea would dash up and bathe her naked feet, she would wait
in all innocence for the coming of the young sailor from Samos. How
rapidly those hours used to pass! How pleadingly, on the last evening,
he had knelt beside her, with his arm resting upon her knee, and there,
gazing up into her face, had asked her for one long tress of hair! How
foolish she had been to give it to him; and how earnestly he had vowed
that he would come back some day, no longer poor and forlorn, but in his
own two-masted vessel, with full banks of oars, manned by the slaves
whom he would capture, and would then bear her away unto his own home!
And how, like a silly girl, she had believed him, as though wandering
sailor boys ever did come back to seek the loving hearts which had
trusted them! And so the year had passed away, and, as she might well
have known from the first, he had not returned. Nor was it to her
regret; for but a little afterward the youthful patrician, already
flushed with budding honors, had chanced to meet her; had loved her with
a generous passion, lifting him above all sordid calculation about
wealth or social differences, and had taught her in turn to bestow upon
him an affection more true and absorbing than she had yet believed her
heart was able to contain. And so her first romantic dream had ended, as
all such childish dreams are apt to end. Let it go. Her heart had found
its true bourne; she could well look back upon the past without regret,
and smile at the youthful fancies connected with it.

One prayer to the gods--a further special invocation to her favorite
goddess, who, at the foot of the couch, stretched forth marble arms
lovingly toward her--and then the silver tinkling of the little
courtyard fountain lulled her softly to sleep.




CARL FRIEDRICH NEUMANN, THE GERMAN HISTORIAN OF OUR COUNTRY.


The first volume of a history of the United States by Carl Friedrich
Neumann, of Berlin,[2] has just been announced as the first history of
our country ever written originally in the German language. The
appearance of such a work at this juncture in our national existence, is
a noteworthy event, and the man who takes so unique an interest in our
affairs should be introduced to our people. Having known him personally
and intimately for many years, I shall attempt such sketch, making much
of it anecdotal, for which purpose material is not wanting.

Dr. Neumann, born near Bamberg, in the kingdom of Bavaria, of Jewish
parents, is now about sixty-five years of age, was educated at
Heidelberg, passed over to the Protestant church at Munich, afterward
attended lectures at Göttingen, and soon after became rector of the
gymnasium at Speyer, but was dismissed from this place on account of the
freedom with which he expressed himself on some religious topics in his
historical teachings. He gave private lessons for a time in Munich, and
then went to learn in a Benedictine monastery in Venice the Armenian
language. This was in 1827. In 1829 he studied the Chinese language in
Paris, went over to London, and sailed thence to visit India and China.
He collected for himself about ten thousand volumes of Chinese works,
embracing every department of the literature of this language, and
bought for the Royal Library at Berlin two thousand four hundred
volumes. Such collections had been till then unknown in Europe, and
hence this was quite an event. Returning in 1831 from India, he made a
present of all his Chinese books to the Royal Library at Munich, and was
appointed conservator of this collection, and professor of Chinese and
Armenian in the university of that capital.

Of Dr. Neumann's attainments in Oriental literature I know only what
fame says, nor does it concern us much in this sketch. I once, however,
sat with him in a retiring room of the Munich Museum (a great reading
room), when Baron Tautphoeus, whose accomplished wife is so well known
in this country as authoress of the 'Initials' and 'Quits,' entered, and
asked if we had seen the notice of Dr. Neumann in the last number of the
London _Times_. The doctor had read it; I had not, but immediately did
so. It made him the equal of the greatest orientalists of the past and
present ages, comparing him particularly with Klaproth. The _Times_, it
is true, had a motive for this notice, as always, both in its praises
and its lampoons. It had found views of Dr. Neumann on British India
which it desired to commend, but even in our view this would not cancel
the eulogy. His authorship in connection with Chinese and Armenian
philosophy and history is very considerable, and outside of this field
he won, in 1847, a prize offered by the French Institute for the best
work on the 'Historical Development of the Peoples of Southern Russia.'

What was to be done in the university in Chinese and Armenian, he of
course did; but his lectures took a much wider range, embracing general
history and ethnography. His powers of elocution were of a high order,
and crowds of students were drawn to his lecture room. That freedom of
utterance which cost him the rectorship at Speyer, was like Dr. Watts's
or Pope's instinct for making rhymes--it was his nature, and could not
be whipped out of him; and it was equally natural that it should assume
the form of wit and humor.

There are not a few anecdotes in the popular mouth illustrating this
trait. He seems to have had no great liking to that race of men called
kings, and it is said that he once alluded to them, in a lecture, in the
not very respectful remark that 'they were numbered, like the hacks in
our streets.' The reader's apprehension of the point of another
anecdote, in which Dr. Neumann appears in an attitude not very
respectful to his own sovereign, Louis II of Bavaria, will depend upon
his knowing something of the situation and history of the university
buildings in Munich. The king, among the many things he did for the
architectural adorning of the city, built a street to be called by his
name. It is all outside of the old wall, and its outer end is closed by
a triumphal arch. Next to this, and outside of the city as it _then_
was, the king purchased ground, perhaps because it was cheap, and built
the present university edifice. As much farther out of the then city
proper lies the miserable little town of Schwabing. Professors and
students disliked to be taken so far from their lodgings and their
beerhouses, and the old university had been quite within the city. When
the removal took place, Dr. Neumann sketched the history of the
institution in a lecture, referring to its original establishment at
Ingolstadt, its removal thence to Landschut, and thence to Munich, and
then added, that _'his Majesty King Louis II had now been pleased to
remove it to Schwabing_.' We can imagine the sensation which such a
sally would produce among students already stirred up for its
appreciation, by having to walk from a half mile to a mile from those
depots of beer barrels from which so many of them sucked their sluggish
life and inspiration. But such jokes were not treason, or contempt of
majesty, or anything else against law.

It should be added in this connection, for Dr. Neumann's benefit, that
these stories, and many of the kind, are floating around, and are just
like him, but I have never had any confirmation of them from him, and in
all our intercourse, which was frequent and intimate for six years,
while he spoke much and freely in favor of democratical and against
monarchical institutions, I never found him indulging in coarse and
clamorous denunciations of his king or Government.

When the great revolutionary movement of 1848 broke upon the land, the
sovereigns of Germany saw and accepted their condition. The popular mind
was so penetrated by this unrest, and the revolutionary leaders were so
substantial in character, that resistance was folly, and the monarchs
yielded, waiting the time when some change would enable them to divide
the revolutionists and turn them against each other. They allowed and
even encouraged the formation at Frankfort of a provisional Parliament,
called the Fore-Parliament, which looked toward a permanent central
Government at that place for united Germany. Of this body Dr. Neumann
was a member. It was a fine field for the display of his free and
liberal instincts, and we cannot conceive of his passing through its
debates without making large drafts upon his exhaustless fund of humor
and sarcasm. It would be strange, indeed, if he could witness the dawn
of that freedom which he loved without showing signs of exultation,
accompanied with occasional taunts at the regime which was passing away
and seemed already beyond recovery.

But, although a regular Parliament followed--although a quasi emperor
was elected in the person of the Archduke John of Austria, and
his way, as he proceeded to Frankfort, was a perfect triumphal
procession--although he selected his ministers, set them to work, and
Parliament was progressing with its constitution, and this continued for
almost a year, still, that which the shrewd ministers of some of the
sovereigns had doubtless foreseen and waited for, came. Radicals outran
their wiser and more rational brethren, and took up arms. They would
demolish at once those sovereignties which would have died by the slow
action of time, had the central Government been fully established and
wisely administered. But this new Government rather deliberated than
acted. That which more than all else arouses the German mind--the
Schleswig-Holstein question, identified as it is with the great question
of the unity of the Teutonic race--was not taken up by the Government at
Frankfort, but by that at Berlin. In the mean time the several
Governments of Bavaria, Prussia, and Austria had gained the mastery over
their own domestic revolutions, so that they could act more freely.
Austria called home its archduke and its members in the Frankfort
Parliament, and finally the whole movement subsided into the old order
of things.

The various Governments were now in a position in which they could
punish those disturbers of their peace who had endangered their very
existence. Of these Dr. Neumann was one, and in 1852 he was notified
that his lectures were no longer needed in the university of Munich. It
was doubtless thought that he would make some slight formal concessions,
and be permitted to continue his active duties, as others had done. But
he felt too independent. He had means to live upon. His retiring pension
could not be withheld. He could now, moreover, give his individual
powers to authorship, without feeling hampered by the thought that he
had a Government to please. He has persevered in this course,
notwithstanding the express wish of the philosophical faculty for his
return to active duty in the university.

He had been occupied with a history of the British empire in India. To
this he gave increased attention, and published it some years ago; but
the Indian rebellion breaking out soon after its publication, he was led
to sketch its history as an appendix. His investigations in the East
brought him in contact with the peculiar history of the Japanese empire,
and he threw off by the way a brief history of Japan, devoting a chapter
to the results of the American expedition thither.

It was while prosecuting his inquiries into the history of Eastern Asia,
that he met with such evidences of the commercial enterprise of the
United States, and obtained such views of the future of our country, as
to conceive the thought of writing its history for the German people,
commencing with the war of 1812, the point at which he considered our
wonderful growth and expansion to have begun; and long before finishing
his history of British India, he was collecting material for this work.
He found, however, that he could not begin at the point he had chosen
without striking upon roots and rudely severing them, which had struck
deeply into the soil of all the earlier periods of our existence. His
plan was therefore enlarged.

The breaking out of the rebellion was a sad blow to him--it could not
have been more so to an American. It was likely not only to spoil _our_
country, but _his_ history of it. It either cut off or dimmed or
confused that prospect of growth and expansion which had been stretched
out interminably before him. He read the daily London _Times_--he had
for years taken the New York _Herald_, and his reliance upon this sheet
had been rather too implicit. Years before the breaking out of the
rebellion, I had suggested this, and introduced to him the New York
_Times_ and _Evening Post_, one of which he has taken ever since, not,
however, without occasional intervals of sighing for his old companion
the _Herald_, much as his ancestors, after having left Egypt, sighed
for its leeks and onions. Although he coupled the _Herald_ and London
_Times_--_par nobile fratrum_--as joint sharers of a favorite epithet of
his--_great liars_--he still liked to read them.

Dr. Neumann had been a Democrat in his politics--for he was familiar
with our distinctions in this country--but since the outbreak of the
rebellion he has scarcely known where to place himself. He had made the
personal acquaintance of Buchanan, when that 'old public functionary'
was our Minister in London, and felt, as was quite natural, a little
vain of this acquaintance when Buchanan became the head of the
Government of that unseen land of his most enthusiastic admiration. The
man, however, was less than the country, and he could drop him; but he
still desired to see him succeeded by a Democrat. We often had little
spats, in which I took the ground that such had been the extravagant
demands of the South, made through the platforms of that party, that
with the strongest predilections for some of its men and its earlier
antecedents, I should have felt bound to vote for both Fremont and
Lincoln, if I had been in the country. He would generally end the matter
by a pleasant and jocular dissent, calling himself a Democrat and me a
Republican. But _after the rebellion_, his friends never knew what he
was, except that he was for the Union and the putting down of the
rebels. No American could have felt in deeper sympathy with our cause.
In that land, where a thousand volunteers could not be raised to save a
throne, how did his heart swell with just pride when the President
called for seventy-five thousand, and afterward in succession for
hundreds of thousands, and they came forth at the call! How depressed at
instances of want of skill or decision in Government or generals! He
nearly lost his patience with young men who were quietly pursuing their
studies in Europe, when their country was in peril and its armies needed
them; and he quite lost it when he met Americans who sympathized with
the rebellion, or even seemed indifferent to their country's fortunes.

There was an American lady in Munich, soon after the rebellion broke
out, whose husband had died some years before, while holding a position
in the army which entitled her to a pension, for which she had drawn
while there. She had heard of Professor Neumann's love for our country
and country people, but had no idea of the strictness of his
discrimination between the parties--thought that he might feel much like
the thousands of Germans who quietly ask us which side we are on--she
may, too, have inferred something from his having a brother in Savannah,
Georgia. She soon found her mistake; for he informed her, in terms of no
doubtful import, that his sympathy did not embrace those of her class;
and thus the result of the pleasant visit she had promised herself was
little short of being turned out doors.

About the 10th of December, 1861, we had at our house a little company
of about thirty persons, and Dr. Neumann, with his wife and two
daughters, was among them. An American gentleman, who had been known to
his family and ours, had left for Russia two years before, and returned
that very day, was one of the company, and we had not yet learned his
views of secession. The first thing with Dr. Neumann and his daughters
was to know how he stood on this question. They found him a rebel, and
in giving him their minds in relation to this matter, one of the
daughters expressed to him her wonder that I should allow him to enter
my house as they would not allow him in theirs. The stir made in the
company by this little brush at arms arrested the attention of all, and
gave the Americans their first information as to where our quondam
friend stood, as well as set them an example of zeal and enthusiasm in
their own cause.

I must close this notice with an incident which lies quite outside of
Dr. Neumann's relations to America and Americans. On his retirement from
his university labors, he withdrew mainly from the exciting scenes of
public life. But in November, 1859, occurred the centennial anniversary
of Schiller's birth. Of all the men connected with German popular
literature, Schiller is most in the hearts of the people of Germany. The
spirit of liberty shown in his 'William Tell'--his exile from his native
Wirtemberg for the free expressions used in the first play he ever
wrote--his high order of genius as a poet and historian--the subjects he
chose, and the way he treated them, and, finally, his social and
domestic character, have all combined to endear him to the whole people.
This festival was everywhere observed, and with the highest enthusiasm;
for although Governments were afraid of its effects, they were still
more afraid to refuse permission to hold it. It lasted for several days,
on one of which was a great public dinner, with several hundred in
attendance, of which Dr. Neumann consented to be one. Champagne flowed
freely, and although I did not taste this beverage, and know by
experience little of its effects, it was easy to perceive that the
animation could not all be accounted for by love to the memory even of
Schiller. Poems were read, and speeches were made describing his
character as poet, historian, or otherwise, according to the fancy of
each speaker. I remember one from Bodenstedt, than whom few stand higher
in the walks of polite literature, and one from Sybel, than whom no one
in Germany ranks higher as a historian. Dr. Neumann, who, like an old
parade horse long withrawn from the excitements of a parade, felt amid
these scenes the spirit of former days stirred within him, rose to
speak. We shall be prepared to appreciate the effect when we get an idea
of the preternatural sensitiveness of those who composed the audience. A
well-known poet, who may perhaps be called the poet-laureate of Bavaria,
had read a poem on the occasion. It contained nothing to which any one
could object, as we might infer from his position with the king, and yet
I heard the poet himself say a few days afterward that the editors of a
certain well-known journal, in publishing it, left out the stanzas
containing the word _Freiheit_ (liberty), so fearful were they of not
pitching their tune to a key that would suit royal and Government ears.
A similar sensitiveness pervaded the whole body present--nearly all drew
their bread and beer from the Government, and did not wish it stopped or
diminished. This class had gotten up the meeting, and hoped to control
it. When they saw Dr. Neumann rise, they felt that _there_ was a man
_naturally_ fearless, and _now_ quite beyond that special sense of
danger which made them cautious. Recollection passed over his seven
years' silence, and called up the power with which he had harangued in
other years. Nor was it so much what he said as the man who said it,
which produced the effect, and yet there was much in the speech. He said
that Schiller had been eulogized as a social and domestic man, poet, and
historian; but nothing had been said of him as a _politician_, and he
should speak of him in this character. The _rising_ of _such_ a man was
an electric shock, suggestive of that which in 1848 made all Europe
tremble from centre to circumference. The word _politician_ was a
_second_ shock, drawing with it suggestively all the concomitants of
that revolution, as yet so well remembered by all. And when he proceeded
to compare Schiller with Goethe--the _former_ frankly addressing himself
to his friend in correspondence on the great questions of their
politics, and trying to draw him out, the _latter_, then a minister of
state, cautiously and warily declining to expose his views--he but
carried out the impression made in his rising and his announcement. It
was the only properly stump speech--I use the phrase in the high sense
in which it might be used of O'Connell or Clay--I ever heard in Germany.

Such is the man who has undertaken to write our country's history for
the Germans. Of his _work_ I have said nothing, for I have not seen it;
I write this impromptu on seeing the newspaper announcement of the first
volume. He will doubtless do much to set us right in the eyes of his own
people, where, however, there is less need of this than in _another_
land, whose people are more nearly related to us, where such service,
however, is less likely to be done.




THE GREAT AMERICAN CRISIS.

_PART THREE._


In the last preceding article on this subject in THE CONTINENTAL, we
concluded by considering the consequences of an early victory of the
North over the entire South, _followed by the restoration of the old
Union upon precisely the old basis_. We showed that, in such an event,
the war would have been barren of results even to the extent of removing
its own cause, or preventing its almost immediate and more desperate
renewal; that the question at issue is a question of paramount governing
power between two adverse theories of social existence; between two
distinct and conflicting civilizations; between two antagonistic and
irreconcilable political and moral forces; and that it must be fought
out to the complete subordination of the less advanced or more barbarous
and backward-tending of those forces--unless the wheels of progress on
this continent are to be reversed, and the watchword of despotism be
substituted for that of freedom: not only that it must be fought out on
the battle field, but that the fruits of the victory must not be blindly
or foolishly surrendered after the obvious and external victory is won.

We may say here, however, for the purpose of reserving the still more
radical consideration of the nature of this conflict for some future
day, that, adverse as these theories of social existence are--distinct
and conflicting as are these two civilizations--antagonistic and
irreconcilable as these contending political and moral forces now seem,
and for present practical purposes must be taken to be--they are not
_essentially_ irreconcilable. Slavery, bad as it is, represents a truth
in the larger Compound Truth of an Integral Social Philosophy. A deeper
understanding of the whole problem of human society, possessed by the
leading personages, North and South, would have saved the necessity of
this war--would at this day even, adjust it peaceably, harmoniously, and
perfectly, and would render unnecessary the whole view of the subject
which we are now taking. The world, however, is not yet quite prepared
for the peaceable intervention of scientific and truly philosophic
methods in the settlement of its disputes; and the knowledge of the
existence, even, of such methods, is as yet too little diffused to make
them in any sense available for the purposes of the hour. The point of
view from which these papers are being written, is, indeed, as stated in
the last preceding number, higher than that of the ordinary politician,
the constitutional lawyer, or even that of common statesmanship and
patriotic devotion. It is a point of view from which the interests of
all mankind are taken into the account, and hence pertains, in a sense,
to the domain of practical philosophy, or the universal aspect of
politics; the politics of the globe and of all humanity, in all time.
But it offers still a presentation of the subject toned down to the
actual state of readiness in the world to hear reason, and to be
influenced or governed by the suggestions contained in the writing. It
is therefore an adaptation to an imperfect order of things, a mixed or
concrete phase of political practical philosophy, which is the most that
can now be aspired to. The point of view in question is therefore far
lower than that of a final social philosophy having its basis in a
perfect scientific theory, and working out from that basis into
practical life. Perhaps, as will be again suggested in the course of
this article, the events of this war may conduce to a readiness on this
continent, or may create an earnest demand even, for higher solutions
and the thorough treatment, by some competent mind, of all our Political
and Sociatory problems. The day, however, for such a radical diagnosis
and treatment of the disease of human society has not yet arrived.

In the mean time we must content ourselves with partial remedies,
alleviations, best temporary resorts, and even desperate expedients. It
is from this stand-point that the writer of these articles now speaks;
that, feeling deeply in his heart and recognizing clearly in his head
the common brotherhood and the equal essential manhood of the
inhabitants of the Southern and Northern States--sympathetically and
socially drawn, even, to the Southern side, by many endearing
associations and recollections; that, clearly appreciating the
fratricidal nature of this war--its essential non-necessity, if men were
wise enough to avail themselves of better known and feasible,
methods--he still deliberately and forcibly insists, under the
circumstances which are, that the North should not only fight out the
war to the last word of determinate conquest, but that it should, with
wise but merciless rigor, extinguish the cause of the war, and hold with
unflinching hand every advantage it gains, until new institutions and
new methods of thought shall have been securely planted on every inch of
the soil of the South.

Since, even, the last previous part of this series of papers was sent to
the press, new and alarming indications have appeared in various
quarters, of the drift in the public mind--North--in favor of an
easy-going and conceding policy toward the South as the war draws to a
close; a policy which would be nearly certain to lose to ourselves and
to the world all the benefits of the war; to deprive the South, even, of
those higher and ulterior benefits which would come to her also; to
leave untouched the causes of the war, and to foster its early renewal
with more than its former desperation.

Not to mention the reiterated and urgent renewals of the subject of
reconstruction in quarters where we are accustomed to look for a partial
loyalty or a covert opposition to the war, articles like the following,
from the New York _Times_, of November 19th, frequently appear in the
undoubtedly loyal press:

     'RECONSTRUCTION.--Since we have been at the trouble of
     conquering the rebels in the State of Arkansas--since, after many
     great victories, we have now complete military possession of the
     State, and have armies posted on its eastern, western, and northern
     lines, and at its capital in the centre--we think it would be worth
     while in the Government to take steps to reorganize the civil
     administration there, and inaugurate a system of policy such as was
     adopted in Missouri two years ago, and which has proved so
     successful in pacifying that State. The loyal element in Arkansas
     is large, as is made evident by the action of the people wherever
     our forces have penetrated, and by the enlistment of a good number
     of its citizens in the armies of the Union. One of the Senators
     from Arkansas, Senator Sebastian, whose term of office is as yet
     unexpired, is, and always has been, we believe, a sound loyal man;
     and Mr. Gantt, who was elected to Congress just before the outbreak
     of the rebellion, has recently given proof of his repentance and
     devotion to the Union in the remarkable address which we published
     last week. We do not see why the process of reconstruction might
     not be at once commenced in Arkansas, and why, before the close of
     next session, the State might not have a full congressional
     delegation in Washington.'

Not a word is here said of the important question of Slavery. The
proposition is pure and simple to readmit the rebellious State of
Arkansas to the Union, upon precisely the same footing as that upon
which we retained the allegiance of Missouri--to treat, in other words,
loyal and rebellious States in the same way.

In a subsequent article of the same able journal, one of the organs of
the Republican party, this easy-going policy, the _laissez-faire_ of
statesmanship, is expanded at large, and explicitly adopted and
recommended. The appearance of such an article in such a quarter is such
a remarkable index of the existence in the public mind of the delusions
we are exposing, that we transfer it bodily to our columns, for the sake
of commenting upon its positions. Calhoun's famous expression, 'masterly
inactivity,' is significantly adopted as a caption:

     'CIVIL POLICY TOWARD SLAVERY.--There is a class of men who
     stick to the idea that something positive must be done by the
     Federal Government to end slavery. Even the issue of the
     Emancipation Proclamation, a military measure for military ends
     solely, does not satisfy them. They want civil power exercised, and
     would gladly have even a breaking down of State lines and a
     reconstruction of the Government itself, as the only effectual
     means of destroying the institution of their special abhorrence.

     'Now we, too, claim a good hearty hatred of slavery. We are as
     anxious as any to see it under the sod, beyond resurrection. But we
     don't believe in making any superfluous sacrifice to get it there.
     Seeing that it is dying, we are quite content to let it die
     quietly, without any attempt to pull the house down about its ears
     and our own ears. This seems to us to be a very absurd sort of
     impatience--prompted by giddy passion rather than sober reason.

     'But how do we know slavery is dying? We know it from the unanimous
     testimony of all personal observers of its condition. There is not
     a man within the Union lines South, however friendly he may be to
     the institution, who pretends that there is any chance whatever of
     its being saved, _if present causes continue_. Two things are
     killing it.

     '_The first is the wear and tear of the war. Military operations
     always tend to disjoint and break up, within their scope, all the
     relations of society. They inevitably remit, to a greater or less
     extent, the social man to a state of nature. Inter arma leges
     silent_. This is felt in every social connection, even the closest
     and strongest; for they all are, more or less, dependent on civil
     law. But it must be felt particularly in that connection, which of
     all others is the most forced and arbitrary--the connection between
     master and slave. Liberty is a natural instinct. The caged bird is
     not surer to fly through the parted wires than the slave, in his
     ordinary condition, from the broken chain--_and the chain must be
     broken when the civil law, which alone gives it strength, passes
     away_. There are men who complain of the anti-slavery war policy of
     the President. A policy that was anything else would not be a war
     policy at all. The war upon the rebellious slaveholding people of
     necessity involves an interruption of their laws; and unless the
     advancing army should make good this absence of civil rule by
     applying its own military power to keeping watch and ward over the
     slaves, and thus abandon its proper military business, the result
     is inevitable _that the institution must melt away as the war goes
     on_. Abraham Lincoln might be as much attached to slavery as
     Jefferson Davis himself, and yet no human sagacity would enable him
     to fight Jefferson Davis honestly and effectually without mortal
     injury to slavery. _It is the war which kills slavery, and not the
     man who leads the war_.

     '_The other destroying agency in open discussion_. Slavery can live
     only in silence. There is a deadly antagonism between itself and
     free speech. Where the one exists the other cannot. The vitality of
     the one rests in pure force, and force and reason never agree. It
     always has been, and always will be, that force must either
     suppress reason or reason will subvert force. One of the first acts
     of the slavery propagandists in Kansas was to pass enactments
     through their spurious Legislature, making it a felony, punishable
     by imprisonment and hard labor, for any man to 'assert or maintain
     by speaking or writing that persons have not the right to hold
     slaves in this Territory.' It has been so in every Slave State, and
     worse. _Not only have slave codes interdicted, in every one of
     them, all adverse discussion of the institution, but a mob power
     has always been at hand to take summary vengeance upon it with
     Lynch law. These resorts were not a mere caprice; they were a
     necessity_. Slavery being once accepted as the prime object, there
     was no alternative but to protect it just in this manner. _But the
     war has ended all that. There can be no mobs where the bayonet
     governs; nor arbitrary local laws where general military law is
     paramount. The discussion of slavery is as free now in New Orleans
     as in New York_. It is no more within the province of the military
     Governor, Shepley, to interfere with fair discussion there, than it
     is within the rightful power of the civil Governor, Seymour, to
     interfere with it here. _And in the Border States, where the civil
     laws still prevail, hostility to the rebellion has excited such a
     dissatisfaction with slavery as its cause, that by general consent
     perfect freedom is allowed in arguing against the institution._ The
     consequence of this freedom has been that Missouri has already
     determined to abolish it; Maryland and Delaware have put declared
     emancipationists in places of their highest trusts by unprecedented
     majorities; and Kentucky is visibly casting about to see how she
     can best rid herself of the curse.

     '_We say, then, that even if the National Government had the right
     to institute new civil measures against slavery, it would not be
     necessary. The unavoidable military operations of the war, and the
     free discussion which is sure to attend it, are enough of
     themselves to break down the institution. The Government has simply
     to stand quiet, and let these agencies work_.'

The italics are our own, inserted for the sake of more easy reference.
Not only is it unnecessary, according to this writer, to take any active
and positive steps against Slavery at the South, but so soon as the
rebel States wish to return within the Union, with all their old
privileges and with Slavery surviving, they should be permitted to do
so, and should be received with open arms. The Proclamation of
Emancipation itself is thus quietly wiped out, and a policy sketched
which, in the event of mere military defeat on their part, would, in the
next place, be the most acceptable of all possible policies;--not to the
loyal black men who are now struggling, fighting, and dying alongside of
us, in the ranks; not to the small and feeble but growing anti-slavery
party, which, in the presence of, and under the protection of our armies
of the North, is just springing up and consolidating itself in the
South;--but to Jefferson Davis himself, and to all the devoted and
fanatical adherents of the slaveholding system in the South, and their
'Copperhead' friends in the North. The _Times_ article concludes as
follows:

     'But we go farther, and say, that any other interference would not
     only be superfluous, but positively mischievous. To insure that
     slavery, when it dies, shall never rise again, you have got to
     depend largely upon the disposition of the Southern people. That
     disposition should not be needlessly embittered. It can't help
     becoming so if, as some propose, their States are reduced to the
     condition of mere territorial dependencies. Americans can never be
     satisfied to be underlings. Whatever the fortunes of war
     legitimately bring, they are sensible enough to submit to; but it
     is not in their spirit to consent to any permanent degradation.
     Undertake to deprive them permanently of their civil rights, and
     you simply make them your permanent enemies. _Territorialize them
     because you hate slavery, and the inevitable effect will be that
     you will only make them love slavery the more, and hate you the
     more. This could not always continue. State rights, sooner or
     later, would have to be restored. We don't believe that three years
     would elapse after the close of the war before the keeping those
     States in a territorial condition would be abandoned as an
     insufferable anomaly in our system of government. State rights once
     restored, the people, maddened by the thrall that had been put upon
     them, would be very likely to vindicate these rights by
     rehabilitating slavery. Every incentive of high pride and every
     impulse of low spite would combine to urge this; and the National
     Government would have no legitimate way of preventing it_.

     'It will never do to try to give slavery its lasting quietus by
     mere arbitrary force. To secure this we have got to rely in no
     small measure upon reason. We must never forget that just as Force
     is the natural ally of

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