The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862

It was wholly impossible for the majority to make any satisfactory concessions to a minority infatuated with such ideas. Compromise was impracticable, so long as the rebellious States made the perpetuity of slavery and the predominance of its power an indispensable condition of any arrangement. Their demands were forever inadmissible so long as they remained in the Union; and to permit them to effect their purposes as an independent confederacy, was equally out of the question. There is no longer any division of sentiment on this point, whatever doubts may have been expressed in the beginning. Separation of the States would be disastrous and fatal to all the fragmentary governments which would take the place of this majestic Union. The nation instinctively feels that its unity is its salvation—that disunion will be destructive of all its long-cherished and glorious hopes. Its permanent peace, its prosperity and progress, its greatness, its honor, and its influence among civilized nations—all depend on its unity. These, which are the glory of our country to every patriotic heart, were the stumbling blocks to the conspirators. Slavery was ambitious and discontented with its appointed lot; it was determined; it rushed headlong to its fatal purpose. The nation stood in its path, and would not, could not get out of the way. This is the central fact of the whole controversy. National unity is on the one side—the disintegration and anarchy which slavery demands, are on the other. These are the contending forces; they are engaged in mortal combat, and one or the other must be utterly overthrown and destroyed. Slavery must succumb and consent to disappear, or the Union of our fathers must go down in the dust, never again to rise.

Can the enemies of the United States, at home or abroad, suppose that these vital questions can ever he yielded? That the nation can voluntarily abdicate its authority, confess the failure of its work for three quarters of a century; permit all the purposes of its creation to be utterly thwarted, and tamely and basely surrender all those hopes of a glorious destiny, which we have ever been taught to cherish as the goal of our unexampled freedom? The Southern people have been the sport of many delusions and infatuations; but the belief of these incredible and impossible suppositions, is the crowning folly of them all. These restless and daring men occupied the fairest region of the globe, with a virtual monopoly of the cotton culture. The unexampled increase of the cotton trade and manufacture, if it had not filled their coffers with unbounded wealth, had at least given them lavish returns for the labor of their slaves and enabled them to live in unlimited profusion. That under such a system they should have little provident care, but should indulge unbounded confidence in the future, was natural enough, for they conceived their prosperity, which cost them so little labor or anxiety, to be in its nature permanent. When, therefore, they saw gradually approaching the certain downfall of their power, they could not understand that this was the result of natural causes, but attributed it to the malignant enmity of the Government. A social organization, so agreeable, so full of pleasures and advantages, conferring not only ease and luxury, but also station and authority, must necessarily be right in itself, and worthy of every effort and every sacrifice to perpetuate it. What was the Government of the United States, that it should presume to erect itself as an obstacle to the progress of this rich and powerful organization? Was not the whole fabric of human industry dependent on it, and would not foreign nations be compelled by the very helplessness of their starving people to sustain and defend it? Why should there be anything sacred in the institutions of the country, when they evidently tended, by their spirit and operation, to overthrow the power of slavery? Washington was weak, with all his goodness; Jefferson was a demagogue; Madison had not forecast enough to see the necessary results of his political combinations. We have grown wiser; then let us sweep away the obstacles which were placed in our path by the weakness and folly of our deluded forefathers. Let us prostrate the clumsy fabric which they constructed, since the Yankees have taken possession of it, and are working it for the benefit of Irish and German immigrants and their descendants, and not for that of African traders and negro masters. By some terrible fatality, it was the misfortune of the Southern leaders to believe these delusions. They have gone so far as to act upon them, and have seduced their people into fatal coöperation; and these are now reaping the bloody fruits of an error so profound and awful.

The rebellious States not only thought it practicable to overthrow the National Government; they, doubtless, also held that result necessary to their safety and success. This followed as a logical conclusion from their established dogma that the slavery of the laboring class is the only firm foundation of social order. They convinced themselves that white men could not perform the labor necessary on cotton and sugar plantations. The negro alone was capable of standing the fierce rays of the Southern sun, and of successfully resisting the deadly malaria which prevails in that region. The Southern people firmly believed this doctrine, although their very eyes, in all parts of their territory, except perhaps in the rice fields of South Carolina and Georgia, thousands of white men were and are daily occupied in this very work. So remarkable a delusion, contradicted by their own daily experience, is by no means uncommon under similar circumstances. When the passions of men are aroused and their interests, real or imaginary, involved, they seldom comprehend the true significance, nor do they stop to estimate deliberately the actual conditions, of what is going on around them. Much less do they understand the character and tendency of great social movements, in which they themselves are actively engaged. The strongest intellects, in such circumstances, do not often escape the prevailing prejudices and delusions. A sort of common moral atmosphere pervades the whole society; opinions become homogeneous; and even the worst abuses, sanctioned by time and by universal custom, lose all their enormity, and command the support and approval even of good men. Palpable errors of fact, and, indeed, every available sophistry in argument, have been adopted by the Southern men to sustain the system of slavery.

The deluded victims of these false ideas could not conceive a different organization of labor as possible for them. It was perhaps even natural for them to consider the opposite system in the Northern States, as hostile to their interests and dangerous to their peculiar property in labor. Nor were they in fact mistaken: not that the Northern social system need have interfered violently to overthrow their institutions; but there was an instinctive feeling that the two could not exist together and flourish in the same community. It was obscurely felt that one must give way before the other, whether peacefully or violently, and it was impossible to doubt which of the two was destined to succumb, under the gradual but inevitable operation of our established political forms and principles. Under the dominion of excited and unreasoning prejudices, the Southern mind could see no distinction between the necessary and irresistible operation of principles and the intentional hostility of their hated rivals. Thus, with a fixed conviction of the inevitable end of their system under the Constitution, it was vainly expected to avoid that unwelcome fate, by destroying the Government of the United States, which had been deliberately created by its founders with a view to the ultimate extinction of slavery.

But, alas! this expedient has proved to be a fatal error—none more fatal has ever misled and ruined a prosperous and gallant people. Instead of overthrowing the Government—a consummation never to be admitted or even thought of, with any toleration, for a single moment—they will only bring the cherished object of their bloody sacrifices to a sudden and disastrous end. Slavery never could have had—never ought to have had any better security than was afforded by the Constitution of this country, administered fairly, as it always has been, if not with evident partiality, toward this exacting interest. Take away from it the support of the Constitution, and, under any circumstances, it would most assuredly fall. But the Government assaulted, in the interest of slavery, for the increase and perpetuity of slavery—that presents an emergency which admits of no hesitation, and in which those who have been most tolerant toward the system, and most ready to yield its unreasonable exactions to save the Government, will be the first to strike it down for the same end. The nation must survive; its enemies must succumb or perish.

Can any one deny that the Federal Government was compelled to take up the gage of battle which the rebels had so vauntingly thrown down? Not merely the interests of civil authority and order, but the preponderance of freedom, and the claims of humanity on this continent, required the most determined resistance to be made, and forbade the possibility of quietly surrendering the destinies of the nation into the hands of the traitors who sought to destroy it, What a spectacle of imbecility and miserable failure in the hour of great peril would have been presented to the indignant world, if, in this great crisis, the national authorities had been so far beneath the occasion as to have declined the proffered contest and basely betrayed their trust, at the first demand of the seceding States! The everlasting scorn of mankind would have overwhelmed and blasted the dastard and degenerate race, who would thus have sacrificed the highest and most sacred interests of humanity. Rather than this, welcome the civil war, with all its sacrifices! Welcome privations, labors, taxes, wounds, death, and all the nameless horrors that swarm along the red path of civil strife! Thousands of precious lives and billions of treasure have already been expended, and yet no patriotic heart thinks of turning back from the battle field, until the Union established by our fathers shall be restored to its integrity.

Compelled to admit the conclusions already stated, let us not do injustice even to the men who are prominent in this iniquitous rebellion. The most difficult of all moral problems is to determine how far individual agency can control social or political events, and what degree of responsibility attaches to those who have been apparently influential in producing disastrous results. An impartial study of history will serve to establish the truth that prominent men who, in any age, may seem to have produced great changes by their individual will, were merely the instruments of society by which irresistible tendencies were carried out to their necessary ends. The very conceptions of such men are the offspring of their times, and in order that they should have power to accomplish their designs, the great social forces of the community must be at their disposal, ready and inclined to perform the work. A great rock or a mighty glacier may be so balanced at the mountain top, that a small force—the sound of a trumpet, a mere breath of air—may dislodge it, and cause it to descend, carrying destruction into the valley. But the force of gravitation is necessary to bring it down and give it the impetus of ruin. So the might of a great people may be poised on some lofty pinnacle of human destiny; but unless there he involved in the existing sentiments and convictions, the situation and surroundings of that people, the elements of force and action, for good or evil, no individual agency and no combination of men can impart the power which they lack. All that was required among the Southern people, for the initiation of this gigantic rebellion, was some universal animating idea, capable of binding them together in unanimous accord, imparting the necessary force and velocity in the direction of treason, when started and impelled by the efforts of their leading men. Slavery was just such a principle; it was the gravitating power which hurled them down the precipice, and gave the tremendous impetus of ruin which they have exerted in their awful descent. But, in truth, this mischievous power has been accumulating ever since the Government was founded. It grew out of the antecedents of existing society; and the present generation is not wholly responsible for it. The misfortunes of our fathers, their omissions and errors as well as ours, have left this fatal legacy to descend into our hands. We may not have dealt with it wisely, but assuredly the framers of the Constitution did not intend slavery to be perpetual, nor did they provide for it the power to overthrow the Government.

ON GUARD

In the black terror-night,
On yon mist-shrouded hill,
Slowly, with footstep light,
Stealthy, and grim, and still,
Like ghost in winding sheet
Risen at midnight bell,
Over his lonely beat
Marches the sentinel!

In storm-defying cloak—
Hand on his trusty gun—
Heart, like a heart of oak—
Eye, never-setting sun;
Speaks but the challenge-shout,
All foes without the line,
Heeds but, to solve the doubt,
Watchword and countersign.

Camp-ward, the watchfires gleam
Beacon-like in the gloom;
Round them his comrades dream
Pictures of youth and home.
While in his heart the bright
Hope-fires shine everywhere,
In love's enchanting light
Memory lies dreaming there.

Faint, through the silence come
From the foes' grim array,
Growl of impatient dram
Eager for morrow's fray;
Echo of song and shout,
Curse and carousal glee,
As in a fiendish rout
Demons at revelry.

Close, in the gloomy shade—
Danger lurks ever nigh—
Grasping his dagger-blade
Crouches th' assassin spy;
Shrinks at the guardman's tread,
Quails 'fore his gleaming eyes,
Creeps back with baffled hate,
Cursing his cowardice.

Naught can beguile his bold
Unsleeping vigilance;
E'en in the fireflame, old
Visions unheeded dance.
Fearless of lurking spy,
Scornful of wassail-swell,
With an undaunted eye
Marches the sentinel.

Low, to his trusty gun
Eagerly whispers he,
'Wait, with the morning sun
March we to victory.
Fools, into Satan's clutch
Leaping ere dawn of day:
He who would fight must watch,
He who would win must pray.'

Pray! for the night hath wings;
Watch! for the foe is near;
March! till the morning brings
Fame-wreath or soldier's bier.
So shall the poet write,
When all hath ended well,
'Thus through the nation's night
Marched Freedom's sentinel.'

RAILWAY PHOTOGRAPHS

On a fair, sunny morning in July, 1862, I started from—no matter where; and taking my seat in a comfortable rail car, turned my face toward the borders of Vermont.

As the road, for the greater part of the way was an up-grade, and as there is on that particular route a way station about every two miles, at each of which the cars unduly stop, our progress was rather slow, and I had ample time to observe alike the wild and rugged scenery through which we were passing, and the countenances and actions of my fellow passengers.

For a time the picturesque character of country engaged my attention; but getting tired, at last, of the endless succession of green mountains, clothed to their summits with dark pine and hemlock; of rocky, tortuous streams, their channels run almost dry by the excessive drought; of stony fields, dotted with sheep or sprinkled with diminutive hay cocks, or coaxed by patient cultivation into bearing a few hills of stunted Indian corn, I began to find the interior of the car a much more interesting field of observation. And it is wonderful how many different aspects of human nature one can see in the course of a day's journey in a railroad car.

The first person who attracted my notice, was a young man sitting opposite to me. His appearance was prepossessing, not so much from beauty of form or feature, as from the pleasant expression of his fair, open face, adorned with side whiskers of a reddish hue, of the mutton-chop genus and pendent species. He looked like an Englishman or Anglicized Scotchman; but from some words he let drop, I am inclined to believe he was a Western man. Be that as it may, he was evidently a tourist, travelling for pleasure through a country that was new to him, and desirous of gaining all the information he could concerning it.

On the hooks above him, hung a heavy blanket shawl, an umbrella, and a little basket. In his hand he held one of Appleton's Railway Guides,' to which he made constant reference, reading from it the names of the places through which we passed, in tones so loud and distinct, that most of his fellow passengers participated in the information. On the seat beside him lay a large book in red binding, which proved to be another guide book, and to which he referred when the smaller one failed him. Immediately behind him sat a saturnine-looking gentleman (also provided with a railway guide), with whom he frequently conversed, addressing him as 'John,' and who seemed to be his travelling companion.