The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 54, April, 1862

Not only is rebellion to be put down, therefore, but to be kept from coming up again. It is obvious to every one, not thoroughly blinded by party, how it did come up. The Gulf States were coaxed out, the Border States were bullied or conjured out. A few leading men, who had made the science of political management their own, got the control of the popular mind. One great secret of their success was their constant assumption that what was to be done had been done already. It is the very art of the veteran seducer, who ever persuades his victim that return is impossible, in order that he may actually make it so. North Carolina, as one expressively said, "found herself out of the Union she hardly knew how." Virginia was dragged out. Tennessee was forced out. Missouri was declared out. Kentucky was all but out. Maryland hung in the crisis of life and death under the guns of Fort McHenry. In South Carolina alone can it be said that any fair expression of the popular will was on the Secession side. The Rebellion was the work of a governing class, all whose ideas and hopes were the aggrandizement of their own order. Terrorism opened the way, reckless lying made the game sure. If any one is inclined to doubt this, let him look at the sway which Robespierre and his few associates exercised in Paris. Some seventy executions delivered that great city from its nightmare agony of months. A dozen resolute, united men, with arms and without scruples, could seize almost any New England village for a time, provided they knew just what they wanted to do. Decision and energy are master-keys to almost most all doors not fortified by Hobbs's patent locks. A party of tipsy Americans one night stormed a Parisian guard-house, disarmed the sentry, and sent the guard flying in desperate fear, thinking that a general émente was in progress. Now one issue of the Rebellion must be to put down, not only this governing class, but also the system from which it springs. We have no such class at the North. We can have no such class. The very collision of interests, the rivalries of trade, the thousand-and-one social relations, all neutralize each other, are checks and counterchecks, which, like the particles in a vessel of water, always tend toward the level of an equilibrium. Two men meet in their lodge as Odd-Fellows, but they are opponents on "town-meeting day." Two partners in business are, one the most bitter of Calvinists, and the other the most progressive of Universalists. Dr. A. and the Rev. Mr. B. pull asunder the men whom 'Change unites. But with the Southerner of the governing class it is not so. One sympathy, more potent than any other can be, leagues them all. All are masters of the Helot race upon which their success and station are built. It is a living relation, the most powerful and vital which can bind men together, that sense of authority borne by the few over the many.

The Norman barons after the Conquest, the Spanish conquerors in Mexico and Peru, the Englishmen of the days of Clive and Hastings in India, are all examples of that thorough concentration of strength which must arise in the conflicts of races. Republics have fallen through their standing armies. The proprietary class at the South was the most dangerous of standing armies, for it was disciplined to the use of power night and day. The overthrow of the Rebellion will to a great degree ruin this class. But since it is one not founded on birth or culture, but simply on white blood and circumstance, (for no Secessionist is so fierce as your converted Northerner,) it cannot fall like the Norman nobility in the Wars of the Roses, or waste by operation of climate like the masters of Mexico and Hindostan. It renews itself whenever it touches slave-soil. That gives it life. We contend that Government must for its own preservation go to the root of the matter. And we cannot see that there is any Constitutional difficulty. There are probably not ten slave-proprietors in the South whom it has not the right to arrest, try, and hang, for high-treason. Of course, every one can see the practical difficulty, as well as the manifest folly, of doing this. But if it has that right toward these individuals, it certainly may say, by Act of Congress, if we choose, that it will not waive it except upon conditions which shall secure it from any further trouble. It seems to us fully within our power. And we will use an illustration that may help to show what we mean. President Lincoln has no right to require of any citizen of the United States that he take the temperance-pledge. But suppose a murderer who has taken life in a fit of drunkenness applies for pardon to the Executive. The Executive, Governor or President, as the case may be, may surely then impose that condition before commuting the sentence or releasing the prisoner. Now the Nation stands toward the Rebels in a like attitude. It may be good policy to take them back as fast as they submit, it may be Christian magnanimity to make the way as easy as possible for their return, but they have no right to come back to anything but a prison and hard labor for life. Many of them have trebly forfeited their lives,—as traitors, as deserters from the naval and military service, and as paroled prisoners who have broken their parole. And therefore we say, since we cannot deal with all the individuals, we must deal with the masses, and that in their corporate capacity. If South Carolina is a sovereign State, is in the Union as a feudal chief in his king's court, with power to carry from York to Lancaster and from Lancaster to York his subject vassals, then South Carolina has dared the hazard of rebellion, and her political head is forfeit.

It is next to be asked, what these conditions are to be. And that is not to be answered in a breath. That they can have but one result, emancipation, is a foregone conclusion; but the mode of reaching it is not so easily determined. A cotton-loaded ship took fire at sea. It would have been easy to pump in water enough to drown the fire. But the captain said, "No," for that would swell the bales to such an extent as to open every seam and start every timber. So with, the ship now carrying King Cotton: you may indeed quench the fire, but you may possibly turn the ship inside out into the bargain.

But something we have a right to insist on. We have it, over and above the Constitutional right shown just now, upon the broad principle of necessity. Slavery has proved itself a nuisance. Just as we say to the owner of a bone-boiling establishment, "You poison the air; we cannot live here; you must go farther off,"—and if a fever break out which can be clearly traced to that source, we say it emphatically: so now Slavery having proved itself pestilential, we say, "March!"

We are not disposed, à la Staten Island, to burn down our yellow-feverish neighbor's house. We will give everybody time to pack up. We will make up a little purse for any specially hard case which the removal may show. But stay and be plague-stricken we will no longer; nor are we disposed to spend our whole income in burning sulphur, saltpetre, and charcoal to keep out infection. And certainly, when by neglect to pay ground-rent, or other illegality, the owner of our nuisance has forfeited his right to stay, no mortal can blame us for taking the strictest and most decisive steps known to the law to remove him.

AGNES OF SORRENTO

CHAPTER XXVII

THE SAINT'S REST

Agnes entered the city of Rome in a trance of enthusiastic emotion, almost such as one might imagine in a soul entering the heavenly Jerusalem above. To her exalted ideas she was approaching not only the ground hallowed by the blood of apostles and martyrs, not merely the tombs of the faithful, but the visible "general assembly and church of the first-born which are written in heaven." Here reigned the appointed representative of Jesus,—and she imagined a benignant image of a prince clothed with honor and splendor, who was yet the righter of all wrongs, the redresser of all injuries, the friend and succorer of the poor and needy; and she was firm in a secret purpose to go to this great and benignant father, and on her knees entreat him to forgive the sins of her lover, and remove the excommunication that threatened at every moment his eternal salvation. For she trembled to think of it,—a sudden accident, a thrust of a dagger, a fall from his horse might put him forever beyond the pale of repentance,—he might die unforgiven, and sink to eternal pain.

If any should wonder that a Christian soul could preserve within itself an image so ignorantly fair, in such an age, when the worldliness and corruption in the Papal chair were obtruded by a thousand incidental manifestations, and were alluded to in all the calculations of simple common people, who looked at facts with a mere view to the guidance of their daily conduct, it is necessary to remember the nature of Agnes's religious training, and the absolute renunciation of all individual reasoning which from infancy had been laid down before her as the first and indispensable prerequisite of spiritual progress. To believe,—to believe utterly and blindly,—not only without evidence, but against evidence,—to reject the testimony even of her senses, when set against the simple affirmation of her superiors,—had been the beginning, middle, and end of her religious instruction. When a doubt assailed her mind on any point, she had been taught to retire within herself and repeat a prayer; and in this way her mental eye had formed the habit of closing to anything that might shake her faith as quickly as the physical eye closes at a threatened blow. Then, as she was of a poetic and ideal nature, entirely differing from the mass of those with whom she associated, she had formed that habit of abstraction and mental reverie which prevented her hearing or perceiving the true sense of a great deal that went on around her. The conversations that commonly were carried on in her presence had for her so little interest that she scarcely heard them. The world in which she moved was a glorified world,—wherein, to be sure, the forms of every-day life appeared, but appeared as different from what they were in reality as the old mouldering daylight view of Rome is from the warm translucent glory of its evening transfiguration.

So in her quiet, silent heart she nursed this beautiful hope of finding in Rome the earthly image of her Saviour's home above, of finding in the head of the Church the real image of her Redeemer,—the friend to whom the poorest and lowliest may pour out their souls with as much freedom as the highest and noblest. The spiritual directors who had formed the mind of Agnes in her early days had been persons in the same manner taught to move in an ideal world of faith. The Mother Theresa had never seen the realities of life, and supposed the Church on earth to be all that the fondest visions of human longing could paint it. The hard, energetic, prose experience of old Jocunda, and the downright way with which she sometimes spoke of things as a trooper's wife must have seen them, were repressed and hushed, down, as the imperfect faith of a half-reclaimed worldling,—they could not be allowed to awaken her from the sweetness of so blissful a dream. In like manner, when Lorenzo Sforza became Father Francesco, he strove with earnest prayer to bury his gift of individual reason in the same grave with his family name and worldly experience. As to all that transpired in the real world, he wrapped himself in a mantle of imperturbable silence; the intrigues of popes and cardinals, once well known to him, sank away as a forbidden dream; and by some metaphysical process of imaginative devotion he enthroned God in the place of the dominant powers, and taught himself to receive all that came from them in uninquiring submission, as proceeding from unerring wisdom. Though he had begun his spiritual life under the impulse of Savonarola, yet so perfect had been his isolation from all tidings of what transpired in the external world that the conflict which was going on between that distinguished man and the Papal hierarchy never reached his ear. He sought and aimed as much as possible to make his soul like the soul of one dead, which adores and worships in ideal space, and forgets forever the scenes and relations of earth; and he had so long contemplated Rome under the celestial aspects of his faith, that, though the shock of his first confession there had been painful, still it was insufficient to shake his faith. It had been God's will, he thought, that where he looked for aid he should meet only confusion, and he bowed to the inscrutable will, and blindly adored the mysterious revelation. If such could be the submission and the faith of a strong and experienced man, who can wonder at the enthusiastic illusions of an innocent, trustful child?

Agnes and her grandmother entered the city of Rome just as the twilight had faded into night; and though Agnes, full of faith and enthusiasm, was longing to begin immediately the ecstatic vision of shrines and holy places, old Elsie commanded her not to think of anything further that night. They proceeded, therefore, with several other pilgrims who had entered the city, to a church specially set apart for their reception, connected with which were large dormitories and a religious order whose business was to receive and wait upon them, and to see that all their wants were supplied. This religious foundation is one of the oldest in Rome; and it is esteemed a work of especial merit and sanctity among the citizens to associate themselves temporarily in these labors in Holy Week. Even princes and princesses come, humble and lowly, mingling with those of common degree, and all, calling each other brother and sister, vie in kind attentions to these guests of the Church.

When Agnes and Elsie arrived, several of these volunteer assistants were in waiting. Agnes was remarked among all the rest of the company for her peculiar beauty and the rapt enthusiastic expression of her face.

Almost immediately on their entrance into the reception-hall connected with the church, they seemed to attract the attention of a tall lady dressed in deep mourning, and accompanied by a female servant, with whom she was conversing on those terms of intimacy which showed confidential relations between the two.

"See!" she said, "my Mona, what a heavenly face is there!—that sweet child has certainly the light of grace shining through her. My heart warms to her."

"Indeed," said the old servant, looking across, "and well it may,—dear lamb come so far! But, Holy Virgin, how my head swims! How strange!—that child reminds me of some one. My Lady, perhaps, may think of some one whom she looks like."

"Mona, you say true. I have the same strange impression that I have seen a face like hers, but who or where I cannot say."

"What would my Lady say, if I said it was our dear Prince?—God rest his soul!"

"Mona, it is so,—yes," added the lady, looking more intently,—"how singular!—the very traits of our house in a peasant-girl! She is of Sorrento, I judge, by her costume,—what a pretty one it is! That old woman is her mother, perhaps. I must choose her for my care,—and, Mona, you shall wait on her mother."

So saying, the Princess Paulina crossed the hall, and, bending affably over Agnes, took her hand and kissed her, saying,—

"Welcome, my dear little sister, to the house of our Father!"

Agnes looked up with strange, wondering eyes into the face that was bent to hers. It was sallow and sunken, with deep lines of ill-health and sorrow, but the features were noble, and must once have been, beautiful; the whole action, voice, and manner were dignified and impressive. Instinctively she felt that the lady was of superior birth and breeding to any with whom she had been in the habit of associating.

"Come with me," said the lady; "and this—your mother"—she added.

"She is my grandmother," said Agnes.

"Well, then, your grandmother, sweet child, shall be attended by my good sister Mona here."

The Princess Paulina drew the hand of Agnes through her arm, and, laying her hand affectionately on it, looked down and smiled tenderly on her.

"Are you very tired, my dear?"

"Oh, no! no!" said Agnes,—"I am so happy, so blessed to be here!"

"You have travelled a long way?"

"Yes, from Sorrento; but I am used to walking,—I did not feel it to be long,—my heart kept me up,—I wanted to come home so much."

"Home?" said the Princess.

"Yes, to my soul's home,—the house of our dear Father the Pope."

The Princess started, and looked incredulously down for a moment; then noticing the confiding, whole-hearted air of the child, she sighed and was silent.

"Come with me above," she said, "and let me attend a little to your comfort."

"How good you are, dear lady!" said Agnes.

"I am not good, my child,—I am only your unworthy sister in Christ"; and as the lady spoke, she opened the door into a room where were a number of other female pilgrims seated around the wall, each attended by a person whose peculiar care she seemed to be.

At the feet of each was a vessel of water, and when the seats were all full, a cardinal in robes of office entered, and began reading prayers. Each lady present, kneeling at the feet of her chosen pilgrim, divested them carefully of their worn and travel-soiled shoes and stockings, and proceeded to wash them. It was not a mere rose-water ceremony, but a good hearty washing of feet that for the most part had great need of the ablution. While this service was going on, the cardinal read from the Gospel how a Greater than they all had washed the feet of His disciples, and said, "If I, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, ye also ought to wash one another's feet." Then all repeated in concert the Lord's Prayer, while each humbly kissed the feet she had washed, and proceeded to replace the worn and travel-soiled shoes and stockings with new and strong ones, the gift of Christian love. Each lady then led her charge into a room where tables were spread with a plain and wholesome repast of all such articles of food as the season of Lent allowed. Each placed her protégée at table, and carefully attended to all her wants at the supper, and afterwards dormitories were opened for their repose.

The Princess Paulina performed all these offices for Agnes with a tender earnestness which won upon her heart. The young girl thought herself indeed in that blessed society of which she had dreamed, where the high-born and the rich become through Christ's love the servants of the poor and lowly,—and through all the services she sat in a sort of dream of rapture. How lovely this reception into the Holy City! how sweet thus to be taken to the arms of the great Christian family, bound together in the charity which is the bond of perfectness!

"Please tell me, dear lady," said Agnes, after supper, "who is that holy man that prayed with us?"

"Oh, he—he is the Cardinal Capello," said the Princess.

"I should like to have spoken with him," said Agnes.

"Why, my child?"

"I wanted to ask him when and how I could get speech with our dear Father the Pope,—for there is somewhat on my mind that I would lay before him."

"My poor little sister," said the Princess, much perplexed, "you do not understand things. What you speak of is impossible. The Pope is a great king."

"I know he is," said Agnes,—"and so is our Lord Jesus,—but every soul may come to him."

"I cannot explain to you now," said the Princess,—"there is not time to-night. But I shall see you again. I will send for you to come to my house, and there talk with you about many things which you need to know. Meanwhile, promise me, dear child, not to try to do anything of the kind you spoke of until I have talked with you."

"Well, I will not," said Agnes, with a glance of docile affection, kissing the hand of the Princess.

The action was so pretty,—the great, soft, dark eyes looked so fawn-like and confiding in their innocent tenderness, that the lady seemed much moved.

"Our dear Mother bless thee, child!" she said, laying her hand on her head, and stooping to kiss her forehead.

She left her at the door of the dormitory.