The Continental Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, April, 1862

If war did little else, it would have its value from the fact that it acts so extensively as an institution for the dissemination of useful knowledge. Every murmur of political dissension sends thousands to consult the map, and repair their early neglect of geography. Perhaps if atlases and ethnographical works were more studied we should have less war. And it is by no means impossible that the mutual knowledge which has been or is to be acquired by the people of the South and the North during this present war will eventually aid materially in establishing a firm bond of union.

That we have much to learn is shown in the firm faith with which so many have listened to the threats of 'a united South.' Until recently the fierce and furious assurances of the rebel press, that south of Mason and Dixon's line all were wedded heart and soul to their cause, were taken almost without a doubt. Who has forgotten the late doleful convictions of the dough-faces that the South would hold together to the last in spite of wind or weather, concluding invariably with the old refrain,—'Suppose we conquer them—what then?' Had the country at large known in detail, as it should have known from a common-school education, what the South really is,—or from experience of life what human nature really is,—it would never have believed that this boasted unanimity was based on aught save ignorance or falsehood. The Southern press itself, almost without an exception, betrays gross ignorance of its own country, and is very superficial in its statistics, inclining more than any other to warp facts and figures to suit preconceived views. We, like it, have tacitly adopted the belief that south of a certain line a certain climate invariably prevailed, and that under its influences, from the Border to the Gulf of Mexico, there has been developed a race essentially alike in all its characteristics. The planter and the slave-owner, or the city merchant, has been the type with which our writers have become familiar at the hotel and the watering-place, or in the 'store,' and we have accepted them as speaking for the South, quite forgetful that in America, as in other countries, the real man of the middle class travels but little, and when he does, is seldom to be found mingling in the 'higher circles.' Yet even this Southern man of the middle class and of 'Alleghania,' when at the North frequently affects a 'Southern' air, which is not more natural to him than it is to the youthful scions of Philadelphia and New York, who, when in Europe, so often talk pro-slavery and bowie knife, as though they lived in the very heart of planterdom. But the truth is that when we search the South out closely we find that in reality there is a very great difference between its districts and their inhabitants, and, in fact, as has been very truly said, 'not only is there no geographical boundary between the free and slave States, but no moral and intellectual boundary.'

In the great temperate region which, parting from either side of the Alleghanies, extends from Virginia to Alabama, and is still continued in the pleasant level of Texas, slavery has rolled away from either mountain side like a flood, leaving it the home of a hardy population which regards with jealousy and dislike both the wealthy planter and the negro. James W. Taylor, in his valuable collection of facts, claims that through the whole extent of the Southern Alleghania slavery has relatively diminished since 1850, and that the forthcoming census tables will establish the assertion. 'The superintendent of the census,' he says, 'would furnish a document, valuable politically and for military use, if he would anticipate the publication of this portion of his voluminous budget.' If government, indeed, were to communicate to the public what information it now holds, and has long held, relative to the numbers and strength of the Union men of the South, an excitement of amazement would thrill through the North. It was on the basis of this knowledge that our great campaign was planned,—and it can not be denied that thousands of stanch Union men were greatly astonished at the revelations of sympathy which burst forth most unexpectedly in districts where the stars and stripes have been planted. But the Cabinet 'knew what it knew' on this subject. Much of its knowledge never can be revealed, but enough will come to-night to show that in our darkest hour we had an enormous mass of aid, little suspected by those weaker brethren who stood aghast at the Southern bugbear, and who, falling prostrate in nerveless terror at the windy spectre, quaked out repeated assurances that they had no intention of 'abolitionizing the war,' and even earnestly begged and prayed that the emancipationists might all be sent to Fort Warren,—so fearful were the poor cowards lest the united South, in the final hour of victory, might include them in its catalogue of the doomed. What would they say if they knew the number and power of the ABOLITIONISTS OF THE SOUTH,—a body of no trifling significance, whose fierce grasp will yet be felt on the throat of rebellion and of slavery? It is grimly amusing to think of the aid which the South counted on receiving from these Northern dough-faces,—little thinking that within itself it contained a counter-revolutionary party, far more dangerous than the Northern friends were helpful.

It should be borne in mind that where such an evil as slavery exists there will be numbers of grave, sensible men, who, however quiet they may keep, will have their own opinions as to the expediency of maintaining it. The bigots of the South may rave of the beauty of 'the institution,' and make many believe that they speak for the whole,—a little scum when whipped covers the whole pail,—but beneath all lies a steadily-increasing mass of practical men who would readily enough manifest their opposition should opportunity favor free speech. Such people, for instance, are not insensible to the enormously corrupting influence of negroes on their children. Let the reader recall Olmsted's experiences,—that, for example, where he speaks of three negro women who had charge of half a dozen white girls of good family, 'from three to fifteen years of age.'

Their language was loud and obscene, such as I never heard before from any but the most depraved and beastly women of the streets. Upon observing me they dropped their voices, but not with any appearance of shame, and continued their altercation until their mistresses entered. The white children, in the mean time, had listened without any appearance of wonder or annoyance. The moment the ladies opened the door, they became silent.—Cotton Kingdom, vol. i. p. 222.

The Southern Cultivator for June, 1855, speaks of many young men and women who have 'made shipwreck of all their earthly hopes, and been led to the fatal step by the seeds of corruption which in the days of childhood and youth were sown in their hearts by the indelicate and lascivious manners and conversation of their fathers' negroes.' If we had no other fact or cause to cite, this almost unnamable one might convince the reader that there must be a groundwork somewhere in the South among good, moral, and decent people, for antipathy to slavery,—human nature teaches us as much. And such people exist, not only among the hardy inhabitants of the inland districts, who are not enervated by wealth and 'exclusiveness,' but in planterdom itself.

There are few in the North who realize the number of persons in the South who silently disapprove of slavery on sound grounds, such as I have mentioned. Does it seem credible that nearly ten millions of people should socially sympathize with some three hundred thousand slave-holders, who act with intolerable arrogance to all non-slave-holders? 'Even in those regions where slavery is profitable,' as a writer in the Boston Transcript well expresses it, 'the poor whites feel the slaveocracy as the most grinding of aristocracies.'

In those regions where it is not profitable, the population regard it with a latent abhorrence, compared with which the rhetorical and open invectives of Garrison and Phillips are feeble and tame. Anybody who has read Olmsted's truthful narrative of his experience in the slave States can not doubt this fact. The hatred to slavery too often finds its expression in an almost inhuman hatred of 'niggers,' whether slave or free, but it is none the less significant of the feelings and opinions of the white population.

As I write, every fresh thunder of war and crash of victory is followed by murmurs of amazement at the enthusiastic receptions which the Union forces meet in most unexpected strongholds of the enemy, in the very heart of slavedom. Yet it was known months ago, and prophesied, with the illustration of undeniable facts, that this counter-revolutionary element existed. One single truth was forgotten,—that these Southern friends of the Union, even while avowing that slavery must be supported, had no love of it in their hearts. Emancipation has been sedulously set aside under pretence of conciliating them; but it was needless,—'old custom' had made them cautious, and mindful of 'expediency;' but the mass of them hate 'the institution.' It is for the traitorous Northern dough-faces, and the paltry handful of secessionists, 'on a thin slip of land on the Atlantic,' that slavery is, at present, cherished. The great area of the South is free from it,—and ever will be.

It has frequently been insisted on that the mere geographical obstacles to disunion are such as to render the cause of slavery hopeless in the long run. Yet to this most powerful Southern aid to the North, men seem to have been strangely blind during the days of doubt which so long afflicted us. These obstacles are, briefly, the enormous growing power of the West, and its inevitable outlet, the Mississippi river. 'For it is the mighty and free West which will always hang like a lowering thunder-cloud over them.'[14 - Words to the West. Knickerbocker Magazine, Oct., 1861.] On this subject I quote at length from an article, in the Danville (Ky.) Review, by the Rev. R. J. Breckenridge, D.D.:—

Whoever will look at a map of the United States, will observe that Louisiana lies on both sides of the Mississippi river, and that the States of Arkansas and Mississippi lie on the right and left banks of this great stream—eight hundred miles of whose lower course is thus controlled by these three States, unitedly inhabited by hardly as many white people as inhabit the city of New York. Observe, then, the country drained by this river and its affluents, commencing with Missouri on its west bank and Kentucky on its east bank. There are nine or ten powerful States, large portions of three or four others, several large Territories—in all, a country as large as all Europe, as fine as any under the sun, already holding many more people than all the revolted States, and powerful regions of the earth. Does any one suppose that these powerful States—this great and energetic population—will ever make a peace that will put the lower course of this single and mighty national outlet to the sea in the hands of a foreign government far weaker than themselves? If there is any such person he knows little of the past history of mankind, and will perhaps excuse us for reminding him that the people of Kentucky, before they were constituted a State, gave formal notice to the federal government, when Gen. Washington was President, that if the United States did not require Louisiana they would themselves conquer it. The mouths of the Mississippi belong, by the gift of God, to the inhabitants of its great valley. Nothing but irresistible force can disinherit them.

Try another territorial aspect of the case. There is a bed of mountains abutting on the left bank of the Ohio, which covers all Western Virginia, and all Eastern Kentucky, to the width, from east to west, in those two States, of three or four hundred miles. These mountains, stretching south-westwardly, pass entirely through Tennessee, cover the back parts of North Carolina and Georgia, heavily invade the northern part of Alabama, and make a figure even in the back parts of South Carolina and the eastern parts of Mississippi, having a course of perhaps seven or eight hundred miles, and running far south of the northern limit of profitable cotton culture. It is a region of 300,000 square miles, trenching upon eight or nine slave States, though nearly destitute of slaves itself; trenching upon at least five cotton States, though raising no cotton itself. The western part of Maryland and two-thirds of Pennsylvania are embraced in the north-eastern continuation of this remarkable region. Can anything that passes under the name of statesmanship be more preposterous than the notion of permanent peace on this continent, founded on the abnegation of a common and paramount government, and the idea of the supercilious domination of the cotton interest and the slave-trade over such a mountain empire, so located and so peopled?

As a further proof of the utter impossibility of peace except under a common government, and at once an illustration of the import of what has just been stated, and the suggestion of a new and insuperable difficulty, let it be remembered that this great mountain region, throughout its general course, is more loyal to the Union than any other portion of the slave States. It is the mountain counties of Maryland that have held treason in check in that State; it is forty mountain counties in Western Virginia that have laid the foundation of a new and loyal commonwealth; it is the mountain counties of Kentucky that first and most eagerly took up arms for the Union; it is the mountain region of Tennessee that alone, in that dishonored State, furnished martyrs to the sacred cause of freedom; it is the mountain people of Alabama that boldly stood out against the Confederate government till their own leaders deserted and betrayed them.

It is not a strong point, but it is worth noting, that even in South Carolina there is an Alleghanian area of 4,074 square miles, equal to the State of Connecticut, in which the diminished proportion of slaves, with other local causes, are sufficient to indicate the Union feeling which indeed struggles there in secret. These counties are:—

Slavery is here large, as compared to the other counties of 'Alleghania,' but the great proportion of free inhabitants, as contrasted with the districts near the Atlantic, makes it worth citing. In accordance with a request, I give from Jas. W. Taylor's collection, illustrating this subject, the table of population in East Tennessee:—

The following table, from the census of 1850, presents the slave and cotton statistics of this district, in their relation to the free population:

The geographical order of the foregoing list of counties is from the extreme north-east—Johnson—south-west to Lincoln, on the Alabama line. I have included a tier of counties the west, which embrace the summits and western slopes of the Cumberland Hills, regarding their physical and political features as more identified with East than Middle Tennessee. Such are Lincoln, Franklin, Grundy, Van Buren, Cumberland, Morgan and Scott counties.

I estimate the area of this district as about 17,175 square miles, an extent of territory exceeding the aggregate of the following States:

Yet it is not many months since even this Tennessee region, it was generally feared, would be false to the Union, on account of its attachment to slavery.

The reader who has studied the facts which I have cited, indicating the existence of a powerful Union party at the South (and the facts are few and weak compared to the vast mass which exist, and which are known to government), may judge for himself whether that party is Union in spite of pro-slavery principles, as so many would have us believe. Let him see where these Union men are found, where they have come forth with the greatest enthusiasm, and then say that he believes they are friends to slavery. Let him bear in mind the hundreds of thousands of acres, the vast tracts, equal in extent to whole Northern States, in the South, which are unfitted for slave labor, and reflect whether the inhabitants of these cool, temperate regions are not as conscious of their inadaptability to slave labor as he is himself; and whether they are so much attached to the institution which fosters the Satanic pride, panders to the passions, and corrupts the children of the planter of the low country.

Since writing the above, the long-expected declaration of President LINCOLN has appeared in favor of adopting a plan which may lead to the gradual abolishment of slavery. He proposes that the United States shall coöperate with such slave States as may desire Emancipation, by giving such pecuniary aid as may compensate for any losses incurred. No interference with State rights or claims to rights in the question is intended.

It is evident that this message is directed entirely to the strengthening and building up of the Union party of the South, and has been based quite as much on their demands and on a knowledge of their needs, as on any Northern pressure. And it will have a sure effect. It will bring to life, if realized, those seeds of counter-revolution which so abundantly exist in the South. The growth may be slow, but it will be certain. So long as the certainty exists that compensation may be obtained, there will be a party who will long for it; and where there is a will there is a way. The executive has finally officially recognized the truth of the theory of Emancipation, and thereby entitled itself to the honor of having taken the greatest forward step in the glorious path of Freedom ever made even in our history.

The Molly O'Molly Papers

No. I

In addressing you for the first time, you will perhaps expect me to give some account of myself and my ancestry, as did the illustrious Spectator.

My remote ancestors are Irish. From them I inherited enthusiasm, a gun-powder temper, a propensity to blunder, and a name—Molly O'Molly. The origin of this name I have in vain endeavored to trace in history, perhaps because it belonged to a very old family, one of the prehistorics. As such it might have been that of a demigod, or, according to the development theory, of a demi-man. Or it might have been that of an old Irish gentleman, gentle in truth;—in the formative stage of society it is the monster that leaves traces of himself, as in an old geologic period the huge reptile left his tracks in the plastic earth, which afterward hardened into rock.

Then, too, I have searched in vain for anything like it in ancient Irish poetry, thinking that my progenitor's name might have been therein embalmed. 'The stony science'—mind you—reveals to us the former existence of the huge reptile, the fragmentary, mighty mastodon, and, imperfect, the mail-clad fish. But, wonder of wonders, we find the whole insect preserved in that fossil gum amber. And even so in verse, characters are preserved for all time, that could not make their mark in history, and that had none of the elements of an earthly immortality. Did I wish immortality I would choose a poet for my friend;—an In Memoriam is worth all the records of the dry chronicler.

But, it is not with the root of the family tree that you have to do, but with the twig Myself.

As for my physique,—I am not like the scripture personage who beheld his face in a glass, and straightway forgot what manner of man he was. I have, on the contrary, a very distinct recollection of my face; suffice it to say, that, had I Rafaelle's pencil, I would not, like him, employ it on my own portrait.

And my life—the circumstances which have influenced, or rather created its currents, have been trifling; not that it has had no powerful currents; it is said that the equilibrium of the whole ocean could be destroyed by a single mollusk or coralline,—but my life has been an uneventful one. I never met with an adventure, never even had a hair-breadth escape,—yes, I did, too, have one hair-breadth escape. I once just grazed matrimony. The truth is, I fell in love, and was sinking with Falstaff's 'alacrity,' when I was fished out; but somehow I slipt off the hook—fortunately, however, was left on shore. By the way, the best way to get out of love is to be drawn out by the matrimonial hook. One of Holmes' characters wished to change a vowel of the verb to love, and conjugate it—I have forgotten how far. Where two set out to conjugate together the verb to love in the first person plural, it is well if they do not, before the honey-moon is over, get to the present-perfect, indicative. Alas! I have thus far, in the first person singular, conjugated too many verbs, among them to enjoy. As for to be, I have come to the balancing in my mind of the question that so perplexed Hamlet—'To be, or not to be.' For, with all the natural cheerfulness of my disposition, I can not help sometimes looking on the dark side of life. But there is no use in setting down my gloomy reflections,—all have them. We are all surrounded by an atmosphere of misery, pressing on us fifteen pounds to the square inch, so evenly and constantly that we know not its fearful weight. To change the figure. Have you ever thought how much misery one life can hold in solution? Each year, as it flows into it, adds to it a heaviness, a weight of woe, as the rivers add salts to the ocean. I do not refer to the most unhappy, but to all. Some one says,—

'If singing breath, if echoing chord
To every hidden pang were given,
What endless melodies were poured,
As sad as earth, as sweet as heaven.'

If breath to every hidden prayer were given, could it be singing breath? Would it not be a wail monotonous as the dirge of the November wind over the dead summer, a wail for lost hopes, lost joys, lost loves? Or the monotony would be varied—as is the wind by fitful gusts—by shrieks of despair, cries of agony. No, no, there is no use in trying to modulate our woes,—'we're all wrong,—the time in us is lost.'

'Henceforth I'll bear
Affliction, till it do cry out itself,
"Enough, enough," and die.'

But why talk thus? why mourn over dead hopes, dead joys, dead loves? 'Tis best to bury the dead out of our sight, and from them will spring many humbler hopes, quieter joys, more lowly affections, which 'smell sweet' though they 'blossom in the dust,' and they are the only resurrection these dead ones can ever have. I have been reading, in Maury's Geography of the Sea, how the sea's dead are preserved; how they stand like enchanted warders of the treasures of the deep, unchanged, except that the expression of life is exchanged for the ghastliness of death. So, down beneath the surface currents do some deep souls preserve their dead hopes, joys, loves. Oh, this is unwise; this is not as God intended; for, unlike the sea's dead, there will be for these no resurrection.

Thus far I wrote, when the current of my thoughts was changed by a lively tune struck up by a hand-organ across the street. I am not 'good' at distinguishing tunes, but this one I had so often heard in childhood, and had so wondered at its strange title, that I could but remember it. It was 'The Devil's Dream.' Were I a poet, I would write the words to it;—but then, too, I would need be a musician to compose a suitable new tune to the words! The rattling, reckless notes should be varied by those sad enough to make an unlost angel weep—an unlost angel, for, to the hot eyes of the lost, no tears can come. 'The Devil's Dream'—perhaps it is of Heaven. Doubtless, frescoed in heavenly colors on the walls of his memory, are scenes from which fancy has but to brush the smoke and grime of perdition to restore them to almost their original beauty. I could even pity the 'Father of lies,' the 'Essence of evil,' the 'Enemy of mankind,' when I think of the terrible awaking. But does he ever sleep? Has there since the fall been a pause in his labors? Perhaps the reason this tune-time is so fast is because he is dreaming in a hurry,—must soon be up and doing. But it is my opinion that he has so wound up the world to wickedness, that he might sleep a hundred years, and it would have scarcely begun to run down on his awaking; when, from the familiar appearance of all things, he would swear 'it was but an after-dinner nap.' Indeed he might die, might to-day go out in utter nothingness like a falling star, and it would be away in the year two thousand before he would be missed,—we have learned to do our own devil-work so rarely. Meanwhile the well-wound world—as a music-box plays over the same tunes—would go on sinning over the same old sins. Satan is a great economist, but a paltry deviser,—he has not invented a new sin since the flood. My thoughts thus danced along to the music, when they were brought to a dead stop by its cessation; and it was time, you will think....

But, permit me to remind you that my name is not acquired, but inherited.

    At your service,
    MOLLY O'MOLLY.

No. II

I detest that man who bides his time to repay a wrong or fancied wrong, who keeps alive in his hardened nature the vile thing hatred, and would for centuries, did he live thus long,—as the toad is kept alive in the solid rock. Hugh Miller says he is 'disposed to regard the poison bag of the serpent as a mark of degradation;' this venomous spite is certainly a mark of degradation, and it is only creeping, crawling souls that have it, but the creeping and crawling are a part of the curse.

Yet I have a respect for honest indignation, righteous anger, such as the O'Mollys have ever been capable of. And all the O'Molly blood in my veins has been stirred by the contemptuous manner in which some men have spoken of woman. 'Weak woman,—inconstant woman;' they have made the wind a type of her fickleness. In this they are right; for it has been proved that the seasons in their return, day and night, are not more sure than the wind. Such fickleness as this is preferable to man's greatest constancy. Woman weak! she's gentle as the summer breeze, I grant;—but, like this same breeze, when she's roused—then beware! You have doubtless heard of that gale that forced back the Gulf Stream, and piled it up thirty feet at its source.

Take care how you sour woman's nature,—remember that, once soured, all the honey in the universe will not sweeten it. There is such a thing as making vinegar of molasses, but I never heard of making molasses of vinegar. Do you wish to know the turning process? Grumbling—everlasting fault-finding—at breakfast, dinner, and supper, the same old tune. I don't see how the man who boards can endure it; he is obliged to swallow his food without complaint. The landlady at the head of the table is a very different-looking individual from the meek woman he afterwards calls wife,—not a word can he say, though he morning after morning, in his breakfast, recognizes, through its various disguises, yesterday's dinner. By the way, this is after Dame Nature's plan; she uses the greatest economy in feeding her immense family of boarders; never wastes a refuse scrap, or even a drop of water. If one of these boarders dies, it is true he is not, like 'the poor work-house boy,' served up as one dish, but he becomes an ingredient in many 'a dainty dish' fit to 'to set before a king.' But I am not, like 'Miss Ophelia' in 'Uncle Tom's Cabin,' going to explore the good dame's kitchen,—will rather eat what is set before me, asking no questions; which last, what man ever did, if he could help it?

For an insignificant man, originally but a cipher, who owes it to his wife that he is even the fraction that he is, to talk about 'woman knowing her place—he's head,' etc.! If he had given her the place that belonged to her, their value, not as individual figures, but as one number, would have been increased a thousand fold. I have made a calculation, and this is literally true, or rather, you will say, figuratively true. Well, this kind of figures can not lie.

'The rose,' the Burmese say, 'imparts fragrance to the leaf in which it is folded.' Many a man has had a sweetness imparted to his character by the woman he has sheltered in his bosom—though some characters 'not all the perfume of Arabia could sweeten;' and, strange as it seem, most women would rather be folded in a tobacco leaf than 'waste their sweetness on desert air.' Though it is a long time since I have been a man lover, I am not a man hater. I can not hate anything that has been so hallowed by woman's love,—its magnetism gives a sort of attractive power to him.

Notwithstanding all that has been said about woman's weakness, it is acknowledged that she has a pretty strong will of her own. Well, we need a strong will,—it is the great centrifugal force that God has given to all. Only it must be subordinate to the centripetal force of the universe—the Divine will.

It is said that the centripetal force of our solar system is the Pleiad Alcyon. I know not whether the other stars of that cluster feel this attraction; if they do, what a centrifugal force the lost Pleiad must have had, to break away from 'the sweet influences' which, through so immense a distance, draw the sun with all his train. This is not without a parallel—when 'the morning stars sang together' over the new-born earth, one 'star of the morning' was not there to join in the chorus.

But Old Sol will probably never so strongly assert his centrifugality as to set such an example of secession to his planets and comets.

Pardon this astronomical digression. I have just returned from hearing an itinerant lecturer, and it will take a week to get the smoke of his magic lantern out of my eyes. If there is any error in these observations, blame the itinerant, not me.