The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862

O'er Wysscherad we saw the great stars shine;
We felt the night-wind on the rushing stream;
We drank the air as if 'twere Melnick wine,
And every draught whirled us still nearer Nebe:
Anezka, fair Bohemian, thou wert there!

Why ever gleam thy black eyes sadly on me?
Why ever rings thy sweet voice in my ear?
Why looks thy pale face from the drifting foam—
Dashed by the wild sea on this distant shore—
Or from the white clouds does it beckon me?

My own heart answers: On the Moldau bridge,
Anezka, we will meet to part no more.

ANTHONY TROLLOPE ON AMERICA

Mr. Anthony Trollope's work entitled North-America has been republished in this country, and curiosity has at length been satisfied. Great as has been this curiosity among his friends, it can not, however, be said to have been wide-spread, inasmuch as up to the appearance of this book of travels, comparatively few were aware of the presence of Mr. Trollope in this country. When Charles Dickens visited America, our people testified their admiration of his homely genius by going mad, receiving him with frantic acclamations of delight, dining him, and suppering him, and going through the 'pump-handle movement' with him. Mr. Dickens was, in consequence, intensely bored by this attestation of popular idolatry so peculiar to the United States, and looked upon us as officious, absurd, and disgusting. Officious we were, and absurd enough, surely, but far from being disgusting. He ought hardly to beget disgust whose youth and inexperience leads him to extravagance in his kindly demonstrations toward genius. However, Mr. Dickens went home rather more impressed by our faults, which he had had every opportunity of inspecting, than by our virtues, which possessed fewer salient features to his humorous eye. Two books—American Notes and Martin Chuzzlewit—were the product of his tour through America. Thereupon, the American people grew very indignant. Their Dickens-love, in proportion to its intensity, turned to Dickens-hate, and ingratitude was considered to be synonymous with the name of this novelist. We gave him every chance to see our follies, and we snubbed his cherished and chief object in visiting America, concerning a copyright. There is little wonder, then, that Dickens, an Englishman and a caricaturist, should have painted us in the colors that he did. There is scarcely less wonder that Americans, at that time, all in the white-heat of enthusiasm, should have waxed angry at Dickens' cold return to so much warmth. But, reading these books in the light of 1862, there are few of us who do not smile at the rage of our elders. We see an uproariously funny extravaganza in Martin Chuzzlewit, which we can well afford to laugh at, having grown thicker-skinned, and wonder what there is to be found in the Notes so very abominable to an American. Mr. Dickens was a humorist, not a statesman or philosopher, therefore he wrote of us as a disappointed humorist would have been tempted to write.

It is not likely that Mr. Trollope's advent in this country would have given rise to any remark or excitement, his novels, clever though they be, not having taken hold of the people's heart as did those of Dickens. He came among us quietly; the newspapers gave him no flourish of trumpets; he traveled about unknown; hence it was, that few knew a new book was to be written upon America by one bearing a name not over-popular thirty years ago. Curiosity was confined to the friends and acquaintances of Mr. Trollope, who were naturally not a little anxious that he should conscientiously write such a book as would remove the existing prejudice to the name of Trollope, and render him personally as popular as his novels. For there are, we believe, few intelligent Americans (and Mr. Trollope is good enough to say that we of the North are all intelligent) who are not ready to 'faire l'aimable' to the kindly, genial author of North-America. It is not being rash to state that Mr. Trollope, in his last book, has not disappointed his warmest personal friends in this country, and this is saying much, when it is considered that many of them are radically opposed to him in many of his opinions, and most of them hold very different views from him in regard to the present war. They are not disappointed, because Mr. Trollope has labored to be impartial in his criticisms. He has, at least, endeavored to lay aside his English prejudices and judge us in a spirit of truth and good-fellowship. Mr. Trollope inaugurated a new era in British book-making upon America, when he wrote: 'If I could in any small degree add to the good feeling which should exist between two nations which ought to love each other so well, and which do hang upon each other so constantly, I should think that I had cause to be proud of my work.' In saying this much, Mr. Trollope has said what others of his ilk—Bulwer, Thackeray, and Dickens—would not have said, and he may well be proud, or, at least, he can afford not to be proud, of a superior honesty and frankness. He has won for himself kind thoughts on this side of the Atlantic, and were Americans convinced that the body English were imbued with the spirit of Mr. Trollope, there would be little left of the resuscitated 'soreness.'

In his introduction, Mr. Trollope frankly acknowledges that 'it is very hard to write about any country a book that does not represent the country described in a more or less ridiculous point of view.' He confesses that he is not a philosophico-political or politico-statistical or a statistico-scientific writer, and hence, 'ridicule and censure run glibly from the pen, and form themselves into sharp paragraphs, which are pleasant to the reader. Whereas, eulogy is commonly dull, and too frequently sounds as though it were false.' We agree with him, that 'there is much difficulty in expressing a verdict which is intended to be favorable, but which, though favorable, shall not be falsely eulogistic, and though true, not offensive.' Mr. Trollope has not been offensive either in his praise or dispraise; and when we look upon him in the light in which he paints himself—that of an English novelist—he has, at least, done his best by us. We could not expect from him such a book as Emerson wrote on English Traits, or such an one as Thomas Buckle would have written had death not staid his great work of Civilization. Nor could we look to him for that which John Stuart Mill—the English De Tocqueville—alone can give. For much that we expected we have received, for that which is wanting we shall now find fault, but good-naturedly, we hope.

Our first ground of complaint against Mr. Trollope's North-America, is its extreme verbosity. Had it been condensed to one half, or at least one third of its present size, the spirit of the book had been less weakened, and the taste of the public better satisfied. The question naturally arises in an inquiring mind, if the author could make so much out of a six months' tour through the Northern States, what would the consequences have been had he remained a year, and visited Dixie's land as well? The conclusions logically arrived at are, to say the least, very unfavorable to weak-eyed persons who are condemned to read the cheap American edition. Life is too short, and books are too numerous, to allow of repetition; and at no time is Mr. Trollope so guilty in this respect as when he dilates upon those worthies, Mason and Slidell, in connection with the Trent affair. It was very natural, especially as England has come off first-best in this matter, that Mr. Trollope should have made a feature of the Trent in reporting the state of the American pulse thereon. One reference to the controversy was desirable, two endurable, but the third return to the charge is likely to meet with impatient exclamations from the reader, who heartily sympathizes with the author when he says: 'And now, I trust, I may finish my book without again naming Messrs. Slidell and Mason.'

It certainly was rash to rave as we did on this subject, but it was quite natural, when our jurists, (even the Hon. Caleb Cushing) who were supposed to know their business, assured us that we had right on our side. It was extremely ridiculous to put Captain Wilkes upon a pedestal a little lower than Bunker-Hill monument, and present him with a hero's sword for doing what was then considered only his duty. But it must be remembered that at that time the mere performance of duty by a public officer was so extraordinary a phenomenon that loyal people were brought to believe it merited especial recognition. Our Government, and not the people, were to blame. Had the speech of Charles Sumner, delivered on his 'field-day,' been the verdict of the Washington Cabinet previous to the reception of England's expostulations, the position taken by America on this subject would have been highly dignified and honorable. As it is, we stand with feathers ruffled and torn. But if, as we suppose, the Trent imbroglio leads to a purification of maritime law, not only America, but the entire commercial world will be greatly indebted to the super-patriotism of Captain Wilkes.

'The charming women of Boston' are inclined to quarrel with their friend Mr. Trollope, for ridiculing their powers of argumentation apropos to Captain Wilkes, for Mr. Trollope must confess they knew quite as much about what they were talking as the lawyers by whom they were instructed. They have had more than their proper share of revenge, however, meted out for them by the reviewer of the London Critic, who writes as follows:

'Mr. Trollope was in Boston when the first news about the Trent arrived. Of course, every body was full of the subject at once—Mr. Trollope, we presume, not excluded—albeit he is rather sarcastic upon the young ladies who began immediately to chatter about it. 'Wheaton is quite clear about it,' said one young girl to me. It was the first I had heard of Wheaton, and so far was obliged to knock under.' Yet Mr. Trollope, knowing very little more of Wheaton than he did before, and obviously nothing of the great authorities on maritime law, inflicts upon his readers page after page of argument upon the Trent affair, not half so delightful as the pretty babble of the ball-room belle. With all due respect to Mr. Trollope, and his attractions, we are quite sure that we would much sooner get our international law from the lips of the fair Bostonian than from his.'

After such a champion as this, could the fair Bostonians have the heart to assail Mr. Trollope?

Mr. Trollope treats of our civil war at great length; in fact, the reverberations of himself on this matter are quite as objectionable as those in the Trent affair. But it is his treatment of this subject that must ever be a source of regret to the earnest thinkers who are gradually becoming the masters of our Government's policy, who constitute the bone and muscle of the land, the rank and file of the army, and who are changing the original character of the war into that of a holy crusade. It is to be deplored, because Mr. Trollope's book will no doubt influence English opinion, to a certain extent, and therefore militate against us, and we already know how his mistaken opinions have been seized upon by pro-slavery journals in this country as a bonne bouche which they rarely obtain from so respectable a source; the more palatable to them, coming from that nationality which we have always been taught to believe was more abolition in its creed than William Lloyd Garrison himself, and from whose people we have received most of our lectures on the sin of slavery. It is sad that so fine a nature as that of Mr. Trollope should not feel conscience-stricken in believing that 'to mix up the question of general abolition with this war must be the work of a man too ignorant to understand the real subject of the war, or too false to his country to regard it.' Yet it is strange that these 'too ignorant' or 'too false' men are the very ones that Mr. Trollope holds up to admiration, and declares that any nation might be proud to claim their genius. Longfellow and Lowell, Emerson and Motley, to whom we could add almost all the well-known thinkers of the country, men after his own heart in most things, belong to this 'ignorant' or 'false' sect. Is it their one madness? That is a strange madness which besets our greatest men and women; a marvelous anomaly surely. Yet there must be something sympathetic in abolitionism to Mr. Trollope, for he prefers Boston, the centre of this ignorance, to all other American cities, and finds his friends for the most part among these false ones, by which we are to conclude that Mr. Trollope is by nature an abolitionist, but that circumstances have been unfavorable to his proper development. And these circumstances we ascribe to a hasty and superficial visit to the British West-India colonies.

It is well known that in his entertaining book on travels in the West-Indies and Spanish Main, Mr. Trollope undertakes to prove that emancipation has both ruined the commercial prosperity of the British islands and degraded the free blacks to a level with the idle brute. Mr. Trollope is still firm in this opinion, notwithstanding the statistics of the Blue Book, which prove that these colonies never were in so flourishing a condition as at present. We, in America, have also had the same fact demonstrated by figures, in that very plainly written book called the Ordeal of Free Labor. Mr. Trollope, no doubt, saw some very lazy negroes, wallowing in dirt, and living only for the day, but later developments have proved that his investigations could have been simply those of a dilettante. It is highly probable that the planters who have been shorn of their riches by the edict of Emancipation, should paint the present condition of the blacks in any thing but rose-colors, and we, of course, believe that Mr. Trollope believes what he has written. He is none the less mistaken, if we are to pin our faith to the Blue Book, which we are told never lies. And yet, believing that emancipation has made a greater brute than ever of the negro, Mr. Trollope rejoices in the course which has been pursued by the home government. If both white man and black man are worse off than they were before, what good could have been derived from the reform, and by what right ought he to rejoice? Mr. Trollope claims to be an anti-slavery man, but we must confess that to our way of arguing, the ground he stands upon in this matter is any thing but terra firma. Mr. Trollope was probably thinking of those dirty West-India negroes when he made the following comments upon a lecture delivered by Wendell Phillips:

'I have sometimes thought that there is no being so venomous, so bloodthirsty, as a professed philanthropist; and that when the philanthropist's ardor lies negro-ward, it then assumes the deepest die of venom and bloodthirstiness. There are four millions of slaves in the Southern States, none of whom have any capacity for self-maintenance or self-control. Four millions of slaves, with the necessities of children, with the passions of men, and the ignorance of savages! And Mr. Phillips would emancipate these at a blow; would, were it possible for him to do so, set them loose upon the soil to tear their masters, destroy each other, and make such a hell upon earth as has never even yet come from the uncontrolled passions and unsatisfied wants of men.'

Mr. Trollope should have thought twice before he wrote thus of the American negro. Were he a competent authority on this subject, his opinion might be worth something; but as he never traveled in the South, and as his knowledge of the negro is limited to a surface acquaintance with the West-Indies, we maintain that Mr. Trollope has not only been unjust, but ungenerous. Four millions of slaves, none of whom have any capacity for self-maintenance or self-control! Whom are we to believe? Mr. Trollope, who has never been on a Southern plantation, or Frederick Law Olmsted? Mr. Pierce, who has been superintendent of the contrabands at Fortress Monroe and at Hilton Head, officers attached to Burnside's Division, and last and best, General David Hunter, an officer of the regular army, who went to South-Carolina with anti-abolition antecedents? All honor to General Hunter, who, unlike many others, has not shut his eyes upon facts, and, like a rational being, has yielded to the logic of events. It is strange that these authorities, all of whom possess the confidence of the Government, should disagree with Mr. Trollope. None self-maintaining? Robert Small is a pure negro. Is he not more than self-maintaining? Has he not done more for the Federal Government than any white man of the Gulf States? Tillman is a negro; the best pilots of the South are negroes: are they not self-maintaining? Kansas has welcomed thousands of fugitive slaves to her hospitable doors, not as paupers, but as laborers, who have taken the place of those white men who have gone to fight the battles which they also should be allowed to take part in. The women have been gladly accepted as house-servants. Does not this look like self-maintenance? Would negroes be employed in the army if they were as Mr. Trollope pictures them? He confesses that without these four millions of slaves the South would be a wilderness, therefore they do work as slaves to the music of the slave-drivers' whip. How very odd, that the moment men and women (for Mr. Trollope does acknowledge them to be such) own themselves, and are paid for the sweat of their brow, they should forget the trades by which they have enriched the South, and become incapable of maintaining themselves—they who have maintained three hundred and fifty thousand insolent slave-owners! Given whip-lashes and the incubus of a white family, the slave will work; given freedom and wages, the negro won't work. Was there ever stated a more palpable fallacy? Is it necessary to declare further that the Hilton Head experiment is a success, although the negroes, wanting in slave-drivers and in their musical instruments, began their planting very late in the season? Is it necessary to give Mr. Trollope one of many figures, and prove that in the British West-India colonies free labor has exported two hundred and sixty-five millions pounds of sugar annually, whereas slave labor only exported one hundred and eighty-seven millions three hundred thousand? And this in a climate where, unlike even the Southern States of North-America, there is every inducement to indolence.

Four millions of slaves, none of whom are capable of self-control, who possess the necessities of children, the passions of men, and the ignorance of savages! We really have thought that the many thousands of these four millions who have come under the Federal jurisdiction, exercised considerable self-control, when it is remembered that in some localities they have been left entire masters of themselves, have in other instances labored months for the Government under promise of pay, and have had that pay prove a delusion. Certainly it is fair to judge of a whole by a part. Given a bone, Professor Agassiz can draw the animal of which the bone forms a part. Given many thousands of negroes, we should be able to judge somewhat of four millions. Had Mr. Trollope seen the thousands of octoroons and quadroons enslaved in the South by their own fathers, it would have been more just in him to have attributed a want of self-control to the masters of these four millions. We do not know what Mr. Trollope means by 'the necessities of children. Children need to be sheltered, fed, and clothed, and so do the negroes, but here the resemblance ends; for whereas children can not take care of themselves, the negro can, provided there is any opportunity to work. It is scarcely to be doubted that temporary distress must arise among fugitives in localities where labor is not plenty; but does this establish the black man's incapacity? Revolutions, especially those which are internal, generally bring in their train distress to laborers. Then we are told that the slaves are endowed with the passions of men; and very glad are we to know this, for, as a love of liberty and a willingness to sacrifice all things for freedom, is one of the loftiest passions in men, were he devoid of this passion, we should look with much less confidence to assistance from the negro in this war of freedom versus slavery, than we do at present. In stating that the slaves are as ignorant as savages, Mr. Trollope pays an exceedingly poor compliment to the Southern whites, as it would naturally be supposed that constant contact with a superior race would have civilized the negro to a certain extent, especially as he is known to be wonderfully imitative. And such is the case; at least the writer of these lines, who has been born and bred in a slave State, thinks so. As a whole, they compare very favorably with the 'poor white trash,' and individually they are vastly superior to this 'trash.' It is true, that they can not read or write, not from want of aptitude or desire, as the teachers among the contrabands write that their desire to read amounts to a passion, in many cases, even among the hoary-headed, but because the teaching of a slave to read or write was, in the good old times before the war, regarded and punished as a criminal offense. What a pity it is that we can not go back to the Union as it was! In this ignorance of the rudiments of learning, the negroes are not unlike a large percentage of the populations of Great Britain and Ireland.

'And Mr. Phillips would let these ignorant savages loose upon the soil to tear their masters, destroy each other, and make such a hell upon earth as has never even yet come from the uncontrolled passions and unsatisfied wants of men!' If Mr. Trollope were read in the history of emancipation, he would know that there has not been an instance of 'such a hell upon earth' as he describes. The American negro is a singularly docile, affectionate, and good-natured creature, not at all given to destroying his kind or tearing his master, and the least inclined to do these things at a time when there is no necessity for them. A slave is likely to kill his master to gain his freedom, but he is not fond enough of murder to kill him when no object is to be gained except a halter. The record so far proves that the masters have shot down their slaves rather than have them fall into the hands of the Union troops. Even granting Mr. Trollope's theory of the negro disposition, no edict of emancipation could produce such an effect as he predicts, to the masters, at least. They, in revenge, might shoot down their slaves, but, unfortunately, the victims would be unable to defend themselves, from the fact that all arms are sedulously kept from them. The slaves would run away in greater numbers than they do at present, would give us valuable information of the enemy, and would swell our ranks as soldiers, if permitted, and kill their rebel masters in the legal and honorable way of war. It is likely that Mr. Trollope, holding the black man in so little estimation, would doubt his abilities in this capacity. Fortunately for us, we can quote as evidence in our favor from General Hunter's late letter to Congress, which, for sagacity and elegant sarcasm, is unrivaled among American state papers. General Hunter, after stating that the 'loyal slaves, unlike their fugitive masters, welcome him, aid him, and supply him with food, labor, and information, working with remarkable industry,' concludes by stating that 'the experiment of arming the blacks, so far as I have made it, has been a complete and even marvelous success. They are sober, docile, attentive, and enthusiastic, displaying great natural capacity for acquiring the duties of the soldier. They are eager beyond all things to take the field and be led into action, and it is the unanimous opinion of the officers who have had charge of them, that in the peculiarities of this climate and country, they will prove invaluable auxiliaries, fully equal to the similar regiments so long and successfully used by the British authorities in the West-India Islands. In conclusion, I would say that it is my hope, there appearing no possibility of other reinforcements, owing to the exigencies of the campaign on the peninsula, to have organized by the end of next fall, and to be able to present to the Government, from forty-eight to fifty thousand of these hardy and devoted soldiers.'

Mr. Trollope declares that without the slaves the South would be a wilderness; he also says that the North is justified in the present war against the South, and although he doubts our ability to attain our ends in this war, he would be very glad if we were victorious. If these are his opinions, and if further, he considers slavery to be the cause of the war, then why in the name of common-sense does he not advocate that which would bring about our lasting success? He expresses his satisfaction at the probability of emancipation in Missouri, Kentucky, and Virginia, and yet rather than that abolition should triumph universally, he would have the Gulf States go off by themselves and sink into worse than South-American insignificance, a curse to themselves from the very reason of slavery. This, to our way of thinking, is vastly more cruel to the South than even the 'hell upon earth,' which, supposing it were possible, emancipation would create. A massacre could affect but one generation: such a state of things as Mr. Trollope expects to see would poison numberless generations. The Northern brain is gradually ridding itself of mental fog, begotten by Southern influences, and Mr. Trollope will not live to see the Gulf States sink into a moral Dismal Swamp. The day is not far distant when a God-fearing and justice-loving people will give these States their choice between Emancipation and death in their 'last ditch,' which we suppose to be the Gulf of Mexico. Repulses before Richmond only hasten this end. 'But Congress can not do this,' says Mr. Trollope. Has martial law no virtue? We object to the title, 'An Apology for the War,' which Mr. Trollope has given to one of his chapters; and with the best of motives, he takes great pains to prove to the English public how we of the North could not but fight the South, however losing a game it might be. No true American need beg pardon of Europe for this war, which is the only apology we can make to civilization for slavery. Mr. Trollope states the worn-out cant that the secessionists of the South have been aided and abetted by the fanatical abolitionism of the North. Of course they have: had there been no slavery, there would have been no abolitionists, and therefore no secessionists. Wherever there is a wrong, there are always persons fanatical enough to cry out against that wrong. In time, the few fanatics become the majority, and conquer the wrong, to the infinite disgust of the easy-going present, but to the gratitude of a better future. The Abolitionists gave birth to the Republican party, and of course the triumph of the Republican party was the father to secession; but we see no reason to mourn that it was so; rather do we thank God that the struggle has come in our day. We can not sympathize with Mr. Trollope when he says of the Bell and Everett party: 'Their express theory was this: that the question of slavery should not be touched. Their purpose was to crush agitation, and restore harmony by an impartial balance between the North and South: a fine purpose—the finest of all purposes, had it been practicable.' We suppose by this, that Mr. Trollope wishes such a state of things had been practicable. The impartial balance means the Crittenden Compromise, whose impartiality the North fails to see in any other light than a fond leaning to the South, giving it all territory South of a certain latitude, a latitude that never was intended by the Constitution. It seems to us that there can be no impartial balance between freedom and slavery. Every jury must be partial to the right, or they sin before God.

Mr. Trollope tells us that 'the South is seceding from the North because the two are not homogeneous. They have different instincts, different appetites, different morals, and a different culture. It is well for one man to say that slavery has caused the separation, and for another to say that slavery has not caused it. Each in so saying speaks the truth. Slavery has caused it, seeing that slavery is the great point on which the two have agreed to differ. But slavery has not caused it, seeing that other points of difference are to be found In every circumstance and feature of the two people. The North and the South must ever be dissimilar. In the North, labor will always be honorable, and because honorable, successful. In the South, labor has ever been servile—at least in some sense—and therefore dishonorable; and because dishonorable, has not, to itself, been successful.' Is not this arguing in a circle? The North is dissimilar to the South. Why? Because labor is honorable in the former, and dishonorable, because of its servility, in the latter. The servility removed, in what are the two dissimilar? One third of the Southern whites are related by marriage to the North; a second third are Northerners, and it is this last third that are most violent in their acts against and hatred of the North. They were born with our instincts and appetites, educated in the same morals, and received the same culture; and these men are no worse than some of their brothers who, though they have not emigrated to the South, have yet fattened upon cotton. The parents of Jefferson Davis belonged to Connecticut; Slidell is a New-Yorker; Benjamin is a Northerner; General Lovell is a disgrace to Massachusetts; so, too, is Albert Pike. It is utter nonsense to say that we are two people. Two interests have been at work—free labor and slave labor; and when the former triumphs, there will be no more straws split about two people, nor will the refrain of agriculture versus manufacture be sung. The South, especially Virginia, has untold wealth to be drained from her great water-power. New-England will not be alone in manufacturing, nor Pennsylvania in mining.

We think that Mr. Trollope fails to appreciate principle when he likens the conflict between the two sections of our country to a quarrel between Mr. and Mrs. Jones, in which a mutual friend (England) is, from the very nature of the case, obliged to maintain neutrality, leaving the matter to the tender care of Sir Creswell. There never yet existed a mutual friend who, however little he interfered with a matrimonial difference, did not, in sympathy and moral support, take violent sides with one of the combatants; and Mr. Trollope would be first in taking up the cudgels against private wrong. The North has never wished for physical aid from England; but does Mr. Trollope remember what Mrs. Browning has so nobly and humanely written? 'Non-intervention in the affairs of neighboring States is a high political virtue; but non-intervention does not mean passing by on the other side when your neighbor falls among thieves, or Phariseeism would recover it from Christianity.' England, the greatest of actual nations, had a part to act in our war, and that part a noble one. Not the part of physical intervention for the benefit of Lancashire and of a confederacy founded upon slavery, which both Earl Russell and Lord Palmerston inform the world will not take place 'at present.' Not the part of hypercriticism and misconstruction of Northern 'Orders,' and affectionate blindness to Southern atrocities. But such a part as was worthy of the nation, one of whose greatest glories is that it gave birth to a Clarkson, a Sharpe, and a Wilberforce. And England has much to answer for, in that she has been found wanting, not in the cause of the North, but in the cause of humanity. Had she not always told us that we were criminals of the deepest dye not to do what she had done in the West-Indies, had she not always held out to the world the beacon-light of emancipation, there could be little censure cast upon the British ermine; but having laid claim to so white and moral a robe, she subjects herself to the very proper indignation of the anti-slavery party which now governs the North.

Mr. Trollope confesses that British sympathy is with the South, and further writes: 'It seems to me that some of us never tire in abusing the Americans and calling them names, for having allowed themselves to be driven into this civil war. We tell them that they are fools and idiots; we speak of their doings as though there had been some plain course by which the war might have been avoided; and we throw it in their teeth that they have no capability for war,' etc., etc. Contact with the English abroad sent us home convinced of English animosity, and this was before the Trent affair. A literary woman writes to America: 'There is only one person to whom I can talk freely upon the affairs of your country. Here in England, they say I have lived so long in Italy that I have become an American.' We have had nothing but abuse from the English press always, excepting a few of the liberal journals. Mill and Bright and Cobden alone have been prominent in their expression of good-will to the North. And this is Abolition England! History will record, that at the time when America was convulsed by the inevitable struggle between Freedom and Slavery, England, actuated by selfish motives, withheld that moral support and righteous counsel which would have deprived the South of much aid and comfort, brought the war to a speedier conclusion, gained the grateful confidence of the anti-slavery North, and immeasurably aided the abolition of human slavery.

It may be said that we of the North have no intention of touching the 'institution,' and therefore England can not sympathize with us. Whatever the theory of the administration at Washington may have been, he is insane as well as blind who does not see what is its practical tendency. In the same length of time, this tendency would have been much farther on the road to right had the strong arm of England wielded the moral power which should belong to it. Mr. Trollope says: 'The complaint of Americans is, that they have received no sympathy from England; but it seems to me that a great nation should not require an expression of sympathy during its struggle. Sympathy is for the weak, not for the strong. When I hear two powerful men contending together in argument, I do not sympathize with him who has the best of it; but I watch the precision of his logic, and acknowledge the effects of his rhetoric. There has been a whining weakness in the complaints made by Americans against England, which has done more to lower them, as a people, in my judgment, than any other part of their conduct during the present crisis.' It is true that at the beginning of this war the North did show a whining weakness for English approbation, of which it is sincerely to be hoped we have been thoroughly cured. We paid our mother-land too high a compliment—we gave her credit for virtues which she does not possess—and the disappointment incurred thereby has been bitter in the extreme. We were not aware, however, that a sincere desire for sympathy was an American peculiarity. We have long labored under the delusion that the English, even, were very indignant with Brother Jonathan during the Crimean war, when he failed to furnish the quota of sympathy which our cousins considered was their due, but which we could not give to a debauched 'sick man' whom, for the good of civilization, we wished out of the world as quickly as possible. But England was 'strong;' why should she have desired sympathy? For, according to Mr. Trollope's creed, the weak alone ought to receive sympathy. It seems to be a matter entirely independent of right and wrong with Mr. Trollope. It is sufficient for a man to prove his case to be 'strong,' for Mr. Trollope to side with his opponent. Demonstrate your weakness, whether it be physical, moral, or mental, and Mr. Trollope will fight your battles for you. On this principle—which, we are told, is English—the exiled princes of Italy, especially the Neapolitan-Bourbon, the Pope, Austria, and of course the Southern confederacy, should find their warmest sympathizers among true Britons, and perhaps they do; but Mr. Trollope, in spite of his theory, is not one of them.

The emancipationist should not look to England for aid or comfort, but it will be none the worse for England that she has been false to her traditions. 'I confess,' wrote Mrs. Browning—dead now a year—'that I dream of the day when an English statesman shall arise with a heart too large for England, having courage, in the face of his countrymen, to assert of some suggested policy: 'This is good for your trade, this is necessary for your domination; but it will vex a people hard by, it will hurt a people farther off, it will profit nothing to the general humanity; therefore, away with it! it is not for you or for me.'' The justice of the poet yet reigns in heaven only; and dare we dream—we who, sick at heart, are weighed down by the craft and dishonesty of our public men—of the possibility of such a golden age?

On the subject of religion as well, we are much at variance with Mr. Trollope. Of course, it is to be expected that one who says, 'I love the name of State and Church, and believe that much of our English well-being has depended on it; I have made up my mind to think that union good, and am not to be turned away from that conviction;' it is to be expected, we repeat, that such an one should consider religion in the States 'rowdy.' Surely, we will not quarrel with Mr. Trollope for this opinion, however much we may regret it; as we consider it the glory of this country, that while we claim for our moral foundation a fervent belief in God and an abiding faith in the necessity of religion, our government pays no premium to hypocrisy by having fastened to its shirts one creed above all other creeds, made thereby more respectable and more fashionable. 'It is a part of their system,' Mr. Trollope continues, 'that religion shall be perfectly free, and that no man shall be in any way constrained in that matter,' (and he sees nothing to thank God for in this system of ours!) 'consequently, the question of a man's religion is regarded in a free-and-easy manner.' That which we have gladly dignified by the name of religious toleration, (not yet half as broad as it should and will be,) Mr. Trollope degrades by the epithet of 'free-and-easy.' This would better apply were ours the toleration of indifference, instead of being a toleration founded upon the unshaken belief that God has endowed every human being with a conscience whose sufficiency unto itself, in matters of religious faith, we have no right to question. And we are convinced that this experiment, with which we started, has been good for our growth of mind and soul, as well as for our growth as a nation. Even Mr. Trollope qualifies our 'rowdyism,' by saying that 'the nation is religious in its tendencies, and prone to acknowledge the goodness of God in all things.'

And now we have done with fault-finding. For all that we hereafter quote from Mr. Trollope's book, we at once express our thanks and sympathy. He is 'strong,' but he is also human, and likes sympathy.

More than true, if such a thing could be, is Mr. Trollope's comments upon American politicians. 'The corruption of the venal politicians of the nation stinks aloud in the nostrils of all men. It behoves the country to look to this. It is time now that she should do so. The people of the nation are educated and clever. The women are bright and beautiful. Her charity is profuse; her philanthropy is eager and true; her national ambition is noble and honest—honest in the cause of civilization. But she has soiled herself with political corruption, and has disgraced the cause of republican government by those whom she has placed in her high places. Let her look to it NOW. She is nobly ambitious of reputation throughout the earth; she desires to be called good as well as great; to be regarded not only as powerful, but also as beneficent She is creating an army; she is forging cannon, and preparing to build impregnable ships of war. But all these will fail to satisfy her pride, unless she can cleanse herself from that corruption by which her political democracy has debased itself. A politician should be a man worthy of all honor, in that he loves his country; and not one worthy of contempt, in that he robs his country.' Can we plead other than guilty, when even now a Senator of the United States stands convicted of a miserable betrayal of his office? Will America heed the voice of Europe, as well as of her best friends at home, before it is too late? Again writes Mr. Trollope: ''It is better to have little governors than great governors,' an American said to me once. 'It is our glory that we know how to live without having great men over us to rule us.' That glory, if ever it were a glory, has come to an end. It seems to me that all these troubles have come upon the States because they have not placed high men in high places.' Is there a thinking American who denies the truth of this? And of our code of honesty—that for which Englishmen are most to be commended—what is truly said of us? 'It is not by foreign voices, by English newspapers, or in French pamphlets, that the corruption of American politicians has been exposed, but by American voices and by the American press. It is to be heard on every side. Ministers of the Cabinet, Senators, Representatives, State Legislatures, officers of the army, officials of the navy, contractors of every grade—all who are presumed to touch, or to have the power of touching, public money, are thus accused.... The leaders of the rebellion are hated in the North. The names of Jefferson Davis, Cobb, Toombs, and Floyd, are mentioned with execration by the very children. This has sprung from a true and noble feeling; from a patriotic love of national greatness, and a hatred of those who, for small party purposes, have been willing to lessen the name of the United States. But, in addition to this, the names of those also should be execrated who have robbed their country when pretending to serve it; who have taken its wages in the days of its great struggle, and at the same time have filched from its coffers; who have undertaken the task of steering the ship through the storm, in order that their hands might be deep in the meal-tub and the bread-basket, and that they might stuff their own sacks with the ship's provisions. These are the men who must be loathed by the nation—whose fate must be held up as a warning to others—before good can come.' How long are the American people to allow this pool of iniquity to stagnate, and sap the vitals of the nation? How long, O Lord! how long?

On the subject of education, Mr. Trollope—though indulging in a little pleasantry on young girls who analyze Milton—does us full justice. 'The one matter in which, as far as my judgment goes, the people of the United States have excelled us Englishmen, so as to justify them in taking to themselves praise which we can not take to ourselves or refuse to them, is the matter of education.... The coachman who drives you, the man who mends your window, the boy who brings home your purchases, the girl who stitches your wife's dress—they all carry with them sure signs of education, and show it in every word they utter.' But much as Mr. Trollope admires our system of public schools, he does not see much to extol in the at least Western way of rearing children. 'I must protest that American babies are an unhappy race. They eat and drink just as they please; they are never punished; they are never banished, snubbed, and kept in the background, as children are kept with us; and yet they are wretched and uncomfortable. My heart has bled for them as I have heard them squalling, by the hour together, in agonies of discontent and dyspepsia.' This is the type of child found by Mr. Trollope on Western steamboats; and we agree with him that beef-steaks, with pickles, produce a bad type of child; and it is unnecessary to confess to Mr. Trollope what he already knows, that pertness and irreverence to parents are the great faults of American youth. No doubt the pickles have much to do with this state of things.

While awarding high praise to American women en masse, Mr. Trollope mourns over the condition of the Western women with whom he came in contact, and we are sorry to think that these specimens form the rule, though of course exceptions are very numerous. 'A Western American man is not a talking man. He will sit for hours over a stove, with his cigar in his mouth and his hat over his eyes, chewing the cud of reflection. A dozen will sit together in the same way, and there shall not be a dozen words spoken between them in an hour. With the women, one's chance of conversation is still worse. 'It seemed as though the cares of this world had been too much for them.... They were generally hard, dry, and melancholy. I am speaking, of course, of aged females, from five-and-twenty, perhaps, to thirty, who had long since given up the amusements and levities of life.' Mr. Trollope's malediction upon the women of New-York whom he met in the street-cars, is well merited, so far as many of them are concerned; but he should bear in mind the fact that these 'many' are foreigners, mostly uneducated natives of the British isles. Inexcusable as is the advantage which such women sometimes take of American gallantry, the spirit of this gallantry is none the less to be commended, and the grateful smile of thanks from American ladies is not so rare as Mr. Trollope imagines. Mr. Trollope wants the gallantry abolished; we hope that rude women may learn a better appreciation of this gallantry by its abolition in flagrant cases only. Had Mr. Trollope once 'learned the ways' of New-York stages, he would not have found them such vile conveyances; but we quite agree with him in advocating the introduction of cabs. In seeing nothing but vulgarity in Fifth Avenue, and a thirst for gold all over New-York City, we think Mr. Trollope has given way to prejudice. There is no city so generous in the spending of money as New-York. Art and literature find their best patrons in this much-abused Gotham; and it will not do for one who lives in a glass house to throw stones, for we are not the only nation of shop-keepers. We do not blame Mr. Trollope, however, for giving his love to Boston, and to the men and women of intellect who have homes in and about Boston.

We are of opinion that Mr. Trollope is too severe upon our hotels; for faulty though they be, they are established upon a vastly superior plan to those of any other country, if we are to believe our own experience and that of the majority of travelers. Mr. Trollope sees no use of a ladies' parlor; but Mr. Trollope would soon see its indispensability were he to travel as an unprotected female of limited means. On the matter of the Post-Office, however, he has both our ears; and much that he says of our government, and the need of a constitutional change in our Constitution, deserves attention—likewise what he says of colonization. We do elevate unworthy persons to the altar of heroism, and are stupid in our blatant eulogies. It is sincerely to be regretted that so honest a writer did not devote two separate chapters to the important subjects of drunkenness and artificial heat, which, had he known us better, he would have known were undermining the American physique. He does treat passingly of our hot-houses, but seems not to have faced the worse evil. Of our literature, and of our absorption of English literature, Mr. Trollope has spoken fully and well; and in his plea for a national copyright, he might have further argued its necessity, from the fact that American publishers will give no encouragement to unknown native writers, however clever, so long as they can steal the brains of Great Britain.

To conclude. We like Mr. Trollope's book, for we believe him when he says: 'I have endeavored to judge without prejudice, and to hear with honest ears, and to see with honest eyes.' We have the firmest faith in Mr. Trollope's honesty. We know he has written nothing that he does not conscientiously believe, and he has given unmistakable evidence of his good-will to this country. We are lost in amazement when he tells us: 'I know I shall never again be at Boston, and that I have said that about the Americans which would make me unwelcome as a guest if I were there.' Said what? We should be thin-skinned, indeed, did we take umbrage at a book written in the spirit of Mr. Trollope's. On the contrary, the Americans who are interested in it are agreeably disappointed in the verdict which he has given of them; and though they may not accept his political opinions, they are sensible enough to appreciate the right of each man to his honest convictions. Mr. Trollope, though he sees in our future not two, but three, confederacies, predicts a great destiny for the North. We can see but a union of all—a Union cemented by the triumph of freedom in the abolition of that which has been the taint upon the nation. If Mr. Trollope's prophecies are fulfilled, (and God forbid!) it will be because we have allowed the golden hour to escape. Pleased as we are with Mr. Trollope the writer—who has not failed to appreciate the self-sacrifice of Northern patriotism—Mr. Trollope the man has a far greater hold upon our heart; a hold which has been strengthened, rather than weakened, by his book. The friends of Mr. Trollope extend to him their cordial greeting, and Boston in particular will offer a hearty shake of the hand to the writer of North-America, whenever he chooses to take that hand again.

UP AND ACT

The man who is not convinced, by this time, that the Union has come to 'the bitter need,' must be hard to convince. For more than one year we have put off doing our utmost, and talked incessantly of the 'wants of the enemy.' We have demonstrated a thousand times that they wanted quinine and calomel, beef and brandy, with every other comfort, luxury, and necessary, and have ended by discovering that they have forced every man into their army; that they have, at all events, abundance of corn-meal, raised by the negroes whom Northern Conservatism has dreaded to free; that they are well supplied with arms from Abolition England, and that every day finds them more and more warlike and inured to war.

Time was, we are told, when a bold, 'radical push' would have prevented all this. Time was, when those who urged such vigorous and overwhelming measures—and we were among them—were denounced as insane and traitorous by the Northern Conservative press. Time was, when the Irishman's policy of capturing a horse in a hundred-acre lot, 'by surrounding him,' might have been advantageously exchanged for the more direct course of going at him. Time was, when there were very few troops in Richmond. All this when time—and very precious time—was.

Just now, time is—and very little time to lose, either. The rebels, it seems, can live on corn-meal and whisky as well under tents as they once did in cabins. They are building rams and 'iron-clads,' and very good ones. They have an immense army, and three or four millions of negroes to plant for it and feed it. Hundreds of thousands of acres of good corn-land are waving in the hot breezes of Dixie. These are facts of the strongest kind—so strong that we have actually been compelled to adopt some few of the 'radical and ruinous' measures advocated from the beginning by 'an insane and fanatical band of traitors,' for whose blood the New-York Herald and its weakly ape, the Boston Courier, have not yet ceased to howl or chatter. Negroes, it seems, are, after all, to be employed sometimes, and all the work is not to be put upon soldiers who, as the correspondent of the London Times has truly said, have endured disasters and sufferings caused by unpardonable neglect, such as no European troops would have borne without revolt. It is even thought by some hardy and very desperate 'radicals,' that negroes may be armed and made to fight for the Union; in fact, it is quite possible that, should the North succeed in resisting the South a year or two longer, or should we undergo a few more very great disasters, we may go so far as to believe what a great French writer has declared in a work on Military Art, that 'War is war, and he wages it best who injures his enemy most.' We are aware of the horror which this fanatical radical, and, of course, Abolitionist axiom, by a writer of the school of Napoleon, must inspire, and therefore qualify the assertion by the word 'may.' For to believe that the main props of the enemy are to be knocked away from under them, and that we are to fairly fight them in every way, involves a desperate and un-Christian state of mind to which no one should yield, and which would, in fact, be impious, nay, even un-democratic and un-conservative.

It is true that by 'throwing grass' at the enemy, as President Lincoln quaintly terms it, by the anaconda game, and above all, by constantly yelling, 'No nigger!' and 'Down with the Abolitionists!' we have contrived to lose some forty thousand good soldiers' lives by disease; to stand where we were, and to have myriads of men paralyzed and kept back from war just at the instant when their zeal was most needed. We beg our readers to seriously reflect on this last fact. There are numbers of essential and bold steps in this war, and against the enemy, which must, in the ordinary course of events, be taken, as for instance. General Hunter's policy of employing negroes, as General Jackson did. With such a step, honestly considered, no earthly politics whatever has any thing to do. Yet every one of these sheer necessities of war which a Napoleon would have grasped at the first, have been promptly opposed as radical, traitorous, and infernal, by those tories who are only waiting for the South to come in again to rush and lick its hands as of old. Every measure, from the first arming of troops down to the employment of blacks, has been fought by these 'reactionaries' savagely, step by step—we might add, in parenthesis, that it has been amusing to see how they 'ate dirt,' took back their words and praised these very measures, one by one, as soon as they saw them taken up by the Administration. The ecco la fica of Italian history was a small humiliation to that which the 'democratic' press presented when it glorified Lincoln's 'remuneration message,' and gilded the pill by declaring it (Heaven knows how!) a splendid triumph over Abolition—that same remuneration doctrine which, when urged in the New-York Tribune, and in these pages, had been reviled as fearfully 'abolition!'

However, all these conservative attacks in succession on every measure which any one could see would become necessities from a merely military point of view, have had their inevitable result: they have got into the West, and have aided Secession, as in many cases they were intended to do. The plain, blunt man, seeing what must be adopted if the war is to be carried on in earnest, and yet hearing that these inevitable expediencies were all 'abolition,' became confused and disheartened. So that it is as true as Gospel, that in the West, where 'Abolition' has kept one man back from the Union, 'Conservatism' has kept ten. And the proof may be found that while in the West, as in the East, the better educated, more intelligent, and more energetic minds, have at once comprehended the necessities of the war, and dared the whole, 'call it Abolition or not,' the blinder and more illiterate, who were afraid of being 'called' Abolitionists, have kept back, or remained by Secession altogether.

As we write, a striking proof of our news comes before us in a remark in an influential and able Western conservative journal, the Nebraska News, The remark in question is to the effect that the proposition made by us in The Continental Monthly, to partition the confiscated real estate of the South among the soldiers of the Federal army is nothing more nor less than 'a bribe for patriotism.' That is the word.

Now, politics apart—abolition or no abolition—we presume there are not ten rational men in the country who believe that the proposition to colonize Texas in particular, with free labor, or to settle free Northern soldiers in the cotton country of the South, is other than judicious and common-sensible. If it will make our soldiers fight any better, it certainly is not very much to be deprecated. To settle disbanded volunteers in the South so as to gradually drive away slave labor by the superior value of free labor on lands confiscated or public, is certainly not a very reprehensible proposition. But it originated, as all the more advanced political proposals of the day do, with men who favor Emancipation, present or prospective, and therefore it must be cried down! The worst possible construction is put upon it. It is 'a bribe for patriotism,' and must not be thought of. 'Better lose the victory,' says Conservatism, 'rather than inspire the zeal of our soldiers by offering any tangible reward!' We beg our thousands of readers in the army to note this. Since we first proposed in these columns to properly reward the army by giving to each man his share of cotton-land, [we did not even go so far as to insist that the land should absolutely be confiscated, knowing well, and declaring, that Texas contains public land enough for this purpose,] the democratic-conservative-pro-slavery press, especially of the West, has attacked the scheme with unwonted vigor. For the West understands the strength latent in this proposal better than the East; it knows what can be done when free Northern vigor goes to planting and town-building; it 'knows how the thing is done;' it 'has been there,' and sees in our 'bribe for patriotism' the most deadly blow ever struck at Southern Aristocracy. Consequently those men who abuse Emancipation in its every form, violently oppose our proposal to give the army such reward as their services merit, and such as their residence in the South renders peculiarly fit. It is 'a bribe;' it is extravagant; it—yes—it is Abolition! The army is respectfully requested not to think of settling in the South, but to hobble back to alms-houses in order that Democracy may carry its elections and settle down in custom-houses and other snug retreats.

And what do the anti-energy, anti-action, anti-contraband-digging, anti-every thing practical and go-ahead in the war gentlemen propose to give the soldier in exchange for his cotton-land? Let the soldier examine coolly, if he can, the next bullet-wound in his leg. He will perceive a puncture which will probably, when traced around the edge and carefully copied, present that circular form generally assigned to a—cipher. This represents, we believe, with tolerable accuracy, what the anti-actionists and reactionists propose to give the soldier as a recompense for that leg. For so truly as we live, so true is it that there is not one anti-Emancipationist in the North who is not opposed to settling the army or any portion of it in the South, simply because to do any thing which may in any way interfere with 'the Institution,' or jar Southern aristocracy, forms no part of their platform!

We believe this to be as plain a fact as was ever yet submitted to living man.

Now, are we to go to work in earnest, to boldly grasp at every means of honorable warfare, as France or England would do in our case, and overwhelm the South, or are we going to let it alone? Are we, for years to come, to slowly fight our way from one small war-expediency to another, as it may please the mongrel puppies of Democracy to gradually get their eyes opened or not? Are we to arm the blacks by and by, or wait till they shall have planted another corn-crop for the enemy? Shall we inspire the soldiers by promising them cotton-lands now, or wait till we get to the street of By and By, which leads to the house of Never? Would we like to have our victory now, or wait till we get it?

Up and act! We are waiting for grass to grow while the horse is starving! Let the Administration no longer hold back, for lo! the people are ready and willing, and one grasp at a fiercely brave, decided policy would send a roar of approval from ocean to ocean. One tenth part of the wild desire to adopt instant and energetic measures which is now struggling into life among the people, would, if transferred to their leaders, send opposition, North and South, howling to Hades. We find the irrepressible discontent gathering around like a thunder-storm. It reaches us in letters. We know that it is growing tremendously in the army—the discontent which demands a bold policy, active measures, and one great overwhelming blow. Every woman cries for it—it is everywhere! Mr. Lincoln, you have waited for the people, and we tell you that the people are now ready. The three hundred thousand volunteers are coming bravely on; but, we tell you, Draft! That's the thing. The very word has already sent a chill through the South. They have seen what can be done by bold, overwhelming military measures; by driving every man into arms; by being headlong and fearless; and know that it has put them at once on equality with us—they, the half minority! And they know, too, that when WE once begin the 'big game,' all will be up with them. We have more than twice as many men here, and their own blacks are but a broken reed. When we begin to draft, however, war will begin in earnest. They dread that drafting far more than volunteering. They know by experience, what we have not as yet learned, that drafting contains many strange secrets of success. It is a bold conscriptive measure, and indicates serious strength and the consciousness of strength in government. Our government has hitherto lain half-asleep, half-awake, a great, good-natured giant, now and then rolling over and crushing some of the rats running over his bed, and now and then getting very badly bitten. Wake up, Giant Samuel, all in the morning early! The rats are coming down on thee, old friend, not by scores, but by tens of thousands! Jump up, my jolly giant! for verily, things begin to look serious. You must play the Wide-Awake game now; grasp your stick, knock them right and left; call in the celebrated dog Halleck, who can kill his thousand rats an hour, and cry to Sambo to carry out the dead and bury them! It's rats now, friend Samuel, if it ever was!

Can not the North play the entire game, and shake out the bag, as well as the South? They have bundled out every man and dollar, dog, cat, and tenpenny nail into the war, and done it gloriously. They have stopped at nothing, feared nothing, believed in nothing but victory. Now let the North step out! Life and wife, lands and kin, will be of small value if we are to lose this battle and become the citizens of a broken country, going backward instead of forward—a country with a past, but no future. Better draw every man into the army, and leave the women to hoe and reap, ere we come to that. Draft, Abraham Lincoln—draft, in God's name! Let us have one rousing, tremendous pull at victory! Send out such armies as never were seen before. The West has grain enough to feed them, and tide what may betide, you can arm them. Let us try what WE can do when it comes to the last emergency.

When we arise in our full strength, England and France and the South will be as gnats in the flame before us. And there is no time to lose. France is 'tinkering away' at Mexico; foreign cannon are to pass from Mexico into the South; our foe is considering the aggressive policy. Abraham Lincoln, the time has come! Canada is to attack from the North, and France from Mexico. Your three hundred thousand are a trifle; draw out your million; draw the last man who can bear arms—and let it be done quickly! This is your policy. Let the blows rain thick and fast. Hurrah! Uncle Samuel—the rats are running! Strike quick, though—very quick—and you will be saved!

REMINISCENCES OF ANDREW JACKSON