The Rebellion : its latent causes and true significance : in letters to a friend abroad

C U

m

i

THE KEBELLION:

ITS

LATENT CAUSES

TRUE SIGNIFICANCE

IN LETTERS TO A FRIEND ABROAD.

HENRY T. TUCKEEMAN,

" Truth crushed to earth shall rise again,
The eternal years of God are hers ;

But Error, wounded, writhes in pain,
And dies among his worshippers."

Bryant.

NEW YORK:

JAMES O-. GREGORY,

(successor to w. a. TOWNSBND & CO.,)

46 WALKER STREET.

1861.

4WW

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1861,

By JAMES G. GREGORY,

In the Clerks Office of the District Court of the United States, for the
Southern District of New York.

C. A. ALVORD, PRINTER.

THE REBELLION.

INTRODUCTION.

New York, July, 1861,
My Dear Sir:

I can well believe your declaration that " we are all sick at
heart at the sad events happening in the once United States, not
merely in a selfish point of view, but for the sake of humanity ;"
and yet you must excuse me for regarding your subsequent obser-
vations as directly opposed to the latter sentiment, inasmuch as,
adopting the unauthorized and perverse statements of a certain
class of British journals, you recognize only a political disagree-
ment, and a spontaneous and unnecessary recourse to arms on the
part of our government, ignoring the antecedent circumstances,
the national scope and the inevitable obligation thus to meet the
crisis. Intimately associated, as you are, with influential organs of
public opinion, and desirous, as you profess, to learn from those
you personally know, the latent causes and true significance of
this rebellion, I will trace them deliberately, and leave it to your
candor to enlighten those within your sphere, so that, at least, the
basis of a correct appreciation of the subject may not be wanting.
With this personal explanation, and the documentary evidence
furnished by the "Rebellion Record," forwarded herewith, I hope
you will find reason to modify opinions derived from false premi-
ses ; in which case, I am confident your sympathy with truth will
lead you to proclaim and advocate her cause.

THE REBELLION.

THE CRISIS.

So unfamiliar to the present generation of Americans are the
phenomena of actual war, so anomalous, in a country governed
by a system of mutual confidence, is treason, and so rapidly have
events succeeded each other, that what has transpired during the
last few months, appears, in the retrospect, to have occupied as
many years ; and even now, it is difficult, especially for those who
dwell amid the peaceful haunts of nature, and far from the scene
of strife, to realize that this free, fertile, and self-reliant nation is
devastated by internal violence, and betrayed by wanton treachery.
Yet many and remarkable are the evidences of the calamity that
come within the most casual observation ; signs of the times so
dramatic and novel, as well as impressive and touching, as to make
history a vivid reality, and fact infinitely stranger than fiction,
even to the least imaginative : for what spectacles has it been the
lot of many of us to behold, what emotions to experience since
the advent of spring! Probably, the most universal of the sen-
sations and sentiments which have almost proved a new self-rev-
elation, is the discovery how inexpressibly near and dear to the
human heart are the ties of nationality. The vicissitudes, which
in the old world make so conscious and prevailing the love of
country, the private sufferings, hopes, triumphs, and sacrifices in-
cident to public interests and relations, and directly springing
therefrom, have been comparatively unknown to our young re-
public ; her children have been so lapped in security, so free to
pursue personal ends, so undisturbed by and uninterfered with
the political machinery, that, like the spoiled offspring of too in-
dulgent parents, they have instinctively confided in rather than
earnestly cherished dependent feeling and faith. To such a peo-
ple, national adversity — treacherous outrage is like the shock of a
personal bereavement, whereby the heart first thoroughly learns
how much it loves by the agony of its loss. To most of us, un-
occupied with ] political ambition and passionate political sympa-
thies, it has, for the first time, happened that sleep has fled our
pillows, and tears bedewed our cheeks, and the familiar occupa-
tions and pleasures of life become " flat, stale, and unprofitable,"

THE CEISIS. 0

and the sense of responsibility, as citizens, the sense of danger
and of duty, as Americans, been intensely awakened, under the
pressure and the pain of a jeopardized nationality, under the re-
alization of that prophetic vision which the eloquent senator
prayed he might not live to behold, " states discordant, bellig-
erent, and drenched in fraternal blood." Half incredulously we
repeat to ourselves the facts of the hour when withdrawn from
their immediate cognizance ; and, with a sorrowful wonder, that
habit fails to subdue, gaze and listen to the tokens of the crisis,
and the chaos of our national life — now thrilled by some deed of
heroism, and now appalled by some threatened catastrophe ; to-
day impatient to frenzy at the stupidity or tardiness of official
rule, and to-morrow bowed down with shame, or exultant with
hope, as the turpitude of the disloyal, or the integrity and ardor
of the patriotic alternate in the record of the hour. We have
lived to see a stranger in the land weep at the treacherous
ingratitude of Americans toward a benignant and free while
he was expiating in exile his devotion to a subjugated nation-
ality; to hear aged men with honored names, welcome death
that withdrew them from the scene of their country's degradation,
and beardless youths describe the fratricidal rage which massa-
cred their wounded comrades before their eyes; to hear the
funeral march usher to an early grave the accomplished writer,
the honest mechanic, and the prosperous citizen, who, a few
weeks before, had cast aside the allurements of home, friends,
congenial industry, and domestic comfort, to defend the capital of
the nation from the ruthless invasion of vindictive usurpers ; to
see the soldier's uniform under academic robes, and hear the grad-
uates of American colleges sent forth not to the peaceful walks of
literature and science, but to the battle-field of civil war. We
have lived to see the chief magistrate of an American city pallid
with the consciousness of detected treason ; the domain where
Washington wooed his bride, a camp to guard the republic from
the sacrilegious violation of the people of his native state ; to hear
German war-songs, the Hungarian battle-cry, and the Irish cheer,
announce, from the Fifth avenue to the Battery, the departure of
regiments to the defence of their adopted country ; and the bugle
charge which proclaimed Garibaldi's invincible forays under the
walls of Rome, wake the peaceful echoes of the A'stor Library."*
We have lived to realize how precious, in its proud significance,
could be the flag of our country, when insult and defiance had

* The identical flag borne at that memorable siege, was presented to the Garibaldi
Guard, in Lafayette Place, New York, when the regiment marched to the bugle charge of
their Italian hero.
1*

O THE REBELLION.

outraged its claims ; to recall, with the tender exultation of a re-
cent experience, the days when it challenged the world's admira-
tion, as the symbol of victory; and invoke the memories of Perry
and Decatur, Lawrence and Jackson, to revive and reassert its
traditional fame ; and to remember fondly every occasion in our
own experience, when the sight of that flag, as the signal of free-
dom, the token of nationality, the pall of dead heroes, encoun-
tered on the " gray and melancholy waste" of ocean, at an iso-
lated border fort amid the prairies, above the domicile of our
country's representatives in foreign lands, and amid the forest of
shipping at Liverpool, Hamburgh, Symrna, or Marseilles, the
pledge of protection, the trophy of power, the emblem of liberty,
the memorial of home ! We have lived to listen to an American
officer, while he declared himself a prisoner of war to his own
countrymen, pledged not to draw his sword in behalf of the na-
tion to whom his allegiance is due, and which he has faithfully
served from early youth to middle life, in order to escape from a
horde of traitors, once his loyal comrades in arms, and whose
lying machinations compelled him to fly the post of duty, or
identify himself with a base conspiracy, the details of which are
unparalleled in military and civic history, for heartless deception.
We have lived to behold the result of a series of compromises
with and concessions to a slave autocracy, in the organized proc-
lamation of its divine origin and its perpetual supremacy ; and
to hear this most unhallowed violation of the fundamental princi-
ple of free government flippantly accepted by men and women,
who have not the excuse of interest in, or familiarity with the in-
stitution, to propagate and maintain which the sacrilegious heresy
was conceived, and is defended. We have lived to witness the
bribe of free trade offered to a Christian nation, and, if not openly
entertained, not indignantly and promptly rejected, as an induce-
ment to recognize a combination of citizens guilty of " sedition,
privy conspiracy, and rebellion," deliverance from which is the
authorized prayer of their established church ; and to have the
worship of God profaned by the deliberate omission of that for
the head of the nation. And we have also lived to hear the pro-
test of the society of Cincinnati against these violations of patri-
otic fealty, echoed in Exeter Hall, at the same time that they
were ignored' and contemned by many of the British journalists
and politicians. And, more sad and shameful than all, we have
lived to see a 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 CRISIS. 7

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 patient attention.

THE REBELLION.

II.

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, we 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 afford 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 apathy 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 but 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-

DECLINE OF PUBLIC SPIRIT, 9

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 make 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 traitors 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 you^ 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 govern-
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 REBELLION".

applause, personal success, or life itself; aud? 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
considering in this common complaint of the neglect to which
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 flatteries 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 favoritism 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 achievement, and holy sacrifice, to be their own reward, that
they are 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 institutions. 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 aristocratic 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 history, 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 un promoted,
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 emolument; 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 afford. 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 these, 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
ear, and break it to the hope."

12 THE REBELLION.

Ill

PROVINCIALISM.

Isolation is another 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
habitual. 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

PROVINCIALISM. 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 broad 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 Carolina, is fostered by the same isola-
tion of thought 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
2

14 THE REBELLION.

for signature, instead of recording himself as a citizen of the
United States, than which no national title then secured greater
respect 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 cho en by the truculent
and exclusive Carolinians, as a substitute for the flag " known and
honored throughout the world."

u The palmetto royal, or Adam's needle, is a singular tree ; they
grow so thick together that a bird can scarcely penetrate between
them. The stiff leaves of this sword plant, standing straight out
from the trunk, form abarrier that neither man nor beast canptass ;
it rises with an erect stem about ten or twelve feet high, crowned
with a chaplet of dagger-like green leaves, with a stiff, sharp spur
at the end. This thorny crown is tipped with a pyramid of white
flowers, shape4 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 exigencies of local
trade and social communication 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 ; whereas 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 than
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 North, 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 interest.
A few months ago, for instance, a Savannah lawyer returned from
China, after having, for the first time in history, broken through
the traditional exclusiveness 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 which 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 such remote natural landscapes — his 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 in existence at the time, which was to be the labarum
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 blind's with prejudice and dwarfs with
passion the grand, beautiful and auspicious feeling of American
citizenship, has been the moral basis of intrigue and seduction
whereon ambitious 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 mind from nationality
and moulding it into sectionalism. It may strike a distant ob-
server as impossible thus to debauch the civic integrity of whole
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
whites, 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 vanquishes 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, are singularly effective among owners of

* Gayerre's History of Louisiania.

PROVINCIALISM. 17

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, when 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 state, 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 TJ. 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, u 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 reckless 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.
2*

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 facts, 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 difference, 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 fray which excites their passions and occupies
their stagnant energies, the latter solicitous to preserve that pre-
dominance in public affairs, 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 assump-

CHARACTER. 19

tion. The correspondent of the London Times, who certainly
takes 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 un chastened 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 fifty years the political ascendency of the
South was maintained through affiliation 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 became 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 suffrage, 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 which 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, throughout 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 offence upon the most trifling 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 indifference 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 the growth of our resources, and the progress of eco-
nomical and mechanical science. The whole nation, as such,
requires the discipline and the purification which 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
lamentably declined. Neither age nor precedents, the lessons of
the past nor the 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. But in the North 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
the source of happiness and culture, are as requisite to-day in
America as in that chaotic era whence sprung the reign of terror
in France. The corruption which 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 their 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 remembered 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 assthetic 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.

absorption 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 are 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
with the legitimate operation of law and order, than the despotic
and limited passions which goad and blind their victims, 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
unparalleled 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 self-excited
fears and vindictiveness. 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 the truth ; and thence and then was sent forth the
declaration of a party to the movement that " Southern oppression
is worse than Northern injustice ;" while a prominent member of
the bar, always respected for his integrity and patriotism, boldly
asserted 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 terms of the constitution), was the 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 fine 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 Pope had not been madly obstinate in rejecting the 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 cherj said Napoleon to the Tuscan ex-grand
duke, weeping before him' as a suppliant, lvous etiez a Solferino?
That act of pure madness settled the duke's claims upon Tuscany.
And looking yearningly to our poor Yenetia (to say nothing of
other suffering peoples beyond this peninsula), my cry must still
be, ' Give, give — more madness, Lord !'

"The Pope has been madder than everybody, and for a much
longer time, exactly because his case was complex and difficult,

* Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

24 THE REBELLION.

and because with Catholic Europe and the French clerical party,
(strengthened by M. Guizot and the whole French dynastic oppo-
sition— I wish them joy of their cause !) drawn up on the Holy
Father's side, the least touch of sanity would have saved him, 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 me, 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 in 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; the other class, having neither reverence nor
love for any institution human or divine, except so far as it sub-
serves their individual lust of power or gain, are on the perpetual
qui vive for any temporary disorganization or crisis of opinion,
whereby they can profit; in other 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 who 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 absolute 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 is 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, Hamilton, 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
unity, 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 the native of our western republic, it seemed as pitiful as
perverse to hear the amiable contessa and the candid contadino,
the effeminate employe of duke, pope, or emperor, and even the
shrewd artisan, talk so complacently of " mio paese" — meaning,
thereby, the city or village that gave them birth; to witness the
proud contempt wTith 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,
which seemed fatal to the generous and practical patriotism alone
adequate to the emancipation of Italy. But this childish 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 which 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 common distribution of water and chains of mountains — that
our own country, which had experienced the moral and physical

NATIONALITY. 27

benefits of union in war and peace, and through years of unpre-
cedented growth, freedom and prosperity, should, by 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 affection — 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 haw 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 anarchi-
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 off, 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
indifference, 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-

28 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 minority 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 clothed
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 fame, 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 tariffs,
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 railwav 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 knows 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 ;
how 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 affinity. 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. Nbt 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 what 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 w7ere 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 whose character it defines, unite combativeness
and destructiveness 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 the 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 extravflgant 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 by constitutional political organization. This reiterated
fiction has acted upon the 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 by 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-

34' THE REBELLION.

thies, 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, unmindful 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 suggests 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 by a mere effort of volition, it was in
your power, convert your slave property into a satisfactory invest-
ment of another description ?" "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 the question at issue involves our property,
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 the
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

38 THE REBELLION.

the staples of the South, while the kindred innovators of Virginia
Hatter themselves 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, howrever 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 illustrate
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, where 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 city, 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 humane ob-
server of phenomena like these, coupled with the exhibition of a
vindictive spirit, for which no motive, at all proportioned to its
vehemence, is apparent, can resist the conclusion that there is

* Hod. John P. Kennedy.

FOREIGN CRITICISM. 37

social as well as individual insanity. History explains, and human
nature accounts for the inveterate resentment between Goth and
Roman, Guelph and Ghibbeline, French 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 the 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 REBELLION.

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 that a flippant medium for spite and inhu-
manity like the Saturday Review, 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
Review, 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 disaffected 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 we.re known that the scheme of the
disunionists 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. Bright 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 CRITICISM. 39

Italian writers. Gasparin, in Paris, the Rivista Contemporanea and
V Opinione of 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 delta democra-
zia e cold arrivato alle sue ultime conseguenze ed ha spaventato il
mondo coll esempio di uno stato Chris tiano che proclama di diritto
divine la schiavitu* 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:

u 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. They are in a frame of
mind which is the result of slavery. These men, accustomed to
exercise a daily despotic power over their fellows, cannot bear con-
trol, criticism or resistance. They draw a blind confidence from
their heated and unruly tempers, and they so exaggerate their
strength as really to imagine that they can bring the North to
terms. Such is always the effect of the exercise of absolute power
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

* QuesUoni UrgenU; Pensieri di Massimo D' Azeqlio: Firenze, 1861,

40 THE REBELLION.

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 their 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
indefinite 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 loyalty
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
Hampden, 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 century, 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 to 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
slaveocracy, 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 indifference or inad-
equacy of the free states and the Federal authority. 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
and 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 off 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 judge that we did not i sink that subject in the river Styx'
that night,"

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 only 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. Oar 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
official 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 monarchs ; witness the annals of Spain and England,
and their condition to-day. 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 writh 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, the 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 CRITICISM. 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 suffrage, and the
distribution of offices as a reward 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 REBELLION.

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 actually 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 difficult 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, which seemed to place the
latter city in such imminent peril, doubtless snatched from destruc-
tion the flower 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-interest,
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

4G THE REBELLION.

Johnson, Ethridge and Clemens, Everett, Kennedy and Motley,
will prove historical illustrations of the national integrity.

The expectation of a reverse at the com men cement of hostilities
was the prediction of intelligent, and we had almost said, the
hope of patriotic men devoted to the Union ; they believed, and
subsequent events have confirmed the opinion, that nothing but
defeat would thoroughly 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 tumultuous 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 applying 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
aspect of solicitude gleams the holy 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
hidden 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 effective 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. We 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.

the government of corruption, and to correct its charter by
amendments, the necessity of which was foreseen by the wisest of
its framers; an opportunity to nationalize 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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