POLITICAL ESSAYS 
 
 BY 
 
 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
 
 1888 
 
Copyright, 1888, 
 BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 
 3 
 
 The Riverside, Press, Cambridge : 
 Electrotyped and Printed by H. 0. Houghton & Co. 
 
PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 I HAVE been often urged to reprint the articles 
 which form the bulk of this volume, by persons 
 who had found them interesting at the time of 
 their first publication, as well as by others who 
 had read them more recently and thought them of 
 some interest even now. I have steadily refused 
 to do what was asked of me, because the greater 
 part of what is here gathered together seemed to 
 me to have mainly a polemic value contempora 
 neous with the date at which it was written. I 
 have (I know not how wisely) allowed myself to 
 be persuaded that there was also in these papers a 
 certain historical interest as recalling aspects of 
 our politics which perhaps it may be useful not 
 wholly to forget. In looking at them again, after 
 so long an interval (for the latest of them is more 
 than twenty years old), it gratifies me to find so 
 little to regret in their tone, and that I was able to 
 keep my head fairly clear of passion when my 
 heart was at boiling-point. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 THE AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY . . . . . 1 
 
 THE ELECTION IN NOVEMBER ..... 17 
 
 E PLURIBUS UNUM . . . . . . .45 
 
 THE PICKENS-AND-STEAUN S REBELLION ... 75 
 
 GENERAL MCCLELLAN S REPORT ..... 92 
 
 THE REBELLION: ITS CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES . 118 
 
 McCLELLAN OR LINCOLN ? . . . . . . . 153 
 
 RECONSTRUCTION . .- . . . ^ . . 177 
 
 SCOTCH THE SNAKE, OR KILL IT? ..... 206 
 
 THE PRESIDENT ON THE STUMP ..... 231 
 
 THE SEWARD-JOHNSON REACTION . . . . 250 
 
 THE PLACE OF THE INDEPENDENT IN POLITICS . . 295 
 
 ^* 
 
POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 THE AMEKICAN TKACT SOCIETY. 
 
 1858. 
 
 THERE was no apologue more popular in the 
 Middle Ages than that of the hermit, who, musing 
 on the wickedness and tyranny of those whom the 
 inscrutable wisdom of Providence had intrusted 
 with the government of the world, fell asleep, and 
 awoke to find himself the very monarch whose 
 abject life and capricious violence had furnished 
 the subject of his moralizing. Endowed with 
 irresponsible power, tempted by passions whose 
 existence in himself he had never suspected, and 
 betrayed by the political necessities of his position, 
 he became gradually guilty of all the crimes and 
 the luxury which had seemed so hideous to him in 
 his hermitage over a dish of water-cresses. 
 
 The American Tract Society from small begin 
 nings has risen to be the dispenser of a yearly 
 revenue of nearly half a million. It has become 
 a great establishment, with a traditional policy, 
 with the distrust of change and the dislike of dis 
 turbing questions (especially of such as would 
 lessen its revenues) natural to great establishments. 
 
2 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 It had been poor and weak; it has become rich 
 and powerful. The hermit has become king. 
 
 If the pious men who founded the American 
 Tract Society had been told that within forty years 
 they would be watchful of their publications, lest, 
 by inadvertence, anything disrespectful might be 
 spoken of the African Slave-trade, that they 
 would consider it an ample equivalent for compul 
 sory dumbness on the vices of Slavery, that their 
 colporteurs could awaken the minds of Southern 
 brethren to the horrors of St. Bartholomew, that 
 they would hold their peace about the body of 
 Cuffee dancing to the music of the cart-whip, pro 
 vided only they could save the soul of Sambo alive 
 by presenting him a pamphlet, which he could not 
 read, on the depravity of the double shuffle, that 
 they would consent to be fellow members in the 
 Tract Society with him who sold their fellow mem 
 bers in Christ on the auction block, if he agreed 
 with them in condemning Transubstantiation (and 
 it would not be difficult for a gentleman who ig 
 nored the real presence of God in his brother man 
 to deny it in the sacramental wafer), if those 
 excellent men had been told this, they would have 
 shrunk in horror, and exclaimed, " Are thy ser 
 vants dogs, that they should do these things ? " 
 
 Yet this is precisely the present position of the 
 Society. 
 
 There are two ways of evading the responsibility 
 of such inconsistency. The first is by an appeal to 
 the Society s Constitution, and by claiming to in 
 terpret it strictly in accordance with the rules of 
 
THE AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY. 3 
 
 law as applied to contracts, whether between indi 
 viduals or States. The second is by denying that 
 Slavery is opposed to the genius of Christianity, 
 and that any moral wrongs are the necessary re 
 sults of it. We will not be so unjust to the Society 
 as to suppose that any of its members would rely 
 on this latter plea, and shall therefore confine 
 ourselves to a brief consideration of the other. 
 
 In order that the same rules of interpretation 
 should be considered applicable to the Constitution 
 of the Society and to that of the United States, 
 we must attribute to the former a solemnity and 
 importance which involve a palpable absurdity. 
 To claim for it the verbal accuracy and the legal 
 wariness of a mere contract is equally at war with 
 common sense and the facts of the case ; and even 
 were it not so, the party to a bond who should 
 attempt to escape its ethical obligation by a legal 
 quibble of construction would be put in Coventry 
 by all honest men. In point of fact, the Constitu 
 tion was simply the minutes of an agreement among 
 certain gentlemen, to define the limits within which 
 they would accept trust funds, and the objects for 
 which they should expend them. 
 
 But if we accept the alternative offered by the 
 advocates of strict construction, we shall not find 
 that their case is strengthened. Claiming that 
 where the meaning of an instrument is doubtful, 
 it should be interpreted according to the contempo 
 rary understanding of its framers, they argue that 
 it would be absurd to suppose that gentlemen from 
 the Southern States would have united to form a 
 
4 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 society that included in its objects any discussion 
 of the moral duties arising from the institution of 
 Slavery. Admitting the first part of their proposi 
 tion, we deny the conclusion they seek to draw from 
 it. They are guilty of a glaring anachronism in 
 assuming the same opinions and prejudices to have 
 existed in 1825 which are undoubtedly influential 
 in 1858. The Anti-slavery agitation did not begin 
 until 1831, and the debates in the Virginia Conven 
 tion prove conclusively that six years after the foun 
 dation of they Tract Society, the leading men in that 
 State, men whose minds had been trained and whose 
 characters had been tempered in that school of ac 
 tion and experience which was open to all during 
 the heroic period of our history, had not yet suf 
 fered such distortion of the intellect through pas 
 sion and such deadening of the conscience through 
 interest, as would have prevented their discussing 
 either the moral or the political aspects of Slavery, 
 and precluded them from uniting in any effort to 
 make the relation between master and slave less 
 demoralizing to the one and less imbruting to the 
 other. 
 
 Again, it is claimed that the words of the Consti 
 tution are conclusive, and that the declaration that 
 the publications of the Society shall be such as are 
 " satisfactory to all Evangelical Christians " for 
 bids by implication the issuing of any tract which 
 could possibly offend the brethren in Slave States. 
 The Society, it is argued, can publish only on 
 topics about which all Evangelical Christians are 
 agreed, and must, therefore, avoid everything in 
 
THE AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY. 5 
 
 which the question of politics is involved. But 
 what are the facts about matters other than Sla 
 very ? Tracts have been issued and circulated in 
 which Dancing is condemned as sinful ; are all 
 Evangelical Christians agreed about this? On 
 the Temperance question, against Catholicism, 
 have these topics never entered into our politics ? 
 The simple truth is that Slavery is the only subject 
 about which the Publishing Committee have felt 
 Constitutional scruples. Till tm$ question arose, 
 they were like men in perfect health, never sus 
 pecting that they had any constitution at "^rh; but 
 now, like hypochondriacs, they feel it in every pore, 
 at the least breath froiiHhe eastward. \ 
 
 If a strict construction orx^ie words " aU Evan- \ 
 gelical Christians " be insisteiP&n, we are at a loss 
 to see where the committee could drkw the dividing 
 line between what might be offensiveNand what 
 allowable. The Society publish tracts in\whicn\ 
 the study of the Scriptures is enforced and \heir 
 denial to the laity by Romanists assailed. BHfc 
 throughout the South it is criminal to teach a slave\ 
 to read ; throughout the South no book could be \l 
 distributed among the servile population more inp 
 cendiary than the Bible, if they could only^read 
 it. Will not our Southern brethren take alarm? 
 The Society is reduced to the dilemma of either 
 denying that the African has a soul to be saved, 
 or of consenting to the terrible mockery of assur 
 ing him that the way of life is to be found only by 
 searching a book which he is forbidden to open. 
 
 If we carry out this doctrine of strict construe- 
 
6 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 tion to its legitimate results, we shall find that it 
 involves a logical absurdity. What is the number 
 of men whose outraged sensibilities may claim the 
 suppression of a tract ? Is the taboo of a thousand 
 valid ? Of a hundred ? Of ten ? Or are tracts to 
 be distributed only to those who will find their doc 
 trine agreeable, and are the Society s colporteurs to 
 be instructed that a Temperance essay is the proper 
 thing for a total-abstinent infidel, and a sermon on 
 the Atonement for a distilling deacon ? If the aim 
 of the Society be only to convert men from sins 
 they have no mind to, and to convince them of er 
 rors to which they have no temptation, they might 
 as well be spending their money to persuade school 
 masters that two and two make four, or geometri 
 cians that there cannot be two obtuse angles in a 
 triangle. If this be their notion of the way in 
 which the gospel is to be preached, we do not won 
 der that they have found it necessary to print a 
 tract upon the impropriety of sleeping in church. 
 
 But the Society are concluded by their own ac 
 tion ; for in 1857 they unanimously adopted the fol 
 lowing resolution : " That those moral duties which 
 grow out of the existence of Slavery, as well as those 
 moral evils and vices which it is known to promote 
 and which are condemned in Scripture, and so much 
 deplored by Evangelical Christians, undoubtedly 
 do fall within the province of this Society, and 
 can and ought to be discussed in a fraternal and 
 Christian spirit." The Society saw clearly that it 
 was impossible to draw a Mason and Dixon s line 
 in the world of ethics, to divide Duty by a parallel 
 
THE AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY. 1 
 
 of latitude. The only line which Christ drew is 
 that which parts the sheep from the goats, that 
 great horizon-line of the moral nature of man, which 
 is the boundary between light and darkness. The 
 Society, by yielding (as they have done in 1858) to 
 what are pleasantly called the " objections " of the 
 South (objections of so forcible a nature that we are 
 told the colporteurs were "forced to flee ") virtually 
 exclude the black man, if born to the southward of 
 a certain arbitrary line, from the operation of God s 
 providence, and thereby do as great a wrong to the 
 Creator as the Episcopal Church did to the artist 
 when without public protest they allowed Ary 
 Scheffer s Christus Consolator, with the figure of 
 the slave left out, to be published in a Prayer-Book. 
 The Society is not asked to disseminate Anti- 
 slavery doctrines, but simply to be even-handed 
 between master and slave, and, since they have 
 recommended Sambo and Toney to be obedient to 
 Mr. Legree, to remind him in turn that he also has 
 duties toward the bodies and souls of his bondmen. 
 But we are told that the time has not yet arrived, 
 that at present the ears of our Southern brethren 
 are closed against all appeals, that God in his good 
 time will turn their hearts, and that then, and not 
 till then, will be the fitting occasion to do some 
 thing in the premises. But if the Society is to 
 await this golden opportunity with such exemplary 
 patience in one case, why not in all ? If it is to 
 decline any attempt at converting the sinner till 
 after God has converted him, will there be any 
 special necessity for a tract society at all ? Will 
 it not be a little presumptuous, as well as superflu- 
 
8 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 ous, to undertake the doing over again of what He 
 has already done ? We fear that the studies of 
 Blackstone, upon which the gentlemen who argue 
 thus have entered in order to fit themselves for the 
 legal and constitutional argument of the question, 
 have confused their minds, and that they are mis 
 led by some fancied analogy between a tract and 
 an action of trover, and conceive that the one, like 
 the other, cannot be em ployed till after an actual 
 conversion has taken place. 
 
 The resolutions reported by the Special Commit 
 tee at the annual meeting of 1857, drawn up with 
 great caution and with a sincere desire to make 
 whole the breach in the Society, have had the usual 
 fate of all attempts to reconcile incompatibilities 
 by compromise. They express confidence in the 
 Publishing Committee, and at the same time im- 
 pliedly condemn them by recommending them to 
 do precisely what they had all along scrupulously 
 avoided doing. The result was just what might 
 have been expected. Both parties among the 
 Northern members of the Society, those who ap 
 proved the former action of the Publishing Com 
 mittee and those who approved the new policy rec 
 ommended in the resolutions, those who favored 
 silence and those who favored speech on the sub 
 ject of Slavery, claimed the victory, while the 
 Southern brethren, as usual, refused to be satisfied 
 with anything short of unconditional submission. 
 The word Compromise, as far as Slavery is con 
 cerned, has always been of fatal augury. The con 
 cessions of the South have been like the " With all 
 
THE AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY. 
 
 my worldly goods I thee endow" of a bankrupt 
 bridegroom, who thereby generously bestows all his 
 debts upon his wife, and as a small return for his 
 magnanimity consents to accept all her personal 
 and a life estate in all her real property. The 
 South is willing that the Tract Society should ex 
 pend its money to convince the slave that he has a 
 soul to be saved so far as he is obedient to his mas 
 ter, but not to persuade the master that he has a 
 soul to undergo a very different process so far as 
 he is unmerciful to his slave. 
 
 We Americans are very fond of this glue of 
 compromise. Like so many quack cements, it is 
 advertised to make the mended parts of the vessel 
 stronger than those which have never been broken, 
 but, like them, it will not stand hot water, and 
 as the question of slavery is sure to plunge all who 
 approach it, even with the best intentions, into that 
 fatal element, the patched-up brotherhood, which 
 but yesterday was warranted to be better than new, 
 falls once more into a heap of incoherent frag 
 ments. The last trial of the virtues of the Patent 
 Redintegrator by the Special Committee of the 
 Tract Society has ended like all the rest, and as 
 all attempts to buy peace at too dear a rate must 
 end. Peace is an excellent thing, but principle 
 and pluck are better ; and the man who sacrifices 
 them to gain it finds at last that he has crouched 
 under the Caudine yoke to purchase only a con 
 temptuous toleration, that leaves him at war with 
 his own self-respect and the invincible forces of his 
 higher nature. 
 
10 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 But the peace which Christ promised to his fol 
 lowers was not of this world ; the good gift he 
 brought them was not peace, but a sword. It was 
 no sword of territorial conquest, but that flaming 
 blade of conscience and self - conviction which 
 lightened between our first parents and their lost 
 Eden, that sword of the Spirit that searcheth 
 all things, which severs one by one the ties of 
 passion, of interest, of self-pride, that bind the 
 soul to earth, whose implacable edge may divide 
 a man from family, from friends, from whatever 
 is nearest and dearest, and which hovers before 
 him like the air-drawn dagger of Macbeth, beckon 
 ing him, not to crime, but to the legitimate royal 
 ties of self-denial and self-sacrifice, to the freedom 
 which is won only by surrender of the will. Chris 
 tianity has never been concession, never peace ; it 
 is continual aggression ; one province of wrong 
 conquered, its pioneers are already in the heart 
 of another. The mile-stones of its onward march 
 down the ages have not been monuments of ma 
 terial power, but the blackened stakes of martyrs, 
 trophies of individual fidelity to conviction. For 
 it is the only religion which is superior to all en 
 dowment, to all authority, which has a bishopric 
 and a cathedral wherever a single human soul has 
 surrendered itself to God. That very spirit of 
 doubt, inquiry, and fanaticism for private judgment, 
 with which Romanists reproach Protestantism, is 
 its stamp and token of authenticity, the seal of 
 Christ, and not of the Fisherman. 
 
 We do not wonder at the division which has 
 
THE AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY. 11 
 
 taken place in the Tract Society, nor do we regret 
 it. The ideal life of a Christian is possible to very 
 few, but we naturally look for a nearer approach 
 to it in those who associate together to disseminate 
 the doctrines which they believe to be its formative 
 essentials, and there is nothing which the enemies 
 of religion seize on so gladly as any inconsistency 
 between the conduct and the professions of such 
 persons. Though utterly indifferent to the wrongs 
 of the slave, the scoffer would not fail to remark 
 upon the hollowness of a Christianity which was 
 horror-stricken at a dance or a Sunday drive, while 
 it was blandly silent about the separation of fami 
 lies, the putting asunder whom God had joined, the 
 selling Christian girls for Christian harems, and the 
 thousand horrors of a system which can lessen the 
 agonies it inflicts only by debasing the minds and 
 souls of the race on which it inflicts them. Is your 
 Christianity, then, he would say, a respecter of 
 persons, and does it condone the sin because the 
 sinner can contribute to your coffers ? Was there 
 ever a simony like this, that does not sell, but 
 withholds, the gift of God for a price ? 
 
 The world naturally holds the Society to a 
 stricter accountability than it would insist upon in 
 ordinary cases. Were they only a club of gentle 
 men associated for their own amusement, it would 
 be very natural and proper that they should exclude 
 all questions which would introduce controversy, 
 and that, however individually interested in certain 
 reforms, they should not force them upon others 
 who would consider them a bore. But a society of 
 
12 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 professing Christians, united for the express pur 
 pose of carrying both the theory and the practice 
 of the New Testament into every household in the 
 land, has voluntarily subjected itself to a graver 
 responsibility, and renounced all title to fall back 
 upon any reserved right of personal comfort or 
 convenience. 
 
 We say, then, that we are glad to see this divi 
 sion in the Tract Society ; not glad because of the 
 division, but because it has sprung from an earnest 
 effort to relieve the Society of a reproach which 
 was not only impairing its usefulness, but doing 
 an injury to the cause of truth and sincerity every 
 where. We have no desire to impugn the motives 
 of those who consider themselves conservative 
 members of the Society ; we believe them to be 
 honest in their convictions, or their want of them ; 
 but we think they have mistaken notions as to what 
 conservatism is, and that they are wrong in sup 
 posing it to consist in refusing to wipe away the 
 film on their spectacle-glasses which prevents their 
 seeing the handwriting on the wall, or in conserv 
 ing reverently the barnacles on their ship s bottom 
 and the dry-rot in its knees. We yield to none of 
 them in reverence for the Past ; it is there only 
 that the imagination can find repose and seclu 
 sion ; there dwells that silent majority whose expe 
 rience guides our action and whose wisdom shapes 
 our thought in spite of ourselves ; but it is not 
 length of days that can make evil reverend, nor 
 persistence in inconsistency that can give it the 
 power or the claim of orderly precedent. Wrong, 
 
THE AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY. 13 
 
 though its title-deeds go back to the days of Sodom, 
 is by nature a thing of yesterday, while the 
 right, of which we became conscious but an hour 
 ago, is more ancient than the stars, and of the 
 essence of Heaven. If it were proposed to estab 
 lish Slavery to-inorrow, should we have more 
 patience with its patriarchal argument than with 
 the parallel claim of Mormonism ? That Slavery 
 is old is but its greater condemnation ; that we 
 have tolerated it so long, the strongest plea for our 
 doing so no longer. There is one institution to 
 which we owe our first allegiance, one that is more 
 sacred and venerable than any other, the soul 
 and conscience of Man. 
 
 What claim has Slavery to immunity from dis 
 cussion? We are told that discussion is danger 
 ous. Dangerous to what ? Truth invites it, courts 
 the point of the Ithuriel-spear, whose touch can 
 but reveal more clearly the grace and grandeur 
 of her angelic proportions. The advocates of 
 Slavery have taken refuge in the last covert of 
 desperate sophism, and affirm that their institution 
 is of Divine ordination, that its bases are laid in 
 the nature of man. Is anything, then, of God s 
 contriving endangered by inquiry? Was it the 
 system of the universe, or the monks, that trembled 
 at the telescope of Galileo ? Did the circulation 
 of the firmament stop in terror because Newton 
 laid his daring finger on its pulse ? But it is idle 
 to discuss a proposition so monstrous. There is 
 no right of sanctuary for a crime against humanity, 
 and they who drag an unclean thing to the horns 
 
14 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 of the altar bring it to vengeance, and not to 
 safety. 
 
 Even granting that Slavery were all that its 
 apologists assume it to be, and that the relation of 
 master and slave were of God s appointing, would 
 not its abuses be just the thing which it was the 
 duty of Christian men to protest against, and, as 
 far as might be, to root out? Would our courts 
 feel themselves debarred from interfering to rescue 
 a daughter from a parent who wished to make mer 
 chandise of her purity, or a wife from a husband 
 who was brutal to her, by the plea that parental 
 authority and marriage were of Divine ordinance ? 
 Would a police-justice discharge a drunkard who 
 pleaded the patriarchal precedent of Noah? or 
 would he not rather give him another month in the 
 House of Correction for his impudence ? 
 
 The Anti-slavery question is not one which the 
 Tract Society can exclude by triumphant majori 
 ties, nor put to shame by a comparison of respecta 
 bilities. Mixed though it has been with politics, it 
 is in no sense political, and springing naturally 
 from the principles of that religion which traces its 
 human pedigree to a manger, and whose first apos 
 tles were twelve poor men against the whole world, 
 it can dispense with numbers and earthly respect. 
 The clergyman may ignore it in the pulpit, but it 
 confronts him in his study ; the church-member, 
 who has suppressed it in parish-meeting, opens it 
 with the pages of his Testament ; the merchant, 
 who has shut it oiit of his house and his heart, 
 finds it lying in wait for him, a gaunt fugitive, in 
 
THE AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY. 15 
 
 the hold of his ship ; the lawyer, who has declared 
 that it is no concern of his, finds it thrust upon 
 him in the brief of the slave-hunter ; the historian, 
 who had cautiously evaded it, stumbles over it at 
 Bunker Hill. And why ? Because it is not politi 
 cal, but moral, because it is not local, but na 
 tional, because it is not a test of party, but of 
 individual honesty and honor. The wrong which 
 we allow our nation to perpetrate we cannot local 
 ize, if we would ; we cannot hem it within the lim 
 its of Washington or Kansas ; sooner or later, it 
 will force itself into the conscience and sit by the 
 hearthstone of every citizen. 
 
 It is not partisanship, it is not fanaticism, that 
 has forced this matter of Anti-slavery upon the 
 American people ; it is the spirit of Christianity, 
 which appeals from prejudices and predilections to 
 the moral consciousness of the individual man ; that 
 spirit elastic as air, penetrative as heat, invulnerable 
 as sunshine, against which creed after creed and 
 institution after institution have measured their 
 strength and been confounded ; that restless spirit 
 which refuses to crystallize in any sect or form, but 
 persists, a Divinely commissioned radical and re- 
 constructor, in trying every generation with a new 
 dilemma between ease and interest on the one 
 hand, and duty 011 the other. Shall it be said that 
 its kingdom is not of this world ? In one sense, 
 and that the highest, it certainly is not ; but just 
 as certainly Christ never intended those words to 
 be used as a subterfuge by which to escape our 
 responsibilities in the life of business and politics. 
 
16 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 Let the cross, the sword, and the arena answer, 
 whether the world, that then was, so understood its 
 first preachers and apostles. Caesar and Flamen 
 both instinctively dreaded it, not because it aimed 
 at riches or power, but because it strove to conquer 
 that other world in the moral nature of mankind, 
 where it could establish a throne against which 
 wealth and force would be weak and contemptible. 
 No human device has ever prevailed against it, no 
 array of majorities or respectabilities ; but neither 
 Ca3sar nor Flamen ever conceived a scheme so cun 
 ningly adapted to neutralize its power as that 
 graceful compromise which accepts it with the lip 
 and denies it in the life, which marries it at the 
 altar and divorces it at the church-door. 
 
THE ELECTION IN NOVEMBER 
 
 1860. 
 
 WHILE all of us have been watching, with that 
 admiring sympathy which never fails to wait on 
 courage and magnanimity, the career of the new 
 Timoleon in Sicily ; while we have been reckoning, 
 with an interest scarcely less than in some affair 
 of personal concern, the chances and changes that 
 bear with furtherance or hindrance upon the for 
 tune of united Italy, we are approaching, with a 
 quietness and composure which more than any 
 thing else mark the essential difference between 
 our own form of democracy and any other yet 
 known in history, a crisis in our domestic policy 
 more momentous than any that has arisen since we 
 became a nation. Indeed, considering the vital 
 consequences for good or evil that will follow from 
 the popular decision in November, we might be 
 tempted to regard the remarkable moderation 
 which has thus far characterized the Presidential 
 canvass as a guilty indifference to the duty implied 
 in the privilege of suffrage, or a stolid unconscious 
 ness of the result which may depend upon its exer 
 cise in this particular election, did we not believe 
 that it arose chiefly from the general persuasion 
 that the success of the Republican party was a fore 
 gone conclusion. 
 
18 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 In a society like ours, where every man may 
 transmute his private thought into history and des 
 tiny by dropping it into the ballot-box, a peculiar 
 responsibility rests upon the individual. Nothing 
 can absolve us from doing our best to look at all 
 public questions as citizens, and therefore in some 
 sort as administrators and rulers. For though 
 during its term of office the government be practi 
 cally as independent of the popular will as that of 
 Kussia, yet every fourth year the people are called 
 upon to pronounce upon the conduct of their af 
 fairs. Theoretically, at least, to give democracy 
 any standing-ground for an argument with despot 
 ism or oligarchy, a majority of the men composing 
 it should be statesmen and thinkers. It is a prov 
 erb, that to turn a radical into a conservative there 
 needs only to put him into office, because then the 
 license of speculation or sentiment is limited by 
 a sense of responsibility ; then for the first time 
 he becomes capable of that comparative view 
 which sees principles and measures, not in the nar 
 row abstract, but in the full breadth of their rela 
 tions to each other and to political consequences. 
 The theory of democracy presupposes something of 
 these results of official position in the individual 
 voter, since in exercising his right he becomes for 
 the moment an integral part of the governing 
 power. 
 
 How very far practice is from any likeness to 
 theory, a week s experience of our politics suf 
 fices to convince us. The very government it 
 self seems an organized scramble, and Congress 
 
THE ELECTION IN NOVEMBER. 19 
 
 a boy s debating-club, with the disadvantage of 
 being reported. As our party-creeds are com 
 monly represented less by ideas than by persons 
 (who are assumed, without too close a scrutiny, 
 to be the exponents of certain ideas) our politics 
 become personal and narrow to a degree never 
 paralleled, unless in ancient Athens or mediaeval 
 Florence. Our Congress debates and our news 
 papers discuss, sometimes for day after day, not 
 questions of national interest, not what is wise 
 and right, but what the Honorable Lafayette 
 Skreemer said on the stump, or bad whiskey said 
 for him, half a dozen years ago. If that person 
 age, outraged in all the finer sensibilities of our 
 common nature, by failing to get the contract 
 for supplying the District Court-House at Skree- 
 meropolisville City with revolvers, was led to dis 
 parage the union of these States, it is seized on 
 as proof conclusive that the party to which he 
 belongs are so many Catcdines, for Congress 
 is unanimous only in misspelling the name of that 
 oft-invoked conspirator. The next Presidential 
 Election looms always in advance, so that we 
 seem never to have an actual Chief Magistrate, but 
 a prospective one, looking to the chances of re 
 election, and mingling in all the dirty intrigues 
 of provincial politics with an unhappy talent for 
 making them dirtier. The cheating mirage of the 
 White House lures our public men away from 
 present duties and obligations; and if matters 
 go on as they have gone, we shall need a Com 
 mittee of Congress to count the spoons in the 
 
20 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 public plate-closet, whenever a President goes 
 out of office, with a policeman to watch every 
 member of the Committee. We are kept normally 
 in that most unprofitable of predicaments, a state 
 of transition, and politicians measure their words 
 and deeds by a standard of immediate and tem 
 porary expediency, an expediency not as con 
 cerning the nation, but which, if more than merely 
 personal, is no wider than the interests of party. 
 
 Is all this a result of the failure of demo 
 cratic institutions? Rather of the fact that those 
 institutions have never yet had a fair trial, and 
 that for the last thirty years an abnormal ele 
 ment has been acting adversely with continually 
 increasing strength. Whatever be the effect of 
 slavery upon the States where it exists, there can be 
 no doubt that its moral influence upon the North 
 has been most disastrous. It has compelled our 
 politicians into that first fatal compromise with 
 their moral instincts and hereditary principles 
 which makes all consequent ones easy ; it has accus 
 tomed us to makeshifts instead of statesmanship, 
 to subterfuge instead of policy, to party-platforms 
 for opinions, and to a defiance of the public sen 
 timent of the civilized world for patriotism. We 
 have been asked to admit, first, that it was a neces 
 sary evil ; then that it was a good both to master 
 and slave ; then that it was the corner-stone of free 
 institutions ; then that it was a system divinely 
 instituted under the Old Law and sanctioned 
 under the New. With a representation, three 
 fifths of it based on the assumption that negroes 
 
THE ELECTION IN NOVEMBER. 21 
 
 are men, the South turns upon us and insists on 
 our acknowledging that they are things. After 
 compelling her Northern allies to pronounce the 
 " free and equal " clause of the preamble to the 
 Declaration of Independence (because it stood 
 in the way of enslaving men) a manifest absurd 
 ity, she has declared, through the Supreme Court 
 of the United States, that negroes are not men 
 in the ordinary meaning of the word. To eat 
 dirt is bad enough, but to find that we have eaten 
 more than was necessary may chance to give us 
 an indigestion. The slaveholding interest has 
 gone on step by step, forcing concession after 
 concession, till it needs but little to secure it 
 forever in the political supremacy of the country. 
 Yield to its latest demand, let it mould the evil 
 destiny of the Territories, and the thing is done 
 past recall. The next Presidential Election is to 
 say Yes or No. 
 
 But we should not regard the mere question 
 of political preponderancy as of vital consequence, 
 did it not involve a continually increasing moral 
 degradation on the part of the Non-slaveholding 
 States, for Free States they could not be called 
 much longer. Sordid and materialistic views of 
 the true value and objects of society and govern 
 ment are professed more and more openly by the 
 leaders of popular outcry, for it cannot be called 
 public opinion. That side of human nature which 
 it has been the object of all lawgivers and moralists 
 to repress and subjugate is flattered and caressed ; 
 whatever is profitable is right; and already the 
 
22 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 slave-trade, as yielding a greater return on the 
 capital invested than any other traffic, is lauded 
 as the highest achievement of human reason and 
 justice. Mr. Hammond has proclaimed the ac 
 cession of King Cotton, but he seems to have 
 forgotten that history is not without examples of 
 kings who have lost their crowns through the 
 folly and false security of their ministers. It is 
 quite true that there is a large class of reasoners 
 who would weigh all questions of right and wrong 
 in the balance of trade ; but we cannot bring our 
 selves to believe that it is a wise political econ 
 omy which makes cotton by unmaking men, or a 
 far-seeing statesmanship which looks on an im 
 mediate money-profit as a safe equivalent for a 
 beggared public sentiment. We think Mr. Ham 
 mond even a little premature in proclaiming the new 
 Pretender. The election of November may prove 
 a Culloden. Whatever its result, it is to settle, 
 for many years to come, the question whether the 
 American idea is to govern this continent, whether 
 the Occidental or the Oriental theory of society 
 is to mould our future, whether we are to recede 
 from principles which eighteen Christian centuries 
 have been slowly establishing at the cost of so 
 many saintly lives at the stake and so many heroic 
 ones on the scaffold and the battle-field, in favor 
 of some fancied assimilation to the household ar 
 rangements of Abraham, of which all that can 
 be said with certainty is that they did not add 
 to his domestic happiness. 
 
 We believe that this election is a turning-point 
 
THE ELECTION IN NOVEMBER. 23 
 
 in our history ; for, although there are four can 
 didates, there are really, as everybody knows, but 
 two parties, and a single question that divides 
 them. The supporters of Messrs. Bell and Ever 
 ett have adopted as their platform the Constitu 
 tion, the Union, and the enforcement of the Laws. 
 This may be very convenient, but it is surely not 
 very explicit. The cardinal question on which the 
 whole policy of the country is to turn a ques 
 tion, too, which this very election must decide in 
 one way or the other is the interpretation to 
 be put upon certain clauses of the Constitution. 
 All the other parties equally assert their loyalty 
 to that instrument. Indeed, it is quite the fashion. 
 The removers of all the ancient landmarks of our 
 policy, the violators of thrice-pledged faith, the 
 planners of new treachery to established compro 
 mise, all take refuge in the Constitution, 
 
 " Like thieves that in a hemp-plot lie, 
 Secure against the hue and cry." 
 
 In the same way the first Bonaparte renewed his 
 profession of faith in the Eevolution at every con 
 venient opportunity ; and the second follows the 
 precedent of his uncle, though the uninitiated 
 fail to see any logical sequence from 1789 to 1815 
 or 1860. If Mr. Bell loves the Constitution, Mr. 
 Breckinridge is equally fond ; that Egeria of our 
 statesmen could be "happy with either, were 
 t other dear charmer away." Mr. Douglas con 
 fides the secret of his passion to the unloqua- 
 cious clams of Rhode Island, and the chief com 
 plaint made against Mr. Lincoln by his opponents 
 is that he is too Constitutional. 
 
24 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 Meanwhile, the only point in which voters are 
 interested is, What do they mean by the Constitu 
 tion ? Mr. Breckinridge means the superiority of 
 a certain exceptional species of property over all 
 others ; nay, over man himself. Mr. Douglas, with a 
 different formula for expressing it, means practically 
 the same thing. Both of them mean that Labor 
 has no rights which Capital is bound to respect, 
 that there is no higher law than human interest and 
 cupidity. Both of them represent not merely the 
 narrow principles of a section, but the still nar 
 rower and more selfish ones of a caste. Both of 
 them, to be sure, have convenient phrases to be jug 
 gled with before election, and which mean one thing 
 or another, or neither one thing nor another, as a 
 particular exigency may seem to require : but since 
 both claim the regular Democratic nomination, we 
 have little difficulty in divining what their course 
 would be after the fourth of March, if they should 
 chance to be elected. We know too well what 
 regular Democracy is, to like either of the two faces 
 which each shows by turns under the same hood. 
 Everybody remembers Baron Grimm s story of the 
 Parisian showman, who in 1789 exhibited the royal 
 Bengal tiger under the new character of national, 
 as more in harmony with the changed order of 
 things. Could the animal have lived till 1848, he 
 would probably have found himself offered to the 
 discriminating public as the democratic and social 
 ornament of the jungle. The Pro-slavery party of 
 this country seeks the popular favor under even 
 more frequent and incongruous aliases : it is now 
 

 THE ELECTION IN NOVEMBER. 25 
 
 national, now conservative, now constitutional; 
 here it represents Squatter-Sovereignty, and there 
 the power of Congress over the Territories ; but, un 
 der whatever name, its nature remains unchanged, 
 and its instincts are none the less predatory and 
 destructive. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln s position is set forth with sufficient 
 precision in the platform adopted by the Chicago 
 Convention ; but what are we to make of Messrs. 
 Bell and Everett ? Heirs of the stock in trade of 
 two defunct parties, the Whig and Know-Noth 
 ing, do they hope to resuscitate them ? or are 
 they only like the inconsolable widows of Pere la 
 Chaise, who, with an eye to former customers, make 
 use of the late Andsoforth s gravestone to adver 
 tise that they still carry on the business at the old 
 stand? Mr. Everett, in his letter accepting the 
 nomination, gave us only a string of reasons why he 
 should not have accepted it at all ; and Mr. Bell 
 preserves a silence singularly at variance with his 
 patronymic. The only public demonstration of 
 principle that we have seen is an emblematic bell 
 drawn upon a wagon by a single horse, with a man 
 to lead him, and a boy to make a nuisance of the 
 tinkling symbol as it moves along. Are all the 
 figures in this melancholy procession equally em 
 blematic ? If so, which of the two candidates is 
 typified in the unfortunate who leads the horse ? 
 for we believe the only hope of the party is to get one 
 of them elected by some hocus-pocus in the House of 
 Representatives. The little boy, we suppose, is in 
 tended to represent the party, which promises to be 
 
26 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 so conveniently small that there will be an office for 
 every member of it, if its candidate should win. Did 
 not the bell convey a plain allusion to the leading 
 name on the ticket, we should conceive it an excel 
 lent type of the hollowness of those fears for the 
 safety of the Union, in case of Mr. Lincoln s elec 
 tion, whose changes are so loudly rung, its noise 
 having once or twice given rise to false alarms of 
 fire, till people found out what it really was. What 
 ever profound moral it be intended to convey, we 
 find in it a similitude that is not without signifi 
 cance as regards the professed creed of the party. 
 The industrious youth who operates upon it has 
 evidently some notion of the measured and regular 
 motion that befits the tongues of well-disciplined 
 and conservative bells. He does his best to make 
 theory and practice coincide ; but with every jolt 
 on the road an involuntary variation is produced, 
 and the sonorous pulsation becomes rapid or slow 
 accordingly. We have observed that the Consti 
 tution was liable to similar derangements, and we 
 very much doubt whether Mr. Bell himself (since, 
 after all, the Constitution would practically be 
 nothing else than his interpretation of it) would 
 keep the same measured tones that are so easy on 
 the smooth path of candidacy, when it came to con 
 ducting the car of State over some of the rough 
 places in the highway of Manifest Destiny, and 
 some of those passages in our politics which, after 
 the fashion of new countries, are rather corduroy 
 in character. 
 
 But, fortunately, we are not left wholly in the 
 
THE ELECTION IN NOVEMBER. 27 
 
 dark as to the aims of the self-styled Constitutional 
 party. One of its most distinguished members, 
 Governor Hunt of New York, has given us to un 
 derstand that its prime object is the defeat at all 
 hazards of the Republican candidate. To achieve 
 so desirable an end, its leaders are ready to coa 
 lesce, here with the Douglas, and there with the 
 Breckinridge faction of that very Democratic party 
 of whose violations of the Constitution, corruption, 
 and dangerous limberness of principle they have 
 been the lifelong denouncers. In point of fact, 
 then, it is perfectly plain that we have only two 
 parties in the field : those who favor the extension 
 of slavery, and those who oppose it, in other 
 words, a Destructive and a Conservative party. 
 
 We know very well that the partisans of Mr. 
 Bell, Mr. Douglas, and Mr. Breckinridge all equally 
 claim the title of conservative : and the fact is a 
 very curious one, well worthy the consideration of 
 those foreign critics who argue that the inevitable 
 tendency of democracy is to compel larger and 
 larger concessions to a certain assumed communis 
 tic propensity and hostility to the rights of property 
 on the part of the working classes. But the truth 
 is, that revolutionary ideas are promoted, not by 
 any unthinking hostility to the rights of property, 
 but by a well-founded jealousy of its usurpations ; 
 and it is Privilege, and not Property, that is per 
 plexed with fear of change. The conservative ef 
 fect of ownership operates with as much force on 
 the man with a hundred dollars in an old stocking 
 as on his neighbor with a million in the funds. 
 
28 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 During the Roman Revolution of 48, the beggars 
 who had funded their gains were among the stanch- 
 est reactionaries, and left Rome with the nobility. 
 No question of the abstract right of property has 
 ever entered directly into our politics, or ever will, 
 the point at issue being, whether a certain excep 
 tional kind of property, already privileged beyond 
 all others, shall be entitled to still further privi 
 leges at the expense of every other kind. The ex 
 tension of slavery over new territory means just 
 this, that this one kind of property, not recog 
 nized as such by the Constitution, or it would never 
 have been allowed to enter into the basis of repre 
 sentation, shall control the foreign and domestic 
 policy of the Republic. 
 
 A great deal is said, to be sure, about the rights 
 of the South; but has any such right been in 
 fringed ? When a man invests money in any 
 species of property, he assumes the risks to which 
 it is liable. If he buy a house, it may be burned ; 
 if a ship, it may be wrecked ; if a horse or an ox, 
 it may die. Now the disadvantage of the Southern 
 kind of property is how shall we say it so as not 
 to violate our Constitutional obligations ? that it 
 is exceptional. When it leaves Virginia, it is a 
 thing ; when it arrives in Boston, it becomes a man, 
 speaks human language, appeals to the justice of 
 the same God whom we all acknowledge, weeps at 
 the memory of wife and children left behind, in 
 short, hath the same organs and dimensions that 
 a Christian hath, and is not distinguishable from 
 ordinary Christians, except, perhaps, by a simpler 
 
THE ELECTION IN NOVEMBER. 29 
 
 and more earnest faith. There are people at the 
 North who believe that, beside meum and tuum, 
 there is also such a thing as suum^ who are old- 
 fashioned enough, or weak enough, to have their 
 feelings touched by these things, to think that hu 
 man nature is older and more sacred than any claim 
 of property whatever, and that it has rights at least 
 as much to be respected as any hypothetical one of 
 our Southern brethren. This, no doubt, makes it 
 harder to recover a fugitive chattel ; but the exist 
 ence of human nature in a man here and there is 
 surely one of those accidents to be counted on at 
 least as often as fire, shipwreck, or the cattle-dis 
 ease ; and the man who chooses to put his money 
 into these images of his Maker cut in ebony should 
 be content to take the incident risks along with the 
 advantages. We should be very sorry to deem this 
 risk capable of diminution ; for we think that the 
 claims of a common manhood upon us should be at 
 least as strong as those of Freemasonry, and that 
 those whom the law of man turns away should find 
 in the larger charity of the law of God and Nature 
 a readier welcome and surer sanctuary. We shall 
 continue to think the negro a man, and on South 
 ern evidence, too, so long as he is counted in the 
 population represented on the floor of Congress, 
 for three fifths of perfect manhood would be a high 
 average even among white men ; so long as he is 
 hanged or worse, as an example and terror to 
 others, for we do not punish one animal for the 
 moral improvement of the rest ; so long as he is 
 considered capable of religious instruction, for 
 
30 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 we fancy the gorillas would make short work with 
 a missionary ; so long as there are fears of insur 
 rection, for we never heard of a combined effort 
 at revolt in a menagerie. Accordingly, we do not 
 see how the particular right of whose infringement 
 we hear so much is to be made safer by the election 
 of Mr. Bell, Mr. Breckinridge, or Mr. Douglas, 
 there being quite as little chance that any of them 
 would abolish human nature as that Mr. Lincoln 
 would abolish slavery. The same generous instinct 
 that leads some among us to sympathize with the 
 sorrows of the bereaved master will always, we 
 fear, influence others to take part with the rescued 
 man. 
 
 But if our Constitutional Obligations, as we 
 like to call our constitutional timidity or indif 
 ference, teach us that a particular divinity hedges 
 the Domestic Institution, they do not require us 
 to forget that we have institutions of our own, 
 worth maintaining and extending, and not with 
 out a certain sacredness, whether we regard the 
 traditions of the fathers or the faith of the chil 
 dren. It is high time that we should hear some 
 thing of the rights of the Free States, and of the 
 duties consequent upon them. We also have our 
 prejudices to be respected, our theory of civiliza 
 tion, of what constitutes the safety of a state and 
 insures its prosperity, to be applied wherever there 
 is soil enough for a human being to stand on and 
 thank God for making him a man. Is conserva 
 tism applicable only to property, and not to jus 
 tice, freedom, and public honor? Does it mean 
 
THE ELECTION IN NOVEMBER. 31 
 
 merely drifting with the current of evil times and 
 pernicious counsels, and carefully nursing the ills 
 we have, that they may, as their nature it is, grow 
 worse ? 
 
 To be told that we ought not to agitate the ques 
 tion of Slavery, when it is that which is forever 
 agitating us, is like telling a man with the fever 
 and ague on him to stop shaking, and he will be 
 cured. The discussion of Slavery is said to be 
 dangerous, but dangerous to what? The manu 
 facturers of the Free States constitute a more 
 numerous class than the slaveholders of the South: 
 suppose they should claim an equal sanctity for 
 the Protective System. Discussion is the very life 
 of free institutions, the fruitful mother of all polit 
 ical and moral enlightenment, and yet the question 
 of all questions must be tabooed. The Swiss guide 
 enjoins silence in the region of avalanches, lest the 
 mere vibration of the voice should dislodge the 
 ruin clinging by frail roots of snow. But where 
 is our avalanche to fall? It is to overwhelm the 
 Union, we are told. The real danger to the Union 
 will come when the encroachments of the Slave- 
 Power and the concessions of the Trade-Power 
 shall have made it a burden instead of a bless 
 ing. The real avalanche to be dreaded, are we 
 to expect it from the ever-gathering mass of igno 
 rant brute force, with the irresponsibility of ani 
 mals and the passions of men, which is one of the 
 fatal necessities of slavery, or from the gradually 
 increasing consciousness of the non-slaveholding 
 population of the Slave States of the true cause 
 
32 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 of their material impoverishment and political in 
 feriority? From one or the other source its ruin 
 ous forces will be fed, but in either event it is not 
 the Union that will be imperilled, but the privi 
 leged Order who on every occasion of a thwarted 
 whim have menaced its disruption, and who will 
 then find in it their only safety. 
 
 We believe that the " irrepressible conflict " 
 for we accept Mr. Seward s much-denounced phrase 
 in all the breadth of meaning he ever meant to 
 give it is to take place in the South itself ; be 
 cause the Slave System is one of those fearful 
 blunders in political economy which are sure, 
 sooner or later, to work their own retribution. 
 The inevitable tendency of slavery is to concen 
 trate in a few hands the soil, the capital, and 
 the power of the countries where it exists, to re 
 duce the non-slaveholding class to a continually 
 lower and lower level of property, intelligence, 
 and enterprise, their increase in numbers add 
 ing much to the economical hardship of their 
 position and nothing to their political weight in 
 the community. There is no home-encourage 
 ment of varied agriculture, for the wants of a 
 slave population are few in number and limited 
 in kind ; none of inland trade, for that is devel 
 oped only by communities where education in 
 duces refinement, where facility of communica 
 tion stimulates invention and variety of enterprise, 
 where newspapers make every man s improvement 
 in tools, machinery, or culture of the soil an in 
 citement to all, and bring all the thinkers of the 
 
THE ELECTION IN NOVEMBER. 33 
 
 world to teach in the cheap university of the 
 people. We do not, of course, mean to say that 
 slaveholding States may not and do not produce 
 fine men; but they fail, by the inherent vice of 
 their constitution and its attendant consequences, 
 to create enlightened, powerful, and advancing 
 communities of men, which is the true object of 
 all political organizations, and is essential to the 
 prolonged existence of all those whose life and 
 spirit are derived directly from the people. Every 
 man who has dispassionately endeavored to en 
 lighten himself in the matter cannot but see, 
 that, for the many, the course of things in slave- 
 holding States is substantially what we have 
 described, a downward one, more or less rapid, 
 in civilization and in all those results of mate 
 rial prosperity which in a free country show 
 themselves in the general advancement for the 
 good of all, and give a real meaning to the word 
 Commonwealth. No matter how enormous the 
 wealth centred in the hands of a few, it has no 
 longer the conservative force or the beneficent in 
 fluence which it exerts when equably distributed, 
 even loses more of both where a system of 
 absenteeism prevails so largely as in the South. 
 In such communities the seeds of an " irrepres 
 sible conflict " are surely if slowly ripening, and 
 signs are daily multiplying that the true peril to 
 their social organization is looked for, less in a 
 revolt of the owned labor than in an insurrec 
 tion of intelligence in the labor that owns itself 
 and finds itself none the richer for it. To mul 
 tiply such communities is to multiply weakness. 
 
34 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 The election in November turns on the single 
 and simple question, Whether we shall consent 
 to the indefinite multiplication of them ; and the 
 only party which stands plainly and unequivocally 
 pledged against such a policy, nay, which is not 
 either openly or impliedly in favor of it, is 
 the Republican party. We are of those who at 
 first regretted that another candidate was not nomi 
 nated at Chicago ; but we confess that we have 
 ceased to regret it, for the magnanimity of Mr. 
 Seward since the result of the Convention was 
 known has been a greater ornament to him and 
 a greater honor to his party than his election to 
 the Presidency would have been. We should have 
 been pleased with Mr. Seward s nomination, for 
 the very reason we have seen assigned for passing 
 him by, that he represented the most advanced 
 doctrines of his party. He, more than any other 
 man, combined in himself the moralist s oppug- 
 nancy to Slavery as a fact, the thinker s resent 
 ment of it as a theory, and the statist s distrust 
 of it as a policy, thus summing up the three 
 efficient causes that have chiefly aroused and 
 concentrated the antagonism of the Free States. 
 Not a brilliant man, he has that best gift of Na 
 ture, which brilliant men commonly lack, of being 
 always able to do his best ; and the very misrep 
 resentation of his opinions which was resorted to 
 in order to neutralize the effect of his speeches 
 in the Senate and elsewhere was the best testimony 
 to their power. Safe from the prevailing epi 
 demic of Congressional eloquence as if he had 
 
THE ELECTION IN NOVEMBER. 35 
 
 been inoculated for it early in his career, he ad 
 dresses himself to the reason, and what he says 
 sticks. It was assumed that his nomination would 
 have embittered the contest and tainted the Re 
 publican creed with radicalism; but we doubt it. 
 We cannot think that a party gains by not hit 
 ting its hardest, or by sugaring its opinions. Re 
 publicanism is not a conspiracy to obtain office 
 under false pretences. It has a definite aim, an 
 earnest purpose, and the unflinching tenacity of 
 profound conviction. It was not called into being 
 by a desire to reform the pecuniary corruptions 
 of the party now in power. Mr. Bell or Mr. 
 Breckinridge would do that, for no one doubts 
 their honor or their honesty. It is not unani 
 mous about the Tariff, about State-Rights, about 
 many other questions of policy. What unites 
 the Republicans is a common faith in the early 
 principles and practice of the Republic, a com 
 mon persuasion that slavery, as it cannot but be 
 the natural foe of the one, has been the chief de- 
 baser of the other, and a common resolve to re 
 sist its encroachments everywhen and everywhere. 
 They see no reason to fear that the Constitution, 
 which has shown such pliant tenacity under the 
 warps and twistings of a forty-years pro-slavery 
 pressure, should be in danger of breaking, if 
 bent backward again gently to its original rec 
 titude of fibre. " All forms of human govern 
 ment," says Machiavelli, "have, like men, their 
 natural term, and those only are long-lived which 
 possess in themselves the power of returning to 
 
36 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 the principles on which they were originally 
 founded." 
 
 It is in a moral aversion to slavery as a great 
 wrong that the chief strength of the Republican 
 party lies. They believe as everybody believed 
 sixty years ago ; and we are sorry to see what ap 
 pears to be an inclination in some quarters to blink 
 this aspect of the case, lest the party be charged 
 with want of conservatism, or, what is worse, with 
 abolitionism. It is and will be charged with all 
 kinds of dreadful things, whatever it does, and it 
 has nothing to fear from an upright and downright 
 declaration of its faith. One part of the grateful 
 work it has to do is to deliver us from the curse of 
 perpetual concession for the sake of a peace that 
 never comes, and which, if it came, would not be 
 peace, but submission, from that torpor and im 
 becility of faith in God and man which have stolen 
 the respectable name of Conservatism. A question 
 which cuts so deep as that which now divides the 
 country cannot be debated, much less settled, with 
 out excitement. Such excitement is healthy, and 
 is a sign that the ill humors of the body politic are 
 coming to the surface, where they are compara 
 tively harmless. It is the tendency of all creeds, 
 opinions, and political dogmas that have once de 
 fined themselves in institutions to become inoper 
 ative. The vital and formative principle, which 
 was active during the process of crystallization into 
 sects, or schools of thought, or governments, ceases 
 to act ; and what was once a living emanation of 
 the Eternal Mind, organically operative in history, 
 
THE ELECTION IN NOVEMBER. 37 
 
 becomes the dead formula on men s lips and the 
 dry topic of the annalist. It has been our good 
 fortune that a question has been thrust upon us 
 which has forced us to reconsider the primal prin 
 ciples of government, which has appealed to con 
 science as well as reason, and, by bringing the the 
 ories of the Declaration of Independence to the 
 test of experience in our thought and life and ac 
 tion, has realized a tradition of the memory into a 
 conviction of the understanding and the soul. It 
 will not do for the Kepublicans to confine them 
 selves to the mere political argument, for the mat 
 ter then becomes one of expediency, with two 
 defensible sides to it ; they must go deeper, to 
 the radical question of right and wrong, or they 
 surrender the chief advantage of their position. 
 What Spinoza says of laws is equally trite of party 
 platforms, that those are strong which appeal 
 to reason, but those are impregnable which compel 
 the assent both of reason and the common affec 
 tions of mankind. 
 
 No man pretends that under the Constitution 
 there is any possibility of interference with the do 
 mestic relations of the individual States ; no party 
 has ever remotely hinted at any such interference ; 
 but what the Republicans affirm is, that in every 
 contingency where the Constitution can be con 
 strued in favor of freedom, it ought to be and shall 
 be so construed. It is idle to talk of sectionalism, 
 abolitionism, and hostility to the laws. The princi 
 ples of liberty and humanity cannot, by virtue of 
 their very nature, be sectional, any more than light 
 
38 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 and heat. Prevention is not abolition, and unjust 
 laws are the only serious enemies that Law ever had. 
 With history before us, it is no treason to question 
 the infallibility of a court ; for courts are never 
 wiser or more venerable than the men composing 
 them, and a decision that reverses precedent can 
 not arrogate to itself any immunity from reversal. 
 Truth is the only unrepeatable thing. 
 
 We are gravely requested to have no opinion, 
 or, having one, to suppress it, on the one topic that 
 has occupied caucuses, newspapers, Presidents 
 messages, and Congress for the last dozen years, 
 lest we endanger the safety of the Union. The 
 true danger to popular forms of government be 
 gins when public opinion ceases because the peo 
 ple are incompetent or unwilling to think. In a 
 democracy it is the duty of every citizen to think ; 
 but unless the thinking result in a definite opinion, 
 and the opinion lead to considerate action, they 
 are nothing. If the people are assumed to be in 
 capable of forming a judgment for themselves, the 
 men whose position enables them to guide the pub 
 lic mind ought certainly to make good their want 
 of intelligence. But on this great question, the 
 wise solution of which, we are every day assured, 
 is essential to the permanence of the Union, Mr. 
 Bell has no opinion at all, Mr. Douglas says it is 
 of no consequence which opinion prevails, and Mr. 
 Breckinridge tells us vaguely that " all sections 
 have an equal right in the common Territories." 
 The parties which support these candidates, how 
 ever, all agree in affirming that the election of its 
 
THE ELECTION IN NOVEMBER. 39 
 
 special favorite is the one thing that can give back 
 peace to the distracted country. The distracted 
 country will continue to take care of itself, as it 
 has done hitherto, and the only question that needs 
 an answer is, What policy will secure the most 
 prosperous future to the helpless Territories, which 
 our decision is to make or mar for all coming 
 time ? What will save the country from a Senate 
 and Supreme Court where freedom shall be forever 
 at a disadvantage ? 
 
 There is always a fallacy in the argument of the 
 opponents of the Republican party. They affirm 
 that all the States and all the citizens of the States 
 ought to have equal rights in the Territories. Un 
 doubtedly. But the difficulty is that they cannot. 
 The slaveholder moves into a new Territory with 
 his institution, and from that moment the free 
 white settler is virtually excluded. His institu 
 tions he cannot take with him ; they refuse to root 
 themselves in soil that is cultivated by slave-labor. 
 Speech is no longer free ; the post-office is Aus- 
 trianized ; the mere fact of Northern birth may be 
 enough to hang him. Even now in Texas, settlers 
 from the Free States are being driven out and mur 
 dered for pretended complicity in a plot the evi 
 dence for the existence of which has been obtained 
 by means without a parallel since the trial of the 
 Salem witches, and the stories about which are 
 as absurd and contradictory as the confessions of 
 Goodwife Corey. Kansas was saved, it is true ; 
 but it was the experience of Kansas that disgusted 
 the South with Mr. Douglas s panacea of " Squat 
 ter Sovereignty." 
 
40 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 The claim of equal rights in the Territories is 
 a specious fallacy. Concede the demand of the 
 slavery-extensionists, and you give up every inch 
 of territory to slavery, to the absolute exclusion of 
 freedom. For what they ask (however they may 
 disguise it) is simply this, that their local law 
 be made the law of the land, and coextensive with 
 the limits of the General Government. The Con 
 stitution acknowledges no unqualified or intermi 
 nable right of property in the labor of another ; 
 and the plausible assertion, that " that is property 
 which the law makes property " (confounding a law 
 existing anywhere with the law which is binding 
 everywhere), can deceive only those who have 
 either never read the Constitution, or are ignorant 
 of the opinions and intentions of those who framed 
 it. It is true only of the States where slavery 
 already exists ; and it is because the propagandists 
 of slavery are well aware of this, that they are so 
 anxious to establish by positive enactment the seem 
 ingly moderate title to a right of existence for their 
 institution in the Territories, a title which they 
 do not possess, and the possession of which would 
 give them the oyster and the Free States the shells. 
 Laws accordingly are asked for to protect South 
 ern property in the Territories, that is, to pro 
 tect the inhabitants from deciding for themselves 
 what their frame of government shall be. Such 
 laws will be passed, and the fairest portion of our 
 national domain irrevocably closed to free labor, if 
 the Non-slaveholding States fail to do their duty 
 in the present crisis. 
 
THE ELECTION IN NOVEMBER. 41 
 
 But will the election of Mr. Lincoln endanger 
 the Union ? It is not a little remarkable that, as 
 the prospect of his success increases, the menaces 
 of secession grow fainter and less frequent. Mr. 
 W. L. Yancey, to be sure, threatens to secede ; but 
 the country can get along without him, and we wish 
 him a prosperous career in foreign parts. But Gov 
 ernor Wise no longer proposes to seize the Treasury 
 at Washington, perhaps because Mr. Buchanan 
 has left so little in it. The old Mumbo-Jumbo is 
 occasionally paraded at the North, but, however 
 many old women may be frightened, the pulse of 
 the stock-market remains provokingly calm. Gen 
 eral Gushing, infringing the patent-right of the late 
 Mr. James, the novelist, has seen a solitary horse 
 man on the edge of the horizon. The exegesis of 
 the vision has been various, some thinking that it 
 means a Military Despot, though in that case 
 the force of cavalry would seem to be inadequate, 
 and others the Pony Express. If it had been 
 one rider on two horses, the application would have 
 been more general and less obscure. In fact, the 
 old cry of Disunion has lost its terrors, if it ever 
 had any, at the North. The South itself seems to 
 have become alarmed at its own scarecrow, and 
 speakers there are beginning to assure their hearers 
 that the election of Mr. Lincoln will do them no 
 harm. We entirely agree with them, for it will 
 save them from themselves. 
 
 To believe any organized attempt by the Re 
 publican party to disturb the existing internal pol 
 icy of the Southern States possible presupposes a 
 
42 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 manifest absurdity. Before anything of the kind 
 could take place, the country must be in a state of 
 forcible revolution. But there is no premonitory 
 symptom of any such convulsion, unless we except 
 Mr. Yancey, and that gentleman s throwing a soli 
 tary somerset will hardly turn the continent head 
 over heels. The administration of Mr. Lincoln 
 will be conservative, because no government is ever 
 intentionally otherwise, and because power never 
 knowingly undermines the foundation on which it 
 rests. All that the Free States demand is that 
 influence in the councils of the nation to which 
 they are justly entitled by their population, wealth, 
 and intelligence. That these elements of prosperity 
 have increased more rapidly among them than in 
 communities otherwise organized, with greater ad 
 vantages of soil, climate, and mineral productions, 
 is certainly no argument that they are incapable of 
 the duties of efficient and prudent administration, 
 however strong a one it may be for their endeavor 
 ing to secure for the Territories the single supe 
 riority that has made them what they are. The 
 object of the Republican party is not the abolition 
 of African slavery, but the utter extirpation of 
 dogmas which are the logical sequence of attempts 
 to establish its righteousness and wisdom, and which 
 would serve equally well to justify the enslavement 
 of every white man unable to protect himself. They 
 believe that slavery is a wrong morally, a mistake 
 politically, and a misfortune practically, wherever 
 it exists ; that it has nullified our influence abroad 
 and forced us to compromise with our better in- 
 
THE ELECTION IN NOVEMBER. 43 
 
 stincts at home ; that it has perverted our govern 
 ment from its legitimate objects, weakened, the 
 respect for the laws by making them the tools of its 
 purposes, and sapped the faith of men in any 
 higher political morality than interest or any better 
 statesmanship than chicane. They mean in every 
 lawful way to hem it within its present limits. 
 
 We are persuaded that the election of Mr. Lin 
 coln will do more than anything else to appease the 
 excitement of the country. He has proved both 
 his ability and his integrity ; he has had experience 
 enough in public affairs to make him a statesman, 
 and not enough to make him a politician. That he 
 has not had more will be no objection to him in the 
 eyes of those who have seen the administration of 
 the experienced public functionary whose term of 
 office is just drawing to a close. He represents a 
 party who know that true policy is gradual in its 
 advances, that it is conditional and not absolute, 
 that it must deal with facts and not with sentiments, 
 but who know also that it is wiser to stamp out evil 
 in the spark than to wait till there is no help but in 
 fighting fire with fire. They are the only conserva 
 tive party, because they are the only one based on 
 an enduring principle, the only one that is not will 
 ing to pawn to-morrow for the means to gamble with 
 to-day. They have no hostility to the South, but a 
 determined one to doctrines of whose ruinous ten 
 dency every day more and more convinces them. 
 
 The encroachments of Slavery upon our national 
 policy have been like those of a glacier in a Swiss 
 valley. Inch by inch, the huge dragon with its 
 
44 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 glittering scales and crests of ice coils itself onward, 
 an anachronism of summer, the relic of a by-gone 
 world where such monsters swarmed. But it has 
 its limit, the kindlier forces of Nature work against 
 it, and the silent arrows of the sun are still, as of 
 old, fatal to the frosty Python. Geology tells us 
 that such enormous devastators once covered the 
 face of the earth, but the benignant sunlight of 
 heaven touched them, and they faded silently, leav 
 ing no trace, but here and there the scratches of their 
 talons, and the gnawed boulders scattered where 
 they made their lair. We have entire faith in the 
 benignant influence of Truth, the sunlight of the 
 moral world, and believe that slavery, like other 
 worn-out systems, will melt gradually before it. 
 " All the earth cries out upon Truth, and the hea 
 ven blesseth it ; ill works shake and tremble at it, 
 and with it is no unrighteous thing." 
 
E PLURIBUS UNUM. 
 1861. 
 
 WE do not believe that any government no, 
 not the Rump Parliament on its last legs ever 
 showed such pitiful inadequacy as our own during 
 the past two months. Helpless beyond measure 
 in all the duties of practical statesmanship, its 
 members or their dependants have given proof of 
 remarkable energy in the single department of 
 peculation ; and there, not content with the slow 
 methods of the old-fashioned defaulter, who helped 
 himself only to what there was, they have contrived 
 to steal what there was going to be, and have pecu 
 lated in advance by a kind of official post-obit. So 
 thoroughly has the credit of the most solvent nation 
 in the world been shaken, that an administration 
 which still talks of paying a hundred millions for 
 Cuba is unable to raise a loan of five millions for 
 the current expenses of government. Nor is this 
 the worst : the moral bankruptcy at Washington is 
 more complete and disastrous than the financial, 
 and for the first time in our history the Executive 
 is suspected of complicity in a treasonable plot 
 against the very life of the nation. 
 
 Our material prosperity for nearly half a century 
 has been so unparalleled that the minds of men have 
 
46 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 become gradually more and more absorbed in 
 matters of personal concern ; and our institutions 
 have practically worked so well and so easily that 
 we have learned to trust in our luck, and to take 
 the permanence of our government for granted. 
 The country has been divided on questions of tem 
 porary policy, and the people have been drilled to 
 a wonderful discipline in the manoeuvres of party 
 tactics ; but no crisis has arisen to force upon them 
 a consideration of the fundamental principles of 
 our system, or to arouse in them a sense of national 
 unity, and make them feel that patriotism was any 
 thing more than a pleasant sentiment, half Fourth 
 of July and half Eighth of January, a feeble 
 reminiscence, rather than a living fact with a direct 
 bearing on the national well-being. We have had 
 long experience of that unmemorable felicity which 
 consists in having no history, so far as history is 
 made up of battles, revolutions, and changes of 
 dynasty ; but the present generation has never 
 been called upon to learn that deepest lesson of 
 politics which is taught by a common danger, 
 throwing the people back on their national instincts, 
 and superseding party-leaders, the peddlers of 
 chicane, with men adequate to great occasions and 
 dealers in destiny. Such a crisis is now upon us ; 
 and if the virtue of the people make up for the 
 imbecility of the Executive, as we have little doubt 
 that it will, if the public spirit of the whole coun 
 try be awakened in time by the common peril, the 
 present trial will leave the nation stronger than 
 ever, and more alive to its privileges and the duties 
 
E PLUR1BUS UNUM. 47 
 
 they imply. We shall have learned what is meant 
 by a government of laws, and that allegiance to the 
 sober will of the majority, concentrated in estab 
 lished forms and distributed by legitimate channels, 
 is all that renders democracy possible, is its only 
 conservative principle, the only thing that has 
 made and can keep us a powerful nation instead of 
 a brawling mob. . 
 
 The theory that the best government is that 
 which governs least seems to have been accepted 
 literally by Mr. Buchanan, without considering the 
 qualifications to which all general propositions are 
 subject. His course of conduct has shown up its 
 absurdity, in cases where prompt action is required, 
 as effectually as Buckingham turned into ridicule 
 the famous verse, 
 
 "My wound is great, because it is so small," 
 
 by instantly adding, 
 
 " Then it were greater, were it none at all." 
 
 Mr. Buchanan seems to have thought, that, if to 
 govern little was to govern well, then to do nothing 
 was the perfection of policy. But there is a vast 
 difference between letting well alone and allowing 
 bad to become worse by a want of firmness at the 
 outset. If Mr. Buchanan, instead of admitting 
 the right of secession, had declared it to be, as it 
 plainly is, rebellion, he would not only have re 
 ceived the unanimous support of the Free States, 
 but would have given confidence to the loyal, re 
 claimed the wavering, and disconcerted the plotters 
 of treason in the South. 
 
48 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 Either we have no government at all, or else the 
 very word implies the right, and therefore the duty, 
 in the governing power, of protecting itself from 
 destruction and its property from pillage. But for 
 Mr. Buchanan s acquiescence, the doctrine of the 
 right of secession would never for a moment have 
 bewildered the popular mind. It is simply mob- 
 law under a plausible name. Such a claim might 
 have been fairly enough urged under the old Con 
 federation ; though even then it would have been 
 summarily dealt with, in the case of a Tory colony, 
 if the necessity had arisen. But the very fact that 
 we have a National Constitution, and legal methods 
 for testing, preventing, or punishing any infringe 
 ment of its provisions, demonstrates the absurdity 
 of any such assumption of right now. When the 
 States surrendered their power to make war, did 
 they make the single exception of the United 
 States, and reserve the privilege of declaring war 
 against them at any moment ? If we are a conge 
 ries of mediaeval Italian republics, why should the 
 General Government have expended immense sums 
 in fortifying points whose strategic position is of 
 continental rather than local consequence ? Florida, 
 after having cost us nobody knows how many mil 
 lions of dollars and thousands of lives to render 
 the holding of slaves possible to her, coolly pro 
 poses to withdraw herself from the Union and take 
 with her one of the keys of the Mexican Gulf, on 
 the plea that her slave-property is rendered inse 
 cure by the Union. Louisiana, which we bought 
 and paid for to secure the mouth of the Missis- 
 
E PLURIBUS UNUM. 49 
 
 sippi, claims the right to make her soil French or 
 Spanish, and to cork up the river again, whenever 
 the whim may take her. The United States are 
 not a German Confederation, but a unitary and in 
 divisible nation, with a national life to protect, a 
 national power to maintain, and national rights to 
 defend against any and every assailant, at all haz 
 ards. Our national existence is all that gives value 
 to American citizenship. Without the respect 
 which nothing but our consolidated character could 
 inspire, we might as well be citizens of the toy- 
 republic of San Marino, for all the protection it 
 would afford us. If our claim to a national exist 
 ence was worth a seven years war to establish, it 
 is worth maintaining at any cost ; and it is daily 
 becoming more apparent that the people, so soon 
 as they find that secession means anything serious, 
 will not allow themselves to be juggled out of their 
 rights, as members of one of the great powers of 
 the earth, by a mere quibble of Constitutional in 
 terpretation. 
 
 We have been so much accustomed to the Bun 
 combe style of oratory, to hearing men offer the 
 pledge of their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor on 
 the most trivial occasions, that we are apt to allow 
 a great latitude in such matters, and only smile to 
 think how small an advance any intelligent pawn 
 broker would be likely to make on securities of this 
 description. The sporadic eloquence that breaks 
 out over the country on the eve of election, and 
 becomes a chronic disease in the two houses of 
 Congress, has so accustomed us to dissociate words 
 
50 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 and things, and to look upon strong language as 
 an evidence of weak purpose, that we attach no 
 meaning whatever to declamation. Our Southern 
 brethren have been especially given to these orgies 
 of loquacity, and have so often solemnly assured us 
 of their own courage, and of the warlike propen 
 sities, power, wealth, and general superiority of 
 that part of the universe which is so happy as to 
 be represented by them, that, whatever other useful 
 impression they have made, they insure our never 
 forgetting the proverb about the woman who talks 
 of her virtue. South Carolina, in particular, if she 
 has hitherto failed in the application of her enter 
 prise to manufacturing purposes of a more practical 
 kind, has always been able to match every yard 
 of printed cotton from the North with a yard of 
 printed fustian, the product of her own domestic 
 industry. We have thought no harm of this, so 
 long as no Act of Congress required the reading of 
 the " Congressional Globe." We submitted to the 
 general dispensation of long-windedness and short- 
 meaningness as to any other providental visitation, 
 endeavoring only to hold fast our faith in the divine 
 government of the world in the midst of so much 
 that was past understanding. But we lost sight of 
 the metaphysical truth, that, though men may fail 
 to convince others by a never so incessant repetition 
 of sonorous nonsense, they nevertheless gradually 
 persuade themselves, and impregnate their own 
 minds and characters with a belief in fallacies that 
 have been uncontradicted only because not worth 
 contradiction. Thus our Southern politicians, by 
 
E PLURIBUS UNUM. 51 
 
 dint of continued reiteration, have persuaded them 
 selves to accept their own flimsy assumptions for 
 valid statistics, and at last actually believe them 
 selves to be the enlightened gentlemen, and the 
 people of the Free States the peddlers and sneaks 
 they have so long been in the habit of fancying. 
 They have argued themselves into a kind of vague 
 faith that the wealth and power of the Republic 
 are south of Mason and Dixon s line; and the 
 Northern people have been slow in arriving at the 
 conclusion that treasonable talk would lead to trea 
 sonable action, because they could not conceive that 
 anybody should be so foolish as to think of rearing 
 an independent frame of government on so vision 
 ary a basis. Moreover, the so often recurring 
 necessity, incident to our system, of obtaining a 
 favorable verdict from the people has fostered in 
 our public men the talents and habits of jury- 
 lawyers at the expense of statesmanlike qualities ; 
 and the people have been so long wonted to look 
 upon the utterances of popular leaders as intended 
 for immediate effect and having no reference to 
 principles, that there is scarcely a prominent man 
 in the country so independent in position and so 
 clear of any suspicion of personal or party motives 
 that they can put entire faith in what he says, and 
 accept him either as the leader or the exponent of 
 their thoughts and wishes. They have hardly been 
 able to judge with certainty from the debates in 
 Congress whether secession were a real danger, or 
 only one of those political feints of which they 
 have had such frequent experience. 
 
52 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 Events have been gradually convincing them that 
 the peril was actual and near. They begin to see 
 how unwise, if nothing worse, has been the weak 
 policy of the Executive in allowing men to play at 
 Revolution till they learn to think the coarse reality 
 as easy and pretty as the vaudeville they have been 
 acting. They are fast coming to the conclusion 
 that the list of grievances put forward by the se 
 cessionists is a sham and a pretence, the veil of a 
 long-matured plot against republican institutions. 
 And it is time the traitors of the South should 
 know that the Free States are becoming every 
 day more united in sentiment and more earnest in 
 resolve, and that, so soon as they are thoroughly 
 satisfied that secession is something more than 
 empty bluster, a public spirit will be aroused that 
 will be content with no half-measures, and which 
 no Executive, however unwilling, can resist. 
 
 The country is weary of being cheated with plays 
 upon words. The United States are a nation, and 
 not a mass-meeting; theirs is a government, and 
 not a caucus, a government that was meant to be 
 capable, and is capable, of something more than the 
 helpless please don t of a village constable ; they 
 have executive and administrative officers that are 
 not mere puppet-figures to go through the motions 
 of an objectless activity, but arms and hands that 
 become supple to do the will of the people so soon 
 as that will becomes conscious and defines its pur 
 pose. It is time that we turned up our definitions 
 in some more trustworthy dictionary than that of 
 avowed disunionists and their more dangerous 
 
E PLURIBUS UNUM. 53 
 
 because more timid and cunning accomplices. 
 Rebellion smells no sweeter because it is called 
 Secession, nor does Order lose its divine prece 
 dence in human affairs because a knave may nick 
 name it Coercion. Secession means chaos, and 
 Coercion the exercise of legitimate authority. You 
 cannot dignify the one nor degrade the other by 
 any verbal charlatanism. The best testimony to 
 the virtue of coercion is the fact that no wrongdoer 
 ever thought well of it. The thief in jail, the 
 mob-leader in the hands of the police, and the 
 murderer on the drop will be unanimous in favor 
 of this new heresy of the unconstitutionality of 
 constitutions, with its Newgate Calendar of con 
 fessors, martyrs, and saints. FalstafFs famous 
 regiment would have volunteered to a man for its 
 propagation or its defence. Henceforth let every 
 unsuccessful litigant have the right to pronounce 
 the verdict of a jury sectional, and to quash all 
 proceedings and retain the property in controversy 
 by seceding from the court-room. Let the planting 
 of hemp be made penal, because it squints toward 
 coercion. Why, the first great secessionist would 
 doubtless have preferred to divide heaven peace 
 ably, would have been willing to send commis 
 sioners, must have thought Michael s proceedings 
 injudicious, and could probably even now demon 
 strate the illegality of hell-fire to any five-year-old 
 imp of average education and intelligence. What 
 a fine world we should have, if we could only come 
 quietly together in convention, and declare by 
 unanimous resolution, or even by a two-thirds 
 
54 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 vote, that edge-tools should hereafter cut every 
 body s fingers but his that played with them; 
 that, when two men ride on one horse, the hindmost 
 shall always sit in front; and that, when a man 
 tries to thrust his partner out of bed and gets 
 kicked out himself, he shall be deemed to have 
 established his title to an equitable division, and 
 the bed shall be thenceforth his as of right, with 
 out detriment to the other s privilege in the floor ! 
 
 If secession be a right, then the moment of its 
 exercise is wholly optional with those possessing it. 
 Suppose, on the eve of a war with England, Michi 
 gan should vote herself out of the Union and de 
 clare herself annexed to Canada, what kind of a 
 reception would her commissioners be likely to 
 meet in Washington, and what scruples should we 
 feel about coercion ? Or, to take a case precisely 
 parallel to that of South Carolina, suppose that 
 Utah, after getting herself admitted to the Union, 
 should resume her sovereignty, as it is pleasantly 
 called, and block our path to the Pacific, under the 
 pretence that she did not consider her institutions 
 safe while the other States entertained such un- 
 scriptural prejudices against her special weakness 
 in the patriarchal line. Is the only result of our 
 admitting a Territory on Monday to be the giving 
 it a right to steal itself and go out again on Tues 
 day? Or do only the original thirteen States possess 
 this precious privilege of suicide ? We shall need 
 something like a Fugitive Slave Law for runaway 
 republics, and must get a provision inserted in 
 our treaties with foreign powers, that they shall 
 
E PLURIBUS UNUM. 55 
 
 help us catch any delinquent who may take refuge 
 with them, as South Carolina has been trying to 
 do with England and France. It does not matter 
 to the argument, except so far as the good taste of 
 the proceeding is concerned, at what particular 
 time a State may make her territory foreign, thus 
 opening one gate of our national defences and of 
 fering a bridge to invasion. The danger of the 
 thing is in her making her territory foreign under 
 any circumstances ; and it is a danger which the 
 government must prevent, if only for self-preser 
 vation. Within the limits of the constitution two 
 sovereignties cannot exist ; and yet what practical 
 odds does it make, if a State may become sovereign 
 by simply declaring herself so? The legitimate 
 consequence of secession is, not that a State be 
 comes sovereign, but that, so far as the general 
 government is concerned, she has outlawed herself, 
 nullified her own existence as a State, and become 
 an aggregate of riotous men who resist the execu 
 tion of the laws. 
 
 We are told that coercion will be civil war ; \ 
 and so is a mob civil war, till it is put down. In 
 the present case, the only coercion called for is the 
 protection of the public property, and the collec 
 tion of the federal revenues. If it be necessary to 
 send troops to do this, they will not be sectional, as 
 it is the fashion nowadays to call people who insist 
 on their own rights and the maintenance of the 
 laws, but federal troops, representing the will and 
 power of the whole Confederacy. A danger is 
 always great so long as we are afraid of it; and 
 
56 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 mischief like that now gathering head in South 
 Carolina may soon become a danger, if not swiftly 
 dealt with. Mr. Buchanan seems altogether too 
 wholesale a disciple of the laissez-faire doctrine, 
 and has allowed activity in mischief the same im 
 munity from interference which is true policy only 
 in regard to enterprise wisely and profitably di 
 rected. He has been naturally reluctant to employ 
 force, but has overlooked the difference between in 
 decision and moderation, forgetting the lesson of all 
 experience, that firmness in the beginning saves the 
 need of force in the end, and that forcible mea 
 sures applied too late may be made to seem violent 
 ones, and thus excite a mistaken sympathy with 
 the sufferers by their own misdoing. The feeling 
 of the country has been unmistakably expressed in 
 regard to Major Anderson, and that not merely 
 because he showed prudence and courage, but be 
 cause he was the first man holding a position of 
 trust who did his duty to the nation. Public sen 
 timent unmistakably demands that, in the case of 
 Anarchy vs. America, the cause of the defendant 
 shall not be suffered to go by default. The pro 
 ceedings in South Carolina, parodying the sublime 
 initiative of our own Revolution with a Declaration 
 of Independence that hangs the franchise of hu 
 man nature on the kink of a hair, and substitutes 
 for the visionary right of all men to the pursuit 
 of happiness the more practical privilege of some 
 men to pursue their own negro, these proceed 
 ings would be merely ludicrous, were it not for the 
 danger that the men engaged in them may so far 
 
E PLURIBUS UNUM. 57 
 
 commit themselves as to find the inconsistency of 
 a return to prudence too galling, and to prefer 
 the safety of their pride to that of their country. 
 
 It cannot be too distinctly stated or too often re 
 peated that the discontent of South Carolina is not 
 one to be allayed by any concessions which the 
 Free States can make with dignity or even safety. 
 It is something more radical and of longer stand 
 ing than distrust of the motives or probable policy 
 of the Republican party. It is neither more nor 
 less than a disbelief in the very principles on which 
 our government is founded. So long as they prac 
 tically retained the government of the country, and 
 could use its power and patronage to their own 
 advantage, the plotters were willing to wait ; but 
 the moment they lost that control, by the break 
 ing up of the Democratic party, and saw that their 
 chance of ever regaining it was hopeless, they 
 declared openly the principles on which they have 
 all along been secretly acting. Denying the con 
 stitutionality of special protection to any other 
 species of property or branch of industry, and in 
 1832 threatening to break up the Union unless 
 their theory of the Constitution in this respect were 
 admitted, they went into the late Presidential con 
 test with a claim for extraordinary protection to 
 a certain kind of property already the only one 
 endowed with special privileges and immunities. 
 Defeated overwhelmingly before the people, they 
 now question the right of the majority to govern, 
 except on their terms, and threaten violence in the 
 hope of extorting from the fears of the Free States 
 
58 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 what they failed to obtain from their conscience 
 and settled convictions of duty. Their quarrel is 
 not with the Eepublican party, but with the theory 
 of Democracy. 
 
 The South Carolina politicians have hitherto 
 shown themselves adroit managers, shrewd in de 
 tecting and profiting by the weaknesses of men ; 
 but their experience has not been of a kind to give 
 them practical wisdom in that vastly more impor 
 tant part of government which depends for success 
 on common sense and business habits. The mem 
 bers of the South Carolina Convention have prob 
 ably less knowledge of political economy than any 
 single average Northern merchant whose success 
 depends on an intimate knowledge of the laws of 
 trade and the world-wide contingencies of profit 
 and loss. Such a man would tell them, as the 
 result of invariable experience, that the prosperity 
 of no community was so precarious as that of one 
 whose very existence was dependent on a single 
 agricultural product. What divinity hedges cot 
 ton, that competition may not touch it, that 
 some disease, like that of the potato and the vine, 
 may not bring it to beggary in a single year, and 
 cure the overweening conceit of prosperity with 
 the sharp medicine of Ireland and Madeira ? But 
 these South Carolina economists are better at va 
 poring than at calculation. They will find to their 
 cost that the figures of statistics have little mercy 
 for the figures of speech, which are so powerful 
 in raising enthusiasm and so helpless in raising 
 money. The eating of one s own words, as they 
 
E PLURIBUS UNUM. 59 
 
 must do, sooner or later, is neither agreeable nor 
 nutritious; but it is better to do it before there 
 is nothing else left to eat. The secessionists are 
 strong in declamation, but they are weak in the 
 multiplication-table and the ledger. They have 
 no notion of any sort of logical connection between 
 treason and taxes. It is all very fine signing De 
 clarations of Independence, and one may thus be 
 come a kind of panic-price hero for a week or two, 
 even rising to the effigial martyrdom of the illus 
 trated press; but these gentlemen seem to have 
 forgotten that, if their precious document should 
 lead to anything serious, they have been signing 
 promises to pay for the State of South Carolina to 
 an enormous amount. It is probably far short of 
 the truth to say that the taxes of an autonomous 
 palmetto republic would be three times what they 
 are now. To speak of nothing else, there must be 
 a military force kept constantly on foot ; and the 
 ministers of King Cotton will find that the charge 
 made by a standing army on the finances of the 
 new empire is likely to be far more serious and 
 damaging than can be compensated by the glory of 
 a great many such " spirited charges " as that by 
 which Colonel Pettigrew and his gallant rifles took 
 Fort Pinckney, with its garrison of one engineer 
 officer and its armament of no guns. Soldiers are 
 the most costly of all toys or tools. The outgo 
 for the army of the Pope, never amounting to ten 
 thousand effective men, in the cheapest country in 
 the world, has been half a million of dollars a 
 month. Under the present system, it needs no 
 
60 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 argument to show that the non-slaveholding States, 
 with a free population considerably more than 
 double that of the slaveholding States, and with 
 much more generally distributed wealth and oppor 
 tunities of spending, pay far more than the propor 
 tion predicable on mere preponderance in numbers 
 of the expenses of a government supported mainly 
 by a tariff on importations. And it is not the 
 burden of this difference merely that the new 
 Cotton Republic must assume. They will need as 
 large, probably a larger, army and navy than that 
 of the present Union ; as numerous a diplomatic 
 establishment ; a postal system whose large yearly 
 deficit they must bear themselves ; and they must 
 assume the main charges of the Indian Bureau. If 
 they adopt free trade, they will alienate the Border 
 Slave States, and even Louisiana ; if a system of 
 customs, they have cut themselves off from the 
 chief consumers of foreign goods. One of the 
 calculations of the Southern conspirators is to 
 render the Free States tributary to their new re 
 public by adopting free trade and smuggling their 
 imported goods across the border. But this is all 
 moonshine ; for, even if smuggling could not be 
 prevented as easily as it now is from the British 
 Provinces, how long would it be before the North 
 would adapt its tariff to the new order of things ? 
 And thus thrown back upon direct taxation, how 
 many years would it take to open the eyes of the 
 poorer classes of Secessia to the hardship of their 
 position and its causes ? Their ignorance has been 
 trifled with by men who cover treasonable designs 
 
E PLURIBUS UNUM. 61 
 
 with a pretence of local patriotism. Neither they 
 nor their misleaders have any true conception of 
 the people of the Free States, of those "white 
 slaves " who in Massachusetts alone have a deposit 
 in the Savings Banks whose yearly interest would 
 pay seven times over the four hundred thousand 
 dollars which South Carolina cannot raise. 
 
 But even if we leave other practical difficulties 
 out of sight, what chance of stability is there for a 
 confederacy whose very foundation is the principle 
 that any member of it may withdraw at the first 
 discontent ? If they could contrive to establish a 
 free trade treaty with their chief customer, England, 
 would she consent to gratify Louisiana with an ex 
 ception in favor of sugar ? Some of the leaders of 
 the secession movement have already become aware 
 of this difficulty, and accordingly propose the abo 
 lition of all State lines, the first step toward a 
 military despotism ; for, if our present system have 
 one advantage greater than another, it is the neu 
 tralization of numberless individual ambitions by 
 adequate opportunities of provincial distinction. 
 Even now the merits of the Napoleonic system are 
 put forward by some of the theorists of Alabama 
 and Mississippi, who doubtless have as good a 
 stomach to be emperors as ever Bottom had to a 
 bottle of hay, when his head was temporarily trans 
 formed to the likeness of theirs, and who, were 
 they subjects of the government that looks so nice 
 across the Atlantic, would, ere this, have been on 
 their way to Cayenne, a spot where such red-pep 
 pery temperaments would find themselves at home. 
 
62 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 The absurdities with which the telegraphic 
 column of the newspapers has been daily crowded, 
 since the vagaries of South Carolina finally settled 
 down into unmistakable insanity, would give us 
 but a poor opinion of the general intelligence of the 
 country, did we not know that they were due to the 
 necessities of " Our Own Correspondent." At one 
 time, it is Fort Sumter that is to be bombarded 
 with floating batteries mounted on rafts behind 
 a rampart of cotton-bales ; at another, it is Mr. 
 Barrett, Mayor of Washington, announcing his in 
 tention that the President-elect shall be inaugu 
 rated, or Mr. Buchanan declaring that he shall 
 cheerfully assent to it. Indeed! and who gave 
 them any choice in the matter ? Yesterday, it was 
 General Scott who would not abandon the flag 
 which he had illustrated with the devotion of a life 
 time ; to-day, it is General Harney or Commodore 
 Kearney who has concluded to be true to the coun 
 try whose livery he has worn and whose bread he 
 has eaten for half a century ; to-morrow, it will 
 be Ensign Stebbins who has been magnanimous 
 enough not to throw up his commission. What are 
 we to make of the extraordinary confusion of ideas 
 which such things indicate? In what other coun 
 try would it be considered creditable to an officer 
 that he merely did not turn traitor at the first op 
 portunity? There can be no doubt of the honor 
 both of the army and navy, and of their loyalty to 
 their country. They will do their duty, if we do 
 ours in saving them a country to which they can 
 be loyal. 
 
E PLURIBUS UNUM. 63 
 
 We have been so long habituated to a kind of 
 local independence in the management of our affairs, 
 and the central government has fortunately had so 
 little occasion for making itself felt at home and in 
 the domestic concerns of the States, that the idea of 
 its relation to us as a power, except for protection 
 from without, has gradually become vague and 
 alien to our ordinary habits of thought. We have 
 so long heard the principle admitted, and seen it 
 acted on with advantage to the general weal, that 
 the people are sovereign in their own affairs, that 
 we must recover our presence of mind before we 
 see the fallacy of the assumption, that the people, 
 or a bare majority of them, in a single State, can 
 exercise their right of sovereignty as against the 
 will of the nation legitimately expressed. When 
 such a contingency arises, it is for a moment diffi 
 cult to get rid of our habitual associations, and to 
 feel that we are not a mere partnership, dissolvable 
 whether by mutual consent or on the demand of one 
 or more of its members, but a nation, which can 
 never abdicate its right, and can never surrender it 
 while virtue enough is left in the people to make 
 it worth retaining. It would seem to be the will 
 of God that from time to time the manhood of 
 nations, like that of individuals, should be tried by 
 great dangers or by great opportunities. If the 
 manhood be here, it makes the great opportunity 
 out of the great danger ; if it be not there, then 
 the great danger out of the great opportunity. The 
 occasion is offered us now of trying whether a con 
 scious nationality and a timely concentration of the 
 
64 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 popular will for its maintenance be possible in a 
 democracy, or whether it is only despotisms that are 
 capable of the sudden and selfish energy of pro 
 tecting themselves from destruction. 
 
 The Kepublican party has thus far borne itself 
 with firmness and moderation, and the great body 
 of the Democratic party in the Free States is 
 gradually being forced into an alliance with it. 
 Let us not be misled by any sophisms about con 
 ciliation and compromise. Discontented citizens 
 may be conciliated and compromised with, but 
 never open rebels with arms in their hands. If 
 there be any concessions which justice may de 
 mand on the one hand and honor make on the 
 other, let us try if we can adjust them with the 
 Border Slave States ; but a government has al 
 ready signed its own death-warrant, when it con 
 sents to make terms with law-breakers. First re 
 establish the supremacy of order, and then it will 
 be time to discuss terms ; but do not call it a com 
 promise, when you give up your purse with a pistol 
 at your head. This is no time for sentimentalisms 
 about the empty chair at the national hearth ; all 
 the chairs would be empty soon enough, if one of 
 the children is to amuse itself with setting the 
 house on fire, whenever it can find a match. Since 
 the election of Mr. Lincoln, not one of the argu 
 ments has lost its force, not a cipher of the sta 
 tistics has been proved mistaken, on which the 
 judgment of the people was made up. Nobody 
 proposes, or has proposed, to interfere with any 
 existing rights of property ; the majority have not 
 
E PLURIBUS UNUM. 65 
 
 assumed to decide upon any question of the right 
 eousness or policy of certain social arrangements 
 existing in any part of the Confederacy ; they have 
 not undertaken to constitute themselves the con 
 science of their neighbors ; they have simply en 
 deavored to do their duty to their own posterity, 
 and to protect them from a system which, as am 
 ple experience has shown, and that of our present 
 difficulty were enough to show, fosters a sense of 
 irresponsibleness to all obligation in the governing 
 class, and in the governed an ignorance and a 
 prejudice which may be misled at any moment 
 to the peril of the whole country. 
 
 But the present question is one altogether 
 transcending all limits of party and all theories 
 of party policy. It is a question of national ex 
 istence ; it is a question whether Americans shall 
 govern America, or whether a disappointed clique 
 shall nullify all government now, and render a sta 
 ble government difficult hereafter ; it is a ques 
 tion, not whether we shall have civil war under 
 certain contingencies, but whether we shall prevent 
 it under any. It is idle, and worse than idle, to 
 talk about Central Republics that can never be 
 formed. We want neither Central Republics nor 
 Northern Republics, but our own Republic and that 
 of our fathers, destined one day to gather the whole 
 continent under a flag that shall be the most au 
 gust in the world. Having once known what it was 
 to be members of a grand and peaceful constella 
 tion, we shall not believe, without further proof, 
 that the laws of our gravitation are to be abol- 
 
66 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 ished, and we flung forth into chaos, a hurlyburly 
 of jostling and splintering stars, whenever Kobert 
 Toombs or Kobert Rhett, or any other Bob of the 
 secession kite, may give a flirt of self-importance. 
 The first and greatest benefit of government is 
 that it keeps the peace, that it insures every man 
 his right, and not only that, but the permanence 
 of it. In order to this, its first requisite is stabil 
 ity ; and this once firmly settled, the greater the 
 extent of conterminous territory that can be sub 
 jected to one system and one language and in 
 spired by one patriotism, the better. That there 
 should be some diversity of interests is perhaps 
 an advantage, since the necessity of legislating 
 equitably for all gives legislation its needful 
 safeguards of caution and largeness of view. A 
 single empire embracing the whole world, and 
 controlling, without extinguishing, local organi 
 zations and nationalities, has been not only the 
 dream of conquerors, but the ideal of specula 
 tive philanthropists. Our own dominion is of 
 such extent and power, that it may, so far as 
 this continent is concerned, be looked upon as 
 something like an approach to the realization of 
 such an ideal. But for slavery, it might have 
 succeeded in realizing it; and in spite of sla 
 very, it may. One language, one law, one citizen 
 ship over thousands of miles, and a government 
 on the whole so good that we seem to have for 
 gotten what government means, these are things 
 not to be spoken of with levity, privileges not to 
 be surrendered without a struggle. And yet while 
 
E PLURIBUS UNUM. 67 
 
 Germany and Italy, taught by the bloody and 
 bitter and servile experience of centuries, are 
 striving toward unity as the blessing above all 
 others desirable, we are to allow a Union, that 
 for almost eighty years has been the source and 
 the safeguard of incalculable advantages, to be 
 shattered by the caprice of a rabble that has out 
 run the intention of its leaders, while we are mak 
 ing up our minds what coercion means ! Ask 
 the first constable, and he will tell you that it is 
 the force necessary for executing the laws. To 
 avoid the danger of what men who have seized 
 upon forts, arsenals, and other property of the 
 United States, and continue to hold them by 
 military force, may choose to call civil war, we 
 are allowing a state of things to gather head which 
 will make real civil war the occupation of the 
 whole country for years to come, and establish it 
 as a permanent institution. There is no such an 
 tipathy between the North and the South as men 
 ambitious of a consideration in the new republic, 
 which their talents and character have failed to 
 secure them in the old, would fain call into ex 
 istence by asserting that it exists. The misunder 
 standing and dislike between them is not so great 
 as they were within living memory between Eng 
 land and Scotland, as they are now between Eng 
 land and Ireland. There is no difference of race, 
 language, or religion. Yet, after a dissatisfaction of 
 near a century and two rebellions, there is no 
 part of the British dominion more loyal than Scot 
 land, no British subjects who would be more 
 
68 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 loath to part with the substantial advantages of 
 their imperial connection than the Scotch ; and 
 even in Ireland, after a longer and more deadly 
 feud, there is no sane man who would consent to 
 see his country irrevocably cut off from power and 
 consideration to obtain an independence which 
 would be nothing but Donnybrook Fair multiplied 
 by every city, town, and village in the island. The 
 same considerations of policy and advantage which 
 render the union of Scotland and Ireland with 
 England a necessity apply with even more force 
 to the several States of our Union. To let one, 
 or two, or half a dozen of them break away in 
 a freak of anger or unjust suspicion, or, still worse, 
 from mistaken notions of sectional advantage, 
 would be to fail in our duty to ourselves and our 
 our country, would be a fatal blindness to the 
 lessons which immemorial history has been tra 
 cing on the earth s surface, either with the ben 
 eficent furrow of the plough, or, when that was 
 unheeded, the fruitless gash of the cannon ball. 
 
 When we speak of coercion, we do not mean 
 violence, but only the assertion of constituted and 
 acknowledged authority. Even if seceding States 
 could be conquered back again, they would not 
 be worth the conquest. We ask only for the as 
 sertion of a principle which shall give the friends 
 of order in the discontented quarters a hope to 
 rally round, and the assurance of the support they 
 have a right to expect. There is probably a ma 
 jority, and certainly a powerful minority, in the 
 seceding States, who are . loyal to the Union ; and 
 
E PLURIBUS UNUM. 69 
 
 these should have that support which the pres 
 tige of the General Government can alone give 
 them. It is not to the North nor to the Repub 
 lican party that the malcontents are called on 
 to submit, but to the laws and to the benign in 
 tentions of the Constitution, as they were under 
 stood by its framers. What the country wants is 
 a permanent settlement; and it has learned, by 
 repeated trial, that compromise is not a cement, 
 but a wedge. The Government did not hesi 
 tate to protect the doubtful right of property of 
 a Virginian in Anthony Burns by the exercise 
 of coercion, and the loyalty of Massachusetts was 
 such that her own militia could be used to en 
 force an obligation abhorrent, and, as there is 
 reason to believe, made purposely abhorrent, to 
 her dearest convictions and most venerable tradi 
 tions ; and yet the same Government tampers with 
 armed treason, and lets / dare not wait upon / 
 would, when it is a question of protecting the ac 
 knowledged property of the Union, and of sus 
 taining, nay, preserving even, a gallant officer 
 whose only fault is that he has been too true to 
 his flag. While we write, the newspapers bring 
 us the correspondence between Mr. Buchanan 
 and the South Carolina " Commissioners ; " and 
 surely never did a government stoop so low as 
 ours has done, not only in consenting to receive 
 these ambassadors from Nowhere, but in suggest 
 ing that a soldier deserves court-martial who has 
 done all he could to maintain himself in a for 
 lorn hope, with rebellion in his front and trea- 
 
70 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 chery in his rear. Our Revolutionary heroes had 
 old-fashioned notions about rebels, suitable to the 
 straightforward times in which they lived, times 
 when blood was as freely shed to secure our na 
 tional existence as milk-and-water is now to de 
 stroy it. Mr. Buchanan might have profited by 
 the example of men who knew nothing of the 
 modern arts of Constitutional interpretation, but 
 saw clearly the distinction between right and 
 wrong. When a party of the Shays rebels came 
 to the house of General Pomeroy, in Northamp 
 ton, and asked if he could accommodate them, 
 the old soldier, seeing the green sprigs in their 
 hats, the badges of their treason, shouted to his 
 son, " Fetch me my hanger, and I 11 accommo 
 date the scoundrels ! " General Jackson, we sus 
 pect, would have accommodated rebel commis 
 sioners in the same peremptory style. 
 
 While our Government, like Giles in the old 
 rhyme, is wondering whether it is a government or 
 not, emissaries of treason are cunningly working 
 upon the fears and passions of the Border States, 
 whose true interests are infinitely more on the side 
 of the Union than of slavery. They are luring 
 the ambitious with visionary promises of Southern 
 grandeur and prosperity, and deceiving the igno 
 rant into the belief that the principles and practice 
 of the Free States were truly represented by John 
 Brown. All this might have been prevented, had 
 Mr. Buchanan in his Message thought of the inter 
 ests of his country instead of those of his party. 
 It is not too late to check and neutralize it now. 
 
E PLURIBUS UNUM. 71 
 
 A decisively national and patriotic policy is all 
 that can prevent excited men from involving them 
 selves so deeply that they will find " returning as 
 tedious as go o er," and be more afraid of coward 
 ice than of consequences. 
 
 Slavery is no longer the matter in debate, and 
 we must beware of being led off upon that side- 
 issue. The matter now in hand is the reestablish- 
 ment of order, the reaffirmation of national unity, 
 and the settling once for all whether there can be 
 such a thing as a government without the right 
 to use its power in self-defence. The Republican 
 party has done all it could lawfully do in limiting 
 slavery once more to the States in which it exists, 
 and in relieving the Free States from forced com 
 plicity with an odious system. They can be pa 
 tient, as Providence is often patient, till natural 
 causes work that conviction which conscience has 
 been unable to effect. They believe that the vio 
 lent abolition of slavery, which would be sure to 
 follow sooner or later the disruption of our Con 
 federacy, would not compensate for the evil that 
 would be entailed upon both races by the abolition 
 of our nationality and the bloody confusion that 
 would follow it. More than this, they believe that 
 there can be no permanent settlement except in the 
 definite establishment of the principle, that this 
 Government, like all others, rests upon the everlast 
 ing foundations of just Authority, that that au 
 thority, once delegated by the people, becomes a 
 common stock of Power to be wielded for the com 
 mon protection, and from which no minority or 
 
72 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 majority of partners can withdraw its contribution 
 under any conditions, that this power is what 
 makes us a nation, and implies a corresponding duty 
 of submission, or, if that be refused, then a necessary 
 right of self-vindication. We are citizens, when we 
 make laws ; we become subjects, when we attempt 
 to break them after they are made. Lynch-law 
 maybe better than no law in new and half -organized 
 communities, but we cannot tolerate its application 
 in the affairs of government. The necessity of sup 
 pressing rebellion by force may be a terrible one, 
 but its consequences, whatever they may be, do not 
 weigh a feather in comparison with those that 
 would follow from admitting the principle that 
 there is no social compact binding on any body of 
 men too numerous to be arrested by a United 
 States marshal. 
 
 As we are writing these sentences, the news 
 comes to us that South Carolina has taken the in 
 itiative, and chosen the arbitrament of war. She 
 has done it because her position was desperate, and 
 because she hoped thereby to unite the Cotton 
 States by a complicity in blood, as they are already 
 committed by a unanimity in bravado. Major 
 Anderson deserves more than ever the thanks of 
 his country for his wise forbearance. The foxes 
 in Charleston, who have already lost their tails in 
 the trap of Secession, wished to throw upon him 
 the responsibility of that second blow which begins 
 a quarrel, and the silence of his guns has balked 
 them. Nothing would have pleased them so much 
 as to have one of his thirty-two-pound shot give a 
 
E PLURIBUS UNUM. 73 
 
 taste of real war to the boys who are playing sol 
 dier at Morris s Island. But he has shown the 
 discretion of a brave man. South Carolina will 
 soon learn how much she has undervalued the peo 
 ple of the Free States. Because they prefer law 
 to bowie-knives and revolvers, she has too lightly 
 reckoned on their caution and timidity. She will 
 find that, though slow to kindle, they are as slow 
 to yield, and that they are willing to risk their 
 lives for the defence of law, though not for the 
 breach of it. They are beginning to question the 
 value of a peace that is forced on them at the point 
 of the bayonet, and is to be obtained only by an 
 abandonment of rights and duties. 
 
 When we speak of the courage and power of the 
 Free States, we do not wish to be understood as 
 descending to the vulgar level of meeting brag 
 with brag. We speak of them only as among the 
 elements to be gravely considered by the fanatics 
 who may render it necessary for those who value 
 the continued existence of this Confederacy as it 
 deserves to be valued to kindle a back-fire, and to 
 use the desperate means which God has put into 
 their hands to be employed in the last extremity of 
 free institutions. And when we use the term co 
 ercion, nothing is farther from our thoughts than 
 the carrying of blood and fire among those whom 
 we still consider our brethren of South Carolina. 
 These civilized communities of ours have interests 
 too serious to be risked on a childish wager of 
 courage, a quality that can always be bought 
 cheaper than day-labor on a railway-embankment. 
 
74 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 We wish to see the Government strong enough for 
 the maintenance of law, and for the protection, if 
 need be, of the unfortunate Governor Pickens 
 from the anarchy he has allowed himself to be 
 made a tool of by evoking. Let the power of the 
 Union be used for any other purpose than that of 
 shutting and barring the door against the return 
 of misguided men to their allegiance. At the same 
 time we think legitimate and responsible force 
 prudently exerted safer than the submission, with 
 out a struggle, to unlawful and irresponsible vio 
 lence. 
 
 Peace is the greatest of blessings, when it is won 
 and kept by manhood and wisdom ; but it is a 
 blessing that will not long be the housemate of 
 cowardice. It is God alone who is powerful 
 enough to let His authority slumber ; it is only His 
 laws that are strong enough to protect and avenge 
 themselves. Every human government is bound 
 to make its laws so far resemble His that they 
 shall be uniform, certain, and unquestionable in 
 their operation ; and this it can do only by a timely 
 show of power, and by an appeal to that authority 
 which is of divine right, inasmuch as its office is to 
 maintain that order which is the single attribute of 
 the Infinite Reason that we can clearly apprehend 
 and of which we have hourly example. 
 
THE PICKENS-AND-STEALIN S 
 EEBELLION. 
 
 1861. 
 
 HAD any one ventured to prophesy on the Fourth 
 of March that .the immediate prospect of Civil 
 War would be hailed by the people of the Free 
 States with a unanimous shout of enthusiasm, he 
 would have been thought a madman. Yet the 
 prophecy would have been verified by what we now 
 see and hear in every city, town, and hamlet from 
 Maine to Kansas. With the advantage of three 
 months active connivance in the cabinet of Mr. 
 Buchanan, with an empty treasury at Washington, 
 and that reluctance to assume responsibility and to 
 inaugurate a decided policy, the common vice of 
 our politicians, who endeavor to divine and to 
 follow popular sentiment rather than to lead it, it 
 seemed as if Disunion were inevitable, and the 
 only open question were the line of separation. So 
 assured seemed the event that English journalists 
 moralized gravely on the inherent weakness of 
 Democracy. While the leaders of the Southern 
 Eebellion did not dare to expose their treason 
 to the risk of a popular vote in any one of the 
 seceding States, The Saturday Review, one of 
 the ablest of British journals, solemnly warned its 
 
76 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 countrymen to learn by our example the dangers 
 of an extended suffrage. 
 
 Meanwhile, the conduct of the people of the 
 Free States, during all these trying and perilous 
 months, had proved, if it proved anything, the 
 essential conservatism of a population in which 
 every grown man has a direct interest in the sta 
 bility of the national government. So abstinent 
 are they by habit and principle from any abnormal 
 intervention with the machine of administration, 
 so almost superstitious in adherence to constitutional 
 forms, as to be for a moment staggered by the claim 
 to a right of secession set up by all the Cotton 
 States, admitted by the Border Slave States, which 
 had the effrontery to deliberate between their plain 
 allegiance and their supposed interest, and but 
 feebly denied by the Administration then in power. 
 The usual panacea of palaver was tried ; Congress 
 did its best to add to the general confusion of 
 thought ; and, as if that were not enough, a Con 
 vention of Notables was called simultaneously to 
 thresh the straw of debate anew, and to convince 
 thoughtful persons that men do not grow wiser as 
 they grow older. So in the two Congresses the 
 notables talked, in the one those who ought to 
 be shelved, in the other those who were shelved 
 already, while those who were too thoroughly 
 shelved for a seat in either addressed Great Union 
 Meetings at home. Not a man of them but had a 
 compromise in his pocket, adhesive as Spalding s 
 glue, warranted to stick the shattered Confederacy 
 together so firmly that, if it ever broke again, it 
 
PICKENS-AND-STEALIN S-REBELLION. 11 
 
 must be in a new place, which was a great con 
 solation. If these gentlemen gave nothing very 
 valuable to the people of the Free States, they 
 were giving the Secessionists what was of inesti 
 mable value to them, Time. The latter went on 
 seizing forts, navy-yards, and deposits of Federal 
 money, erecting batteries, and raising and arming 
 men at their leisure ; above all, they acquired a 
 prestige, and accustomed men s minds to the thought 
 of disunion, not only as possible, but actual. They 
 began to grow insolent, and, while compelling 
 absolute submission to their rebellious usurpation 
 at home, decried any exercise of legitimate autho 
 rity on the part of the General Government as 
 Coercion, a new term, by which it was sought 
 to be established as a principle of constitutional 
 law, that it is always the Northern bull that has 
 gored the Southern ox. 
 
 During all this time, the Border Slave States, 
 and especially Virginia, were playing a part at 
 once cowardly and selfish. They assumed the right 
 to stand neutral between the government and re 
 bellion, to contract a kind of morganatic marriage 
 with Treason, by which they could enjoy the plea 
 sant sin without the tedious responsibility, and to 
 be traitors in everything but the vulgar contingency 
 of hemp. Doubtless the aim of the political man 
 agers in these States was to keep the North amused 
 with schemes of arbitration, reconstruction, and 
 whatever other fine words would serve the purpose 
 of hiding the real issue, till the new government 
 of Secessia should have so far consolidated itself 
 
78 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 as to be able to demand with some show of reason 
 a recognition from foreign powers, and to render 
 it politic for the United States to consent to peace 
 able separation. They counted on the self-interest 
 of England arid the supineness of the North. As 
 to the former, they were not wholly without justi 
 fication, for nearly all the English discussions 
 of the "American Crisis" which we have seen 
 have shown far more of the shop-keeping spirit 
 than of interest in the maintenance of free institu 
 tions ; but in regard to the latter they made the 
 fatal mistake of believing our Buchanans, Gush- 
 ings, and Touceys to be representative men. They 
 were not aware how utterly the Democratic party 
 had divorced itself from the moral sense of the 
 Free States, nor had they any conception of the 
 tremendous recoil of which the long-repressed con 
 victions, traditions, and instincts of a people are 
 capable. 
 
 Never was a nation so in want of a leader; 
 never was 1 it more plain that, without a head, the 
 people "bluster abroad as beasts," with plenty of 
 the iron of purpose, but purpose without cohe 
 rence, and with no cunning smith of circumstance 
 to edge it with plan and helve it with direction. 
 What the country was waiting for showed itself 
 in the universal thrill of satisfaction when Major 
 Anderson took the extraordinary responsibility of 
 doing his duty. But such was the general uncer 
 tainty, so doubtful seemed the loyalty of the 
 Democratic party as represented by its spokesmen 
 at the North, so irresolute was the tone of many 
 
PICKENS-AND-STEALIN S REBELLION. 79 
 
 Kepublican leaders and journals, that a powerful 
 and wealthy community of twenty millions of 
 people gave a sigh of relief when they had been 
 permitted to install the Chief Magistrate of their 
 choice in their own National Capital. Even after 
 the inauguration of Mr. Lincoln, it was confidently 
 announced that Jefferson Davis, the Burr of the 
 Southern conspiracy, would be in Washington be 
 fore the month was out ; and so great was the 
 Northern despondency that the chances of such 
 an event were seriously discussed. While the 
 nation was falling to pieces, there were newspapers 
 and " distinguished statesmen " of the party so 
 lately and so long in power base enough to be 
 willing to make political capital out of the common 
 danger, and to lose their country, if they could only 
 find their profit. There was even one man found in 
 Massachusetts, who, measuring the moral standard 
 of his party by his own, had the unhappy audacity 
 to declare publicly that there were friends enough 
 of the South in his native State to prevent the 
 march of any troops thence to sustain that Consti 
 tution to which he had sworn fealty in Heaven 
 knows how many offices, the rewards of almost as 
 many turnings of his political coat. There was 
 one journal in New York which had the insolence 
 to speak of President Davis and Mister Lincoln 
 in the same paragraph. No wonder the "dirt- 
 eaters " of the Carolinas could be taught to despise 
 a race among whom creatures might be found to 
 do that by choice which they themselves were 
 driven to do by misery. 
 
80 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 Thus far the Secessionists had the game all their 
 own way, for their dice were loaded with Northern 
 lead. They framed their sham constitution, ap 
 pointed themselves to their sham offices, issued 
 their sham commissions, endeavored to bribe Eng 
 land with a sham offer of low duties and Virginia 
 with a sham prohibition of the slave-trade, adver 
 tised their proposals for a sham loan which was to 
 be taken up under intimidation, and levied real 
 taxes on the people in the name of the people whom 
 they had never allowed to vote directly on their 
 enormous swindle. With money stolen from the 
 Government, they raised troops whom they equipped 
 with stolen arms, and beleaguered national for 
 tresses with cannon stolen from national arsenals. 
 They sent out secret agents to Europe, they had 
 their secret allies in the Free States, their con 
 ventions transacted all important business in secret 
 session ; there was but one exception to the 
 shrinking delicacy becoming a maiden government, 
 and that was the openness of the stealing. We 
 had always thought a high sense of personal honor 
 an essential element of chivalry ; but among the 
 Romanic races, by which, as the wonderful ethnol 
 ogist of De Bow s Review tells us, the Southern 
 States where settled, and from which they derive a 
 close entail of chivalric characteristics, to the ex 
 clusion of the vulgar Saxons of the North, such is 
 by no means the case. For the first time in his 
 tory the deliberate treachery of a general is deemed 
 worthy of a civic ovation, and Virginia has the 
 honor of being the first State claiming to be civil- 
 
PICKENS-AND-STEALIN S REBELLION. 81 
 
 ized that has decreed the honors of a triumph to a 
 cabinet officer who had contrived to gild a treason 
 that did not endanger his life with a peculation 
 that could not further damage his reputation. Re 
 bellion, even in a bad cause, may have its romantic 
 side ; treason, which had not been such but for 
 being 011 the losing side, may challenge admiration ; 
 but nothing can sweeten larceny or disinfect per 
 jury. A rebellion inaugurated with theft, and 
 which has effected its entry into national fortresses, 
 not over broken walls, but by breaches of trust, 
 should take Jonathan Wild for its patron saint, 
 with the run of Mr. Buchanan s cabinet for a choice 
 of sponsors, godfathers we should not dare to 
 call them. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln s Inaugural Speech was of the 
 kind usually called " firm, but conciliatory," a 
 policy doubtful in troublous times, since it com 
 monly argues weakness, and more than doubtful in 
 a crisis like ours, since it left the course which the 
 Administration meant to take ambiguous, and, 
 while it weakened the Government by exciting the 
 distrust of all who wished for vigorous measures, 
 really strengthened the enemy by encouraging the 
 conspirators in the Border States. There might 
 be a question as to whether this or that attitude 
 were expedient for the Republican party ; there 
 could be none as to the only safe and dignified one 
 for the Government of the Nation. Treason was 
 as much treason in the beginning of March as in 
 the middle of April ; and it seems certain now, as 
 it seemed probable to many then, that the country 
 
82 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 would have sooner rallied to the support of the 
 Government, if the Government had shown an 
 earlier confidence in the loyalty of the people. 
 Though the President talked of " repossessing " 
 the stolen forts, arsenals, and custom-houses, yet 
 close upon this declaration followed the dishearten 
 ing intelligence that the cabinet were discussing 
 the propriety of evacuating not only Fort Sumter, 
 which was of no strategic importance, but Fort 
 Pickens, which was the key to the Gulf of Mexico, 
 and to abandon which was almost to acknowledge 
 the independence of the Rebel States. Thus far 
 the Free States had waited with commendable 
 patience for some symptom of vitality in the new 
 Administration, something that should distinguish 
 it from the piteous helplessness of its predecessor. 
 But now their pride was too deeply outraged for 
 endurance; indignant remonstrances were heard 
 from all quarters, and the Government seemed for 
 the first time fairly to comprehend that it had 
 twenty millions of freemen at its back, and that 
 forts might be taken and held by honest men as 
 well as by knaves and traitors. The nettle had 
 been stroked long enough ; it was time to try a firm 
 grip. Still the Administration seemed inclined to 
 temporize, so thoroughly was it possessed by the 
 notion of conciliating the Border States. In point 
 of fact, the side which those States might take in 
 the struggle between Law and Anarchy was of 
 vastly more import to them than to us. They 
 could bring no considerable reinforcement of 
 money, credit, or arms to the rebels ; they could at 
 
PICKENS-AND-STEALIN S REBELLION. 83 
 
 best but add so many mouths to an army whose 
 commissariat was already dangerously embarrassed. 
 They could not even, except temporarily, keep the 
 war away from the territory of the seceding States, 
 every one of which had a sea-door open to the 
 invasion of an enemy who controlled the entire 
 navy and shipping of the country. The position 
 assumed by Eastern Virginia and Maryland was 
 of consequence only so far as it might facilitate 
 a sudden raid on Washington, and the policy of 
 both these States was to amuse the Government 
 by imaginary negotiations till the plans of the con 
 spirators were ripe. In both States men were 
 actively recruited and enrolled to assist in attack 
 ing the capital. With them, as with the more 
 openly rebellious States, the new theory of " Coer 
 cion " was ingeniously arranged like a valve, yield 
 ing at the slightest impulse to the passage of forces 
 for the subversion of legitimate authority, closing 
 imperviously, so that no drop of power could ooze 
 through in the opposite direction. Lord De Roos, 
 long suspected of cheating at cards, would never 
 have been convicted but for the resolution of an 
 adversary, who, pinning his hand to the table with 
 a fork, said to him blandly, " My Lord, if the ace 
 of spades is not under your Lordship s hand, why, 
 then, I beg your pardon ! " It seems to us that a 
 timely treatment of Governor Letcher in the same 
 energetic way would have saved the disasters of 
 Harper s Ferry and Norfolk, for disasters they 
 were, though six months of temporizing had so 
 lowered the public sense of what was due to the 
 
84 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 national dignity that people were glad to see the 
 Government active at length, even if only in set 
 ting fire to its own house. 
 
 We are by no means inclined to criticise the 
 Administration, even if this were the proper time 
 for it ; but we cannot help thinking that there was 
 great wisdom in Napoleon s recipe for saving life 
 in dealing with a mob, " First fire grape-shot 
 into them ; after that, over their heads as much as 
 you like." The position of Mr. Lincoln was al 
 ready embarrassed when he entered upon office, by 
 what we believe to have been a political blunder in 
 the leaders of the Republican party. Instead of 
 keeping closely to the real point, and the only 
 point, at issue, namely, the claim of a minority to a 
 right of rebellion when displeased with the result 
 of an election, the bare question of Secession, 
 pure and simple, they allowed their party to be 
 come divided, and to waste themselves in discussing 
 terms of compromise and guaranties of slavery 
 which had nothing to do with the business in hand. 
 Unless they were ready to admit that popular gov 
 ernment was at an end, those were matters already 
 settled by the Constitution and the last election. 
 Compromise was out of the question with men who 
 had gone through the motions, at least, of estab 
 lishing a government and electing an anti-presi 
 dent. The way to insure the loyalty of the Border 
 States, as the event has shown, was to convince 
 them that disloyalty was dangerous. That revolu 
 tions never go backward is one of those compact 
 generalizations which the world is so ready to 
 
((UNIVERSITY)} 
 
 PICKENS-AND-STEALIJSTS REBELLION. 85 
 
 accept because they save the trouble of thinking ; 
 but, however it may be with revolutions, it is 
 certain that rebellions most commonly go backward 
 with disastrous rapidity, and it was of the gravest 
 moment, as respected its moral influence, that 
 Secession should not have time allowed it to as 
 sume the proportions and the dignity of revolu 
 tion ; in other words, of a rebellion too powerful to 
 be crushed. The secret friends of the secession 
 treason in the Free States have done their best to 
 bewilder the public mind and to give factitious 
 prestige to a conspiracy against free government 
 and civilization by talking about the right of revo 
 lution, as if it were some acknowledged principle 
 of the Law of Nations. There is a right and 
 sometimes a duty of rebellion, as there is also a 
 right and sometimes a duty of hanging men for it ; 
 but rebellion continues to be rebellion until it has 
 accomplished its object and secured the acknow 
 ledgment of it from the other party to the quarrel, 
 and from the world at large. The Republican 
 Party in the November elections had really effected 
 a peaceful revolution, had emancipated the country 
 from the tyranny of an oligarchy which had abused 
 the functions of the Government almost from the 
 time of its establishment, to the advancement of 
 their own selfish aims and interests; and it was 
 this legitimate change of rulers and of national 
 policy by constitutional means which the Seces 
 sionists intended to prevent. To put the matter 
 in plain English, they resolved to treat the people 
 of the United States, in the exercise of their un- 
 
86 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 doubted and lawful authority, as rebels, and re 
 sorted to their usual policy of intimidation in order 
 to subdue them. Either this magnificent empire 
 should be their plantation, or it should perish. 
 This was the view even of what were called the 
 moderate slaveholders of the Border States; and 
 all the so-called compromises and plans of recon 
 struction that were thrown into the caldron where 
 the hell-broth of anarchy was brewing had this 
 extent, no more, What terms of submission 
 would the people make with their natural masters ? 
 Whatever other result may have come of the long 
 debates in Congress and elsewhere, they have at 
 least convinced the people of the Free States that 
 there can be no such thing as a moderate slave 
 holder, that moderation and slavery can no more 
 coexist than Floyd and honesty, or Anderson and 
 treason. 
 
 We believe, then, that conciliation was from the 
 first impossible, that to attempt it was unwise, 
 because it put the party of law and loyalty in the 
 wrong, and that, if it was done as a mere matter 
 of policy in order to gain time, it was a still 
 greater mistake, because it was the rebels only who 
 could profit by it in consolidating their organiza 
 tion, while the seeming gain of a few days or weeks 
 was a loss to the Government, whose great advan 
 tage was in an administrative system thoroughly 
 established, and, above all, in the vast power of 
 the national idea, a power weakened by every day s 
 delay. This is so true that already men began to 
 talk of the rival governments at Montgomery and 
 
PICKENS-AND-STEALIN S REBELLION. 87 
 
 Washington, and Canadian journals to recommend 
 a strict neutrality, as if the independence and legi 
 timacy of the mushroom despotism of New Ashan- 
 tee were an acknowledged fact, and the name of the 
 United States of America had no more authority 
 than that of Jefferson Davis and Company, dealers 
 in all kinds of repudiation and anarchy. For more 
 than a month after the inauguration of President 
 Lincoln there seemed to be a kind of interregnum, 
 during which the confusion of ideas in the Border 
 States as to their rights and duties as members of 
 the " old " Union, as it began to be called, became 
 positively chaotic. Virginia, still professing neu 
 trality, prepared to seize the arsenal at Harper s 
 Ferry and the navy-yard at Norfolk ; she would 
 prevent the passage of the United States forces 
 " with a serried phalanx of her gallant sons," two 
 regiments of whom stood looking on while a file of 
 marines took seven wounded men in an engine- 
 house for them ; she would do everything but her 
 duty, the gallant Ancient Pistol of a common 
 wealth. She " resumed her sovereignty," whatever 
 that meant ; her Convention passed an ordinance 
 of secession, concluded a league offensive and de 
 fensive with the rebel Confederacy, appointed Jef 
 ferson Davis command er-in-chief of her land-forces 
 and somebody else of the fleet she meant to steal 
 at Norfolk, and then coolly referred the whole 
 matter back to the people to vote three weeks 
 afterwards whether they would secede three weeks 
 before. Wherever the doctrine of Secession has 
 penetrated, it seems to have obliterated every no 
 tion of law and precedent. 
 
88 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 The country had come to the conclusion that 
 Mr. Lincoln and his cabinet were mainly employed 
 in packing their trunks to leave Washington, when 
 the " venerable Edward Kuffin of Virginia " fired 
 that first gun at Fort Sumter which brought all 
 the Free States to their feet as one man. That 
 shot is destined to be the most memorable one ever 
 fired on this continent since the Concord fowling- 
 pieces said, " That bridge is ours, and we mean to 
 go across it," eighty-seven Aprils ago. As these 
 began a conflict which gave us independence, so 
 that began another which is to give us nationality. 
 It was certainly a great piece of good-luck for the 
 Government that they had a fort which it was so 
 profitable to lose. The people were weary of a 
 masterly inactivity which seemed to consist mainly 
 in submitting to be kicked. We know very well 
 the difficulties that surrounded the new Adminis 
 tration ; we appreciate their reluctance to begin a 
 war the responsibility of which was as great as its 
 consequences seemed doubtful ; but we cannot un 
 derstand how it was hoped to evade war, except by 
 concessions vastly more disastrous than war itself. 
 War has no evil comparable in its effect on na 
 tional character to that of a craven submission to 
 manifest wrong, the postponement of moral to ma 
 terial interests. There is no prosperity so great as 
 courage. We do not believe that any amount of 
 forbearance would have conciliated the South so 
 long as they thought us pusillanimous. The only 
 way to retain the Border States was by showing 
 that we had the will and the power to do without 
 them. The little Bopeep policy of 
 
PICKENS-AND-STEALIN S REBELLION. 89 
 
 " Let them alone, and they 11 all come home 
 Wagging their tails behind them " 
 
 was certainly tried long enough with conspirators 
 who had shown unmistakably that they desired 
 nothing so much as the continuance of peace, es 
 pecially when it was all on one side, and who would 
 never have given the Government the great advan 
 tage of being attacked in Fort Sumter, had they 
 not supposed they were dealing with men who 
 could not be cuffed into resistance. The lesson we 
 have to teach them now is, that we are thoroughly 
 and terribly in earnest. Mr. Stephens s theories 
 are to be put to a speedier and sterner test than he 
 expected, and we are to prove which is stronger, 
 an oligarchy built on men, or a commonwealth 
 built of them. Our structure is alive in every part 
 with defensive and recuperative energies ; woe to 
 theirs, if that vaunted corner-stone which they be 
 lieve patient and enduring as marble should begin 
 to writhe with intelligent life ! 
 
 We have no doubt of the issue. We believe 
 that the strongest battalions are always on the side 
 of God. The Southern army will be fighting for 
 Jefferson Davis, or at most for the liberty of self- 
 misgovernment, while we go forth for the defence 
 of principles which alone make government august 
 and civil society possible. It is the very life of the 
 nation that is at stake. There is no question here 
 of dynasties, races, religions, but simply whether 
 we will consent to include in our Bill of Rights 
 not merely as of equal validity with all other rights, 
 whether natural or acquired, but by its very nature 
 
90 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 transcending and abrogating them all the Right 
 of Anarchy. We must convince men that treason 
 against the ballot-box is as dangerous as treason 
 against a throne, and that, if they play so desperate 
 a game, they must stake their lives on the hazard. 
 The one lesson that remained for us to teach the 
 political theorists of the Old World was, that we 
 are as strong to suppress intestine disorder as for 
 eign aggression, and we must teach it decisively 
 and thoroughly. The economy of war is to be 
 tested by the value of the object to be gained by 
 it. A ten years war would be cheap that gave 
 us a country to be proud of, and a flag that should 
 command the respect of the world because it was 
 the symbol of the enthusiastic unity of a great 
 nation. 
 
 The Government, however slow it may have been 
 to accept the war which Mr. Buchanan s supineness 
 left them, is acting now with all energy and deter 
 mination. What they have a right to claim is the 
 confidence of the people, and that depends in good 
 measure on the discretion of the press. Only let us 
 have no more weakness under the plausible name 
 of Conciliation. We need not discuss the proba 
 bilities of an acknowledgment of the Confederated 
 States by England and France ; we have only to 
 say, "Acknowledge them afc your peril." But there 
 is no chance of the recognition of the Confederacy 
 by any foreign governments, so long as it is with 
 out the confidence of the brokers. There is no ques 
 tion on which side the strength lies. The whole 
 tone of the Southern journals, so far as we are able 
 
PICKENS-AND-STEALIN S REBELLION. 91 
 
 to judge, shows the inherent folly and weakness of 
 the secession movement. Men who feel strong in 
 the justice of their cause, or confident in their pow 
 ers, do not waste breath in childish boasts of their 
 own superiority and querulous depreciation of their 
 antagonists. They are weak, and they know it. 
 And not only are they weak in comparison with 
 the Free States, but we believe they are without the 
 moral support of whatever deserves the name of 
 public opinion at home. If not, why does their 
 Congress, as they call it, hold council always with 
 closed doors, like a knot of conspirators ? The 
 first tap of the Northern drum dispelled many illu 
 sions, and we need no better proof of which ship is 
 sinking than that Mr. Caleb Gushing should have 
 made such haste to come over to the old Constitu 
 tion, with the stars and stripes at her mast-head. 
 
 We cannot think that the war we are entering 
 on can end without some radical change in the sys 
 tem of African slavery. Whether it be doomed 
 to a sudden extinction, or to a gradual abolition 
 through economical causes, this war will not leave 
 it where it was before. As a power in the state, 
 its reign is already over. The fiery tongues of the 
 batteries in Charleston harbor accomplished in one 
 day a conversion which the constancy of Garrison 
 and the eloquence of Phillips had failed to bring 
 about in thirty years. And whatever other result 
 this war is destined to produce, it has already won 
 for us a blessing worth everything to us as a nation 
 in emancipating the public opinion of the North. 
 
GENERAL McCLELLAN S EEPORT. 
 
 1864. 
 
 can conceive of no object capable of rous 
 ing deeper sympathy than a defeated commander. 
 Though the first movement of popular feeling may 
 be one of wrathful injustice, yet, when the ebb of 
 depression has once fairly run out, and confidence 
 begins to set back, hiding again that muddy bed of 
 human nature which such neap-tides are apt to lay 
 bare, there is a kindly instinct which leads all gen 
 erous minds to seek every possible ground of extenu 
 ation, to look for excuses in misfortune rather than 
 incapacity, and to allow personal gallantry to make 
 up, as far as may be, for want of military genius. 
 There is no other kind of failure which comes so 
 directly home to us, none which appeals to so many 
 of the most deeply rooted sentiments at once. 
 Want of success in any other shape is compara 
 tively a personal misfortune to the man himself 
 who fails ; but how many hopes, prides, sacrifices, 
 and heroisms are centred in him who wields the 
 embattled manhood of his country! An army is 
 too multitudinous to call forth that personal en 
 thusiasm which is a necessity of the heart. The 
 imagination needs a single figure which it can 
 invest with all those attributes of admiration that 
 
GENERAL McCLELLAN S REPORT. 93 
 
 become vague and pointless when divided among 
 a host. Accordingly, we impersonate in the gen 
 eral, not only the army he leads, but whatever 
 qualities we are proud of in the nation itself. He 
 becomes for the moment the ideal of all masculine 
 virtues, and the people are eager to lavish their 
 admiration on him. His position gives him at a 
 bound what other men must spend their lives in 
 winning or vainly striving to win. If he gain a 
 battle, he flatters that pride of prowess which, 
 though it may be a fault of character in the in 
 dividual man, is the noblest of passions in a people. 
 If he lose one, we are all beaten with him, we all 
 fall down with our Caesar, and the grief glistens 
 in every eye, the shame burns on every cheek. 
 Moralize as we may about the victories of peace 
 and the superiority of the goose-quill over the 
 sword, there is no achievement of human genius 
 on which a country so prides itself as on success in 
 war, no disgrace over which it broods so incon- 
 solably as military disaster. 
 
 There is nothing more touching than the sight 
 of a nation in search of its great man, nothing 
 more beautiful than its readiness to accept a hero 
 on trust. Nor is this a feeble sentimentality. It 
 is much rather a noble yearning of what is best in 
 us, for it is only in these splendid figures which 
 now and then sum up all the higher attributes of 
 character that the multitude of men can ever hope 
 to find their blind instinct of excellence realized 
 and satisfied. Not without reason are nations 
 always symbolized as women, for there is some- 
 
94 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 thing truly feminine in the devotion with which 
 they are willing to give all for and to their ideal 
 man, and the zeal with which they drape some 
 improvised Agamemnon with all the outward shows 
 of royalty from the property-room of imagination. 
 This eagerness of loyalty toward first-rate char 
 acter is one of the conditions of mastery in every 
 sphere of human activity, for it is the stuff that 
 genius works in. Heroes, to be sure, cannot be 
 made to order, yet with a man of the right fibre, 
 who has the stuff for greatness in him, the popular 
 enthusiasm would go far toward making him in 
 fact what he is in fancy. No commander ever had 
 more of this paid-up capital of fortune, this fame 
 in advance, this success before succeeding, than 
 General McClellan. That dear old domestic bird, 
 the Public, which lays the golden eggs out of 
 which greenbacks are hatched, was sure she had 
 brooded out an eagle-chick at last. How we all 
 waited to see him stoop on the dove-cote of Kich- 
 mond ! Never did nation give such an example of 
 faith and patience as while the Army of the Po 
 tomac lay during all those weary months before 
 Washington. Every excuse was invented, every 
 palliation suggested, except the true one, that our 
 chicken was no eagle, after all. He was hardening 
 his seres, he was waiting for his wings to grow, he 
 was whetting his beak ; we should see him soar at 
 last and shake the thunder from his wings. But 
 do what we could, hope what we might, it became 
 daily clearer that, whatever other excellent qualities 
 he might have, this of being aquiline was wanting. 
 
GENERAL McCLELLAN S REPORT. 95 
 
 Disguise and soften it as we may, the campaign 
 of the Peninsula was a disastrous failure, a fail 
 ure months long, like a bad novel in weekly instal 
 ments, with " To be continued " grimly ominous at 
 the end of every part. So far was it from ending 
 in the capture of Richmond that nothing but the 
 gallantry of General Pope and his little army 
 hindered the Rebels from taking Washington. 
 And now comes Major-General George B. McClel- 
 lan, and makes affidavit in one volume 1 octavo 
 that he is a great military genius, after all. It 
 should seem that this genius is of two varieties. 
 The first finds the enemy, and beats him ; the 
 second finds him, and succeeds in getting away. 
 General McClellan is now attempting a change of 
 base in the face of public opinion, and is endeavor 
 ing to escape the consequences of having escaped 
 from the Peninsula. For a year his reputation 
 flared upward like a rocket, culminated, burst, and 
 now, after as long an interval, the burnt-out case 
 comes down to us in this Report. 
 
 There is something ludicrously tragic, as our 
 politics are managed, in seeing an Administration 
 compelled to print a campaign document (for such 
 is General McClellan s Report in a double sense) 
 directed against itself. Yet in the present case, 
 had it been possible to escape the penance, it had 
 
 1 Letter of the Secretary of War, transmitting Report on the 
 Organization of the Army of the Potomac, and of the Campaigns in 
 Virginia and Maryland under the Command of Major-General 
 George B. McClellan, from July 26, 1861, to November 7, 1862. 
 Washington : Government Printing-Office. 1864. 8vo, pp. 242. 
 
96 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 been unwise, for we think that no unprejudiced per 
 son can read the volume without a melancholy feel 
 ing that General McClellan has foiled himself even 
 more completely than the Rebels were able to do. 
 He should have been more careful of his communi 
 cations, for a line two hundred and forty-two pages 
 long is likely to have its weak points. The volume 
 before us is rather the plea of an advocate retained 
 to defend the General s professional character and 
 expound his political opinions than the curt, color 
 less, unimpassioned statement of facts which is 
 usually so refreshing in the official papers of mili 
 tary men, and has much more the air of being 
 addressed to a jury than to the War Department 
 at Washington. It is, in short, a letter to the 
 people of the United States, under cover to the 
 Secretary of War. General McClellan puts him 
 self upon the country, and, after taking as much 
 time to make up his mind as when he wearied and 
 imperilled the nation in his camp on the Potomac, 
 endeavors to win back from public opinion the 
 victory which nothing but his own over-caution 
 enabled the Rebels to snatch from him before 
 Richmond. He cannot give us back our lost time 
 or our squandered legions ; but how nice it would 
 be if we would give him back his reputation, which 
 has never been of any great use to us, and yet 
 would be so convenient for him ! It was made for 
 him, and accordingly fits him better than it would 
 any one else. But it is altogether too late. There 
 is no argument for the soldier but success, no wis 
 dom for the man but to acknowledge defeat and be 
 
GENERAL McCLELLAN S REPORT. 97 
 
 silent under it. The Great Captain on his sofa 
 at Longwood may demonstrate how the Russian 
 expedition might, could, would, and should have 
 ended otherwise; but meanwhile its results are not 
 to be reasoned with, the Bourbons are at the 
 Tuileries, and he at St. Helena. There is hardly 
 anything that may not be made out of history by 
 a skilful manipulator. Characters may be white 
 washed, bigotry made over into zeal, timidity into 
 prudence, want of conviction into toleration, ob 
 stinacy into firmness ; but the one thing that can 
 not be theorized out of existence, or made to look 
 like anything else, is a lost campaign. 
 
 We have had other unsuccessful generals, but 
 not one of them has ever been tempted into the 
 indecorum of endeavoring to turn a defeat in the 
 field to political advantage. Not one has thought 
 of defending himself by imputations on his supe 
 riors. Early in the war General McDowell set an 
 example of silence under slanderous reproach that 
 won for him the sympathy and respect of whoever 
 could be touched by self-reliant manliness. It is 
 because General McClellan has seen fit to overstep 
 the bounds of a proper official reserve, because, 
 after more than a year for reflection, he has re 
 peated charges of the grossest kind against those 
 under whose orders he was acting, and all this from 
 a political motive, that we think his Report deserv 
 ing of more than usual attention. It will be no 
 fault of his if he be not put in nomination for the 
 Presidency, and accordingly it becomes worth our 
 while to consider such evidences of character and 
 capacity as his words and deeds afford us. 
 
POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 We believe that General McClellan has been 
 ruined, like another general whose name began 
 with Mac, by the " All hail hereafter " of certain 
 political witches, who took his fortunes into their 
 keeping after his campaign in Western Virginia. 
 He had shown both ability and decision in hand 
 ling a small force, and he might with experience 
 have shown similar qualities in directing the op 
 erations of a great army, had not the promise 
 of" the Presidency made him responsible to other 
 masters than military duty and unselfish patriot 
 ism. Thenceforward the soldier was lost in the 
 politician. He thought more of the effect to 
 be produced by his strategy on the voters behind 
 him than oh the enemy in his front. What 
 should have been his single object the suppres 
 sion of the rebellion for the sake of the country 
 was now divided with the desire of merely ending 
 it by some plan that should be wholly of his own 
 contrivance, and should redound solely to his own 
 credit and advancement. He became giddy and 
 presumptuous, and lost that sense of present re 
 alities, so essential to a commander, in contempla 
 ting the mirage that floated the White House 
 before his eyes. At an age considerably beyond 
 that of General Bonaparte when he had trium 
 phantly closed his first Italian campaign, he was 
 nick-named " the young Napoleon," and from that 
 time forth seems honestly to have endeavored, like 
 Toepffer s Albert, to resemble the ideal portrait 
 which had been drawn for him by those who put 
 him forward as their stalking-horse. And it must 
 
GENERAL McCLELLAN S REPORT. 99 
 
 be admitted that these last managed matters 
 cleverly, if a little coarsely. They went to work 
 deliberately to Barnuinize their prospective candi 
 date. No prima donna was ever more thoroughly 
 exploited by her Hebrew impresario. The papers 
 swarmed with anecdotes, incidents, sayings. Noth 
 ing was too unimportant, and the new comman- 
 der-in-chief pulled on his boots by telegram from 
 Maine to California, and picked his teeth J)y spe 
 cial despatch to the Associated Press. We had 
 him warm for supper in the very latest with three 
 exclamation marks, and cold for breakfast in last 
 evening s telegraphic news with none. Nothing 
 but a patent pill was ever so suddenly famous. 
 
 We are far from blaming General McClellan 
 for all this. He probably looked upon it as one of 
 the inevitable discomforts of distinction in Amer 
 ica. But we think that it insensibly affected his 
 judgment, led him to regard himself as the rep 
 resentative of certain opinions, rather than as a 
 general whose whole duty was limited to the army 
 under his command, and brought him at last to a 
 temper of mind most unfortunate for the public 
 interests, in which he could believe the administra 
 tion personally hostile to himself because opposed 
 to the political principles of those who wished to 
 profit by his " availability." It was only natural, 
 too, that he should gradually come to think himself 
 what his partisans constantly affirmed that he was, 
 the sole depositary of the country s destiny. 
 We form our judgment of General McClellan 
 solely from his own Report ; we believe him to be 
 
100 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 honest in his opinions, and patriotic so far as those 
 opinions will allow him to be ; we know him to be 
 capable of attaching those about him in a warm 
 personal friendship, and we reject with the con 
 tempt they deserve the imputations on his courage 
 and his military honor ; but at the same time we 
 consider him a man like other men, with a head 
 liable to be turned by a fame too easily won. His 
 great misfortune was that he began his first impor 
 tant campaign with a reputation to save instead of 
 to earn, so that he was hampered by the crown 
 ing disadvantage of age in a general without the 
 experience which might neutralize it. Nay, what 
 was still worse, he had two reputations to keep 
 from damage, the one as soldier, the other as poli 
 tician. 
 
 He seems very early to have misapprehended 
 the true relation in which he stood to the govern 
 ment. By the operation of natural causes, as poli 
 ticians would call them, he had become heir pre 
 sumptive to the chair of state, and felt called on to 
 exert an influence on the policy of the war, or at 
 least to express an opinion that might go upon 
 record for future convenience. He plunged into 
 that Dismal Swamp of constitutional hermeneutics, 
 in which the wheels of government were stalled 
 at the outbreak of our rebellion, and from which 
 every untrained explorer rises with a mouth too 
 full of mud to be intelligible to Christian men. 
 He appears to have thought it within the sphere 
 of his duty to take charge of the statesmanship of 
 the President no less than of the movements of the 
 
GENERAL McCLELLAN S REPORT. 101 
 
 army, nor was it long before there were unmistak 
 able symptoms that he began to consider himself 
 quite as much the chief of an opposition who could 
 dictate terms as the military subordinate who was 
 to obey orders. Whatever might have been his 
 capacity as a soldier, this divided allegiance could 
 not fail of disastrous consequences to the public 
 service, for no mistress exacts so jealously the 
 entire devotion of her servants as war. A mind 
 distracted with calculations of future political con 
 tingencies was not to be relied on in the conduct 
 of movements which above all others demand the 
 constant presence, the undivided energy, of all the 
 faculties, and the concentration of every personal 
 interest on the one object of immediate success. A 
 general who is conscious that he has an army of 
 one hundred and fifty thousand voters at his back 
 will be always weakened by those personal con 
 siderations which are the worst consequence of 
 the elective system. General McClellan s motions 
 were encumbered in every direction by a huge 
 train of political baggage. This misconception of 
 his own position, or rather his confounding the two 
 characters of possible candidate and actual general, 
 forced the growth of whatever egotism was latent 
 in his nature. He began erelong to look at every 
 thing from a personal point of view, to judge men 
 and measures by their presumed relation to his own 
 interests, and at length fairly persuaded himself 
 that the inevitable results of his own want of initia 
 tive were due to the hostile combination against 
 him of Mr. Lincoln, Mr. Stanton, and General 
 
102 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 Halleck. Regarding himself too much in consid 
 ering the advantages of success, he regards others 
 too little in awarding the responsibility of failure. 
 
 The intense self-consciousness of General Mc- 
 Clellan and a certain aim at effect for ulterior and 
 unmilitary purposes show themselves early. In 
 October, 1861, addressing a memorial to Mr. Cam 
 eron, then Secretary of War, he does not forget 
 the important constituency of Buncombe. " The 
 unity of this nation," he says, " the preservation of 
 our institutions, are so dear to me that I have will 
 ingly sacrificed my private happiness with the sin 
 gle object of doing my duty to my country. When 
 the task is accomplished, I shall be glad to retire 
 to the obscurity from which events have drawn me. 
 Whatever the determination of the government 
 may be, I will do the best I can with the Army of 
 the Potomac, and will share its fate, whatever may 
 be the task imposed upon me." Not to speak of 
 taste, the utter blindness to the true relations of 
 things shown in such language is startling. What 
 sacrifice had General McClellan made which had 
 not been equally made by every one of the hundred 
 and fifty thousand men of his army ? Educated at 
 the expense of the country, his services were a 
 debt due on demand. And what was the sacrifice 
 of which a soldier speaks so pathetically ? To be 
 raised from the management of a railway to one 
 of the most conspicuous and inspiring positions of 
 modern times, to an opportunity such as comes 
 rarely to any man, and then only as the reward of 
 transcendent ability transcendently displayed ! To 
 
GENERAL McCLELLAN S REPORT. 103 
 
 step from a captaincy of engineers to the command 
 in chief of a great nation on fire with angry enthu 
 siasm, spendthrift of men, money, devotion, to be 
 the chosen champion of order, freedom, and civili 
 zation, this is indeed a sacrifice such as few men 
 have been called upon to make by their native 
 land ! And of what is General McClellan think 
 ing when he talks of returning to obscurity ? Of 
 what are men commonly thinking when they talk 
 thus? The newspapers would soon grow rich, if 
 everybody should take to advertising what he did 
 not want. And, moreover, to what kind of obscu 
 rity can a successful general return ? An obscurity 
 made up of the gratitude and admiration of his 
 countrymen, a strange obscurity of glory ! Nor is 
 this the only occasion on which the General speaks 
 of his willingness to share the fate of his army. 
 What corporal could do less ? No man thoroughly 
 in earnest, and with the fate of his country in his 
 hands and no thought but of that, could have any 
 place in his mind for such footlight phrases as 
 these. 
 
 General McClellan s theory from the first seems 
 to have been that a large army would make a 
 great general, though all history shows that the 
 genius, decision, and confidence of a leader are the 
 most powerful reinforcement of the troops under 
 his command, and that an able captain makes a 
 small army powerful by recruiting it with his own 
 vigor and enthusiasm. From the time of his tak 
 ing the command till his removal, he was con 
 stantly asking for more men, constantly receiving 
 
104 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 them, and constantly unable to begin anything 
 with them after he got them. He could not move 
 without one hundred and fifty thousand pairs of 
 legs, and when his force had long reached that 
 number, the President was obliged by the over 
 taxed impatience of the country to pry him up 
 from his encampment on the Potomac with a spe 
 cial order. What the army really needed was an 
 addition of one man, and that at the head of it ; 
 for a general, like an orator, must be moved him 
 self before he can move others. The larger his 
 army, the more helpless was General McClellan. 
 Like the magician s famulus, who rashly under 
 took to play the part of master, and who could 
 evoke powers that he could not control, he was 
 swamped in his own supplies. With every rein 
 forcement sent him on the Peninsula, his estimate 
 of the numbers opposed to him increased. His 
 own imagination faced him in superior numbers at 
 every turn. Since Don Quixote s enumeration of 
 the armies of the Emperor Alifanfaron and King 
 Pentapolin of the Naked Arm, there has been 
 nothing like our General s vision of the Rebel 
 forces, with their ever-lengthening list of leaders, 
 gathered for the defence of Richmond. His anx 
 iety swells their muster-roll at last to two hundred 
 thousand. We say his anxiety, for no man of ordi 
 nary judgment can believe that with that number 
 of men the Rebel leaders would not have divided 
 their forces, with one army occupying General 
 McClellan, while they attempted the capital he 
 had left uncovered with the other. 
 
GENERAL McCLELLAN S REPORT. 105 
 
 The first plan proposed by General McClellan 
 covered operations extending from Virginia to 
 Texas. With a main army of two hundred and 
 seventy-three thousand he proposes " not only to 
 drive the enemy out of Virginia and occupy Rich 
 mond, but to occupy Charleston, Savannah, Mont 
 gomery, Pensacola, Mobile, and New Orleans ; in 
 other words, to move into the heart of the enemy s 
 country and crush the rebellion in its very heart." 
 We do not say that General McClellan s ambition 
 to be the one man who should crush the rebellion 
 was an unworthy one, but that his theory that this 
 was possible, and in the way he proposed, shows 
 him better fitted to state the abstract problems 
 than to apprehend the complex details of their so 
 lution when they lie before him as practical diffi 
 culties. For when we consider the necessary de 
 tachments from this force to guard his communi 
 cations through an enemy s country, as he wishes 
 the President to do, in order to justify the large 
 ness of the force required, we cannot help asking 
 how soon the army for active operations would be 
 reduced to a hundred and fifty thousand. And 
 how long would a general be in reaching New Or 
 leans, if he is six months in making up his mind 
 to advance with an army of that strength on the 
 insignificant fortifications of Manassas, manned, 
 according to the best information, with forty thou 
 sand troops ? At the same time General McClellan 
 assigns twenty thousand as a force adequate for 
 opening the Mississippi. This plan, to be sure, 
 was soon abandoned, but it is an illustration of the 
 
106 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 want of precision and forethought which charac 
 terizes the mind of its author. A man so vague in 
 his conceptions is apt to be timid in action, for the 
 same haziness of mind may, according to circum 
 stances, either soften and obscure the objects of 
 thought, or make them loom with purely fantastic 
 exaggeration. There is a vast difference between 
 clearness of head on demand and the power of 
 framing abstract schemes of action, beautiful in 
 their correctness of outline and apparent simplicity. 
 It is a perception of this truth, we believe, which 
 leads practical men always to suspect plans sup 
 ported by statistics too exquisitely conclusive. 
 
 It was on precisely such a specious basis of defi 
 nite misinformation that General McClellan s next 
 proposal for the campaign by way of the Peninsula 
 rested, precise facts before he sets out turning 
 to something like precise no-facts when he gets 
 there, beautiful completeness of conception end 
 ing in hesitation, confusion, and failure. Before 
 starting, " the roads are passable at all seasons of 
 the year, the country much more favorable for 
 offensive operations than that in front of Washing 
 ton, much more level, the woods less dense, the soil 
 more sandy " (p. 47). After arriving, we find 
 " the roads impassable," " very dense and extensive 
 forests, the clearings being small and few ; " and 
 " the comparative flatness of the country and the 
 alertness of the enemy, everywhere in force, ren 
 dered thorough reconnoissances slow, dangerous, 
 and difficult " (p. 79). General McClellan s men 
 tal constitution would seem to be one of those, easily 
 
GENERAL McCLELLAN S REPORT. 107 
 
 elated and easily depressed, that exaggerate dis 
 tant advantages and dangers near at hand, 
 minds stronger in conception than perception, and 
 accordingly, as such always are, wanting that fac 
 ulty of swift decision which, catching inspiration 
 from danger, makes opportunity success. Add to 
 this a kind of adhesiveness (we can hardly call 
 it obstinacy or pertinacity) of temper, which can 
 make no allowance for change of circumstances, 
 and we think we have a tolerably clear notion of 
 the causes of General McClellan s disasters. He 
 can compose a good campaign beforehand, but he 
 cannot improvise one out of the events of the mo 
 ment, as is the wont of great generals. Occasion 
 seldom offers her forelock twice to the grasp of the 
 same man, and yet General McClellan, by the ad 
 mission of the Rebels themselves, had Richmond 
 at his mercy more than once. 
 
 He seems to attribute his misfortunes mainly 
 to the withdrawal of General McDowell s division, 
 and its consequent failure to cooperate with his 
 own forces. But the fact is patent that the cam 
 paign was lost by his sitting down in front of York- 
 town, and wasting a whole month in a series of 
 approaches whose scientific propriety would have 
 delighted Uncle Toby, to reduce a garrison of 
 eight thousand men. Without that delay, which 
 gave the Rebels time to send Jackson into the She- 
 nandoah valley, General McDowell s army would 
 have been enabled to come to his assistance. Gen 
 eral McClellan, it is true, complains that it was 
 not sent round by water, as he wished ; but even if 
 
108 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 it had been, it could only have been an addition of 
 helplessness to an army already too unwieldy for 
 its commander ; for he really made the Rebel force 
 double his own (as he always fancied it) by never 
 bringing more than a quarter of his army into ac 
 tion at once. Yet during the whole campaign he 
 was calling for more men, and getting them, till 
 his force reached the highest limit he himself had 
 ever set. When every available man, and more, 
 had been sent him, he writes from Harrison s Bar 
 to Mr. Stanton, " To accomplish the great task of 
 capturing Richmond and putting an end to this re 
 bellion, reinforcements should be sent to me rather 
 much over than less than one hundred thousand 
 men." This letter General McClellan has not seen 
 fit to include in his Report. Was the government 
 to be blamed for pouring no more water into a 
 sieve like this ? 
 
 It certainly was a great mistake on Mr. Lin 
 coln s part to order General McDowell off on a 
 wild-goose chase after Jackson. The cooperation 
 of this force might have enabled General McClel 
 lan even then to retrieve his campaign, and we do 
 not in the le^ast blame him for feeling bitterly the 
 disappointment of wanting it. But it seems to us 
 that it was mainly his own fault that there was 
 anything to retrieve, and the true occasion to re 
 cover his lost ground was offered him after his 
 bloody repulse of the enemy at Malvern Hill, 
 though he did not turn it to account. For his re 
 treat we think he would deserve all credit, had he 
 not been under the necessity of making it. It was 
 
GENERAL McCLELLAN S REPORT. 109 
 
 conducted with great judgment and ability, and 
 we do not love that partisan narrowness of mind 
 that would grudge him the praise so fairly earned. 
 But at the same time it is not ungenerous to say 
 that the obstinate valor shown by his army under 
 all the depression of a backward movement, while 
 it proves how much General McClellan had done 
 to make it an effective force, makes us regret all 
 the more that he should have wanted the decision 
 to try its quality under the inspiration of attack. 
 It is impossible that the spirit of the army should 
 not have been affected by the doubt and indecision 
 of their general. They fought nobly, but they 
 were always on the defensive. Had General Mc 
 Clellan put them at once on the aggressive, we 
 believe his campaign would have been a trium 
 phant one. With truly great generals resolve is 
 instinctive, a deduction from premises supplied by 
 the eye, not the memory, and men find out the sci 
 ence of their achievements afterwards, like the 
 mathematical law in the Greek column. The 
 stiffness rather than firmness of mind, the surren 
 der of all spontaneous action in the strait-waistcoat 
 of a preconceived plan, to which we have before 
 alluded, unfitted him for that rapid change of com 
 binations on the great chess-board of battle which 
 enabled General Kosecrans at Murfreesboro to 
 turn defeat into victory, an achievement without 
 parallel in the history of the war. 
 
 General McClellan seems to have considered the 
 President too careful of the safety of the" capital ; 
 but he should measure the value of Washington by 
 
110 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 what he himself thought of the importance of tak 
 ing Richmond. That, no doubt, would be a great 
 advantage, but the loss of a recognized seat of gov 
 ernment, with its diplomatic and other traditions, 
 would have been of vastly more fatal consequence 
 to us than the capture of their provisional perch in 
 Virginia would have been to the Rebel authorities. 
 It would have brought foreign recognition to the 
 Rebels, and thrown Maryland certainly, and prob 
 ably Kentucky, into the scale against us. So long 
 as we held Washington, we had on our side the 
 two powerful sentiments of permanence and tradi 
 tion, some insensible portions of which the Rebels 
 were winning from us with every day of repose al 
 lowed them by General McClellan. It was a clear 
 sense of this that both excited and justified the 
 impatience of the people, who saw that the in 
 surrection was gaining the coherence and prestige 
 of an established power, an element of much 
 strength at home and abroad. That this popular 
 instinct was not at fault, we have the witness of 
 General Kirby Smith, who told Colonel Fremantle 
 " that McClellan might probably have destroyed 
 the Southern army with the greatest ease during 
 the first winter, and without much risk to himself, 
 as the Southerners were so much over-elated by 
 their easy triumph at Manassas, and their army 
 had dwindled away." 
 
 We have said that General McClellan s vol 
 ume is rather a plea in abatement of judgment 
 than a report. It was perfectly proper that he 
 should endeavor to put everything in its true 
 
GENERAL McCLELLAN S REPORT. Ill 
 
 light, and he would be sure of the sympathy of 
 all right-minded men in so doing; but an ex 
 parte statement at once rouses and justifies ad 
 verse criticism. He has omitted many documents 
 essential to the formation of a just opinion ; and it 
 is only when we have read these also, in the Re 
 port of the Committee on the Conduct of the War, 
 that we feel the full weight of the cumulative evi 
 dence going to show the hearty support in men 
 and confidence that he received from the Adminis 
 tration, and, when there were no more men to be 
 sent, and confidence began to yield before irresisti 
 ble facts, the prolonged forbearance with which he 
 was still favored. Nothing can be kinder or more 
 cordial than the despatches and letters both of the 
 President and Mr. Stanton, down to the time when 
 General McClellan wrote the following sentences 
 at the end of an official communication addressed 
 to the latter : " If I save this army now, I tell you 
 plainly that I owe no thanks to you, or to any 
 other persons in Washington. You have done 
 your best to sacrifice this army." (28th June, 
 1862.) We shall seek no epithet to characterize 
 language like this. All but the most bigoted par 
 tisans will qualify it as it deserves. We have here 
 a glaring example of that warping of good sense 
 and good feeling which the consciousness of having 
 a political stake at risk will produce in a gallant 
 soldier and a courteous gentleman. Can General 
 McClellan, after a year to grow cool in, either him 
 self believe, or expect any one else to believe, that 
 the President and the Secretary of War would 
 
112 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 " do their best to sacrifice " an army of a hundred 
 and fifty thousand brave men, in order to lessen 
 his possible chances as a candidate for the Presi 
 dency ? It was of vastly more importance to them 
 than to him that he should succeed. The dignified 
 good temper of Mr. Lincoln s answer to this wan 
 ton insult does him honor : " I have not said you 
 were ungenerous for saying you needed reinforce 
 ments ; I thought you were ungenerous in assum 
 ing that I did not send them as fast as I could. I 
 feel any misfortune to you and your army quite as 
 keenly as you feel it yourself." Mr. Stanton could 
 only be silent; and whatever criticisms may be 
 made on some traits of his character, he is quite 
 safe in leaving the rebuke of such an imputation 
 to whoever feels that earnestness, devotion, and 
 unflagging purpose are high qualities in a public 
 officer. 
 
 If General McClellan had been as prompt in 
 attacking the enemy as he showed himself in this 
 assault on his superiors, we think his campaign in 
 the Peninsula would have ended more satisfacto 
 rily. We have no doubt that he would conduct 
 a siege or a defence with all the science and all 
 the proprieties of warfare, but we think he has 
 proved himself singularly wanting in the qualities 
 which distinguish the natural leaders of men. He 
 had every theoretic qualification, but no ardor, no 
 leap, no inspiration. A defensive general is an 
 earthen redoubt, not an ensign to rally enthusiasm 
 and inspire devotion. Caution will never make an 
 army, though it may sometimes save one. We 
 
GENERAL McCLELLAN S REPORT. 113 
 
 think General McClellan reduced the efficiency 
 and lowered the tone of his soldiers by his six 
 months dose of prudence. With every day he 
 gave the enemy, he lessened his chances of success, 
 and added months to the duration of the war. He 
 never knew how to find opportunity, much less to 
 make it. He was an accomplished soldier, but 
 lacked that downright common sense which is only 
 another name for genius with its coat off for actual 
 work in hand. 
 
 Were General McClellan s Keport nothing more 
 than a report, were the General himself nothing 
 more than an officer endeavoring to palliate a fail 
 ure, we should not have felt called on to notice his 
 plea, unless to add publicity to any new facts he 
 might be able to bring forward. But the Report 
 is a political manifesto, and not only that, but an 
 attack on the administration which appointed him 
 to the command, supported him with all its re 
 sources, and whose only fault it was not sooner to 
 discover his incapacity to conduct aggressive move 
 ments. General McClellan is a candidate for the 
 Presidency, and as he has had no opportunity to 
 show his capacity in any civil function, his claim 
 must rest on one of two grounds, either the abil 
 ity he has shown as a general, or the specific prin 
 ciples of policy he is supposed to represent. What 
 ever may be the success of our operations in the 
 field, our Chief Magistracy for the next four years 
 will demand a person of great experience and abil 
 ity. Questions cannot fail to arise taxing pru 
 dence of the longest forecast and decision of the 
 
114 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 firmest quality. How far is General McClellan 
 likely to fulfill these conditions? What are the 
 qualities of mind of which both his career and his 
 Report give the most irrefragable evidence ? 
 
 General McClellan s mind seems to be equally 
 incapable of appreciating the value of time as the 
 material of action, and its power in changing the 
 relations of facts, and thus modifying the basis of 
 opinion. He is a good maker of almanacs, but no 
 good judge of the weather. Judging by the politi 
 cal counsel which he more than once felt called 
 upon to offer the President, and which, as he has 
 included it in his Report, we must presume to rep 
 resent his present opinions, he does not seem even 
 yet to appreciate the fact that this is not a war 
 between two nations, but an attempt at revolution 
 within ourselves, which can be adequately met only 
 by revolutionary measures. And yet, if he were at 
 this moment elevated to the conduct of our affairs, 
 he would find himself controlled by the same neces 
 sities which have guided Mr. Lincoln, and must 
 either adopt his measures, or submit to a peace 
 dictated by the South. No side issue as to how 
 the war shall be conducted is any longer possible. 
 The naked question is one of war or submission, 
 for compromise means surrender ; and if the choice 
 be war, we cannot afford to give the enemy fifty 
 in the game, by standing upon scruples which he 
 would be the last to appreciate or to act upon. It 
 is one of the most terrible features of war that it 
 must be inexorable by its very nature. 
 
 Great statesmanship and great generalship have 
 
GENERAL McCLELLAN S REPORT. 115 
 
 been more than once shown by the same man, and, 
 naturally enough, because they both result from 
 the same qualities of mind, an instant apprehen 
 sion of the demand of the moment, and a self-con 
 fidence that can as instantly meet it, so that every 
 energy of the man is gathered to one intense focus. 
 It is the faculty of being a present man, instead of 
 a prospective one ; of being ready, instead of get 
 ting ready. Though we think great injustice has 
 been done by the public to General McClellan s 
 really high merits as an officer, yet it seems to us 
 that those very merits show precisely the character 
 of intellect to unfit him for the task just now de 
 manded of a statesman. His capacity for organ 
 ization may be conspicuous ; but, be it what it may, 
 it is one thing to bring order out of the confusion 
 of mere inexperience, and quite another to retrieve 
 it from a chaos of elements mutually hostile, which 
 is the problem sure to present itself to the next 
 administration. This will constantly require pre 
 cisely that judgment on the nail, and not to be 
 drawn for at three days sight, of which General 
 McClellan has shown least. 
 
 Is our path to be so smooth for the next four 
 years that a man whose leading characteristic is 
 an exaggeration of difficulties is likely to be our 
 surest guide ? If the war is still to be carried on, 
 and surely the nation has shown no symptoms of 
 slackening in its purpose, what modifications 
 of it would General McClellan introduce? The 
 only information that is vouchsafed us is, that he is 
 to be the " conservative " candidate, a phrase that 
 
116 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 may mean too little or too much. As well as we 
 can understand it, it is the convenient formula by 
 which to express the average want of opinions of 
 all who are out of place, out of humor, or dislike 
 the dust which blinds and chokes whoever is be 
 hind the times. Sometimes it is used as the rally- 
 ing-cry of an amiable class of men, who still believe, 
 in a vague sort of way, that the rebels can be 
 conciliated by offering them a ruler more comme il 
 faut than Mr. Lincoln, a country where a flatboat- 
 man may rise to the top, by virtue of mere man 
 hood, being hardly the place for people of truly 
 refined sensibilities. Or does it really mean no 
 thing more nor less than that we are to try to put 
 slavery back again where it was before (only that 
 it is not quite convenient just now to say so), on 
 the theory that ideologically the pot of ointment 
 was made to conserve the dead fly ? 
 
 In the providence of God the first thoughtless 
 enthusiasm of the nation has settled to deep pur 
 pose, their anger has been purified by trial into 
 a conviction of duty, and they are face to face with 
 one of those rare occasions where duty and advan 
 tage are identical. The man who is fit for the 
 office of President in these times should be one 
 who knows how to advance, an art which General 
 McClellan has never learned. He must be one 
 who comprehends that three years of war have 
 made vast changes in the relative values of things. 
 He must be one who feels to the very marrow of 
 his bones that this is a war, not to conserve the 
 forms, but the essence, of free institutions. He 
 
GENERAL McCLELLAN S REPORT. 117 
 
 must be willing to sacrifice everything to the single 
 consideration of success, because success means 
 truth and honor ; to use every means, though they 
 may alarm the fears of men who are loyal with 
 a reservation, or shock the prejudices of would-be 
 traitors. No middle course is safe in troubled 
 times, and the only way to escape the dangers of 
 revolution is by directing its forces and giving it 
 useful work to do. 
 
THE REBELLION: ITS CAUSES AND 
 CONSEQUENCES. 
 
 1864. 
 
 IN spite of the popular theory that nothing is 
 so fallacious as circumstantial evidence, there is 
 no man of observation who would not deem it 
 more trustworthy than any human testimony, 
 however honest, which was made up from per 
 sonal recollection. The actors in great affairs 
 are seldom to be depended on as witnesses, either 
 to the order of events or their bearing upon re 
 sults ; for even where selfish interest is not to be 
 taken into account, the mythic instinct erelong 
 begins to shape things as they ought to have 
 been, rather than as they were. This is true 
 even of subjects in which we have no personal 
 interest, and not only do no two men describe 
 the same street-scene in the same way, but the 
 same man, unless prosaic to a degree below the 
 freezing-point of Tupper, will never do it twice 
 in the same way. Few men, looking into their 
 old diaries, but are astonished at the contrast, 
 sometimes even the absolute unlikeness, between 
 the matters of fact recorded there and their own 
 recollection of them. Shortly after the battle 
 of Lexington it was the interest of the Colo- 
 
THE REBELLION. 119 
 
 nies to make the British troops not only wan 
 ton, but unresisted, aggressors ; and if primitive 
 Christians could be manufactured by affidavit, 
 so large a body of them ready to turn the other 
 cheek also was never gathered as in the minute- 
 men before the meeting-house on the 19th of 
 April, 1775. The Anglo-Saxon could not fight 
 comfortably without the law on his side. But 
 later, when the battle became a matter of local 
 pride, the muskets that had been fired at the Red 
 coats under Pitcairn almost rivalled in number 
 the pieces of furniture that came over in the 
 Mayflower. Indeed, whoever has talked much 
 with Revolutionary pensioners knows that those 
 honored veterans were no less remarkable for 
 imagination than for patriotism. It should seem 
 that there is, perhaps, nothing on which so little 
 reliance is to be placed as facts, especially when 
 related by one who saw them. It is no slight 
 help to our charity to recollect that, in disput 
 able matters, every man sees according to his 
 prejudices, and is stone-blind to whatever he did 
 not expect or did not mean to see. Even where 
 no personal bias can be suspected, contemporary 
 and popular evidence is to be taken with great 
 caution, so exceedingly careless are men as to ex 
 act truth, and such poor observers, for the most 
 part, of what goes on under their eyes. The 
 ballad which was hawked about the streets at 
 the execution of Captain Kidd, and which was 
 still to be bought at street-stalls within a few 
 years, affirms three times in a single stanza that 
 
120 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 the pirate s name was Robert. Yet he was 
 commissioned, indicted, convicted, and hanged as 
 William Kidd. Nor was he, as is generally 
 supposed, convicted of piracy, but of murder. 
 The marvels of Spiritualism are supernatural to 
 the average observer, who is willing to pay for 
 that dulness from another world which he might 
 have for nothing in this, while they seem mere 
 legerdemain, and not of the highest quality, to 
 the trained organs of scientific men. 
 
 History, we are told, is philosophy teaching 
 by example. But how if the example does, not 
 apply? Le Verrier discovers Neptune when, ac 
 cording to his own calculations, the planet should 
 not have been in the place where his telescope 
 found it. Does the example redound to the 
 credit of luck or of mathematics ? The histo 
 rian may give a thoroughly false view of an event 
 by simply assuming that after means in conse 
 quence of, or even by the felicitous turn of a 
 sentence. Style will find readers and shape con 
 victions, while mere truth only gathers dust on 
 the shelf. The memory first, and by degrees the 
 judgment, is enslaved by the epigrams of Tacitus 
 or Michelet. Our conception of scenes and men 
 is outlined and colored for us by the pictorial im 
 agination of Carlyle. Indeed, after reading his 
 tory, one can only turn round, with Montaigne, 
 and say, What know I? There was a time when 
 the reputation of Judas might have been thought 
 past mending, but a German has whitewashed him 
 as thoroughly as Malone did Shakespeare s bust, 
 
THE REBELLION. 121 
 
 and an English poet made him the hero of a tra 
 gedy, as the one among the disciples who believed 
 too much. Call no one happy till he is dead? 
 Rather call no one safe, whether in good repute 
 or evil, after he has been dead long enough to 
 have his effigy done in historical wax-work. Only 
 get the real clothes, that is, only be careful to 
 envelop him in a sufficiently probable dressing of 
 facts, and the public will be entirely satisfied. 
 What s Hecuba to us, or we to Hecuba ? Or is 
 Thackeray s way any nearer the truth, who strips 
 Louis the Great of all his stage -properties, and 
 shows him to us the miserable forked radish of 
 decrepitude ? 
 
 There are many ways of writing what is called 
 history. The earliest and simplest was to record 
 in the form of annals, without investigating, what 
 ever the writer could lay hold of, the only thread of 
 connection being the order of time, so that events 
 have no more relation to each other than so many 
 beads on a string. Higher then this, because more 
 picturesque, and because living men take the place 
 of mere names, are the better class of chronicles, 
 like Froissart s, in which the scenes sometimes have 
 the minute vividness of illumination, and the page 
 seems to take life and motion as we read. The 
 annalist still survives, a kind of literary dodo, 
 in the " standard " historian, respectable, immiti 
 gable, with his philosophy of history, and his 
 stereotyped phrase, his one Amurath succeeding 
 another, so very dead, so unlike anything but his 
 torical characters, that we can scarce believe they 
 
122 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 ever lived, and only differing from his ancient 
 congener of the monastery by his skill in making 
 ten words do the duty of one. His are the fatal 
 books without which no gentleman s library can be 
 complete ; his the storied pages which ingenuous 
 youth is invited to turn, and is apt to turn four or 
 five together. With him something is still always 
 sure to transpire in the course of these negoti 
 ations, still the traditional door is opened to the 
 inroad of democratic innovation, still it is im 
 possible to interpret the motives which inspired 
 the conduct of so-and-so in this particular emer 
 gency. So little does he himself conceive of any 
 possible past or future life in his characters that 
 he periphrases death into a disappearance from the 
 page of history, as if they were bodiless and soul 
 less creatures of pen and ink ; mere names, not 
 things. Picturesqueness he sternly avoids as the 
 Delilah of the philosophic mind, liveliness as a 
 snare of the careless investigator; and so, stop 
 ping both ears, he slips safely by those Sirens, 
 keeping safe that sobriety of style which his fel 
 low-men call by another name. Unhappy books, 
 which we know by heart before we read them, and 
 which a mysterious superstition yet compels many 
 unoffending persons to read ! What has not the 
 benevolent reader had to suffer at the hands of 
 the so-called impartial historian, who, wholly dis 
 interested and disinteresting, writes with as me 
 chanic an industry and as little emotion as he 
 would have brought to the weaving of calico or 
 the digging of potatoes, under other circum- 
 
THE REBELLION. 123 
 
 stances! Far truer, at least to nature and to 
 some conceivable theory of an immortal soul in 
 man, is the method of the poet, who makes his 
 personages luminous from within by an instinc 
 tive sympathy with human motives of action, and 
 a conception of the essential unity of character 
 through every change of fate. 
 
 Of late years men have begun to question the 
 prescriptive right of this "great gyant Asdryas- 
 dust, who has choked many men," to choke them 
 also because he had worked his wicked will on their 
 fathers. It occurred to an inquiring mind here and 
 there that if the representation of men s action 
 and passion on the theatre could be made interest 
 ing, there was no good reason why the great drama 
 of history should be dull as a miracle-play. Need 
 philosophy teaching by example be so tiresome that 
 the pupils would rather burst in ignorance than go 
 within earshot of the pedagogue ? Hence the his 
 torical romance, sometimes honestly called so, and 
 limited by custom in number of volumes ; sometimes 
 not called so, and without any such limitation. 
 This latter variety admits several styles of treat 
 ment. Sometimes a special epoch is chosen, where 
 one heroic figure may serve as a centre round which 
 events and subordinate characters group themselves, 
 with no more sacrifice of truth than is absolutely 
 demanded by artistic keeping. This may be called 
 the epic style, of which Carlyle is the acknowledged 
 master. Sometimes a period is selected, where the 
 facts, by coloring and arrangement, may be made 
 to support the views of a party, and history becomes 
 
124 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 a political pamphlet indefinitely prolonged. Here 
 point is the one thing needful, to be attained at 
 all hazards, whether by the turn of a sentence or 
 the twisting of a motive. Macaulay is preeminent 
 in this kind, and woe to the party or the man that 
 comes between him and his epigrammatic neces 
 sity ! Again, there is the new light, or perhaps, 
 more properly, the forlorn-hope method, where the 
 i author accepts a brief against the advocatus dia- 
 boli, and strives to win a reverse of judgment, as 
 Mr. Froude has done in the case of Henry VIII. 
 The latest fashion of all is the a priori, in which 
 a certain dominant principle is taken for granted, 
 and everything is deduced from 35, instead of serv 
 ing to prove what x may really be. The weakness 
 of this heroic treatment, it seems to us, is in allow 
 ing too little to human nature as an element in the 
 problem. This would be a fine world, if facts 
 would only be as subservient to theory in real life 
 as in the author s inkstand. Mr. Buckle stands at 
 the head of this school, and has just found a worthy 
 disciple in M. Taine, who, in his Histoire de la 
 Litterature Anglaise, having first assumed certain 
 ethnological postulates, seems rather to shape the 
 character of the literature to the race than to illus 
 trate that of the race by the literature. 
 
 In short, whether we consider the incompetence 
 of men in general as observers, their carelessness 
 about things at the moment indifferent, but which 
 may become of consequence hereafter (as, for 
 example, in the dating of letters), their want of 
 impartiality, both in seeing and stating occurrences 
 
THE REBELLION. 125 
 
 and in tracing or attributing motives, it is plain 
 that history is not to be depended on in any ab 
 solute sense. That smooth and indifferent quality 
 of mind, without a flaw of prejudice or a blur of 
 theory, which can reflect passing events as they 
 truly are, is as rare, if not so precious, as that 
 artistic sense which can hold the mirror up to 
 nature. The fact that there is so little historical 
 or political prescience, that no man of experience 
 ventures to prophesy, is enough to prove, either 
 that it is impossible to know all the terms of our 
 problem, or that history does not repeat itself with 
 anything like the exactness of coincidence which is 
 so pleasing to the imagination. Six months after 
 the coup d etat of December, 1851, Mr. Savage 
 Landor, who knew him well, said to us that Louis 
 Napoleon had ten times the political sagacity of 
 his uncle ; but who foresaw or foretold an Augustus 
 in the dull-eyed frequenter of Lady Blessington s, 
 the melodramatic hero of Strasburg and Bologne, 
 with his cocked hat and his eagle from Astley s ? 
 What insurance company would have taken the 
 risk of his hare-brained adventure ? Coleridge 
 used to take credit to himself for certain lucky 
 vaticinations, but his memory was always inexact, 
 his confounding of what he did and what he 
 thought he meant to do always to be suspected, 
 and his prophecies, when examined, are hardly 
 more precise than an ancient oracle or a couplet 
 of Nostradamus. The almanac-makers took the 
 wisest course, stretching through a whole month 
 their il about this time expect a change of weather." 
 
126 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 That history repeats itself has become a kind of 
 truism, but of as little practical value in helping 
 us to form our opinions as other similar labor-sav 
 ing expedients to escape thought. Sceptical minds 
 see in human affairs a regular oscillation, hopeful 
 ones a continual progress, and both can support 
 their creeds with abundance of pertinent example. 
 Both seem to admit a law of recurrence, but the 
 former make it act in a circle, the latter in a spiral. 
 There is, no doubt, one constant element in the 
 reckoning, namely, human nature, and perhaps an 
 other in human nature itself, the tendency to 
 reaction from all extremes ; but the way in which 
 these shall operate, and the force they shall exert, 
 are dependent on a multitude of new and impredi- - 
 cable circumstances. Coincidences there certainly 
 are, but our records are hardly yet long enough to 
 furnish the basis for secure induction. Such par 
 allelisms are merely curious, and entertain the 
 fancy rather than supply precedent for the judg 
 ment. When Tacitus tells us that gladiators have 
 not so much stomach for fighting as soldiers, we 
 remember our own roughs and shoulder-hitters at 
 the beginning of the war, and are inclined to think 
 that Macer and Billy Wilson illustrated a general 
 truth. But, unfortunately, Octavius found prize 
 fighters of another metal, not to speak of Sparta- 
 cus. Perhaps the objections to our making use of 
 colored soldiers Qiic niger est, hunc tu, Romane, 
 caveto ) will seem as absurd one of these days as 
 the outcry that Caesar was degrading the service 
 by enlisting Gauls; but we will not hazard a 
 
THE REBELLION. 127 
 
 prophecy. In the alarm of the Pannonian revolt, 
 his nephew recruited the army of Italy by a con 
 scription of slaves, who thereby became free, and 
 this measure seems to have been acquiesced in by 
 the unwarlike citizens, who preferred that the ex 
 periment of death should be made in corpore vili 
 rather than in their own persons. 
 
 If the analogies between past and present were 
 as precise as they are sometimes represented to be, 
 if Time really dotes and repeats his old stories, 
 then ought students of history to be the best states 
 men. Yet, with Guizot for an adviser, Louis 
 Philippe, himself the eyewitness of two revolutions, 
 became the easy victim of a third. Reasoning 
 from what has been to what will be is apt to be 
 paralogistic at the best. Much influence must 
 still be left to chance, much accounted for by what 
 pagans called Fate, and we Providence. We can 
 only say, Victrix causa diis placuit, and Cato 
 must make the best of it. What is called poetical 
 justice, that is, an exact subservience of human 
 fortunes to moral laws, so that the actual becomes 
 the liege vassal of the ideal, is so seldom seen in 
 the events of real life that even the gentile world 
 felt the need of a future state of rewards and pun 
 ishments to make the scale of Divine justice even, 
 and satisfy the cravings of the soul. Our sense of 
 right, or of what we believe to be right, is so 
 pleased with an example of retribution that a 
 single instance is allowed to outweigh the many in 
 which wrong escapes un whipped. It was remarked 
 that sudden death overtook the purchasers of cer- 
 
128 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 tain property bequeathed for pious uses in Eng 
 land, and sequestered at the Reformation. Fuller 
 tells of a Sir Miles Pateridge, who threw dice with 
 the king for Jesus bells, and how " the ropes after 
 catched about his neck," he being hanged in the 
 reign of Edward VI. But at least a fifth of the 
 land in England was held by suppressed monas 
 teries, and the metal for the victorious cannon of 
 revolutionary France once called to the service of 
 the Prince of Peace from consecrated spires. We 
 err in looking for a visible and material penalty, 
 as if God imposed a fine of mishap for the breach 
 of his statutes. Seldom, says Horace, has penalty 
 lost the scent of crime, yet, on second thought, he 
 makes the sleuth-hound lame. Slow seems the 
 sword of Divine justice, adds Dante, to him who 
 longs to see it smite. The cry of all generations 
 has been, " How long,- O Lord ? " Where crime 
 has its root in weakness of character, that same 
 weakness is likely to play the avenger ; but where 
 it springs from that indifference as to means and 
 that contempt of consequences which are likely to 
 be felt by a strong nature, intent upon its end, it 
 would be hardy to reckon on the same dramatic 
 result. And if we find this difficulty in the cases 
 of individual men, it is even more rash to personify 
 nations, and deal out to them our little vials of 
 Divine retribution, as if we were the general dis~ 
 pensaries of doom. Shall we lay to a nation the 
 sins of a line of despots whom it cannot shake off ? 
 If we accept too blindly the theory of national 
 responsibility, we ought, by parity of reason, to 
 
THE REBELLION. 129 
 
 admit success as a valid proof of right. The mor 
 alists of fifty years ago, who saw the democratic 
 orgies of France punished with Napoleon, whose 
 own crimes brought him in turn to the rock of Pro 
 metheus, how would they explain the phenomenon 
 of Napoleon III. ? The readiness to trace a too 
 close and consequent relation between public delin 
 quencies and temporal judgments seems to us a 
 superstition holding over from the time when each 
 race, each family even, had its private and tute 
 lary divinity, a mere refinement of fetichism. 
 The world has too often seen " captive good attend 
 ing captain ill " to believe in a providence that 
 sets man-traps and spring-guns for the trespassers 
 on its domain, and Christianity, perhaps, elevated 
 man in no way so much as in making every one 
 personally, not gregariously, answerable for his 
 doings or not-doings, and thus inventing con 
 science, as we understand its meaning. But just 
 in proportion as the private citizen is enlightened 
 does he become capable of an influence on that 
 manifold result of thought, sentiment, reason, im 
 pulse, magnanimity, and meanness which, as Pub 
 lic Opinion, has now so great a share in shaping 
 the destiny of nations. And in this sense does he 
 become responsible, and out of the aggregate of 
 such individual responsibilities we can assume a 
 common complicity in the guilt of common wrong 
 doing. 
 
 But surely the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth ; 
 and though we do not believe in his so immediate 
 interference in events as would satisfy our impa- 
 
130 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 tience of injustice, yet he achieves his ends and 
 brings about his compensations by having made 
 Good infinitely and eternally lovely to the soul of 
 man, while the beauty of Evil is but a brief cheat, 
 which their own lusts put upon the senses of her 
 victims. And it is surely fixed as the foundations 
 of the earth that faithfulness to right and duty, 
 self-sacrifice, loyalty to that service whose visible 
 reward is often but suffering and baffled hope, 
 draw strength and succor from exhaustless springs 
 far up in those Delectable Mountains of trial which 
 the All-knowing has set between us and the achieve 
 ment of every noble purpose. History teaches, at 
 least, that wrong can reckon on no alliance with 
 the diviner part of man, while every high example 
 of virtue, though it led to the stake or the scaf 
 fold, becomes a part of the reserved force of hu 
 manity, and from generation to generation summons 
 kindred natures to the standard of righteousness 
 as with the sound of a trumpet. There is no such 
 reinforcement as faith in God, and that faith is 
 impossible till we have squared our policy and con 
 duct with our highest instincts. In the loom of 
 time, though the woof be divinely foreordained, 
 yet man supplies the weft, and the figures of the 
 endless web are shaped and colored by our own 
 wisdom or folly. Let no nation think itself safe 
 in being merely right, unless its captains are in 
 spired and sustained by a sense thereof. 
 
 We do not believe that history supplies any 
 trustworthy data for casting the horoscope of our 
 war. America is something without precedent. 
 
THE REBELLION. 131 
 
 Moreover, such changes have been going on in the 
 social and moral condition of nations as to make 
 the lessons of even comparatively recent times of 
 little import in forming conclusions on contem 
 porary affairs. Formerly a fact, not yet forgetful 
 of its etymology, was a thing done, a deed, and in 
 a certain sense implied, truly enough, the predomi 
 nance of individual actors and prevailing charac 
 ters. But powerful personalities are becoming of 
 less and less account, when facility of communica 
 tion has given both force and the means of exert 
 ing it to the sentiment of civilized mankind, and 
 when commerce has made the banker s strong-box 
 a true temple of Janus, the shutting or opening of 
 which means peace or war. Battles are decisive 
 now not so much by the destruction of armies as 
 by the defeat of public spirit, and a something 
 that has actually happened may be a less important 
 fact, either in conjecturing probabilities or deter 
 mining policy, than the indefinable progress of 
 change, not marked on any dial, but instinctively 
 divined, that is taking place in the general 
 thought. 
 
 The history of no civil war can be written with 
 out bias, scarcely without passionate prejudice. It 
 is always hard for men to conceive the honesty or 
 intelligence of those who hold other opinions, or 
 indeed to allow them the right to think for them 
 selves ; but in troubled times the blood mounts to 
 the head, and colors the judgment, giving to sus 
 picions and fancies the force of realities, and in 
 tensifying personal predilections, till they seem the 
 
132 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 pith and substance of national duties. Even where 
 the office of historian is assumed in the fairest 
 temper, it is impossible that the narrative of events 
 whose bearing is so momentous should not insen 
 sibly take somewhat the form of an argument, 
 that the political sympathies of the author should 
 not affect his judgment of men and measures. And 
 in such conflicts, far more than in ordinary times, 
 as the stake at issue is more absorbing and appeals 
 more directly to every private interest and patriotic 
 sentiment, so men, as they become prominent, and 
 more or less identified with this or that policy, at 
 last take the place of principles with the majority 
 of minds. To agree with us is to be a great com 
 mander, a prudent administrator, a politician with 
 out private ends. 
 
 The contrast between the works of Mr. Pollard l 
 and Mr. Greeley 2 is very striking. Though coin 
 cident in design, they are the antipodes of each 
 other in treatment. Mr. Greeley, finding a coun 
 try beyond measure prosperous suddenly assailed 
 by rebellion, is naturally led to seek an adequate 
 cause for so abnormal an effect. Mr. Pollard, 
 formerly an office-holder under the United States, 
 and now the editor of a Richmond newspaper, is 
 struck by the same reflection, and, unwilling to 
 state the true cause, or unable to find a plausible 
 reason, is driven to hunt up an excuse for what 
 strikes ordinary people as one of the greatest crimes 
 in history. The difference is instructive. 
 
 1 The Southern History of the War. The First Year of the War. 
 By Edward A. Pollard. 
 
 2 The American Conflict. By Horace Greeley. Vol. I. 
 
THE REBELLION. 133 
 
 Mr. Pollard s book, however, is well worth read 
 ing by those who wish to learn something of the 
 motives which originally led the Southern States 
 into rebellion, and still actuate them in their ob 
 stinate resistance. To any one familiar with the 
 history of the last thirty years, it would almost 
 seem that Mr. Pollard s object had been to expose 
 the futility of the pretences set up by the origina 
 tors of Secession, so utterly does he fail in showing 
 any adequate grounds for that desperate measure. 
 As a history, the book is of little value, except as 
 giving us here and there a hint by which we can 
 guess something of the state of mind prevailing at 
 the South. In point of style it is a curious jumble 
 of American sense and Southern highfaluting \ 
 One might fancy it written by a schoolmaster, 
 whose boys had got hold of the manuscript, and 
 inserted here and there passages taken at random 
 from the Gems of Irish Oratory. Mr. Pollard s 
 notions of the " Yankees," and the condition of 
 things among them, would be creditable to a Chi 
 naman from pretty well up in the back country. 
 No society could hold together for a moment in the 
 condition of moral decay which he attributes to the 
 Northern States. Before writing his next volume 
 he should read Charles Lamb s advice " to those who 
 have the framing of advertisements for the appre 
 hension of offenders." We must do him the justice 
 to say, however, that he writes no nonsense about 
 difference of races, and that, of all " Yankees," 
 he most thoroughly despises the Northern snob who 
 professes a sympathy for " Southern institutions " 
 
134 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 because lie believes that a slaveholder is a better 
 man than himself. 
 
 In narrating the causes which brought about 
 the present state of things, Mr. Pollard arranges 
 matters to suit his own convenience, constantly 
 reversing the relations of cause and effect, and 
 forgetting that the order of events is of every im 
 portance in estimating their moral bearing.. The 
 only theoretic reason he gives for Secession is the 
 desire to escape from the tyranny of a " numerical 
 majority." Yet it was by precisely such a ma 
 jority, and that attained by force or fraud, that the 
 seceding States were taken out of the Union. We 
 entirely agree with Mr. Pollard that a show of 
 hands is no test of truth ; but he seems to forget 
 that, except under a despotism, a numerical ma 
 jority of some sort or other is sure to govern. No 
 man capable of thought, as Mr. Pollard certainly 
 is, would admit that a majority was any more 
 likely to be right under a system of limited than 
 under one of universal suffrage, always provided 
 the said majority did not express his own opinions. 
 The majority always governs in the long run, be 
 cause it comes gradually round to the side of what is 
 just and for the common interest, and the only dan 
 gerous majority is that of a mob unchecked by the 
 delay for reflection which all constitutional govern 
 ment interposes. The constitutions of most of the 
 Slave States, so far as white men are concerned, 
 are of the most intensely democratic type. Would 
 Mr. Pollard consolidate them all under one strong 
 government, or does he believe that to be good for 
 
THE REBELLION. 135 
 
 a single State which is bad for many united ? It 
 is curious to see, in his own intense antipathy to a 
 slaveholding aristocracy, how purely American he 
 is in spite of his theories ; and, bitterly hostile as 
 he is to the Davis administration, he may chance 
 on the reflection that a majority is pretty much 
 the same thing in one parallel of latitude as an 
 other. Of one thing he may be assured, that 
 we of the North do not understand by republic a 
 government of the better and more intelligent class 
 by the worse and more ignorant, and accordingly 
 are doing our best by education to abolish the dis 
 tinction between the two. 
 
 The fact that no adequate reasons for Secession 
 have ever been brought forward, either by the 
 seceding States at the time, or by their apologists 
 since, can only be explained on the theory that 
 nothing more than a coup d etat was intended, 
 which should put the South in possession of the 
 government. Owing to the wretched policy (if 
 supineness deserve the name) largely prevalent in 
 the North, of sending to the lower house of Con 
 gress the men who needed rather than those who 
 ought to go there, men without the responsibility 
 or the independence which only established repu 
 tation, social position, long converse with great 
 questions, or native strength of character can give, 
 and to the habit of looking on a seat in the 
 national legislature more as the reward for partisan 
 activity than as imposing a service of the highest 
 nature, so that representatives were changed as 
 often as there were new political debts to pay or 
 
136 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 cliques to be conciliated, owing to these things, 
 the South maintained an easy superiority at Wash 
 ington, and learned to measure the Free States by 
 men who represented their weakest, and sometimes 
 their least honorable, characteristics. We doubt if 
 the Slave States have sent many men to the Capi 
 tol who could be bought, while it is notorious that 
 from the north of Mason and Dixon s line many 
 an M. C. has cleared, like a ship, for Washington 
 and a market. Southern politicians judge the 
 North by men without courage and without princi 
 ple, who would consent to any measure if it could 
 be becomingly draped in generalities, or if they 
 could evade the pillory of the yeas and nays. The 
 increasing drain of forensic ability toward the large 
 cities, with the mistaken theory that residence in 
 the district was a necessary qualification in candi 
 dates, tended still more to bring down the average 
 of Northern representation. The "claims" of a 
 section of the State, or even part of a district, 
 have been allowed to have weight, as if square 
 miles or acres were to be weighed against capacity 
 and experience. We attached too little importance 
 to the social prestige which the South acquired and 
 maintained at the seat of government, forgetting 
 the necessary influence it would exert upon the in 
 dependence of many of our own members. These 
 in turn brought home the new impressions they had 
 acquired, till the fallacy gradually became con 
 viction of a general superiority in the South, 
 though it had only so much truth in it as this, 
 that the people of that section sent their men of 
 
THE REBELLION. 137 
 
 character and position to Washington, and kept 
 them there till every year of experience added an 
 efficiency which more than made up for their 
 numerical inferiority. Meanwhile, our thinking 
 men allowed, whether from timidity or contempt, 
 certain demagogic fallacies to become axioms by 
 dint of repetition, chief among which was the 
 notion that a man was the better representative of 
 the democratic principle who had contrived to push 
 himself forward to popularity by whatever means, 
 and who represented the average instead of the 
 highest culture of the community, thus establishing 
 an aristocracy of mediocrity, nay, even of vulgarity, 
 in some less intelligent constituencies. The one 
 great strength of democracy is, that it opens all 
 the highways of power and station to the better 
 man, that it gives every man the chance of rising 
 to his natural level ; and its great weakness is in its 
 tendency to urge this principle to a vicious excess, 
 by pushing men forward into positions for which 
 they are unfit, not so much because they deserve 
 to rise, or because they have risen by great quali 
 ties, as because they began low. Our quadrennial 
 change of offices, which turns public service into 
 a matter of bargain and sale instead of the reward 
 of merit and capacity, which sends men to Con 
 gress to represent private interests in the sharing 
 of plunder, without regard to any claims of states 
 manship or questions of national policy, as if the 
 ship of state were periodically captured by priva 
 teers, has hastened our downward progress in the 
 evil way. By making the administration promi- 
 
138 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 nent at the cost of the government, and by its 
 constant lesson of scramble and vicissitude, almost 
 obliterating the idea of orderly permanence, it has 
 tended in no small measure to make disruption 
 possible, for Mr. Lincoln s election threw the 
 weight of every office-holder in the South into the 
 scale of Secession. The war, however, has proved 
 that the core of Democracy was sound; that the 
 people, if they had been neglectful of their duties, 
 or had misapprehended them, had not become 
 corrupt. 
 
 Mr. Greeley s volume is a valuable contribution 
 to our political history. Though for many years 
 well known as an ardent politician, and associated 
 by popular prejudice with that class of untried 
 social theories which are known by the name of 
 isms, his tone is singularly calm and dispassionate. 
 Disfigured here and there by a vulgarism which 
 adds nothing to its point, while it detracts from 
 its purity, his style is clear, straightforward, 
 and masculine, a good business style, at once 
 bare of ornament and undiluted with eloquence. 
 Mr. Greeley s intimate knowledge of our politics 
 and instinctive sympathy with the far-reaching 
 scope of our institutions (for, as B^ranger said of 
 himself, he is tout peuple) admirably fitted him 
 for his task. He is clear, concise, and accurate, 
 honestly striving after the truth, while his judi 
 cious Preface shows that he appreciates fully the 
 difficulties that beset whoever seeks to find it. If 
 none of his readers will be surprised to find his 
 work that of an able man, there are many who 
 
THE REBELLION. 139 
 
 would not expect it to be, as it is, that of a fair- 
 minded one. He writes without passion, making 
 due allowance for human nature in the South as 
 well as the North, and does not waste his strength, 
 as is the manner of fanatics, in fighting imaginary 
 giants while a real enemy is in the field. Tracing 
 Secession to its twin sources in slavery and the 
 doctrine of State Rights, and amply sustaining his 
 statements of fact by citations from contemporary 
 documents and speeches, he has made the plainest, 
 and for that very reason, we think, the strongest, 
 argument that has been put forth on the national 
 side of the question at issue in our civil war. 
 Above all, he is ready to allow those virtues in the 
 character of the Southern people whose existence 
 alone makes reunion desirable or possible. We 
 should not forget that the Negro is at least no more 
 our brother than they, for if he have fallen among 
 thieves who have robbed him of his manhood, they 
 have been equally enslaved by prejudice, ignorance, 
 and social inferiority. 
 
 It is not a little singular that, while slavery has 
 been for nearly eighty years the one root of bitter 
 ness in our politics, the general knowledge of its 
 history should be so superficial. Abolitionism has 
 been so persistently represented as the disturbing 
 element which threatened the permanence of our 
 Union, that mere repetition has at last become 
 conviction with that large class of minds with 
 which a conclusion is valuable exactly in propor 
 tion as it saves mental labor. Mr. Greeley s 
 chronological narrative is an excellent corrective of 
 
140 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 this delusion, and his tough little facts, driven 
 firmly home, will serve to spike this parrot battery, 
 and render it harmless for the future. A consecu 
 tive statement of such of the events in our history 
 as bear directly on the question of slavery, sepa 
 rated from all secondary circumstances, shows two 
 things clearly : first, that the doctrine that there 
 was any national obligation to consider slaves as 
 merely property, or to hold our tongues about 
 slavery, is of comparatively recent origin ; and, 
 second, that there was a pretty uniform ebb of 
 anti-slavery sentiment for nearly sixty years after 
 the adoption of the Constitution, the young flood 
 beginning to set strongly in again after the full 
 meaning of the annexation of Texas began to be 
 understood at the North, but not fairly filling up 
 again even its own deserted channels till the South 
 ern party succeeded in cutting the embankment of 
 the Missouri Compromise. Then at last it became 
 evident that the real danger to be guarded against 
 was the abolition of Freedom, and the reaction was 
 as violent as it was sudden. 
 
 In the early days of the Republic, slavery was 
 admitted to be a social and moral evil, only to be 
 justified by necessity ; and we think it more than 
 doubtful if South Carolina and Georgia could have 
 procured an extension of the slave-trade, had there 
 not been a general persuasion that the whole sys 
 tem could not long maintain itself against the 
 growth of intelligence and humanity. As early as 
 1786 a resident of South Carolina wrote : " In 
 countries where slavery is encouraged, the ideas of 
 
THE REBELLION. 141 
 
 the people are of a peculiar cast ; the soul becomes 
 dark and narrow, and assumes a tone of savage 
 brutality. . . . The most elevated and liberal Car 
 olinians abhor slavery ; they will not debase them 
 selves by attempting to vindicate it." In 1789 
 William Pinckney said, in the Maryland Assem 
 bly : " Sir, by the eternal principles of natural jus 
 tice, no master in the State has a right to hold his 
 slave in bondage for a single hour." And he went 
 on to speak of slavery in a way which, fifty years 
 later, would have earned him a coat of tar and 
 feathers, if not a halter, in any of the Slave States, 
 and in some of the Free. In 1787 Delaware 
 passed an act forbidding the importation of " negro 
 or mulatto slaves into the State for sale or other 
 wise ; " and three years later her courts declared a 
 slave, hired in Maryland and brought over the bor 
 der, free under this statute. In 1790 there were 
 Abolition societies in Maryland and Virginia. In 
 1787 the Synod of the Presbyterian Church (since 
 called the General Assembly), in their pastoral 
 letter, "strongly recommended the abolition of 
 slavery, with the instruction of the negroes in liter 
 ature and religion." We cite these instances to 
 show that the sacredness of slavery from discussion 
 was a discovery of much later date. So also was 
 the theory of its divine origin, a theological 
 slough in which, we are sorry to say, Northern men 
 have shown themselves readiest to bemire them 
 selves. It was when slave labor and slave breed 
 ing began to bring large and rapid profits, by the 
 extension of cotton-culture consequent on the in- 
 
142 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 vention of Whitney s gin, and the purchase of 
 Louisiana, that slavery was found to be identical 
 with religion, and, like Duty, a " daughter of the 
 voice of God." Till it became rich, it had been 
 content with claiming the municipal law for its 
 parent, but now it was easy to find heralds who 
 could blazon for it a nobler pedigree. Men who 
 looked upon dancing as sinful could see the very 
 beauty of holiness in a system like this ! It is 
 consoling to think that, even in England, it is little 
 more than a century since the divine right of kings 
 ceased to be defended in the same way, by mak 
 ing the narrative portions of Scripture doctrinal. 
 Such strange things have been found in the Bible 
 that we are not without hope of the discovery of 
 Christianity there, one of these days. 
 
 The influence of the Southern States in the na 
 tional politics was due mainly to the fact of their 
 having a single interest on which they were all 
 united, and, though fond of contrasting their more 
 chivalric character with the commercial spirit of 
 the North, it will be found that profit has been the 
 motive to all the encroachments of slavery. These 
 encroachments first assumed the offensive with the 
 annexation of Texas. In the admission of Mis 
 souri, though the Free States might justly claim a 
 right to fix the political destiny of half the terri 
 tory, bought with the common money of the nation, 
 and though events have since proved that the com 
 promise of 1820 was a fatal mistake, yet, as sla 
 very was already established there, the South might, 
 with some show of reason, claim to be on the 
 
THE REBELLION. 143 
 
 defensive. In one sense, it is true, every enlarge 
 ment of the boundaries of slavery has been an 
 aggression. For it cannot with any fairness be 
 assumed that the framers of the Constitution in 
 tended to foreordain a perpetual balance of power 
 between the Free and the Slave States. If they 
 had, it is morally certain that they would not so 
 have arranged the basis of representation as to se 
 cure to the South an unfair preponderance, to be 
 increased with every addition of territory. It is 
 much more probable that they expected the South 
 ern States to fall more and more into a minority 
 of population and wealth, and were willing to 
 strengthen this minority by yielding it somewhat 
 more than its just share of power in Congress. In 
 deed, it was mainly on the ground of the undue 
 advantage which the South would gain, politically, 
 that the admission of Missouri was distasteful to 
 the North. 
 
 It was not till after the Southern politicians had 
 firmly established their system of governing the 
 country by an alliance with the Democratic party 
 of the Free States, on the basis of a division of 
 offices, that they dreamed of making their " insti 
 tution" the chief concern of the nation. As we 
 follow Mr. Greeley s narrative, we see them first 
 pleading for the existence of slavery, then for its 
 equality, and at last claiming for it an absolute do 
 minion. Such had been the result of uniform con 
 cession on the part of the North for the sake of 
 Union, such the decline of public spirit, that within 
 sixty years of the time when slaveholders like 
 
144 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 George Mason of Virginia could denounce slavery 
 for its inconsistency with the principles on which 
 our Revolution had triumphed, the leaders of a 
 party at the North claiming a kind of patent in 
 the rights of man as an expedient for catching 
 votes were decrying the doctrines of the Declara 
 tion of Independence as visionary and impractica 
 ble. Was it the Slave or the Free States that had 
 just cause to be alarmed for their peculiar institu 
 tions ? And, meanwhile, it had been discovered 
 that slavery was conservative ! It would protect a 
 country in which almost every voter was a land 
 holder from any sudden frenzy of agrarian ism ! 
 In the South it certainly conserved a privileged 
 class, and prevented a general debauch of educa 
 tion ; but in the North it preserved nothing but 
 political corruption, subserviency, cant, and all 
 those baser qualities which unenviably distinguish 
 man from the brutes. 
 
 The nation had paid ten millions for Texas, an 
 extension of the area of freedom, as it was shame 
 lessly called, which was to raise the value of slaves 
 in Virginia, according to Mr. Upshur, and did 
 raise it, fifty per cent. It was next proposed to 
 purchase Cuba for one hundred millions, or to take 
 it by force if Spain refused to sell. And all this 
 for fear of abolition. This was paying rather dearly 
 for our conservative element, it should seem, espe 
 cially when it stood in need of such continual and 
 costly conservation. But it continued to be plain 
 to a majority of voters that democratic institutions 
 absolutely demanded a safeguard against demo- 
 
THE REBELLION. 145 
 
 cracy, and that the only insurance was something 
 that must be itself constantly insured at more and 
 more ruinous rates. It continued to be plain also 
 that slavery was purely a matter of local concern, 
 though it could help itself to the national money, 
 force the nation into an unjust war, and stain its 
 reputation in Europe with the buccaneering prin 
 ciples proclaimed in the Ostend Manifesto. All 
 these were plainly the results of the ever-increasing 
 and unprovoked aggressions of Northern fanati 
 cism. To be the victims of such injustice seemed 
 not unpleasing to the South. Let us sum up the 
 items of their little bill against us. They de 
 manded Missouri, we yielded ; they could not 
 get along without Texas, we re-annexed it ; they 
 must have a more stringent fugitive-slave law, 
 we gulped it ; they must no longer be insulted with 
 the Missouri Compromise, we repealed it. Thus 
 far the North had surely been faithful to the terms 
 of the bond. We had paid our pound of flesh 
 whenever it was asked for, and with fewer wry 
 faces, inasmuch as Brother Ham underwent the in 
 cision. Not at all. We had only surrendered the 
 principles of the Revolution ; we must give up the 
 theory also, if we would be loyal to the Constitu 
 tion. 
 
 We entirely agree with Mr. Greeley that the 
 quibble which would make the Constitution an 
 anti-slavery document, because the word slave is 
 not mentioned in it, cannot stand a moment if we 
 consider the speeches made in Convention, or the 
 ideas by which the action of its members was 
 
146 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 guided. But the question of slavery in the Ter 
 ritories stands on wholly different ground. We 
 know what the opinions of the men were who 
 drafted the Constitution, by their own procedure 
 in passing the Ordinance of 1787. That the 
 North should yield all claim to the common lands 
 was certainly a new interpretation of constitutional 
 law. And yet this was practically insisted on by 
 the South, and its denial was the more immediate 
 occasion of rupture between the two sections. But, 
 in our opinion, the real cause which brought the 
 question to the decision of war was the habit of 
 concession on the part of the North, and the inabil 
 ity of its representatives to say JVb, when policy as 
 well as conscience made it imperative. Without 
 that confidence in Northern pusillanimity into 
 which the South had been educated by their long 
 experience of this weakness, whatever might have 
 been the secret wish of the leading plotters, they 
 would never have dared to rush their fellow-citizens 
 into a position where further compromise became 
 impossible. 
 
 Inextricably confused with the question of Sla 
 very, and essential to an understanding of the mo 
 tives and character of the Southern people as dis 
 tinguished from their politicians, is the doctrine of 
 State Rights. On this topic also Mr. Greeley fur 
 nishes all the data requisite to a full understanding 
 of the matter. The dispute resolves itself substan 
 tially into this : whether the adoption of the Con 
 stitution established a union or a confederacy, a 
 government or a league, a nation or a committee. 
 
THE REBELLION. 147 
 
 This also is a question which can only be deter 
 mined by a knowledge of what the Convention of 
 1787 intended and accomplished, and the States 
 severally acceded to, it being of course under 
 stood that no State had a right, or at the time pre 
 tended any right, to accept the Constitution with 
 mental reservations. On this subject we have am 
 ple and unimpeachable testimony in the discussions 
 which led to the calling of the Convention, and the 
 debates which followed in the different conventions 
 of the States called together to decide whether the 
 new frame of government should be accepted or 
 rejected. The conviction that it was absolutely 
 necessary to remodel the Articles of Confederation 
 was wrought wholly by an experience of the inade 
 quacy of the existing plan (under which a single 
 State could oppose its veto to a law of Congress), 
 from the looseness of its cohesion and its want of 
 power to compel obedience. The principle of coer 
 cive authority, which was represented as so oppres 
 sively unconstitutional by the friends of Secession 
 in the North as well as the South four years ago, 
 was precisely that which, as its absence had 
 brought the old plan to a dead-lock, was deemed 
 essential to the new. The formal proposal for a 
 convention, originated by Hamilton, was seconded 
 by one State after another. Here is a sample of 
 Virginian public sentiment at that time, from the 
 " instructions to their representatives," by several 
 constituencies : " Government without coercion is a 
 proposition at once so absurd and self-contradic 
 tory that the idea creates a confusion of the under- 
 
148 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 standing ; it is form without substance, at best a 
 body without a soul." Oliver Ellsworth, advoca 
 ting the adoption of the Constitution in the Con 
 vention of Connecticut, says : " A more energetic 
 system is necessary. The present is merely advi 
 sory. It has no coercive power. Without this, 
 government is ineffectual, or rather is no govern 
 ment at all." Earlier than this Madison had 
 claimed "an implied right of coercion" even for 
 the Confederate Congress, and Jefferson had gone 
 so far as to say that they possessed it " by the law 
 of nature." The leading objections to the new 
 Constitution were such as to show the general be 
 lief that the State sovereignties were to be ab 
 sorbed into the general government in all matters 
 of national concern. But the unhappy ingenuity 
 of Mr. Jefferson afterwards devised that theory of 
 strict construction which would enable any State 
 to profit by the powers of the Constitution so long 
 as it was for her interest or convenience, and then, 
 by pleading its want of powers, to resolve the help 
 less organization once more into the incoherence of 
 confederacy. By this dexterous legerdemain, the 
 Union became a string of juggler s rings, which 
 seems a chain while it pleases the operator, but 
 which, by bringing the strain on the weak point 
 contrived for the purpose, is made to fall easily 
 asunder and become separate rings again. An 
 adroit use of this theory enabled the South to gain 
 one advantage after another by threatening dis 
 union, and led naturally, on the first effective show 
 of resistance, to secession. But in order that the 
 
THE REBELLION. 149 
 
 threat might serve its purpose without the costly 
 necessity of putting it in execution, the doctrine of 
 State Eights was carefully inculcated at the South 
 by the same political party which made belief in 
 the value of the Union a fanaticism at the North. 
 On one side of Mason and Dixon s line it was law 
 ful, and even praiseworthy, to steal the horse ; on 
 the other, it was a hanging matter to look over the 
 fence. 
 
 But in seeking for the cause of the rebellion, 
 with any fairness toward the Southern people, 
 and any wish to understand their motives and 
 character, it would be unwise to leave out of view 
 the fact that they have been carefully educated in 
 the faith that secession is not only their right, but 
 the only safeguard of their freedom. While it is 
 perfectly true that the great struggle now going on 
 is intrinsically between right and privilege, between 
 law and license, and while on the part of its leaders 
 the Southern revolt was a conspiracy against popu 
 lar government, and an attempt to make a great 
 Republic into a mere convenient drudge for Slavery, 
 yet we should despair of our kind did we believe 
 that the rank and file of the Confederate armies 
 were consciously spending so much courage and 
 endurance on behalf of barbarism. It is more 
 consoling, as it is nearer the truth, to think that 
 they are fighting for what they have been taught to 
 believe their rights, and their inheritance as a free 
 people. The high qualities they have undoubtedly 
 shown in the course of the war, their tenacity, 
 patience, and discipline, show that, under better 
 
150 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 influences, they may become worthy to take their 
 part in advancing the true destinies of America. 
 
 It is yet too early to speculate with much con 
 fidence on the remote consequences of the war. 
 One of its more immediate results has already 
 been to disabuse the Southern mind of some of 
 its most fatal misconceptions as to Northern char 
 acter. They thought us a trading people, incapable 
 of lofty sentiment, ready to sacrifice everything 
 for commercial advantage, a heterogeneous rabble, 
 fit only to be ruled by a superior race. They are 
 not likely to make that mistake again, and must 
 have learned by this time that the best blood is 
 that which has in it most of the iron of purpose 
 and constancy. War, the sternest and dearest 
 of teachers, has already made us a soberer and 
 older people on both sides. It has brought ques 
 tions of government and policy home to us as never 
 before, and has made us feel that citizenship is a 
 duty to whose level we must rise, and not a privilege 
 to which we are born. The great principles of 
 humanity and politics, which had faded into the 
 distance of abstraction and history, have been for 
 four years the theme of earnest thought and dis 
 cussion at every fireside and wherever two men 
 met together. They have again become living and 
 operative in the heart and mind of the nation. 
 What was before a mighty population is grown a 
 great country, united in one hope, inspired by one 
 thought, and welded into one power. But have 
 not the same influences produced the same result 
 in the South, and created there also a nation hope- 
 
THE REBELLION. 151 
 
 lessly alien and hostile ? To a certain extent this 
 is true, but not in the unlimited way in which it 
 is stated by enemies in England, or politicians 
 at home, who would gladly put the people out of 
 heart, because they themselves are out of office. 
 With the destruction of slavery, the one object of 
 the war will have been lost by the Rebels, and its 
 one great advantage gained by the government. 
 Slavery is by no means dead as yet, whether 
 socially in its relation of man to man, or morally 
 in its hold on public opinion and its strength as 
 a political superstition. But there is no party at 
 the North, considerable in numbers or influence, 
 which could come into power on the platform of 
 making peace with the Rebels on their own terms. 
 No party can get possession of the government 
 which is not in sympathy with the temper of the 
 people, and the people, forced into war against 
 their will by the unprovoked attack of pro-slavery 
 bigotry, are resolved on pushing it to its legiti 
 mate conclusion. War means now, consciously 
 with many, unconsciously with most, but inevita 
 bly, abolition. Nothing can save slavery but peace. 
 Let its doom be once accomplished, or its recon 
 struction (for reconstruction means nothing more) 
 clearly seen to be an impossibility, and the bond 
 between the men at the South who were willing to 
 destroy the Union, and those at the North who 
 only wish to save it, for the sake of slavery, will 
 be broken. The ambitious in both sections will 
 prefer their chances as members of a mighty 
 empire to what would always be secondary places 
 
152 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 in two rival and hostile nations, powerless to com 
 mand respect abroad or secure prosperity at home. 
 The masses of the Southern people will not feel 
 too keenly the loss of a kind of property in which 
 they had no share, while it made them underlings, 
 nor will they find it hard to reconcile themselves 
 with a government from which they had no real 
 cause of estrangement. If the war be waged man 
 fully, as becomes a thoughtful people, without 
 insult or childish triumph in success, if we meet 
 opinion with wiser opinion, waste no time in 
 badgering prejudice till it become hostility, and 
 attack slavery as a crime against the nation, and 
 not as individual sin, it will end, we believe, in 
 making us the most powerful and prosperous com 
 munity the world ever saw. Our example and our 
 ideas will react more powerfully than ever on the 
 Old World, and the consequence of a rebellion, 
 aimed at the natural equality of all men, will be 
 to hasten incalculably the progress of equalization 
 over the whole earth. Above all, Freedom will 
 become the one absorbing interest of the whole 
 people, making us a nation alive from sea to sea 
 with the consciousness of a great purpose and 
 a noble destiny, and uniting us as slavery has 
 hitherto combined and made powerful the most 
 hateful aristocracy known to man. 
 
McCLELLAN OR LINCOLN? 
 
 1864. 
 
 THE spectacle of an opposition waiting patiently 
 during several months for its principles to turn up 
 would be amusing in times less critical than these. 
 Nor was this the worst. If there might be persons 
 malicious enough to think that the Democratic 
 party could get along very well without principles, 
 all would admit that a candidate was among the 
 necessaries of life. Now, where not only immedi 
 ate policy, but the very creed which that policy 
 is to embody, is dependent on circumstances, and 
 on circumstances so shifting and doubtful as those 
 of a campaign, it is hard to find a representative 
 man whose name may, in some possible contingen 
 cy, mean enough, without, in some other equally 
 possible contingency, meaning too much. The 
 problem was to hunt up somebody who, without 
 being anything in particular, might be anything 
 in general, as occasion demanded. Of course, the 
 professed object of the party was to save their 
 country, but which was their country, and which 
 it would be most profitable to save, whether Amer 
 ica or Secessia, was a question that Grant or 
 Sherman might answer one way or the other in 
 a single battle. If only somebody or something 
 
154 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 would tell them whether they were for war or 
 peace ! The oracles were dumb, and all summer 
 long they looked anxiously out, like Sister Anne 
 from her tower, for the hero who should rescue 
 unhappy Columbia from the Republican Blue 
 beard. Did they see a cloud of dust in the 
 direction of Richmond or Atlanta? Perhaps 
 Grant might be the man, after all, or even Sher 
 man would answer at a pinch. When at last no 
 great man would come along, it was debated 
 whether it might not be better to nominate some 
 one without a record, as it is called, since a no 
 body was clearly the best exponent of a party 
 that was under the unhappy necessity of being 
 still uncertain whether it had any recognizable 
 soul or not. Meanwhile, the time was getting 
 short and the public impatience peremptory. 
 
 " Under which king 1 , bezonian ? Speak, or die ! " 
 
 The party found it alike inconvenient to do the 
 one or the other, and ended by a compromise 
 which might serve to keep them alive till after 
 election, but which was as far from any distinct 
 utterance as if their mouths were already full of 
 that official pudding which they hope for as the 
 reward of their amphibological patriotism. Since 
 it was not safe to be either for peace or war, they 
 resolved to satisfy every reasonable expectation 
 by being at the same time both and neither. If 
 you are warlike, there is General McClellan ; if 
 pacific, surely you must be suited with Mr. Pendle- 
 ton ; if neither, the combination of the two makes 
 
McCLELLAN OR LINCOLN? 155 
 
 a tertium quid that is neither one thing nor 
 another. As the politic Frenchman, kissing the 
 foot of St. Peter s statue (recast out of a Jupiter), 
 while he thus did homage to existing prejudices, 
 hoped that the Thunderer would remember him 
 if he ever came into power again, so the Chicago 
 Convention compliments the prevailing warlike 
 sentiment of the country with a soldier, but holds 
 the civilian quietly in reserve for the future con 
 tingencies of submission. The nomination is a 
 kind of political Wfiat-is-it ? and voters are ex 
 pected, without asking impertinent questions, to 
 pay their money and make their own choice as 
 to the natural history of the animal. Looked at 
 from the Northern side, it is a raven, the bird of 
 carnage, to be sure, but whitewashed and looking 
 as decorously dove-like as it can ; from the South 
 ern, it is a dove, blackened over for the nonce, 
 but letting the olive-branch peep from under its 
 wing. 
 
 A more delicate matter for a convention, how 
 ever, even than the selection of candidates, is the 
 framing of a platform for them to stand upon. 
 It was especially delicate for a gathering which 
 represented so many heterogeneous and almost 
 hostile elements. So incongruous an assemblage 
 has not been seen since the host of Peter the 
 Hermit, unanimous in nothing but the hope of 
 plunder and of reconquering the Holy Land of 
 office. There were War Democrats ready to unite 
 in peace resolutions, and Peace Democrats eager 
 to move the unanimous nomination of a war can- 
 
156 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 didate. To make the confusion complete, Mr. 
 Franklin Pierce, the dragooner of Kansas, writes 
 a letter in favor of free elections, and the ma- 
 ligners of New England propose a Connecticut 
 Yankee as their favorite nominee. The Conven 
 tion was a rag-bag of dissent, made up of bits so 
 various in hue and texture that the managers must 
 have been as much puzzled to arrange them in any 
 kind of harmonious pattern as the thrifty house 
 wife in planning her coverlet out of the parings 
 of twenty years dressmaking. All the odds and 
 ends of personal discontent, every shred of private 
 grudge, every resentful rag snipped off by official 
 shears, scraps of Rebel gray and leavings of Union 
 blue, all had been gathered, as if for the tailor 
 ing of Joseph s coat ; and as a Chatham Street 
 broker first carefully removes all marks of previous 
 ownership from the handkerchiefs which find their 
 way to his counter, so the temporary chairman 
 advised his hearers, by way of a preliminary cau 
 tion, to surrender their convictions. This, perhaps, 
 was superfluous, for it may be doubted whether 
 anybody present, except Mr. Fernando Wood, ever 
 legally had one, though Captain Rynders must 
 have brought many in his following who richly 
 deserved it. Mr. Belmont, being chosen to repre 
 sent the Democracy of Mammon, did little more 
 than paraphrase in prose the speech of that fallen 
 financier in another rebellious conclave, as reported 
 by Milton : 
 
 How in safety best we may 
 Compose our present evils, with regard 
 
McCLELLAN OR LINCOLN? 157 
 
 Of what we are and were, dismissing quite 
 All thoughts of war." 
 
 But we turn from the momentary elevation of 
 the banker, to follow the arduous labors of the 
 Committee on Resolutions. 1 The single end to be 
 served by the platform they were to construct was 
 that of a bridge over which their candidate might 
 make his way into the White House. But it must 
 be so built as to satisfy the somewhat exacting the 
 ory of construction held by the Rebel emissaries at 
 Niagara, while at the same time no apprehensions 
 as to its soundness must be awakened in the loyal 
 voters of the party. The war plank would offend 
 the one, the State Rights plank excite the suspicion 
 of the other. The poor fellow in ^Esop, with his 
 two wives, one pulling out the black hairs and the 
 other the white, was not in a more desperate sit 
 uation than the Committee, MacHeath, between 
 his two doxies, not more embarrassed. The result 
 of their labors was, accordingly, as narrow as the 
 pathway of the faithful into the Mahometan par 
 adise, so slender, indeed, that Blondin should 
 have been selected as the only candidate who could 
 hope to keep his balance on it, with the torrent of 
 events rushing ever swifter and louder below. It 
 might sustain the somewhat light Unionism of Mr. 
 Pen die ton, but would General McClellan dare to 
 trust its fragile footing, with his Report and his 
 West Point oration, with his record, in short, under 
 his arm ? Without these documents General Mc- 
 
 1 The Platform of the Chicago Convention was published in the 
 public journals 30th August. 
 
158 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 Clellan is a nobody ; with them, before he can step 
 on a peace platform, he must eat an amount of leek 
 that would have turned the stomach of Ancient 
 Pistol himself. It remained to be seen whether he 
 was more in favor of being President than of his 
 own honor and that of the country. 
 
 The Resolutions of the Chicago Convention, 
 though they denounce various wrongs and evils, 
 some of them merely imaginary, and all the neces 
 sary results of civil war, propose only one thing, 
 surrender. Disguise it as you will, flavor it as 
 you will, call it what you will, umble-pie is umble- 
 pie, and nothing else. The people instinctively so 
 understood it. They rejected with disgust a plan 
 whose mere proposal took their pusillanimity for 
 granted, and whose acceptance assured their self- 
 contempt. At a moment when the Rebels would 
 be checkmated in another move, we are advised to 
 give them a knight and begin the game over again. 
 If they are not desperate, what chance of their ac 
 cepting offers which they rejected with scorn before 
 the war began ? If they are not desperate, why is 
 their interest more intense in the result of our next 
 Presidential election than even in the campaign 
 at their very door? If they were not desperate, 
 would two respectable men like Messrs. Clay and 
 Holcomb endure the society of George Saunders ? 
 General McClellan himself admitted the righteous 
 ness of the war by volunteering in it, and, the war 
 once begun, the only real question has been whether 
 the principle of legitimate authority or that of 
 wanton insurrection against it should prevail, 
 
McCLELLAN OR LINCOLN? 159 
 
 whether we should have for the future a gov 
 ernment of opinion or of brute force. When the 
 rebellion began, its leaders had no intention to 
 dissolve the Union, but to reconstruct it, to make 
 the Montgomery Constitution and Jefferson Davis 
 supreme over the whole country, and not over a 
 feeble fragment of it. They knew, as we knew, the 
 weakness of a divided country, and our experience 
 of foreign governments during the last four years 
 has not been such as to lessen the apprehension on 
 that score, or to make the consciousness of it less 
 pungent in either of the contending sections. Even 
 now, Jefferson Davis is said to be in favor of a con 
 federation between the Free and the Slave States. 
 But what confederation could give us back the 
 power and prestige of the old Union ? The expe 
 rience of Germany surely does not tempt to imi 
 tation. And in making overtures for peace, with 
 whom are we to treat? Talking vaguely about 
 " the South," " the Confederate States," or " the 
 Southern people," does not help the matter ; for 
 the cat under all this meal is always the govern 
 ment at Richmond, men with everything to expect 
 from independence, with much to hope from re 
 construction, and sure of nothing but ruin from 
 reunion. And these men, who were arrogant as 
 equals and partners, are to be moderate in dictat 
 ing terms as conquerors ! If the people understood 
 less clearly the vital principle which is at hazard in 
 this contest, if they were not fully persuaded that 
 Slavery and State Rights are merely the coun 
 ters, and that free institutions are the real stake, 
 
160 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 they might be deluded with the hope of compro 
 mise. But there are things that are not subjects 
 of compromise. The honor, the conscience, the 
 very soul of a nation, cannot be compromised with 
 out ceasing to exist. When you propose to yield 
 a part of them, there is already nothing left to 
 yield. 
 
 And yet this is all that the party calling itself 
 Democratic, after months of deliberation, after 
 four years in which to study the popular mind, 
 have to offer in the way of policy. It is neither 
 more nor less than to confess that they have no 
 real faith in popular self-government, for it is to 
 assume that the people have neither common nor 
 moral sense. General McClellan is to be put in 
 command of the national citadel, on condition that 
 he immediately offers to capitulate. To accept the 
 nomination on these terms was to lose, not only 
 his election, but his self-respect. Accordingly, no 
 sooner was the damaging effect of the platform 
 evident than it was rumored that he would consent 
 to the candidacy, but reject the conditions on 
 which alone it was offered. The singular uniform, 
 half Union -blue and half Confederate - gray, in 
 which it was proposed by the managers at Chicago 
 to array the Democratic party, while it might be no 
 novelty to some camp-followers of the New York 
 delegation familiar with the rules of certain of our 
 public institutions, could hardly be agreeable to 
 one who had worn the livery of his country with 
 distinction. It was the scene of Petruchio and the 
 tailor over again : 
 
McCLELLAN OR LINCOLN 1 161 
 
 Gen. McC. "Why, what, i th Devil s name, tailor, call st thou 
 
 this? " 
 Committee. " You bid me make it orderly and well, 
 
 According to the fashion and the time." 
 Gen. McC. Marry, I did; but, if you be remembered, 
 
 I did not bid you mar it to the time." 
 
 Between the nomination and acceptance came 
 the taking of Atlanta, marring the coat to the time 
 with a vengeance, and suggesting the necessity of 
 turning it, a sudden cure which should rank 
 among the first in future testimonials to the efficacy 
 of Sherman s lozenges. Had General McClellan 
 thrust the resolutions away from him with an hon 
 est scorn, we should have nothing to say save in 
 commendation. But to accept them with his own 
 interpretation, to put upon them a meaning utterly 
 averse from their plain intention, and from that 
 understanding of them which the journals of his 
 own faction clearly indicated by their exultation or 
 their silence, according as they favored Confeder 
 acy or Union, is to prepare a deception for one of 
 the parties to the bargain. In such cases, which 
 is commonly cheated, the candidate, or the people 
 who vote for him ? If the solemn and deliberate 
 language of resolutions is to be interpreted by con 
 traries, what rule of hermeneutics shall we apply 
 to the letter of a candidate ? If the Convention 
 meant precisely what they did not say, have we 
 any assurance that the aspirant has not said pre 
 cisely what he did not mean ? Two negatives may 
 constitute an affirmative, but surely the affirmation 
 of two contradictory propositions by parties to the 
 same bargain assures nothing but misunderstanding. 
 
162 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 The resolutions were adopted with but four dis 
 senting votes ; their meaning was obvious, and the 
 whole country understood it to be peace on any 
 conditions that would be condescended to at Rich 
 mond. If a nation were only a contrivance to pro 
 tect men in gathering gear, if territory meant only 
 so many acres for the raising of crops, if power 
 were of worth only as a police to prevent or punish 
 crimes against person and property, then peace for 
 the mere sake of peace were the one desirable thing 
 for a people whose only history would be written 
 in its cash-book. But if a nation be a living unity, 
 leaning on the past by tradition, and reaching 
 toward the future by continued aspiration and 
 achievement, if territory be of value for the rais 
 ing of men formed to high aims and inspired to 
 noble deeds by that common impulse which, spring 
 ing from a national ideal, gradually takes authen 
 tic shape in a national character, if power be 
 but a gross and earthy bulk till it be ensouled with 
 thought and purpose, and of worth only as the 
 guardian and promoter of truth and justice among 
 men, then there are misfortunes worse than war 
 and blessings greater than peace. At this moment, 
 not the Democratic party only, but the whole coun 
 try, longs for peace, and the difference is merely as 
 to the price that shall be paid for it. Shall we pay 
 in degradation, and sue for a cessation of hostili 
 ties which would make chaos the rule and order the 
 exception, which would not be peace, but toleration, 
 not the repose of manly security, but the helpless 
 quiet of political death ? Or shall we pay, in a 
 
McCLELLAN OR LINCOLN? 163 
 
 little more present suffering, self-sacrifice, and ear 
 nestness of purpose, for a peace that shall be as 
 lasting as honorable, won as it will be by the vic 
 tory of right over wrong, and resting on the prom 
 ise of God and the hope of man? We believe the 
 country has already made up its mind as to the an 
 swer, and will prove that a democracy may have as 
 clear a conception of its interests and duties, as 
 fixed a purpose in defending the one and fulfilling 
 the other, a will as united and prompt, as have 
 hitherto been supposed to characterize forms of 
 government where the interests were more personal 
 and the power less diffused. 
 
 Fortunately, though some of General McClellan s 
 indiscreet friends would make the coming election 
 to turn upon his personal quarrel with the admin 
 istration, the question at issue between the two par 
 ties which seek to shape the policy of the country 
 is one which manifestly transcends all lesser con 
 siderations, and must be discussed in the higher 
 atmosphere of principle, by appeals to the reason, 
 and not the passions, of the people. However 
 incongruous with each other in opinion the candi 
 dates of the Democratic party may be, in point of 
 respectability they are unexceptionable. It is true, 
 as one of the candidates represents war and the 
 other peace, and " when two men ride on one horse, 
 one must ride behind," that it is of some conse 
 quence to know which is to be in the saddle and 
 which on the croup : but we will take it for granted 
 that General McClellan will have no more delicacy 
 about the opinions of Mr. Pendleton than he has 
 
164 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 shown for those of the Convention. Still, we 
 should remember that the General may be impru 
 dent enough to die, as General Harrison and Gen 
 eral Taylor did before him, and that Providence 
 may again make " of our pleasant vices whips to 
 scourge us." We shall say nothing of the sectional 
 aspect of the nomination, for we do not believe 
 that what we deemed a pitiful electioneering cla 
 mor, when raised against our own candidates four 
 years ago, becomes reasonable argument in oppos 
 ing those of our adversaries now. The point of 
 interest, then, is simply this : What can General 
 McClellan accomplish for the country which Mr. 
 Lincoln has failed to accomplish? In what re 
 spect would their policies differ ? And, supposing 
 them to differ, which would be most consistent 
 with the honor and permanent well-being of the 
 nation ? 
 
 General McClellan, in his letter of acceptance, 1 
 assumes that, in nominating him, " the record of 
 his public life was kept in view " by the Conven 
 tion. This will enable us to define with some cer 
 tainty the points on which his policy would be 
 likely to differ from that of Mr. Lincoln. He 
 agrees with him that the war was a matter of ne 
 cessity, not of choice. He agrees with him in as 
 suming a right to emancipate slaves as a matter of 
 military expediency, differing only as to the method 
 and extent of its application, a mere question of 
 judgment. He agrees with him as to the propriety 
 of drafting men for the public service, having, in- 
 
 1 This letter was published in the public journals 9 September. 
 
vv \*J&I 
 
 McCLELLAN OR LINCOLN? 165 
 
 deed, been the first to recommend a draft of men 
 whom he was to command himself. He agrees 
 with him that it is not only lawful, but politic, to 
 make arrests without the ordinary forms of law 
 where the public safety requires it, and himself 
 both advised and accomplished the seizure of an 
 entire Legislature. So far there is no essential 
 difference, and beyond this we find very little, ex 
 cept that Mr. Lincoln was in a position where he 
 was called on to act with a view to the public wel 
 fare, and General McClellan in one where he could 
 express abstract opinions, without the responsibility 
 of trial, to be used hereafter for partisan purposes 
 as a part of his " record." For example, just after 
 his failure to coerce the State of Virginia, he took 
 occasion to instruct his superiors in their duty, and, 
 among other things, stated his opinion that the war 
 " should not be a war looking to the subjugation of 
 the people of any State," but " should be against 
 armed forces and political organizations." The 
 whole question of the right to " coerce a sovereign 
 State " appears to have arisen from a confusion of 
 the relations of a State to its own internal policy 
 and to the general government. But a State is 
 certainly a " political organization," and, if we un 
 derstand General McClellan rightly, he would co 
 erce a State, but not the people of it, a distinc 
 tion which we hope he appreciates better than its 
 victims would be likely to do. We find here also 
 no diversity in principle between the two men, 
 only that Mr. Lincoln has been compelled to do, 
 while General McClellan has had the easier task 
 
166 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 of telling us what he would do. After the Penin 
 sular campaign, we cannot but think that even the 
 latter would have been inclined to say, with the 
 wisest man that ever spoke in our tongue, " If to 
 do were as easy as to know what twere good to 
 do, chapels had been churches, and poor men s cot 
 tages princes palaces. " x 
 
 The single question of policy on which General 
 McClellan differs from Mr. Lincoln, stripped of 
 the conventional phrases in which he drapes it, is 
 Slavery. He can mean nothing else when he talks 
 of " conciliation and compromise," of receiving 
 back any State that may choose to return " with a 
 full guaranty of all its constitutional rights." If 
 it be true that a rose by any other name will smell 
 as sweet, it is equally true that there is a certain 
 species of toadstool that would be none the less dis 
 gusting under whatever alias. Compromise and 
 conciliation are both excellent things in their own 
 way, and in the fitting time and place, but right 
 cannot be compromised without surrendering it, 
 and to attempt conciliation by showing the white 
 feather ends, not in reconcilement, but subjection. 
 The combined ignorance of the Seven Sleepers of 
 Ephesus as to what had been going on while they 
 were in their cavern would hardly equal that of 
 General McClellan alone as to the political history 
 of the country. In the few months between Mr. 
 Lincoln s election and the attack on Fort Sumter 
 we tried conciliation in every form, carrying it 
 almost to the verge of ignominy. The Southern 
 leaders would have none of it. They saw in it 
 
McCLELLAN OR LINCOLN 1 167 
 
 only a confession of weakness, and were but the 
 more arrogant in their demand of all or nothing. 
 Compromise we tried for three quarters of a cen 
 tury, and it brought us to where we are, for it was 
 only a fine name for cowardice, and invited aggres 
 sion. And now that the patient is dying of this 
 drench of lukewarm water, Doctor Sangrado Mc- 
 Clellan gravely prescribes another gallon. If that 
 fail to finish him, why, give him a gallon more. 
 
 We wish it were as easy to restore General Mc- 
 Clellan s army to what it was before the Peninsular 
 campaign as he seems to think it is to put the 
 country back where it was at the beginning of the 
 war. The war, it is true, was undertaken to assert 
 the sovereignty of the Constitution, but the true 
 cause of quarrel was, not that the South denied 
 the supremacy of that instrument, but that they 
 claimed the sole right to interpret it, and to inter 
 pret it in a sense hostile to the true ideal of the 
 country, and the clear interests of the people. But 
 circumstances have changed, and what was at first 
 a struggle to maintain the outward form of our 
 government has become a contest to preserve the 
 life and assert the supreme will of the nation. 
 Even in April, 1861, underneath that desire for 
 legal sanction common to our race, which expressed 
 itself in loyalty to the Constitution, there was an 
 instinctive feeling that the very germinating prin 
 ciple of our nationality was at stake, and that unity 
 of territory was but another name for unity of 
 idea ; nay, was impossible without it, and undesir 
 able if it were possible. It was not against the 
 
168 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 Constitution that the Rebels declared war, but 
 against free institutions ; and if they are beaten, 
 they must submit to the triumph of those institu 
 tions. Their only chance of constitutional victory 
 was at the polls. They rejected it, though it was 
 in their grasp, and now it is for -us, and not them, 
 to dictate terms. After all the priceless blood they 
 have shed, General McClellan would say to them, 
 " Come back and rule us." Mr. Lincoln says, 
 " Come back as equals, with every avenue of power 
 open to you that is open to us ; but the advantage 
 which the slaveholding interest wrung from the 
 weakness of the fathers your own madness has for 
 feited to the sons." 
 
 General McClellan tells us that if the war had 
 been conducted " in accordance with those prin 
 ciples which he took occasion to declare when in 
 active service, reconciliation would have been 
 easy." We suppose he refers to his despatch of 
 July 7th, 1862, when, having just demonstrated 
 his incapacity in the profession for which he had 
 been educated, he kindly offered to take the civil 
 policy of the country under his direction, expect 
 ing, perhaps, to be more successful in a task for 
 which he was fitted neither by training nor ex 
 perience. It is true he had already been spoken 
 of as a possible candidate for the Presidency, and 
 that despatch was probably written to be referred 
 to afterwards as part of the "record" to which 
 he alludes in his recent letter. Indeed, he could 
 have had no other conceivable object in so imper 
 tinent a proceeding, for, up to that time, the war 
 
McCLELLAN OR LINCOLN* 169 
 
 had been conducted on the very principles he re 
 commended ; nay, was so conducted for six months 
 longer, till it was demonstrated that reconciliation 
 was not to be had on those terms, and that victory 
 was incompatible with them. Mr. Lincoln was 
 forced into what General McClellan calls a radical 
 policy by the necessity of the case. The Rebels 
 themselves insisted on convincing him that his 
 choice was between that and failure. They boasted 
 that slavery was their bulwark and arsenal ; that, 
 while every Northern soldier withdrew so much 
 from the productive industry of the Union, every 
 fighting-man at the South could be brought into 
 the field, so long as the negroes were left to do 
 the work that was to feed and clothe him. Were 
 these negroes property? The laws of war jus 
 tified us in appropriating them to our own use. 
 Were they population ? The laws of war equally 
 justified us in appealing to them for aid in a cause 
 which was their own more than it was ours. It 
 was so much the worse for the South that its pro 
 perty was of a kind that could be converted from 
 chattels into men, and from men into soldiers, by 
 the scratch of a pen. The dragon s teeth were 
 not of our sowing, but, so far from our being under 
 any obligation not to take into our service the 
 army that sprang from them, it would have been 
 the extreme of weakness and folly not to do it. 
 If there be no provision in the Constitution for 
 emancipating the negroes, neither is there any for 
 taking Richmond ; and we give General McClellan 
 too much credit for intelligence and patriotism to 
 
170 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 suppose that if, when he asked for a hundred 
 thousand more men at Harrison s Bar, he had been 
 told that he could have black ones, he would have 
 refused them. 
 
 But supposing the very improbable chance of 
 General McClellan s election to the Presidency, 
 how would he set about his policy of conciliation ? 
 Would he disarm the colored troop^? In favor 
 of prosecuting the war, as he declares himself to 
 be, this would only necessitate the draft of just 
 so many white ones in their stead. Would he 
 recall the proclamation of freedom? This would 
 only be to incite a servile insurrection. The 
 people have already suffered too much by General 
 McClellan s genius for retreat, to follow him in 
 another even more disastrous. But it is idle to 
 suppose that the Rebels are to be appeased by any 
 exhibition of weakness. Like other men, they 
 would take fresh courage from it. Force is the 
 only argument to which they are in a condition 
 to listen, and, like other men, they will yield to 
 it at last, if it prove irresistible. We cannot 
 think that General McClellan would wish to go 
 down to posterity as the President who tried to 
 restore the Union by the reenslaving of men who 
 had fought in its defence, and had failed in the 
 attempt. We doubt if he had any very clear con 
 ception of what he meant by conciliation and com 
 promise, except as a gloss to make the uncondi 
 tional surrender doctrine of the Chicago Convention 
 a little less odious. If he meant more, if he hoped 
 to gain political strength by an appeal to the old 
 
McCLELLAN OR LINCOLN? 171 
 
 pro-slavery prejudices of the country, he merely 
 shows the same unfortunate unconsciousness of the 
 passage of time, and the changes it brings with it, 
 that kept him in the trenches at Yorktown till his 
 own defeat became inevitable. Perhaps he believes 
 that the Rebels would accept from him what they 
 rejected with contempt when offered by Mr. Lin 
 coln, that they would do in compliment to him 
 what they refused to do from the interest of self- 
 preservation. If they did, it would simply prove 
 that they were in a condition to submit to terms, 
 and not to dictate them. If they listened to his 
 advances, their cause must be so hopeless that it 
 would be a betrayal of his trust to make them. 
 If they were obstinate, he would be left with the 
 same war on his hands which has forced Mr. Lin 
 coln into all his measures, and which would not be 
 less exacting on himself. As a peace candidate he 
 might solicit votes with some show of reason, but 
 on a war platform we see no good reason for dis 
 placing Mr. Lincoln in his favor except on personal 
 grounds; and we fear that our campaigns would 
 hardly be conducted with vigor under a President 
 whom the people should have invested with the 
 office by way of poultice for his bruised sensibilities 
 as a defeated commander. Once in the Presidential 
 chair, with a country behind him insisting on a 
 re-establishment of the Union, and a rebellion be 
 fore him deaf to all offers from a government that 
 faltered in its purposes, we do not see what form 
 of conciliation he would hit upon by which to per 
 suade a refractory " political organization," except 
 
172 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 that practised by Hood s butcher when he was ad 
 vised to try it on a drove of sheep. 
 
 " He seized upon the foremost wether, 
 And hugged and lugged and tugged him neck and crop, 
 Just nolens volens through the open shop 
 (If tails came off he did not care a feather) ; 
 Then, walking to the door and smiling grim, 
 He rubbed his forehead and his sleeve together, 
 There ! I ve conciliated him ! 
 
 It is idle, however, to think of allaying angry 
 feeling or appeasing resentment while the war lasts, 
 and idler to hope for any permanent settlement, 
 except in the complete subjugation of the rebellion. 
 There are persons who profess to be so much shocked 
 at the word subjugation as to be willing that we 
 should have immediate experience of the thing, by 
 receiving back the Rebels on their own conditions. 
 Mr. Lincoln has already proclaimed an amnesty 
 wide enough to satisfy the demands of the most 
 exacting humanity, and they must reckon on a 
 singular stupidity in their hearers who impute fero 
 cious designs to a man who cannot nerve his mind 
 to the shooting of a deserter or the hanging of a 
 spy. Mr. Lincoln, in our judgment, has shown 
 from the first the considerate wisdom of a practical 
 statesman. If he has been sometimes slow in mak 
 ing up his mind, it has saved him the necessity of 
 being hasty to change it when once made up, and 
 he has waited till the gradual movement of the 
 popular sentiment should help him to his conclu 
 sions and sustain him in them. To be moderate 
 and unimpassioned in revolutionary times that 
 kindle natures of more flimsy texture to a blaze 
 
McCLELLAN OR LINCOLN? 173 
 
 may not be a romantic quality, but it is a rare 
 one, and goes with those massive understandings 
 on which a solid structure of achievement may be 
 reared. Mr. Lincoln is a long-headed and long- 
 purposed man, who knows when he is ready, a 
 secret General McClellan never learned. That he 
 should be accused of playing Cromwell by the Op 
 position, and reproached with not being Cromwel- 
 lian enough by the more ardent of his own sup 
 porters, is proof enough that his action has been 
 of that firm but deliberate temper best suited to 
 troublous times and to constitutional precedents. 
 One of these accusations is the unworthy fetch of 
 a party at a loss for argument, and the other springs 
 from that exaggerated notion of the power of some 
 exceptional characters upon events which Carlyle 
 has made fashionable, but which was never even 
 approximately true except in times when there was 
 no such thing as public opinion, and of which there 
 is no record personal enough to assure us what we 
 are to believe. A more sincere man than Cromwell 
 never lived, yet they know little of his history who 
 do not know that his policy was forced to trim be 
 tween Independents and Presbyterians, and that 
 he so far healed the wounds of civil war as to make 
 England dreaded without satisfying either. We 
 have seen no reason to change our opinion of Mr. 
 Lincoln since his wary scrupulousness won him the 
 applause of one party, or his decided action, when 
 he was at last convinced of its necessity, made him 
 the momentary idol of the other. We will not 
 call him a great man, for over-hasty praise is too 
 
174 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 apt to sour at last into satire, and greatness may 
 be trusted safely to history and the future ; but an 
 honest one we believe him to be, and with no aim 
 save to repair the glory and greatness of his country. 
 But fortunately it is no trial of the personal 
 merits of opposing candidates on which the next 
 election is to pronounce a verdict. The men set 
 up by the two parties represent principles utterly 
 antagonistic, and so far-reaching in their conse 
 quences that all personal considerations and con 
 temporary squabbles become as contemptible in 
 appearance as they always are in reality. How 
 ever General McClellan may equivocate and strive 
 to hide himself in a cloud of ink, the man who 
 represents the party that deliberately and unani 
 mously adopted the Chicago Platform is the prac 
 tical embodiment of the principles contained in it. 
 By ignoring the platform, he seems, it is true, to 
 nominate himself ; but this, though it may be good 
 evidence of his own presumption, affords no tittle 
 of proof that he could have been successful at 
 Chicago without some distinct previous pledges of 
 what his policy would be. If no such pledges 
 were given, then the Convention nominated him 
 with a clear persuasion that he was the sort of 
 timber out of which tools are made. If they were 
 not given, does not the acceptance of the nomina 
 tion under false pretences imply a certain sacrifice 
 of personal honor ? And will the honor of the 
 country be safe in the hands of a man who is 
 careless of his own ? General McClellan s election 
 will be understood by the South and by the whole 
 
McCLELLAN OR LINCOLN f . 175 
 
 country as an acknowledgment of the right of se 
 cession, an acknowledgment which will resolve 
 the United States into an association for insurance 
 against any risk of national strength and greatness 
 by land or sea. Mr. Lincoln, on the other hand, 
 is the exponent of principles vital to our peace, 
 dignity, and renown, of all that can save Amer 
 ica from becoming Mexico, and insure popular 
 freedom for centuries to come. 
 
 It is the merest electioneering trick to say that 
 the war has been turned from its original intention, 
 as if this implied that a cheat had thereby been 
 put upon the country. The truth is, that the 
 popular understanding has been gradually enlight 
 ened as to the real causes of the war, and, in con 
 sequence of that enlightenment, a purpose has 
 grown up, defining itself slowly into clearer con 
 sciousness, to finish the war in the only way that 
 will keep.it finished, by rooting out the evil prin 
 ciple from which it sprang. The country has been 
 convinced that a settlement which should stop 
 short of this would be nothing more than a truce 
 favorable only to the weaker party in the struggle, 
 to the very criminals who forced it upon us. The 
 single question is, Shall we have peace by sub 
 mission or by victory ? General McClellan s elec 
 tion insures the one, Mr. Lincoln s gives us our 
 only chance of the other. It is Slavery, and not 
 the Southern people, that is our enemy ; we must 
 conquer this to be at peace with them. With the 
 relations of the several States of the Rebel Con 
 federacy to the Richmond government we have 
 
176 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 nothing to do ; but to say that, after being beaten 
 as foreign enemies, they are to resume their previ 
 ous relations to our own government as if nothing 
 had happened, seems to us a manifest absurdity. 
 From whom would General McClellan, if elected 
 under his plan of conciliation, exact the penalties 
 of rebellion ? The States cannot be punished, and 
 the only merciful way in which we can reach the 
 real criminals is by that very policy of emancipa 
 tion whose efficacy is proved by the bitter opposi 
 tion of all the allies of the Rebellion in the North. 
 This is a punishment which will not affect the in 
 dependence of individual States, which will improve 
 the condition of the mass of the Southern popu 
 lation, and which alone will remove the rock of 
 offence from the pathway of democratic institutions. 
 So long as slavery is left, there is antipathy be 
 tween the two halves of the country, and the re 
 currence of actual war will be only a question of 
 time. It is the nature of evil to be aggressive. 
 Without moral force in itself, it is driven, by the 
 necessity of things, to seek material props. It 
 cannot make peace with truth, if it would. Good, 
 on the other hand, is by its very nature peaceful. 
 Strong in itself, strong in the will of God and the 
 sympathy of man, its conquests are silent and be 
 neficent as those of summer, warming into life, 
 and bringing to blossom and fruitage, whatever is 
 wholesome in men and the institutions of men. 
 
RECONSTRUCTION. 
 
 1865. 
 
 IN the glare of our civil war, certain truths, 
 hitherto unobserved or guessed at merely, have 
 been brought out with extraordinary sharpness of 
 relief ; and two of them have been specially im 
 pressive, the one for European observers, the other 
 for ourselves. The first, and perhaps the most 
 startling to the Old World watcher of the political 
 skies, upon whose field of vision the flaming sword 
 of our western heavens grew from a misty speck 
 to its full comet-like proportions, perplexing them 
 with fear of change, has been the amazing strength 
 and no less amazing steadiness of democratic insti 
 tutions. An army twice larger than England, 
 with the help of bounties, drafts, and the purchase 
 of foreign vagabonds, ever set in the field during 
 the direst stress of her struggle with Napoleon has 
 been raised in a single year by voluntary enlist 
 ment. A people untrained to bear the burden of 
 heavy taxes not only devotes to the public service 
 sums gathered by private subscription that in any 
 other country would be deemed fabulous, but by 
 sheer force of public opinion compels its legislators 
 to the utmost ingenuity and searchingness of taxa 
 tion. What was uttered as a sarcasm on the want 
 
178 POLITICAL ESSAYS, 
 
 of public spirit in Florence is here only literally 
 true : 
 
 Many refuse to bear the common burden ; 
 But thy solicitous people answereth 
 Unasked, and cries, I bend my back to it. 
 
 And that the contrast may be felt in its fullest 
 completeness, we must consider that no private 
 soldier is tempted into the ranks by hopes of 
 plunder, or driven into them by want of fair wages 
 for fair work, that no officer can look forward 
 to the splendid prizes of hereditary wealth and 
 title. Love of their country was the only incen 
 tive, its gratitude their only reward. And in the 
 matter of taxation also, a willingness to help bear 
 the common burden has more of generosity in it 
 where the wealth of the people is in great part the 
 daily result of their daily toil, and not a hoard 
 inherited without merit, as without industry. 
 
 Nor have the qualities which lead to such strik 
 ing results been exhibited only by the North. The 
 same public spirit, though misled by wicked men 
 for selfish ends, has shown itself in almost equal 
 strength at the South. And in both cases it has 
 been unmistakably owing to that living and active 
 devotion of the people to institutions in whose ex 
 cellence they share, and their habit of obedience to 
 laws of their own making. If we have not hitherto 
 had that conscious feeling of nationality, the ideal 
 abstract of history and tradition, which belongs to 
 older countries, compacted by frequent war and 
 united by memories of common danger and com 
 mon triumph, it has been simply because our na- 
 
RECONSTRUCTION. 179 
 
 tional existence has never been in such peril as to 
 force upon us the conviction that it was both the 
 title-deed of our greatness and its only safeguard. 
 But what splendid possibilities has not our trial 
 revealed even to ourselves ! What costly stuff 
 whereof to make a nation ! Here at last is a state 
 whose life is not narrowly concentred in a despot 
 or a class, but feels itself in every limb ; a govern 
 ment which is not a mere application of force from 
 without, but dwells as a vital principle in the will 
 of every citizen. Our enemies and wherever a 
 man is to be found bribed by an abuse, or who 
 profits by a political superstition, we have a natural 
 enemy have striven* to laugh and sneer and lie 
 this apparition of royal manhood out of existence. 
 They conspired our murder ; but in this vision is 
 the prophecy of a dominion which is to push them 
 from their stools, and whose crown doth sear their 
 eyeballs. America lay asleep, like the princess of 
 the fairy tale, enchanted by prosperity ; but at the 
 first fiery kiss of war the spell is broken, the blood 
 tingles along her veins again, and she awakes con 
 scious of her beauty and her sovereignty. 
 
 It is true that, by the side of the self-devotion and 
 public spirit, the vices and meannesses of troubled 
 times have shown themselves, as they will and must. 
 We have had shoddy, we have had contracts, we 
 have had substitute-brokerage, we have had spe 
 culators in patriotism, and, still worse, in military 
 notoriety. Men have striven to make the blood 
 of our martyrs the seed of wealth or office. But 
 in times of public and universal extremity, when 
 
180 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 habitual standards of action no longer serve, and 
 ordinary currents of thought are swamped in the 
 flood of enthusiasm or excitement, it always hap 
 pens that the evil passions of some men are stimu 
 lated by what serves only to exalt the nobler quali 
 ties of others. In such epochs, evil as well as 
 good is exaggerated. A great social convulsion 
 shakes up the lees which underlie society, forgotten 
 because quiescent, and the stimulus of calamity 
 brings out the extremes of human nature, whether 
 for good or evil. 
 
 What is especially instructive in the events we 
 have been witnessing for the past four years is the 
 fact that the people have been the chief actors in 
 the drama. They have not been the led, but the 
 leaders. They have not been involved in war by 
 the passions or interests of their rulers, but delib 
 erately accepted the ordeal of battle in defence 
 of institutions which were the work of their own 
 hands, and of whose beneficence experience had 
 satisfied them. Loyalty has hitherto been a senti 
 ment rather than a virtue ; it has been more often 
 a superstition or a prejudice than a conviction of 
 the conscience or of the understanding. Now for 
 the first time it is identical with patriotism, and 
 has its seat in the brain, and not the blood. It has 
 before been picturesque, devoted, beautiful, as for- 
 getf ulness of self always is, but now it is something 
 more than all these, it is logical. Here we have 
 testimony that cannot be gainsaid to the universal 
 vitality and intelligence which our system diffuses 
 with healthy pulse through all its members. Every 
 
RECONSTRUCTION. 181 
 
 man feels himself a part, and not a subject, of the 
 government, and can say in a truer and higher 
 sense than Louis XIV., "I am the state." But 
 we have produced no Cromwell, no Napoleon. Let 
 us be thankful that we have passed beyond that 
 period of political development when such produc 
 tions are necessary, or even possible. It is but 
 another evidence of the excellence of the democratic 
 principle. Where power is the privilege of a class 
 or of a single person, it may be usurped ; but where 
 it is the expression of the common will, it can no 
 more be monopolized than air or light. The igno 
 rant and unreasoning force of a populace, sure of 
 losing nothing and with a chance of gaining some 
 thing by any change, that restless material out of 
 which violent revolutions are made, if it exist here 
 at all, is to be found only in our great cities, among 
 a class who have learned in other countries to look 
 upon all law as their natural enemy. Nor is it by 
 any fault of American training, but by the want of 
 it, that these people are what they are. When 
 Lord Derby says that the government of this coun 
 try is at the mercy of an excited mob, he proves 
 either that the demagogue is no exclusive product 
 of a democracy, or that England would be in less 
 danger of war if her governing class knew some 
 thing less of ancient Greece and a little more of 
 modern America. 
 
 Whether or no there be any truth in the asser 
 tion that democracy tends to bring men down to a 
 common level (as it surely brings them up to one), 
 we shall not stop to inquire, for the world has not 
 
182 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 yet had a long enough experience of it to warrant 
 any safe conclusion. During our revolutionary 
 struggle, it seems to us that both our civil and 
 military leaders compare very well in point of 
 ability with the British product of the same period, 
 and the same thing may very well be true at the 
 present time. But while it may be the glory, it 
 can hardly be called the duty of a country to pro 
 duce great men ; and if forms of polity have any 
 thing to do in the matter, we should incline to 
 prefer that which could make a great nation felt 
 to be such and loved as such by every human fibre 
 in it, to one which stunted the many that a few 
 favored specimens might grow the taller and fairer. 
 While the attitude of the government was by 
 the necessity of the case expectant so far as slavery 
 was concerned, it is also true that the people ran 
 before it, and were moved by a deeper impulse 
 than the mere instinct of self-preservation. The 
 public conscience gave energy and intention to the 
 public will, and the bounty which drew our best 
 soldiers to the ranks was an idea. The game was 
 the ordinary game of war, and they but the un 
 reasoning pieces on the board ; but they felt that 
 a higher reason was moving them in a game where 
 the stake was the life not merely of their coun 
 try, but of a principle whose rescue was to make 
 America in very deed a New World, the cradle 
 of a fairer manhood. Weakness was to be no 
 longer the tyrant s opportunity, but the victim s 
 claim ; labor should never henceforth be degraded 
 as a curse, but honored as that salt of the earth 
 
RECONSTRUCTION. 183 
 
 which keeps life sweet, and gives its savor to duty. 
 To be of good family should mean being a child of 
 the one Father of us all ; and good birth, the being 
 born into God s world, and not into a fool s para 
 dise of man s invention. But even had this moral 
 leaven been wanting, had the popular impulse been 
 merely one of patriotism, we should have been well 
 content to claim as the result of democracy that 
 for the first time in the history of the world it had 
 mustered an army that knew for.what it was fight 
 ing. Nationality is no dead abstraction, no unreal 
 sentiment, but a living and operative virtue in the 
 heart and moral nature of men. It enlivens the 
 dullest soul with an ideal out of and beyond itself, 
 lifting every faculty to a higher level of vision and 
 action. It enlarges the narrowest intellect with 
 a fealty to something better than self. It eman 
 cipates men from petty and personal interests, to 
 make them conscious of sympathies whose society 
 ennobles. Life has a deeper meaning when its 
 throb beats time to a common impulse and catches 
 its motion from the general heart. 
 
 But while the experience of the last four years 
 has been such, with all its sorrows, as to make us 
 proud of our strength and grateful for the sources 
 of it, we cannot but feel that peace will put to the 
 test those higher qualities which war leaves in re 
 serve. What are we to do with the country our 
 arms have regained ? It is by our conduct in this 
 stewardship, and not by our rights under the origi 
 nal compact of the States, that our policy is to be 
 justified. The glory of conquest is trifling and 
 
184 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 barren, unless victory clear the way to a higher 
 civilization, a more solid prosperity, and a Union 
 based upon reciprocal benefits. In what precise 
 manner the seceding States shall return, whether 
 by inherent right, or with some preliminary pen 
 ance and ceremony of readoption, is of less conse 
 quence than what they shall be after their return. 
 Dependent provinces, sullenly submitting to a 
 destiny which they loathe, would be a burden to us, 
 rather than an increase of strength or an element 
 of prosperity. War would have won us a peace 
 stripped of all the advantages that make peace a 
 blessing. We should have so much more territory, 
 and so much less substantial greatness. We did 
 not enter upon war to open a new market, or fresh 
 fields for speculators, or an outlet for redundant 
 population, but to save the experiment of demo 
 cracy from destruction, and put it in a fairer way 
 of success by removing the single disturbing ele 
 ment. Our business now is not to allow ourselves 
 to be turned aside from a purpose which our ex 
 perience thus far has demonstrated to have been 
 as wise as it was necessary, and to see to it that, 
 whatever be the other conditions of reconstruction, 
 democracy, which is our real strength, receive no 
 detriment. 
 
 We would not be understood to mean that Con 
 gress should lay down in advance a fixed rule not 
 to be departed from to suit the circumstances of 
 special cases as they arise. What may do very 
 well for Tennessee may not be as good for South 
 Carolina. Wise statesmanship does not so much 
 
RECONSTRUCTION. 185 
 
 consist in the agreement of its forms with any 
 abstract ideal, however perfect, as in its adaptation 
 to the wants of the governed and its capacity of 
 shaping itself to the demands of the time. It is 
 not to be judged by its intention, but by its results, 
 and those will be proportioned to its practical, and 
 not its theoretic, excellence. The Anglo-Saxon 
 soundness of understanding has shown itself in 
 nothing more clearly than in allowing institutions 
 to be formulated gradually by custom, convenience, 
 or necessity, and in preferring the practical comfort 
 of a system that works, to the French method of a 
 scientific machinery of perpetual motion, demon- 
 strably perfect in all its parts, and yet refusing to 
 go. We do not wish to see scientific treatment, 
 however admirable, applied to the details of recon 
 struction, if that is to be, as now seems probable, 
 the next problem that is to try our intelligence and 
 firmness. But there are certain points, it seems 
 to us, on which it is important that public opinion 
 should come to some sort of understanding in 
 advance. 
 
 The peace negotiations have been of service in 
 demonstrating that it is not any ill blood engen 
 dered by war, any diversity of interests properly 
 national, any supposed antagonism of race, but 
 simply the slaveholding class, that now stands 
 between us and peace, as four years ago it forced 
 us into war. Precisely as the principle of Divine 
 right could make no lasting truce with the French 
 Revolution, the Satanic right of the stronger to 
 enslave the weaker can come to no understanding 
 
186 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 with democracy. The conflict is in the things, not 
 in the men, and one or the other must abdicate. 
 Of course the leaders, to whom submission would 
 be ruin, and a few sincere believers in the doc 
 trine of State rights, are willing to sacrifice even 
 slavery for independence, a word which has a 
 double meaning for some of them ; but there can 
 be no doubt that an offer to receive the seceding 
 States back to their old position under the Consti 
 tution would have put the war party in a hopeless 
 minority at the South. We think there are mani 
 fest symptoms that the chinks made by the four 
 years struggle have let in new light to the South 
 ern people, however it may be with their ruling 
 faction, and that they begin to suspect a diversity 
 of interest between themselves, who chiefly suffer 
 by the war, and the small class who bullied them 
 into it for selfish purposes of their own. However 
 that may be, the late proposal of Davis and Lee 
 for the arming of slaves, though they certainly did 
 not so intend it, has removed a very serious ob 
 stacle from our path. It is true that the emanci 
 pating clause was struck out of the act as finally 
 passed by the shadowy Congress at Richmond. 
 But this was only for the sake of appearances. 
 Once arm and drill the negroes, and they can 
 never be slaves again. This is admitted on all 
 hands, and accordingly, whatever the words of the 
 act may be, it practically at once promotes the 
 negro to manhood by brevet, as it were, but at any 
 rate to manhood. For the offer of emancipation 
 as a bounty implies reason in him to whom it is 
 
RECONSTRUCTION. 187 
 
 offered ; nay, more, implies a capacity for progress 
 and a wish for it, which are in themselves valid 
 titles to freedom. This at a step puts the South 
 back to the position held by her greatest men in 
 regard to slavery. All the Scriptural arguments, 
 all the fitness of things, all the physiological dem 
 onstrations, all Mr. Stephens s corner-stones, Ham, 
 Onesimus, heels, hair, and facial angle, all are 
 swept out, by one flirt of the besom of Fate, into 
 the inexorable limbo of things that were and never 
 should have been. How is Truth wounded to 
 death in the house of her friends ! The highest 
 authority of the South has deliberately renounced 
 its vested interest in the curse of Noah, and its 
 right to make beasts of black men because St. Paul 
 sent back a white one to his master. Never was 
 there a more exact verification of the Spanish 
 proverb, that he who went out for wool may come 
 back shorn. Alas for Nott and Gliddon ! Thrice 
 alas for Bishop Hopkins ! With slavery they lose 
 their hold on the last clue by which human reason 
 could find its way to a direct proof of the bene 
 volence of God and the plenary inspiration of 
 Scripture. 
 
 All that we have learned of the blacks during 
 the war makes the plan of arming a part of them 
 to help maintain the master s tyranny over the rest 
 seem so futile, and the arguments urged against it 
 by Mr. Gholson and Mr. Hunter are so convincing, 
 that we can hardly persuade ourselves that the 
 authors of it did not intend it to make the way 
 easier, not to independence, but to reunion. It is 
 
188 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 said to argue desperation on the part of the chief 
 conspirators at Richmond, and it undoubtedly does ; 
 but we see in what we believe to be the causes 
 of their despair something more hopeful than the 
 mere exhaustion it indicates. It is simply incredi 
 ble that the losses of a four years war should have 
 drained the fighting men of a population of five 
 millions, or anything like it ; and the impossibil 
 ity of any longer filling the Rebel armies even by 
 the most elaborate system of press-gangs proves 
 to our mind that the poorer class of whites have 
 for some reason or other deserted the cause of the 
 wealthy planters. The men are certainly there, 
 but they have lost all stomach for fighting. Here 
 again we see something which is likely to make a 
 final settlement more easy than it would have been 
 even a year ago. Though the fact that so large a 
 proportion of the Southern people cannot read 
 makes it harder to reach them, yet our soldiers 
 have circulated among them like so many North 
 ern newspapers, and it is impossible that this in 
 tercourse, which has been constant, should not have 
 suggested to them many ideas of a kind which their 
 treacherous guides would gladly keep from them. 
 The frantic rage of Southern members of Congress 
 against such books as Helper s can be explained 
 only by their fear lest their poorer constituents 
 should be set a-thinking, for the notion of corrupt 
 ing a field-hand by an Abolition document is too 
 absurd even for a Wigfall or a Charleston editor. 
 
 Here, then, are two elements of a favorable horo 
 scope for our future ; an acknowledgment of the 
 
RECONSTRUCTION. 189 
 
 human nature of the negro by the very Sanhedrim 
 of the South, thus removing his case from the court 
 of ethics to that of political economy ; and a sus 
 picion on the part of the Southern majority that 
 something has been wrong, which makes them 
 readier to see and accept what is right. We do not 
 mean to say that there is any very large amount of 
 even latent Unionism at the South, but we believe 
 there is plenty of material in solution there which 
 waits only to be precipitated into whatever form of 
 crystal we desire. We must not forget that the 
 main elements of Southern regeneration are to be 
 sought in the South itself, and that such elements 
 are abundant. A people that has shown so much 
 courage and constancy in a bad cause, because they 
 believed it a good one, is worth winning even by 
 the sacrifice of our natural feeling of resentment. 
 If we forgive the negro for his degradation and 
 his ignorance, in consideration of the system of 
 which he has been the sacrifice, we ought also to 
 make every allowance for the evil influence of 
 that system upon the poor whites. It is the fatal 
 necessity of all wrong to revenge itself upon those 
 who are guilty of it, or even accessory to it. The 
 oppressor is dragged down by the victim of his 
 tyranny. The eternal justice makes the balance 
 even ; and as the sufferer by unjust laws is lifted 
 above his physical abasement by spiritual compen 
 sations and that nearness to God which only suffer 
 ing is capable of, in like measure are the material 
 advantages of the wrong-doer counterpoised by a 
 moral impoverishment. Our duty is not to punish, 
 
190 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 but to repair ; and the cure must work both ways, 
 emancipating the master from the slave, as well as 
 the slave from the master. Once rid of slavery, 
 which was the real criminal, let us have no more 
 reproaches, justifiable only while the Southern sin 
 made us its forced accomplices ; and while we bind 
 up the wounds of our black brother who had fallen 
 among thieves that robbed him of his rights as a 
 man, let us not harden our hearts against our white 
 brethren, from whom interest and custom, those 
 slyer knaves, whose fingers we have felt about our 
 own pockets, had stolen away their conscience and 
 their sense of human brotherhood. 
 
 The first question that arises in the mind of 
 everybody in thinking of reconstruction is, What is 
 to be done about the negro ? After the war is over, 
 there will be our Old Man of the Sea, as ready 
 to ride us as ever. If we only emancipate him, 
 he will not let us go free. We must do something 
 more than merely this. While the suffering from 
 them is still sharp, we should fix it in our minds as 
 a principle, that the evils which have come upon 
 us are the direct and logical consequence of our 
 forefathers having dealt with a question of man as 
 they would with one of trade or territory, as if 
 the rights of others were something susceptible of 
 compromise, as if the laws that govern the moral, 
 and, through it, the material world, would stay 
 their operation for our convenience. It is well to 
 keep this present in the mind, because in the gen 
 eral joy and hurry of peace we shall be likely to 
 forget it again, and to make concessions, or to 
 
RECONSTRUCTION. 191 
 
 leave things at loose ends for time to settle, as 
 time has settled the blunders of our ancestors. 
 Let us concede everything except what does not 
 belong to us, but is only a trust-property, namely, 
 the principle of democracy and the prosperity of 
 the future involved in the normal development of 
 that principle. 
 
 We take it for granted at the outset, that the 
 mind of the country is made up as to making no 
 terms with slavery in any way, large or limited, 
 open or covert. Not a single good quality trace 
 able to this system has been brought to light in the 
 white race at the South by the searching test of 
 war. In the black it may have engendered that 
 touching piety of which we have had so many 
 proofs, and it has certainly given them the unity 
 of interest and the sympathy of intelligence which 
 make them everywhere our friends, and which have 
 saved them from compromising their advantage, 
 and still further complicating the difficulties of 
 civil war by insurrection. But what have been 
 its effects upon the ruling class, which is, after all, 
 the supreme test of institutions? It has made 
 them boastful, selfish, cruel, and false, to a degree 
 unparalleled in history. So far from having given 
 them any special fitness for rule, it has made them 
 incapable of any but violent methods of govern 
 ment, and unable to deal with the simplest prob 
 lems of political economy. An utter ignorance 
 of their own countrymen at the North led them 
 to begin the war, and an equal misconception of 
 Europe encouraged them to continue it. That 
 
192 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 they have shown courage is true, but that is no 
 exclusive property of theirs, and the military ad 
 vantage they seemed to possess is due less to any 
 superiority of their own than to the extent of their 
 territory and the roadless wildernesses which are 
 at once the reproach and the fortification of their 
 wasteful system of agriculture. Their advantages 
 in war have been in proportion to their disadvan 
 tages in peace, and it is peace which most convin 
 cingly tries both the vigor of a nation and the wis 
 dom of its polity. It is with this class that we 
 shall have to deal in arranging the conditions of 
 settlement ; and we must do it with a broad view 
 of the interests of the whole country and of the 
 great mass of the Southern people, whose ignorance 
 and the prejudices consequent from it made it so 
 easy to use them as the instruments of their own 
 ruin. No immediate advantage must blind us to 
 the real objects of the war, the securing our ex 
 ternal power and our internal tranquillity, and the 
 making them inherent and indestructible by found 
 ing them upon the common welfare. 
 
 The first condition of permanent peace is to 
 render those who were the great slaveholders when 
 the war began, and who will be the great land 
 holders after it is over, powerless for mischief. 
 What punishment should be inflicted on the chief 
 criminals is a matter of little moment. The South 
 has received a lesson of suffering which satisfies all 
 the legitimate ends of punishment, and as for ven 
 geance, it is contrary to our national temper and 
 the spirit of our government. Our great object 
 
RECONSTRUCTION. 193 
 
 should be, not to weaken, but to strengthen the 
 South, to make it richer, and not poorer. We 
 must not repeat the stupid and fatal blunder of 
 slaveholding publicists, that the wealth and power 
 of one portion of the country are a drain upon the 
 resources of the rest, instead of being their natural 
 feeders and invigorators. Any general confiscation 
 of Rebel property, therefore, seems to us unthrifty 
 housekeeping, for it is really a levying on our own 
 estate, and a lessening of our own resources. The 
 people of the Southern States will be called upon 
 to bear their part of the grievous burden of taxa 
 tion which the war will leave upon our shoulders, 
 and that is the fairest as well as the most prudent 
 way of making them contribute to our national 
 solvency. All irregular modes of levying contri 
 butions, however just, and exactly just they can 
 seldom be, leave discontent behind them, while a 
 uniform system, where every man knows what he 
 is to pay and why he is to pay it, tends to restore 
 stability by the very evenness of its operation, by 
 its making national interests familiar to all, and by 
 removing any sense of injustice. Any sweeping 
 confiscation, such as has sometimes been proposed 
 in Congress with more heat than judgment, would 
 render the South less available for revenue, would 
 retard the return of industry to its legitimate chan 
 nels, by lessening its means, and would not destroy 
 the influence of the misgoverning aristocracy. On 
 the contrary, it would give them that prestige of 
 misfortune whose power over the sentiments of 
 mankind is the moral of the story of Stuarts and 
 
194 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 Bourbons and Bonapartes. Retribution they should 
 have, but let them have it in the only way worthy 
 of a great people to inflict. Let it come in a sense 
 of their own folly and sin, brought about by the 
 magnanimity of their conquerors, by the return of 
 a more substantial prosperity born of the new 
 order of things, so as to convince, instead of alien 
 ating. We should remember that it is our country 
 which we have regained, and not merely a rebel 
 lious faction which we have subdued. 
 
 Whether it would not be good policy for the 
 general government to assume all the wild lands in 
 the rebellious States, and to devote the proceeds of 
 their sale to actual settlers to the payment of the 
 national debt, is worth consideration. Texas alone, 
 on whose public lands our assumption of her in 
 debtedness gives us an equitable claim, would 
 suffice to secure our liabilities and to lighten our 
 taxation, and in all cases of land granted to freed- 
 men no title should vest till a fair price had been 
 paid, a principle no less essential to their true 
 interests than our own. That these people, who 
 are to be the peasantry of the future Southern 
 States, should be made landholders, is the main 
 condition of a healthy regeneration of that part of 
 the country, and the one warranty of our rightful 
 repossession of it. The wealth that makes a nation 
 really strong, and not merely rich, is the oppor 
 tunity for industry, intelligence, and well-being of 
 its laboring population. This is the real country 
 of poor men, as the great majority must always be. 
 No glories of war or art, no luxurious refinement of 
 
RECONSTRUCTION. 195 
 
 the few, can give them a sense of nationality where 
 this is wanting. If we free the slave without giv 
 ing him a right in the soil, and the inducement to 
 industry which this offers, we reproduce only a more 
 specious form of all the old abuses. We leave all 
 political power in the hands of the wealthy land 
 holders, where it was before. We leave the poorer 
 whites unemancipated, for we leave labor still at 
 the mercy of capital, and with its old stigma of 
 degradation. Blind to the lessons of all experi 
 ence, we deliberately make the South what Ire 
 land was when Arthur Young travelled there, the 
 country richest in the world by nature, reduced to 
 irredeemable poverty and hopeless weakness by an 
 upper class who would not, and a lower class who 
 could not, improve. We have no right to purchase 
 dominion, no right to purchase even abolition, at 
 such a price as that. No uti possidetis conveys 
 any legitimate title, except on the condition of wise 
 administration and mutual benefit. 
 
 But will it be enough to make the freedmen 
 landholders merely? Must we not make them 
 voters also, that they may have that power of self- 
 protection which no interference of government can 
 so safely, cheaply, and surely exercise in their be 
 half ? We answer this question in the affirmative, 
 for reasons both of expediency and justice. At 
 best, the difficulty, if not settled now, will come 
 up again for settlement hereafter, when it may not 
 be so easy of solution. As a matter of expediency, 
 it is always wisest to shape a system of policy with 
 a view to permanence, much more than to imme- 
 
196 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 diate convenience. When things are put upon a 
 right footing at first, and the only right footing 
 is one which will meet the inevitable demands of 
 the future as well as the more noisy ones of the 
 present, all subsidiary relations will of necessity 
 arrange themselves by mutual adaptation, without 
 constantly calling for the clumsy interference of 
 authority. We must leave behind us no expecta 
 tion and no fear of change, to unsettle men s minds 
 and dishearten their industry. Both the late mas 
 ter and the late slave should begin on the new 
 order of things with a sense of its permanence on 
 the one hand and its rightfulness on the other. 
 They will soon learn that neither intelligence can 
 do without labor, nor labor without intelligence, 
 and that wealth will result only from a clearly un 
 derstood and reciprocally beneficial dependence of 
 each upon the other. Unless we make the black a 
 citizen, we take away from the white the strongest 
 inducement to educate and enlighten him. As 
 a mere proletary, his ignorance is a temptation to 
 the stronger race ; as a voter, it is a danger to 
 them which it becomes their interest to remove. 
 It is easy to manage the mob of New York for 
 the time with grape-shot, but it is the power for 
 evil which their suffrage gives them that will at 
 last interest all classes, by reform and education, 
 to make it a power for good. 
 
 Under the head of expediency comes also this 
 other consideration, that, unless made citizens, 
 the emancipated blacks, reckoned as they must be 
 in the basis of representation, and yet without 
 
RECONSTRUCTION. 197 
 
 power to modify the character of the representa 
 tives chosen, will throw so much more power into 
 the hands of men certain to turn it to their disad 
 vantage, and only too probably to our own. This 
 mass, if we leave it inert, may, in any near balance 
 of parties, be enough to crush us ; while, if we en 
 dow it with life and volition, if we put it in the 
 way of rising in intelligence and profiting by self- 
 exertion, it will be the best garrison for maintain 
 ing the supremacy of our ideas, till they have had 
 time to justify themselves by experience. Have 
 we endured and prosecuted this war for the sake 
 of bringing back our old enemies to legislate for 
 us, stronger than ever, with all the resentment and 
 none of the instruction of defeat ? 
 
 But as a measure of justice also, which is always 
 the highest expediency, we are in favor of giving 
 the ballot to the freedmen. Our answer to the 
 question, What are we to do with the negro ? is 
 short and simple. Give him a fair chance. We 
 must get rid of the delusion that right is in any 
 way dependent on the skin, and not on an inward 
 virtue. Our war has been carried on for the prin 
 ciples of democracy, and a cardinal point of those 
 principles is, that the only way in which to fit men 
 for freedom is to make them free, the only way to 
 teach them how to use political power is to give it 
 them. Both South and North have at last con 
 ceded the manhood of the negro, and the question 
 now is how we shall make that manhood available 
 and profitable to him and to us. Democracy does 
 not mean, to any intelligent person, an attempt at 
 
198 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 the impossibility of making one man as good as 
 another. But it certainly does mean the making 
 of one man s manhood as good as another s and the 
 giving to every human being the right of unlim 
 ited free trade in all his faculties and acquire 
 ments. We believe the white race, by their intel 
 lectual and traditional superiority, will retain suffi 
 cient ascendency to prevent any serious mischief 
 from the new order of things. We admit that the 
 whole subject bristles with difficulties, and we 
 would by no means discuss or decide it on senti 
 mental grounds. But our choice would seem to be 
 between unqualified citizenship, to depend on the 
 ability to read and write, if you will, and setting 
 the blacks apart in some territory by themselves. 
 There are, we think, insuperable objections to this 
 last plan. It would put them beyond the reach of 
 all good influence from the higher civilization of 
 the whites, without which they might relapse into 
 barbarism like the Maroons of Surinam, and it 
 would deprive the whole Southern country of the 
 very labor it needs. As to any prejudices which 
 should prevent the two races from living together, 
 it would soon yield to interest and necessity. The 
 mere antipathy of color is not so strong there as 
 here, and the blacks would form so very large a 
 majority of the laboring class as not to excite the 
 jealousy of rivalry. We can remember when the 
 prejudice against the Celt was as strong in many of 
 the Free States as that against the African could 
 ever be at the South. It is not very long since 
 this prejudice nearly gave a new direction to the 
 
RECONSTRUCTION. 199 
 
 politics of the country. Yet, like all prejudices, 
 it had not coherence enough to keep any consider 
 able party long together. 
 
 The objections to the plan are, of course, the 
 same which lie against any theory of universal 
 suffrage. These are many and strong, if consid 
 ered abstractly ; but we assume that theory to be 
 admitted now as the rule of our political practice, 
 and its evils as a working system have not been 
 found so great, taking the country at large, as 
 nearly to outweigh its advantages. Moreover, as 
 we have said before, it compels the redress of its 
 own abuses, and the remedy is one which is a bene 
 fit to the whole community, for it is simply to raise 
 the general standard of intelligence. It is supe 
 rior, certainly, to the English system, in which the 
 body of the nation is alienated from its highest 
 intellect and culture. We think the objections are 
 quite as strong to any elective plan of government, 
 for a select majority is as liable to be governed by 
 its interests and passions as any popular one. Wit 
 ness the elections at Oxford. Is the average wis 
 dom or unselfishness of mankind so high that there 
 should be no narrow minds and no selfish hearts 
 in any body of electors, however carefully selected ? 
 The only infallible sovereign on earth is chosen by 
 the majority of a body in which passion and intrigue 
 and the influence (sometimes none of the purest) 
 of conflicting courts are certainly not inoperative. 
 Man is perhaps not the wisest of animals, but he 
 has at least as keen a sense of his own advantage 
 in a hovel as in a palace, and what is for the inter- 
 
200 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 est of the masses of the people is not very far from 
 being for that of the country. It is said, to be 
 sure, that we are inadequately represented in Con 
 gress ; but a representative is apt to be a tolerably 
 exact exponent of the merits of his constituency, 
 and we must look for relief to the general im 
 provement of our people in morals, manners, and 
 culture. We doubt if the freedmen would send 
 worse members to Congress than some in whose 
 election merchants and bankers and even doctors 
 of divinity have been accomplices. 
 
 With the end of the war the real trial of our 
 statesmanship, our patriotism, and our patience 
 will begin. The passions excited by it will, no 
 doubt, subside in due time, but meanwhile it be 
 hooves the party in possession of the government to 
 conciliate patriotic men of all shades of opinion by 
 a liberal, manly and unpartisan policy. Repub 
 licans must learn to acknowledge that all crit 
 icisms of their measures have not been dictated 
 by passion or disloyalty, that many moderate and 
 honest men, many enlightened ones, have really 
 found reason for apprehension in certain arbitrary 
 stretches of authority, nay, may even have been 
 opposed to the war itself, without being in love 
 with slavery, and without deserving to be called 
 Copperheads. Many have doubted the wisdom of 
 our financial policy, without being unpatriotic. It 
 is precisely this class, dispassionate and moderate 
 in their opinions, whose help we shall need in heal 
 ing the wounds of war and giving equanimity to 
 our counsels. We hope to see a course of action 
 
RECONSTRUCTION. 201 
 
 entered upon which shall draw them to its sup 
 port. In peace, governments cannot, as in war, 
 find strength in the enthusiasm and even the pas 
 sions of the people, but must seek it in the ap 
 proval of their judgment and convictions. Dur 
 ing war, all the measures of the dominant party 
 have a certain tincture of patriotism ; declamation 
 serves very well the purposes of eloquence, and 
 fervor of persuasion passes muster as reason ; but 
 in peaceful times everything must come back to a 
 specific standard, and stand or fall on its own 
 merits. Our faith is not unmixed with apprehen 
 sion when we think of the immediate future, yet it 
 is an abiding faith nevertheless ; and with the ex 
 perience of the last four years to sustain us, we 
 are willing to believe almost anything good of the 
 American people, and to say with the saint, Credi- 
 mus quia impossibile est. We see no good reason 
 why, if we use our victory with the moderation be 
 coming men who profess themselves capable of self- 
 government, conceding all that can be conceded 
 without danger to the great principle which has 
 been at stake, the North and the South should not 
 live more harmoniously together in the future than 
 in the past, now that the one rock of offence has 
 been blasted out of the way. We do not believe 
 that the war has tended to lessen their respect for 
 each other, or that it has left scars which will take 
 to aching again with every change of the political 
 weather. We must bind the recovered communi 
 ties to us with hooks of interest, by convincing 
 them that we desire their prosperity as an integral 
 
202 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 part of our own. For a long while yet there will 
 be a latent disaffection, even when the outward 
 show may be fair, as in spring the ground often 
 stiffens when the thermometer is above the freezing 
 point. But we believe, in spite of this, that all 
 this untowardness will yield to the gradual wooing 
 of circumstances, and that it is to May, and not 
 December, that we are to look forward. Even 
 in our finances, which are confessedly our weakest 
 point, we doubt if the experience of any other na 
 tion will enable us to form a true conception of our 
 future. We shall have, beyond question, the ordi 
 nary collapse of speculation that follows a sudden 
 expansion of paper currency. We shall have that 
 shivering and expectant period when the sails flap 
 and the ship trembles ere it takes the wind on the 
 new tack. But it is no idle boast to say that there 
 never was a country with such resources as ours. 
 In Europe the question about a man always is, 
 What is he ? Here it is as invariably, What does 
 he do ? And in that little difference lies the se 
 curity of our national debt for whoever has eyes. 
 In America there is no idle class supported at the 
 expense of the nation, there is no splendid poor- 
 house of rank or office, but every man is at 
 work adding his share to the wealth, and to that 
 extent insuring the solvency, of the country. Our 
 farm, indeed, is mortgaged, but it is a mortgage 
 which the yearly profits will pay off. 
 
 Those who look upon the war as a wicked cru 
 sade of the North against the divinely sanctioned 
 institutions of the South, and those who hope even 
 
RECONSTRUCTION. 203 
 
 yet to reknit the monstrous league between slavery 
 and a party calling itself Democratic, will of course 
 be willing to take. back the seceding States without 
 conditions. Neither of these classes is any longer 
 formidable, either by its numbers or the character 
 of its leaders. But there is yet a third class, who 
 seem to have confused their minds with some 
 fancied distinction between civil and foreign war. 
 Holding the States to be indestructible, they seem 
 to think that, by the mere cessation of hostilities, 
 they are to resume their places as if nothing had 
 happened, or rather as if this had been a mere 
 political contest which we had carried. But it is 
 with the people of the States, and not with any 
 abstract sovereignty, that we have been at war, 
 and it is of them that we are to exact conditions, 
 and not of some convenient quasi-entity, which is 
 not there when the battle is raging, and is there 
 when the terms of capitulation are to be settled. 
 No, it is slavery which made this war, and slavery 
 which must pay the damages. While we should 
 not by any unseemly exultation remind the South 
 ern people that they have been conquered, we should 
 also not be weak enough to forget that we have won 
 the right of the victor. And what is that right, if 
 it be not to exact indemnity for the past and secu 
 rity for the future? And what more nobly and 
 satisfactorily fulfils both those conditions, than 
 utterly to extinguish the cause of quarrel ? What 
 we fear is the foolish and weak good-nature inher 
 ent in popular government, but against which mon 
 archies and aristocracies are insured by self-interest, 
 
204 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 which the prospect of peace is sure to arouse, and 
 which may make our settlement a stage-reconcilia 
 tion, where everybody rushes into the arms of every 
 body else with a fervor which has nothing to do 
 with the living relations of the actors. We believe 
 that the public mind should be made up as to what 
 are the essential conditions of real and lasting 
 peace, before it is subjected to the sentimental 
 delusions of the inevitable era of good feeling, 
 in which the stronger brother is so apt to play 
 the part of Esau. If we are to try the experi 
 ment of democracy fairly, it must be tried in its 
 fullest extent, and not half-way. The theory which 
 grants political power to the ignorant white for 
 eigner need not be squeamish about granting it to 
 the ignorant black native, for the gist of the matter 
 is in the dark mind, and not the more or less dusky 
 skin. Of course we shall be met by the usual 
 fallacy, Would you confer equality on the blacks? 
 But the answer is a very simple one. Equality 
 cannot be conferred on any man, be he white or 
 black. If he be capable of it, his title is from 
 God, and not from us. The opinion of the North 
 is made up on the subject of emancipation, and 
 Mr. Lincoln has announced it as the one essential 
 preliminary to the readmission of the insurgent 
 States. To our mind, citizenship is the necessary 
 consequence, as it is the only effectual warranty, 
 of freedom ; and accordingly we are in favor of 
 distinctly settling beforehand some conditional 
 right of admission to it. We have purposely 
 avoided any discussion on gradualism as an ele- 
 
RECONSTRUCTION. 205 
 
 ment in emancipation, because we consider its evil 
 results to have been demonstrated in the British 
 West Indies. True conservative policy is not an 
 anodyne hiding away our evil from us in a brief 
 forgetf ulness. It looks to the long future of a 
 nation, and dares the heroic remedy where it is 
 scientifically sure of the nature of the disease. 
 The only desperate case for a people is where its 
 moral sense is paralyzed, and the first symptom 
 is a readiness to accept an easy expedient at the 
 sacrifice of a difficult justice. The relation which 
 is to be final and permanent cannot be too soon 
 decided on and put in working order, whether for 
 the true interest of master or slave ; and the only 
 safe relation is one that shall be fearlessly true to 
 the principles in virtue of which we asserted our 
 own claim to autonomy, and our right to compel 
 obedience to the government so established. Any 
 thing short of that has the weakness of an expe 
 dient which will erelong compel us to reconstruct 
 our reconstruction, and the worse weakness of hy 
 pocrisy, which will sooner or later again lay us 
 open to the retribution of that eternal sincerity 
 which brings all things at last to the test of its 
 own unswerving standard. 
 
SCOTCH THE SNAKE, OR KILL IT? 
 
 1865. 
 
 IT has been said that the American people are 
 less apt than others to profit by experience, because 
 the bustle of their lives keeps breaking the thread 
 of that attention which is the material of memory, 
 till no one has patience or leisure to spin from it a 
 continuous thread of thought. We suspect that 
 this is not more true of us than of other nations, 
 than it is of all people who read newspapers. 
 Great events are perhaps not more common than 
 they used to be, but a vastly greater number of 
 trivial incidents are now recorded, and this dust 
 of time gets in our eyes. The telegraph strips his 
 tory of everything down to the bare fact, but it 
 does not observe the true proportions of things, 
 and we must make an effort to recover them. In 
 brevity and cynicism it is a mechanical Tacitus, 
 giving no less space to the movements of Sala than 
 of Sherman, as impartial a leveller as death. It 
 announces with equal sangfroid the surrender of 
 Kirby Smith and the capture of a fresh rebel 
 governor, reducing us to the stature at which pos 
 terity shall reckon us. Eminent contemporaneous 
 ness may see here how much space will be allotted 
 to it in the historical compends and biographical 
 
SCOTCH THE SNAKE, OR KILL IT? 207 
 
 dictionaries of the next generation. In artless 
 irony the telegraph is unequalled among the sat 
 irists of this generation. But this short-hand dia 
 rist confounds all distinctions of great and little, 
 and roils the memory with minute particles of what 
 is oddly enough called intelligence. We read in 
 successive paragraphs the appointment of a Pro 
 visional Governor of North Carolina, whose fitness 
 or want of it may be the turning-point of our fu 
 ture history, and the nomination of a minister, who 
 will at most only bewilder some foreign court with 
 a more desperately helpless French than his pre 
 decessor. The conspiracy trial at Washington, 
 whose result will have absolutely no effect on the 
 real affairs of the nation, occupies for the moment 
 more of the public mind and thought than the 
 question of reconstruction, which involves the life 
 or death of the very principle we have been fight 
 ing for these four years. 
 
 Undoubtedly the event of the day, whatever it 
 may be, is apt to become unduly prominent, and to 
 thrust itself obscuringly between us and the per 
 haps more important event of yesterday, where the 
 public appetite demands fresh gossip rather than 
 real news, and the press accordingly keeps its spies 
 everywhere on the lookout for trifles that become 
 important by being later than the last. And yet 
 this minuteness of triviality has its value also. 
 Our sensitive sheet gives us every morning the 
 photograph of yesterday, and enables us to detect 
 and to study at leisure that fleeting expression of 
 the time which betrays its character, and which 
 
208 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 might altogether escape us in the idealized histori 
 cal portrait. We cannot estimate the value of the 
 items in our daily newspaper, because the world to 
 which they relate is too familiar and prosaic ; but 
 a hundred years hence some Thackeray will find 
 them full of picturesque life and spirit. The 
 " Chronicle " of the Annual Register makes the 
 England of the last century more vividly real to 
 us than any history. The jests which Pompeian 
 idlers scribbled on the walls, while Vesuvius was 
 brooding its fiery conspiracy under their feet, bring 
 the scene nearer home to us than the letter of 
 Pliny, and deepen the tragedy by their trifling 
 contrast, like the grave-diggers unseemly gabble in 
 Hamlet. Perhaps our judgment of history is made 
 sounder, and our view of it more lifelike, when we 
 are so constantly reminded how the little things of 
 life assert their place alongside the great ones, and 
 how healthy the constitution of the race is, how 
 sound its digestion, how gay its humor, that can 
 take the world so easily while our continent is 
 racked with fever and struggling for life against 
 the doctors. 
 
 " Let Hercules himself do what he may, 
 The cat will mew, the dog must have his day." 
 
 It is always pleasant to meet Dame Clio over the 
 tea-table, as it were, where she is often more enter 
 taining, if not more instructive, than when she puts 
 on the loftier port and more ceremonious habit 
 of a Muse. These inadvertences of history are 
 pleasing. We are no longer foreigners, in any 
 age of the world, but feel that in a few days we 
 
SCOTCH THE SNAKE, OR KILL IT? 209 
 
 could have accommodated ourselves there, and that, 
 wherever men are, we are not far from home. The 
 more we can individualize and personify, the more 
 lively our sympathy. Man interests us scientifi 
 cally, but men claim us through all that we have 
 made a part of our nature by education and cus 
 tom. We would give more to know what Xeno- 
 phon s soldiers gossiped about round their camp- 
 fires, than for all the particulars of their retreat. 
 Sparta becomes human to us when we think of 
 Agesilaus on his hobby-horse. Finding that those 
 heroic figures romped with their children, we begin 
 for the first time to suspect that they ever really 
 existed as much as Robinson Crusoe. Without 
 these personal traits, antiquity seems as unreal to 
 us as Sir Thomas More s Utopia. It is, indeed, 
 surprising how little of real life what is reckoned 
 solid literature has preserved to us, voluminous as 
 it is. Where does chivalry at last become some 
 thing more than a mere procession of plumes and 
 armor, to be lamented by Burke, except in some of 
 the less ambitious verses of the Trouvres, where 
 we hear the canakin clink too emphatically, per 
 haps, but which at least paint living men and pos 
 sible manners? Tennyson s knights are cloudy, 
 gigantic, of no age or country, like the heroes of 
 Ossian. They are creatures without stomachs. 
 Homer is more condescending, and though we 
 might not be able to draw the bow of Ulysses, we 
 feel quite at home with him and Eumoeus over 
 their roast pork. 
 
 We cannot deny that the poetical view of any 
 
210 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 period is higher, and in the deepest sense truer, 
 than all others ; but we are thankful also for the 
 penny-a-liner, whether ancient or modern, who re 
 flects the whims and humors, the enthusiasms and 
 weaknesses, of the public in unguarded moments. 
 Is it so certain, after all, that we should not be in 
 teresting ourselves in other quite as nugatory mat 
 ters if these were denied us ? In one respect, and 
 no unimportant one, the instantaneous dispersion 
 of news and the universal interest in it have af 
 fected the national thought and character. The 
 whole people have acquired a certain metropolitan 
 temper ; they feel everything at once and in com 
 mon ; a single pulse sends anger, grief, or triumph 
 through the whole country ; one man sitting at the 
 keyboard of the telegraph in Washington sets the 
 chords vibrating to the same tune from sea to sea ; 
 and this simultaneousness, this unanimity, deepens 
 national consciousness and intensifies popular emo 
 tion. Every man feels himself a part, sensitive 
 and sympathetic, of this vast organism, a partner 
 in its life or death. The sentiment of patriotism 
 is etherealized and ennobled by it, is kindled by 
 the more or less conscious presence of an ideal ele 
 ment ; and the instinctive love of a few familiar 
 hills and fields widens, till Country is no longer an 
 abstraction, but a living presence, felt in the heart 
 and operative in the conscience, like that of an ab 
 sent mother. \ It is no trifling matter that thirty 
 millions of men should be thinking the same 
 thought and feeling the same pang at a single mo 
 ment of time, and that these vast parallels of lati- 
 
SCOTCH THE SNAKE, OR KILL IT1 211 
 
 tude should become a neighborhood more intimate 
 than many a country village. The dream of Hu 
 man Brotherhood seems to be coming true at last. 
 The peasant who dipped his net in the Damibe, or 
 trapped the beaver on its banks, perhaps never 
 heard of Caesar or of Caesar s murder ; but the shot 
 that shattered the forecasting brain, and curdled 
 the warm, sweet heart of the most American of 
 Americans, echoed along the wires through the 
 length and breadth of a continent, swelling all eyes 
 at once with tears of indignant sorrow. Here was 
 a tragedy fulfilling the demands of Aristotle, and 
 purifying with an instantaneous throb of pity and 
 terror a theatre of such proportions as the world 
 never saw. We doubt if history ever recorded an 
 event so touching and awful as this sympathy, so 
 wholly emancipated from the toils of space and 
 time that it might seem as if earth were really sen 
 tient, as some have dreamed, or the great god 
 Pan alive again to make the hearts of nations stand 
 still with his shout. What is Beethoven s " Fu 
 neral March for the Death of a Hero " to the sym 
 phony of love, pity, and wrathful resolve which the 
 telegraph of that April morning played on the 
 pulses of a nation ? 
 
 It has been said that our system of town meet 
 ings made our Revolution possible, by educating 
 the people in self-government. But this was at 
 most of partial efficacy, while the newspaper and 
 telegraph gather the whole nation into a vast town- 
 meeting, where every one hears the affairs of the 
 country discussed, and where the better judgment 
 
212 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 is pretty sure to make itself valid at last. No 
 memorable thing is said or done, no invention or 
 discovery is made, that some mention of it does not 
 sooner or later reach the ears of a majority of 
 Americans. It is this constant mental and moral 
 stimulus which gives them the alertness and viva 
 city, the wide-awakeness of temperament, charac 
 teristic of dwellers in great cities, and which has 
 been remarked on by English tourists as if it were 
 a kind of physiological transformation. They seem 
 to think we have lost something of that solidity of 
 character which (with all other good qualities) they 
 consider the peculiar inheritance of the British 
 race, though inherited in an elder brother s pro 
 portion by the favored dwellers in the British Isles. 
 We doubt if any substantial excellence is lost by 
 this supplying of the intellectual faculties, and 
 bringing the nervous system nearer the surface 
 by the absorption of superfluous fat. What is 
 lost in bulk may be gained in spring. It is 
 true that the clown, with his parochial horizon, 
 his diet inconveniently thin, and his head conveni 
 ently thick, whose notion of greatness is a prize 
 pig, and whose patriotism rises or falls with the 
 strength of his beer, is a creature as little likely 
 to be met with here as the dodo, his only rival 
 in the qualities that make up a good citizen ; but 
 this is no result of climatic influences. Such crea 
 tures are the contemporaries of an earlier period 
 of civilization than ours. Nor is it so clear that 
 solidity is always a virtue, and lightness a vice in 
 character, any more than in bread, or that the 
 
SCOTCH THE SNAKE, OR KILL ITf 213 
 
 leaven of our institutions works anything else than 
 a wholesome ferment and aeration. The experi 
 ence of the last four years is enough to- prove that 
 sensibility may consist with tenacity of purpose, 
 and that enthusiasm may become a permanent 
 motive where the conviction of the worth of its 
 object is profound and logical. There are things 
 in this universe deeper and higher, more solid even, 
 than the English Constitution. If that is the per 
 fection of human wisdom and a sufficing object of 
 faith and worship for our cousins over the water, 
 on the other hand God s dealing with this chosen 
 people is preparing them to conceive of a perfec 
 tion of divine wisdom, of a constitution in the 
 framing of which man s wit had no share, and which 
 shall yet be supreme, as it is continually more or 
 less plainly influential in the government of the 
 world. We may need even sterner teaching than 
 any we have yet had, but we have faith that the 
 lesson will be learned at last. 
 
 If the assertion which we alluded to at the out 
 set were true, if we, more than others, are apt to 
 forget the past in the present, the work of Mr. 
 Moore l would do much in helping us to recover 
 what we have lost. Had its execution been as com 
 plete as its plan was excellent, it would have left 
 nothing to be desired. Its want of order may be 
 charged upon the necessity of monthly publication ; 
 but there are other defects which this will hardly 
 excuse. The editor seems to have become grad 
 ually helpless before the mass of material that 
 
 1 The Rebellion Record. Edited by Frank Moore. Six vols. 
 
214 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 heaped itself about him, and to have shovelled 
 from sheer despair of selection. In the documen 
 tary part he is sufficiently, sometimes even depres- 
 singly full, and he has preserved a great deal of 
 fugitive poetry from both sides, much of it spirited, 
 and some of it vigorously original ; l but he has 
 frequently neglected to give his authorities. His 
 extracts from the newspapers of the day, especially 
 from Southern and foreign ones, are provokingly 
 few, and his department of " incidents and rumors," 
 the true mirror of the time, inadequate both in 
 quantity and quality. In spite of these defects, 
 however, there is enough to recall vividly the fea 
 tures of the time at any marked period during the 
 war, to renew the phases of feeling, to trace the 
 slowly gathering current of opinion, and to see 
 a definite purpose gradually orbing itself out of 
 the chaos of plans and motives, hopes, fears, en 
 thusiasms, and despondencies. We do not propose 
 to review the book, we might, indeed, almost as 
 well undertake to review the works of Father Time 
 himself, but, relying chiefly on its help in piecing 
 out our materials, shall try to freshen the memory 
 of certain facts and experiences worth bearing in 
 mind either for example or warning. 
 
 It is of importance, especially considering the 
 part which what are called the " leading minds " of 
 the South are expected to play in reconstruction, to 
 keep clearly before our eyes the motives and the 
 manner of the Rebellion. Perhaps we should say 
 
 i s ee especially The Old Sergeant, a remarkable poem by For- 
 ceythe Willson, in the sixth volume. 
 
SCOTCH THE SNAKE, OR KILL ITf 215 
 
 inducements rather than motives, for of these there 
 was but a single one put forward by the seceding 
 States, namely, the obtaining security, permanence, 
 and extension for the system of slavery. We do 
 not use the qualifying epithet " African," because 
 the franker propagandists of Southern principles 
 affirmed the divine institution of slavery pure and 
 simple, without regard to color or the curse of 
 Canaan. This being the single motive of the Re 
 bellion, what was its real object? Primarily, to 
 possess itself of the government by a sudden coup 
 d etat ; or that failing, then, secondarily, by a peace 
 ful secession, which should paralyze the commerce 
 and manufactures of the Free States, to bring them 
 to terms of submission. Whatever may have been 
 the opinion of some of the more far-sighted, it is 
 clear that a vast majority of the Southern people, 
 including their public men, believed that their re 
 volution would be peaceful. Their inducements to 
 moving precisely when they did were several. At 
 home the treasury was empty ; faithless ministers 
 had supplied the Southern arsenals with arms, and 
 so disposed the army and navy as to render them 
 useless for any sudden need ; but above all, they 
 could reckon on several months of an administra 
 tion which, if not friendly, was so feeble as to be 
 more dangerous to the country than to its betrayers, 
 and there was a great party at the North hitherto 
 their subservient allies, and now sharing with them 
 in the bitterness of a common political defeat. 1 
 
 1 Mr. A. H. Stephens, Vice-President of the late Confederacy, 
 attributed the Secession movement to disappointed ambition. 
 
216 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 Abroad there was peace, with the prospect of its 
 continuance ; the two great maritime powers were 
 also the great consumers of cotton, were both deadly 
 enemies, like themselves, to the democratic princi 
 ple, and, if not actively interfering, would at least 
 throw all the moral weight of their sympathy and 
 encouragement on the Southern side. They were 
 not altogether mistaken in their reckoning. The 
 imbecility of Mr. Buchanan bedded the ship of 
 state in an ooze of helpless inaction, where none of 
 her guns could be brought to bear, and whence no 
 thing but the tide of indignation which followed 
 the attack on Sumter could have set her afloat again, 
 while prominent men and journals of the Demo 
 cratic party hastened to assure the Rebels, not only 
 of approval, but of active physical assistance. Eng 
 land, with indecent eagerness, proclaimed a neu 
 trality which secured belligerent rights to a conspi 
 racy that was never to become a nation, and thus 
 enabled members of Parliament to fit out privateers 
 to prey with impunity on the commerce of a friendly 
 power. The wily Napoleon followed, after an in 
 terval long enough to throw all responsibility for 
 the measure, and to direct all the natural irritation 
 it excited in this country, upon his neighbor over 
 the way. England is now endeavoring to evade the 
 consequences of her hasty proclamation and her 
 jaunty indifference to the enforcement of it upon 
 her own subjects. The principle of international law 
 involved is a most important one ; but it was not 
 so much the act itself, or the pecuniary damage 
 resulting from it, as the animus that so plainly 
 
SCOTCH THE SNAKE, OR KILL IT? 217 
 
 prompted it, which Americans find it hard to for 
 give. 
 
 It would be unwise in us to forget that inde 
 pendence was a merely secondary and incidental 
 consideration with the Southern conspirators at the 
 beginning of the Eebellion, however they may have 
 thought it wise to put it in the front, both for the 
 sake of their foreign abettors who were squeam 
 ish about seeming, though quite indifferent about 
 being, false to their own professions and the higher 
 interests of their country, and also for the sake of 
 its traditionary influence among the Southern peo 
 ple. Some, it is true, were bold enough or logical 
 enough to advocate barbarism as a good in itself ; 
 and in estimating the influences which have ren 
 dered some minds, if not friendly to the Rebellion, 
 at least indifferent to the success of the Union, we 
 should not forget that reaction against the softening 
 and humanizing effect of modern civilization, led 
 by such men as Carlyle, and joined in by a multi 
 tude whose intellectual and moral fibre is too much 
 unstrung to be excited by anything less pungent 
 than paradox. Protestants against the religion 
 which sacrifices to the polished idol of Decorum 
 and translates Jehovah by Comme-il-faut, they find 
 even the divine manhood of Christ too tame for 
 them, and transfer their allegiance to the shaggy 
 Thor with his mallet of brute force. This is hardly 
 to be wondered at when we hear England called 
 prosperous for the strange reason that she no longer 
 dares to act from a noble impulse, and when, at 
 whatever page of her recent history one opens, he 
 
218 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 finds her statesmanship to consist of one Noble 
 Lord or Honorable Member asking a question, and 
 another Noble Lord or Honorable Member endea 
 voring to dodge it, amid cries of Hear! Hear! 
 enthusiastic in proportion to the fruitlessness of 
 listening. After all, we are inclined to think there 
 is more real prosperity, more that posterity will 
 find to have a deep meaning and reality, in a de- 
 mocracy spending itself for a principle, and, in spite 
 of the remonstrances, protests, and sneers of a 
 world busy in the eternal seesaw of the balance of 
 Europe, persisting in a belief that life and property 
 are mere counters, of no value except as represen 
 tatives of a higher idea. May it be long ere gov 
 ernment become in the New World, as in the Old, 
 an armed police and fire-department, to protect 
 property as it grows more worthless by being sel 
 fishly clutched in fewer hands, and keep God s fire 
 of manhood from reaching that gunpowder of the 
 dangerous classes which underlies all institutions 
 based on the wisdom of our ancestors. 
 
 As we look back to the beginnings of the Rebel 
 lion, we are struck with the thoughtlessness with 
 which both parties entered upon a war of whose 
 vast proportions and results neither was even dimly 
 conscious. But a manifest difference is to be re 
 marked. In the South this thoughtlessness was the 
 result of an ignorant self-confidence, in the North 
 of inexperience and good humor. It was long be 
 fore either side could believe that the other was in 
 earnest : the one in attacking a government which 
 they knew only by their lion s share in its offices 
 
SCOTCH THE SNAKE, OR KILL IT? 219 
 
 and influence, the other in resisting the unprovoked 
 assault of a race born in the saddle, incapable of 
 subjugation, and unable to die comfortably except 
 in the last ditch of jubilant oratory. "When at last 
 each was convinced of the other s sincerity, the 
 moods of both might have been predicted by any 
 observer of human nature. The side which felt 
 that it was not only in the wrong, but that it had 
 made a blunder, lost all control of its temper, all 
 regard for truth and honor. It betook itself forth 
 with to lies, bluster, and cowardly abuse of its an 
 tagonist. But beneath every other expression of 
 Southern sentiment, and seeming to be the base 
 of it, was a ferocity not to be accounted for by 
 thwarted calculations or by any resentment at in 
 juries received, but only by the influence of slavery 
 on the character and manners. " Scratch a Rus 
 sian," said Napoleon, " and you come to the Tartar 
 beneath." Scratch a slaveholder, and beneath the 
 varnish of conventionalism you come upon some 
 thing akin to the man-hunter of Dahomey. Nay, 
 the selfishness engendered by any system which 
 rests on the right of the strongest is more irritable 
 and resentful in the civilized than the savage man, 
 as it is enhanced by a consciousness of guilt. In 
 the first flush of over-confidence, when the Rebels 
 reckoned on taking Washington, the air was to be 
 darkened with the gibbeted carcasses of dogs and 
 caitiffs. Pollard, in the first volume of his South 
 ern History of the War, prints without comment 
 the letter of a ruffian who helped butcher our 
 wounded in Sudley Church after the first battle of 
 
220 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 Manassas, in which he says that he had resolved to 
 give no quarter. In Missouri the Rebels took scalps 
 as trophies, and that they made personal ornaments 
 of the bones of our unburied dead, and that women 
 wore them, though seeming incredible, has been 
 proved beyond question. Later in the war, they 
 literally starved our prisoners in a country where 
 Sherman s army of a hundred thousand men found 
 supplies so abundant that they could dispense with 
 their provision train. Yet these were the " gen 
 try " of the country, in whose struggle to escape 
 from the contamination of mob-government the 
 better classes of England so keenly sympathized. 
 Our experience is thrown away unless it teach us 
 that every form of conventionalized injustice is in 
 stinctively in league with every other, the world 
 over, and that all institutions safe only in law, but 
 forever in danger from reason and conscience, be 
 get first selfishness, next fear, and then cruelty, 
 by an incurable degeneration. Having been thus 
 taught that a rebellion against justice and mercy 
 has certain natural confederates, we must be blind 
 indeed not to see whose alliance at the South is 
 to give meaning and permanence to our victory 
 over it. 
 
 In the North, on the other hand, nothing is more 
 striking than the persistence in good nature, the 
 tenacity with which the theories of the erring 
 brother and the prodigal son were clung to, despite 
 all evidence of facts to the contrary. There was a 
 kind of boyishness in the rumors which the news 
 papers circulated (not seldom with intent to dis- 
 
SCOTCH THE SNAKE, OR KILL IT* 221 
 
 pirit), and the people believed on the authority of 
 reliable gentlemen from Richmond, or Union refu 
 gees whose information could be trusted. At one 
 time the Rebels had mined eleven acres in the 
 neighborhood of Bull Run ; at another, there were 
 regiments of giants on their way from Texas, who, 
 first paralyzing our batteries by a yell, would rush 
 unscathed upon the guns, and rip up the unresist 
 ing artillerymen with bowie-knives three feet long, 
 made for that precise service, and the only weapon 
 to which these Berserkers would condescend ; again, 
 for the fiftieth time, France and England had de 
 finitely agreed upon a forcible intervention ; finally, 
 in order to sap the growing confidence of the peo 
 ple in President Lincoln, one of his family was 
 accused of communicating our plans to the Rebels, 
 and this at a time when the favorite charge against 
 his administration was the having no plan at all. 
 The public mind, as the public folly is generally 
 called, was kept in a fidget by these marvels and 
 others like them. But the point to which we would 
 especially call attention is this : that while the 
 war slowly educated the North, it has had compara 
 tively little effect in shaking the old nonsense out 
 of the South. Nothing is more striking, as we 
 trace Northern opinion through those four years 
 that seemed so long and seem so short, than to see 
 how the minds of men were sobered, braced, and 
 matured as the greatness of the principles at stake 
 became more and more manifest ; how their pur 
 pose, instead of relaxing, was strained tighter by 
 disappointment, and by the growing sense of a 
 
222 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 guidance wiser than their own. Nor should we 
 forget how slow the great body of the people were 
 in being persuaded of the expediency of directly 
 attacking slavery, and after that of enlisting colored 
 troops ; of the fact, in short, that it must always be 
 legal to preserve the source of the law s authority, 
 and constitutional to save the country. The pru 
 dence of those measures is now acknowledged by 
 all, and justified by the result ; but we must not 
 be blind to the deeper moral, that justice is always 
 and only politic, that it needs no precedent, and 
 that we were prosperous in proportion as we were 
 willing to be true to our nobler judgment. In one 
 respect only the popular understanding seems al 
 ways to have been, and still to remain, confused. 
 Our notion of treason is a purely traditional one, 
 derived from countries where the question at issue 
 has not been the life of the nation, but the con 
 flicting titles of this or that family to govern it. 
 Many people appear to consider civil war as merely 
 a more earnest kind of political contest, which 
 leaves the relative position of the parties as they 
 would be after a Presidential election. But no 
 treason was ever so wicked as that of Davis and his 
 fellow-conspirators, for it had no apology of injury 
 or even of disputed right, and it was aimed against 
 the fairest hope and promise of the world. They 
 did not attempt to put one king in place of another, 
 but to dethrone human nature and discrown the 
 very manhood of the race. And in what respect 
 does a civil war differ from any other in the dis 
 cretion which it leaves to the victor of exacting 
 
SCOTCH THE SNAKE, OR KILL IT? 223 
 
 indemnity for the past and security for the future ? 
 A contest begun for such ends and maintained by 
 such expedients as this has been, is not to be con 
 cluded by merely crying quits and shaking hands. 
 The slaveholding States chose to make themselves 
 a foreign people to us, and they must take the con 
 sequences. We surely cannot be expected to take 
 them back as if nothing had happened, as if victory 
 rendered us helpless to promote good or prevent 
 evil, and took from us all title to insist on the ad 
 mission of the very principle for which we have 
 sacrificed so much. The war has established the 
 unity of the government, but no peace will be any 
 thing more than a pretence unless it rest upon the 
 unity of the nation, and that can only be secured 
 by making everywhere supreme the national idea 
 that freedom is a right inherent in man himself, 
 and not a creature of the law, to be granted to 
 one class of men or withheld from it at the option 
 of another. 
 
 What have we conquered ? The Southern 
 States? The Southern people? A cessation of 
 present war ? Surely not these or any one of 
 these merely. The fruit of our victory, as it was 
 always the object of our warfare, is the everlasting 
 validity of the theory of the Declaration of Inde 
 pendence in these United States, and the obligation 
 before God and man to make it the rule of our 
 practice. It was in that only that we were stronger 
 than our enemies, stronger than the public opinion 
 of the world ; and it is from that alone that we 
 derive our right of the strongest, for it is wisdom, 
 
224 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 justice, and the manifest will of Him who made of 
 one blood all the nations of the earth. It were a 
 childish view of the matter to think this is a mere 
 trial of strength or struggle for supremacy between 
 the North and South. The war sprang from the 
 inherent antipathy between two forms of political 
 organization radically hostile to each other. Is the 
 war over, will it ever be over, if we allow the in 
 compatibility to remain, childishly satisfied with a 
 mere change of shape ? This has been the grapple 
 of two brothers that already struggled with each 
 other even in the womb. One of them has fallen 
 under the other ; but let simple, good-natured Esau 
 beware how he slacken his grip till he has got back 
 his inheritance, for Jacob is cunninger with the 
 tongue than he. 
 
 We have said that the war has given the North 
 a higher conception of its manhood and its duties, 
 and of the vital force of ideas. But do we find 
 any parallel change in the South ? We confess we 
 look for it in vain. There is the same arrogance, 
 the same materialistic mode* of thought, which 
 reckons the strength and value of a country by the 
 amount of its crops rather than by the depth of 
 political principle which inspires its people, the 
 same boyish conceit on which even defeat wastes 
 its lesson. Here is a clear case for the interference 
 of authority. The people have done their part by 
 settling the fact that we have a government ; and 
 it is for the government now to do its duty toward 
 the people by seeing to it that their blood and 
 treasure shall not have been squandered in a mean- 
 
SCOTCH THE SNAKE, OR KILL IT* 225 
 
 ingless conflict. We must not let ourselves be 
 misled by the terms North and South, as if those 
 names implied any essential diversity of interest, 
 or the claim to any separate share in the future 
 destiny of the country. Let us concede every right 
 to the several States except that of mischief, and 
 never again be deceived by the fallacy that a moral 
 wrong can be local in its evil influence, or that a 
 principle alien to the instincts of the nation can be , 
 consistent either with its prosperity or its peace. 
 We must not be confused into a belief that it is 
 with States that we are dealing in this matter. 
 The very problem is how to reconstitute safely a 
 certain territory or population as States. It is not 
 we that take anything from them. The war has 
 left them nothing that they can fairly call their 
 own politically but helplessness and confusion. 
 We propose only to admit them for the first time 
 into a real union with us, and to give them an 
 equal share in privileges, our belief in whose value 
 we have proved by our sacrifices in asserting them. 
 There is always a time for doing what is fit to be 
 done ; and if it be done wisely, temperately, and 
 firmly, it need appeal for its legality to no higher 
 test than success. It is the nation, and not a sec 
 tion, which is victorious, and it is only on princi 
 ples of purely national advantage that any perma 
 nent settlement can be based. 
 
 The South will come back to the Union intent 
 on saving whatever fragments it can from the 
 wreck of the evil element in its social structure, 
 which it clings to with that servile constancy which 
 
226 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 men often show for the vice that is making them 
 its victims. If they must lose slavery, they will 
 make a shift to be comfortable on the best substi 
 tute they can find in a system of caste. The ques 
 tion for a wise government in such a case seems to 
 us not to be, Have we the right to interfere ? but 
 much rather, Have we the right to let them alone ? 
 If we are entitled, as conquerors, and it is only 
 as such that we are so entitled, to stipulate for 
 the abolition of slavery, what is there to prevent 
 our exacting further conditions no less essential to 
 our safety and the prosperity of the South ? The 
 national unity we have paid so dearly for will turn 
 out a pinchbeck counterfeit, without that sympathy 
 of interests and ideas, that unity of the people, 
 which can spring only from homogeneousness of 
 institutions. The successive advances toward jus 
 tice which we made during the war, and which 
 looked so difficult and doubtful before they were 
 made, the proclamation of freedom and the arming 
 of the blacks, seem now to have been measures of 
 the simplest expediency, as the highest always 
 turns out to be the simplest when we have the wit 
 to try it. The heavens were to have come crash 
 ing down after both those measures ; yet the pil 
 lars of the universe not only stood firm on their 
 divinely laid foundations, but held us up also, and, 
 to the amazement of many, God did not frown on 
 an experiment of righteousness. People are not 
 yet agreed whether these things were constitutional ; 
 we believe, indeed, that the weight of legal opinion 
 is against them, but nevertheless events are toler- 
 
SCOTCH THE SNAKE, OR KILL IT* 227 
 
 ably unanimous that without them we should have 
 had a fine Constitution left on our hands with no 
 body politic for it to animate. 
 
 Laws of the wisest human device are, after all, 
 but the sheath of the sword of Power, which must 
 not be allowed to rust in them till it cannot be 
 drawn swiftly in time of need. President Lincoln 
 had many scruples to overcome ere he could over 
 step the limits of precedent into the divine air of 
 1 moral greatness. Like most men, he was reluctant 
 to be the bearer of that message of God with which 
 his name will be linked in the grateful memory of 
 mankind. If he won an immortality of fame by 
 consenting to ally himself with the eternal justice, 
 and to reinforce his armies by the inspiration of 
 their own nobler instincts, an equal choice of re 
 nown is offered to his successor in applying the 
 same loyalty to conscience in the establishment of 
 peace. We could not live together half slave and 
 half free ; shall we succeed better in trying a 
 second left-handed marriage between democracy 
 and another form of aristocracy, less gross, but not 
 less uncongenial? They who before misled the 
 country into a policy false and deadly to the very 
 truth which was its life and strength, by the fear 
 of abolitionism, are making ready to misrule it 
 again by the meaner prejudice of color. We can 
 have no permanent peace with the South but by 
 Americanizing it, by compelling it, if need be, to 
 accept the idea, and with it the safety of demo 
 cracy. At present we seem on the brink of con 
 tracting to protect from insurrection States in 
 
228 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 which a majority of the population, many of them 
 now trained to arms, and all of them conscious of 
 a claim upon us to make their freedom strong 
 enough to protect them, are to be left at the mercy 
 of laws which they have had no share in enacting. 
 The gravity of this consideration alone should 
 make us pause. The more thought we bestow 
 upon the matter, the more thoroughly are we per 
 suaded that the only way to get rid of the negro is 
 to do him justice. Democracy is safe because it is 
 just, and safe only when it is just to all. Here is 
 no question of white or black, but simply of man. 
 We have hitherto been strong in proportion as we 
 dared be true to the sublime thought of our own 
 Declaration of Independence, which for the first 
 time proposed to embody Christianity in human 
 laws, and announced the discovery that the secu 
 rity of the state is based on the moral instincts and 
 the manhood of its members. In the very mid 
 night of the war, when we were compassed round 
 with despondency and the fear of man, that peer 
 less utterance of human policy rang like a trumpet 
 announcing heavenly succor, and lifted us out of the 
 darkness of our doubts into that courage which comes 
 of the fear of God. Now, if ever, may a statesman 
 depend upon the people sustaining him in doing 
 what is simply right, for they have found out the 
 infinite worth of freedom, and how much they love 
 it, by being called on to defend it. We have seen 
 how our contest has been watched by a breathless 
 world ; how every humane and generous heart, 
 every intellect bold enough to believe that men 
 
SCOTCH THE SNAKE, OR KILL IT* 229 
 
 may be safely trusted with government as well as 
 with any other of their concerns, has wished us 
 God-speed. And we have felt as never before the 
 meaning of those awful words, " Hell beneath is 
 stirred for thee," as we saw all that was mean and 
 timid and selfish and wicked, by a horrible impul 
 sion of nature, gathering to the help of our ene 
 mies. Why should we shrink from embodying 
 our own idea as if it would turn out a Franken 
 stein? Why should we let the vanquished dictate 
 terms of peace? A choice is offered that may 
 never come again, unless after another war. We 
 should sin against our own light, if we allowed 
 mongrel republics to grow up again at the South, 
 and deliberately organized anarchy, as if it were 
 better than war. Let the law be made equal for 
 all men. If the power does not exist in the Con 
 stitution, find it somewhere else, or confess that 
 democracy, strongest of all governments for war, 
 is the weakest of all in the statesmanship that shall 
 save us from it. There is no doubt what the 
 wishes of the administration are. Let them act 
 up to their own convictions and the emergency of 
 the hour, sure of the support of the people ; for it 
 is one of the chief merits of our form of polity 
 that the public reason, which gives our Constitu 
 tion all its force, is always a reserve of power to 
 the magistrate, open to the appeal of justice, and 
 ready to ratify the decisions of conscience. There 
 is no need of hurry in readmitting the States that 
 locked themselves out of the old homestead. It is 
 not enough to conquer unless we convert them, and 
 
230 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 time, the best means of quiet persuasion, is in our 
 own Lands. Shall we hasten to cover with the 
 thin ashes of another compromise that smoulder 
 ing war which we called peace for seventy years, 
 only to have it flame up again when the wind of 
 Southern doctrine has set long enough in the old 
 quarter ? It is not the absence of war, but of its 
 causes, that is in our grasp. That is what we 
 fought for, and there must be a right somewhere 
 to enforce what all see to be essential. To quibble 
 away such an opportunity would be as cowardly as 
 unwise. 
 
THE PKESIDENT ON THE STUMP. 
 
 1866. 
 
 MR. JOHNSON is the first of our Presidents who 
 has descended to the stump, and spoken to the 
 people as if they were a mob. We do not care to 
 waste words in criticising the taste of this proceed 
 ing, but deem it our duty to comment on some of 
 its graver aspects. We shall leave entirely aside 
 whatever was personal in the extraordinary dia 
 tribe of the 22d of February, merely remarking 
 that we believe the majority of Americans have 
 too much good sense to be flattered by an allusion 
 to the humbleness of their chief magistrate s ori 
 gin ; the matter of interest for them being rather 
 to ascertain what he has arrived at than where he 
 started from, we do not mean in station, but in 
 character, intelligence, and fitness for the place he 
 occupies. We have reason to suspect, indeed, that 
 pride of origin, whether high or low, springs from 
 the same principle in human nature, and that one 
 is but the positive, the other the negative, pole of 
 a single weakness. The people do not take it as a 
 compliment to be told that they have chosen a ple 
 beian to the highest office, for they are not fond of 
 a plebeian tone of mind or manners. What they 
 do like, we believe, is to be represented by their 
 
232 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 foremost man, their highest type of courage, sense, 
 and patriotism, no matter what his origin. For, 
 after all, no one in this country incurs any natal 
 disadvantage unless he be born to an ease which 
 robs him of the necessity of exerting, and so of in 
 creasing and maturing, his natural powers. It is 
 of very little consequence to know what our Presi 
 dent was ; of the very highest, to ascertain what he 
 is, and to make the best of him. We may say, in 
 passing, that the bearing of Congress, under the 
 temptations of the last few weeks, has been most 
 encouraging, though we must except from our com 
 mendation the recent speech of Mr. Stevens of 
 Pennsylvania. There is a pride of patriotism that 
 should make all personal pique seem trifling ; and 
 Mr. Stevens ought to have remembered that it 
 was not so much the nakedness of an antagonist 
 that he was uncovering as that of his country. 
 
 The dangers of popular oratory are always great, 
 and unhappily ours is nearly all of this kind. 
 Even a speaker in Congress addresses his real 
 hearers through the reporters and the post-office. 
 The merits of the question at issue concern him 
 less than what he shall say about it so as not to 
 ruin his own chance of reelection, or that of some 
 fourth cousin to a tidewaitership. Few men have 
 any great amount of gathered wisdom, still fewer 
 of extemporary, while there are unhappily many 
 who have a large stock of accumulated phrases, 
 and hold their parts of speech subject to immediate 
 draft. In a country where the party newspapers 
 and speakers have done their best to make us be- 
 
THE PRESIDENT ON THE STUMP. 233 
 
 lieve that consistency is of so much more impor 
 tance than statesmanship, and where every public 
 man is more or less in the habit of considering 
 what he calls his " record " as the one thing to be 
 saved in the general deluge, a hasty speech, if the 
 speaker be in a position to make his words things, 
 may, by this binding force which is superstitiously 
 attributed to the word once uttered, prove to be of 
 public detriment. It would be well for us if we 
 could shake off this baleful system of requiring 
 that a man who has once made a fool of himself 
 shall always thereafter persevere in being one. 
 Unhappily it is something more easy of accomplish 
 ment than the final perseverance of the saints. 
 Let us learn to be more careful in distinguishing 
 between betrayal of principle, and breaking loose 
 from a stupid consistency that compels its victims 
 to break their heads against the wall instead of 
 going a few steps round to the door. To eat our 
 own words would seem to bear some analogy to 
 that diet of east-wind which is sometimes attrib 
 uted to the wild ass, and might therefore be whole 
 some for the tame variety of that noble and neces 
 sary animal, which, like the poor, we are sure to 
 have always with us. If the words have been 
 foolish, we can conceive of no food likely to be 
 more nutritious, and could almost wish that we 
 might have public establishments at the common 
 charge, like those at which the Spartans ate black 
 broth, where we might all sit down together to a 
 meal of this cheaply beneficial kind. Among other 
 amendments of the Constitution, since every Sena- 
 
234 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 tor seems to carry half a dozen in his pocket now 
 adays, a sort of legislative six-shooter, might we 
 not have one to the effect that a public character 
 might change his mind as circumstances changed 
 theirs, say once in five years, without forfeiting the 
 confidence of his fellow-citizens ? 
 
 We trust that Mr. Johnson may not be so often 
 reminded of his late harangue as to be provoked 
 into maintaining it as part of his settled policy, 
 and that every opportunity will be given him for 
 forgetting it, as we are sure his better sense will 
 make him wish to do. For the more we reflect 
 upon it, the more it seems to us to contain, either 
 directty or by implication, principles of very dan 
 gerous consequence to the well-being of the Kepub- 
 lic. We are by no means disposed to forget Mr. 
 Johnson s loyalty when it was hard to be loyal, nor 
 the many evidences he has given of a sincere de 
 sire to accomplish what seemed to him best for the 
 future of the whole country ; but, at the same time, 
 we cannot help thinking that some of his over- 
 frank confidences of late have shown alarming mis 
 conceptions, both of the position he holds either in 
 the public sentiment or by virtue of his office, and 
 of the duty thereby devolved upon him. We do 
 not mean to indulge ourselves in any nonsensical 
 rhetoric about usurpations like those which cost 
 an English king his head, for we consider the mat 
 ter in too serious a light, and no crowded galleries 
 invite us to thrill them with Bulwerian common 
 place ; but we have a conviction that the exceptional 
 circumstances of the last five years, which gave a 
 
THE PRESIDENT ON THE STUMP. 235 
 
 necessary predominance to the executive part of 
 our government, have left behind them a false im 
 pression of the prerogative of a President in ordi 
 nary times. The balance-wheel of our system has 
 insensibly come to think itself the motive power, 
 whereas that, to be properly effective, should al 
 ways be generated by the deliberate public opinion 
 of the country. Already the Democratic party, 
 anxious to profit by any chance at resuscitation, 
 for it is extremely inconvenient to be dead so long, 
 is more than hinting that the right of veto was 
 given to the President that he might bother and 
 baffle a refractory Congress into concession, not to 
 his reasons, but to his whim. There seemed to be 
 a plan at one time of forming a President s party, 
 with no principle but that of general opposition to 
 the policy of that great majority which carried him 
 into power. Such a scheme might have had some 
 chance of success in the good old times when it 
 seemed to the people as if there was nothing more 
 important at stake than who should be in and who 
 out ; but it would be sure of failure now that the 
 public mind is intelligently made up as to the vital 
 meaning of whatever policy we adopt, and the 
 necessity of establishing our institutions, once for 
 all, on a basis as permanent as human prudence 
 can make it. 
 
 Congress is sometimes complained of for wasting 
 time in discussion, and for not having, after a four 
 months session, arrived at any definite plan of 
 settlement. There has been, perhaps, a little eager 
 ness on the part of honorable members to associate 
 
236 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 their names with, the particular nostrum that is to 
 build up our national system again. In a country 
 where, unhappily, any man may be President, it is 
 natural that a means of advertising so efficacious 
 as this should not be neglected. But really, we do 
 not see how Congress can be blamed for not being 
 ready with a plan definite and precise upon every 
 point of possible application, when it is not yet in 
 possession of the facts according to whose varying 
 complexion the plan must be good or bad. The 
 question with us is much more whether another 
 branch of the government, to which, from its 
 position and its opportunity for a wider view, the 
 country naturally looks for initiative suggestion, 
 and in which a few months ago even decisive action 
 would have been pardoned, whether this did not 
 let the lucky moment go by without using it. That 
 moment was immediately after Mr. Lincoln s mur 
 der, when the victorious nation was ready to apply, 
 and the conquered faction would have submitted 
 without a murmur to that bold and comprehen 
 sive policy which is the only wise as it is the only 
 safe one for great occasions. To let that moment 
 slip was to descend irrecoverably from the van 
 tage ground where statesmanship is an exact sci 
 ence to the experimental level of tentative politics. 
 We cannot often venture to set our own house on 
 fire with civil war, in order to heat our iron up 
 to that point of easy forging at which it glowed, 
 longing for the hammer of the master-smith, less 
 than a year ago. That Occasion is swift we 
 learned long ago from the adage; but this vola- 
 
THE PRESIDENT ON THE STUMP. 237 
 
 tility is meant only of moments where -force of 
 personal character is decisive, where the fame or 
 fortune of a single man is at stake. The life of 
 nations can afford to take less strict account of 
 time, and in their affairs there may always be a 
 hope that the slow old tortoise, Prudence, may over 
 take again the opportunity that seemed flown by 
 so irrecoverably. Our people have shown so much 
 of this hard -shelled virtue during the last five 
 years, that we look with more confidence than ap 
 prehension to the result of our present difficulties. 
 Never was the common-sense of a nation more often 
 and directly appealed to, never was it readier in 
 coming to its conclusion and making it operative 
 in public affairs, than during the war whose wounds 
 we are now endeavoring to stanch. It is the duty 
 of patriotic men to keep this great popular faculty 
 always in view, to satisfy its natural demand for 
 clearness and practicality in the measures proposed, 
 and not to distract it and render it nugatory by 
 the insubstantial metaphysics of abstract policy. 
 From the splitting of heads to the splitting of 
 hairs would seem to be a long journey, and yet 
 some are already well on their way to the end of 
 it, who should be the leaders of public opinion and 
 not the skirmishing harassers of its march. It 
 would be well if some of our public men would 
 consider that Providence has saved their modesty 
 the trial of an experiment in cosmogony, and that 
 their task is the difficult, no doubt, but much sim 
 pler and less ambitious one, of bringing back the 
 confused material which lies ready to their hand, 
 
238 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 always with a divinely implanted instinct of order 
 in it, to as near an agreement with the providential 
 intention as their best wisdom can discern. The 
 aggregate opinion of a nation moves slowly. Like 
 those old migrations of entire tribes, it is encum 
 bered with much household stuff; a thousand un 
 foreseen things may divert or impede it ; a hostile 
 check or the temptation of present convenience 
 may lead it to settle far short of its original aim ; 
 the want of some guiding intellect and central will 
 may disperse it ; but experience shows one constant 
 element of its progress, which those who aspire to 
 be its leaders should keep in mind, namely, that 
 the place of a wise general should be oftener in the 
 rear or the centre than the extreme front. The 
 secret of permanent leadership is to know how to 
 be moderate. The rashness of conception that 
 makes opportunity, the gallantry that heads the 
 advance, may win admiration, may possibly achieve 
 a desultory and indecisive exploit ; but it is the 
 slow steadiness of temper, bent always on the main 
 design and the general movement, that gains by 
 degrees a confidence as unshakable as its own, the 
 only basis for permanent power over the minds of 
 men. It was the surest proof of Mr. Lincoln s 
 sagacity and the deliberate reach of his under 
 standing, that he never thought time wasted while 
 he waited for the wagon that brought his supplies. 
 The very immovability of his purpose, fixed always 
 on what was attainable, laid him open to the shal 
 low criticism of having none, for a shooting star 
 draws more eyes, and seems for the moment to have 
 
THE PRESIDENT ON THE STUMP. 239 
 
 a more definite aim, than a planet, but it gained 
 him at last such a following as made him irresisti 
 ble. It lays a much lighter tax on the intellect, 
 and proves its resources less, to suggest a number 
 of plans, than to devise and carry through a single 
 one. 
 
 Mr. Johnson has an undoubted constitutional 
 right to choose any, or to reject all, of the schemes 
 of settlement proposed by Congress, though the 
 wisdom of his action in any case is a perfectly 
 proper subject of discussion among those who put 
 him where he is, who are therefore responsible for 
 his power of good or evil, and to whom the conse 
 quences of his decision must come home at last. 
 He has an undoubted personal right to propose any 
 scheme of settlement himself, and to advocate it 
 with whatever energy of reason or argument he 
 possesses, but is liable, in our judgment, to very 
 grave reprehension if he appeal to the body of the 
 people against those who are more immediately its 
 representatives than himself in any case of doubt 
 ful expediency, before discussion is exhausted, and 
 where the difference may well seem one of personal 
 pique rather than of considerate judgment. This 
 is to degrade us from a republic, in whose fore- 
 ordered periodicity of submission to popular judg 
 ment democracy has guarded itself against its own 
 passions, to a mass meeting, where momentary in 
 terest, panic, or persuasive sophistry all of them 
 gregarious influences, and all of them contagious 
 may decide by a shout what years of afterthought 
 may find it hard, or even impossible, to undo. There 
 
240 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 have been some things in the deportment of the 
 President of late that have suggested to thoughtful 
 men rather the pettish foible of wilfulness than the 
 strength of well-trained and conscientious will. It is 
 by the objects for whose sake the force of volition 
 is called into play that we decide whether it is 
 childish or manly, whether we are to call it obsti 
 nacy or firmness. Our own judgment can draw no 
 favorable augury from meetings gathered " to sus 
 tain the President," as it is called, especially if we 
 consider the previous character of those who are 
 prominent in them, nor from the ill-considered 
 gossip about a " President s party ; " and the^ 
 would excite our apprehension of evil to come, 
 did we not believe that the experience of the last 
 five years had settled into convictions in the mind 
 of the people. The practical result to which all 
 benevolent men finally come is that it is idle to try 
 to sustain any man who has not force of character 
 enough to sustain himself without their help, and 
 the only party which has any chance now before 
 the people is that of resolute good sense. What 
 is now demanded of Congress is unanimity in the 
 best course that is feasible. They should recollect 
 that Wisdom is more likely to be wounded in the 
 division of those who should be her friends, than 
 either of the parties to the quarrel. Our difficul 
 ties are by no means so great as timid or interested 
 people would represent them to be. We are to 
 decide, it is true, for posterity; but the question 
 presented to us is precisely that which every man 
 has to decide in making his will, neither greater 
 
THE PRESIDENT ON THE STUMP. 241 
 
 nor less than that, nor demanding a wisdom above 
 what that demands. The power is in our own 
 hands, so long as it is prudent for us to keep it 
 there; and we are justified, not in doing simply 
 what we will with our own, but what is best to be 
 done. The great danger in the present posture of 
 affairs seems to be lest the influence which in Mr. 
 Lincoln s case was inherent in the occasion and the 
 man should have held over in the popular mind as 
 if it were entailed upon the office. To our minds 
 more is to be apprehended in such a conjuncture 
 from the weakness than from the strength of the 
 President s character. 
 
 There is another topic which we feel obliged to 
 comment on, regretting deeply, as we do, that the 
 President has given us occasion for it, and believ 
 ing, as we would fain do, that his own better judg 
 ment will lead him to abstain from it in the future. 
 He has most unfortunately permitted himself to 
 assume a sectional ground. Geography is learned 
 to little purpose in Tennessee, if it does not teach 
 that the Northeast as well as the Southwest is an 
 integral and necessary part of the United States. 
 By the very necessity of his high office, a Presi 
 dent becomes an American, whose concern is with 
 the outward boundaries of his country, and not its 
 internal subdivisions. One great object of the 
 war, we had supposed, was to abolish all fallacies 
 of sectional distinction in a patriotism that could 
 embrace something wider than a township, a 
 county, or even a State. But Mr. Johnson has 
 chosen to revive the paltry party-cries from before 
 
242 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 that deluge which we hoped had washed everything 
 clean, and to talk of treason at both ends of the 
 Union, as if there were no difference between 
 men who attempted the life of their country, and 
 those who differ from him in their judgment of 
 what is best for her future safety and greatness. 
 We have heard enough of New England radical 
 ism, as if that part of the country where there 
 is the most education and the greatest accumula 
 tion of property in the hands of the most holders 
 were the most likely to be carried away by what are 
 called agrarian theories. All that New England 
 and the West demand is that America should be 
 American ; that every relic of a barbarism more 
 archaic than any institution of the Old World 
 should be absolutely and irrecoverably destroyed ; 
 that there should be no longer two peoples here, 
 but one, homogeneous and powerful by a sympa 
 thy in idea. Does Mr. Johnson desire anything 
 more ? Does he, alas ! desire anything less ? If so, 
 it may be the worse for his future fame, but it will 
 not and cannot hinder the irresistible march of 
 that national instinct which forced us into war, 
 brought us out of it victorious, and will not now 
 be cheated of its fruits. If we may trust those 
 who have studied the matter, it is moderate to say 
 that more than half the entire population of the 
 Free States is of New England descent, much more 
 than half the native population. It is by the votes 
 of these men that Mr. Johnson holds his office ; it 
 was as the exponent of their convictions of duty 
 and policy that he was chosen to it. Not a vote 
 
THE PRESIDENT ON THE STUMP. 243 
 
 did he or could he get in a single one of the States 
 in rebellion. If they were the American people 
 when they elected him to execute their will, are they 
 less the American people now ? It seems to us the 
 idlest of all possible abstractions now to discuss the 
 question whether the rebellious States were ever 
 out of the Union or not, as if that settled the right 
 of secession. The victory of superior strength 
 settled it, and nothing else. For four years they 
 were practically as much out of the Union as 
 Japan ; had they been strong enough, they would 
 have continued out of it ; and what matters it 
 where they were theoretically ? Why, until Queen 
 Victoria, every English sovereign assumed the 
 style of King of France. The King of Sardinia 
 was, and the King of Italy, we suppose, is still tit 
 ular King of Jerusalem. Did either monarch ever 
 exercise sovereignty or levy taxes in those imagi 
 nary dominions? What the war accomplished for 
 us was the reduction of an insurgent population ; 
 and what it settled was, not the right of secession, 
 for that must always depend on will and strength, 
 but that every inhabitant of every State was a sub 
 ject as well as a citizen of the United States, in 
 short, that the theory of freedom was limited by 
 the equally necessary theory of authority. We 
 hoped to hear less in future of the possible inter 
 pretations by which the Constitution may be made 
 to mean this or that, and more of what will help 
 the present need and conduce to the future strength 
 and greatness of the whole country. It was by 
 precisely such constitutional quibbles, educating 
 
244 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 men to believe they had a right to claim whatever 
 they could sophistically demonstrate to their own 
 satisfaction, and self-interest is the most cunning 
 of sophists, that we were interpreted, in spite of 
 ourselves, into civil war. It was by just such a 
 misunderstanding of one part of the country by 
 another as that to which Mr. Johnson has lent the 
 weight of his name and the authority of his place, 
 that rendered a hearty national sympathy, and may 
 render a lasting reorganization, impossible. 
 
 If history were still written as it was till within 
 two centuries, and the author put into the mouth 
 of his speakers such words as his conception of the 
 character and the situation made probable and fit 
 ting, we could conceive an historian writing a hun 
 dred years hence to imagine some such speech as 
 this for Mr. Johnson in an interview with a South 
 ern delegation. 
 
 " Gentlemen, I am glad to meet you once more 
 as friends, I wish I might say as fellow-citizens. 
 How soon we may again stand in that relation to 
 each other depends wholly upon yourselves. You 
 have been pleased to say that my birth and life 
 long associations gave you confidence that I would 
 be friendly to the South. In so saying, you do no 
 more than justice to my heart and my intentions ; 
 but you must allow me to tell you frankly, that, if 
 you use the word South in any other than a purely 
 geographical sense, the sooner you convince your 
 selves of its impropriety as addressed to an Amer 
 ican President, the better. The South as a politi 
 cal entity was Slavery, and went out of existence 
 
THE PRESIDENT ON THE STUMP. 245 
 
 with it. And let me also, as naturally connected 
 with this topic, entreat you to disabuse your minds 
 of the fatally mistaken theory that you have been 
 conquered by the North. It is the American peo 
 ple who are victors in this conflict, and who intend 
 to inflict no worse penalty on you than that of ad 
 mitting you to an entire equality with themselves. 
 They are resolved, by God s grace, to Americanize 
 you, and America means education, equality before 
 the law, and every upward avenue of life made as 
 free to one man as another. You urge upon me, 
 with great force and variety of argument, the mani 
 fold evils of the present unsettled state of things, the 
 propriety and advantage of your being represented 
 in both houses of Congress, the injustice of taxation 
 without representation. I admit the importance 
 of every one of these considerations, but I think 
 you are laboring under some misapprehension of the 
 actual state of affairs. I know not if any of you 
 have been in America since the spring of 1861, or 
 whether (as I rather suspect) you have all been 
 busy in Europe endeavoring to but I beg par 
 don, I did not intend to say anything that should 
 recall old animosities. But intelligence is slow to 
 arrive in any part of the world, and intelligence 
 from America painfully so in reaching Europe. 
 You do not seem to be aware that something has 
 happened here during the last four years, some 
 thing that has made a very painful and lasting im 
 pression on the memory of the American people, 
 whose voice on this occasion I have the honor to 
 be. They feel constrained to demand that you 
 
246 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 shall enter into bonds to keep the peace. They do 
 not, I regret to say, agree with you in looking upon 
 what has happened here of late as only a more em 
 phatic way of settling a Presidential election, the 
 result of which leaves both parties entirely free 
 to try again. They seem to take the matter much 
 more seriously. Nor do they, so far as I can see, 
 agree with you in your estimate of the importance 
 of conserving your several state sovereignties, as 
 you continue to call them, insisting much rather 
 on the conservation of America and of American 
 ideas. They say that the only thing which can 
 individualize or perpetuate a commonwealth is to 
 have a history ; and they ask which of the States 
 lately in rebellion, except Virginia and South 
 Carolina, had anything of the kind ? In spite of 
 my natural sympathies, gentlemen, my reason com 
 pels me to agree with them. Your strength, such 
 as it was, was due less to the fertility of your 
 brains than to that of your soil and to the inven 
 tion of the Yankee Whitney which you used and 
 never paid for. You tell me it is hard to put you 
 on a level with your negroes. As a believer in 
 the superiority of the white race, I cannot admit 
 the necessity of enforcing that superiority by law. 
 A Roman emperor once said that gold never re 
 tained the unpleasant odor of its source, and I must 
 say to you that loyalty is sweet to me, whether it 
 throb under a black skin or a white. The Amer 
 ican people has learned of late to set a greater 
 value on the color of ideas than on shades of com 
 plexion. As to the injustice of taxation without 
 
THE PRESIDENT ON THE STUMP- 247 
 
 representation, that is an idea derived from our 
 English ancestors, and is liable, like all rules, to 
 the exceptions of necessity. I see no reason why 
 a State may not as well be disfranchised as a bor 
 ough for an illegal abuse of its privileges ; nor do 
 I quite feel the parity of the reason which should 
 enable you to do that with a loyal black which we 
 may not do with a disloyal white. Remember that 
 this government is bound by every obligation, ethi 
 cal and political, to protect these people because 
 they are weak, and to reward them (if the common 
 privilege of manhood may be called a reward) be 
 cause they are faithful. We are not fanatics, but 
 a nation that has neither faith in itself nor faith 
 toward others must soon crumble to pieces by moral 
 dry-rot. If we may conquer you, gentlemen, (and 
 you forced the necessity upon us,) we may surely 
 impose terms upon you ; for it is an old principle 
 of law that cui liceat majus, ei licet etiam minus. 
 " In your part of the country, gentlemen, that 
 which we should naturally appeal to as the friend of 
 order and stability property is blindly against 
 us ; prejudice is also against us ; and we have noth 
 ing left to which we can appeal but human nature 
 and the common privilege of manhood. You seem 
 to have entertained some hope that I would gather 
 about myself a 4 President s party, which should be 
 more friendly to you and those animosities which 
 you mistake for interests. But you grossly deceive 
 yourselves ; I have no sympathy but with my 
 whole country, and there is nothing out of which 
 such a party as you dream of could be constructed, 
 
248 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 except the broken remnant of those who deserted 
 you when for the first time you needed their help 
 and not their subserviency, and those feathery 
 characters who are drawn hither and thither by 
 the chances of office. I need not say to you that I 
 am and can be nothing in this matter but the voice 
 of the nation s deliberate resolve. The recent past 
 is too painful, the immediate future too momentous, 
 to tolerate any personal considerations. You throw 
 yourselves upon our magnanimity, and I must be 
 frank with you. My predecessor, Mr. Buchanan, 
 taught us the impolicy of weakness and concession. 
 The people are magnanimous, but they understand 
 by magnanimity a courageous steadiness in prin 
 ciple. They do not think it possible that a large 
 heart should consist with a narrow brain ; and 
 they would consider it pusillanimous in them to 
 consent to the weakness of their country by admit 
 ting you to a share in its government before you 
 have given evidence of sincere loyalty to its prin 
 ciples, or, at least, of wholesome fear of its power. 
 They believe, and I heartily agree with them, that 
 a strong nation begets strong citizens, and a weak 
 one weak, that the powers of the private man 
 are invigorated and enlarged by his confidence in 
 the power of the body politic ; and they see no 
 possible means of attaining or securing this needed 
 strength but in that hoinogeneousness of laws and 
 institutions which breeds unanimity of ideas and 
 sentiments, no way of arriving at that homogene- 
 ousness but the straightforward path of perfect 
 confidence in freedom. All nations have a right to 
 
THE PRESIDENT ON THE STUMP. 249 
 
 security, ours to greatness ; and must have the one 
 as an essential preliminary to the other. If your 
 prejudices stand in the way, and you are too weak 
 to rid yourselves of them, it will be for the Ameri 
 can people to consider whether the plain duty of 
 conquering them for you will be, after all, so diffi 
 cult a conquest as some they have already achieved. 
 By yourselves or us they must be conquered. 
 Gentlemen, in bidding you farewell, I ask you to 
 consider whether you have not forgotten that, in 
 order to men s living peacefully together in com 
 munities, the idea of government must precede 
 that of liberty, and that the one is as much the 
 child of necessity as the other is a slow concession 
 to civilization, which itself mainly consists in the 
 habit of obedience to something more refined than 
 force." 
 
THE SEWARD-JOHNSON REACTION. 
 1866. 
 
 THE late Philadelphia experiment at making a 
 party out of nullities reminds us of nothing so 
 much as of the Irishman s undertaking to produce 
 a very palatable soup out of no more costly mate 
 rial than a pebble. Of course he was to be fur 
 nished with a kettle as his field of operations, and 
 after that he asked only for just the least bit of 
 beef in the world to give his culinary miracle a 
 flavor, and a pinch of salt by way of relish. As 
 nothing could be more hollow and empty than the 
 pretence on which the new movement was founded, 
 nothing more coppery than the material out of which 
 it was mainly composed, we need look no further 
 for the likeness of a kettle wherewith to justify our 
 comparison ; as for the stone, nothing could be 
 more like that than the Northern disunion faction, 
 which was to be the chief ingredient in the new 
 fangled pottage, and whose leading characteristic 
 for the last five years has been a uniform alacrity 
 in going under ; the offices in the gift of the Presi 
 dent might very well be reckoned on to supply the 
 beef which should lead by their noses the weary 
 expectants whose hunger might be too strong for 
 their nicety of stomach ; and the pinch of salt, 
 
THE SEWARD-JOHNSON REACTION. 251 
 
 why could not that be found in the handful of Be- 
 publicans who might be drawn over by love of 
 notoriety, private disgusts, or that mixture of mo 
 tives which has none of the substance of opinion, 
 much less of the tenacity of principle, but which 
 is largely operative in the action of illogical minds ? 
 But the people ? Would they be likely to have 
 their appetite aroused by the fumes of this thin 
 decoction ? Where a Chinaman is cook, one is apt 
 to be a little suspicious ; and if the Address in 
 which the Convention advertised their ingenious 
 mess had not a little in its verbiage to remind one 
 of the flowery kingdom, there was something in 
 that part of the assemblage which could claim any 
 bygone merit of Republicanism calculated to stim 
 ulate rather than to allay any dreadful surmise of 
 the sagacious rodent which our antipodes are said 
 to find savory. And as for the people, it is a curi 
 ous fact, that the party which has always been 
 loudest to profess its faith in their capacity of self- 
 government has been the last to conceive it pos 
 sible that they should apprehend a principle, arrive 
 at a logical conclusion, or be influenced by any 
 other than a mean motive. The cordons bleus of 
 the political cooks at Philadelphia were men admi 
 rably adapted for the petty intrigues of a local 
 caucus, but by defect of nature profoundly uncon 
 scious of that simple process of generalization from 
 a few plain premises by which the popular mind 
 is guided in times like these, and upon questions 
 which appeal to the moral instincts of men. 
 
 The Convention was well managed, we freely 
 
252 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 admit, and why not, when all those who were 
 allowed to have any leading part in it belonged 
 exclusively to that class of men who are known as 
 party managers, and who, like the director of a 
 theatre or a circus, look upon the mass of mankind 
 as creatures to be influenced by a taking title, by 
 amplitude of posters, and by a thrilling sensation 
 or two, no matter how coarse ? As for the title, 
 nothing could be better than that of the " Devoted 
 Unionists," and were not the actors, no less than 
 the scenery and decorations, for the most part 
 entirely new, at least in that particular play? 
 Advertisement they did not lack, with the whole 
 Democratic press and the Department of State at 
 their service, not to speak of the real clown be 
 ing allowed to exhibit himself at short intervals 
 upon the highest platform in this or any other coun 
 try. And if we ask for sensation, never were so 
 many performers exhibited together in their grand 
 act of riding two horses at once, or leaping through 
 a hoop with nothing more substantial to resist them 
 than the tissue-paper of former professions, nay, of 
 recent pledges. And yet the skill of the managers 
 had something greater still behind, in Massachu 
 setts linked arm in arm with South Carolina. To 
 be sure, a thoughtful mind might find something 
 like a false syllogism in pairing off a Commonwealth 
 whose greatest sin it has been to lead the van in 
 freedom of opinion, and in those public methods of 
 enlightenment which make it a safeguard of popular 
 government, with an Oligarchy whose leadership 
 has been in precisely the opposite direction, as if 
 
THE SE WARD-JOHNSON REACTION. 253 
 
 both had equally, sinned against American ideas. 
 But such incongruities are trifles no greater than 
 those of costume so common on every stage ; and 
 perhaps the only person to be pitied in the exhibi 
 tion was Governor Orr, who had once uttered a 
 hope that his own State might one day walk abreast 
 with the daughter of Puritan forethought in the 
 nobler procession of prosperous industry, and who 
 must have felt a slight shock of surprise, if nothing 
 more, at the form in which Massachusetts had 
 chosen to incarnate herself on that particular occa 
 sion. We cannot congratulate the Convention on 
 the name of its chairman, for there is something 
 ominously suggestive in it. But, on the other hand 
 it is to be remembered that Mr. Doolittle has a 
 remarkably powerful voice, which is certainly one 
 element in the manufacture of sound opinions. A 
 little too much latitude was allowed to Mr. Ray 
 mond in the Address, though on the whole perhaps 
 it was prudent to make that document so long as to 
 insure it against being read. In their treatment 
 of Mr. Vallandigham the managers were prudent. 
 He was allowed to appear just enough not quite to 
 alienate his party, on whom the new movement 
 counts largely for support, and just not enough to 
 compromise the Convention with the new recruits 
 it had made among those who would follow the 
 name Conservative into anything short of down 
 right anarchy. The Convention, it must be con 
 fessed, had a rather hard problem to solve, no 
 thing less than to make their patent reconciliation 
 cement out of fire and gunpowder, both useful 
 
254 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 things in themselves, but liable in concert to bring 
 about some odd results in the way of harmonious 
 action. It is generally thought wiser to keep them 
 apart, and accordingly Mr. Vallandigham was ex 
 cluded from the Convention altogether, and the 
 Southern delegates were not allowed any share in 
 the Address or Resolutions. Indeed, as the North 
 ern members were there to see what they could 
 make, and the Southern to find out how much they 
 could save, and whatever could be made or saved 
 was to come out of the North, it was more prudent 
 to leave all matters of policy in the hands of those 
 who were supposed to understand best the weak 
 side of the intended victim. The South was really 
 playing the game, and is to have the lion s share of 
 the winnings ; but it is only as a disinterested 
 bystander, who looks over the cards of one of the 
 parties, and guides his confederate by hints so 
 adroitly managed as not to alarm the pigeon. The 
 Convention avoided the reef where the wreck of 
 the Chicago lies bleaching ; but we are not so sure 
 that they did not ground themselves fast upon the 
 equally dangerous mud-bank that lies on the op 
 posite side of the honest channel. At Chicago they 
 were so precisely frank as to arouse indignation ; 
 at Philadelphia they are so careful of generalities 
 that they make us doubtful, if not suspicious. Does 
 the expectation or even the mere hope of pudding 
 make the utterance as thick as if the mouth were 
 already full of it ? As to the greater part of the 
 Resolutions, they were political truisms in which 
 everybody would agree as so harmless that the Con- 
 
THE SEWARD-JOHNSON REACTION. 255 
 
 vention might almost as well have resolved the 
 multiplication table article by article. The Address 
 was far less explicit ; and where there is so very 
 much meal, it is perhaps not altogether unchari 
 table to suspect that there may be something under 
 it. There is surely a suspicious bulge here and 
 there, that has the look of the old Democratic cat. 
 But, after all, of what consequence are the prin 
 ciples of the party, when President Johnson covers 
 them all when he puts on his hat, and may change 
 them between dinner and tea, as he has done several 
 times already? The real principle of the party, 
 its seminal and vital principle alike, is the power 
 of the President, and its policy is every moment at 
 the mercy of his discretion. That power has too 
 often been the plaything of whim, and that discre 
 tion the victim of ill-temper or vanity, for us to 
 have any other feeling left than regret for the one 
 and distrust of the other. 
 
 The new party does not seem to have drawn 
 to itself any great accession of strength from the 
 Republican side, or indeed to have made many 
 converts that were not already theirs in fact, though 
 not in name. It was joined, of course, at once by 
 the little platoon of gentlemen calling themselves, 
 for some mystical reason, Conservatives, who have 
 for some time been acting with the Democratic 
 faction, carefully keeping their handkerchiefs to 
 their noses all the while. But these involuntary 
 Catos are sure, as if by instinct, to choose that 
 side which is doomed not to please the gods, and 
 their adhesion is as good as a warranty of defeat. 
 
256 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 During the President s progress they must often 
 have been driven to their handkerchiefs again. 
 It was a great blunder of Mr. Seward to allow 
 him to assume the apostolate of the new creed in 
 person, for every word he has uttered must have 
 convinced many, even of those unwilling to make 
 the admission, that a doctrine could hardly be 
 ound which had its origin and derives its power 
 from a source so impure. For so much of Mr. 
 Johnson s harangues as is not positively shocking, 
 we know of no parallel so close as in his Imperial 
 Majesty Kobes I. : 
 
 " Er riihmte class er nie studirt 
 
 Auf Universitaten 
 
 Und Reden sprach aus sich selbst heraus, 
 Ganz ohne Facultaten." 
 
 And when we consider his power of tears ; when 
 we remember Mr. Reverdy Johnson and Mr. An 
 drew Johnson confronting each other like two 
 augurs, the one trying not to laugh while he saw 
 the other trying to cry; when we recall the 
 touching scene at Canaudaigua, where the Presi 
 dent was overpowered by hearing the pathetic 
 announcement that Stephen A. Douglas had for 
 two years attended the academy in what will doubt 
 less henceforward be dubbed that " classic locality," 
 we cannot help thinking of 
 
 " In seinem schonen Auge glanzt 
 Die Thrane, die Stereotype." 
 
 Indeed, if the exhibition of himself were not so 
 profoundly sad, when we think of the high place 
 he occupies and the great man he succeeded in it, 
 
THE SE WARD-JOHNSON REACTION. 257 
 
 nothing could well be so comic as some of the in 
 cidents of Mr. Johnson s tour. No satirist could 
 have conceived anything so bewitchingly absurd as 
 the cheers which greeted the name of Simeon at 
 the dinner in New York, whether we suppose the 
 audience to have thought him some eminent mem 
 ber of their party of whom they had never heard, 
 or whom they had forgotten as thoroughly as they 
 had Mr. Douglas, or if we consider that they were 
 involuntarily giving vent to their delight at the 
 pleasing prospect opened by their " illustrious 
 guest s " allusion to his speedy departure. Nor 
 could anything have been imagined beforehand 
 so ludicrously ominous as Mr. Seward s fears lest 
 the platform should break down under them at 
 Niagara. They were groundless fears, it is true, 
 for the Johnson platform gave way irreparably 
 on the 22d of February ; but they at least luckily 
 prevented Nicholas Bottom Cromwell from utter 
 ing his after-dinner threat against the people s 
 immediate representatives, against the very body 
 whose vote supplies the funds of his party, and 
 whose money, it seems, is constitutional, even if 
 its own existence as a Congress be not. We pity 
 Mr. Seward in his new office of bear-leader. 
 How he must hate his Bruin when it turns out 
 that his tricks do not even please the crowd ! 
 
 But the ostensible object of this indecent orgy 
 seems to us almost as discreditable as the purpose 
 it veiled so thinly. Who was Stephen A. Douglas, 
 that the President, with his Cabinet and the two 
 highest officers of the army and navy, should add 
 
258 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 their official dignity to the raising of his monument, 
 and make the whole country an accomplice in con 
 secrating his memory? His name is not associated 
 with a single measure of national importance, un 
 less upon the wrong side. So far was he from 
 being a statesman that, even on the lower ground 
 of politics, both his principles and. his expression 
 of them were tainted with the reek of vulgar asso 
 ciations. A man of naturally great abilities he 
 certainly was, but wholly without that instinct for 
 the higher atmosphere of thought or ethics which 
 alone makes them of value to any but their pos 
 sessor, and without which they are more often dan 
 gerous than serviceable to the commonwealth. He 
 habitually courted those weaknesses in the people 
 which tend to degrade them into a populace, in 
 stead of appealing to the virtues that grow by use, 
 and whose mere acknowledgment in a man in some 
 sort ennobles him. And by doing this he proved 
 that he despised the very masses whose sweet 
 breaths he wooed, and had no faith in the system 
 under which alone such a one as he could have 
 been able to climb so high. He never deserted the 
 South to take side with the country till the South 
 had both betrayed and deserted him. If such a 
 man were the fairest outcome of Democracy, then 
 is it indeed a wretched failure. But for the facti 
 tious importance given to his name by the necessity 
 of furnishing the President with a pretext for 
 stumping the West in the interest of Congress, 
 Mr. Douglas would be wellnigh as utterly forgotten 
 as Cass or Tyler, or Buchanan or Fillinore ; nor 
 
THE SE WARD-JOHNSON REACTION. 259 
 
 should we have alluded to him now but that the 
 recent pilgrimage has made his name once more 
 public property, and because we think it a common 
 misfortune when such men are made into saints, 
 though for any one s advantage but their own. 
 We certainly have no wish to play the part of 
 advocatus diaboli on such an occasion, even were 
 it necessary at a canonization where the office of 
 Pontifex Maximus is so appropriately filled by Mr. 
 Johnson. 
 
 In speaking of the late unhappy exposure of 
 the unseemly side of democratic institutions, we 
 have been far from desirous of insisting on Mr. 
 Seward s share in it. We endeavored to account 
 for it at first by supposing that the Secretary of 
 State, seeing into the hands of how vain and weak 
 a man the reins of administration had fallen, was 
 willing, by flattering his vanity, to control his 
 weakness for the public good. But we are forced 
 against our will to give up any such theory, and to 
 confess that Mr. Seward s nature has been " sub 
 dued to what it works in." We see it with sincere 
 sorrow, and are far from adding our voice to the 
 popular outcry against a man the long and honor 
 able services of whose prime we are not willing to 
 forget in the decline of his abilities and that dry- 
 rot of the mind s nobler temper which so often re 
 sults from the possession of power. Long contact 
 with the meaner qualities of men, to whose infec 
 tion place and patronage are so unhappily exposed, 
 could not fail of forcing to a disproportionate 
 growth any germs of that cynicism always latent 
 
260 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 in temperaments so exclusively intellectual and 
 unmitigated by any kindly lenitive of humor. 
 Timid by nature, the war which he had prophesied, 
 but had not foreseen, and which invigorated bolder 
 men, unbraced him ; and while the spendthrift 
 verbosity of his despatches was the nightmare of 
 foreign ministries, his uncertain and temporizing 
 counsels were the perpetual discouragement of his 
 party at home. More than any minister with 
 whose official correspondence we are acquainted, 
 he carried the principle of paper money into diplo 
 macy, and bewildered Earl Russell and M. Drouyn 
 de Lhuys with a horrible doubt as to the real value 
 of the verbal currency they were obliged to receive. 
 But, unfortunately, his own countrymen were also 
 unprovided with a price-current of the latest quota 
 tion in phrases, and the same gift of groping and 
 inconclusive generalities which perhaps was useful 
 as a bewilderment to would-be hostile governments 
 abroad was often equally effective in disheartening 
 the defenders of nationality at home. We cannot 
 join with those who accuse Mr. Seward of betray 
 ing his party, for we think ourselves justified by 
 recent events in believing that he has always looked 
 upon parties as the mere ladders of ambitious men ; 
 and when his own broke under him at Chicago in 
 1860, he forthwith began to cast about for another, 
 the rounds of which might be firmer under his 
 feet. He is not the first, and we fear will not be 
 the last, of our public men who have thought to 
 climb into the "White House by a back window, 
 and have come ignominiously to the ground in at- 
 
THE SE WARD-JOHNSON REACTION. 261 
 
 tempting it. Mr. Seward s view of the matter 
 probably is that the Republican party deserted him 
 six years ago, and that he was thus absolved of all 
 obligations to it. But might there not have been 
 such a thing as fidelity to its principles ? Or was 
 Mr. Seward drawn insensibly into the acceptance 
 of them by the drift of political necessity, and did 
 he take them up as if they were but the hand that 
 had been dealt him in the game, not from any con 
 viction of their moral permanence and power, per 
 haps with no perception of it, but from a mere 
 intellectual persuasion of the use that might be 
 made of them politically and for the nonce by a 
 skilful gamester? We should be very unwilling 
 to admit such a theory of his character ; but surely 
 what we have just seen would seem to justify it, 
 for we can hardly conceive that any one should 
 suddenly descend from real statesmanship to the 
 use of such catch-rabble devices as those with which 
 he has lately disgusted the country. A small poli 
 tician cannot be made out of a great statesman, 
 for there is an oppugnancy of nature between the 
 two things, and we may fairly suspect the former 
 winnings of a man who has been once caught with 
 loaded dice in his pocket. However firm may be 
 Mr. Seward s faith in the new doctrine of John 
 sonian infallibility, surely he need not have made 
 himself a partner in its vulgarity. And yet he 
 has attempted to vie with the Jack-pudding tricks 
 of the unrivalled performer whose man-of-business 
 he is, in attempting a popularity (we must coin 
 a new word for a new thing) for which he was 
 
262 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 exquisitely unfitted. What more stiffly awkward 
 than his essays at easy familiarity ? What more 
 painfully remote from drollery than his efforts to 
 be droll ? In the case of a man who descends so 
 far as Mr. Seward, such feats can be character 
 ized by no other word so aptly as by tumbling. 
 The thing would be sad enough in any prominent 
 man, but in him it becomes a public shame, for 
 in the eyes of the world it is the nation that 
 tumbles in its Prime Minister. The Secretary of 
 State s place may be dependent on the President, 
 but the dignity of it belongs to the country, and 
 neither of them has any right to trifle with it. Mr. 
 Seward might stand on his head in front of what 
 Jenkins calls his " park gate," at Auburn, and we 
 should be the last to question his perfect right as 
 a private citizen to amuse himself in his own way, 
 but in a great officer of the government such 
 pranks are no longer harmless. They are a na 
 tional scandal, and not merely so, but a national 
 detriment, inasmuch as they serve to foster in 
 foreign statesmen a profound misapprehension of 
 the American people and of the motives which in 
 fluence them in questions of public policy. Never 
 was so great a wrong done to democracy, nor so 
 great an insult offered to it, as in this professional 
 circuit of the presidential Punch and his ministerial 
 showman. 
 
 Fortunately, the exhibitions of this unlucky pair, 
 and their passing round the hat without catching 
 even the greasy pence they courted, have very 
 little to do with the great question to be decided 
 
THE SEWARD-JOHNSON REACTION. 263 
 
 at the next elections, except in so far as we may 
 be justified in suspecting their purity of motive 
 who could consent to such impurity of means, and 
 the soundness of their judgment in great things 
 who in small ones show such want of sagacity. 
 The crowds they have drawn are no index of popu 
 lar approval. We remember seeing the prodigious 
 nose of Mr. Tyler (for the person behind it had 
 been added by nature merely as the handle to so 
 I fine a hatchet) drawn by six white horses through 
 the streets, and followed by an eager multitude, 
 nine tenths of whom thought the man belonging 
 to it a traitor to the party which had chosen him. 
 But then the effigy at least of a grandiose, if not 
 a great man, sat beside him, and the display was 
 saved from contempt by the massive shape of 
 Webster, beneath which he showed like a swallow 
 against a thunder-cloud. Even Mr. Fillmore, to 
 whom the Fugitive Slave Law denies the complete 
 boon of an otherwise justly earned oblivion, had 
 some dignity given to his administration by the 
 presence of Everett. But in this late advertising- 
 tour of a policy in want of a party, Cleon and 
 Agoracritus seem to have joined partnership, and 
 the manners of the man match those of the master. 
 Mr. Johnson cannot so much as hope for the suc 
 cess in escaping memory achieved by the last of 
 those small Virginians whom the traditionary fame 
 of a State once fertile in statesmen lifted to four 
 years of imperial pillory, where his own littleness 
 seemed to heighten rather than lower the grandeur 
 of his station ; his name will not be associated 
 
264 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 with the accomplishment of a great wrong against 
 humanity, let us hope not with the futile attempt 
 at one ; but he will be indignantly remembered as 
 the first, and we trust the last, of our chief magis 
 trates who believed in the brutality of the peo 
 ple, and gave to the White House the ill-savor 
 of a corner-grocery. He a tribune of the people ? 
 A lord of misrule, an abbot of unreason, much 
 rather ! 
 
 No one can object more strongly than we to the 
 mixing of politics with personal character ; but 
 they are here inextricably entangled together, and 
 we hold it to be the duty of every journal in the 
 country to join in condemning a spectacle which 
 silence might seem to justify as a common event in 
 our politics. We turn gladly from the vulgarity 
 of the President and his minister to consider the 
 force of their arguments. Mr. Johnson seems to 
 claim that he has not betrayed the trust to which 
 he was elected, mainly because the Union party 
 have always affirmed that the rebellious States 
 could not secede, and therefore ex vi termini are 
 still in the Union. The corollary drawn from this 
 is, that they have therefore a manifest right to 
 immediate representation in Congress. What we 
 have always understood the Union party as meaning 
 to affirm was, that a State had no right to secede ; 
 and it was upon that question, which is a very dif 
 ferent thing from the other, that the whole con 
 troversy hinged. To assert that a State or States 
 could not secede, if they were strong enough, 
 would be an absurdity. In point of fact, all but 
 
THE SE WARD-JOHNSON REACTION. 265 
 
 three of the Slave States did secede, and for four 
 years it would have been treason throughout their 
 whole territory, and death on the nearest tree, to 
 assert the contrary. The law forbids a man to 
 steal, but he may steal, nevertheless ; and then, if 
 he had Mr. Johnson s power as a logician, he might 
 claim to escape all penalty by pleading that when 
 the law said should not it meant could not, and 
 therefore he had not. If a four years war, if a 
 half million lives, and if a debt which is counted 
 by the thousand million are not satisfactory proofs 
 that somebody did contrive to secede practically, 
 whatever the theoretic right may have been, then 
 nothing that ought not to be done ever has been 
 done. We do not, however, consider the question 
 as to whether the Rebel States were constitution 
 ally, or in the opinion of any political organization, 
 out of the Union or not as of the least practical 
 importance ; for we have never known an instance 
 in which any party has retreated into the thickets 
 and swamps of constitutional interpretation, where 
 it had the least chance of maintaining its ground 
 in the open field of common sense or against 
 the pressure of popular will. The practical fact 
 is, that the will of the majority, or the national 
 necessity for the time being, has always been con 
 stitutional ; which is only as much as to say that 
 the Convention of 1787 was not wholly made up of 
 inspired prophets, who could provide beforehand 
 for every possible contingency. The doctrine of a 
 strict and even pettifogging interpretation of the 
 Constitution had its rise among men who looked 
 
266 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 upon that instrument as a treaty, and at a time 
 when the conception of a national power which 
 should receive that of the States into its stream as 
 tributary was something which had entered the 
 head of only here and there a dreamer. The theo 
 rists of the Virginia school would have dammed up 
 and diverted the force of each State into a narrow 
 channel of its own, with its little saw-mill and its 
 little grist-mill for local needs, instead of letting it 
 follow the slopes of the continental water-shed to 
 swell the volume of one great current ample for 
 the larger uses and needful for the higher civiliza 
 tion of all. That there should always be a school 
 who interpret the Constitution by its letter is a 
 good thing, as interposing a check to hasty or par 
 tial action, and gaining time for ample discussion ; 
 but that in the end we should be governed by its 
 spirit, living and operative in the energies of an 
 advancing people, is a still better thing ; since the 
 levels and shore-lines of politics are no more sta 
 tionary than those of continents, and the ship of 
 state would in time be left aground far inland, to 
 long in vain for that open sea which is the only 
 pathway to fortune and to glory. 
 
 Equally idle with the claim that the Union party 
 is foreclosed from now dealing with the Rebel 
 States as seceded, because four years ago it de 
 clared that they had no right to secede, is the as 
 sertion that the object of the war was proclaimed 
 to be for the restoration of the Union and the Con 
 stitution as they were. Even were we to admit 
 that 1861 is the same thing as 1866, the question 
 
THE SEWARD-JOHNSON REACTldN. 267 
 
 comes back again to precisely the point that is at 
 issue between the President and Congress, namely, 
 What is the wisest way of restoring the Union ? for 
 which both profess themselves equally anxious. 
 As for the Constitution, we cannot have that as it 
 was, but only as its frainers hoped it would be, 
 with its one weak and wicked element excluded. 
 But as to Union, are we in favor of a Union in 
 form or in fact ? of a Union on the map and in our 
 national style merely, or one of ideas, interests, and 
 aspirations ? If we cannot have the latter, the for 
 mer is a delusion and a snare ; and the strength of 
 the nation would be continually called away from 
 prosperous toil to be wasted in holding a wolf by 
 the ears, which would still be a wolf, and known 
 by all our enemies for such, though we called 
 heaven and earth to witness, in no matter how 
 many messages or resolves, that the innocent crea 
 ture was a lamb. That somebody has a right to 
 dictate some kind of terms is admitted by Mr. 
 Johnson s own repeated action in the matter ; but 
 who that somebody should be, whether a single 
 man, of whose discretion even his own partisans 
 are daily becoming more doubtful, or the imme 
 diate representatives of that large majority of the 
 States and of the people who for the last five years 
 have been forced against their will to represent and 
 to be the United States, is certainly too grave an 
 affair to be settled by that single man himself. 
 
 We have seen to what extremes the party calling 
 itself Conservative has hinted its willingness to go, 
 under the plea of restored Union, but with the ob- 
 
268 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 ject of regained power. At Philadelphia, they went 
 as far as they publicly dared in insinuating that 
 the South would be justified in another rebellion, 
 and their journals have more than once prompted 
 the President to violent measures, which would as 
 certainly be his ruin as they would lead to incalcu 
 lable public disaster. The President himself has 
 openly announced something like a design of for 
 cibly suppressing a Congress elected by the same 
 votes and secured by the same guaranties that 
 elected him to his place and secure him in it, a 
 Congress whose validity he has acknowledged by 
 sending in his messages to it, by signing its bills, 
 and by drawing his pay under its vote ; and yet 
 thinking men are not to be allowed to doubt the 
 propriety of leaving the gravest measure that ever 
 yet came up for settlement by the country to a 
 party and a man so reckless as these have shown 
 themselves to be. Mr. Johnson talks of the dan 
 ger of centralization, and repeats the old despotic 
 fallacy of many tyrants being worse than one, a 
 fallacy originally invented, and ever since repeated, 
 as a slur upon democracy, but which is a palpable 
 absurdity when the people who are to be tyran 
 nized over have the right of displacing their ty 
 rants every two years. The true many-headed ty 
 rant is the Mob, that part of the deliberative body 
 of a nation which Mr. Johnson, with his Southern 
 notions of popular government, has been vainly 
 seeking, that he might pay court to it, from the 
 seaboard to St. Louis, but which hardly exists, we 
 are thankful to say, as a constituent body, in any 
 
THE SEWARD-JOHNSON REACTION. 269 
 
 part of the Northern States outside the city of New 
 York. 
 
 Mr. Seward, with that playfulness which sits 
 upon him so gracefully, and which draws its re 
 sources from a reading so extensive that not even 
 John Gilpin has escaped its research, puts his 
 argument to the people in a form where the So- 
 cratic and arithmetic methods are neatly combined, 
 and asks, " How many States are there in the Un 
 ion ? " He himself answers his own question for 
 an audience among whom it might have been diffi 
 cult to find any political adherent capable of so ar 
 duous a solution, by asking another, " Thirty-six ? " 
 Then he goes on to say that there is a certain 
 party which insists that the number shall be less 
 by ten, and ends by the clincher, " Now how many 
 stars do you wish to see in your flag ? " The re 
 sult of some of Mr. Johnson s harangues was so 
 often a personal collision, in which the more ardent 
 on both sides had an opportunity to see any num 
 ber of new constellations, that this astronomical 
 view of the case must have struck the audience 
 rather by its pertinence than its novelty. But in 
 the argument of the Secretary, as in that of the 
 President, there is a manifest confusion of logic, 
 and something very like a petitio principii. We 
 might answer Mr. Seward s question with, " As 
 many fixed stars as you please, but no more shoot 
 ing stars with any consent of ours." But really 
 this matter is of more interest to heralds of arms 
 than to practical men. The difference between 
 Congress and the President is not, as Mr. Seward 
 
270 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 would insinuate, that Congress or anybody else 
 wishes to keep the ten States out, but that the 
 Radical party (we cheerfully accept our share in 
 the opprobrium of the name) insists that they shall 
 come in on a footing of perfect equality with the 
 rest ; while the President would reward them for 
 rebellion by giving them an additional weight of 
 nearly one half in the national councils. The cry 
 of " Taxation without representation " is foolish 
 enough as raised by the Philadelphia Convention, 
 for do we not tax every foreigner that comes to us 
 while he is in process of becoming a citizen and a 
 voter ? But under the Johnsonian theory of recon 
 struction, we shall leave a population which is now 
 four millions not only taxed without representation, 
 but doomed to be so forever without any reason 
 able hope of relief. The true point is not as to the 
 abstract merits of universal suffrage (though we 
 believe it the only way toward an enlightened 
 democracy and the only safeguard of popular gov 
 ernment), but as to whether we shall leave the 
 freedmen without the only adequate means of self- 
 defence. And however it may be now, the twenty- 
 six States certainly were the Union when they ac 
 cepted the aid of these people and pledged the 
 faith of the government to their protection. Ja 
 maica, at the end of nearly thirty years since eman 
 cipation, shows us how competent former masters 
 are to accomplish the elevation of their liberated 
 slaves, even though their own interests would 
 prompt them to it. Surely it is a strange plea to 
 be effective in a democratic country, that we owe 
 
THE SEWARD-JOHNSON REACTION. 271 
 
 these people nothing because they cannot help 
 themselves ; as if governments were instituted for 
 the care of the strong only. The argument against 
 their voting which is based upon their ignorance 
 strikes us oddly in the mouths of those whose own 
 hope of votes lies in the ignorance, or, what is 
 often worse, the prejudice, of the voters. Besides, 
 we do not demand that the seceding States should 
 at once confer the right of suffrage on the blacks, 
 but only that they should give them the same 
 chance to attain it, and the same inducement to 
 make themselves worthy of it, as to every one else. 
 The answer that they have not the right in some of 
 the Northern States may be a reproach to the in 
 telligence of those States, but has no relevancy if 
 made to the general government. It is not with 
 these States that we are making terms or claim any 
 right to make them, nor is the number of their 
 non-voting population so large as to make them 
 dangerous, or the prejudice against them so great 
 that it may not safely be left to time and common 
 sense. It was not till all men were made equal be 
 fore the law, and the fact recognized that govern 
 ment is something that does not merely preside 
 over, but reside in, the rights of all, that even 
 white peasants were enabled to rise out of their 
 degradation, and to become the strength instead of 
 the danger of France. Nothing short of such a re 
 form could have conquered the contempt and aver 
 sion with which the higher classes looked upon the 
 emancipated serf. Norman-French literature reeks 
 with the outbreak of this feeling toward the ances- 
 
272 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 tors, whether Jews or villeins, of the very men who 
 are now the aristocracy of South Carolina, a feel 
 ing as intense, as nauseous in its expression, and as 
 utterly groundless, as that against the negro now. 
 We are apt, it would seem, a little to confound the 
 meaning of the two terms government and self-gov 
 ernment^ and the principles on which they respec 
 tively rest. If the latter has its rights, the former 
 has quite as plainly its duties ; and one of them 
 certainly is to see that no freedom should be al 
 lowed to the parts which would endanger the safety 
 of the whole. An occasion calling for the exercise 
 of this duty is forced upon us now, and we must be 
 equal to it. Self-government, in any rightful defi 
 nition of it, can hardly be stretched so far that it 
 will cover, as the late Rebels and their Northern 
 advocates contend, the right to dispose absolutely 
 of the destinies of four millions of people, the allies 
 and hearty friends of the United States, without 
 allowing them any voice in the matter. 
 
 It is alleged by reckless party orators that those 
 who ask for guaranties before readmitting the se 
 ceded States wish to treat them with harshness, if 
 not with cruelty. Mr. Thaddeus Stevens is tri 
 umphantly quoted, as if his foolish violence fairly 
 represented the political opinions of the Union 
 party. They might as well be made responsible 
 for his notions of finance. We are quite willing to 
 let Mr. Stevens be paired off with Mr. Vallan- 
 digham, and to believe that neither is a fair expo 
 nent of the average sentiment of his party. Call 
 ing names should be left to children, with whom, 
 
THE SEWARD-JOHNSON REACTION. 273 
 
 as with too large a class of our political speakers, 
 it seems to pass for argument. We believe it 
 never does so with the people ; certainly not with 
 the intelligent, who make a majority among them, 
 unless (as in the case of " Copperhead ") there 
 be one of those hardly-to-be-defined realities be 
 hind the name which they are so quick to detect. 
 We cannot say that we have any great sympathy 
 for the particular form of mildness which discov 
 ers either a "martyr," or a "pure -hearted pa 
 triot," or even a "lofty statesman," in Mr. Jef 
 ferson Davis, the latter qualification of him having 
 been among the discoveries of the London Times 
 when it thought his side was going to win ; but we 
 can say that nothing has surprised us more, or 
 seemed to us a more striking evidence of the hu 
 manizing influence of democracy, than the entire 
 absence of any temper that could be called revenge 
 ful in the people of the North toward their late 
 enemies. If it be a part of that inconsistent mix 
 ture of purely personal motives and more than 
 legitimate executive action which Mr. Johnson is 
 pleased to call his "policy," if it be a part of 
 that to treat the South with all the leniency that is 
 short of folly and all the conciliation that is short 
 of meanness, then we were advocates of it before 
 Mr. Johnson. While he was yet only ruminating 
 in his vindictive mind, sore with such rancor as 
 none but a " plebeian," as he used to call himself, 
 can feel against his social superiors, the only really 
 agrarian proclamation ever put forth by any legiti 
 mate ruler, and which was countersigned by the 
 
274 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 now suddenly " conservative " Secretary of State, 
 we were in favor of measures that should look 
 to governing the South by such means as the 
 South itself afforded, or could be made to afford. 
 It is true that, as a part of the South, we reck 
 oned the colored people bound to us by every 
 tie of honor, justice, and principle, but we never 
 wished to wink out of sight the natural feelings of 
 men suddenly deprived of what they conceived to 
 be their property, of men, too, whom we re 
 spected for their courage and endurance even in a 
 bad cause. But we believed then, as we believe 
 now, and as events have justified us in believing, 
 that there could be no graver error than to flatter 
 our own feebleness and uncertainty by calling it 
 magnanimity, a virtue which does not scorn the 
 society of patience and prudence, but which cannot 
 subsist apart from courage and fidelity to principle. 
 A people so boyish and conceited as the Southern 
 ers have always shown themselves to be, unwilling 
 ever to deal with facts, but only with their own 
 imagination of them, would be sure to interpret 
 indecision as cowardice, if not as an unwilling 
 tribute to that superiority of which men who 
 really possess it are the last to boast. They have 
 learned nothing from the war but to hate the 
 men who subdued them, and to misinterpret and 
 misrepresent the causes of their subduing ; and 
 even now, when a feeling has been steadily growing 
 in the rest of the country for the last nine months 
 deeper and more intense than any during the war, 
 because mixed with an angry sense of unexpected 
 
THE SEWARD-JOHNSON REACTION. 275 
 
 and treacherous disappointment, instead of setting 
 their strength to the rebuilding of their shat 
 tered social fabric, they are waiting, as they waited 
 four years ago, for a division in the North which 
 will never come, and hailing in Andrew Johnson 
 a scourge of God who is to avenge them in the 
 desolation of our cities ! Is it not time that these 
 men were transplanted at least into the nineteenth 
 century, and, if they cannot be suddenly Ameri 
 canized, made to understand something of the coun 
 try which was too good for them, even though at 
 the cost of a rude shock to their childish self-con 
 ceit? Is that a properly reconstructed Union in 
 the Southern half of which no Northern man s life 
 is safe except at the sacrifice of his conscience, his 
 freedom of speech, of everything but his love of 
 money? To our minds the providential purpose 
 of this intervention of Mr. Johnson in our affairs 
 is to warn us of the solemn duty that lies upon us 
 in this single crisis of our history, when the chance 
 is offered us of stamping our future with greatness 
 or contempt, and which requires something like 
 statesmanship in the people themselves, as well as 
 in those who act for them. The South insisted 
 upon war, and has had enough of it ; it is now our 
 turn to insist that the peace we have conquered 
 shall be so settled as to make war impossible for 
 the future. 
 
 But how is this to be done ? The road to it is a 
 very plain one. We shall gain all we want if we 
 make the South really prosperous ; for with pros 
 perity will come roads, schools, churches, printing- 
 
276 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 presses, industry, thrift, intelligence, and security 
 of life and property. Hitherto the prosperity of 
 the South has been factitious ; it has been a pros 
 perity of the Middle Ages, keeping the many poor 
 that a few might show their wealth in the barba 
 rism of showy equipages and numerous servants, and 
 spend in foreign cities the wealth that should have 
 built up civilization and made way for refinement 
 at home. There were no public libraries, no col 
 leges worthy of the name ; there was no art, no 
 science, still worse, no literature but Simms s : 
 there was no desire for them. We do not say it in 
 reproach ; we are simply stating a fact, and are 
 quite aware that the North is far behind Europe in 
 these things. But we are not behind her in the 
 value we set upon them ; are even before her in the 
 price we are willing to pay for them, and are in the 
 way to get them. The South was not in that way ; 
 could not get into it, indeed, so long as the labor 
 that made wealth was cut off from any interest in 
 its expenditure, nor had any goal for such hopes as 
 soared away from the dreary level of its lifelong 
 drudgery but in the grave and the world beyond 
 it. We are not blind to what may be said on 
 the other side, nor to that fatal picturesqueness, 
 so attractive to sentimental minds and so melan 
 choly to thoughtful ones, which threw a charm over 
 certain exceptional modes of Southern life among 
 the older families in Virginia and South Carolina. 
 But there are higher and manlier kinds of beauty, 
 barer and sterner, some would call them, with 
 less softly rounded edges, certainly, than the Wolf s 
 
THE SEWARD-JOHNSON REACTION. 277 
 
 Crag picturesqueness, which carries the mind with 
 pensive indolence toward the past, instead of stir 
 ring it with a sense of present life, or bracing it 
 with the hope of future opportunity, and which at 
 once veils and betrays the decay of ancient civiliza 
 tions. Unless life is arranged for the mere benefit 
 of the novelist, what right had these bits of last- 
 century Europe here? Even the virtues of the 
 South were some of them anachronisms ; and even 
 those that were not existed side by side with an 
 obtuseness of moral sense that could make a hero 
 of Semmes, and a barbarism that could starve pri 
 soners by the thousand. 
 
 Some philosophers, to be sure, plead with us that 
 the Southerners are remarkable for their smaller 
 hands and feet, though so good an observer as 
 Thackeray pronounced this to be true of the whole 
 American people ; but really we cannot think such 
 arguments as this will give any pause to the inev 
 itable advance of that democracy, somewhat rude 
 and raw as yet, a clumsy boy-giant, and not too 
 well mannered, whose office it nevertheless is to 
 make the world ready for the true second coming 
 of Christ in the practical supremacy of his doc 
 trine, and its incarnation, after so many centuries 
 of burial, in the daily lives of men. We have been 
 but dimly, if at all, conscious of the greatness of 
 our errand, while we have already accomplished a 
 part of it in bringing together the people of all 
 nations to see each other no longer as aliens or ene 
 mies, but as equal partakers of the highest earthly 
 dignity, a common manhood. We have been 
 
278 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 forced, whether we would or no, first to endure, 
 then to tolerate, and at last to like men from all 
 the four corners of the world, and to see that each 
 added a certain virtue of his own to that precious 
 amalgam of which we are in due time to fashion a 
 great nation. We are now brought face to face 
 with our duty toward one of those dusky races that 
 have long sat in the shadow of the world ; we are 
 to be taught to see the Christ disguised also in 
 these, and to find at last that a part of our salva 
 tion is inextricably knit up with the necessity of 
 doing them justice and leading them to the light. 
 This is no sentimental fancy ; it is written in plain 
 characters upon the very surface of things. We 
 have done everything to get rid of the negro ; and 
 the more we did, the more he was thrust upon us in 
 every possible relation of life and aspect of thought. 
 One thing we have not tried, a spell before which 
 he would vanish away from us at once, by taking 
 quietly the place, whatever it be, to which Nature 
 has assigned him. We have not acknowledged him 
 as our brother. Till we have done so he will be 
 always at our elbow, a perpetual discomfort to him 
 self and us. Now this one thing that will give us 
 rest is precisely what the South, if we leave the 
 work of reconstruction in their hands, will make it 
 impossible for us to do ; and yet it must be done 
 ere America can penetrate the Southern States. 
 It is for this reason, and not with any desire of es 
 tablishing a standing garrison of four hundred 
 thousand loyal voters in the South, that we insist 
 on the absolute necessity of justice to the black 
 
THE SE WARD-JOHNSON REACTION. 279 
 
 man. Not that we have not a perfect right to de 
 mand the reception of such a garrison, but we wish 
 the South to govern itself ; and this it will never 
 be able to do, it will be governed as heretofore by 
 its circumstances, if we allow it to replace slavery 
 by the disenfranchisement of color, and to make an 
 Ireland out of what should be the most productive, 
 populous, and happy part of the Union. We may 
 evade this manifest duty of ours from indolence, or 
 indifference, or selfish haste ; but if there is one 
 truth truer than another, it is that no man or 
 nation ever neglected a duty that was not sooner or 
 later laid upon them in a heavier form, to be done 
 at a dearer rate. Neither man nor nation can find 
 rest short of their highest convictions. 
 
 This is something that altogether transcends any 
 partisan politics. It is of comparatively little con 
 sequence to us whether Congress or the President 
 carry the day, provided only that America tri 
 umph. That is, after all, the real question. On 
 which side is the future of the country, the fu 
 ture that we cannot escape if we would, but which 
 our action may embarrass and retard ? If we had 
 looked upon the war as a mere trial of physical 
 strength between two rival sections of the country, 
 we should have been the first to oppose it, as a 
 wicked waste of treasure and blood. But it was 
 something much deeper than this, and so the peo 
 ple of the North instinctively recognized it to be 
 from the first, instinctively, we say, and not 
 deliberately at first ; but before it was over, their 
 understandings had grasped its true meaning, as an 
 
280 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 effort of the ideal America, which was to them half 
 a dream and half a reality, to cast off an alien 
 element. It was this ideal something, not the less 
 strongly felt because vaguely defined, that made 
 them eager, as only what is above sordid motives 
 can, to sacrifice all that they had and all that they 
 were rather than fail in its attainment. And it is to 
 men not yet cooled from the white-heat of this pas 
 sionate mood that Mr. Johnson comes with his pal 
 try offer of " my policy," in exchange for the logical 
 consequences of all this devotion and this sacrifice. 
 What is any one man s policy, and especially any 
 one weak man s policy, against the settled drift of a 
 nation s conviction, conscience, and instinct? The 
 American people had made up not only their minds, 
 but their hearts, and no man who knows anything 
 of human nature could doubt what their decision 
 would be. They wanted only a sufficient obstacle 
 to awaken them to a full consciousness of what was 
 at stake, and that obstacle the obstinate vanity of 
 the President and the blindness or resentment of 
 his prime minister have supplied. They are fully 
 resolved to have the great stake they played for and 
 won, and that stake was the Americanization of 
 all America, nothing more and nothing less. Mr. 
 Johnson told us in New York, with so profound a 
 misconception of the feeling of the Northern States 
 as was only possible to a vulgar mind, and that 
 mind a Southern one, that the South had set up 
 slavery as its stake, and lost, and that now the 
 North was in danger of losing the stake it had 
 risked on reconstruction in the national debt. Mr. 
 
THE SEWARD-JOHNSON REACTION. 281 
 
 Johnson is still, it would seem, under that delusion 
 which led the South into the war ; namely, that it 
 was that section of the country which was the chief 
 element in its wealth and greatness. But no North 
 ern man, who, so long as he lives, will be obliged 
 to pay his fine of taxes for the abolition of slavery 
 which was forced upon us by the South, is likely to 
 think it very hard that the South should be com 
 pelled to furnish its share toward the common bur 
 den, or will be afraid that the loyal States, whose 
 urgent demands compelled a timid Congress at last 
 to impose direct taxes, will be unable to meet their 
 obligations in the future, as in the past. 
 
 We say again that the questions before the 
 country are not to be decided on any grounds of 
 personal prejudice or partiality. We are far from 
 thinking that Congress has in all respects acted as 
 became the dignity of its position, or seized all the 
 advantage of the opportunity. They have seemed 
 to us sometimes afraid of coming before the people 
 with a direct, frank, and simple statement of what 
 was not only the best thing that could be done, but 
 the one thing that must be done. They were 
 afraid of the people, and did not count securely, 
 as they should have done, on that precious seeing 
 which four years of gradually wakening moral sense 
 had lent to the people s eyes. They should not 
 have shrunk from taking upon themselves and their 
 party all the odium of being in the right ; of being 
 on the side of justice, humanity, and of the Amer 
 ica which is yet to be, whoever may fear to help 
 and whoever may try to hinder. The vulgar ciy 
 
282 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 would be against them, at any rate, and they might 
 reckon on being accused of principles which they 
 thought it prudent to conceal, whether they com 
 mitted their party to them or not. With those who 
 have the strong side, as they always do who have 
 conscience for an ally, a bold policy is the only 
 prosperous one. It is always wisest to accept in 
 advance all the logical consequences that can be 
 drawn from the principles we profess, and to make 
 a stand on the extremest limits of our position. It 
 will be time enough to fall back when we are 
 driven out. In taking a half-way position at first, 
 we expose ourselves to all the disadvantage and 
 discouragement of seeming to fight on a retreat, 
 and cut ourselves off from our supplies. For the 
 supplies of a party which is contending for a clear 
 principle, and not for its own immediate success, 
 are always drawn from the highest moral ground 
 included in its lines. We are not speaking here 
 of abstractions or wire -drawn corollaries, but of 
 those plain ethical axioms which every man may 
 apprehend, and which are so closely involved in 
 the question now before the country for decision. 
 We at least could lose nothing by letting the peo 
 ple know exactly what we meant ; for we meant 
 nothing that could not claim the suffrage of sin 
 cere democracy, of prudent statesmanship, or of 
 jealousy for the nation s honor and safety. That 
 the Republican party should be broken up is of 
 comparatively little consequence ; for it would be 
 merged in the stronger party of those who are re 
 solved that no by-questions, no fallacies of gen- 
 
THE SEWARD-JOHNSON REACTION. 283 
 
 erosity to the vanquished, shall turn it aside from 
 the one fixed purpose it has at heart ; that the war 
 shall not have been in vain ; and that the Rebel 
 States, when they return to the Union, shall return 
 to it as an addition of power, and under such terms 
 as that they must, and not merely may, be fixed 
 there. Let us call things by their right names, 
 and keep clearly in view both the nature of the 
 thing vanquished and of the war in which we were 
 victors. When men talk of generosity toward a 
 suppliant foe, they entirely forget what that foe 
 really was. To the people of the South no one 
 thinks of being unmerciful. But they were only 
 the blind force wielded by our real enemy, an 
 enemy, prophesy what smooth things you will, with 
 whom we can never be reconciled and whom it 
 would be madness to spare. And this enemy was 
 not any body of kindred people, but that principle 
 of evil fatally repugnant to our institutions, which, 
 flinging away the hilt of its broken weapon, is now 
 cheating itself with the hope that it can forge a 
 new one of the soft and treacherous metal of 
 Northern disloyalty. The war can in no respect 
 be called a civil war, though that was what the 
 South, in its rash ignorance, threatened the North 
 with. It was as much a war between two different 
 nations, and the geographical line was as distinctly 
 drawn between them, as in the late war between 
 North and South Germany. They had been living, 
 it is true, under the same government, but the 
 South regarded this as implying no tie more in 
 timate than that which brought the representatives 
 
284 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 of Prussia and Austria together in the Frankfort 
 Diet. We have the same right to impose terms 
 and to demand guaranties that Prussia has, that 
 the victor always has. 
 
 Many people are led to favor Mr. Johnson s pol 
 icy because they dislike those whom they please to 
 call the " Republican leaders." If ever a party ex 
 isted that had no recognized leaders, it is the Re 
 publican party. Composed for the last five years, 
 at least, of men who, themselves professing all 
 shades of opinion, were agreed only in a determi 
 nation to sustain the honor and preserve the ex 
 istence of the nation, it has been rather a majority 
 than a party, employing the legislative machine to 
 carry out the purposes of public opinion. The 
 people were the true inspirers of all its mea 
 sures, and accordingly it was left without a definite 
 policy the moment the mere politicians in its ranks 
 became doubtful as to what direction the pop 
 ular mind would take. It had no recognized leader 
 either in the House or Senate just at the time when 
 it first stood in need of such. The majority of 
 its representatives there tried in vain to cast any 
 political horoscope by which it would be safe for 
 them individually to be guided. They showed the 
 same distrust of the sound judgment of the people 
 and their power to grasp principles that they 
 showed at the beginning of the war, and at every 
 discouraging moment while it was going on. Now 
 that the signs of the times show unmistakably to 
 what the popular mind is making itself up, they 
 have once more a policy, if we may call that so 
 
THE SE WARD-JOHNS ON REACTION. 285 
 
 which is only a calculation of what it would be 
 " safe to go before the people with," as they call it. 
 It is always safe to go before them with plain prin 
 ciples of right, and with the conclusions that must 
 be drawn from them by common sense, though this 
 is what too many of our public men can never un 
 derstand. Now joining a Know-Nothing " lodge," 
 now hanging on the outskirts of a Fenian " circle," 
 they mistake the momentary eddies of popular 
 whimsy for the great current that sets always 
 strongly in one direction through the life and his 
 tory of the nation. Is it, as foreigners assert, the 
 fatal defect of our system to fill our highest offices 
 with men whose views in politics are bounded by 
 the next district election ? When we consider how 
 noble the science is, nobler even than astronomy, 
 for it deals with the mutual repulsions and attrac 
 tions, not of inert masses, but of bodies endowed 
 with thought and will, calculates moral forces, and 
 reckons the orbits of God s purposes toward man 
 kind, we feel sure that it is to find nobler teach 
 ers and students, and to find them even here. 
 
 There is another class of men who are honestly 
 drawn toward the policy of what we are fain, for 
 want of a more definite name, to call the Presi 
 dential Opposition party, by their approval of the 
 lenient measures which they suppose to be peculiar 
 to it. But our objection to the measures advocated 
 by the Philadelphia Convention, so far as we can 
 trace any definite shape amid the dust-cloud of 
 words, is, not they would treat the Rebel States 
 with moderation, but that they propose to take 
 
286 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 them back on trust. We freely admit that we 
 should have been inclined to see more reasonable 
 ness in this course if we had not the examples of 
 Jamaica and New Orleans before our eyes ; if we 
 had not seen both there and in other instances with 
 which history supplies us, that it is not safe to leave 
 the settlement of such matters in the hands of men 
 who would be more than human if they had not the 
 prejudices and the resentments of caste. Here is 
 just one of those cases of public concern which call 
 for the arbitrament of a cool and impartial third 
 party, the very office expected of a popular gov 
 ernment, which should as carefully abstain from 
 meddling in matters that may be safely left to be 
 decided by natural laws as it should be prompt to 
 interfere where those laws would to the general 
 detriment be inoperative. It should be remem 
 bered that self-interest, though its requirements 
 may seem plain and imperative to an unprejudiced 
 bystander, is something which men, and even com 
 munities, are often ready to sacrifice at the bidding 
 of their passions, and of none so readily as their 
 pride. As for the attachment between master and 
 slave, whose existence is sometimes asseverated in 
 the face of so many glaring facts to the contrary, 
 and on which we are asked to depend as something 
 stronger than written law, we have very little faith 
 in it. The system of clanship in the Scottish 
 Highlands is the strongest case to which we can 
 appeal in modern times of a truly patriarchal 
 social order. In that, the pride of the chief was 
 answered by the willing devotion of the sept, and 
 
THE SEWARD-JOHNSON REACTION. 287 
 
 the two were bound together as closely as kindred 
 blood, immemorial tradition, and mutual depend 
 ence could link them ; and yet, the moment it be 
 came for the interest of the chieftain, in whom 
 alone was the landed title, to convert the mountain 
 slopes into sheep-walks, farewell to all consider 
 ations of ancestral legend and ideal picturesque- 
 ness ! The clansmen were dispossessed of their lit 
 tle holdings, and shipped off to the colonies like 
 cattle, by the very in en for whom they would have 
 given their lives without question. The relation, 
 just like that of master and slave, or the proposed 
 one of superior and dependent, in the South, had 
 become an anachronism, to preserve which would 
 have been a vain struggle against that power of 
 Necessity which the Greeks revered as something 
 god-like. In our own case, so far from making it 
 for the interest of the ruling classes at the South to 
 elevate the condition of the black man, the policy 
 of Mr. Johnson offers them a bribe to keep him in 
 a state of hopeless dependency and subjection. It 
 gives them more members of Congress in propor 
 tion as they have more unrepresented inhabitants. 
 Mr. Beecher asks us (and we see no possible rea 
 son for doubting the honesty of his opinions, what 
 ever may be their soundness) whether we are 
 afraid of the South, and tells us that, if we allow 
 them to govern us, we shall richly deserve it. It is 
 not that we are afraid of, nor are we in the habit 
 of forming our opinions on any such imaginary 
 grounds ; but we confess that we are afraid of 
 committing an act of national injustice, of national 
 
288 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 dishonor, of national breach of faith, and therefore 
 of national unwisdom and weakness. Moderation 
 is an excellent thing ; but taking things for granted 
 is not moderation, and there may be such a thing 
 as being immoderate in concession and confidence. 
 Aristotle taught us long ago that true moderation 
 was as far from the too-much of blind passion on 
 the one hand as from that of equally blind luke- 
 warmness on the other. We have an example of 
 wise reconstructive policy in that measure of the 
 Bourbon-restoration ministry, which compensated 
 the returned emigrants for their confiscated estates 
 by a grant from the public treasury. And the 
 measure was wise, for the reason that it enabled the 
 new proprietors and the ousted ones to live as citi 
 zens of the same country together without mutual 
 hatred and distrust. We do not propose to com 
 pensate the slaveholder for the loss of his chattels, 
 because the cases are not parallel, and because Mr. 
 Johnson no less than we acknowledges the justice 
 and validity of their emancipation. But the situa 
 tion of the negro is strikingly parallel with that of 
 the new holders of land in France. As they were 
 entitled to security, so he has a right not only to be 
 secured in his freedom, but in the consequences 
 which legitimately flow from it. For it is only 
 so that he can be insured against that feeling of 
 distrust and uncertainty of the future which will 
 prevent him from being profitable to himself, his 
 former master, and the country. If we sought a 
 parallel for Mr. Johnson s " policy," we should find 
 it in James II., thinking his prerogative strong 
 
THE SEWARD-JOHNSON REACTION. 289 
 
 enough to overcome the instincts, convictions, and 
 fears of England. 
 
 However much fair-minded men may have been 
 wearied with the backing and filling of Congress, 
 and their uncertainty of action on some of the most 
 important questions that have come before them, 
 however the dignity, and even propriety, of 
 their attitude toward Mr. Johnson may be in some 
 respects honestly called in question, no one who 
 has looked fairly at the matter can pronounce the 
 terms they have imposed on the South as condi 
 tions of restoration harsh ones. The character of 
 Congress is not before the country, but simply the 
 character of the plan they propose. For ourselves, 
 we should frankly express our disgust at the dem- 
 agogism which courted the Fenians ; for, however 
 much we may sympathize with the real wrongs of 
 Ireland, it was not for an American Congress to 
 declare itself in favor of a movement which based 
 itself on the claim of every Irish voter in the coun 
 try to a double citizenship, in which the adopted 
 country was made secondary, and which, directed 
 as it was against a province where Irishmen are 
 put on equal terms with every other inhabitant, 
 and where their own Church is the privileged one, 
 was nothing better than burglary and murder. 
 Whatever may be Mr. Seward s faults, he was cer 
 tainly right in his dealing with that matter, unless 
 he is to be blamed for slowness. But as regards 
 the terms offered by Congress to the South, they 
 are very far from harsh or unreasonable ; they 
 are lamb-like compared to what we had reason to 
 
290 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 fear from Mr. Johnson, if we might judge by his 
 speeches and declarations of a year or two ago. 
 But for the unhappy hallucination which led Mr. 
 Johnson first to fancy himself the people of the 
 United States, and then to quarrel with the party 
 which elected him for not granting that he was so, 
 they would not have found a man in the North to 
 question their justice and propriety, unless among 
 those who from the outset would have been willing 
 to accept Mr. Jefferson Davis as the legitimate 
 President of the whole country. The terms im 
 posed by Congress really demand nothing more 
 than that the South should put in practice at home 
 that Monroe Doctrine of which it has always been 
 so clamorous a supporter when it could be used for 
 party purposes. The system of privileged classes 
 which the South proposes to establish is a relic of 
 old Europe which we think it bad policy to in 
 troduce again on this continent, after our so fresh 
 experience in the war of the evil consequences that 
 may spring from it. Aristocracy can form no 
 more intimate and hearty union with democracy 
 under one form than under another ; and unless 
 such a union be accomplished, or we can see some 
 reasonable hope of its future accomplishment, we 
 are as far from our object as ever. 
 
 The plan proposed disfranchises no one, does 
 not even interfere with the right of the States to 
 settle the conditions of the franchise. It merely 
 asks that the privilege shall be alike within reach 
 of all, attainable on the same terms by those who 
 have shown themselves our friends as by those 
 
THE SE WARD-JOHNS ON REACTION. 291 
 
 whose hands were so lately red with the blood of 
 our nearest and dearest. We have nothing to do 
 with the number of actual loyalists at the South, 
 but with the number of possible ones. The ques 
 tion is not how many now exist there, and what 
 are their rights, but how many may be made to 
 exist there, and by what means. The duty of the 
 country to itself transcends all private claims or 
 class interests. And when people speak of "the 
 South," do they very clearly define to themselves 
 what they mean by the words ? Do they not really 
 mean, without knowing it, the small body of dan 
 gerous men who have misguided that part of the 
 country to its own ruin, and almost to that of the 
 Republic ? In the mind of our government the 
 South should have no such narrow meaning. It 
 should see behind the conspirators of yesterday 
 an innumerable throng of dusky faces, with their 
 dumb appeal, not to its mercy, its generosity, or 
 even its gratitude, but to its plighted faith, to the 
 solemn engagement of its chief magistrate and 
 their martyr. Any theory of the South which 
 leaves out the negro is a scandal and reproach to 
 our honesty ; any attempt at another of those fatal 
 compromises which ignore his claims upon us, but 
 cannot ignore his claims upon nature and God and 
 that inevitable future which we may hope to put 
 far from us, but which is even now at our door, 
 would be an imputation on our judgment, and an 
 acknowledgment that we were unworthy to measure 
 our strength with a great occasion when it met us 
 face to face. 
 
292 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 We are very far from joining in the unfeeling 
 outcry which is sometimes raised by thoughtless 
 persons against the Southern people, because they 
 decorate with flowers the graves of their dead sol 
 diers, and cherish the memory of those who fell in 
 the defence of a cause which they could not see to 
 be already fallen before they entered its service. 
 They have won our respect, the people of Virginia 
 especially, by their devotion and endurance in sus 
 taining what they believed to be their righteous 
 quarrel. They would rather deserve our reproba 
 tion, if they were wanting in these tributes to nat 
 ural and human feeling. They are as harmless as 
 the monument to the memory of those who fell for 
 the Pretender, which McDonald of Glenaladale 
 raised after the last of the Stuarts was in his grave. 
 Let us sympathize with and respect all such exhibi 
 tions of natural feeling. But at the same time let 
 us take care that it shall not be at the risk of nis 
 life that the poor black shall fling his tribute on 
 the turf of those who died, with equal sacrifice of 
 self, in a better cause. Let us see to it that the 
 Union men of the South shall be safe in declaring 
 and advocating the reasons of their faith in a cause 
 which we believe to be sacred. Let us secure such 
 opportunities of education to the masses of the 
 Southern people, whether white or black, as shall 
 make any future rebellion impracticable, and ren 
 der it possible for the dead of both sides to sleep 
 peaceably together under the safeguard of a com 
 mon humanity, while the living dwell under the 
 protection of a nationality which both shall value 
 
THE SE WARD-JOHNS ON REACTION. 293 
 
 alike. Let us put it out of the power of a few 
 ambitious madmen to shake, though they could 
 not endanger, the foundations of a structure which 
 enshrines the better hope of mankind. When Con 
 gress shall again come together, strong in the sym 
 pathy of a united people, let them show a dignity 
 equal to the importance of the crisis. Let them 
 give the President a proof of their patriotism, not 
 only by allowing him the opportunity, but by mak 
 ing it easy for him, to return to the national posi 
 tion he once occupied. Let them not lower their 
 own dignity and that of the nation by any bandy 
 ing of reproaches with the Executive. The cause 
 which we all have at heart is vulgarized by any lit 
 tleness or show of personal resentment in its repre 
 sentatives, and is of too serious import to admit of 
 any childishness or trifling. Let there be no more 
 foolish talk of impeachment for what is at best a 
 poor infirmity of na,ture, and could only be raised 
 into a harmful importance by being invested with 
 the dignity of a crime against the state. Nothing 
 could be more unwise than to entangle in legal 
 quibbles a cause so strong in its moral grounds, so 
 transparent in its equity, and so plain to the hum 
 blest apprehension in its political justice and neces 
 sity. We have already one criminal half turned 
 martyr at Fortress Monroe ; we should be in no 
 hurry to make another out of even more vulgar 
 material, for unhappily martyrs are not Mercu 
 ries. We have only to be unswervingly faithful to 
 what is the true America of our hope and belief, 
 and whatever is American will rise from one end 
 
294 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 of the country to the other instinctively to our side, 
 with more than ample means of present succor and 
 of final triumph. It is only by being loyal and 
 helpful to Truth that men learn at last how loyal 
 and helpful she can be to them. 
 
THE PLACE OF THE INDEPENDENT IN 
 POLITICS. 1 
 
 I HAVE not been so much surprised as perhaps I 
 ought to have been to learn that, in the opinion of 
 some of our leading politicians and of many of 
 our newspapers, men of scholarly minds are ipso 
 facto debarred from forming any judgment on pub 
 lic affairs ; or, if they should be so unscrupulous 
 as to do so, that they must at least refrain from 
 communicating it to their fellow-citizens. One 
 eminent gentleman has even gone so far as to sneer 
 at school-books as sources of information. If he 
 had a chance, he would perhaps take a hint from 
 what is fabled of the Caliph Omar, and burn our 
 libraries : because if they contained doctrine not to 
 be found in his speeches, they would be harmful, 
 while if the doctrine, judged by that test, were 
 orthodox, they would be useless. Books have 
 hitherto been supposed to be armories of human 
 experience, where we might equip ourselves for 
 the battles of opinion while we had yet vigor and 
 hopefulness enough left to make our weapons of 
 some avail. 
 
 Through books the youngest of us could con- 
 
 1 An address delivered before the Reform Club of New York, 
 at Steinway Hall, April 13, 1888. 
 
296 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 verse with more generations than Nestor ; could 
 attain that ripened judgment which is the privilege 
 of old age without old age s drawbacks and dimi 
 nutions. This has been the opinion of many men, 
 not reckoned the least wise in their generation. 
 But they were mistaken, it seems. I looked round 
 with saddened wonder at the costly apparatus of 
 school-houses provided by our ancestors to the 
 avowed end that " good learning might not cease 
 from among us," at the libraries and universities 
 by the founding of which our rich men seek to 
 atone for their too rapidly agglomerated wealth, 
 and said to myself, " What a wasteful blunder we 
 have been making ! " Then it suddenly occurred 
 to me that this putting of culture under the ban 
 might be, after all, but a more subtle application 
 of the American System, as it is called, which 
 would exclude all foreign experience, as well as 
 the raw material of it, till we had built up an ex 
 perience of our own at the same cost of mistake 
 and retribution which is its unvarying price. This 
 might indeed flatter my pride of country, though 
 it left me, as Grumio says, to " return unexperienced 
 to my grave." 
 
 But if we are forbidden to seek knowledge in 
 books, what is the alternative ? I could think of 
 none unless it were immediate inspiration. It is 
 true that I could not see that any authentic marks 
 of it were revealed by the advocates of this novel 
 theory. They keep their secret remarkably well. 
 No doubt inspiration, like money, is a very handy 
 thing to have, and if I should ever see an adver- 
 
THE INDEPENDENT IN POLITICS. 297 
 
 tisement of any shop where it could be bought, even 
 at second hand, I would lay in a stock of it forth 
 with. It is more convenient than knowledge, for, 
 like certain articles of wearing apparel, it is adjust 
 able to the prevailing taste of the moment in any 
 part of the country. It seems more studious of 
 the traditions and prejudices of the multitude than 
 the utterances of Isaiah were wont to be. I must 
 frankly confess at the outset that I come to you 
 wholly unprovided with this precious commodity. I 
 must also admit that I am a book-man, that I am 
 old-fashioned enough to have read many books, 
 and that I hope to read many more. I find them 
 easier reading than some other kinds of printed 
 matter. I appear before you, therefore, with some 
 diffidence, and shall make my excuses in the words 
 of an elder who in my youth was accounted wise. 
 Lord Bacon, a man versed both in affairs and in 
 books, says : " And for the matter of policy and 
 government, that learning should rather hurt than 
 enable thereunto is a thing very improbable. We 
 see it is accounted an error to commit a natural 
 body to empiric physicians who commonly have a 
 few pleasing receipts whereupon they are confident 
 and adventurous, but know neither the causes of 
 diseases, nor the constitutions of patients, nor peril 
 of accidents, nor the true method of cures ; we see 
 it is a like error to rely upon advocates or lawyers 
 who are only men of practice and not grounded in 
 their books, who are many times easily surprised 
 when matter falleth out beyond their experience to 
 the prejudice of the causes they handle ; so by like 
 
298 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 reason it cannot be but a matter of doubtful con 
 sequence if states be managed by empiric states 
 men not well mingled with men grounded in learn 
 ing. But, contrariwise, it is almost without an 
 instance to the contrary that ever any government 
 was disastrous that was in the hands of learned 
 governors." He goes on to say that " It hath been 
 ordinary with politique men to extenuate and dis 
 able learned men by the name of pedants" Prac 
 tical politicians, as they call themselves, have the 
 same habit still, only that they have substituted 
 doctrinaire for pedant as the term of reproach. 
 Now the true and mischievous doctrinaire is he 
 who insists that facts shall accommodate themselves 
 to preconceived theory, and the truly practical man 
 he who would deduce theory from the amplest pos 
 sible comparison and correlation of facts ; in other 
 words, from recorded experience. I think it is 
 already beginning to be apparent on which side of 
 the questions which have been brought to the front 
 by the President s Message the doctrinaires are to 
 be found. We all know the empiric physicians 
 who are confident and adventurous with their few 
 pleasing receipts. 
 
 Your committee asked me to give a title to such 
 suggestions as I might find occasion to make this 
 evening, and I took " The Place of the Indepen 
 dent in Politics " as the first that occurred to me. 
 But I confess that I partake of Mr. Walter Shan 
 dy s superstition about names, and shall not allow 
 myself to be circumscribed and scanted of elbow- 
 room by the appellative I have chosen. I prefer 
 
THE INDEPENDENT IN POLITICS. 299 
 
 general to personal politics. I allude to this in 
 order that, in anything I shall say here, I may not 
 be suspected to have one party more than another 
 in my mind. I am not blind to the fact that Truth 
 always seems to have gone to school to the prophet 
 Nathan, and to intend a personal application. It is 
 perhaps her prime virtue as a stimulant of thought, 
 for thought is helpful in proportion as it more and 
 more becomes disengaged from self, and this can 
 not happen till some sharp reminder makes us con 
 scious of that plausible accomplice in our thinking 
 and in the doing which follows from it. Though I 
 shall not evade present questions when they come 
 naturally in my way, I shall choose rather to indi 
 cate why there is a necessity that the Independent 
 should have a place in politics than to dictate where 
 that place should be. I think that something I 
 wrote forty years ago, if you will allow me to quote 
 it, will define my notion of what is meant by an 
 Independent with sufficient exactness. I then said, 
 and I have not changed my mind : 
 
 I honor the man who is ready to sink 
 Half his present repute for the freedom to think, 
 And when he has thought, be his cause strong or weak, 
 Will risk t other half for the freedom to speak, 
 Caring naught for what vengeance the mob has in store, 
 Let that mob be the upper ten thousand or lower. 
 
 Four years ago I was called upon to deliver an 
 address in Birmingham, and chose for my theme 
 " Democracy." In that place I felt it incumbent 
 on me to dwell on the good points and favorable 
 aspects of democracy as I had seen them practi 
 cally illustrated in my native land. I chose rather 
 
300 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 that my discourse should suffer through inadequacy 
 than run the risk of seeming to forget what Burke 
 calls " that salutary prejudice called our country," 
 and that obligation which forbids one to discuss 
 family affairs before strangers. But here among 
 ourselves it is clearly the duty of whoever loves 
 his country to be watchful of whatever weaknesses 
 and perils there may be in the practical working 
 of a system never before set in motion under such 
 favorable auspices, or on so large a scale. I have 
 called them weaknesses and perils in the system, 
 but it would be idle to discuss them if I did not 
 believe that they were not so properly results of 
 the system as of abuses in the operation of it, due 
 in part to changed conditions, in part to a thought 
 less negligence which experience and thought will 
 in due time rectify. I believe that no other method 
 of conducting the public affairs of men is so capa 
 ble of sloughing off its peccant parts as ours, be 
 cause in no other are the forces of life at once so 
 intense and so universally distributed. 
 
 Before we turn to the consideration of politics 
 as we see them in practice, let us think for a mo 
 ment what, when properly understood, they really 
 are. In their least comprehensive definition, politics 
 are an art which concerns itself about the -national 
 housekeeping, about the immediate interests and 
 workaday wants, the income and the outgo of the 
 people. They have to deal with practical ques 
 tions as they arise and grow pressing. Even on 
 this humbler plane they may well have an attrac 
 tion for the finest intellects and the greatest abili- 
 
THE INDEPENDENT IN POLITICS. 301 
 
 ties in a country where public opinion is supreme, 
 for they can perform their function only by per 
 suading, convincing, and thus governing the minds 
 of men. The most trivial question acquires dig 
 nity when it touches the well-being or rouses the 
 passions of many millions. But there is a higher 
 and wider sense in which politics may fairly be 
 ranked as a science. When they rise to this level 
 we call them statesmanship. The statesman applies 
 himself to the observation and recording of certain 
 causes which lead constantly to certain effects, and 
 is thus able to formulate general laws for the guid 
 ance of his own judgment and for the conduct of 
 affairs. He is not so much interested in the devices 
 by which men may be influenced, as about how 
 they ought to be influenced ; not so much about how 
 men s passions and prejudices may be utilized for a 
 momentary advantage to himself or his party, as 
 about how they may be hindered from doing a per 
 manent harm to the commonwealth. He trains 
 himself to discern evils in their causes that he may 
 forewarn if he cannot prevent, and that he may 
 not be taken unawares by the long bill of damages 
 they are sure to bring in, and always at the least 
 convenient moment. He seeks and finds in the 
 moral world the weather-signs of the actual world. 
 He strives to see and know things as they really 
 are and as they are related to each other, as they 
 really are and therefore always must be ; his vision 
 undeflected by the cross-lights of transitory circum 
 stance, his judgment undisturbed by the clamor of 
 passionate and changeful opinion. 
 
302 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 That this conception of statesmanship is not fan 
 ciful, the writings and speeches of Burke are ample 
 proof. Many great and many acute minds had 
 speculated upon politics from Aristotle s time down 
 wards, but Burke was the first to illuminate the sub 
 ject of his observation and thought with the electric 
 light of imagination. He turned its penetrating 
 ray upon what seemed the confused and wavering 
 cloud-chaos of man s nature and man s experience, 
 and found there the indication, at least, if not the 
 scheme, of a divine order. The result is that his 
 works are as full of prophecy, some of it already 
 fulfilled, some of it in course of fulfilment, as they 
 are of wisdom. And this is because for him human 
 nature was always the text and history the com 
 ment. There are no more pregnant lessons in the 
 science of how to look at things so as to see them and 
 into them, of how to distinguish what is perennial 
 from what is deciduous in a political question, than 
 Burke s two speeches on " Taxation of the Ameri 
 can Colonies" and on " Conciliation with America." 
 For if his imagination was fervid, it served but 
 to warm his understanding till that grew ductile 
 enough to take a perfect impression of fact. If 
 the one made generalization easy, the other, in 
 testing the generalization, compelled him always to 
 make account of the special diagnosis of the case 
 in hand. If one would know the difference be 
 tween a statesman and a politician, let him compare 
 Burke s view of the American troubles with that 
 of Dr. Johnson, a man of that headstrong com 
 mon sense which sees with absorbing, one might 
 
THE INDEPENDENT IN POLITICS. 303 
 
 almost say blinding, clearness whatever comes 
 within its immediate field of vision, but is con 
 scious of nothing beyond it. The question for 
 Burke was not whether taxation were tyranny, 
 but whether the Americans would think it so. 
 Here was a case in which expediency was at one 
 with wisdom. 
 
 But I am happy in being able to find an illus 
 tration nearer home. Never did three men show 
 more clearly the quality of true statesmanship or 
 render a more precious service to their country 
 than Senators Fessenden, Trumbull, and Grimes, 
 when they dared to act independently of party in 
 the impeachment case against President Johnson. 
 They saved us from the creeping paralysis which 
 is now gradually benumbing the political energies 
 of France. Nay, while we were yet in the gristle, 
 we produced statesmen, not, indeed, endowed with 
 Burke s genius, though fairly comparable with him 
 in breadth of view, and sometimes his superiors 
 in practical sagacity. But I think there is a grow 
 ing doubt whether we are not ceasing to produce 
 them, whether perhaps we are not losing the power 
 to produce them. The tricks of management are 
 more and more superseding the science of govern 
 ment. Our methods force the growth of two kinds 
 of politicians to the crowding out of all other vari 
 eties, him who is called practical, and him of the 
 corner grocery. The one trades in that counterfeit 
 of public opinion which the other manufactures. 
 Both work in the dark, and there is need that 
 some one should turn the light of his policeman s 
 
304 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 lantern on their doings. I believe that there is as 
 much of the raw material of statesmanship among 
 us as ever there was, but the duties levied by the 
 local rings of majority-manufacturers are so high 
 as to prohibit its entrance into competition with 
 the protected article. Could we only have a trav 
 elling exhibition of our Bosses, and say to the 
 American people, " Behold the shapers of your 
 national destiny ! " A single despot would be 
 cheaper, and probably better looking. It is a nat 
 ural impulse to turn away one s eyes from these 
 flesh-flies that fatten on the sores of our body pol 
 itic, and plant there the eggs of their disgustful and 
 infectious progeny. But it is the lesson of the day 
 that a yielding to this repulsion by the intelligent 
 and refined is a mainly efficient cause of the evil, 
 and must be overcome, at whatever cost of selfish 
 ease and aesthetic comfort, ere the evil can be hope 
 fully dealt with. 
 
 It is admitted on all hands that matters have 
 been growing worse for the last twenty years, as it 
 is the nature of evil to do. It is publicly asserted 
 that admission to the Senate of the United States 
 is a marketable thing. I know not whether this 
 be true or not, but is it not an ominous sign of the 
 times that this has been asserted and generally be 
 lieved to be possible, if not probable ? It is noto 
 rious that important elections are decided by votes 
 bought with money, or by the more mischievous 
 equivalent of money, places in the public service. 
 What is even more disheartening, the tone of a 
 large part of the press in regard to this state of 
 
THE INDEPENDENT IN POLITICS. 305 
 
 things is cynical, or even jocular. And how often 
 do we not read in our morning paper that such and 
 such a local politician is dictating the choice of 
 delegates to a nominating convention, or manipu 
 lating them after they are chosen ? So often that 
 we at last take it as a matter of course, as some 
 thing beyond our power to modify or control, like 
 the weather, at which we may grumble, if we like, 
 but cannot help. We should not tolerate a packed 
 jury which is to decide on the fate of a single man, 
 yet we are content to leave the life of the nation 
 at the mercy of a packed convention. We allow 
 ourselves to be bilked of our rights and thwarted 
 in our duties as citizens by men in whose hands 
 their very henchmen would be the last to trust any 
 thing more valuable than their reputation. Pessi 
 mists tell us that these things are the natural inci 
 dents and necessary consequences of representative 
 government under democratic conditions ; that we 
 have drawn the wine, and must drink it. If I 
 believed this to be so, I should not be speaking 
 here to-night. Parties refuse to see, or, if they 
 see, to look into, vicious methods which help them 
 to a majority, and each is thus estopped from sin 
 cere protest against the same methods when em 
 ployed by the other. The people of the Northern 
 States thought four years war not too dear a price 
 to prevent half their country being taken from 
 them. But the practices of which I have been 
 speaking are slowly and surely filching from us the 
 whole of our country, all, at least, that made it 
 the best to live in and the easiest to die for. If 
 
306 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 parties will not look after their own drainage and 
 ventilation, there must be people who will do it for 
 them, who will cry out without ceasing till their fel 
 low-citizens are aroused to the danger of infection. 
 This duty can be done only by men dissociated 
 from the interests of party. The Independents 
 have undertaken it, and with God s help will carry 
 it through. A moral purpose multiplies us by ten, 
 as it multiplied the early Abolitionists. They 
 emancipated the negro; and we mean to emanci 
 pate the respectable white man. 
 
 It is time for lovers of their country to consider 
 how much of the success of our experiment in de 
 mocracy has been due to such favorable conditions 
 as never before concurred to make such an attempt 
 plausible ; whether those conditions have changed 
 and are still changing for the worse ; how far we 
 have been accessories in this degeneration, if such 
 there be, and how far it is in our power, with the 
 means furnished by the very instruments of de 
 struction, to stay its advance and to repair its rav 
 ages. Till within a few years of our civil war, 
 everything conduced to our measuring the suc 
 cess of our institutions by the evidence of our out 
 ward prosperity, and to our seeing the future in 
 rose-color. The hues of our dawn had scarcely 
 faded from the sky. Men were still living who 
 had seen the face and heard the voice of the most 
 august personage in our history, and of others 
 scarce less august than he. The traditions of our 
 founders were fresh. Our growth in wealth and 
 power was without precedent. We had been so 
 
THE INDEPENDENT IN POLITICS. 307 
 
 fortunate that we had come to look upon our luck 
 as partly due to our own merits and partly to our 
 form of government. When we met together it 
 was to felicitate each other on our superiority to 
 the rest of mankind. Our ears caught from behind 
 the horizon the muffled thunders of war, only to be 
 lulled as with the murmurs of the surf on a far-off 
 shore. We heard of revolutions, but for us For 
 tune forgot to turn her wheel. This was what may 
 be called the Fourth of July period of our history. 
 Among the peoples of the earth we were the little 
 Jack Horner. We had put in our thumb and 
 pulled out a plum, and the rest of mankind thought 
 that we were never tired of saying, " What a good 
 boy am I ! " Here is a picture of our growth, 
 drawn by a friendly yet impartial hand : " Nothing 
 in the history of mankind is like their progress. 
 For my part, I never cast an eye on their flourish 
 ing commerce and their cultivated and commodious 
 life but they seem to me rather ancient nations 
 grown to perfection through a long series of fortu 
 nate events and a train of successful industry ac 
 cumulating wealth in many centuries than the colo 
 nies of yesterday. . . . Your children do not grow 
 faster from infancy to manhood than they spread 
 from families to communities, and from villages to 
 nations." But for a certain splendor of style these 
 words seem to be of yesterday, so pertinent are 
 they still. They were uttered in the British Par 
 liament more than a year before the battle of Lex 
 ington, by Edmund Burke. There is no exaggera 
 tion in them. They are a simple statement of fact. 
 
308 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 Burke, with his usual perspicacity, saw and stated 
 one and a chief cause of this unprecedented pheno 
 menon. He tells us that the colonies had made 
 this marvellous growth because, " through a wise 
 and salutary neglect, a generous nature has been 
 suffered to take her own way to perfection." But 
 by that " wise and salutary neglect " he meant free 
 dom from the petty and short-sighted meddlesome 
 ness of a paternal government; he meant being 
 left to follow untrammelled the instincts of our 
 genius under the guidance of our energy. The 
 same causes have gone on ever since working the 
 same marvels. Those marvels have been due in 
 part to our political system. But there were other 
 circumstances tending to stimulate personal energy 
 and enterprise, especially land to be had for the 
 taking, and free trade over a larger share of the 
 earth s surface peopled by thriving and intelligent 
 communities than had ever been enjoyed elsewhere. 
 I think, however, that there was one factor more 
 potent than any other, or than all others together. 
 Before we broke away from the mother country 
 politically, a century and a half of that " wise neg 
 lect " of which Burke spoke had thoroughly made 
 over again and Americanized all the descendants 
 of the earlier settlers, and these formed the great 
 bulk of the population. The same process was rap 
 idly going on in the more recent immigrants. So 
 thorough had this process been that many, perhaps 
 most, of the refugees who, during or after the Rev 
 olutionary War, went to England, or home, as they 
 fondly called it, found themselves out of place and 
 
THE INDEPENDENT IN POLITICS. 309 
 
 unhappy there. The home they missed was that 
 humane equality, not of condition or station, but of 
 being and opportunity, which by some benign influ 
 ence of the place had overcome them here, like a 
 summer cloud, without their special wonder. Yet 
 they felt the comfort of it as of an air wholesome 
 to breathe. I more than suspect that it was the 
 absence of this inestimable property of the moral 
 atmosphere that made them aliens in every other 
 land, and convinced them that an American can no 
 more find another country than a second mother. 
 This equality had not then been proclaimed as a 
 right ; it had been incorporated in no constitution, 
 but was there by the necessity of the case a gift 
 of the sky and of the forest, as truly there as it 
 now is in that great West whose history was so ad 
 mirably treated by Senator Hoar a few days ago, 
 and whose singular good-fortune it has been that 
 no disparities except those of nature s making have 
 ever been known there. Except in the cities of 
 the seaboard, where the habits of the Old World 
 had to some extent been kept alive by intercourse 
 and importation, the defecation of the body politic 
 and the body social of all purely artificial and arbi 
 trary distinctions had been going on silently and 
 surely among the masses of the people for gener 
 ations. This was true (in a more limited sense) 
 even of communities where slavery existed, for as 
 that was based on complexion, every white, no 
 matter what his condition, belonged to the privi 
 leged class, just as in Hungary every Magyar was 
 a noble. This was the American novelty, no bant- 
 
310 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 ling of theory, no fruit of forethought, no trophy 
 of insurgent violence, but a pure evolution from 
 the nature of man in a perfectly free medium. 
 The essential triumph was achieved in this tacit 
 recognition of a certain privilege and adequacy 
 in mere manhood, and democracy may be said to 
 have succeeded before it was accepted as doctrine 
 or embodied as a political fact. Our ancestors 
 sought a new country. What they found was a 
 new condition of mind. It is more than question 
 able whether the same conditions in as favorable 
 combination of time and place will ever occur 
 again, whether equality, so wholesome when a so 
 cial evolution, as I have described it, may not 
 become harmful as a sudden gift in the form of 
 dogma, may not indeed prove dangerous when in 
 terpreted and applied politically by millions of 
 newcomers alien to our traditions, unsteadied by 
 lifelong training and qualifying associations. We 
 have great and thus far well-warranted faith in the 
 digestive and assimilative powers of our system ; 
 but may not these be overtaxed ? 
 
 The theory of equality was as old, among men 
 of English blood, as Jack Cade s rebellion, but it 
 was not practically conceived even by the very men 
 who asserted it. Here, on the edge of the forest, 
 where civilized man was brought face to face again 
 with nature and taught to rely mainly on himself, 
 mere manhood became a fact of prime importance. 
 That century and a half of apprenticeship in de 
 mocracy stimulated self-help, while it also necessi 
 tated helpfulness for others and mutual dependence 
 
THE INDEPENDENT IN POLITICS. 311 
 
 upon them. Not without reason did " help " take 
 the place of " servant " in our vocabulary. But 
 the conditions of life led to other results that left 
 less salutary effects behind them. They bred a 
 habit of contentment with what would do, as we 
 say, rather than an impatience of whatever was not 
 best ; a readiness to put up with many evils or in 
 conveniences, because they could not be helped ; 
 and this has, especially in our politics, conduced to 
 the growth of the greatest weakness in our Amer 
 ican character the acquiescence in makeshifts 
 and abuses which can and ought to be helped, and 
 which, with honest resolution, might be helped. 
 
 Certainly never were the auguries so favorable 
 as when our republic was founded, a republic sure 
 from inherent causes to broaden into a more popu 
 lar form. But while the equality of which I have 
 been speaking existed in the instincts, the habits, 
 and obscurely in the consciousness of all, it was la 
 tent and inert. It found little occasion for self-as 
 sertion, none for aggression, and was slow to invent 
 one. A century ago there was still a great respect 
 for authority in all its manifestations ; for the law 
 first of all, for age, for learning, and for experience. 
 The community recognized and followed its natural 
 leaders, and it was these who framed our Constitu 
 tion, perhaps the most remarkable monument of 
 political wisdom known to history. The conven 
 tion which framed it was composed of the choicest 
 material in the community, and was led astray by 
 no theories of what might be good, but clave closely 
 to what experience had demonstrated to be good. 
 
312 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 The late M. Guizot once asked me " how long I 
 thought our republic would endure." I replied : 
 " So long as the ideas of the men who founded it 
 continue dominant," and he assented. I will not 
 say that we could not find among us now the con 
 stituents of as able an assembly, but I doubt if 
 there be a single person in this audience who be 
 lieves that with our present political methods we 
 should or could elect them. We have revived the 
 English system of rotten boroughs, under which 
 the electors indeed return the candidate, but it is 
 a handful of men, too often one man, that selects 
 the person to be so returned. If this be so, and 
 I think it is so, it should give us matter for very 
 serious reflection. 
 
 After our Constitution got fairly into working 
 order it really seemed as if we had invented a 
 machine that would go of itself, and this begot a 
 faith in our luck which even the civil war itself 
 but momentarily disturbed. Circumstances con 
 tinued favorable, and our prosperity went on in 
 creasing. I admire the splendid complacency of 
 my countrymen, and find something exhilarating 
 and inspiring in it. We are a nation which has 
 struck He, but we are also a nation that is sure the 
 well will never run dry. And this confidence in 
 our luck with the absorption in material interests, 
 generated by unparalleled opportunity, has in some 
 respects made us neglectful of our political duties. 
 I have long thought that the average men of our 
 revolutionary period were better grounded in the 
 elementary principles of government than their de- 
 
THE INDEPENDENT IN POLITICS. 313 
 
 scendants. The town-meeting was then a better 
 training-school than the caucus and the convention 
 are now, and the smaller the community the greater 
 the influence of the better mind in it. In looking 
 about me, I am struck with the fact that while we 
 produce great captains, financial and industrial 
 leaders in abundance, and political managers in 
 overabundance, there seems to be a pause in the 
 production of leaders in statesmanship. I am still 
 more struck with the fact that my newspaper often 
 gives me fuller reports of the speeches of Prince 
 Bismarck and of Mr. Gladstone than of anything 
 said in Congress. If M. Thiers or M. Gambetta 
 were still here, it would be the same with them ; 
 but France, like ourselves, has gone into the manu 
 facture of small politicians. Why are we interested 
 in what these men say ? Because they are impor 
 tant for what they are, as well as for what they 
 represent. They are Somebodies, and their every 
 word gathers force from the character and life 
 behind it. They stand for an idea as well as for 
 a constituency. An adequate amount of small 
 change will give us the equivalent of the largest 
 piece of money, but what aggregate of little men 
 will amount to a single great one, that most pre 
 cious coinage of the mint of nature ? It is not that 
 we have lost the power of bringing forth great 
 men. They are not the product of institutions, 
 though these may help or hinder them. I am 
 thankful to have been the contemporary of one and 
 among the greatest, of whom I think it is safe 
 to say that no other country and no other form of 
 
314 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 government could have fashioned him, and whom 
 posterity will recognize as the wisest and most 
 bravely human of modern times. It is a bene 
 diction to have lived in the same age and in the 
 same country with Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 Had democracy borne only this consummate 
 flower and then perished like the century-plant, it 
 would have discharged its noblest function. It is 
 the crown of a nation, one might almost say the 
 chief duty of a nation, to produce great men, for 
 without them its history is but the annals of ants 
 and bees. Two conditions are essential : the man, 
 and the opportunity. We must wait on Mother 
 Nature for the one, but in America we ourselves 
 can do much to make or mar the other. We can 
 not always afford to set our house on fire as we did 
 for Lincoln, but we are certainly responsible if the 
 door to distinction be made so narrow and so low 
 as to admit only petty and crouching men. 
 
 A democracy makes certain duties incumbent on 
 every citizen which under other forms of govern 
 ment are limited to a man or to a class of men. 
 A prudent despot looks after his kingdom as a pru 
 dent private man would look after his estate ; in an 
 aristocratic republic a delegated body of nobles 
 manages public affairs as a board of railroad direc 
 tors would manage the property committed to their 
 charge ; in both cases, self-interest is strong enough 
 to call forth every latent energy of character and 
 intellect ; in both cases the individual is so con 
 sciously important a factor as to insure a sense of 
 personal responsibility. In the ancient democracies 
 
THE INDEPENDENT IN POLITICS. 315 
 
 a citizen could see and feel the effect of his own 
 vote. But in a democracy so vast as ours, though 
 the responsibility be as great (I remember an elec 
 tion in which the governor of a State was chosen by 
 a majority of one vote), yet the infinitesimal divi 
 sion of power wellnigh nullifies the sense of it, and 
 of the responsibility implied in it. It is certainly 
 a great privilege to have a direct share in the 
 government of one s country, but it is a privilege 
 which is of advantage to the commonwealth only 
 in proportion as it is intelligently exercised. Then, 
 indeed, its constant exercise should train the facul 
 ties of forethought and judgment better, and should 
 give men a keener sense of their own value than 
 perhaps anything else can do. But under every 
 form of representative government, parties become 
 necessary for the marshalling and expression of 
 opinion, and, when parties are once formed, those 
 questions the discussion of which would discipline 
 and fortify men s minds tend, more and more to 
 pass out of sight, and the topics that interest their 
 prejudices and passions to become more absorbing. 
 What will be of immediate advantage to the party 
 is the first thing considered, what of permanent 
 advantage to their country the last. I refer espe 
 cially to neither of the great parties which divide 
 the country. I am treating a question of natural 
 history. Both parties have been equally guilty, 
 both have evaded, as successfully as they could, the 
 living questions of the day. As the parties have 
 become more evenly balanced, the difficulty of 
 arriving at their opinions has been greater in pro- 
 
316 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 portion to the difficulty of devising any profession 
 of faith meaningless enough not to alarm, if it 
 could not be so interpreted as to conciliate, the 
 varied and sometimes conflicting interests of the 
 different sections of the country. If you asked 
 them, as Captain Standard in Farquahar s comedy 
 asks Parley, " Have you any principles ? " the an 
 swer, like his, would have been, " Five hundred." 
 Between the two a conscientious voter feels as the 
 traveller of fifty years ago felt between the touters 
 of the two rival hotels in the village where the 
 stage-coach stopped for dinner. Each side deaf 
 ened him with depreciation of the other establish 
 ment till his only conclusion was that each was 
 worse than the other, and that it mattered little at 
 which of them he paid dearly for an indigestion. 
 When I say that I make no distinctions between the 
 two parties, I must be allowed to make one excep 
 tion. I mean the attempt by a portion of the Repub 
 licans to utilize passions which every true lover 
 of his country should do his best to allay, by pro 
 voking into virulence again the happily quiescent 
 animosities of our civil war. In saying this I do 
 not forget that the Democratic party was quite as 
 efficient in bringing that war upon us as the seced 
 ing States themselves. Nor do I forget that it was 
 by the same sacrifice of general and permanent in 
 terests to the demands of immediate partisan ad 
 vantage which is the besetting temptation of all 
 parties. Let bygones be bygones. Yet I may say 
 in passing that there was something profoundly 
 comic in the spectacle of a great party, with an 
 
THE INDEPENDENT IN POLITICS. 317 
 
 heroic past behind it, stating that its policy would 
 be to prevent some unknown villains from doing 
 something very wicked more than twenty years 
 ago. 
 
 Parties being necessary things, it follows, of 
 course, that there must be politicians to manage 
 and leaders to represent and symbolize them. The 
 desire of man to see his wishes, his prejudices, his 
 aspirations, summed up and personified in a single 
 representative has the permanence of an instinct. 
 Few escape it, few are conscious of its controlling 
 influence. The danger always is that loyalty to the 
 man shall insensibly replace loyalty to the thing he 
 is supposed to represent, till at last the question 
 what he represents fades wholly out of mind. The 
 love of victory as a good in itself is also a power 
 ful ingredient in the temperament of most men. 
 Forty odd years ago it would have been hard to 
 find a man, no matter how wicked he may have be 
 lieved the Mexican War to be, who could suppress 
 a feeling of elation when the news of Buena Vista 
 arrived. Never mind the principle involved, it 
 was our side that won. 
 
 If the dangers and temptations of parties be such 
 as I have indicated, and I do not think that I have 
 overstated them, it is for the interest of the best 
 men in both parties that there should be a neutral 
 body, not large enough to form a party by itself, 
 nay, which would lose its power for good if it 
 attempted to form such a party, and yet large 
 enough to moderate between both, and to make 
 both more cautious in their choice of candidates 
 
318 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 and in their connivance with evil practices. If the 
 politicians must look after the parties, there should 
 be somebody to look after the politicians, somebody 
 to ask disagreeable questions and to utter uncom 
 fortable truths ; somebody to make sure, if possible, 
 before election, not only what, but whom the candi 
 date, if elected, is going to represent. What to me 
 is the saddest feature of our present methods is the 
 pitfalls which they dig in the path of ambitious 
 and able men who feel that they are fitted for a 
 political career, that by character and training they 
 could be of service to their country, yet who find 
 every avenue closed to them unless at the sacrifice 
 of the very independence which gives them a claim 
 to what they seek. As in semi-barbarous times the 
 sincerity of a converted Jew was tested by forcing 
 him to swallow pork, so these are required to gulp 
 without a wry face what is as nauseous to them. I 
 would do all in my power to render such loathsome 
 compliances unnecessary. The pity of it is that 
 with our political methods the hand is of necessity 
 subdued to what it works in. It has been proved, 
 I think, that the old parties are not to be reformed 
 from within. It is from without that the attempt 
 must be made, and it is the Independents who must 
 make it. If the attempt should fail, the failure 
 of the experiment of democracy would inevitably 
 follow. 
 
 But I do not believe that it will fail. The signs 
 are all favorable. Already there are journals in 
 every part of the country journals, too, among 
 the first in ability, circulation, and influence 
 
THE INDEPENDENT IN POLITICS. 319 
 
 which refuse to wear the colors of party. Already 
 the people have a chance of hearing the truth, and 
 I think that they always gladly hear it. Our first 
 aim should be, as it has been, the reform of our 
 civil service, for that is the fruitful mother of all 
 our ills. It is the most aristocratic system in the 
 world, for it depends on personal favor and is the 
 reward of personal service, and the power of the 
 political boss is built up and maintained, like that 
 of the mediaeval robber baron, by his freehanded- 
 ness in distributing the property of other people. 
 From it is derived the notion that the public treas 
 ure is a fund to a share of which every one is en 
 titled who by fraud or favor can get it, and from 
 this again the absurd doctrine of rotation in office 
 so that each may secure his proportion, and that 
 the business of the nation may be carried on by 
 a succession of apprentices who are dismissed just 
 as they are getting an inkling of their trade to 
 make room for others who are in due time to be 
 turned loose on the world, passed masters in noth 
 ing but incompetence for any useful career. From 
 this, too, has sprung the theory of the geographical 
 allotment of patronage, as if ability were depend 
 ent, like wheat, upon the soil, and the more mis 
 chievous one that members of Congress must be 
 residents of the district that elects them, a custom 
 which has sometimes excluded men of proved abil 
 ity, in the full vigor of their faculties and the ripe 
 ness of their experience, from the councils of 
 the nation. All reforms seem slow and wearisome 
 to their advocates, for these are commonly of that 
 
320 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 ardent and imaginative temper which inaccurately 
 foreshortens the distance and overlooks the difficul 
 ties between means and end. If we have not got 
 all that we hoped from the present administration, 
 we have perhaps got more than we had reason to 
 expect, considering how widely spread are the roots 
 of this evil, and what an inconvenient habit they 
 have of sending up suckers in the most unex 
 pected places. To cut off these does not extirpate, 
 them. It is the parent tree that must go. It is 
 much that we have compelled a discussion of the 
 question from one end of the country to the other, 
 for it cannot bear discussion, and I for one have 
 so much faith in the good sense of the American 
 people as to feel sure that discussion means vic 
 tory. That the Independents are so heartily de 
 nounced by those who support and are supported 
 by the system that has been gradually perfected 
 during the last fifty years is an excellent symp 
 tom. We must not be impatient. Some of us 
 can remember when those who are now the can 
 onized saints of the party which restored the 
 Union and abolished slavery were a forlorn hope 
 of Mugwumps, the scorn of all practical politi 
 cians. Sydney Smith was fond of saying that the 
 secret of happiness in life was to take short views, 
 and in this he was but repeating the rule of the 
 Greek and Roman poets, to live in every hour as 
 if we were never to have another. But he who 
 would be happy as a reformer must take long views, 
 and into distances sometimes that baffle the most 
 piercing vision. 
 
THE INDEPENDENT IN POLITICS. 321 
 
 Two great questions have been opened anew by 
 the President : reduction of revenue, and the best 
 means of effecting it, and these really resolve them 
 selves into one, that of the war tariff. I say of 
 the war tariff, because it is a mere electioneering 
 device to call it a question of protection or free 
 trade pure and simple. I shall barely allude to 
 them as briefly as possible, for they will be amply 
 discussed before the people by more competent men 
 than I. I cannot help thinking that both are illus 
 trations of the truth that it is a duty of statesmen 
 to study tendencies and probable consequences 
 much rather than figures, which can as easily be 
 induced to fight impartially on both sides as the 
 condottieri of four centuries ago. All that rea 
 sonable men contend for now is the reduction of 
 the tariff in such a way as shall be least hurtful to 
 existing interests, most helpful to the consumer, 
 and, above all, as shall practically test the question 
 whether we are better off when we get our raw 
 material at the lowest possible prices. I think the 
 advocates of protection have been unwise, and are 
 beginning to see that they were unwise in shifting 
 the ground of debate. They have set many peo 
 ple to asking whether robbing Peter to pay Paul 
 be a method equally economical for both par 
 ties, and whether the bad policy of it be not all 
 the more flagrant in proportion as the Peters are 
 many and the Pauls few ? Whether the Pauls of 
 every variety be not inevitably forced into an alli 
 ance offensive and defensive against the Peters, 
 and sometimes with very questionable people? 
 
322 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 Whether if we are taxed for the payment of a 
 bounty to the owner of a silver mine, we should 
 not be equally taxed to make a present to the 
 owner of wheat fields, cotton fields, tobacco fields, 
 hay fields, which are the most productive gold 
 mines of the country ? Whether the case of pro 
 tection be not like that of armored ships, requiring 
 ever thicker plating as the artillery of competition 
 is perfected ? But the tendency of excessive pro 
 tection which thoughtful men dread most is that it 
 stimulates an unhealthy home competition, leading 
 to over-production and to the disasters which are 
 its tainted offspring ; that it fosters over-population, 
 and this of the most helpless class when thrown 
 out of employment ; that it engenders smuggling, 
 false invoices, and other demoralizing practices; 
 that the principle which is its root is the root also 
 of Rings, and Syndicates, and Trusts, and all other 
 such conspiracies for the artificial raising of profits 
 in the interest of classes and minorities. I con 
 fess I cannot take a cheerful view of the future of 
 that New England I love so well when her leading 
 industries shall be gradually drawn to the South, 
 as they infallibly will be, by the greater cheapness of 
 labor there. It is not pleasant to hear that called the 
 American system which has succeeded in abolish 
 ing our commercial marine. It is even less pleas 
 ant to hear it advocated as being for the interest of 
 the laborer by men who imported cheaper labor till 
 it was forbidden by law. The true American sys 
 tem is that which produces the best men by leaving 
 them as much as possible to their own resources. 
 
THE INDEPENDENT IN POLITICS. 323 
 
 That protection has been the cause of our material 
 prosperity is refuted by the passage I have already 
 quoted from Burke. Though written when our 
 farmers wives and daughters did most of our spin 
 ning and weaving, one would take it for a choice 
 flower of protection eloquence. We have pros 
 pered in spite of artificial obstacles that would have 
 baffled a people less energetic and less pliant to 
 opportunity. The so-called American system, the 
 system, that is, of selfish exclusion and monopoly, 
 is no invention of ours, but has been borrowed of 
 the mediaeval guilds. It has had nothing to do 
 with the raising of wages, for these are always 
 higher in countries where the demand for labor is 
 greater than the supply. And if the measure of 
 wages be their purchasing power, what does the 
 workman gain, unless it be the pleasure of spend 
 ing more money, under a system, which, if it pay 
 more money in the hire of hands, enhances the 
 prices of what that money will buy in more than 
 equal proportion ? 
 
 Of the surplus in the Treasury I will only say 
 that it has already shown itself to be an invitation to 
 every possible variety of wasteful expenditure and 
 therefore of demoralizing jobbery, and that it has 
 again revived those theories of grandmotherly gov 
 ernment which led to our revolt from the mother 
 country, are most hostile to the genius of our in 
 stitutions, and soonest sap the energy and corrode 
 the morals of a people. 
 
 It is through its politics, through its capacity 
 for government, the noblest of all sciences, that a 
 
324 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 nation proves its right to a place among the other 
 beneficent forces of nature. For politics permeate 
 more widely than any other force, and reach every 
 one of us, soon or late, to teach or to debauch. 
 We are confronted with new problems and new 
 conditions. We and the population which is to 
 solve them are very unlike that of fifty years ago. 
 As I was walking not long ago in the Boston Pub 
 lic Garden, I saw two Irishmen looking at Ball s 
 equestrian statue of Washington, and wondering 
 who was the personage thus commemorated. I 
 had been brought up among the still living tradi 
 tions of Lexington, Concord, Bunker s Hill, and 
 the siege of Boston. To these men Ireland was 
 still their country, and America a place to get 
 their daily bread. This put me upon thinking. 
 What, then, is patriotism, and what its true value 
 to a man ? Was it merely an unreasoning and al 
 most cat-like attachment to certain square miles of 
 the earth s surface, made up in almost equal parts 
 of lifelong association, hereditary tradition, and 
 parochial prejudice? This is the narrowest and 
 most provincial form, as it is also, perhaps, the 
 strongest, of that passion or virtue, whichever we 
 choose to call it. But did it not fulfil the essential 
 condition of giving men an ideal outside them 
 selves, which would awaken in them capacities for 
 devotion and heroism that are deaf even to the 
 penetrating cry of self? All the moral good of 
 which patriotism is the fruitful mother, my two 
 Irishmen had in abundant measure, and it had 
 wrought in them marvels of fidelity and self-sacri- 
 
THE INDEPENDENT IN POLITICS. 325 
 
 fice which made me blush for the easier terms on 
 which my own duties of the like kind were habitu 
 ally fulfilled. Were they not daily pinching them 
 selves that they might pay their tribute to the old 
 hearthstone or the old cause three thousand miles 
 away ? If tears tingle our eyes when we read of 
 the like loyalty in the clansmen of the attainted 
 and exiled Lochiel, shall this leave us unmoved ? 
 
 I laid the lesson to heart. I would, in my own 
 way, be as faithful as they to what I believed to be 
 the best interests of my country. Our politicians 
 are so busy studying the local eddies of prejudice 
 or interest that they allow the main channel of our 
 national energies to be obstructed by dams for the 
 grinding of private grist. Our leaders no longer 
 lead, but are as skilful as Indians in following the 
 faintest trail of public opinion. I find it generally 
 admitted that our moral standard in politics has 
 been lowered, and is every day going lower. Some 
 attribute this to our want of a leisure class. It is 
 to a book of the Apocrypha that we are indebted 
 for the invention of the Man of Leisure. 1 But a 
 leisure class without a definite object in life, and 
 without generous aims, is a bane rather than a 
 blessing. It would end in the weariness and cyni 
 cal pessimism in which its great exemplar Ecclesi- 
 astes ended, without leaving us the gift which his 
 genius left. What we want is an active class who 
 will insist in season and out of season that we shall 
 
 1 " The wisdom of a learned man cometh by opportunity 
 of leisure, and he that hath little business shall become 
 wise." Ecclesiasticus xxxviii. 24. 
 
326 POLITICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 have a country whose greatness is measured, not 
 only by its square miles, its number of yards 
 woven, of hogs packed, of bushels of wheat raised, 
 not only by its skill to feed and clothe the body, 
 but also by its power to feed and clothe the soul ; 
 a country which shall be as great morally as it is 
 materially ; a country whose very name shall not 
 only, as now it does, stir us as with the sound of a 
 trumpet, but shall call out all that is best within us 
 by offering us the radiant image of something bet 
 ter and nobler and more enduring than we, of some 
 thing that shall fulfil our own thwarted aspiration, 
 when we are but a handful of forgotten dust in the 
 soil trodden by a race whom we shall have helped 
 to make more worthy of their inheritance than we 
 ourselves had the power, I might almost say the 
 means, to be. 
 
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