T89 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 011 933 329 5 Prieo ^(y Cents. THE EEBELLIO]^ LATENT CAUSES TRUE SIGNIFICANCE IN LETTERS TO A FRIENP Al'.ROAli. HENKY T. TUCKERMAN " Truth orusbiritish journalists and politicians. And, more sad and shameful than all, we have lived to see u party, fairly beaten at the polls, under the influence of disappointed ambition, or rather the base section of that party, resort to arms and treachery rather than fulfil their part of the mutual contract; repudiate their obligations as American citizens, THE CEISIS. i ignore the claims of patriotism and the demands of justice— ay, and the appeal of humanity and Christian civilization, and reck- lessly seek to destroy what they cannot honestly possess. The elaborate and able discussion of secession theories, was the first duty of patriots and statesmen, in order to vindicate the Constitution, and the course of those who support it, even to the extent of civil war ; that the doctrine is not authorized by state sovereignty — that the Virginia resolutions of '98, and the South Carolina nullification of a later period, were abandoned as unten- able, when confronted with the emphatic authority of the Federal Government; that a decision of the Supreme Court of the latter state disavowed the doctrine ; that the enormous cost to the whole country of the original purchase, and subsequent mainten- ance of many of the rebellious states — that the necessity of con- trolling the outlet of the Mississippi, and the certainty of perpet- ual strife from any interference therewith by a foreign power, are insuperable obstacles; and that the triumph of the party that elected Lincoln was perfectly legal — are points of the argument that have never been confuted ; the reopening and the re-estab- lishment of the slave-trade, and the inauguration of conquest in the direction of Central America, Mexico, and Cuba, have been shown to be a political necessity to the Southern Confederacy, and to have such a vital interest for the rest of the civilized world, that they would entail thereon perpetual conflict until abandoned. But important as are these arguments, there are others derived from the latent causes and true issues of the war, which should be discussed and illustrated, in order to appreciate its true signifi- cance; and to these I desire to call your jjatient attention. THE REBELLION. IL DECLINE OF PUBLIC SPIRIT. One of the most remote, and, at the same time, most pervasive causes of the present disaffection, is the general neglect of civic duty. Flattered into passivity by an overweening confidence in the stability of our institutions, and repelled by the distasteful and troublesome process whereby the citizen's functions are real- ized — engrossed by private cares and enterprise, and the sense of our privileges and obligations, as members of a great republic, deadened by material prosperity, v/e have, to a great extent, eva- ded the claims of our country, and the vigilance and activity through which alone her security and sacredness can be preserved. The field being thus deserted, statesmanship has declined, and politics become a trade ; until the nation was aroused by the out- break of civil war into consciousness of peril. The strife of party has thus been degraded into a vulgar scramble for emoluments; the able and honored representatives of opinion, whose very names were once watchwords of fidelity and of fame, were super- seded by men of secondary ability and equivocal character; office was regarded as compensation for partisan service, with an utter disregard to fitness; patent abuses were tolerated , and corrup- tion so invaded the administration of government, from venal legislation to an imbecile executive, as to aftord every facility for treason. This demoralization was confined to no section ; the patriotic sentiment remained, but its practical and organized ex- pression was silenced by apatliy and indifference, until actual vio- lence succeeded base fraud ; then, indeed, the dormant love of country awoke — breathing in emphatic protest and earnest appeal from pulpit, rostrum, journal — assemblies, armies, households, and official proclamations. Against these tardy but true utterances of popular sentiment — these prompt assertions of citizenship — these cheerful sacrifices for the public weal — was arrayed the con- spiracy, slowly )jut surely matured by the want of respect for, and confidence in, the institutions thus allowed so long to be abused and contemned. The defection of so many officers of the army and navy of the United States, at the most critical epoch in their history, is one of those phenomena that cannot be ex- DECLIXE OF PUBLIC SPIRIT. V plained either by the pressure of local exactions, or the influence of a fanatical infatuation. The habit of irreverence, the deca- dence of public spirit, the discontent induced by want of sympa- thy, the hope of promotion, the fear of unpopularity, and the urgency of political adventurers, combined to seduce men of weak minds or blind ambition ; either the fever of faction, or the want of moral courage, rendered many of them an easy prey to the arts of designing demagogues, or personal disappointment coin- cided with fallacious theories, to jnake them oblivious of, and in- sensible to that honor which, in all ages, has been the first in- stinct and the essential characteristic of the hero and the gentle- man. When a Southern commodore was urged to resign, and take up arms against his flag and government, by the traitor? of his native state, he replied, " I have been in the service of the United States nearly half a century ; have commanded three squadrons, been at the head of naval bureaus, enjoyed every honor, and had accorded every privilege in the line of my profes- sion ; and whatever social consideration I have enjoyed abroad, and honor and prosperity I have won at home, I owe to the sanction and the service bestowed on me by the government of my country ; under these circumstances, fellow-citizens, would you, could you trust me, if I were to comply with your invita- tion ?" They replied in the affirmative. "Then, gentlemen," said the gallant commodore, "/ could not trust yo?/." Many of these unprincipled renegades, and others who more justly may be called irresolute victims of what they call a " divided duty," have, since their desertion, bitterly repented, and already the so- cial proscription inevitably following such dishonor, has proved a speedy retribution.- Still the fact remains ; and whoever is fa- miliar with the history of the American Revolution and the war of 1812 — whoever has felt pride, confidence and protection in his nation's flag in distant lands, or knows its significance as an emblem on ship, arsenal,- court-house and capitol, may imagine what a perversion of the highest human instinct and the noblest human sentiment there must have existed, to allow an American officer of the army or navy voluntarily to forswear his allegiance. The ingratitude of republics is proverbial ; and the excuse con- stantly urged for the defection of so many officers of Southern birth, is, that they have experienced so much recognition and sympathy from their state, and so little from the national govei'n- ment, that when a question of allegiance arises, it naturally is de- cided in favor of the former. It is superfluous to demonstrate the untenable nature of this, or any justification for disloyalty to what is dearer to an honest or patriotic heart, than preferment, 10 THE KEBELLION. applause, personal success, or life itself; and, in the majority of ■ instances of active treason among our naval and military officers, their antecedents suggest personal weaknesses, unfortunate habits, or a lack of integrity, which explain the infamous dereliction. Dissatisfaction with those who control their movements and reg- ulate their rewards, is common in the army and navy of every na- tion ; and the autobiography of Lord Dundonald, recently pub- lished, exhibits as corrupt an administration and as flagrant con- tempt of official merit in the British Admiralty, as ever disgraced the annals of any government. But there is a principle worth eonsideiing in this common complaint of the neglect to whicli national benefactors are subject under popular governments. In no small degree this is a natural, and should be a recognized con- dition thereof. The superiority of democratic institutions, as far as the individual is concerned,, is moral and intellectual, rather than material ; they involve, as their chief good, the necessity of self-reliance, and, in discarding the patronage of regal sway, the blandishments of courts, the tiatteries of rank, and largess, orders and titles, they assume immunity from dependence on arbitrary favor to be an inestimable privilege ; it is because manhood finds scope, and not because honor or fsivoritism allures, that the wise advocates of free institutions vindicate their worth. It is because they cast men on their own resources, and leave honor and duty, high achievevnent, and lioly sacrifice, to be their own reward, that they arc to be preferred ; thus are heroes developed ; not to po- litical but to social, not to government but to human apprecia- tion, must the republican soldier, statesman, savan, look ; his must inevitably be a labor of love ; and if he has not the soul to feel that herein is a dignity and a satisfaction beyond all external success, he is but a conventional representative of the sentiment and the system of free in.'^titutions. It implies character as well as ability to turn aside from the material prosperity which is the ideal of a uniform and equalized social state, and to devote life to nobler ends, where the encouragement which aiistocratic institu- tions lavish upon their successful votaries, is withheld. The favor of the casual "powers that be" in a republic, is distributed on other grounds than abstract merit; and no man of sense expects, as his chief recompense, just and generous treatment from those in authority. We find in our own brief histor}^ that modest merit in official life has often been overlooked in favor of pre- sumptuous self-assertion ; that it is not the most capable and hon- est, but the most available for party objects, who attain position; our best statesmen have failed, since the early days of the repub- lic, to reach the highest office in the gift of the people ; the sec- DECLINE OF PUBLIC SPIRIT.- 11 ond-rate politicians occupy our legislative halls ; the most scien- tific officers of the army and navy often remain unpromoted, while their inferiors are advanced ; and it is thus in the spheres of labor outside of civic life. The American capitalist who aids public enterprise at great personal risk ; the citizen who conscien- tiously devotes time, thought and money to social ameliorations, without office or emohmient; the author who resists the tempta- tion to win immediate, though spurious popularity, by degrading his style and thoughts to the vulgar level of casual demand — all, in short, who toil, think, and achieve, from disinterested love of truth, of country, and of usefulness, have an instinct of heroism, the development of which is the manly blessing that compensates the lover of freedom and equality, for the absence of those facti- tious rewards which appeal to less elevated motives, in countries where arbitrary power metes out the guerdons. The votaries of arms, of science, of reform, and of letters, in a republic, must have that large " faith in time, and that which shapes it to some perfect end," and must realize that " they also serve who only stand and wait;" and this implies moral courage and native in- tegrity. The self-sustained rectitude, not the external recognition of Washington's character, was its enduring distinction. And consistent individuality must ever be a test of eminence in a dem- ocratic nation, beyond what any outward rank or consideration can aflord. There is, indeed, to the noble mind, a satisfaction far beyond what the touch of royalty can confer, in the intelligent and grateful admiration of a free people, and the sublime con- sciousness of patriotic self-devotion. He who can voluntarily for- feit thes«, is deficient in that manhood which self-government legitimately breeds; he who is insensible thereto lacks the essen- tial heart of heroism and of faith ; and it is, therefore, in the last analysis, presumptive evidence of inadequate character, when, under popular governments, her sworn defenders yield to those juggling fiends of treason, that "keep the word of promise to the car, and break it to the hope," 12 THE REBELLION. III. PROVINCIALISM. Isolation is anotlier and a most influential cause of perverted feeling and extravagant opinions. The narrowness of mind and morbid sensitiveness induced by limited experience of life, and a confined and uniform sphere of observation, is proverbial ; the ex- aggeration born of village gossip, the bitterness nurtured by imagined wrongs, the fanaticism created by over-consciousness, are facts of human nature familiar to every student of history and observer of life. The broad views which characterize a liberal mind, and the logical and dispassionate conviction that belong to sound judgment, are results of contact and comparison ; it is through generous sympathy that we learn to estimate social truth ; the great laws of character, the phenomena of human ex- istence, the recognition of an idea " dearer than self" are acquired by a knowledge of the world, the habit of wide and varied asso- ciation ; shut out from such discipline, absorbed in a monotonous and special vocation, a certain dogmatic egotism is engendered — a false standard adopted, and a provincial tone of mind becomes liabitual. The only safety, intellectually if not morally speaking, for a man thus situated, is to be found in some gift or grace of soul whereby such influences are modified and overcome. Life in the Southern states, is, for the most part, devoid of other than the most exclusive local interest; except the bond of certain agricul- tural staples, it is, to a great degree, unallied with that of the rest of the world; in the cities, professional and commercial occupa- tions, and a foreign social element, bring a class of men under the influence of more versatile relations and open to them a wider field ; and this class present quite a diverse type of char- acter from the majority who, beyond the care of their plantations, the excitement of a race, or a game of hazard, care for little but local politics; the number and variety of impressions to which a man of average intelligence and sensibility is exposed in a great commercial metropolis, or an enterprising rural community, alone serve to ventilate his thoughts, enlarge his conceptions, and give a wholesome tone to his mind ; the most common form of insan- ity is the permanent concentration of thought upon a single idea, or of feeling upon one object ; Dr. Johnson said no man is wholly TKOVINCIALI6M. 13 sane; and the ratio of his mental soundness is graduated by the range of his perceptions :. when these have no adequate scope, irrational tendencies are sure to develop, while the emotional nature, equally baffled, reacts in sensitiveness and passion. The individual application of these trite conditions, in estimating character, is within the ordinary experience of every observant person ; is it difficult to realize that peculiar circumstances may render them as obviously true of entire communities ? To the man of large experience and of br ad views, the evidences of this provincialism, especially in the interior of the gulf or cotton states, are striking, even on the most casual acquaintance with the people. Northern invalids who sojourned in the back country of the Carolinas during the Crimean war, were astonished to find how little even the more intelligent inhabitants knew or cared about those startling events — the record of which was pondered in New York and Boston with almost as much interest as in London and Paris; yet the planters who frequented the tavern of Colum- bia to sip toddy and compare notes, would not even read, far less discuss, the charge of the six hundred at Balaklava, the details of the siege of Sebastopool, or the death of Nicholas; these occur- rences involving the fate of Europe, and indirectly of the world, had no significance 'to men who vehemently canvassed the claims and prospects of rival candidates for county office. The exag- gerated pride of birth, as an exclusive distinction, which is such a local absurdity in South CaroHna, is fostered by the same isola- tion of thouglit and experience; the circumstance of direct de- scent from distinguished English and Huguenot families, being as true of New York and Massachusetts, but less considered, less vaunted, because of the more varied interests and more legitimate social ambition there prevalent. The first impression which per- sonal contact with this intense provincialism makes upon a liberal mind, is a conviction, that the best use to which the public finances of those states could be applied, would be to pay the expenses of foreign and home travel for the enlargement and discipline of the people; thus only would it seem practicable to widen to their vision the narrow bounds of local into the broad and noble asso- ciations of national life — to correct the morbid egotism and child- ish self-importance bred from a limited and mutual complacency, whereby visionary ideas in politics and exclusive standards of social character are engendered and maintained. It must be con- fessed, however, that this assumed superiority — this curious sur- vival of feudal traditions in the nineteenth century, is often incor- rigible ; a native of South Carolina, one of a party of Americans travelling in Europe, when the hotel registers were brought him 14 THE EEBELLION. for signature, instead of recording himself as a citizen of the United States, tlian which no national title then secured greater respoct abroad, insisted upon writing La Carolina as his native country, which proceeding continually led to the mistake of his being regarded as an inhabitant of an obscure South American town. Some years ago, a deputation of planters from the same state visited Savannah, Georgia, where their costume, which re- sembled the worn and dingy vestments of overseers, excited sur- prise ; these same individuals were subsequently encountered in the streets of Charleston dressed like gentlemen, and when their Savannah visitors inquired the reason of their coming to Georgia in old clothes, they were informed it was done to indicate the social estimation in which the first families of the one state held those of the other. Such a puerile exhibition of arrant conceit is incredible in this age and country ; but it signalizes the provincial bigotry which, in more grave interests, ignores the laws of nature herself, in wild schemes of local aggrandizements, interprets mis- fortunes which originate in habits of life and facts of climate, to- pography, labor and temperament, into wrongs inflicted by more prosperous communities — to be revenged by violence and craft — and would immolate a nation's happiness and dignity upon the degraded and diminutive altar of superstitious self-love. One might imagine a latent satire in the description by an early trav- eller in America, of the indigenous tree clio-en by the truculent and exclusive Carolinians, as a substitute for the flag " known and honored throughout the world." " The palmetto royal, or Adam's needle, is a singular tree ; they grow so thick together that a bird can scarcely 2^cii'Ctrate between them. The stiff leaves of this sword plant, standing straight out from the trunk, /orm abarrier that neither man nor beast can pass ; it rises with an erect stem about ten or twelve feet high, crowned with a chaplet of iagger-like green leaves, with a stiff\ sharp spur at the end. This thorny croivn is tipped with a pyramid of white flowers, shaped like a tulip or lily ; to these flowers succeeds a large fruit, in form like a cucumber, but, when ripe, of a deep purple color.'' The incessant interchange of commodities between the interior and seaboard cities and towns of New York, the exigi'iicies of local trade and social commuuication in New England, the Middle and the Western States, continually bring together the people of those regions so that there is little consciousness of the geo graphical limits of each ; and no strong prejudice or partiality, except what finds vent in jocose comparisons and stoical self-criti- cism ; \rhereas the isolated habits of the South, preclude in- PROVINCIALISM. 15 timate acquaintance, not only with the opposite section, but between the adjacent states. Few of the inhabitants wander far from their homes, and no one who has explored that part of the country, fails to be struck with the mutual ignorance and jealousy that prevail, so that no idea can be more false thau that which attributes a homogeneous character and feeling to the population. It is this condition which, on the one hand pre- vents uniform political and social sympathy, and on the other, circumscribes and often annihilates national aspiration, attach- ment and pride, which thrive under the more free and familiar com- munication and intercourse of the Xorth, West and East. Yet it is surprising that the mere experience of that importance and facility which a national sanction imparts to a small and remote community, does not quicken the sense of its value and intere-t. A few months ago, for instance, a Savannah lawyer returned from China, after liaving, for the first time in history, broken throngh the traditional excliisiveness of the Chinese and been admitted within the jealous precincts of Pekin ; and this triumph over antiquated precedent in a distant quarter of the globe, was achieved solely by virtue of the prestige and the protection derived from the American government, whose ambassador he was. Such an experience one would imagine would open the eyes of his neighbors as well as himself, to -the honor and ef- ficiency attached to the flag they now profess to despise. De- spite the variety of natural and social features and the wide dis- tances of the republic — everywhere are tokens and associa- tions of a common fame and common source of prosperity. The name of the very fort against wliich the little state of South Carolina opened her batteries, reproaches the act as paricidal, for it was baptized for a Southern general who helped to win the independence of the nation. In Georgia, too, is the plantation a grateful state bestowed upon a Rhode Island officer for his emi- nent services in the same great cause, and there also is his grave ; while the most popular and the heart-inspired tribute to our country's banner, was inspired by the sight of its starry folds when revealed to a prisoner of war, who with rapture beheld them still floating, at dawn, over the city where, a few weeks ago, that flag was only raised by patriotic intrepidity. And if a foreign visitor, having explored the granite hills, gnarled orchards and teeming marts and factories of New England, coursed over her fleecy snow or inhaled her bleak winds, when roaming amid the cypress swamps and canebrakes of Louisiana, hearing the bittern's cry and sweltering under the clammy heat — should wonder at the elasticity of a system of self-government which can 16 THE REBELLION. include sneh remote natural landscapes — liis surprise will dimin- ish when he turns to the history of the state, and after reading of so many and such diverse political dominations, and their results, ponders the conclusion of the historian, who declares that "there were none of those associations — not a link of that mystic chain connecting the present with the past — which produce an attachment to locality. It was not when a poor colony, and when given away like a farm, that she prospered. This miracle was to be the consequence of the apparition of a banner which was not ill existence at the time, which was to be the labarura of the advent of liberty, the harbinger of the regeneration of nations, and which was to form so important an era in the history of mankind."* This provincial instead of national spirit, this local instead of patriotic sentiment, which blinds with prejudice and dwarfs with passion the grand, beautiful and auspicious feeling of American citizenship, lias been the moral basis of intrigue and seduction whereon ambitions Southern politicians have worked: the more intellectual among them by artful appeals to narrow motives, by ingenious theories of government, and extravagant assertion of state-rights, and especially by attributing the inferior industrial development and commercial prosperity of the South to legisla- tion and Federal authority^ have gradually educated the people into a belief in their sophistries ; some availing themselves of this expedient for a temporary party object, and others, like Cal- houn, deliberately alienating the popular niind from nationality and moulding it into sectionalism. It may strike a distant ob- server as impossible thus to debauch the civic integrity of wliole states, where free discussion prevails ; but the possibility grows out of the peculiar organization and condition of society in that region ; a comparatively few wealthy planters, a large servile race, and between these extremes, the " landless resolutes" or poor wliites, ignorant, desperate, and with neither the scope nor the motive which free labor insures — offer ample verge for the domination of politicians; what is understood practically in both Old and New England by "the formation of public opinion," a process which in the end vaiupiishes error and makes truth mani- fest, is all but unknown ; there is no vast and intelligent and inter- mediate class between the wealthy land-owner and the poor laborer ; it is easy for wealth and wit to combine and impinge upon the rabble a political creed — while appeals to interest, however untenable, arc singularly effective among owners of * Gaverre's History of Louisiania. PROVINCIALISM. IT estates whose incomes are precarious, and whose pride will not permit them to recognize the cause and the remedy of their dis- couragements at home, when they can delude themselves into the belief that the origin of their inferior success is external. Tem- perament favors these irrational theories ; isolation confirms them ;; falsehood is easily propagated, ill-will easily inflamed, jealousy easily excited in such a community, Avhen a few enterprising minds sagaciously delude and inflame that native arrogance of temper which all philosophic observers, from Thomas Jefferson to John Stuart Mill, unite in declaring an inevitable result of " property in man." The evidence of the passing hour attests that this process is habitual. A naval officer of Southern birth the instant he heard of the secession of his native stato, resigned his commission, " because his father, thirty years ago, had taught him it would be his duty in such an exigency/' The son of one of the rebellious leaders was ordered by his father to resign as a member of the U. S. Naval School, and endeavored to obtain his teacher's sanction to resist the command. " My father, sir," said the boy with his eyes full of tears, " is a political enthusiast,'' But the fallacy of the doctrine thus maintained is proved by the absolute inconsistency of the recorded convictions of the very men who now cast off their allegiance to their country, their oaths and their duty. The history of the world affords no such examples of shameless apostasy ; not years and months, but weeks, days, and even hours only, intervene between the most solemn recognition of the paramount claims of national fealty and the benignant character of national institutions, and the heartless and I'eckless repudiation of both. Not only do the words of their own mouths condemn them, but, in many instances, where there lingers moral sensibility, the struggle between ambition and duty, honor and treachery, has made young men wear the aspect of age, racked the brain to the verge of insanity, and induced self-abandonment to strong drink or seclusion and remorse. And where hardihood precludes such effects, the mendacity of treason has been so unblushing and excessive, as to demoralize fatally both the men and the cause. Unfortunately for that charitable judgment which under circumstances somewhat akin, has gained for the adherents of a bad cause, the compassion which belongs to involuntary but generous wrong — from first to last the absolute proof of wilful falsehood and faithlessness has attended the rec- ognized representatives of the most wicked and wanton conspir- acy ever aimed at the life of a great nation. 18 THE REBELLION. IV. CHARACTER. To analyze character, whether national or individual, requires opportunities of study, and power of insight and comparison, rarely united ; and to point out the characteristics of the South and the North as social entities, involves so many considerations which must modify any general estimate, that the most candid view is likely to be attributed either to limited experience, or to inadequate discrimination. Certain fncts, however, variously at- tested, and so generally recognized as to illustrate the normal di- versities of the respective populations, may be justly adduced to explain the moral complexion of the present crisis and strife. The first and most obvious consideration is, that it is as a caste rath- er than a people, that the South have raised the banner and the cry of insurrection ; it is in the character of slaveholders that they wage fratricidal war, not because they have not in the past, and may not in the future, enjoy all the protection, scope, prosperity, and prestige which honest labor and free citizenship secure, but because they refuse to yield to the encroachment of natural laws, whereby political supremacy has passed from Southern to West- ern communities, on account of the inevitable expansion of the latter under the agency of free labor; that they selfishly and de- spairingly strive to overthrow a just government. The pretext for their rebellion, be it ever remembered, so far as it has any legislative cause, is the determination of the majority of their fellow-citizens to prevent the extension of slavery ; the animus of their hostility partakes of the same origin : — passionate resistance to what civilization, culture, duty, Christianity assert; it is against the hatred which conscious error, long suppressed jealousy, baffled ambition inspires, that the mere self-preserving instinct of the North has to contend. In this fact, from this difi'erence, we may discern the prevalent traits of society and character — a lawless class of indigent, and an arrogant class of wealthy men — the for- mer eager for the tray which excites their passions and occupies their stagnant energies, the latter solicitous to preserve that pre- dominance in public aff'airs, which secures the institution whereby they live exempt from the necessity of labor. The very antago- nism of such a condition breeds anger, sensitiveness and assurap- CHARACTER. 19 tion. The correspondent of the London Times, wlio certainly takrs a most favorable view of the agreeable in Southern society, and compliments the manners, the appearance, and the wine he found in Carolina, admits that the gentlemen of the South, " if they meet with opposition, can scarce control their passions, and argument is often treated as insult," while only the evidence of facts would make credible the exhibition of female ire evoked by the present conflict. "We are justified, therefore, in the conclu- sion, that the temper of the better classes is unchastened and ag- gressive ; and every traveller can attest that the wildest district of Ireland, and the most vengeful race of Corsica, furnish no such demoralized and ferocious rabble as the crowds that glare at the prisoners, and threaten wayfarers from the North, at every rail- way station between Pensacola and Manassas. The industrious habits, disciplined minds, and social equality prevalent at the North and West, chasten the temper, and make self-control and self-possession the rule instead of the exception. The people there have no motive to hate, though many resist their truculent South- ern foes. Hence the long apathy, from which the cannon of Charleston roused them ; hence the forbearance under misrepre- sentations — the patience under exactions ; hence the long cher- ished hope of reconciliation, reconstruction, and compromise; hence the reluctance to extreme measures, even against spies and traitors. The North does not, and we trust never will, hate the South ; there is no personal rancor except among a few irascible politicians. Moral indignation, the recoil of outraged humanity, the calm determination to repel assaults upon national honor, rights and property, her citizens do, indeed, acknowledge ; but they have no deadly hatred to gratify, no unscrupulous revenge to wreak — only a solemn duty to fulfil, a sacred responsibility to meet. As long as an abstract question divided the two sections, the prime movers of this rebellion sought and found sympathy at the North. For fitly years the political ascendency of the South was maintained through afiiliation with the democratic party of the North ; but when the balance of power, through the growth of the West, was shifted ; — when so many of the South- ern politicians becan e peculators, conspirators, anarchists — sur- reptitiously diverting the money, ships and army from the repub- lic, and finally seizing its property, and assailing with rifles, batte- ries, poison, treachery, and wanton insult, its suftVage, defenders, representatives, flag, capitol, and citizens — then, and then only, the Federal authorities, in accordance with their constitutional obligations, and with the earnest sanction and support of the people whose organs they are, proclaimed the penalties of treason, 20 THE REBELLION. and summoned to arms an insulted and assailed nation. Such is the record, whose evidences are clear, and Avbich no sophistry- can obscure or rhetoric confuse. It is written in the prosecution of Floyd, in the orders of Cobb and Thompson when members of the Cabinet, in the speeches of Yancey, Stephens and Pickens, in the protest of Twiggs' betrayed subordinates ; and confirmed in terms of enduring honor, in the appeals therefrom by Dix, Cass, Anderson, Scott, Holt and Johnson — in the inaugural and proclamations of the President of the United States, and the res- olutions of Congress — in the self-assertion of Western Virginia, Eastern Tennessee, Missouri, Kentucky, North Carolina, Mary- land, and the less hampered sections of other states — in the prompt response of our volunteer militia, the generous confidence of bankers, the testimony of press, pulpit, bar and exchange, and the cheerful sacrifices of mechanics, merchants, farmers, and women, through ont our free states. The frequent necessity of anticipating their incomes from crops, a conventional system of generosity too often opposed to justice, in fiscal matters, the habit of indulging in games of hazard, and the absence of those strict arrangements in regard to debt and credit, which obtain in communities where commerce is the prev- alent vocation, combined with an impulsive, and therefore com- paratively reckless temperament, cause the standard of integrity as regards pecuniary obligations to be, as a general rule, much lower at the South than the North. The history of several of the states illustrates this point; and few individuals accustomed to methodical and provident habits, after being won by the frank- ness, liberality, and genial qualities of Southerners, are not, sooner or later, disenchanted by finding a looseness of principle and a carelessness of practice in relation to money, which, associated as it so often is with a Hotspur quickness both to imagine and re- sent oftence upon the most trifiing provocation, makes the com- panionship, otherwise so desirable, far from satisfactory. In al- luding to these well-known traits and tendencies of character, we are far from supposing they are not redeemed by many noble im- pulses ; we only affirm that, in a social point of view, they are especially unfavorable to political efficiency ; and afford indirect but potent occasions for unstable and capricious phenomena in the civic as in the personal sphere. Nor are we disposed to claim for Northern character immunity from traits that mar its more consistent vigor. The taint of materialism induced by prosperous enterprise, the lack of aspiration, the acquiescence in flagrant national abuses, the inditference to public duty, and the insensi- bility to elevating motives, too great reference to thrift and too CHARACTER. 21 little to patriotism, are signs of deterioration which have kept pace with tlio growth of our resources, and the progress of eco- nomical and mechanical science. The whole nation, as such, requires ihe discipline and the purification wliich the terrible or- deal of civil war may, if rightly apprehended, secure. The senti- ment of reverence, the true keystone of the national structure, which recognizes a supreme arbiter, and respects humanity, has lamentablv declined. Neither age nor precedents, the lessons of the past nor tlie claims of the future, have that respect which re- ligious faith and duty inculcate. We, as a people, have fully jus- tified De Tocqueville's theory that devotion to the immediate is the characteristic of republics. ]jut in the Xorth this sacrilegious and profane tendency has been more evident as a negative, and in the South as a positive element; apathy and evasion are its tokens here, downright scorn and violence there. Burke's appeal to the normal instincts of mankind as the conservative principle of society, and Rousseau's recurrence to the natural affections as tlie source of happiness and culture, are as requisite to-day in America as in that cliaotic era whence sprung the reign of terror in France. The corruption wliich had debased our government, inevitably led to the utter want of respect therefor, which em- boldened unscrupulous politicians to defy and repudiate it; but had there lingered in tlieir hearts respect for citizenship, rever- ence for the traditions, love of the founders, considerations for the future destiny of the republic — ■while contemning the disloyal and dishonest administration, they would have rememVjered the sacredness of citizenship, the inestimable value of constitutional rights; they would have recognized the people, while scorning their betrayers, and hesitated long to lay sacrilegious hands on the ark of our political salvation. Here was the great error of the traitors; they confounded imbecile and unprincipled rulers with the citizens of a common country ; and took no account, in their schemes, of that vast reserve of patriotism and integrity, un- conspicuous in ordinary times, but invoked, as by enchantment, into life and action, by the least violence to nationality. There is a mechanical spirit in the life of that portion of the country which has thriven so bountifully upon free labor, which accuses society as untrue to the aesthetic and the humane instincts that alone give dignity and grace to prosperity. If we meet on terms of greater conventional equality, we seldom elevate that advantage into respect for and sympathy with the individual : thrift too often benumbs sentiment, formal acquiescence in religious ob- servances takes the place of vital faith ; and domestic, social, and political life are hardened and narrowed by devotion to affairs, 22 THE REBELLION. absorptinn in gainful schemes, or vulgar ostentation; but these drawbacks to the highest civilization are incident to the facility with which fortunes are made, and the material taste their sudden acquisition engenders ; they arc acknowledged evils, continually modified by the humanizing influences of regular industry, free citizenship, humane literature, and art, and the example of the cultivated and the conscientious ; they harden rather than de- grade the moral sensibilities, and lead more to the neglect than the violent perversion of political duties; hence they injure the individual more than society, and, on this account, interfere less witli the legitimate operation of law and order, than the despotic and limited passions which goad and blind their vir.tims, where less industry and education, and more temptation to domineer and speculate, mar the high functions of citizenship and national obli- gation. However, in the heat of passion, the superior average civilization of the North may be denied, our Southern fellow- citizens give the best proof of their consciousness and conviction thereof, by sending their children to be educated there, by seek- ing there investments for surplus revenue, by habitually resorting thither for recreation, information, health, and social satisfaction; and by sending their families among the same traduced people, as their best refuge and most agreeable home, even when the two sections of the land are opposed to each other in deadly array. The confidence in Northern integrity, resources, culture, and kind- ness, as far as social agencies are concerned, has been, and is man- ifested by the South in so practical a manner as to make ridicu- lous their intemperate abuse and ostensible distrust. "Clear your mind of cant," urged Dr. Johnson, in an argument : the cant produced by this present climax of feeling and crisis of affairs is unparalleldl for audacious mendacity. We hear continually that the South are ''fighting for homes and firesides;" and before the evacuation of Sumpter were told of ladies devoting the Sabbath to making cartridges, and gentlemen keeping batteries under a fervid sun, as if a foreign enemy invested the city, and hordes of insatiable desperadoes threatened domestic security. And what was the truth ? Simply that these people chose to imagine per- sonal enmity, revengeful ire corresponding with their seTf-excited fears and vindictivencss. Voluntarily they made war on the United States, of which they constituted an integral part; with no provocation to hostilities but the election of a chief magistrate they did not approve, they commenced a violent seizure of forts, arsenals, custom-houses, treasure, and ships belonging to the whole country ; and then threatened the capital ; and having so done, began to "play the injured :" calling American citizens CHARACTER. 23 from every class and party, in arms to defend the country, " Lin- coln's men " and " Yankees ;" ignoring every bond and tie but " our state," as if a certain extent of soil, without freedom to vote at will, or utter one's national allegiance with impunity, could, in any legitimate sense, be a state ; one honest and sane protest against such an anomalous condition is as good as a thousand to make apparent tbe truth ; and thence and then was sent forth the declaration of a party to tlie movement that "Southern oppression is worse than Northern injustice;" while a prominent member of the bar, always respected for his integrity and patriotism, boldly assertetf that in thus acting his native state had " made a fool of herself," and one of her most honored daughters confessed she had wept with mortification and pity, after laughing immoderately at the comic self-delusion. And if it is objected that beneath these apparent absurdities lay, dark and portentous, the question of slavery, and that apprehension of an intended violent interfer- ence therewith, sanctioned by the new administration (however impracticable by the terras of the constitution), was tlie latent and overmastering inducement; then must we deny method to the mad- ness whereof the most gifted woman of the age, whose tenderness and wisdom are hallowed by her fresh grave, thus wrote :* "Now the question is thrown into new probabilities of solution by that Jine madness of the South, which is God's gift to the world in these latter days, in order to a ' restitution of all things,' and the reconstruction everywhere oF political justice and national right. See how it has been in Italy ! If Austria had not madly invaded Piedmont in 1859, France could not have fought. If the l*ope had not been madly obstinate in rejecting tlic reforms pressed on him by France, he must have been sustained as a tem- poral ruler. If the king of Naples had not madly refused to ac- cept the overtures of Piedmont toward an alliance in free govern- ment and Italian independence, we should have had to wait for Italian unity. So with the rulers of Tuscany, Modena, and the rest. Everybody was mad at the right moment. I thank God for it. '■Mais, mon cher,' said Napoleon to the Tuscan ex-grand duke, weeping before him as a suppliant, ^vous etiez a Solferino.'' That act of pure madness settled the duke's claims upon Tuscany. And looking yearningly to our poor Venetia (to say nothing of other suffering peoples beyond this peninsula), my cry nuist still be, ' Give, give — more madness. Lord !' " The Pope has been madder than everybody, and fur a much longer time, exactly because his case was complex and difficult, * Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 24: THE REBELLION. and because witli Catliolic Europe and tlic French clerical party, (slrengtlieiied by J\J. (juizot and the whole French dynastic oppo- sition — I wish them joy of their cause I) drawn up on the Holy Father's side, the least touch of sanity would have saved hiin, to the immense injury of the Italian nation. As it is, we are at the beginning of the end. "We see light at the end of the cavern. Here's a dark turning indeed about Venetia — but we won't hit our heads against the stalactites even there; and beyond, we get out into a free, great, independent Italy! May God save us to the end ! " At this point the anxiety on American affairs can take its full share of thought. My partiality for frenzies is not so absorbing, believe nie, as to exclude very painful considerations on the disso- lution of your great Union. But my serious fear has been, and is, not for the dissolution of the body but the death of the soul ; not of a rupture of states and civil war, but of reconciliation and peace at the expense of a deadly compromise of principle. Noth- ing will destroy the republic but what corrupts its conscience and disturbs its fame — for the stain upon the honor must come off upon the flag. If, on the other hand, the North stands- fast on the moral ground, no glory -will be like your glory ; your frontiers may diminish, but your essential greatness will increase; your foes may be of your own household, but your friends must be among all just and righteous men." In all civilized countries there are two antagonistic classes more or less defined — one valuing political institutions for their conser- vative, civilizing and national use, protection and inspiration ; and the other regarding them only as means of personal aggran- dizement ill the game of life ; the one class respect and love gov- ernment as the official expression of popular convictions — the delegated power on which the citizen relies for the preservation of law and order; tlie other class, having neither reverence nor Jove for any institution liunian or divine, except so favas it sub- serves their individual lust of power or gain, are on the perpetual qtii Vive for any temporary disorganization or crisis of opinion, whereby they can profit; in otlier words, civilized populations are made up of contented citizens and adventurers. With the growth of our country and the increase of its foreign element, the latter class have multiplied ; and they now furnish no small portion of those wlio have voluntarily taken up arms against the constitution and the laws, and the elected authorities of the land. The antecedents of the leaders in this rebellion identify them with the adventurers; many of them have been filibusters, others political schemers and innovators; and others, who have held CHARACTER. 25 offices of honor and trust under the Federal Government, have been remarkable for advocating views and enacting parts in the drama of public life, which conflict with logical loyalty and civic honor. Even the foreign reader of American history cannot fail to be struck with the absohite contrast in tone of mind, extent of ability and integrity of sentiment, between these men and the original and subsequent representatives of the political life of the republic; the latter were statesmen, the former are demagogues; the one trusted to principles, the other confide in theories ; to the one patriotism was an absorbing instinct, to the other parti- sanship V' the highest virtue ; these look on the country, its re- sources, its welfare and its destinies through the narrow loophole of sectional prejudice, and those surveyed them from the exalted eminence of national honor; the means and methods of the founders of our government were candid, patient, intelligent and intrepid ; those of its assailants and subverters, cruel, subtle, dis- ingenuous and unprincipled ; self-respect and mutual forbearance signalized the action of the former; vulgarity, meanness, and inso- lence characterize the latter; the contrast of their very names seems to mark the antagonism ; some of them are appellations a farce-writer might choose for Pickwickian desperadoes. What ignoble names, as belonging to the recognized leaders of public life and opinion in the land made illustrious by Washington, Franklin, llamilton, Madison, Jay, Adams, Morris, Marshall, Webster, Clay, and Jefferson ! There is a latent significance in the juxta-position of the latter name with that of Davis, associ- ated as it is with the triumph of the ultra-democracy to which is attributed in the last analysis,, the degraded popular absolutism that now threatens the nation. In the person of that ambitious traitor, his rule and his professed objects, we have incarnated the destructive irresponsibleness of democratic usurpation. No one acquainted with American citizens of Southern birth, men of sense, refinement, integrity and patriotism, and women of intelligence, sensibility and nobleness — can for a moment do them the injustice to imagine that such men represent either their opinions or social standard of character : nor is it less unreason- able to believe that they, and such as they, are in anywise, directly responsible for the political iniquity and barbarous despotism which prevail around them ; however local pride and affection and. a sense of personal injury may, for the time being, enlist their active sympathies in behalf of neighbors, kindred and friends, and make it almost a social necessity to ostensibly acqui- esce in and maintain the views and purposes adopted in the name of their respective states. 3 26 THE REBELLION. V. NATIONALITY. American travellers in Italy (before the advent of Cavour, Victor Emanuel, and Garibaldi — that noble trio of constitutional king, national statesman, and popular champion — through whom nnitv, which begets power, and power legitimized by free govern- ment, were established in the peninsula), while their sympathies were deeply excited for this ingenious, urbane, and oppressed people, half despaired of their political regeneration on account of the local feeling and antagonism, the provincial and municipal prejudice and attachment, which seemed to utterly forego na- tional feeling, wherein so evidently consisted the welfare of Italy, To ,tbe native of our western republic, it seemed as pitiful as perverse to hear the amiable coniessa and the candid contadino, the effeniinate employe of duke, pope, or emperor, and even the shrewd artisan, talk so complacently of ^^ viio 2xiese'''' — meaning, thereby, the city or village that gave them birth; to witness the proud contempt with which the Roman flung his threadbare cloak over his shoulders at the mention of the Neapolitans ; to note the shallow pity of the latter for the more cultivated Tuscans, and mark the antagonistic mein of the Piedmontese officer toward the tradesman of Milan, indicating a mutual indifference or anti- pathy, and a narrow consciousness of civic dignity and privilege, wiiich seemed fatal to the generous and practical patriotism alone adequate to the emancipation of Italy. But this chiMish and unworthy feeling challenged pity rather than anger ; it was the growth of ages, born of the feudal wars of the old Italian repub- lic,, kept alive by traditional animosities, rival interests, and the sequestration whicli despotism encourages. That our own country, subjected, to no such heritage of demarcation, whose original combination of resources and sentiment won freedom and founded republican government on the grandest scale; where the hand of the Creator has written a united destiny by the most magnificent series of rivers and lakes in the world, connecting the heart of the continent with the sea, and interfusing states and territories by (*,onimon distribution of water and chains of mountains — that our own country, which had experienced the moral and pliysical NATIONALITY. 27 benefits of union in war and peace, and througli years of unpre- cedented growtli, freedom and prosperity, should, bj" the influence of this same obsolete provincial and feudal bigotry, relapse into divided counsels, interests, and institutions, even to insurrection — — that we live to hear Americans talk with puerile emphasis of " my state," while the Italians vindicate the sentiment and success of nationality, is one of those miraculous transformations that baffle speculation, and make almost untrustworthy the evidence of our senses. Nothing can more clearly demonstrate the super- ficial hold which national honor, pride, and aftection — the safe- . guard and the sanctions of a civilized people — have upon these fanatical votaries of what they call " state rights," and, at the same time, better indicate how often the latter are flagrant " state wrongs," than the abrupt and inconsequent changes of political faith under the pressure of this crisis. Letters are in the posses- sion of numerous Northern friends of some of the most respected and intelligent Virginians, Georgians, and Louisianians, written just before their respective states were declared seceded from the federal Union, in which the abettors of this project are denounced as reckless and treasonable, their purpose stigmatized as anai'chi- cal, and the warmest professions of attachment to and confidence in the constitution and Union declared. Yet a few days subsequent these convictions are ignored, and the obligation to " stand by our state" recognized, either because of property therein, the claims of kindred, the fear of persecution, or the prospect of office. Sometimes the transition has been so instantaneous and complete as to be comic. When Annapolis was threatened, no- thing could exceed the active sympathy of the female friends of the officers' wives; obliged to pack up and hasten oft", with their young families, at a few hours' warning. We know of instances where friends and neighbors have mingled tears and reproaches with the suddenly ejected household, kept vigils of love and care with them, and the next day passed them with a stare of cold inditference, because, meantime, news had arrived that their state had seceded ! The very persons who have invoked the federal arms for protection, have resisted their appearance as an invasion ; the same hands that have recorded utter distrust of, and well- founded contempt for, the honesty of the rebellious leaders, and declared it infamy to obey their behests, have signed papers recog- nizing their authority, and commending their usurpations. Such gross inconsistencies and rapid self-contradictions prove either a fatal materialism or a civic cowardice, from which it would be an inestimable blessing to be set free, even through the fiery ordeal of civil war. In fact, this political crisis and hostile demonstra- 2S THE REBELLION. tion has revealed a state of society so incongruous and demoralized that, had it not occurred, a social revolution and local contest must have soon taken place at the South. It has been made apparent that the refined, humane, cultivated, and Christian fam- ilies, whose members have so won the love of the North, so honored and blest the sphere of their duties, whose homes are shrines of religious and domestic peace, and haunts of genial hospitality, are so greatly in the mmority as to be overshadowed and overawed by the irresponsible and arrogant element of the population. During these long years of prosperity and peace, the large planters have increased their estates, while the poor whites and the negroes have multiplied ; the sons of the land-owners, by the subdivisions of property, are restricted in means ; and, having been educated at the North and travelled in Europe, with expensive tastes, and despising labor, are at once proud and poor, and there- fore ready for military enterprise and glad of an excuse for fighting. Here we have the desperate and the adventurous material which stimulates political factions into turbulence and bloodshed. To resist the tide of popular fury, under the local circumstances of the Southern states, has been physically impos- sible ; so that men of sense, of principle and of patriotism, are con- demned to tacit acquiescence, and keep aloof, as far as practicable, from the strife ; and in the seclusion of their plantations, if un- disturbed by foragers and press-gangs, have ample time and cause to realize how bitter are the so-called "state rights" which de- prive the citizens of free speech, free votes, free passage — all that constitute " liberty and the pursuit of happiness," so long guaran- teed under the flag now trodden in the dust, its stars of promise superseded by the thorny palmetto, the filthy pelican, and the envenomed snake. There are, indeed, recognized conservative influences which invariably deepen and define national sentiment, so as to render it superior to the blandishments of speculative innovators and the temptation of economical experiments — influences so inwrought with the fame and the charm of one's native land, as to bind the heart thereto by the strong ties of a common heritage of renown, the memory of individual culture, and the pride of national achievement. Among the most endeared of these are literature and art ; and herein the Southern communities are far less fav- ored than those of the North. The written thought, when clotlied with beauty and power, and inspired by genius, reflecting and embalming the traditions, the aspect, and the character of a people, and the trophies of art, which perpetuate historical and local feme, singularly endear the country of their origin. Abroad NATIONALITY. 29 we ponder the verse which renews to the mind every feature of our country, the chronicle that illustrates the triumphs of her scholars, the eloquence which celebrates her heroes, and, at home, we cherish the picture or the statue that vindicates her artistic power, as memorials of native glory. The more general culture and the special achievements in letters and art which have signal- ized the civilization of the North, have tended, in no small degree, to keep alive pride of country ; while the talent of the South has been exhibited more in the evanescent triumphs of oratory than in permanent and classic works. Those American authors and artists who have attained a European reputation, with but few exceptions have been of New England birth ; and the spirit of their creations has been eminently national. It is the same in the mechanic arts and in commercial enterprise, which are held, as vocations, in contempt by wealthy planters. The echoes of national celebrity, which the bards, historians, ethical and critical writers, shipwrights, sculptors, limners, inventors, and dis- coverers of America, have evoked from the old world, have been hailed chiefly at a distance from her cotton-fields; and thus the true glory of the land seems to have had but a local recognition. It is, indeed, among the sophistical arguments of those who per- sist in attributing to legislative and social all the ill-success that grows out of natural causes — that the North will not encourage the Southern mind any more than the Southern trade ; but we all know that genius and effective self-culture make themselves felt in spite of prejudice and prohibition, neither of which exists in this case. The theory is as unreasonable as a method of accounting for the dearth of literary and artistic triumphs, as is that of tariff's, monopolies, and local preferences, in explaining the superiority of New York to Charleston as a mart and port ; as if harbors ob- structed by sand-bars and currents, and cities exposed to annual pestilence, can ever equal more commodious, accessible, and salu- brious centres of traffic ; or, as if a great poet, masterly historian, gifted artist, or prevalent literary taste, could, by any external agency, fail of just recognition wherever found. It is to one of that despised race of Yankees that the South is indebted for the system of telegraphic communication, which, until she wantonly severed the ties of -commerce and comity, bore so swiftly to and from the distant North embassies of traffic or of love ; to another they owe the very machine which, by a process quicker and more sure than human hands, separates the seed from the fibre of the cotton plant, and thus indefinitely adds to its market value ; the shoes he wears, the book he reads, the weapon he so recklessly uses, the engine that propels him on railway and river, half the 3* 30 THE REBELLION. commodities and amenities of life, are contributed by the same derided Yankees. The traditions of the revolutionary struggle have been kept alive at the North, while they have languished at the South, by virtue of this greater love of, and devotion to, art and letters. It was the eloquence of a New England orator that made Mount Vernon national property ; it was the cunning hand of a New- York sculptor that moulded the heroic figure of Washington, that adorns, while it reproaches, the capital of Virginia ; it was the comprehensive reasoning and immortal appeal of a Northern statesman, that laid bare the iniquity of this very rebellion, when it was but a speculative germ, and proclaimed in language which the world knovvs by heart — the inestimable value, glorious his- tory, and precious heritage of the Union ; and it was a band of Massachusetts soldiers who, a few weeks since, on their way to defend it, turned aside to lay garlands on the fresh grave of Washington's latest biographer. VI. ALIENATION. The most lamentable, and to honest and generous hearts the most unaccountable phase of this political alienation, is the vindictive hatred exhibited by the Southern people toward the North. No fact more clearly proves the existence of an organized and assid- uous system of deception than this ; for there is nothing in the past relations — nothing in the history of the government, or in the diversities of life and character, to explain this unmitigated hostility, as a social antagonism ; it is not reciprocal, as would be the case if it originated in conscious wrong acted as well as suffered. Any intelligent Northern citizen, who has intimately as- sociated with ladies and gentlemen (the politicians and black- guards are not to be considered) of Southern birth, will not hesi- tate to bear witness to the utter absence of ill-will, inhospitality, or prejudice ; on the contrary, average experience indicates pre- cisely the reverse — a decided partiality for, and interest in, South- ern society, as such. For how many years was Saratoga the pleasant rendezvous where old friendships were renewed annually ALIENATION^. 31 between the best families from the extreme sections of the land ; bow constantly have Northern invalids found homes at the South endeared by the warmest ties of kindness, respect and affection ; and Southern friends gladly resumed these relations on their sum- mer excursions to the sea-side and mountains of the North, If the private correspondence of the most cultivated families in both sections, were laid open to our inspection, it would reveal years of the most frank and sympathetic intercourse. The very differ- ences of character have promoted this affinit3\ There is some- thing peculiarly attractive in the manners, something freshly suggestive in the conversation of Southern women to Northern men ; and scarcely a large plantation, or a favorite watering-place in the land, has not witnessed the most genial intercourse, often resulting in permanent relations. The violent repulsion now ex- perienced, cannot, therefore, be accounted for as a social fact, by exclusive political causes ; these alienate communities, bar pro- miscuous association, check and chill awhile the interchange of hospitality ; but they do not blight, at a glance, the love of years, extinguish friendships based on mutual confidence, fill the tested sympathy of familiar comrades with the poison of distrust, and turn the tender sympathies of woman into fiendish hatred. What then are the latent causes of this unchristian, unphilosophical, un- American social enmity ? We recognize three prominent sources thereof — mendacious politicians, an irresponsible press, and ma- lignant philanthropists ; and we confidently assert, that neither has any legitimate claim to represent the social sentiment, or to assume the political expression of the national mind ; and the consciousness of this has led the first class to establish and main- tain every possible obstacle whereby a mutual understanding could be attained, and the truth be revealed to their deluded vic- tims. Not one man in a thousand believed such an attempt practicable in this country, where freedom of communication has been so long a national habit ; but espionage, proscription and violence have succeeded on American soil quite as well as under Austrian tyranny; and when the history of this rebellion shall be written, its most remarkable feature will be the number, enor- mity, and continuance of popular delusions, by means of which the leaders have kept up the strife and kept out the truth ; that a day of reckoning will come, and that the betrayal of whole communities, for personal objects, will react fatally upon its au- thors, is the inference from all historical precedent as well as re- tributive law. But with all their sagacity and unscrupulous force, it would have been impossible thus to deceive the multitude, had not antecedent influences prepared the way for the blind adop- 32 THE REBELLION. tion of these fanatical convictions. As the previous social experi- ence of those so grossly self-deluded gives no warrant therefor, we must seek the cause in more public agencies, and first among these is the press. We have often imagined vs'hat would be our feelings if, unenlightened by personal contact with Northern society, and dwelling upon an isolated Southern plantation, we should read some of the New-York journals, such as they were during the last two years and before ; — read the impudent defiance, the gross invective, the reckless speculations, and the inhuman suggestions, whereby, under the influence of party zeal, and personal arrogance and ignorance, it was sought to widen and deepen the breach be- tween the North and South — not as members of a united body politic, but as communities of men, women and citizens. To us, familiar with the insulting tone and unprincipled aggression of a portion of the press — its want of respect for every sentiment dear to humanity, and almost every individual honored among men ; — its want of convictions, its mercenary inspiration, its corps of adventurers, who, without stake in the fortunes, arro- gantly discuss the destinies of the republic— to us, who know pre- cisely how to estimate the value of opinions thus put forth, and the responsibility thus assumed, it is easy to read and smile as at a farce or a mountebank ; but at a distance from such means of attaining a correct view — isolated from any other representation of the spirit and opinions of a distant community — we find no difficulty in imagining that these graceless outpourings of private arrogance and radicalism, would seem to us the voice of popular sentiment — the positive evidence of heartless prejudice or inveter- ate animosity. And under such an impression, the better and true convictions gained from private experience and logical inves- tigation might fade away, and thus leave free scope for the false- hoods of political insurrectionists to take root. The term " malignant philanthropists," by which we designate a small but unscrupulous class of men, who, in the ostensible pro- motion of an object which, in the abstract, is right, advocate means practically wrong, would seem an unauthorized use of language, an adjective and a noun that contradict each other, and, therefore, mean nothing. But the epithet was first used, we believe, by a discriminating clergyman, and is literally correct ; for the persons whoso character it defines, unite combativeness and dcstructiveness to professed benevolence, and present the anomaly of ostensibly seeking the good of humanity while violat- ing her primal instincts. It is an abuse of language to call this class of active opponents to slavery, abolitionists, for every one who believes that institution ought to be abolished, comes under ALIENATION. 33 this appellation ; while the class referred to are properly insurrec- tionists, and advocate a course which involves tlie life of thou- sands of innocent human beings — their fellow-citizens as well as a larger number of their fellow-creatures whose champions they perversely declare themselves. Though limited and uninfluential, without political prestige or power, and looked upon with horror by every rational lover of freedom, they have had full range in the expression of their opinions; and of this circumstance the po- litical zealots of the South have availed themselves to propagate the wanton falsehood that a majority of the Northern people not only approve their wicked purpose, but originally intended to re- alize it through military conquest. This monstrous fiction, incred- ible according to the common sense of mankind, and contradicted by the history of legislation, and the testimony of all impartial ■witnesses ; known, in fact, to be an invention by all experienced and observant persons, is nevertheless the great expedient of the political tyrants who have outraged the constitution, the laws, and the rights of the country. Should a novice doubt the effi- cacy of such a method, let him read the story of the few abortive negro insurrections that have occurred on this continent; and the wild terror and extravagant precautions even the faintest rumor thereof have occasioned in whole states, will convince him that in the hands of sagacious adventurers there is no conceivable means of exciting fear, and through fear hate and desperate violence, than the constantly repeated assertion that citizens of the same country are leagued with these infamous advocates of a servile in- surrection bv constitutional political organization. This reiterated fiction has acted upon tlie ignorant and passionate masses of the South, as the fanaticism of the first French revolution upon the mob and their leaders — rousing the instinct of self-preservation into the frenzy of vindictive usurpation, alienation, and revenge. Those incapable of apprehending the subtle arguments of polit- ical theorists, and even of reading the diatribes of unprincipled journalism, are roused by this alarm into ferocity and blind ag- gression. But the malignant philanthropist is as much distrusted and disliked bv men of humanity and sense at the North, as his incendiary speech and writings are feared and anathematized at the South. He is regarded as one who impiously strives to main- tain an unchristian standard of benevolence, by aggressive alle- giance to the letter, and entire unfaithfulness to the spirit of the benign founder of our religion ; as substituting an abstract and speculative for a practical and soulful interest in mankind. There is nothing in his personal character and influence that bespeaks the tenderness for human needs, the respect for human sympa- 64: THE EEBELLION^. tliics, which vociferous assaults on a special wrong, and exclusive appeals for a special class, would suggest. Not to him do his neighbors instinctively turn for kindly offices and generous aid ; intolerant, self-complacent, pertinacious, unmindfid of the feelings of those around and defiant toward the proprieties of time, place, and circumstances, he lacks the " heart of courtesy," often the domestic graces, always the divine charity whereof is made the character of the Christian gentlemen : and inevitably sugii;ests to the experienced observer, the idea of a champion inspired to a reckless crusade, by the consciousness of deficiency in that love and nobleness that finds scope in daily life and familiar relations. Can a better illustration of the real state of the case be imagined than that afforded by a frank and free conversation between an intelligent slaveholder and an equally intelligent republican of the North, when each, through long acquaintance, had reason to know the honesty and magnanimity of the other ? Such a conversation, tempered by all the pleasant influences of a sumptuous repast and an agreeable company, it was our fortune to hear. " How many years have you known me?" asked the republican of his Southern friend." "About a quarter of a century," was the reply. " Do you then believe me capable of uniting myself to a party having for its object the initiation of a servile war — a slave insurrection, with all its atrocious horrors, involving alike men, women, and children — my fellow-citizens, many of whom are personally en- deared by years of affectionate intercourse ?" His auditor indig- nantly disclaimed the idea. " Your sense of justice then discards this falsehood, so industriously propagated at the South as identi- fied with the political organization to which I belong?" "It does." " Would you, if l)y a mere effort of volition, it was in your power, convert your slave property into a satisfactory invest- ment of another description V " With infinite pleasure." "Why ?" " Because I consider it desirable." " You regard slavery then as an evil ?" " Yes, but a necessary, an inevitable evil." " Do you, with such convictions, think it justifiable in you as an American and a Christian, to wish to promote its extension ?" " No." " This is the only object or doctrine of the Republican party which gives offence to the South ; it is an object and a doctrine the majority of the people of the United States cherish and advo- cate ; and they have constitutionally elected a president pledged to uphold and execute their views; it is the first time for years that the South have been conquered at the ballot-box ; and now, forsooth, with all their boasted chivalry, they passionately throw up the game, repudiate their allegiance, and attempt to break up the government." " But you must remember," replied the South- ALIENATION. 35 erner, "that with us tlje question at issue involves our propertv, our lives, and those of our families, while with you it is but a po- litical abstraction ; the attempt to prohibit slavery extension is the entering wedge that, in the end will subvert our 'peculiar in- stitution,' and, therefore, we resist it to the death. I know the temper and principles of the better class of Northern society so well, that I believe, so far from sharing the violent and fatal schemes of the radical abolitionists, many would come to our aid, if the destruction of the whites was seriously attempted ; I have every reason to deny the existence of any hostile sentiment, or bitter enmity toward us; I acknowledge these slanders are tlie invention of political aspirants ; at the same time, our interests, our pride, our local attachments, and our self-preserving instincts, compel recourse to secession with all its unhappy consequences."' Such was the admission, in the confidence of friendship, of a slaveholder ; and when he was asked why he did not correct the delusions so rife in his own state and neighborhood, as to the true aim of the successful party, and the real sentiment of the Northern community toward the Southern, as such, he candidly acknowl- edged that he could not risk the probable consequences of such ingenious advocacy of truth — tar and feathers, a prison or a halter. We have spoken of the provincialism which, in parts of the South- ern states, blinds the people to the dignity and value of national relations, and of the theoretical politics thence engendered — of the jealousy of their " peculiar institution," which creates an ex- travagant susceptibility both of private opinion and possible legis- lation in the free states regarding it, and of the opportunity thus afforded to unprincipled adventurers to sophisticate the thought and exasperate the feeling of the public ; to these causes of disaf- fection may be added one less worthy, but equally true — envy of the more rapid growth and greater prosperity of the North; the irritation thus awakened vents itself in language which cannot be mistaken. The commercial prominence and social luxury wit- nessed in the large cities of the North, is a spectacle which affects the less magnanimous of our Southern fellow-citizens, as did the sight of Mordecai Haman of old. Not only are the unreason- ing cavillers who dwell beside the canebrakes, and in the stag- nant summer marts, thus affected, but in Maryland, as the most northern of the slave states, whose commercial port admits of all the requisite facilities for extensive and regular trade — certain capitalists have adopted the belief in, and pressed to the most dire extremity, the purpose of secession, in order, as they fondly imagine, to render Baltimore all that New York now is, by di- verting thither the depots, shipping, and centre of exchange for 36 THE KEBELLION. the staples of the South, while the kindred innovators of Virginia flatter tlieniselves that, under this new order of things, their state will become the manufacturing region that has made New Eng- land rich and industrious. In their selfish eagerness to realize these projects, they ignore the fact that they are wholly experi- mental ; that, however unequally divided, the extraordinary pros- perity of the United States has been derived from its political unity; and that, with the possibility of local advantage by a sev- erance of the Union, there is a certainty of greater decadence throughout the states ; while the vast protection and encourage- ment incident to our great country will be lost to its unsustained and rival fragments. One of the best writers and most honorable patriots Maryland boasts,* has demonstrated that it is a fatal error, as far as her industrial interests are concerned, to withdraw from the Union under any circumstances ; that political economy coalesces with national honor to appeal from a course at once disloyal and suicidal; and so far is the municipal integrity of Baltimore from being sound, that before the present mania devel- oped into treasonable violence, it was notorious that the com- munity were deprived of their political rights by a permanent mobocracy. One of the leading lawyers of that city, to iHustrate this anomalous and fearful condition, informed us, that having gained a suit involving a large amount of real estate, his client was unable to obtain possession, because the premises had been seized and occupied by one of those lawless bands in the interest of the defeated party. Elsewhere, in the country, he added, re- dress might easily be obtained by process of ejectment for tres- pass ; " but if I had sent a sheriff's posse to drive away the in- truders, I should have exposed my invalid wife and young children to the horrors of a vengeful mob, on the very next occasion of popular tumult." And yet, whei-e freemen could not deposit their ballots from fear of violence, and the local authorities had proved inadequate to save from slaughter those who sought a peaceable passage through their cit}', where the property of a large corpora- tion was ruthlessly destroyed in defiance of law, the presence of the national militia, which, for the first time for years, restrained these ruffians, to the delight of honest and order-loving citizens, was met by "curses not loud but deep" against this necessary pro- tection, as a violation of state rights! No sober and huinane ob- server of phenomena like these, coupled with the exhibition of a vindictive sj)irit, for which no motive, at all proportioned to its vehemence, is apparent, can resist the conclusion that there is * lion. Johu P. Kennedy. FOREIGN CRITICISM. 37 social as well as individual insanity. History explains, and huinan nature accounts for the inveterate resentment between Goth and Roman, Guelph and Ghibbeline, Frencli and English, Austrian and Italian, but vainly will the historian of modern civilization, though as indefatigable in research and ingenious in inference as Buckle, seek for any more plausible theory of this local animosity than an epidemic madness. There remains another cause appli- cable to tlie border, cotton, and free states, that accounts for the bitterness and the prevalence of disunion schemes — a cause more disgraceful and discouraging to the lovers of free constitutional government than either wild theories of local aggrandizement or fears in regard to direct interference with slavery, and that is po- litical selfishness and disloyalty. The very theory of popular gov- ernment presupposes that the majority shall legitimately rule and the minority cheerfully submit; heretofore, however fierce and strong party feeling has risen, the terms and the rights of this solemn compact have been respected; now violence and treason are openly advocated and practised by the defeated party, or rather by the unprincipled members thereof; and the people are driven by the instinct of self-preservation, and the clear dictates of patriotic duty, to meet the fearful ordeal of civil war. VII. FOREIGN CRITICISM. In view of these patent facts, the disingenuous tone of the English press on American affairs is, to say the least, discredit- able to its candor and manliness. That the London Times, which has long ceased to be the expositor of the popular senti- ment of Great Britain, and become the advocate of her conjectu- ral interests— should studiously misstate the issue and the exigency, is not surprising ; that the remorseless organ of Toryism, fitly called "Old Ebony" — from the density and darkness of its political perversity, should affect to consider the struggle as a necessary result of democratic institutions, and involving no more important consequence than an auspicious separation of states, 4 38 THE KEBELLION. which originally made the grand mistake of abjuring British colonial rule, is consistent with the tactics and temper of a peri- odical whose literary freedom and brilliancy contrast so unfor- tunately with the conventional restraint and arbitrariness of its political creed; and tliat a flippant medium for spite and inhu- manity like the Saturday Hevinv, should sneer at the claims and dogmatize over the prospects of a nation whose trials and ten- dencies it lacks both the soul and the intellect to comprehend, are freaks of popular journalism which are to be expected by all who are cognizant of the methods and the motives of those who control this trenchant and truculent sheet. But the case is dif- ferent when we find the subject discussed, not in the same antag- onistic temper, indeed, nor with like indifference to the feelings and the fate of a kindred people, but with the same indications of a foregone conclusion and wilful repudiation of facts, by pro- fessedly liberal and independent organs, such as the National Revietv, which, arguing that the North would flourish better apart, and be free of the taint and the perplexity of the Slavery ques- tion, expresses wonder that the most civilized and powerful states of the Union do not cheerfully and peacefully allow the withdrawal of those disaft'ected and rebellious ; and then goes on to show that, while right is unquestionably on the side of the government, reason is against a war for its maintenance — the in- ference being that the United States initiated a bloody conflict, simply to prevent a voluntary and legitimate secession of certain discontented members of the republic ; whereas the present war was made inevitable by an organized attempt to overthrow the institutions, appropriate the resources, destroy the liberties and seize the capital of the nation ; it was a moral and physical necessity to fight — even if it were known that the scheme of the disunioiiists could and would be realized — for otherwise, the property, the lives, and the freedom of American citizens had no earthly guarantee, safeguard or sanction. In ignoring this palpa- ble truth, a portion of the press of England has stultified all its speculative logic; and it is a remarkable evidence of the honesty of the people — that the most stringent protests against this injus- tice have come from a journal and man that represent the manu- facturing interests, which were most compromised by the war; Mr. ]>rigl)t and the Manchester Guardian herein rise far above the material level of the London Times ; and the most just and gen- erous interpretation of the crisis in Europe, instead of emanating from those who are nearest us in blood and institutions, has found scope in the eloquent appeal of a French publicist, in the intelligent sympathy of German and the authentic statements of FOREIGN CKITICI8M. 39 Itftlian writers. Gasparin, in Paris, the Rlvista Contemporanea and V Opinione oi Turin, better understand and more nobly advocate our cause ; and D'Azeglio, in opposing the schemes of dema- gogues who seek to nip in the bud the expanding nationality of the Italian states, by subverting the constitutional kingdom under which it has germinated and attained vigor — cites the conduct of the Southern states of America: Uassolutismo della democra- zia e cold arrivuto alle sue ultime consef/uenze ed ha sjMventato il niondo coll esempio diiino stato Christiana che proclama di diritto divino la schiavitk* The greatest living English authority in economical and political science, attests, in equally emphatic terms the same truth. In a discussion on the American crisis by the Political Economy Society of Paris, John Stuart Mill thus expressed his deliberate convictions: " The question between the North and South of the American Union is a question of passion and not of economical interest or of political interest rightly understood, whatever may be the mo- tive urged on either side. What is now passing there has taken place many a time before in Europe in circumstances of similar gravity. The Southern states are mastered by a passion which blinds them and prevents them from weighing their true interests and the dangers which threaten them. Thei/ are in a frame of mind which is the result of slave)')/. These men, accustomed to exercise a daily despotic power over their fellows^ cannot bear con- trol, criticism or resistance. They d^'aiv a blind confidence from their heated and unruly tempers, and they so exaggerate their strength as really to imagine (hat they can bring the North to terms. Such is always the effect of the exercise of absolute potver over one^ s fellow man. The passion which inspires the North is born of nobler and worthier sentiments. They wish to preserve to the republic the prestige which it has enjoyed up to the pres- ent time, and they think that the maintenance of political bonds with the Southern states is necessary for the preservation of this prestige. It is on patriotism that they rely to effect this object." The same want of candor is shown in disregarding the geograph- ical facts of the crisis, and the absolute obligations of the na- tional government toward the South. To read the articles of English writers, and listen to the conversation of treacherous op- ponents of the war at home, one would imagine that the United States were divided into two congruous and isolated parties, the one having freely declared for disunion, and the other selfishly opposing their wishes. So contrary to the truth is this, that * QueaUoni JTrgenti ; Pmsieri di Massimo D'Azeglio: Firenze, 1S61. 40 THE KEBKLLION. ■while the bayonet and proscription have forced the alienated states into ostensible concurrence, large sections of Virginia, Ten- nessee, Georgia, Louisiana and North Carolina, temporarily main- tained tlieir protest against the illegal usurpation, sometimes ac- tually organizing a separate government, and claiming the pro- tection of the national authority ; while Kentucky bravely strives, and Missouri still nobly struggles to attain, uninvaded, their nor- mal integrity as constituent parts of the Union. Moreover, this sequestration from the tyranny of treasonable faction exists to an indetinite degree throughout the so-called Confederacy; some- times exhibiting itself in voluntary exile, often in banishment, and still more frequently in the unexpressed but determined loyaltj'^ of individuals, who purchase immunity from confiscation and mur- der by silence. Hereafter it will be recorded as one of the most glaring anomalies of Saxon civilization, that men, on both sides of the Atlantic, born and bred under constitutional freedom, and professing allegiance to the principles of civil liberty, for which llampden. Vane, Korner and Masrin, La Fayette and Tell, Kos- ciusco and Marco Bozzaris, Washington, Kossuth and Garibaldi, fought, pleaded or died — men of social position and respecta- bility, have been found in the nineteenth centurj', who refused to see, in the self-defence of a nation, within whose bosom were openly violated these sacred principles, the performance of a sol- emn duty ti> humanity and to nationality — the evasion of which would have condemned her people to eternal obloquy. The con- quest of the inhabitants of the border states of America by the slaveoerac}', would rank in history as a more shameful wrong than the subjugation of Greece by the Turks, the dismemberment of Poland, or the failure of Italian regeneration, because in these cases the infamous work was or would have been achieved by an alien race and a foreign government, whereas, in our republic, it could be attributed only to the unfaithfulness or pusillanimity of the delegated powers of the nation itself — to the indifterence or inad- equacy of the free states and the Federal authorit}'. Aptly in such a catastrophe, might be applied to the majestic bird that is the symbol of the republic, the beautiful simile, then no poetic fiction, but a tragic reality — which describes the agonies of the dying eagle as intensified by the sight of the feathers from his own plumage, that winged the fatal arrow. Not only is attachment for, and loyalty to the Union an actual aiitl vital sentiment, however crushed and shrouded in the disaf- fected states, demanding the efficient countenance of the central government, but the very institution in whose behalf such mon- strous sacrifices of justice and dignity are impudently claimed, FOREIGN CRITICISM. 41 does not exist in whole counties thereof, and is even secretly de- tested, where it is legally maintained. On merely economical grounds it is a transition element in more than one of the states where it lingers rather than flourishes. Nor are the instances rare of individual remorse, disinterested renunciation or latent discontent — pointing to its ultimate overthrow. As we write, a daily jour- nal records the following illustration of the manner in which the better sympathies of our nature sometimes break forth, despite the pleadings of interest and the insensibility of habit : " It was not a hundred miles from where the rebel army is now encamped, that I once went to visit an old Virginia friend. We had known each other in boyhood. He had married, and settled down on a farm well stocked with negroes. He then invited me to visit him, not without mentioning that he had heard of my un-Virginian heresies on the slavery question ; but he wrote, " that subject we can sink in the river Styx." I went, and found him pleasantly environed and happy. Old times were talked of. In the evening, when we sat talking of the old school scenes, his beautiful bride sitting near, slavery not yet distantly alluded to, nor in all our thoughts, a groan was heard outside the door, and the exclamation : " O, my God !" The husband started — the young wife was out of the door in an instant. There -was a noise, a moaning voice replying to an eager, quick one; what they said was undistinguishable. Presently the door of the parlor was burst open, disclosing in the hall, sitting on the floor, with her head on a chair, and sobbing violently, a light mulatto woman. The young wife of my friend stood before us, pale as a sheet, and deeply stirred. Scarcely, for her tremendous emotion, could she inform us of the trouble, which was, that the husband of Fanny, (the mulatto girl) had been sold South, and been taken oft' that day without even being allowed to come over to this neighboring estate to see his wife. But never, never can I forget the emotion and the voice with which my friend's young wife uttered her whole heart. She held up the whole system as an accursed, God- defying system ; if by lifting her finger, she could set every slave in America free, that moment she would do it, and there would be no more white throats cut than ought to be. In vain the hus- band reminded her that they were not alone. Erect as a sun- beam, full of electric wrath, this Pythoness stood before me, and warned me that I could never hate slavery too much. And so she went on, with an eloquence that Phillips would envy, until the pallor was overborne by a suffusion, and the flush came with a rain of tears, and she went to kneel with the poor broken heart in the hall. The husband closed the door on the scene ; but you 4* •' 42 THE REBELLION. may jncls^c that we did not ' sink that subject in the river Styx' that nic:iit." Equally fallacious is the theory which pretends to discover in these events the indications of radical evanescence in republican institutions, these have been invariably recognized by intelligent advocates; as based upon popular education, in the widest sense of that term ; and this condition has oidy been practically ful- filled in the Eastern and Western states, where an alacrity and unanimity, as well as intelligence, absolutely without precedent, have been exhibited in the recent manifestation of patriotism. The apparent lapse of this conservative instinct confirms the stability of free institutions, inasmuch as, under no other form of govern- ment, could the abuses of political power have coexisted with national life. Our people so wisely governed themselves, had been so adequately educated in the social virtues, as to be, in a great measure, independent of bad rulers ; the mischief they were able to inflict was casual, not vital ; public order survived oflScial dishonesty ; law harmonized the community, despite its violation by their representatives ; chaos came not, as in France, when the integrity of government was violated ; the machinery continued to work, notwithstanding the ship of state drifted far out of her course through faithless pilotage. All history shows that nations, subject to despotism, decay or flourish according to the character of kings and ministers; but self-reliant, self-enlight- ened citizenship, counteracts the worst evils of ignorant, bigoted, and cruel nionarchs ; witness the annals of Spain and England, and their condition to-da}-. The essential principles of republi- can government, public education and equal rights, were repudia- ted by that portion of the United States where slavery exists ; its social consequences are incompatible with the political theory of our institutions ; and therefore it is as illogical as it is disingen- uous, to ascribe the failure of the great experiment there to intrin- sic defect. It was not through insensibility to this anomalous element that the founders of the republic permitted its continu- ance. They believed, and with reason, that it was a temporary obstacle ; it had already died out in many states, and, according to the existent signs of the times, was destined to gradually dis- appear by a moral, economical, and geographical necessity. The debates of that peerless convention of patriotic statesmen who formed the Constitution, the current opinion of the day, the tes- timony of early travellers in America, tlie tendencies and spirit of the age, all justify this inference. No stronger protest against the system, or more firm conviction of its limited duration, are to be found, than among the letters and speeches of the leaders FOREIGN CKITICISM. 43 of public opinion — the representative men of that very state whose soil now reeks with fraternal blood shed in civil war, osten- sibly inaugurated for the defence of an institution then but toler- ated as a casual necessity — never defended as a permanent or desirable social fact. The invention of the cotton-gin, and the new and vast mercantile value of that staple, renewed and enlar- ged the life of a then decrepit element in the robust body politic ; interest prolonged and intensified what humanity and social sci- ence recognized as a disease ; the treatment of which thenceforth became the most perplexing problem ever awarded to Christian patriotism — a nucleus for fanatics and demagogues, and a peren- nial source of mortification and anxiety to honorable citizens. To infer from the perversions of republican principles incident to this anomalous element their impracticable triumph, is as irra- tional as to deny all laws of health, because of the revelations of morbid anatomy. The industrial development, the humane fel- lowship, the equalized prosperity, and the greater degree of man- hood and womanhood, of social progress and comfort, and indi- vidual scope and happiness, which are the legitimate results of free institutions, have been fully realized on this continent, where those institutions have truly existed ; the exceptions are local, and no candid or generous mind fails to acknowledge that the cause thereof is independent of, and antagonistic to, the essentials of republican government. The frequency of elections, the unrestricted suflfrage, and the distribution of offices as a rewaid for partisan fidelity; the tenure and possible renewal of the presidential term, and the limited power of the executive, are features of American institutions, the practical evil of which has been sadly demonstrated ; but each and all of these imperfections were anticipated by the most enlight- ened and comprehensive men who formed, discussed, and adopted the constitution ; experience has fully justified their wisdom ; the writings of Washington, Hamilton, Jay, King, Madison, Gouverneur Morris, Marshall, and others of kindred views, are prophetic of the very abuses which have gradually rendered the worst features of the present crisis not only possible but inevitable. Be it re- membered, however, that they are all susceptible of reform, and if any ordeal can induce the requisite amendments, it is that through which the nation is now passing. Three other consider- ations suggest themselves as explanatory of the difficulties and dangers incident but not essential to our republican form of government. The first is, the great extension of the territory of the United States, the second, an immense and continuous foreign immigration, and the third, the situation of the National Capital ; 44 THE KEBELLION. each of which is associated with the secondary causes that have promoted the present disaffection and favored the outbreak of civil war. Had the rapid enlargement of the original bounds of the United States of America been foreseen, the constitution would have contained provisions adapted to the exigency ; and the fathers of the republic, could they have imagined the influx of such a multitude of ignorant and impoverished Europeans, would have made the elective privilege subject to certain desirable con- ditions of education, property, and residence. The isolation of the capital, and its almost exclusive occupancy by representatives and employes of the government, by depriving the political nu- cleus of the land of those direct and salubrious influences gener- ated by its social centres, has tended to separate civic from national life — to concentrate the agents while banishing the subjects of legislation, and thus abandoning, as it were, the former to all the pernicious influences of mere political motives. It has been re- peatedly suggested that if Washington was the place of residence, even during a part of the year, of the most eminent professional and commercial citizens, from all parts of the country, their pres- ence would modify, encourage, and sustain the administration, and give vigor and wisdom to national councils and authority. The social efficiency of London and Paris in giving character and significance to government, by immediately operating on public opinion, and the exercise of political functions, is exhibited in the history of England and France. The interference of politicians in administrative duties, and the remote action of popular sentiment upon those actuallj'^ engaged in national affairs, are obvious rea- sons for the temporary success of treasonable intrigue and official dishonesty. The measure discussed at the club while pending in Parliament, and the crisis that raises a storm in the Chamber of Deputies, which instantly wakes an echo in the cafe and salon, cannot retain, if they originally possessed, an exclusively political character, for the sentiment and the thought of the citizen blend with and often shape those of the executive and the councillors of the nation. The people watch over their representatives, detect the latent purpose, enlighten the blind allegiance and inspire the loyal ruler or lawgiver, so that it is at once more difiicult to betray and more easy to reform the tendencies of the hour. The history of the last few months has taught Americans the moral necessity of fusing their political and social interests, by mak- ing the capital of the nation the nucleus of its genius, its patriotism and its eminent society, whereby a wise and loyal public sentiment is engendered in the very heart of the republic. CONCLUSION. 45 VIII. CONCLUSION, Those who delight to trace Providential issues in history, will find ample scope therefor in the recent events among us. An extraordinary combination and succession of incidents make mar- vellously clear the record of the government as the legitimate exponent of the popular will and the national character. Never was a civil war initiated with a more distinct revelation of the right and the wrong, the just and the unjust, the honorable and the shameless principles therein involved. It was to prevent the constitutionally empowered authorities of the land from supplying food to a starving garrison, that the first rebellious shots were fired and the federal government assailed ; the man chosen to lead and represent the treasonable movement was the successful advo- cate of the repudiation of state debts, whereby fiscal dishonor was first permanently attached to the republic ; the most intellectual of the traitor chiefs had, a few weeks before, solemnly declared that there existed no justification for rebellion against the "most beneficent government the world ever saw ;" the first martyrs in the strife were struck down by a mob while peacefully marching to the defence of the capital, to which duty they had been sum- moned by executive proclamation; the destruction of the bridges between Baltimore and Washington, Avhich seemed to place the latter city in such imminent peril, doubtless snatched from destruc- tion the tiower of the New York volunteers, whose presence after- ward saved it from attack ; the wanton insults to the national flag roused to its defence thousands whom no motive of self-intei'est, and no political dogma could have won to arms for the cause of the Union ; and the mendacious and vulgar tone, the transparent sophistries and the inflated bombast of the dispatches, proclama- tions, speeches, messages, and commentaries, which have emanated from those who assume to represent the Southern communities, carry in themselves the proofs of duplicity and usurpation; while the calm and conscientious tenor of the President's appeal to the country, of those of the loyal governors to their respective states, of the patriotic addresses and letters of such men as Holt and 46 THE REBELLION. Jolinson, Ethridge and Clemens, Everett, Kennedy and Motley, will prove historical illustrations of the national integrity. The expectation of a reverse at the commencement of hostilities was the prediction of intelligent, and we had almost said, the hope of patriotic men devoted to the Union ; they believed, and suLseqnent events have confirmed the opinion, that nothing but defeat, would thorouglily arouse, and firmly concentrate the public sentiment and resistance. Therefore it is, that in attempting to trace the hand of Providence in these momentous events, we in- clude even the sad and shameful termination of that fatal Sabbath struggle at and around Manassas, Vain before were pleadings and protests to break the subtle web of political chicanery and encroachment; vain the demonstrations of military science; and vain the warnings of prudent and conscientious observers, to stay the tide of popular but ignorant zeal that precipitated action, and challenged the very laws of nature. By no path but the valley of humiliation could the national will be guided to self-knowledge, the national rulers be awakened to the vastness and the immi- nence of their duty, and the national heart be solemnized into the earnestness of self-sacrifice and intrepid purpose. Nor is this all. Every successive phase and process of the war is clearing avenues to truth, and purifying the whole atmosphere of the country from the stagnant vapors of corruption that had so long settled over and poisoned its vital breath. For years, thoughtful citizens had foretold the necessity of some convulsion, the advent of some calamity, as the only possible means of restoring, to a degree at least of its elemental purity, the life of the republic. Disease in political as in physiological science, ha^ its immutable laws, and is self-limited ; a crisis in our national existence was inevitable, and now that it is upon us, little perspicacity is required to feel its providential issues. Already it has subdued to a healthful calm- ness the tujiiultuous beatings of thousands of eager hearts, whose pulsations kept time only with the low throbbings of material care and selfish ambition ; already it has drawn together into more humane relations the different classes of society, and taught the great lesson of mutual dependence ; already it has made whole communities familiar "with an idea dearer than self;" it has ap- plied, and is ai>plying the test which distinguishes the patriot from the politician, the man from the coward, the true of heart from the worldly, the heroic from the frivolous; beneath the grave asj)ect of solicitude gleams the iioly light of sacrifice ; under the pressure of dismay rises the soul of faith ; youths suddenly have become men; women, angels of mercy, and pleasure-seekers re- sponsible citizens ; to the rich, the gifted, the eminent, and the CONCLUSION. 47 obscure, there is now an ordeal whereby, in act and speech, is made apparent how much of reality, and how much of sham lies liidden in the Christianity they profess, and the manhood and womanhood they represent. But while the indirect and possible good of a resort to arms in this fierce war of opinion is acknowl- edged as a just inference by the student of social ethics, the direct and inevitable advantages are often ignored. The political revo- lution, however, as has been truly stated, has already " established the principle of emancipation ;" while a motive, such as no ab- stract reasoning could have enforced, is supplied by the interrup- tion of the cotton importation from the United States, for its in- creased culture elsewhere, thereby practically diminishing one of the most etfective causes of and apologies for slavery. Nor do we regard it as a trivial benefit that the test is thus applied to the principles of Christian governments abroad, as well as at home, by forcing into competition the appeal of self-interest and of humanity, of expediency and of Christianity. Even in the com- paratively languid policy of the government, under which journals bluster and telegrams inaugurate panics, there was a certain ad- vantage; it proved at least the absence of political vindictiveness eager to revenge the insults of faction ; it breathed a magnanim- ity in tolerating so long the treachery of the press and the tongue ; in liberating, after the oath of allegiance, so many captured traitors, and in refusing to act under the base excitement of un- christian hatred. AVe do not mean to justify the tardiness, or apologize for the inadequacy of the public functionaries ; but only to assert that their want of zeal, in the beginning, was a complete refutation of the incessant charge of partisan animosity as the ani- mus of the government. This slow recognition of the popular will also only serves more clearly to manifest the great truth — that on the people depends the result and rests the responsibility. This is, indeed, the lesson of all history in similar junctures of national life. It was the unconquerable spirit of the people that finally won religious freedom in the Netherlands, scattered the Spanish armada, and twice humbled the grasping pride of Great Britain on this continent; and it is the money, the wit, the patriotic sac- rifices, the strong arm, and the dauntless will of the people, that can alone rescue the name and the life of the nation from ruin and infamy. After the war of the Revolution, Washington, in his moderate language, declared we had now an opportunity of becoming a respectable nation ; improved in the virgin glow of national self-assertion, it has been abused more and more as it ex- panded ; and now, when wrong has culminated into portentous evil, another opportunity is vouchsafed ; an opportunity to purge 48 THE REBELLION. tbe government of corruption, and to correct its charter by amendments, the necessity of whicli was foreseen by the wisest of its framers; an opportunity to uationalize political parties, and re- construct and reorganize the machinery while renewing the soul of the republic ; an opportunity to forswear private luxury and be loyal to public duty, to initiate frugal habits of life, to substitute statesmen for politicians, culture for gold-worship, comfort for os- tentation, integrity for extravagance, principle for policy, content- ment for ambition, and, above all, an opportunity to rehabilitate freedom; so vital may be the stern lessons of civil strife, so great the possible social amelioration and elevation consequent on this dire interruption to the ease, industry, and complacent self-seeking of our people. 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