The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 1, July, 1862

OUR BRAVE TIMES

I wonder if we, as a people, have any conception of the grandeur and glory of the Times in which we are living; if we at all appreciate the importance of the history which is being lived all around us; if we feel the colossal magnitude of the every-day events which so crowd upon us that we have hardly time to grasp them; if we are fully aware of the infinite possibilities of what has been so well called this 'fearfully glorious present'? I think not, and I do not know that it is possible for us to do so. Only when we look back upon it from the hight of the far-off future, shall we see the country through which we are journeying in all its grand, sweeping outlines, its majestic proportions, and its imperial tints of coloring. The days of peace and tranquillity in a nation as in a life are robed in colors sweet and grateful to the eye—softened hues of green and gold—but the days of war and tribulation are days of scarlet and crimson, and all that can be seen in heaven and earth is black and flame; but the days when Right achieves great triumphs, even through bloodshed and desolation, are days of imperial purple, hues royal in their magnificence. Thank Heaven that, through the days of blood and black, we have at last reached the purple days of life as a nation. A little more than a year of war, and now the skies are brightening. Thank God! for they have been black, black, black with horror and suffering and crime. And yet such a year as this, I am almost persuaded, is worth a score of years of peace. It certainly has achieved more for truth and humanity and God than the score of years which preceded it. As a nation, we had become almost despicable. Such supple, yielding slaves of 'Democratic' demagogues; such cringing, fawning, knee-bending, hand-kissing agents of the diabolical, traitorous Slave-Power; such apologists and supporters of Wrong; such pusillanimous, weak-hearted advocates of the unpopular Right; such slaves to Cotton and its threats, that we had almost lost the God-given independence of American freemen, and seemed—thank God! events have proved only seemed—to be entirely given up to money and mechanics, to have become, indeed, a nation of peddlers. So much so, indeed, that our prophets were stoned in their own lands, our apostles stricken down in the national councils, and the few voices that were raised for God and humanity, from out the miry slough of a trafficking age, were almost unheard in the general din which went up from all the nations, and the burden of whose song seemed to be: 'There is no God but Cotton, and we are all his prophets.' But the moment the first gun was fired, how all this changed! How regally the whole nation rose up! How magnificently she threw off the garment of rags and filth which had hidden her fair proportions, and donned the imperial toga of humanity, and wrapping the rich folds of the gorgeous mantle around her, stood out before the world in all the dignity of freedom and virtue—a form which made the whole earth glad and the heavens clap their hands in exultation. What giant leaps the nation made in manhood and heroism, strides following each other thick and fast, until the most cynical of the doubters of humanity began to open their eyes, and acknowledge that they would not have thought her capable of such unexampled deeds. The national heroism which the Northern people have displayed is indeed unparalleled. They have risen up as one man to the support of the Government. They have offered property and life and the most sacred treasures of the heart upon the shrine of constitutional liberty. At the sound of the drum, they have left the farm and the barn, the anvil and the mill, the church and the forum, and formed into the grand army of invincibles which, at the word of command, have marched forward, conquering and resistless. They have borne patiently with delay and defeat, with blunders and crimes, with humiliation and taxation, and have, in short, proved themselves Americans worthy of the name. Of course, national heroism has inspired individual heroism, and to-day the country blazes from frontier to metropolis with gallant records of daring deeds. Their number is infinite; they can not be individually remembered, but only massed together, one sublime mosaic by which the gallantry and heroism of the free, untrammeled North is proved. We doubt not there is a leaf for each hero in the heroic record of heaven, and the due share of hero-worship paid to each by those angels who love to pore over the chronicles of earth. And we mourn less over the coming of this war at the present time than we should, did we not perceive that sooner or later it was inevitable. It was written in the fate-book of God. Never before was war so emphatically a war of principle. It mitigates the suffering much to know this. It is something to know that all the brave men who have fallen have fallen for the right; and when we believe so, we do firmly believe that their death will give liberty and happiness to millions yet to be. We can not think but that their lives are well spent. There are some who are written upon God's muster-scroll as martyrs to liberty. Who would not esteem it a happiness and a glory to belong to this Old Guard, who from age to age have rallied and rallied and rallied to the support of liberty, to the rescue of this holy sepulchre from the hands of desolators and barbarians, who have ever fought where the fight was thickest, have ever been the advance-guard of the world in its onward progress, and been enshrined in the great heart of the world, there to glow like the stars forever and ever? Is it a hardship to die that one may live forever? Is it a hardship to die that millions who now live in wailing and woe, in chains and degradation, may live in happiness and freedom in all time to come? The voice of the great army of American freemen rolls back the answer, like the majestic anthem of the sea, No! a deep, continuous no, which echoes from the broad Atlantic to the sunset-dyed Pacific, from the summits of Nevada to the great lakes of the North. Yes, I tell you the whole people feel the depth and sacredness of this war; they feel it to be, as Carlyle said of the French Revolution, 'truth, though a truth clad in hell-fire.'

Then forward, noble army of the brave and true! Rally and forward, and forward again, until every Malakoff of Wrong is reduced, and every suffering Lucknow of our country hears the slogan of deliverance. You have glorious successes to cheer you now. You can think of Somerset and Donelson, and all the glorious battles of the war—of forts taken, of enemies driven, of towns evacuated, of the great cities of the enemy in our hands, of all the stirring, glorious successes of our army and our flag—and even had you none of these to think of, you could think of our cause, and this would be enough. Then let the bugles sound, the trumpets clang, the drums beat, the cannons roar, and we will march, and rally, and forward, and charge and charge and charge, until victory or death crown our labors; and if death to us, so let it be—it will be victory to our successors. This is the spirit of our Northern army. Sing plaudits to it, ye sons of song. Let your eloquence be inspired by it, ye golden-mouthed men—ye Everetts and Sumners. Write of them, ye gifted who would live in the coming time. Weave garlands for them, ye white-handed and lily-browed. Write anthems and oratorios for them, ye men of music. Pray for them, each and all of you, night and day, with heart and voice. But we can not, if we would, overlook the desolation which the war has brought and must bring upon our favored land. We can not conceal from ourselves the fact that, end when it will, or how it may, it must bring desolation to thousands of happy households, and inflict never-healing wounds upon thousands of happy hearts. For every man who falls in battle some one mourns. For every man who dies in hospital-wards, and of whom no note is made, some one mourns. For the humblest soldier shot on picket, and of whose humble exit from the stage of life little is thought, some one mourns. Nor this alone. For every soldier disabled; for every one who loses an arm or a leg, or who is wounded or languishes in protracted suffering; for every one who has 'only camp-fever,' some heart bleeds, some tears are shed. In far-off humble households, perhaps, sleepless nights and anxious days are passed, of which the world never knows; and every wounded and crippled soldier who returns to family and friends, brings a lasting pang with him. Oh! how the mothers feel this war! If ever God is sad in heaven, it seems to me it must be when he looks upon the hearts of mothers. We who are young, think little of it, know nothing of it; neither, I think, do the fathers or the brothers know much of it; but it is the poor mothers and wives of the soldiers. God help them! But the theme is too sad—let us leave it. And amid this wild rush of war, let us not forget our individual duties and responsibilities. Carlyle truly says: 'Each of us here, let the world go how it will, and be victorious or not victorious, has he not a little life of his own to lead? One life—a little gleam of life between two eternities—no second chance to us for evermore.' Let us not forget the loves, the amenities and charities of social life. Let us not forget that the education of the world must go on as ever, that the great virtues of charity and self-denial must more than ever be exercised, and that the discipline and perfection of our own characters is as ever our grand life-work. Then let the angry waves of tumult dash up and froth at our feet, let the skies blacken and the tempest roar, God is over all. This one thing we are to remember, and be cheerful. Browning says:

 
'God's in his heaven—
All's right with the world.'
 

THE CRISIS AND THE PARTIES

From two points of view, the great and preëminently American nation vibrates at present in a crisis of immense historical significance. The first is, that of the war between the United and so-called Confederate States, which is virtually a strife between Free Labor seeking to enlarge its sphere and retain its power against agricultural aristocracy maintained by slave labor. All the energies and theories of industrial progress, of science, and of constant intellectual development; in a word, all that is most characteristic of 'the spirit of the Nineteenth Century,' is enlisted on the one side; all that is fading out and wearing away, with all that characterizes the unwisest conservatism has taken its last stand on the other. It is the old story of 'the generation which comes and of that which goes,' reduced to the intense form of a fierce fight. All of this—but little understood within a very few years—has been of late made generally intelligible on this side of the border, thanks, perhaps, as much to Mr. Hammond's word 'mudsill' as to any other cause. In the short sentence which declared that there should always exist, in every community, one ever-sunken and permanently degraded class, the great point of difference between the South and North was set forth in a form intelligible to the humblest capacity, and it was understood—how well has been shown in many a bloody field.

The other crisis in which we are at present involved is domestic and purely political. It is the growth of opposing political parties, and its existence is undoubtedly to be regretted, if we take only a superficial view of the causes of its birth. We could all wish for some time to come—perhaps forever—to see only a single Union-party, with all men, looking neither to the right nor the left, pushing steadily on to the great goal of unity, commercial development, and social progress. But we forget that so surely as night follows day, even so surely, in every community, will there be a conservative section and a progressive; the 'extreme right' of the former consisting of frozen conservatives, advocating the preservation of every antiquated evil, because it has acquired in their eyes a halo of 'respectability,' while on the 'extreme left' of their opponents will be found the radical innovators, for whom no extravagance of reform is too great; so that as each molecule or group of atoms has its positive and negative electrical point, and as each atom in turn obeys the same law, so we see the positive and negative poles of North and South again reflected in the rapidly increasing divisions among us of Conservatives, who, by a singular fatality, still indicate the plebeian origin which they would now so gladly disown by the term Democrats; and, on the other hand, of Republicans, nick-named at present Radicals—somewhat unjustly; since the term is strictly applicable only to a very limited portion of their number.

There were men of high intelligence among the founders of the old Democratic party; men who understood in many respects the true interests of humanity and its inevitable tendency, under the influences of free labor, free schools, and science. But with the masses, it owed its growth to the old assumed 'natural antagonism' of labor to capital, or of 'the poor against the rich.' It was essentially the same party as that which was played upon by low demagogues like Cleon in the old Greek day; by men who stirred up the poor and ignorant against the privileged and rich, for their own selfish advantage. Of late years, more enlightened and intelligent views have prevailed in all parties, and the Cleons of the present day have been compelled to adventure more and more among the lowest and most ignorant for dupes. For the workman is gradually learning with his employer that there is a harmony of interests and a gradual adjustment of the prices allotted to the relative values of time, labor, brains, and capital, and that the most serious obstacle to this adjustment is, the keeping up of a constant warfare between laborers and employers. It is the skilled employé who becomes himself the capitalist in due time, under a peaceable and well-organized system, as labor and brains rise in value, and the greatest impediment to his rise is a settled state of war between himself and the employer. Education and political equality, the competition of capital, and the ever-increasing appreciation of intelligence, are constantly promoting this harmony and enabling labor to secure its rights.

It is easy to see how the ancient Democracy, or rather its leaders, having for many years held political supremacy and shared the spoils, actually took the place of their opponents, and, in their decline, naturally enough, formed a coalition with the intensely aristocratic South. Meanwhile, what became of the once aristocratic Opposition, with its 'silk-stocking gentry,' as they were termed? Like the Democracy, it died a natural death, so far as the active enforcement of its principles was concerned, after those principles had no longer a foundation in the social developments of the age. Here and there, an old and incurable devotee to mere forms or party shibboleth, who could not comprehend the new order of thought, went over to the 'Democratic' conservatives. Of such were the old gentlemen who, in Philadelphia, voted for the white waistcoat and immaculate snowy neck-tie of James Buchanan. They fled to their ancient foes, that they might die happily in the holy odor of respectability, quite ignorant that a new gospel of what may be termed Respect Ability was being preached, and building up a higher and grander order of nobility than they had ever dreamed of.

Meanwhile, the arrogance of the South and its desperate struggle to secure political preponderance, by extending slavery to the territories, developed in the North a free-soil and free-labor party, which received, most appropriately, the name of Republican. The doctrine of free-labor being intimately allied to every other form of social freedom, and of active thought and social science, had a natural affinity for 'intellect.' The old Opposition, which had boasted, or been taunted with, possessing 'all the dignity,' including that of superior culture, swelled the ranks of this new party with writers and thinkers of eminence. So it grew in power, taking in, of course, many varied elements, both good and bad.

As might have been expected, the proper conduct of the war, and the disposal of the enemy in case of victory, soon led to decided differences between the Democracy, who could not—owing to ancient custom—throw aside their love for the name, or their antipathy to the new doctrines which threatened their power. The mass of them had grown up in firm alliance with the South, and duped and cat's-pawed as they had been—irritated as they were at the treachery of their old allies and despite the noble service which many of them rendered, in fighting the common foe—many have never been able to hate ab imo pectore the men of that false and foul feudal party which, when the rupture fairly came, expressed for their old allies a scorn and contempt deeper even than they felt for 'the Abolitionists.' In vain the South protested fiercely that it meant disunion and nothing but disunion, and made its words good by offering, both in Europe and in its own press, to sacrifice, if need be, even slavery, rather than be longer bound to the North; still, the remaining ultra Democracy could not, would not, even now will not believe that the South would or could be so unfriendly. It was this hope of compromise and conciliation which lost us forts, and ships, and millions of dollars in munitions of war; for it was said: 'The South is only boasting, and must not be driven to extremes.' With eyes wide open to the thefts, the Democratic leaders smiled a languid, cowardly assent, and let the enemy prepare for war. And war came. It might have been prevented; it might, beyond all doubt, have been limited and crushed; but the hand of the braggart South had been so long on the throat of the doughfaces, that they dared not move, and the doughfaces were in power. The country at large has had to pay dearly for that old doughface love for the South; it is paying every day in lives and money.

Even now, it is amazing to see how the leaders among the Democracy, while pecking the South with the bill, continue to fondle it with the wing. Again and again, since the war began, they have humiliated the North and encouraged the desperate foe by efforts at peace-parties, conciliations, outcries for amnesty, and entreaties not to 'exasperate' the enemy. They have urged and advocated the maintenance of slavery, the great cause of Southern arrogance and secession, with as much zeal as any Southron of them all, and fiercely deprecated any allusion to a subject which can no more he kept from consciousness than can a deadly and madly irritating cancer. Every suggestion, even the mildest and most equitable, for arranging this difficulty, has been stigmatized by them as out of place and time, while their press has, without exception, as we believe, given currency to statements denouncing directly as swindlers and prostitutes the innocent and well-meaning men and women who went South with the sole object of clothing, nursing, and teaching the disorganized masses of blacks set free by our army. In all of this, we have a melancholy illustration of the difficulty with which unthinking men of the blind mass which rolls itself away into 'parties,' and follows its leaders, embrace new truths or shake off old habits of slavery.

While the modern Democratic party firmly believed—as its majority still seems to—that all this trouble was caused solely by the Abolitionists, and simply for the sake of liberating some four millions of blacks, they had at least some color for their iron conservatism. European humanity did not agree with us; but we of America are more tropical in our feelings, and so we made up our minds that it was too bad to cut one another's throats for the sake of benefiting certain 'fat and lazy niggers,' who were probably rather better off as chattels than as free men. But it is not from this point of view that the world is now beginning to view the subject. Common-sense has ascertained clearly enough that without the agitation of Abolition, the South would have become intolerable and tyrannical—it was imperious, sectional, and arrogant in the days of its weakness, while the Abolitionists scarcely existed, and given to secession for any and every cause. The insolent, individual independence which prompted the wearing of weapons, wild law and wild life, free from mutual social obligations, contained within itself the germs of withdrawal from a civilized and superior people and a stable government. For such men, one pretense served as well as another. They of South-Carolina employed Nullification long before they dreamed of Anti-Abolition.

Still more absurd is the 'Democratic' opposition, since Abolition for the sake of the Negro has been changed into the cry of Emancipation for the sake of the White Man. Before this cry, before the inevitable and mighty demand of the free white labor of the future on the territories of the South, all protestations against 'meddling' with emancipation shrivel up into trifles and become contemptible. The prayer of the ant petitioning against the removal of a mountain, where a nation was to found its capital, was not more verily frivolous and inconsiderable than are these timid ones of 'let it alone!' And why let it alone? The Emancipation-for-the-sake-of-the-white-man party, as represented by President Lincoln's Message, commending remuneration, asks for no undue haste, no violent or sudden aggressive measures. It is satisfied to let the South free itself when it shall be disposed so to do; simply offering it a kindly aid when this measure shall become popular and expedient. More than this we have never asked for in these columns; yet it would be hard to imagine a term of 'newspaper abuse,' which has not been given us by the 'Democratic' press. Yes, at a time when ninety-nine men in a hundred in the free States avow that they would like to see slavery 'out of the way,' if only to avoid the endless war which its continuance must entail, all mention of it is tabooed by the men who claim to head the party of the virtual majority! No matter how far off the friends of Emancipation and of the Administration are willing to postpone the practical execution of the measure, 'it must not be mentioned.' For the greater part, these Northern friends of the South at present still earnestly desire the perpetual establishment of slavery 'on a constitutional basis.'

The contemptible efforts at Washington to build up a separate and distinct Democratic party, when no party save that of the Union existed, will condemn to everlasting opprobrium the Vallandighams, Carlisles, Garret Davises, and other false friends of freedom, who at such a time crowded together like hungry political cormorants, to hatch out the egg of faction, and secure a prospective share of the spoils. Have these 'Conservatives' reflected on the disgraceful show which their names will make in history, in after-years, when freedom shall have been proclaimed throughout the land, and when those who opposed its progress will appear like nothing else than traitors! Heaven help the men who, at a time when others were gathering in full measure of glory in a holy cause, were piling up naught but shame for their posterity. For it is not more certain that God is just, than that the full measure of iniquity will be heaped upon their names in the after-chronicles of freedom.

Even to the present moment, the 'Conservative' alias the 'Democratic'—or the Black, alias the White—party struggles with might and main to defend and protect its old Southern whippers-in, even at the risk of dividing and distracting the Union. To effect this, it has—almost successfully—insolently thrust the Commander-in-chief forward as its centre, and broadly slandered the Secretary of War and President in no measured terms, as having toiled to defeat McClellan and prolong the war. Through all the glossy web of lies, the light of truth shines or will shine to their disgrace.

Chiefly and most unwisely is the conservative hand shown at present in opposition to every proposition for confiscation or punishing the rebels. After having hurried us by their cowardice and Southern toad-eating into this war; after urging it by their contemptible procrastination to its present tremendous proportions, they cry out 'humanity!' for the men who have murdered our relatives, and shake the Constitution for protection over estates which have been directly used to contribute to Southern war! While every mail from the South gives fresh instances of desperation, and while we search in vain for a trace of proof that there is the slightest hope of reconciliation, we are still entreated to restore every thing in statu quo ante bellum, and bear all the results of the war ourselves, as if forsooth we had been after all in the wrong. And so the Vallandighams and Davises declare that we were. 'Abolitionism caused it all,' they say, 'nothing but Abolition.'

Meanwhile, the question urges itself on us every day with more pressing power, how we are really to settle the whole difficulty? We see but one course—the 'Northing' of the South. We are content to waive for the present all theory or project of confiscation, save so far as promoting the settlement of those soldiers and emigrants who may wish to settle in the South is concerned. This question demands consideration, and must have it. Whether the lands to be appropriated for this purpose come from rebel estates which have ministered to the war, or whether they are to be taken from State property, they must be had; for the settlement of the South and the proper rewarding of the army are matters of paramount importance. The South can no longer exist in its present social condition. People who believe, to use the language of their most respectable journal, the Richmond Whig, that:

'Yankees are the most contemptible and detestable of God's creation; vile wretches, whose daily sustenance consists in the refuse of all other people; for they eat nothing that any body else will buy;… who have long very properly looked upon themselves as our social inferiors, as our serfs:'

People, we say, who believe this of us, must be taught to think differently and truthfully. If they lived in China, it would be otherwise; but linked to us as they are, we can no longer tolerate such outrageous superciliousness as they manifest. Those among them who will learn, may be taught; those who will not, must be supplanted by people who are not too proud to work, who do not 'abominate the system of free schools, because the schools are free,'² and revile free labor, because it consists of 'greasy mechanics, filthy operatives, and small-fisted farmers.' The task is great; but it must be accomplished. The war is drawing to an end; but a greater and nobler task lies before the soldiers and the free men of America—the extending of civilization into the South. Let us lift our minds above the narrow limits of 'party,' and realize the mighty work which we have in hand. Let the introduction of free labor to the South be in future the subject to which every thinking American mind shall be devoted. Let them stream in by millions!—the free laborers of all the world!—there is room for them all; and the right of man to work never yet had such fair and just opportunity to have justice done it. Agricultural aristocracy, supported by involuntary servitude and unsupported by manufactures, has been tried, and found worse than wanting. Let its place be filled as promptly as possible by that truly higher aristocracy of industry and of culture which is at present common to Europe and our own portion of America. The turn of the North to rule has at length come. Let its reign be inaugurated by great, noble, and philanthropic efforts to extend the blessings of true civilization to all the continent.