FROM
LINCOLN TO CLEVELAND
AND OTHER SHORT 8TDDIE3 IN
HISTORY AND GENERAL LITERATURE.
BY REV. W. J. SCOTT.
COPYRIGHT SECURED.
ATLANTA, GEORGIA: JAS. f, HAKRI80N * CO., PRINTERS AND PtTBLISHBRS.
1886.
INSCRIBED TO
EDNA, WILLIE, WALTER, ALICE.
i )/>) H
J-
PREFACE.
MOST readers wisely skip the Preface as at best a piece of conventional surplusage.
This volume, as may be seen at a glance, is fragment ary partly from choice and yet more from necessity. Chronic invalidism of ten years continuance is not favor able to exhaustive discussions, nor are such discussions in much favor in the present age. This, however, is not said apologetically, for after all the book must stand or fall on its intrinsic merits would it were worthier We beg leave to express our regret that some slight errors, typographical and otherwise, were seen too late for cor rection in the present edition.
IN BOTH HEMISPHERES. THE STORY OF Two CIVILIZATIONS.
ROUNDHEAD AND CAVALIER.
CHAPTER I.
AMERICAN history is in no small degree a sealed book, unless it be interpreted in the light of English history. Our civilization is, in every moral, political and social aspest of it, thoroughly English. The language we speak, the literature we read, and well-nigh the entire frame work of our institutions, municipal, state and federal, all point with unerring finger to the mother country. Our home-life, with its domestic ties and endearments, with its nursery tales and cradle hymns, its family Bible and its Sabbath sacredness, these, one and all, breathe fragrant memories of that imperial island "fast anchored by the gateway of a mighty continent." We rightly claim kinship with Sidney and Hampden. Shakspeare and Spenser, and rare Ben Jonson, are our fellowcountrymen. Chinese Gordon, holding "that last outpost of Christian-civilization" in the heart of Soudan, was of like blood and lineage with Stonewall Jackson, who sleeps at Lexington, in the valley of Virginia.
It is more than a sentiment that prompts us to claim a part in the glories of Agincourt and Cressy, and in the later resplendent triumphs of Blenheim and Trafal gar. Whatever of good or great has been achieved under the shamrock, the rose or the thistle ia our heritage, for is not every one part and parcel of the same peerless civilization ?
8
ROUNDHEAD AND CAVAUEB.
Nor is it less true that the two divergent types of this civilization that strove for the mastery at Edgehill and Worcester were illustrated in our own times on the heights of Gettysburg and in the swamps of the Chicamauga.
Puritanism indeed is older than the forefathers day of New England, and Cavalierism antedates by five hundred years the planting of the Jamestown colony. Historically they are both related to the great democratic
movement of the seventeenth century, which is alike the glory and the shame of English history. That movement was no sudden outbreak of popular frenzy, but the re sultant of several political and moral factors that had been sensibly felt not later than the reign of Henry VIII. That monarch, the Bluebeard of the nursery legend, has been less understood than any of the English kings. Indeed his true character has been but recently revealed in the writings of Proude. Henry gave, unwittingly it may be, the earliest impulse to the movement by his open revolt against the papacy. His defiant attitude towards the reigning Pontiff, followed quickly by the dissolution of the monasteries, had in it the promise and potency of a vast revolution. While in its prima Jade aspect it
was a blow aimed at medieval theology, it was scarcely less a blow stricken for constitutional liberty. It may be true, as has often been suggested, that a sense of per sonal grievance, some trifling matter of divorce, or some graver quarrel as to the temporal headship of the church, was the mainspring of Henrys new-born zeal for Protest antism. It is less to be questioned that the English Reformation stopped short of its legitimate results, and was indeed an example of what Darwin might have
KOUNDHEAD AND CAVALIER.
9
called "arrested development." Allowing all this, there remained a positive gain for popular freedom of most inestimable value. In the same line was the decay of feudalism, the revival of learning and the rapid expan sion of commerce. The discoveries of Columbus and the Cabots, and of the Dutch and Portuguese navigators, had vastly enlarged the area of mercantile venture. In proportion as feudalism waned did manufactures and trade flourish. So that as early as the latter years of Elizabeth, a middle class had sprung up more enlightened than the Bourgeoise of France, and not less formidable to absolutism, whether in church or state.
The death of Elizabeth was followed by the accession of thai royal pedant, James the 1st. He had imbibed along with his Greek and Latin very extravagant no tions of kingly prerogative and an almost idolatrous worship of episcopacy. During his reign the Star Cham ber and High Commission Courts were worked to their utmost capacity. The world-famous maxim of Louis XIV., of France, " I am the State," was the exponent of the administrati ire policy of this learned pupil of George Buchanan. Buckingham and Laud, the chief counsel ors of the. king, the one by his prelatical arrogance and the other because of his unblushing venality, were cor dially despised, and yet greatly dreaded by the English nation. Early in his reign James manifested a fierce intolerance towards the Presbyterianism of his Scottish subjects His ill advised policy brought the Scotch Pres byterians into close sympathy, if not positive alliance, with the English Puritans. These latter religionists, an ignorant and hitherto despised sect, were thus lifted to a plane of prominence that afterwards gave them a con-
10
ROUNDHEAD AND -CAVALIER.
trolling influence in public affairs. The later insane effort of Charles I. to foist episcopacy upon Scotland contributed greatly to bring about an unexpected, if not unnatural coalition, pregnant with mischief to the gov ernment. This coalition was further strengthened by the moral support of a large number of godly Bishops and pious Presbyters and deacons, who adhered to the established church. These held with Cranmer and Jewell, and Whitgift and Parker, that episcopacy did not exist by divine right, but was at most a scriptural and wisely ordered ecclesiastical economy. They respected the right of private judgment in matters of doctrine and discipline. They also recognized in the reformed church es of the continent, and in the non-conformist bodies of England, true branches of the church catholic. Affairs were evidently shaping and adjusting themselves for an internecine conflict between Royal prerogative and par. liamentary privilege, when Charles I. asoended the throne. Unfortunately for himself and the nation at large, he inherited in no small measure the extreme views of his father touching prerogative and episcopacy. Like Louis XVI., of France, whom he resembled in char acter and destiny, he seemed born out of due season. People of all ranks had become impatient of the current methods of administration. Hence it came speedily to pass that what Burleigh could do with impunity under the Tudor dynasty cost Strafford his head, and what Henry VII. could perform without a whisper of popular dissatisfaction lost Charles I. his crown. Charles indeed had many praiseworthy qualities that were suited to en dear him to hia subjects. In his courtly bearing he was "every inch a king." There was also a gracious manner
ROUNDHEAD AND CAVALIER.
31
in his official intercourse notably different from the pe dantic boorishuess of his immediate predecessor. He was strangely deficient, however, in that political sagaci ty that discerns the signs of the times. It is quite proba ble that the young monarch was misled by the popular addresses that welcomed him to the throne. These ad dresses were not only intensely loyal in their tone, but they were humble to the point of servility. Nor was it long until the king had reason to suspect the sincerity of these loyal protestations. While the demise of his father was universally esteemed a happy riddance, there were not a few who feared some hereditary taint in his successor. These fears marred the seeming general joy, and even foretokened troublous times. Nor should it be overlooked that the Stuarts, despite their unimpeach able title, were regarded as an alien dynasty under whose rule the English people were always restive. Charles first experience with an English Parliament was by no means satisfactory. He found it self-assertive, if not turbulent and refractory. Neither the Lords nor Com mons had forgotten the autocracy of Buckingham or the bigotry of Laud during the previous reign. At their first convocation, therefore, they were disposed, with sin gular unanimity, to make the redress of private griev ances and the reform of public abuses a condition pre cedent to the granting of supplies. After no little un pleasant chaffering between King and Parliament, a dis solution was peremptorily ordered.
When the third Parliament was convoked, the king was confronted by the renowned Petition of Right. That memorable document re affirmed the principles of Magna Gharta with some fresh applications to present emer-
12
ROUNDHEAD AND CAVALIER.
gencies. After many ungracious delays, not to say at tempted evasions on the part of the king, an adjustment was reached. The king assented to the petition in the customary French phrase, Soil droiifait comme il si desire.
This assent of the king was looked upon as a favorable prognostic, but it proved to be utterly delusive. Each party charged the other with violating its most solemn stipulations, and this not without sufficient reasons on both sides. Shortly after the parliamentary dissolution, the king, influenced by Strafford, himself a renegade from the peoples party, undertook the hazardous experiment of governing without the aid of Parliament. Strafford, who was all powerful at Court, had formulated his sys tem of THOROUGH, which, rightly understood, meant Con tinental despotism.
The English, always pronounced sticklers for precedent, were indignant at this anomalous and alarming depart ure from constitutional usages. And yet eleven years intervened, during which time the king resorted to forced loans and various unconstitutional levies to replenish the royal exchequer. As a cloak to his arbitrary designs, he even revived at York the Council of Peers, a feudal institution that had been extinct for four hundred years. Meanwhile, the popular discontent increased, and "curses loud and deep" were heaped upon StraSbrd and Laud, the evil counselors of the king. As Charles might have foreseen, sheer pecuniary necessity, coupled with the ever-growing dissatisfaction of his subjects, compelled him at length to summon another Parliament.
Like the convocation of the States-General in France in the next century, it was the beginning of the end. As the States-General contained the seeds of the Reign
ROUNDHEAD AND CAVALIER.
13
of Terror, so the memorable Long Parliament carried in its bosom the hardly less bloody Cromwelliau era.
In this historical body, which began its session in No vember, 1640, there was a considerable percentage of men who were intent on the vindication of popular rights at whatever cost to Monarchy and the Established Church. These were the Roundheads, so called from the style of wearing their hair. In a generic sense they were Puri tans, but this appellation embraced all non-conformists, the greater portion of whom were well affected towards the government. Foremost among the Roundheads was Oliver Cromwell, who sat as a representative for Cam bridgeshire.
His personal following was at present not large, but it consisted of men who shared in his own unflinch ing courage and invincible firmness. He was by native endowment eminently fitted for leadership in the storm and stress of a revolutionary period. Already he was the acknowledged head of the Independents, who were not only irreconcilably averse to the doctrine and dis cipline of the Established Church, but secretly hostile to monarchical institutions. But this faction and an other made up of extreme Royalists and Churchmen were counterbalanced by a conservative party headed by Hyde, Falkland and Colepepper, who were honestly attached to the Constitution, but who desired additional safe-guards against the encroachments of Royalty. A large majority of these were either Presbyterians or moderate Churchmen.
The first onslaught of Parliament was directed against the Star Chamber and High Commission Courts. These bastiles of tyranny were demolished to the infinite joy
14
, ROUNDHEAD AND CAVALTER.
of the nation. Nominally devoted to the punishment of great offenders, they were prostituted to purposes of the vilest oppression. Contrary to the whole spirit of Anglo Saxon jurisprudence, their methods were no less cruel and vindictive than the enginery of the Spanish Inquisition. Subsidiary to this sweeping reform in the administration of justice was the imprisonment of Laud and the attainder and execution of Strafford. The latter event was exceedingly abhorrent to Charles. He spared no efforts to shield his favorite from the fury of his assailants, but his efforts were all unavailing.
He was, notwithstanding, reproached both by friends and enemies for a lack of nerve and fidelity in yielding to the demands of Parliament. It may be doubted, how ever, if he could have saved his favorite minister by the sacrifice of his throne. The execution of Sfcrafford con tributed greatly to exasperate and estrange the contest ing parties and to hasten the final appeal to the sword. As a balm to his wounded sensibilities, Charles sought
to retaliate by the arrest of five obnoxious members of the House of Commons, including Pym, Hampden and Hollis. Frustrated in his first attempt, he ventured on a more desperate expedient. He went in person to the House and boldly demanded the surrender of the contu macious members. It proved to be a silly and futile ef fort to overawe the representatives of the people. On every hand he was greeted with the outcry of Privilege!" Privilege 11 The king was not equal to the emergency. He faltered as if rebuked by the majestic Genius of the British Constitution. In the midst of the uproar the ac cused members had escaped, and the king retired, baffled
BOUNDHEAD AND CAVALIER. .
15
and half paralyzed with rage and chagrin, from the pres ence of the Commons.
The Rubicon was now passed, and it was evident that an armed conflict was emergent and probably inevitable. There was, however, an interval of several months before the sword was unsheathed. It was a golden opportunity, which, if wisely improved by a fusion of Royalists and Presbyterians, might have forestalled the battles, sieges and intestine broils that so shamefully blurred the his tory of English civilization. Both parties, however, were intractable. Charles, who was not wanting in physical hardihood or personal daring, took the initia tive. He staked everything on a plebiscitum to be ren dered, not by ballots, but by bullets. He reckoned largely it may be on the traditional loyalty of the English people and in the sequel found his confidence misplaced. He abandoned his capital only to return a defeated and
doomed sovereign. We have purposely avoided any effort to outline the
chequered fortunes of the Commonwealth wars. The world knows by heart the story of Cromwell and his Ironsides. The merest tyro in history is familiar with the impetuous chivalry of Rupert and his devoted ad herents. It was after all the same immemorial contest between Patrician and Plebeian which was waged at Pharsalia, and culminated in the disasters of Philippi. The military strength of the Roundheads consisted chiefly of the small country freeholders and the shop-keepers of the towns and cities. The power of the Cavalier move ment lay in the loyalty of the nobility and their numer ous retainers the landed gentry, strongly reinforced by
16
ROUNDHKAD AND CAVALIER.
the clergy and the educated classes of the two great uni
versities. While the military contest was pending, and even
after the overthrow of the king and his partisans, there was being enacted in Parliament a death struggle be tween the conservative Presbyterians and the destruc tive Independents. The course of events was favorable to the ascendency of the latter party. These extremists were not satisfied with the simple redress of the peoples grievances. They aimed at nothing less than the violent subversion of the existing political order in Church and State. The majority of them were eager and ex pectant fifth monarchy men, locking for the personal appearing and visible enthronement of King Jesus. To this end they not only compassed the death of Charles, but in aim and purpose were already regicides. Nor were they less bent on the downfall of episcopacy. Not a few of them regarded a surplice as the sign of the apoc alyptic beast, and the splendid liturgical worship of the establishment as a relic of Romanism. In their super stition they shuddered at the tones of an organ. In their ignorance they preferred the hum-drum singing of the Conventicle to the Gregorian chants of the venerable minsters and cathedrals of the Anglican church. In 1647 Parliament ordained the destruction of all the organs throughout the kingdom. This decree was executed by marauding bands of soldiery, who with difficulty were restrained from the pillage and defacement of the parish churches. Another feature of this perverse fanaticism was uncompromising hostility to every species of popu lar diversion, whether in the field or a.t the fire-side. Not only bear-baiting by the rabble, but hawking by the no-
J
ROONDHBAD AND CAVALIER.
17
bility; not only dancing in the mansion, but blindmans buff in the cottage were all strictly forbidden by this strait-laced orthodoxy. The festivities of Christmas were solemnly voted an abomination and the day turned into a day of fasting and prayer. The bang ing of a garland on a May pole was thought to bear the odor of idolatry. The playing of a game of chesa, and even the reading of Spensers Fairie Queen, were considered sinful indulgences. Sculpture and painting were condemned as vicious in tendency, if not vioiative of the second precept of the decalogue. In a word, they were the sworn enemies of all artistic culture and of every species of polite learning.
The debates of the Barebones Parliament were near akin to the pulpit exercitations of Hugh Peters and his droning tribe. Grave legislators frequently aired their erudition in tedious expositions of such high mys teries as Election and its cognate doctrines. On special occasions the House of Commons was wrought into a tempest of pious fervor and patriotic fury by impas sioned harangues on the worldliness of flounces and furbelows and the unseemliness of love-locks. General orders addressed to the army were seasoned with pious ejaculations, and Acts of Parliament were garnished with scriptural quotations. Profoundly ignorant of English history, they were thoroughly conversant with the annals of the Hebrew Commonwealth. They heartily despised the common law as a badge of political servitude, and in many instances copied the jurisprudence of the Mosaic Institute. To all this they superadded a Pharisaism that cavilled about the breadth of a phylactery or the color of a fringe. Indeed, it may be said, in all sober-
18
ROUNDHEAD AND CAVALIER.
ness, that the Roundhead was a Jew without the sign of circumcision. Chronologically he belonged to the Sinaitic dispensation, and politically he pertained to the Theocratic period of Jewish history. In so far as he was a Christian at all, he might be placed with the Ebionites of the early centuries of our era. And yet these sniveling fanatics dominated an English House of Commons in the seventeenth century. This parliamentary rabble not only inflicted every possible indignity on the captive Charles and his family, but they fined and imprisoned thousands of the Cavaliers and their followers. Confis cation was pushed to such an extent that a vast number of ancient and titled families were reduced to the verge of starvation. Not a few who were menaced with severer penalties were driven into exile. As the taste, or even smell of blood serves to enrage a famishing tiger, so these cruelties inflicted on the Cavaliers seemed to sharpen the appetite of the Roundheads for a royal victim.
In and out of Parliament they became clamorous for the trial and execution of the king. Cromwell himself affected some reluctance in reference to this extreme measure. But it was well understood that his single voice could arrest and defeat the iniquity.
The proposition was sternly opposed by the more thoughtful members of Parliament. Besides, the French court protested with earnestness and emphasis. The States-General of the Netherlands inveighed against it as an unjust and vindictive policy. The sober-minded citi zens throughout the realm remonstrated in no dubious terms against it as "a sacrament of blood." The "Rump," however, proceeded with indecent haste to organize
ROUNDHEAD AND CAVALIER.
19
a sort of vehmic tribunal with the infamous Bradshaw as President. Charles was arraigned and after the mock ery of a trial was adjudged guilty of treason, murder, etc. He bore himself grandly in the midst of these terrible adversities. Protesting his innocence and reverently ap pealing to heaven for his vindication, he met the accu sation and conviction with the courage of a martyr and the patience of a saint. He was allowed short shrift, for on the 30th of January, in front of Whitehall, this judicial homicide was consummated. Louis XVI., more than one hundred years thereafter, suffered a similar doom in the Place de la Revolution in Paris. Louis, in his last mo ments, was cheered by the ministrations of his confessor, the Abbe Edgeworth, who, just before the guillotine made the fatal stroke, exclaimed with a faltering voice, "Son of St. Louis, ascend to heaven!" Charles was not denied the offices of religion, but was refused the presence of his household. When the executioner held aloft the Lead of the king, dripping with the blood of the Tudors and Plantaganets, thousands of spectators hid their faces from the ghastly spectacle and half-suppressed shrieks attested the sympathy of the multitude. But the stern-visaged Roundhead, stroking his beardless face, rolled his sanc timonious eyes heavenward and thanked God for a tyrant slain. The Parisian rabble allowed the dead Bourbon the honor of entombment at St Denis, the mausoleum ofthe kings of France, and yet a Roundhead Parliament shut out Charles from Westminster Abbey, where England for a thousand years -has garnered up her noble dead." As Guizot has said, "Charles ascended the throne amidst an outburst of popular enthusiasm," but he was interred in
20
ROUNDHEAD AND CAVAUEB. , .
a parish chtirchyard without even the rites of Chris tian burial.
Macaulay, a ready apologist for the regicides, speaks of this deed of popular vengeance as a crime, possibly a blunder. These are mild terms with which to character ize an act more atrocious than the assassination of Wil
liam of Orange, not less shameful than the execution of John of Barneveldt.
There was a saying among the Greeks that the light ning sanctifies what it strikes. So death canonizes its least illustrious victim. How much more when ruthless violence strikes down that divinity that doth -hedge a king. Horror, followed by indignation, was felt through out the civilized world. This sentiment was greatly strengthened by the posthumous publication of a volume entitled Eikon Basilike, the authorship of which has been attributed alternately to Clarendon and the deceased monarch. Its true paternity, like the authorship of the Junius letters, may never be ascertained, but it waked a responsive chord in the national breast. Nor did it
fail to arouse a generous and wide-spread sympathy on the Continent. Such, indeed, was its damaging effect on Puritanism that Milton, prompted by Cromwell, deemed it expedient to prepare an elaborate reply. Not even Miltons glittering rhetoric could consecrate such a deed of judicial butchery.
Cromwell, seldom lacking in sagacity, saw the pressing necessity for a thorough readjustment of the machinery of the government. His wonderful military achieve ments bad endeared him to the army, and already he had complete mastery of the Parliament. He it was who suggested "Pridea purge," by which the obstructive
KOUNDHEAD AND CAVALIEU.
21
K
Presbylwlans were sent into political Coventry. After
this arbitrary procedure, there was left of the Historical
Long Parliament the miserable "Rump," consisting of
three-score psalm-singing fanatics. In defiance of all
precedent and the out-spoken contempt of the peo
ple, they continued their legislative incubation. Crom
well could not endure such a sham, and entering the
House of Commons, backed by a file of troops, he seized
the speakers mace, thrust out the recalcitrant mob,
locked the door, put the key in his pocket and went
about his business. That business, for the time being,
was the reconstruction of the government on some basis
that would be satisfactory to the country. Fearing, as
he did, a formidable coalition between the Royalists and
the Levellers for his personal downfall, he sought to re
store the forms and symbols of the ancient constitution.
After toying for a season with the seductive title of king,
he accepted the less odious title of Lord Protector. We
need not slay to consider the successive failures of his
schemes, all going to show his utter incapacity for civil
administration.
His " Little Parliament," the members of which he
summoned by name, were guilty of such gross insubor
dination that he dissolved them after a very brief
session. Somewhat later, desiring to conciliate the Con
servatives, he constituted a House of Peers, which his
next House of Commons refused to recognize as a co or-
dinAte branch of the government. Thereupon another
dissolution followed greatly to his personal mortification.
At^Kf crisis he began to realize that it is one thing to
conduct a battle and a widely different thing to admin
ister the affairs of a great nation. He saw, moreover,
22
ROUNDHEAD AND CAVALIER.
that the people were hear-tsick and weary of Puritan dogma in Church and State. This double conscious ness, far more than the death of his favorite daughter, Elizabeth, or the hardships of his vigorous Irish cam paign, had drunk up his spirits and shattered his phys ical strength. He had nursed the hope that he was des tined by Divine Providence to be the head of a European Protestant alliance and the founder of a Royal dynasty. This cherished project was to be soon frustrated, for in the summer of 1658 ha was prostrated by an incurable disease. His days, indeed, were numbered. There was in the manner of Cromwells death more than a sem blance of poetic justice. It occurred on the 3rd of Sep tember, 1658, the anniversary of the Scots defeat at Dunbar, and also of what he esteemed his " crowning mercy," the decisive battle of Worcester. In front of the Royal palace of Whitehall, where he lay dying, had been exhibited nine years agone that most tragical pageant, the judicial murder of Charles I., the purest sovereign of the Stuart dynasty. Almost in the midst of his death-agony, a strong winged tempest swept over the sea and shook even the dry land.
Weird lightning flashes, followed by crashing thunder peals, added to the terrible sublimity of the scene. This wild war of the elements without symbolized the fiercer conflict that raged in the breast of the dying Lord Pro tector. For months and years he had moved about in hourly apprehension of assassination. Now that the end was nigh there was the absence of that imperial repose with which Caesar confronted the daggers of conspiracy. Nor was there the slightest token of that exhilaration of soul which the great Napoleon felt when, from his dying
ROUNDHEAD AND CAVALIER.
23
couch at Longwood, he seemed to watch the heady surges of some new Leipsic or Austerlitz, and with his parting breath shouted with the old-time emphasis, Tele farmee/ On the contrary, the vultures of Remorse were preying on his vitals. In this supreme hour of his destiny hia single solace was found in the Puritan dogma, "Once in grace always in grace." A few spasmodic contortions of the face, and the once -mailed hand was still and stark in death, and the eagle-eye that had so often flashed in the forefront of the charging squadrons was quenched in the blackness of darkness forever.
Cromwells true place in English history has not even yet been definitely fixed. Hume, true to his Tory in stincts, brands him "a canting hypocrite." Carlyle styles him "the most English of Englishmen." Macaulay, in his thoroughly partisan History of England, applauds him to the echo ; while Forster, in his Statesmen of the British Commonwealth, not less capable than the Whig histo rian, and far more dispassionate, alleges that Cromwell was "wanting in truth." Any sober judicial estimate of him must distinctly recognize the fact that he was sel dom consistent with himself. Contrary to thatraditional conception of his character, it was a bundle of contradic tions. "Better," says Solomon, " is the beginning of a thing than the end thereof." This wise maxim was illustrated in the career of the great Protector. When first he sat in Parliament as the representative of Hunting donshire, he was a Puritan of the straitest sect. His hair was of the orthodox cut; his nasal twang was perfect after its kind; bis speech was richly flavored with He braisms, and plentifully seasoned with scriptural quota-
2
24
ROUNDHEAD AND CAVALIER.
tions. But whilst there was in all this somewhat to pro voke a smile or a sneer, there was also an air and an utter ance that challenged confidence, if it did not win admira tion. In those days not one of his hearers could suspect his downright honesty of purpose. That he was narrow was seen at a glance, but that he was sincere was not less obvious. But as he rose from obscurity to eminence, his whole nature was transformed. In his closing years, as Lord Protector, he was guilty of graver offenses against humanity and constitutional liberty than he or his satel lites ever charged against Charles i.
No single act of Charles provoked severer criticism than his attempted seizure of the five obnoxious members of the House of Commons. Cromwell, as we have already seen, on two subsequent occasions, in person or by proxy, committed a more flagrant breach of the privileges of Parliament. Charles again was arraigned and denounced for endeavoring to rule without the concurrence of the legislative body. Cromwell was in the same condemna tion. No hereditary sovereign of England e ver prorogued or dissolved Parliament more capriciously or arbitrarily than Cromwell, the Usurper. If Charles I. outraged public sentiment by conniving at the priestly despot ism of Laud, Cromwell and his party were not less intole rant and prescriptive towards the Catholics and Episco palians. In what single respect was the High Commis sion Court more unconstitutional than the extra judicial action of the so-called ecclesiastical " Triers" of the Pro tectorate ? It is the veriest nonsense to condone these flagrant wrongs on the ground that prelacy and popery were rather political factions than religious sects. It is the merest logical make-shift to reply that Cromwell
ROUNDHEAD AND CAVALIER.
25
granted special exemptions to the Jews, whilst he pun ished the reading of the liturgy or the saying of a mass with imprisonment and confiscation. His Puritan de fenders never weary of telling us of his sturdy champion ship of Protestantism on the Continent. Milton, in his sonnets, and Carlyle, in his history, remind us of how he demanded freedom of worship for the Piedmontese how he even threatened to garrison the Castle of 8k Angelo with Protestant troops, if the Vaudois were mo lested in their simple faith. Let all this be granted, and it still remains historically true that he and his party, within the "four seas," confiscated the-property of the establishment and robbed its clergy of their livings. And yet again, without the pretext of an Act of Uniform ity, they ejected hundreds of Presbyterians from their parishes.
Like Disraeli of the present century, Cromwell endeavored to atone for the sins and shortcomings of his home administration by the brilliancy of his foreign policy. Whatever may be our estimate of Cromwells statesmanship, there can be no room for disagreement as to the political consequences of his death. Beyond controversy that death was the downfall of Puritanism in all its branches. He was its brain and muscle, its blood and its bones. True, he had provided with much painstaking for the succession of his son Richard. But between sire and son there was a broader disparity than between Solomon and Rehoboam. Richard, a well man nered gentleman, was a sovereign of the Merovingian type, ill-adapted to the existing emergency. His resig nation was itself compulsory. The interregnum that followed was marked by the disgraceful rivalry of such
26
ROUNDHEAD AND CAVALIER.
military pretenders as Lambert and Desborough. Even the Bump Parliament once more resumed its sittings, claiming to be the representative of the nation. So great and BO imminent was the national peril that many of the Roundheads themselves were ready for revolt. At this juncture General Monk, who with strict impartiality had fought for both king and Parliament, became the man of destiny, the Guy Warwick of the hour. Supported by a well disciplined army, he at once entered into negotiations with the Cavaliers at home and abroad. The restoration of the Stuarts was decreed, and the national welfare demanded that it should be done quickly. Nothing can give us a clearer idea of the irredeemable failure of Puritanism than the stirring events of the next few months. When William of Orange landed at Torbay he was disheartened by the wantof enthusiasm, or rather the stolid indifference, that marked his reception. Yet he came, on the urgent invitation of the Convention of Westminster, to occupy a throne made vacant by abdication. How strikingly different the ovation of Charles II1 The booming of guns and the blazing of bonfires announced the joy of the nation that they were at last free from a curse and pestilence that sanscvlottism in politics and Jack Cadeism in literature were thrice dead plucked up by the roots and buried. Nor does it weaken our conclusion that this right royal welcome was extended, not to a wise and virtuous Prince, who had been defrauded of his birthright, but to a debauchee, who afterwards converted the Palace into a brothel, and basely consented to become a stipendiary of the French crown. For all this licen tiousness in private life for all the cabal and corrup
ROUNDHEAD AND CAVALIER.
27
tion in official station for the Act of Uniformity and the Assizes of Jeffries, Puritanism is justly responsible at the bar of History. Such a reaction, ethical and political, was inevitable, nor is it to be wondered at that it transcended all sober limits. The nation had sown the wind and must needs reap the whirlwind.
For long years there was on every side confusion and bewilderment as when one is suddenly aroused from some terrible dream. Nor did the reaction exhaust itself with the enthronement of William and Mary.
There were still outcroppings of party spleen and some what disastrous continental wars until the Peace of Ryswick in September, 1697. From that date forward the English Royal succession has never been for a moment interrupted, nor, indeed, at any time seriously menaced, either by foreign levy or domestic treason.
It will be observed that in this statement we take no account of the Scotch rebellions of 15 and 45, or the fabulous adventures of Chevalier St. George, in the heart of London. These abortive attempts and mysteri ous plottings were of less significance than the No Popery riots and Chartist demonstrations of more re cent times. Fromthe era of the restored monarchy the British dominion has widened with the processes of the sun until it has reached the proportions of the grandest imperialism of the worlds history.
The England of to-day in the workshop of the nations the entrepot of a commerce whose sails whiten every ocean the seat of a military power whose "morning drambeat" is more than a sentiment or a sensation, and what is best of all, the head of a Christian civilization that is destined to overspread the whole earth.
JAMESTOWN AND PLYMOUTH ROCK.
CHAPTER II.
THE average American statesman has been slow to apprehend, or else strangely reluctant to acknowledge the existence of two widely divergent civilizations on this continent. Our national coat of arms is emblazoned by the legend, E PlurSna Unum, but the stupid conceit is flatly contradicted by almost every page of our national history. Never, except in the presence of a common peril or under the pressure of a common necessity, has there been more than the faintest sem blance of national unity. And no sooner was the ex ternal pressure withdrawn than the old antagonisms were revived. In the laboratory of the chemist there is a recognized difference between a mechanical mixture as of water and alcohol, and a chemical combination as of an acid with a metallic base. The one is the result of a well-defined law of affinity, the other is the product of physical contact and commingling. This serves to illustrate what we mean when we assert that strict national unity has never been realized in all the years of our past political history.
It was in somewise formulated in the Articles of Confederation adopted to meet the exigencies of the revolutionary period. It was afterwards rendered more compact in the Federal Constitution of 1787, which, as John Quincy Adams alleged, was "wrung from the neces-
JAMESTOWN AND PLYMOUTH ROCK.
29
sities of a reluctant people." It is symbolized in the starry ensign of the Republic, but as for a veritable hand and heart union it is utterly unhistorical. Apart from this truth, the party contests of the last hundred years have been a selfish scramble for official spoils, and the late war between the States is stripped of its heroic aspects, and was the naked outcome of savage bloodthirstiness. In the earliest Colonial records, as well as in the latest phases of representative journalism, these conflicting types of Cavalier and Puritan civilization may be readily recognized. They not only survived the seven years struggle with Great Britain, but they have outlived the modern era of reconstruction. It is a palpable blunder to suppose that the abolition of slavery, still less the enfranchisement of the freedman, has contributed in any degree to the unification of these diverse civilizations. On the contrary, these events, and others of like sort, have widened the gulf of separation. The traditions of a common struggle for independence have been well-nigh obliterated by the later asperities of sectional conflict. Henceforth, Independence day has as little political significance in democratic America as the anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot in Protestant England. The 4th of July, alike with the 5th of November, has for all practical uses been expunged from the calendar. It is the part of wise statesmanship to accept these facts and to mold the national policy in accordance therewith. The great problem of our gov ernment is not to destroy either of the constituent elements of our American civilization, but to co-ordi nate them in such a spirit of concession and compromise
30
JAMESTOWK AND PLYMOUTH ROCK.
that the blessings of civil and religious liberty may be
transmitted to all generations.
In the foregoing chapter, we considered, with some
fullness of detail, and we trust with judicial fairness, the chequered fortunes of Puritan and Cavalier through more than a century of conflict on English soil. We witnessed the rise and downfall of Puritanism as a politi cal and religious faction. There is probably a measure of truth in what Macaulay suggests, that the same contest has been continued under other party names down to our own times. So that the recent overthrow of the Glad stone ministry has a vital relation to the political con troversies of the 17th century. But we are not careful to analyze or elaborate this statement. We prefer to turn
away from these old world struggles and to discuss the more interesting conflict of these civilizations in our Western Hemisphere. The planting of the Jamestown
colony was the earliest permanent English settlement on the Continent. The spirit of commercial adventure had mainly to do with this enterprise. There is but the
merest modicum of truth in the statement of Northern historians that the colony was, in the beginning, com posed of decayed gentlemen and bankrupt traders. The leader of the enterprise and the first governor of the col ony, Capt. John Smith, was of highly respectable descent,
and a scholar and writer of no little distinction. Like many a knightly spirit of that age, he was a soldier of fortune. He greatly distinguished himself in the war against the infidel Turks, who were menacing the Chris tian civilization of the West. His nautical skill and his administrative ability were invaluable to the infant col ony of Virginia, and because of his admirable qualifica-
JAMESTOWN AND PLYMOUTH ROCK.
31
tions for leadership, he was afterwards chosen by the Puritans as the Admiral of New England.
A majority of those who accompanied Smith to Vir ginia were, like himself, of gentle birth, so that there
was from the outset a predominant element of cavalierism in the Jamestown colony. Some years subsequent, the adventurous Mayflower set forth from Delft Haven, in Holland, with its human cargo of one hundred and odd souls, to find a resting-place in the new world. They had Sed from England to escape the hardships and disa bilities imposed on them by the English establishment. For a few years they had sojourned at Leyden, but a no madic freak impelled them to a fresh adventure. Their objective point was the mouth of the Hudson river. Owing, however, to contrary winds, and possibly to a nautical blunder, they were drifted or driven to a higher latitude. In December, 1620, they disembarked at Plymouth Rock in the face of hostile savages and in the midst of a climate only less inhospitable than the coasts of Labrador. In numbers and equipment, they were a feeble colony. The rigorous winter, coupled with the want of physical comforts, occasioned a very great mor tality during the first few months of their settlement. Matthew Arnold has, in a recent publication, spoken jeeringly of the ignorance and coarseness of these Pil grim Fathers. We shall Tiardly be accused of undue par tiality towards them. But we confess to a feeling of ad miration for men who were moved to brave the perils of the sea and to confront the privations of the wilderness, not for gain, but godliness. They were, indeed, illiterate and intensely narrow, but they were sincere and cour ageous. Nor can it be denied that in that meanly-clad
32
JAMESTOWN AND PLYMOUTH ROCK.
and shivering congregation there was lodged the germ of a culture and a civilization which, with all its faults, has, in the person of some of its representative men, shed imperishable lustre on American literature and states manship. These earliest immigrants would have inevi tably succumbed to climatic conditions and Indian depredations but for occasional reinforcements of men and supplies, both from England and Holland.
Meanwhile, the struggle for existence developed a toughness of physical and intellectual fibre which has been of material service to their descendants. The timely arrival of Endicott at Salem, and the opportune coming of Winthrop at Charlestown, greatly strengthened the colony. In point of wealth and refinement, these later immigrants were vastly superior to their co-religionists of Plymouth. They soon acquired a political ascendency which they have practically maintained until the present hour. These two colonies, Virginia and Massachusetts, were the geographical centers of the two civilizations that have dominated the religion, literature and politics of the nation for the last hundred years. These mother colonies were antipodal, however, in the matter and style of their civilization.
We shall content ourself with barely suggesting these points of difference, thereby avoiding needless detail and amplification. They differed widely in their theology and forms of worship. The Puritans in both hemispheres accepted the Genevan theology with but the slightest ad mixture of what was styled at a later date Arminianism. With them divine sovereignty, with its corelated dog mas, as inculcated in the writings of St. Augustine, was the corner-stone troth of the Christian system. The lat-
JAMESTOWN AND PLYMOUTH ROCK.
33
ter day modifications of Andover and Yale would have found little favor with the Mathers and Edwardaes of a former generation. In church polity they were Congregationalists, regarding each body of faithful men and women as a distinct unit in the kingdom of God. As to forms of worship they affected great simplicity. Their church architecture was rude and unsightly; their psalm ody was the doggerel of Sternhold and Hopkins version of Jhe Psalter, and they were fiercely intolerant of any thing that savored of a liturgical service. They incorpo rated as far as practicable a theocratic element in their civil economy. Warm advocates in theory of universal suffrage, they made church membership a condition of the elective franchise. While they sought in exile free dom to worship God, they were sternly bent on a mo nopoly of this priceless privilege. Heresy in doctrine or worldliness of deportment waa a species of treason against the godly commonwealth that needed to be restrained and punished by the civil magistrate. Not only the ignorant masses, but their educated leaders were superstitious and cruel to a degree scarcely credible. The death penalty even was inflicted in some instances with unsparing severity on. witches, Quakers, Catholics and Baptists. It was as though the shadow had gone back on the dial of Ahaz and professedly Christian men had relapsed into the barbarism of the twelfth century. Like their fellow-fanatics, the Roundheads of England, they were ascetics of the worst type. With them life was not only real, but it was sternly serious and even morose. The Sabbath waa a fast to be observed with Jewish strict ness a day to be devoted to sermons, and catechisms, and devout meditation. The blue laws of Connecticut reflect
34
JAMESTOWN AND PLYMOUTH BOCK.
the pious sentiment of the times, and while they are in part apocryphal, they certainly embody the traditional convictions of the Puritan fathers.
It need hardly be said that they were in full sym pathy with the popular movement in England. They were jubilant at the victories of Cromwell, and shouted Te Deum when Charles I. was executed. They were in good favor with the Lord Protector and greatly bewailed his death. When the day of reckoning and retribution came to the popular leaders of England, they gladly, af forded sanctuary to five of the regicides.
In all of these respects the Cavalier colony was the ex act opposite. As regards religion, they were devoted ad herents of the Church of England. While Massachusetts divided its territory into school townships, Virginia dis tributed her territory into parishes, and the book of com mon prayer was ordered to be used in all religious assem blies. Their churches were fashioned after English models, and many of the private residences of the wealth ier planters closely resembled the manor houses of the English gentry. Their homes were the centers of a hos pitality that became proverbial for its elegance and bountifulness. Nor were they forgetful of literature and the fine arts. Their homes were furnished with libraries and decorated with statuary and paintings imported from Europe. During the Colonial period, and afterwards, many of the elder sons of these rich planters were edu cated at the best universities of Europe. In politics they were admirers of the British Constitution with its three estates of king, lords and commons. The common law, with its law of primogeniture, and the feudal sys tem of entails, so favorable to the accumulation of large
JAMESTOWN AND PLYMOUTH ROCK.
35
landed estates, was part of its jurisprudence for nearly two centuries. Instead of manhood suffrage they estab lished freehold suffrage.
They were in hearty accord with the Cavaliers during the commonwealth era, and after the overthrow of the monarchy, Virginia was the asylum of hundreds of the persecuted Royalists. Two years before the restoration Richard Lee visited Charles II. at Breda, and ten dered him the fealty of his Virginia subjects. Indeed, Sir William Berkley, the Governor of the colony, caused Charles II. to be proclaimed king of England, Scotland, Ireland, France and Virginia, when as yet he was a homeless fugitive. These treasonable doings of the Vir ginia Cavaliers did not escape the vigilant eye of Crom well. He deemed it a matter sufficiently grave to warrant him in dispatching a war ship to reduce the rebellious colony. That veteran Cavalier, Sir William Berkley, organized a body of troops to resist the Lord Pro tector. Fortunately for the interests of all concerned, an honorable settlement was obtained, Virginia secur ing for herself the right of self-taxation, and also exemp tion from commercial burdens imposed on some of the other colonies. It is noteworthy that Virginia was the last to succumb to Puritan ascendency, and tbe first to challenge the military authority of the English govern ment. For the next hundred years the prosperity of Virginia was phenomenal. Her resources were enlarged in all directions. Especially was she benefited by the influx of an educated and enterprising Scotch-Irish population, who settled west of the Blue Ridge. These Valley Virginians were descendants of the men whose obstinate valor at the siege of Londonderry has made
36
JAMESTOWN AND PLYMOUTH ROCK.
their memory immortal. At first there was a bitter rivalry between these Cohees, as they were called, and the Tuckahoes, who inhabited the tide-water district. Com mercial intercourse and frequent intermarriage gradu ally removed their mutual prejudice. During the French and Indian wars and the Revolutionary struggle, they were more thoroughly united, but their political affiliation was never complete. Stonewall Jackson was a fair representative of the Valley Virginians, while Robert E. Lee was " a Cavalier of the Cavaliers."
Massachusetts and Virginia, although differing on many questions during the Colonial period, were both jealous of either royal or parliamentary encroachments on their chartered rights.
When, therefore, the Tory ministry of George III. in augurated their scheme of taxation without representa tion, they were united in opposition to the project. As early as 1765, the Virginia House Burgesses denounced the Stamp Act as unconstitutional and oppressive. At a later period they made common cause with Puritan Massachusetts against the Boston Port bill, and shipped supplies to their famishing compatriots. To Patrick Henry besides, beyond all men, belongs the credit of starting the ball of the revolution. No man, indeed, did more to arouse the colonists to a just sense of the impend ing danger.
When the military contest began with a chance col lision at Lexington, the Colonies soon became solid. As yet, however, there were few that contemplated a permanent separation from the mother country. In the Colonial Congress, Richard Henry Lee, of Virginia, whose Norman blood was indisputable, moved for the appoint-
JAME6TOWS AND PLYMOUTH KOCK.
37
ment of a committee to draft a Declaration of Independ ence. The motion prevailed, the declaration was pre pared by Thomas Jefferson, submitted to Congress and unanimously adopted. It was at the suggestion of Vir ginia that the Articles of Confederation were adopted. This was a league between sovereign States, and while it was hardly adequate for the purposes of the war, it proved utterly insufficient after the treaty of Versailles. Many of the States failed to pay their quota towards the support of the Confederation. At times it was so nearly bankrupt that its treasury was barely able to purchase stationery and defray the clerk hire. Aa stated in the outset, external pressure withdrawn, there was shown an utter lack of political affinity. Anarchy, or a group of fee ble and independent republics, it seemed, were the dread ful alternatives. Moreover, the commercial regulations of the different States were so variant that they were a source of perpetual discord. At this juncture, Vir ginia proposed a convention of all the States, to be held at Annapolis, Maryland, which should take all these matters relating to commerce under advisement. So little interest was felt in the question that only four States were represented. This convention of delegates asked for an enlargement of their powers, and adjourned to meet at Philadelphia in May, 1787. Over this mem orable body George Washington presided. The session was prolonged through wearisome months of debate, and there were times when the most hopeful despaired of any satisfactory result. Luther Martin tells us that there were no less than three parties in the convention whose differences were radical and apparently irreconcilable. The Constitution, as reported to and finally accepted by
38
JAMESTOWN AND PLJMOUTH BOCK.
the thirteen original States, was the result of a series of compromises. When submitted to the several State conventions it met with fierce opposition. For some while North Carolina and Rhode Island withheld their ratification, and so little desire was felt for what the pre amble styled "a more perfect union," that the leading States of Virginia, New York and Massachusetts adopted it by beggarly majorities. Not a few of our most illustri ous patriots and statesmen were dissatisfied in a greater or less degree with the work of the convention. Hamil ton himself was not without painful misgivings. Patrick Henry did not scruple to stigmatize the Constitution as dangerous to public liberty. Mr. Jefferson, who was ab sent in Europe during these heated discussions, was known to be ill-affected towards the proposed change. Viewed in the clear light of subsequent history, some of these men seemed to be endowed with the spirit of po litical prophecy, not less so, indeed, than Edinuud Burke when he wrote his "Reflections on the French Revolu tion."
They seemed to have an open vision of the rivalry be tween the hostile sections foreboding anarchy. On the other hand no small number feared the gradual usurpation of the reserved rights of the States by the Central govern ment with an alarming tendency towards imperialism. They predicted the rise of a national party that would seek to obtain by artful construction what was wanting in specific grant. Nor did these far-sighted statesmen fail to see the probability, if not moral certainty, of a struggle between individual States and the Federal gov ernment, resulting in such deadly strife as for four years drenched the continent with fraternal blood. As more
JAMESTOWN AND PLYMOUTH ROCK.
39
than once already intimated, the Constitution was at last ratified under a sort of constraint, and not without a significant if silent protest. This language will not be adjudged too strong by those who are familiar with the situation of that transition period. There was re luctant acquiescence rather than hearty approval.
Such was the true condition when the Federal govern ment was launched by the inauguration of Washington in 1789. The immense personal influence of the Presi dent prevented for the time being any grave party divis ions, guaranteed an era of good feeling, and secured con fidence in the stability of the new political order. And yet in hia first cabinet there were two distinguished men, Jefferson and Hamilton, who were radically dissim ilar in their views on nearly all constitutional questions. These differences were indeed so great that Jefferson withdrew from the cabinet after about three years ser vice as Secretary of State. There were still, notwith standing, elements of discord in Congress and in the country which crystallized in well-defined party organ ization before the close of Washingtons second term. It was evident from his farewell address that he clearly foresaw some of the dangers, foreign and domestic, that impended over the new government and threatened to strangle the infant Hercules in its cradle. Hence his em phatic warning against entangling alliances with foreign nations and his admonitory appeals on the evils of sec tionalism.
It was a national misfortune that the official mantle of Washington fell on John Adams, the head and front of the Federal party. For while Mr. Adams was a states-
3
40
JAMESTOWN AND PLYMOUTH ROCK.
man of incorruptible integrity and tried patriotism, he hardly possessed a single qualification for the Presidency. If not the author of the Jay treaty, he was largely re sponsible for that diplomatic blunder which practically surrendered the freedom of the seas. His "Defense of the American Constitutions," a prosy and ponderous book, satisfied all thinking men that he was the merest plodder in the science of government. Besides all these proofs of incapacity, his deliberate sanction of the Alien and Sedition laws was such a flagrant outrage on the car dinal principles of American liberty that he was justly relegated to the shades of Quincy. Against these and similar invasions of personal and State rights, Mr. Jef ferson, with the concurrence and co-operation of Mr. Madison, prepared and published the Kentucky and Vir ginia resolutiona These masterly political documents were henceforth the Magna Charta of State sovereignty and the text-book of the Republican party.
The presidential contest of 1800 was fairly won by the Republicans, but the Federalists, thus early in our nation al history, sought by mere technicalities to defeat the pop ular will in the overthrow of Jefferson and the substitution of Aaron Burr, who had hardly been thought of in connec tion with the Presidency. The struggle in the House of Representatives was long and dubious, and the excite ment in the country intense and absorbing. It developed not only a spirit of partyism, but a spirit of sectionalism that has marked all our subsequent history. One of the earliest measures of Mr. Jeffersons administration we refer to the acquisition of Louisiana was bitterly opposed by New England and its allies chiefly, if not solely, on the ground that it increased the preponderance of the
JAMESTOWN AIO> PLtMonrfl ROCK.
41
Southern States. There was, however, no anti-slavery outcry. This fanaticism was the invention of a later age. Abolitionism had as yet neither birth nor self-conscious being. This vast addition to our national territory gave us control of the Mississippi, from its head-waters to the Belize, and made it possible for us to become a first-class political and commercial power. Another thing remained to be done to free u* from Colonial vassalage. Our com mercial independence, as already intimated, had been seriously compromised by British influence and the ser vility of the Federal party in the negotiation and ratifi cation ofthe Jay treaty. The embargo and non-intercourse acts were purely defensive measures, and they aroused the fiercest opposition of the Federal party. All through this struggle for commercial independence, Puritan New England and her allies were in open revolt against the Republican administration.
But for these intestine troubles the second British war might have been indefinitely postponed. The Hartford Convention the refusal of Massachusetts to respond to the call for the militia the blue-light signals along the North Atlantic coast, were but the continuous and con sistent developments of a well-matured conspiracy against the Federal government. Some partisan writers of American history it would be a flagrant misnomer to style them historians have spared no pains to con ceal or extenuate these traitorous policies and practices of Federalism. But so convincing was the proof that, as early as 1808, this corrupt organization could only muster eight votes in the Senate, and in a little while it ceased to exercise any marked influence in national politics.
42
JAMESTOWN AND PLYMOUTH ROCK.
Notwithstanding this defection of New England, the patriotism of the country was equal to the emergency. Our gallant little navy vindicated the rights of neutrals, which had been infringed by the Orders in Council and the Berlin and Milan decrees, and which Jays treaty had tamely yielded up. Our success on land had likewise been most gratifying. Scotts victories on the Canadian border had been exceptionally brilliant, whilst at New Orleans, Jackson, with his Western riflemen, had routed the veterans of the Peninsular war under (he leadership of the gallant, but ill-starred Packenham. The treaty of Ghent for the first time placed our national independence on a firm basis, and the honor is due almost exclusively to the skill and gallantry of the Democratic chieftans in field and cabinet.
The period which immediately followed the adminis tration of Madison is usually characterized as the " Era of good feeling." So complete was the overthrow of Federalism that Mr. Monroe was re-elected to a second term without the slightest show of opposition. The defeat of Jackson and the election of the younger Adams in 1824 was attributed by a vast majority of the people to a corrupt coalition between " the Puritan and the blackleg." It was fiercely rebuked in the next Presidential campaign by the triumphant election of Jackson. It was during this season of domestic quiet ness that Mexico, under the leadership of Santa Anna and Victoria, subverted the Empire of Iturbide that Simon Bolivar achieved the independence of Columbia and Peru,and that Bozzaris and his " Suliote band" paved the way for the re-establishment of Greek nationality. These triumphs of Democracy on both continents aroused
JAMESTOWN AND PLYMOUTH ROCK.
43
the enthusiasm and enlisted the sympathies of all classes in the United States. They furnished occasion also for some of the finest displays of forensic oratory ever listened to in the halls of the American Congress. This picture of Arcadian repose and loveliness was sadly marred by thrusting upon the country the " Negro Prob lem." That problem is the ghastly skeleton in our national closet. It is the Sphinx riddle of American politics, which no halting Edipus has yet been found to solve.
Our purpose now is to deal with that special issue which, more than all else, contributed to weaken the bond of fellowship between the North and South, and ul timately to divide the country into geographical parties. The minor questionsof tariff, banks,etc., were important,
but not of necessity vital. They could in no just sense be regarded as sectional, for while it is true that the Northern section of the Union was most clamorous for protection to domestic industries, there was a respectable minority of Southern voters who were afraid nf the com petition of the pauper labor of Europe. So, likewise, while the commercial centers of the Middle and Eastern States were chiefly anxious for a national currency of uniform value, yet there were many Southern sympa thizers who were dissatisfied with the obvious incon veniences of the State banking system. These questions, however, were susceptible of ready adjustment. The nullification movement in South Carolina was quieted by the compromise of 1833, and the bank troubles were al layed by the heroic conduct of General Jackson. These agitations were not only evanescent, but insignificant compared with the anti-slavery agitation that first as-
44
JAMESTOWN AND PLYMOUTH BOCK.
sumed political prominence in connection with the ad mission of Missouri in 1820. This Negro craze for so it may be fitly characterized was small in its beginnings and had a plausible humanitarian basis. It was for many years confined to the Quakers and a few aged spinsters in the vicinity.of Boston, who, in the earlier days of the Plymouth colony, would have been burned as witches. The intelligence of New England even repudiated it as a mischievous fanaticism. But as the little cloud, which Elijahs servant saw rise out of the sea, continued to spread, until it darkened the whole heavens, so this" evil leaven of abolitionism waxed more and more until it im periled the integrity of the Union. Its foremost cham pion, Garrison, was drugged, with a rope round his neck, through the streets of Boston, amidst the hootings of the small boys and the curses of what Van Hoist styles the "gentlemanly rabble" of the city. Gerritt Smith and Wendell Phillips were frequently pelted with stale egga and howled down by the mob. But, before many years, it became a political factor of vast weight in State and National politics. The North became jealous, not only of Southern prosperity, but of its continued ascendency in the councils of the nation. There was murmuring against the three-fifths slave representation in the House and complaints against the rendition of fugitive slaves. These fanatics won their first victory in the passage of the Mis souri compromise. While it wasa measure of pacification, it was a perilous concession to Abolitionism. By it the South was at once overreached and betrayed. Hencefor ward the North, while clinging to the humanitarian fea tures of anti-slaveryism, became more arrogant and ag gressive. Congress was flooded with memorials praying
JAMESTOWN AND PLYMOUTH HOCK.
45
for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia and wherever the General government held exclusive jurisdiction. The halls of Congress resounded with bit ter denunciations of the slave-holding aristocracy. In flammatory appeals were made to the sectional prejudices of the North and West. Men,whose forefathers were brutal task-masters and professional slave-hunters on the coasts of Africa, stood up and lectured the Southern people on the iniquity of chattel slavery. Such a policy of course produced estrangement, and years before the era of bleed ing Kansas and John Browns midnight raid, the two civilizations, correspondent to the two sections, were in as deadly feud as Saxon and Celt.
The rise of the National Whig party in 1836 and its triumph in 1840 promised to allay for a season the fe verish excitement on this thoroughly sectional issue. That party embodied a large proportion of the virtue and intelligence of both sections, and for a time kept un der control the worse elements that had entered into its composition.
Party ties are not easily broken, nor party allegiance readily forsworn. As long as the two great National parties could preserve their organization intact, there was no ground of apprehension for the safety of the Re public. Two events, however, were at hand which added fresh fuel to the flames. The annexation of Texas and the defeat of Mr. Clay for the Presidency greatly exas perated the Northern extremists. The former, followed as it was by the brilliant campaigns of Scott and Taylor, hardly wakened a momentary enthusiasm amongst the masses of New England. The acquisition of an immense territory, rich in agricultural and mineral resources, was
46
JAMESTOWN AND PLYMOUTH ROCK.
viewed with disfavor and trepidation lest it might strengthen the South and restore the lost equilibrium between the contending sections. The election of TayIcr and the compromise of 1850 caused, it is true, a tem porary lull, yet it proved to be the calm that precedes the terrible cyclone. The decade that immediately fol lowed was a period of incessant agitation. Compromises had been singularly inefficient. Constitutional compacts were not less powerless to stay the whelming torrent of anti-slavery fanaticism. The Bible and the Constitu tion were alike spurned as in the interests of slavecatchers and men-stealers, and their sacred restraints trampled under the swinish hoofs of a Ciicean rabble drunk with partisan fury. The Missouri compromise was very soon repealed. We, as already intimated, have no disposition x> defend it. It was a fraud and an injus tice to the slave States. Esaus sale of his birthright for a mess of red lentils was a marvelously shrewd business transaction compared with that political folly. And yet its repeal was the opening of Pandoras box. It fanned the flames of sectional controversy. It substituted squat ter sovereignty for constitutional safeguards. It was the proximate cause of that border strife which was the bloody prologue of the fearful tragedy that shortly fol lowed. Nor is it- allowable for those who would acquaint themselves with the deeper philosophy of the war be tween the two civilizations to overlook or undervalue the influence of that remarkable book, Uncle Toms Cabin. The author was liberally endowed with hereditary genius which had been enriched by more than average literary culture. Whilst there was a coloring of truth in many of its statements, it was in the main a frightful caricature
JAMESTOWN AND PLYMOUTH ROCK.
47
of Southern slavery. Comparatively few of its Northern readers were carious to know the exact truth of its in tensely dramatic representations. Whether Topsy was a picture from real slave-life or a figment of the fancy was of no personal concern with them; whether Legree was a flesh and blood entity or the coinage of a distempered brain was of the slightest imaginable consequence. It was quite enough that it nourished their hatred to the Nabobs of Virginia and the Carolinas. It might be easily foreseen that a people who were stirred to incendiary vio lence by the "awful disclosures of Maria Monk" would be thrilled to their finger tips and infuriated to madness by the overdrawn pictures of Uncle Toms Cabin. So profound was the impression that even until to day the worship of New England is divided between Uncle Tom, the saintly hero of Mrs. Stowe, and Brown of Ossawattomie, the martyr of the Quaker poet, Whittier. Add to this the frantic appeals of a hireling priesthood and of a time-serving, if not subsidized press, and it is not strange that, 1 ike a "hell-broth," the Puritan blood con tinued to boil and bubble with ten-fold fury.
The administration of Buchanan was the close of the constitutional period of our national history. For more than sixty years the South had ruled the destinies of the nation in peace and war. To this statement there are hardly any noteworthy exceptions, and it may be profitable to consider the results, State and Federal, of this protracted dynastic sway. The whole nation had prospered in a degree that may well excite our admi ration. In the outset, we were limited on the south and west by French and Spanish occupation. The fairest and most productive portions of the continent were
48
JAMESTOWN AND PLYMOUTH ROCK.
under the flag of European nationalities. These bar riers to our territorial extension had been removed, not by war, but by wise and well-directed diplomacy. Our
commercial independence, without which our disenthrallment from British dominion would have been of little or no worth, had been achieved by the gallantry of our army and navy. Impressment, right of search and other hindrances to our national commerce had been forever abolished. The Monroe doctrine had not only been asserted, but practically enforced. Indian hostilities were largely a thing of the past. The greater
portion of the partially domesticated tribes had been re moved to reservations provided for them in the far west. These ancient denizens of the forest, under the protec tion and patronage of the government, had abandoned the chase and engaged in agriculture and the mechanic arts. The financial condition of the country was all that could be desired. The debt incurred by three for eign wars and various Indian disturbances had been liquidated. The excise and land tax system had been discontinued, and with honest and economical adminis tration the revenue from the customs was adequate to meet current expenses. The growth of our population had been normal, and this natural increase was supple mented by a vast immigration from the Old World.The benefits of this immigration had inured in a dis proportionate measure to the North, principally because that section had almost a monopoly of direct steam com munication with the transatlantic States. Our export trade, consisting mainly of the agricultural products of Southern industry, was constantly enlarging. Indeed, in all parts of the Union there were evidences of enter-
JAMESTOWN AND PLYMOUTH ROCK.
49
prise and thrift, as shown by the steady increase of tax able values. Manufactures were flourishing, especially the cotton and iron industries of the Eastern and Mid
dle States, which had for many years been stimulated and fostered by protective tariffs. The South enjoyed its full share of this general prosperity. Despite the alleged economical disadvantages of our labor system, the slave States had increased vastly in material wealth with each successive decade. Georgia alone had added three hundred millions of dollars to her capital from 1840 to 1850. Her sister Southern States had nearly kept pace with her, and probably one or more. had out stripped her. Without the aid of fishery bounties or of incidental protection to her industrial pursuits, she, to gether with South Carolina and Tennessee, had more wealth per capita than the foremost State of New Eng land. In this estimate we of course rate their negro property and its regular increase at market value. Be sides, with all their boasted advantages of common schools, there was a smaller percentage of crime and a larger percentage of higher education in the older Southern States than in the land of steady habits and of moral ideas. These statements may startle, but they are amply sustained by the census statistics.
In two respects the South had relatively lost ground. The numerical strength of the free States had grown more rapidly than the slave States. This, as heretofore suggested, was due in some measure to foreign immigra tion. And the direction of that current was itself in fluenced chiefly by the character of the Southern cli mate and its comparative lack of manufactories. An other relatiye deficiency of the South was in professional
50
JAMESTOWN AND PLYMOUTH ROCK.
authorship. This has been made the occasion of many spiteful flings at Southern literature. These invidious attacks were prompted by sectional jealousy and echoed by a class of Southern men who neither understand what they say nor whereof they affirm. The small num ber of professional Southern writers admits of ready ex planation. The educated young men of the South devoted themselves mainly to the learned professions, and much the larger part to politics and statesmanship. Hence, it was a matter of general remark, that in the halls of Congress, in the diplomatic service and in all that pertains to statesmanship in its higher and broader signifisation, men of Southern birth or lineage have borne away the palm of excellence. Our historic names Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Marshall, Jackson, Clay, Monroe, Crawford, Calhoun, Preston, Randolph, and a number of lesser lights were either directly or collaterally of Cavalier blood. But it argues strange ignorance to assert that even in literature and science the South has not produced a large number of notably eminent men and women. She may justly point with pride to Legar6, whose equal in the highest Hellenistic culture is rarely found in any age to Bledsoe, whose Theodicy entitles him to rank with Leibnitz in the realm of theological metaphysics to Maury, who map ped out the currents of the ocean, and by his " Phys ical Geography of the Sea" lessened by a hundred fold the perils of navigation -to Audobon, the world famed ornithologist, who was familiar with every bird of North America, from the humming-bird of the tropics to the eagle of the Rockies to Calhoun,. whose work on Government is a master-piece of political science to
JAMESTOWN AND PLYMOUTH KOCK.
51
Edgar Allan Poe, whom Victor Hugo pronounces the greatest poet of America, and the superior of Haw thorne as a romancist to the LeContes, unsurpassed in natural science to a long array of other names, as Simms, Warfield, Hayne, Timrod, Wilde, Key, Tucker, Kennedy, Wirt, Longstreet, Alston, Lanier, Charlton, Evann, Ticknor, French, Lipscomb, Thorn well, any and all of whom are worthy of fellowship with the best writers who illumi nate the pages of Harper and the Atlantic Monthly. As to periodical literature, it may be gravely questioned whether any American publication, monthly or quar terly, ever reached the standard of literary excellence achieved by the Southern Quarterly Review in its palm iest days.
We say these things without meaning to claim for the literature of either section any extraordinary merit. While we can now properly boast of a "few immortal names," yet it will require at least another half century to develop a distinctive American literature that shall right fully challenge a place beside the old masters of England, Germany and France- When that time arrives we ven ture the prediction that the South will lead the North in literature, as it has heretofore surpassed it in statesman ship. At this point we close our summary of events relat ing to the constitutional period of American history. The whole country was prosperous and contented, except for that sectional issue which had been persistently thrust upon the nation from the date of the Missouri compro mise.
To this Augustan age of the Republic, future genera tions will recur with unmixed satisfaction. The next quarter of a century, as will presently appear, was a
52
JAMESTOWN AND PLYMOUTH ROCS.
period of chaos and misrule. But as the reign of Nero, Caligula and Domitian the tyrants and scourges of mankind was eventually succeeded by the age of the Antonines, the "Indian summer" of Boman history, so we cherish the hope that, under the present political auspices, brighter days and grander destinies are yet in store for our common country.
FROM LINCOLN TO CLEVELAND.
1861-1885.
CHAPTER III.
THE 4th of March, 1861,waa the day-spring of an era of national strife and blood-shed. The early morning sky was overcast by skurrying cloud-racks that bespoke a day of discomfort and dreariness. The sun as he rose looked through the horizontal, misty air as if struggling in the shadows of an eclipse.
At an unwonted hour, however, the avenueagf the National Capital were thronged, and large groupsot men were gathered at the chief places of concourse discussing with bated breath the urgent issues of the hour.
It was regarded by very many as an evil omen that the President-elect should have considered it a wise pre caution to enter the city by stealth and under the cover of darkness. All thoughtful men realized that we were upon the eve of vast social and constitutional changes, the utmost extent of which could be but dimly foreseen. And yet, in this impending crisis of the nations fate, no ill boding raven croaked his dismal but iparticulate prophecies from the turrets of the Capitol no gibbering ghost squeaked through its dimly-lighted corridors. In deed, there was no ghastly portent in earth or sky, as when in the olden time ancient dynasties tottered on the verge of dissolution and mighty empires nodded to their downfall. And yet, beyond the Potomac,the knightly Cav
54 FROM LINCOLN TO CLEVELAND 1861-1885.
aliers, whose fathers endured the horrors of the Valley Forge encampment and signally triumphed at Yorktown, talked earnestly around their firesides of Southern wrongs and the mode and measure of redress. Across the Blue Ridge the descendants of men who checked the marauding Tarleton at Rock-Fish Gap stood ready at "Virginias call to do and dare. Besides, all along the Southern horizon there were dense, massive clouds sur charged with the fiery bolts of war and heavy laden with the red rain of battle.
These things were thought and felt, and even spoken on that inauguration day, and gave to it the aspect of a funeral rather than a festival. As the day advanced, however, the skies brightened, and before noon the ac customed state pageant was wending its way through Penmylvania avenue to the Capitol. Presently the east ern portico was occupied by a group of dignitaries, not the least conspicuous among whom was Mr. Lincoln, the Presi dent-elect. There was in his attitude and bearing more of the frontiersman than of the courtier. The familiar soubri quet of rail-splitter, of which he was at times foolishly boastful, was not ill-suited to his appearance as he stood and leisurely surveyed the sea of up-turned faces before him. It was, however, in nowise to his discredit that he had arisen from an obscure parentage and humble social position to the Chief Magistracy of a great nation. His inaugural address, which had been carefully prepared, was temperate in tone and even conciliatory in its spirit. It was greeted with the hearty huzzas of the assembled thousands. The official oath solemnly administered, the inauguration ceremonies were completed. What a broad
fROM LINCOLN TO CLEVELAND 1861-1885.
55
contrast between the kalends of March, 1861, and the ides of April, 1865.
Hitherto Mr. Lincolns reputation had been provincial rather than national. Neither his legislative career in his adopted State of Illinois, nor his Congressional life at Washington, was notably brilliant. Certainly there was nothing in his early record to foreshadow in the smallest degree his future eminence. In the circle of his personal friends at Washington he was esteemed a genial fellow of "infinite jest" the amiable Yorick of the club-room and the whist-table. But underlying this native buffoonery there was a stratum of common sense philosophy, and there was about him an air of transpa rent honesty that both inspired confidence manded respect. More than once before the back
audiences of Illinois he proved himself to be a formid able opponent to Douglas, the "Little Giant" of the West. On special occasions in the House of Representatives he exhibited a readiness of repartee, and a thoroughness of information as well, that showed him to be of no mean capacity as a statesman. His proverbial fondness for jokes, sometimes of a coarser sort, was in doubtful keeping with a countenance usually grave and sometimes even sardonic in its expression. Was this the flitting shadow of a coming doom almost weird in its sadness?
He was largely indebted to the bitter rivalry of the Bepublican leaders for his nomination in 1860. He was not less indebted to the needless disruption of the Democratic party at Charleston for a decided majority of the Electoral College. This, too, while in the popular
4
56
FBOM LINCOLN TO CLEVELAND 1861-1585.
vote his minority was a round million. He did not re ceive a single electoral vote from the South, and in all the slave States he did not foot up exceeding twenty-five thousand votes. His election, therefore, was the first pronounced triumph of sectionalism in a Presidential contest. To this end events had been drifting for the past decade, and to this complexion our national affairs had come at last. The Southern leaders all this while had not been blind to the aggressions of the North. The personal liberty bills of fourteen States enacted and habitually enforced in utter defiance of the constitutional compact the avowed purpose of a Congressional majority to circumscribe the area of slavery. These, and other outrages already perpetrated or threatened, conspired to nwke the South impatient of such a foul dom ination. When shut up to the alternative of sec tional degradation, or the manful assertion of their constitutional rights, it is not surprising that the wisest and most patriotic had soberly calculated the
value of the Federal Union. On the other hand, they were not ignorant of the possibilities of secession. They knew, likewise, the exceptional prosperity of the South, which must be greatly hindered and damaged by the shock of arms. But knowing also the temper of the party which would dominate the incoming adminis tration, the Southern leaders, with but little dissent, looked upon the election of Lincoln, under such aus pices, as the death-knell of constitutional liberty. A large number, more extreme in their views, regarded it as a veritable casus belli, fully justifying the immediate and unconditional withdrawal of the slave States.
If it be borne in mind that the great body of the
FROM LINCOLN 0 CLEVELAND 1861-1S85. 57
Southern people adhered to the Jefferaonian theory of government, this conclusion cannot in fairness be con sidered as either strange or indefensible. Indeed, this theory was almost universally accepted by the Conscript Fathers of the Republic. Massachusetts, by her early history, was not less fully committed to the political dogma of secession than South Carolina. Timothy Pickering, the typical Federalist, and the recognized Sir Oracle of New England politicians, was one of its sturdiest advocates. Indeed, a New England confed eracy was projected long before the bombardment of Fort Sumter. Several of the States had affirmed this right in their ratification ordinances, and had even for mally stipulated for its exercise when occasion de manded. According to every principle of legal con struction and natural justice, this reservation inured to the advantage of all other parties to the political compact. Nor again was it considered an abstract rev olutionary remedy for insupportable wrongs, but as a well-denned constitutional right which the General gov ernment had no authority to gainsay or resist. Military coercion of a State by Federal authority was undreamed of in the golden age of the Republic. President Buchanan, in his last message, spurned such a proposition as a monstrous heresy. Even Mr. Lincoln, in his inau gural address, did not claim it, either by special averment or implication, except as related to forts, arsenals, etc. The only pertinent issue, therefore, in the South was as to the expediency of the movement.
Mr. Stephens, clarum et vencrabile nomen, in his im mortal speech at Milledgeville, distinctly claimed the right of secession, but questioned the expediency of its
58 FROM LIHCOLN TO CLEVELAND 1861-1885.
exercise. He insisted, with thousands of others equally good and true, that slavery in the Union was shielded by impregnable bulwarks, and that the South was prospering beyond all parallel. So that, for the time being, it was wise to adjourn the issue and to await futuie developments. As usually happens, however, in similar emergencies, the more resolute and determined spirits prevailed. Such was the pressure that, in ad vance of Lincolns inauguration, several of the Southern State conventions had adopted ordinances of secession with marked unanimity. Even after these stirring events, there were not lacking conservative men of both sections who had not utterly despaired of some honor able adjustment. Various plans were proposed, both in and out of Congress, but men of the Stevens and Morion type ware found unmanageable. The Confederate Con gress at Montgomery, anxious to avoid an armed con flict, dispatched Messrs. Forsyth and Crawford as Peace Commissioners to the government at Washington. Hav ing exhausted all honorable methods, they were refused any distinct recognition on diplomatic punctilios which would have disgraced Downing street itself. This re fusal to enter into negotiation was equivalent to a declaration of hostilities against the seceded States. The struggle between the opposing sections was finally precipitated by the clandestine attempt of the Wash ington government to re-provision Fort Sumter, then straitly besieged by the Confederate forces. This effort was responded to properly and promptly by the batteries of Beauregard. - And now in quick succession came the Presidents call for troops, and on either side there was hurrying to and fro and the marshalling of mailed
FROM LINCOLN TO CLEVELAND----1861-1885.
59
hosts. Websters hideous spectacle of "States discordant and belligerent" was no longer a sombre fancy, but a stern reality.
We should refrain from any detail or discussion of the incidents and events of the war period. The time is not yet when some fair-minded Thucydides shall ad equately describe this stupendous contest, compared with which the war of the Peloponnesus was as tame as a dress parade and as insignificant as the battle of the Pigmies and Cranes. It waa well understood from the beginning that the numerical odds was greatly against the South. The same disparity existed with reference to all matters of army subsistence and equipment. Fur thermore, the South, isolated by thefclockade, could draw no fighting contingents from the populous East, whilst the North, having its recruiting stations in every capital of Europe, by means of liberal bounties, reinforced its decimated armies without stint or limitation. And yet, after as gallant a defense as the seven years struggle of the Great Frederick, the South succumbed, but in no craven spirit, to the overwhelming numbers and vaster resources of the North. If personal heroism could have won the unequal fight, then the stars and bars would now be full-nigh advanced and bathed in the sunlight of victory. But the methods and appliances of modern warfare are such that military success depends purely on the physical momentum of the contesting battalions. If the race is not always to the swift nor the battle al* ways to the strong, the exceptions are so exceedingly rare that they do not sensibly affect the general rule.
The re-election of Lincoln over his Democratic oppo nent in 1864, preceded as it was by the Gettysburg and
60 FROM LINCOLN TO CLEVELAND--1861-1885.
Vicksburg disasters, was a death-blow to the Peace party at the North. His second inauguration was close ly succeeded by the surrender at Appoinattox, and with that perished the last hope of Southern independence. The South lay prostrate in the dust and bleeding at every pore. Treading on the heels of the Confederate collapse was the startling assassination of the PresidentAt Fords theatre, on Good Friday night, April, 1865, the President and his party from a private box were watch ing the mimic scene, when the festive assemblage was startled by a pistol-shot and shocked by the almost sim ultaneous outcry, "the President is killed!" In the midst of the uproar J. Wilkes Booth, a well-known actor, leaped upon the stage brandishing a dagger and shouting aloud the motto of Virginia, Sic Semper Tyrannia / It was a thrilling dramatic incident only equaled -in real horror by that classical scene in the Senate House at Rome when Brutus "called aloud on Tullys name and shook his crimson steel," while imperial Caesar lay wel tering in his blood at the base of Pompeys statue. Meanwhile the assassin escaped immediate arrest by a precipitate Sight. He mounted a horse ready for the emergency and was soon lost sight of in the encompass ing darkness. No sooner did the multitude rally from the general consternation than the constabulary, military and civil, were in hot pursuit. Booth was overtaken in a farm-house not far from the scene of John Browns fiasco. He made a gallant defense, but was finally rid dled with bullets. It was at first rumored that he was given the burial of an ass in an unknown sepulchre. Whether he was more than a vulgar assassin like Guiteau, or an inspired avenger like Judith, the slayer
FROM LINCOLN TO CLEVELAND 1861-1885. 61
of Holofernes, is a problem we leave to those who have a fancy for hair-splitting discussions. In whatever as pect it may be considered, it was a most cruel and un timely taking off. It gave at least an intense nervous shock to the nation at large, while to the South it was a terrible calamity. We have always felt and have re peatedly shown a just appreciation of the sterling qual ities of Mr. Lincoln. He was generons in his impulses and comprehensive in his statesmanship. The Eman cipation Proclamation of January, 1863, which invited^ a general insurrection of the Southern slaves, is the single foul blot on his escutcheon. We have reason to believe, from the testimony of Mr. Stephens, who met him at the Fortress Monroe conference, that this expe dient was resorted to as the last hope of a tottering dynasty. That measure, so clearly unconstitutional and so flagrantly barbarous in its possibilities of crime and bloodshed, was justified as a war necessity. Such was the temper of the North that it was either that or inev itable failure. The whole basis of the struggle must be changed. The war, which was avowedly inaugurated for the preservation of the Union, must henceforth be prosecuted for the destruction of slavery. It is with in the range of possibility that if Lincoln had refused to yield to this loud-voiced clamor some Radical des perado might have forestalled the murderous work of Wilkes Booth.
However this may be, it is well understood that the President was sincerely anxious to stay the farther effusion of blood by a fair adjustment of sectional differ ences. It is, besides, an open secret that he had formu lated a policy quite as liberal aa that which Johnson
62
FROM LINCOLN TO CLKVBLAND--1861-1885.
afterwards emphasized as " My policy." No one is em powered to speak authoritatively of its details, but it certainly would have spared the South the prolonged humiliation and suffering of the reconstruction era. It would probably have embraced gradual emancipation qualified negro suffrage and partial compensation to the slaveholder. There is still less doubt that his per sonal and official influence with the Northern masses would have insured its general acceptance. For these considerations, we repeat the statement, that the death of the President was a calamity to the South. Nor was it less mischievous in its influence on the North. It fired the Northern heart and frenzied the Northern brain. The first impulse was to charge that the assassin ation was the outcome of rebel conspiracy. Such an accusation in the existing state of general demoralization met with ready credence. At Washington particularly, there was a howl of indignation and a fierce cry for blood. Johnson and his cabinet were no little affected by the prevailing frenzy, and made no present effort to mitigate its violence. Indeed, the times were out of joint, and no one could say when or where the next re tributive bolt would fall. Stanton, the War Minister, and Holt, the Attorney-General, were brimful of patri otic indignation. The former, hardly less cruel than Gouthon and more false than Barrere, sat at his official desk with the front of Jove and the eye of Mars,
While famine, pestilence and war, Leashed in like hounds, Crouched at his feet.
At a single wave of the Presidential hand he was ready to cry havoc, and let slip the dogs of war upon the dig.
PROM LINCOLN TO CLEVELAND 1861-1885. 63
armed and desolated South. Inquisitor-General Holt proceeded at once to organize a military court for a mock trial of Wirz, Mrs. Surratt and other conspirators. Their conviction and execution was a matter of course. Even Johnson was so carried away by the rampant ter rorism, or so eager to demonstrate his loyalty to the "old flag," that he was heard to say, " that treason must be made odious."
President Davis, already shattered in the storms of State, was incontinently thrust into the case-mates of Fortress Monroe, and notwithstanding his broken health was heavily ironed like a common felon. Mr. Stephens,. a chronic invalid,was dragged from Liberty Hall and shut up in Fort Warren, where he might breathe at leisure the noxious vapors of a dungeon. Consultations were held with General Grant as to the propriety of disposing of Lee, Johnston and other Confederate leaders by the sum mary process of a drumhead court-martial. Grant, for tunately, had no ambition to be gibbeted on the pages of history alongside of Haynau, the Austrian butcher. Above all, he was too brave, not to say magnanimous, to compromise his soldierly honor. He protested with be* fitting emphasis against the slightest infraction of the terms of surrender. Amidst the martinets and poppinjays, and treasury thieves as well, that were congregated at Washington, he was calm and conscientious. His un flinching firmness alone saved the honor of American sol* diership from everlasting infamy, and snatched the country from the verge of a guerrilla warfare of twenty years duration.
But such madness must sooner or later exhaust itselfIn less than two months after the death of Lincoln, a re-
64 PROM LINCOLN TO CLEVELAND 1861-1885.
action set in. Quite a number of prominent Republicans, amongst them Johnson and Seward, felt it to be wise to call a halt and adopt milder methods.
Johnson, in the teeth of a divided cabinet, undertook the work of recoastruction according to a plan of his own devising. In its main features, looking to an early re habilitation of the Union, it bore a close resemblance to the plan of Mr. Lincoln. This step was regarded by the extremists of his party as an unwarrantable stretch of Ex ecutive authority. It was even denounced as a bare-faced usurpation of powers properly belonging to the legisla tive department.
From this time forward to the close of his term, he was badgered by the Jacobins, who were dominant in both branches of Congress. In spite of the Executive veto and patronage, he was pushed to the wall and nar rowly escaped conviction of high crimes and misde meanors, to be followed by official degradation. In this conflict he displayed a Spartan valor that atoned for his former political delinquencies. Nothing, however, could avert the uttermost fury of a Congressional mob, who, by the trickery of "constitutional amendments and under the forms of law, were intent on confiscation and disfranchisement for the Southern whites and the vir tual enthronement of a negro rabble as the propertyholders and law-givers of the South.
And now the curtain rises on another and more dis graceful act of this frightful drama of reconstruction. Congress very soon addressed itself to tht work of estab lishing loyal State governments in the South. In aid of this project it divided the Southern States into five military districts. The several departmental command-
FROM LINCOLN TO CLEVELAND--1 861-1 885.
65
ere were invested with dictatorial powers, for the abuse of which there was practically neither responsibility nor redress. Regiments were quartered at important strategic points to repress the first buddings of disloy alty. Men, and in some instances women, were ar rested, and without warrant or indictment were hurried to prison. Churches and parsonages were seized by mil itary orders. On every side there was a feeling of inse curity mens hearts failing them for fear of some fresh outrage. The Provisional governments rBp.f>gnimd by President Johnson wp ngortnrnc^. statn
tiqng_were convnlcBd qnf1 ^"g^ ^ ^t. t.ha will nf
Legislatures were summoned and dispersed at the point of the bayonet, and the quali fications of its members determined by some epauletted dunder-head.
Such was the anomalous condition of affairs when Grant, the unanimous choice of his party, was inaugu rated on March 4, 1869. Grants previous rupture with Johnson, as to his policy of reconstruction, was sufficient evidence that under the new regime all departments of the government would be in harmony. Every obstacle to reconstruction, according to the Congressional plan, was removed and the threat of the Abolitionists to or ganize hell in the South was executed to the letter. A fresh inundation of Goths and Vandals swept over the plague-smitten South. As one has said of the Menadic insurrection in Paris, " Rascality had slipped its muz zle and bayed three-throated like the dog of Erebus." Government detectives prowled through the length and breadth of the land, and hireling informers were on the track of the leading citizens. The
66 FROH LINCOLN TO CLEVELAND 1861-1885.
negroes, stimulated by the presence of the military, became more insolent and aggressive. The frequency of brutal outrages on the mothers and daughters of the South goaded our young men to desperation. When they summarily punished these offenders, some of whom could hardly be reached by the ordinary legal tribunals, the Northern press cried out against rebel cruelty to the wards of the nation. Having secured by fair and foul means the ratification of the 14th Amendment, congress was not slow to enact the notorious Ku-Klux law. Under its provisions martial law was proclaimed in some districts of the South. Sporadic instances of vio lence did nowand then occur that demanded punish ment, but the ends of justice could have been secured without military intervention. It is remarkable that these instances of swift-footed justice were so infrequent. The instincts of a worm crawling in the dust of the highway impel it to sting the heel that treads upon it. And no higher evidence could be asked of the civiliza tion of the South than that, in the midst of unparalleled provocation, the great body of its people maintained their self-control and were habitually law-abiding.
This is not written by way of defense, but extenuation. Klu-Kluxism cannot be defended in the abstract, and yet it was only a practical illustration of the higher law dog ma of Puritan New England. Indeed, the earliest ex amples of it are furnished by that section of the Union. . Beginning with the expulsion of Roger Williams down to Shays rebellion, the first communistic movement on the continent, down to the mobbing of Prudence Crandall at Canterbury, Connecticut, and the burning of a Catholic convent at Boston, and the fugitive slave riots.
tfROM LINCOLN tO CLEVELAND--1861-1885.
6t
These events and their number might be increased a hundred-fold demonstrate that the spirit of Ku-KIuxism is the inherent vice of Puritan civilization. Ouly yesterday, in Wyoming, a score of defenseless Chinamen were butchered by a mob of men and women for the sin gle crime of underbidding in the labor market: and here in the South the negro does the same thing every day and nobody molests him. But we have no disposition to consider further the literature of Ku-Kluxism, whether it relates to Massachusetts or South Carolina.
While military outrages were perpetrated in the South, the National Capital was disgraced by a corruption bold and unblushing, such as was hardly known in the dark est days of the Roman Empire. We mention only the Credit Mobilier, a gigantic swindle involving some of the chief functionaries of the government. Men in prominent official position guilty of crimes that Jack Sheppard, the noted highwayman, would have shrunk from, and others indulging in petty villainies that Macheath, the hero of the Beggars Opera, would have dis dained. All this the legitimate fruitage of a war waged for the purpose of national robbery and of a plan of re construction alike deficient in mercy and statesmanship. It is one of the strangest paradoxes of history that a scheme so essentially wicked and foolish should have re ceived the approval of a few of the better and wiser men of the Republican party. It has been well said that the great continents of the earth are uplifted from the sealevel at the rate of a single foot in a century. So like wise the great deltas of the Nile and Ganges require for their deposition 10,000 years. How absurd and ridicu lously false, then, the idea that by the magic of legislative
68 FROM LINCOLN TO CLEVELAND 1861-1885.
enactments, a horde of semi-barbarians could be suddenly fitted, not only for citizenship, but also qualified to be law makers and judges and members of Congress. Nothing but the blindness of party rage can account for such a politcal blunder. Either this is true, or else they were pre pared to see the most fertile region of the country re manded to its former wilderness condition and roamed over by millions of naked savages for a thousand years to come.
The results of this Congressional plan were less perni cious because General Grant stood at the helm of national affairs. We regard it as a gracious Providence for the South that he was in a position to guide the storm that menaced the country with universal wreck. Not less than Lincoln, he was without malice, and we were about to write without guile. We will write, a man of honest purposes. Even under his control military reconstruc tion was a fearful calamity. Judge Jerry Black, looking at it from a Northern standpoint, says it has no parallel for wickedness and meanness in human history. After the lapse of years, we say in all soberness, that next to the curse of -Cromwell in Ireland and the cruelties of Alva in the Netherlands, it was a most damning dis grace to Christian civilization. And yet, if any other leading Republican had been elected instead of Grant, the evil would have been augmented a thousand-fold.
We have no special sympathy for the extravagant praise of this really great man, which has lately been quite the fashion both North and South. As a military chieftain, he won the highest distinction. If mere suc cess be the supreme test of merit, he deserves a lofty rank. And yet history will say that he was not the
LINCOLN TO CLEVELAND 1S61-1885. 6$
equal of Sherman as & strategist that he could not organize a great campaign like McClellan that he was wanting in the dash of Sheridan, and still, that in stubborn fighting qualities he was the superior of any or all of them. He had more of the persistence of Wellington than of the genius of Bonaparte or Marlborough. His civil administration was feeble because he lacked original capacity and professional training. He seemed in civil office to be wanting in the self-reliance that characterized his military career. He had a stupid veneration for the behests of a party caucus and the decrees of a Congressional majority. And yet, in an other aspect of it, this may have been fortunate for^ the best interest? of all sections.
The closing weeks of Grants administration devoted to the inauguration of Rutherford B. Hayes. His Democratic opponent, Samuel J. Tilden, secured a plurality of 157,000 in the popular vote, and was clearly chosen by a small majority in the Electoral College., As soon as the result was ascertained, a plan was de- [ veloped to seize the electoral votes of South Carolina, \ Florida and Louisiana on the convenient pretext of fraud and intimidation. This well-concocted effort to stifle the popular voice was in the line of safe precedents already established by the Republican party. Congres sional committees were dispatched to the several State capitals, where, under military surveillance, the election returns were manipulated so as to make sure of one majority for the Republican candidate. The representa tive men of a party who had been clamorous for a free ballot and a fair count were guilty of an atrocious out rage on popular sovereignty. The rigmarole of an Elec-
70
PBOK LINCOLN fO CLKVJELAND----1861-188.*>.
toral Commission, with its inevitable 8 by 7 result, only added insult to injury. To make assurance doubly sure, the President caused large bodies of troops to be massed in and about the National Capital, and gave it quite the air of a besieged city. The apprehension of a revolutionary outbreak was a naked pretense. As the cuttle-fish muddles the water to escape capture as the real rogue is the first to cry stop thief in the marketcrowd, so these violators of the law affected a great desire for its enforcement. The obvious intent of all this marching and counter-marching of Federal troops was to intimidate Congress and the people and to have within easy distance a Praetorian band to throttle the one and to control the other.
Every precaution was taken to prevent a miscarriage of this traitorous plot. Hayes was sworn in on Sunday at the White House by a complacent Chief-justice. This unusual procedure, it was alleged, was designed to prevent the slightest interference, but its real object was to give a color of fairness and of legal sanction to the theft of the Presidency, which was to be consum mated on the following day at the east portico of the Capitol.
Hayes administration, conceived in sin and brought forth in iniquity, was more conservative than that of his immediate predecessor. Congressional reconstruction, in one sense, was an accomplished fact, but in a higher sense an admitted failure. Confederate brigadiers were securely installed in both houses of Congress. Democratic ascend ency was re-established throughout the lately "rebellious States." Blood and brain had asserted their rightful mas tery. It only remained for Mr. Hayes to withdraw the
FROM LINCOLN TO CLEVELAND 1861-1885. 71
military and recognize the Democratic authorities. The immediate result was inspiriting to the South and grati fying to a large minority of the Northern people. The wisdom of this policy was vindicated by its result. Despite short crops and monetary stringency, there was a rapid revival of Southern industries. Race antag onisms were seldom referred to and race conflicts were unheard of. The horrible night-mare of military recon struction was now past, and good men all over the coun try thanked God and took courage. But there was, after all, a taint of fraud about the Hay es administration that caused men of all parties to wish for its overthrow.
Setting aside the tradition of the country that a Presi dent was ineligible for re-election after serving two full offi cial terms, General Grant suffered himself to be put for ward for a third term under the auspices of Stalwartism. Whatever the import of that ominous term, it failed to win in the Republican convention. Long time in even scale the battle hung, but ultimately the historical 306 was overborne. Garfield was nominated and elected.
Although Mr. Garfield was an Ohioan by birth, he was in his convictions a thorough paced Puritan. Dur ing his Congressional career he was Blames armorbearer until that "Plumed Knight" was transferred to the Senate Chamber, whereupon Garfield became the acknowledged leader of his party in the House. He was less brilliant than Blaine and less conscientious than Thad Stevens but he was more narrow and prescriptive in his partisanship than either of them. An honest investi gation of the Congressional Record will reveal the fact that, on all questions pertaining to the matter of recon-
5
12
FROM LINCOLN TO CLEVELAND--1861-1685.
struction, he was hitter and uncompromising. In many respects he was the most dangerous -partisan ever elevated to the Presidency.
It is evident from his inaugural address that he was
quite dissatisfied with the status of the negro problem. Not only during his canvass, but as he stood upon the threshhold of his official term, he was confronted by a solid South, and realized more sensibly than ever that negro suffrage had been a snare and a delusion.
In the midst of this perplexity he solicited the counsel and advice of Judge Tourgee, who by his own confession,
had gone upon a "fools errand" to North Carolina, and who, according to the general estimate of his own party, was an educational bore of the first water. The inter view between Tourgee and his Presidential pupil in the
month of June, after his inauguration at the White House, is recorded by Tourgee with great minuteness of detail. Spread out before them were mysterious dia
grams of the Southern States, showing the comparative strength of the whites and the blacks. Judge Tourgee urged and Mr. Garfield assented that negro education
was the sovereign remedy for the freedmans disabilities, and the only sure guarantee of a free ballot and a fair count. By this new phase of reconstruction, not less than
seven of the South Atlantic and Gulf States were, in process of time, to be transformed into negro republics.
The main features of this policy were afterwards em
bodied in the Blair educational bill. By its provisions the surplus moneys in the Federal treasury, which had been raised by taxation for quite a different purpose, were to be distributed amongst the States on the basis of illiteracy.. This would of course give the lately slave
PROM LINCOLN TO CLEVELAND 1861-1888. 73
States the lions share of the appropriation. Herein was a strong appeal to the cupidity of the South, and some of our best citizens were beguiled by the tempting bait. But behind this apparent magnanimity of the Republi can leaders there was a set purpose to give the control Of education in the States to some future minister of public instruction.
Mr. Garfield well knew that this pet project would be a long stride towards centralization. Austria could de vise no better plan for counteracting the spread of liber al principles in the empire than to place the whole mat ter of education in the hands of the Jesuit fathers.
Nor could human ingenuity devise a better plan for destroying the peace and prosperity of the South than to allow Federal intervention and control in the matter of the primary education of the masses, white and black. The ostensible pretext for this unconstitutional interfer ence with a matter properly pertaining to the jurisdic tion of the State governments was humanitarian rather than political. It was to forestall a war of races in ref erence to which these Quixotic philanthropists have been painfully exercised. Just at this point we desire to say somewhat touching this bug-bear of race conflicts at the South. It is fair to allow that these conflicts, at wide intervals and on a limited scale, are quite possible. Mr. Calhoun.our wisest American statesman, thought that to some extent they were inevitable. Nor did he fail to perceive that these collisions would come in large meas ure from the perverse and pragmatical intermeddling of Northern emissaries. But it will be well in this connec tion to remind these self-appointed guardians of our Southern firesides that the peril to Southern civilization
74 FROM LINCOLN TO CLEVELAND 1861-1885.
from negro insurrections is not nearly so imminent as that which menaces the North and West from the im pending conflict between labor and capital. Even now there is an armed truce which may be broken at any moment by a financial crash or the general failure of a wheat crop in the West. Their bloated prosperity ia thoroughly honey-combed at its base and their boasted civilization is rotten to its core. The refuse population of European communities are pouring through Castle Garden at the rate of thousands per week. Even Massa chusetts, the cradle of Puritanism, is fast becoming the stronghold of communism. And in such centers of com merce and manufactures as New York, Cincinnati and Chicago there is steadily accumulating a population as depraved and desperate as that fierce rabble which swarmed forth from the Faubourg Saint Antoine to lay waste the art and culture of five hundred years. No people feel more secure and self-complacent than the dwellers in the vine valleys of Vesuvius. And these bond-holding aristocrats of the North may yet wake from their rosy day-dreams to hear the war-cry of the commune ringing like another Ca Ira through State street, Boston, and Broadway, New York. But to return from this brief di gression, we have this further to say in regard to the new reconstruction which Garfield and Tourgee concocted in that wide embrasure in the White House in the "leafy month of June," 1881.
The Southern States, without national aid, have al ready accomplished more for popular education than Massachusetts in proportion to their present resources. Without accepting the theory that there is any sort of relationship between ignorance and crime without be-
FROM LINCOLN TO CLEVELAND 1861-1885. 75
lieving for a moment that the spelling-book is a proper preparation for the ballot, they have of their own motion undertaken to educate the illiterate masses in their midst. This they will do without the help of the national treasury.
There is every reason to believe, from the testimony of Judge Tourgee, that this scheme would have been a leading measure of Garfields administration. Nor is it improbable that, if he had not been cut off by the pistol-shot of a Republican crank that, as a corollary to this project, we should have had renewed agitation and possibly the reinstatement of military satraps in portions of the South. Vice-President Arthur, who succeeded him, was a man of less sentiment and far more prac tical sagacity. He manifested from the outset a dispo sition to ignore the slavery issues. So that during his Presidency the country had a rest from this pestilent agitation. But there was no appreciable abatement of official venality. On every side there were tokens of a popular upheaval that would drive the Republicans from place and power.
The Presidential campaign of 1884 was one of the most spirited and thrilling contests known in our na tional annals. The opposing candidates Cleveland and Blaine were sharply contrasted in their personal char acteristics. The former was staid in manners and deliberate in utterance and action; the latter was as impulsive in temperament and as fiery in declamation as either of the Gracchi. Moreover, they represented po litical methods that were widely variant. Cleveland, as shown by his whole career, was a man of affairs. Blaine, gifted to a remarkable degree, was singularly
76 FBOM LINCOLN TO CLEVBLAHD 1861-1885.
deficient in mental equipoise. As. to moral character istics, they were as far asunder as the poles. Cleveland in his official conduct was free from blame. Blaine was more than suspected of involvement in disgraceful transactions by which the government was defrauded and its treasury pillaged. The friends of Blaine relied largely upon his magnetic oratory to insure a victory. For the first time in our history, a Presidential candi date mounted the hustings and engaged in a personal and persistent canvass for the suffrages of the people.
His masterly appeals produced in many localities a profound impression. Nor was he less endowed with that other gift of the demagogue, the capacity to cheat,
With cozening words and shallow flattery, The SoloDB of the street
As a counteractive to this there was, in both the pop ular mind and heart, a deep conviction that there ex isted an imperative necessity for cleaner methods in our national politics. Nearly a quarter of a century of Re publican rule had engendered an odious officialism that needed to be sharply rebuked. This sort of parasitism was no longer at a premium in the political market place.
A vast multitude of all parties, who were in no sense disgruntled pessimists, believed that nothing short of a thorough purgation would cleanse the Augean stable. Patriotism demanded this at whatever hazard to per sonal ambition or party supremacy. The candidacy of St. John had a political as well as a moral signifi cance. The canvass of Butler was an evidence of deep-seated and growing dissatisfaction among the in dustrial classes. Beyond question, the open revolt of
FROM LINCOLN TO CLEVELAND--1861-1885.
77
the mugwumps, as they were opprobriously styled, was
the indignant protest of thousands of Republicans against the most shameful political debauchery.
Overshadowing all else by its majestic presence, were the serried ranks of the iron-ribbed Democracy, whose mild and beneficent sway for sixty years had made the nation illustrious to the ends of the earth. Against these heavy odds Blaine made a desperate fight. Money was expended with reckless prodigality. A vast army of Federal office holders put forth their utmost strength in behalf of the Republican leader. The slogan of the Democracy was, "Turn the rascals out." It was re sponded to by the alliterative war-cry, "Rum, Roman ism and Rebellion." Blaine was evidently weakening when, towards the close of the campaign, he invoked the bloody shirt. That tattered and filthy garment, the fetisch of the Republican rabble, had lost its ancient prestige and power. Before the campaign closed, Blaine and his henchmen recognized the handwriting of doom and stood ready to investigate the ballot-box and manip ulate the returning-boards. Cleveland, however, was chosen by a majority quite too large to be wiped out by the jugglery of an Electoral Commission. Nor was it an altogether prudent thing to tamper with the sovereignty of New York.
As the old Federal party was crushed out of existence by its effort to sustain Burr in his contest with Jefferson, so the Republican party was put to an open shame by undertaking to uphold Blaine and his questionable methods. Indeed, the work of that party was accomp lished in the destruction of slavery.
Lacking, as the French happily express it, a ration
78
FROM LINCOLN TO CLEVELAND--1861-1885.
tPetn, its longer continuance was an obvious historical impertinence. Besides, its perpetual "legislative finger ing" with matters outside of the national jurisdiction was a standing menace to the public peace. The resto ration of the Stuarts was not more fatal to English Boundheadism than was the election of Grover Cleve land to Puritan ascendency in the councils of the na tion. In some sort, however, its influence will survive. It has exhibited in the past a marvelous tenacity of life. Nor are we quite prepared to say that it is utterly devoid of present or prospective utility. And yet, should it ever again become formidable in our national politics, it will be because of some egregious blunder or grievous default of the Democratic party.
One hundred years of national existence have demon strated that the masses of our fellow-countrymen are wedded to local self-government that they prefer the Greek to the Asiatic type of civilization. Indeed, the uni form tendency of the age is in that direction. Therefore it is that Hungary, after centuries of conflict, has at last se cured home-rule. For a like reason Parnell and his com patriots hold the balance of power in an English House of Commons. Irish parliamentary independence, for which Grattan and OConnell struggled in vain, may yet be granted by a Tory administration. Nor would any measure do more to strengthen and consolidate the British Empire. Why, then, should it he esteemed a Bourbon fancy that in the next twenty years State sovereignty, as interpreted by Jefferson and Madison, should be re affirmed and permanently re-established? Then, and only then, can it be said, with any degree of correctness, that we have no North, no South, no East, no West.
FROM LINCOLN TO CLEVELAND----1861-1885.
79
It may strike superficial thinkers as a paradox, if not an absurdity, when we assert that the readiest method to perpetuate the Union is to sectionalize it. In other words, to preserve inviolate the autonomy of the States is to save the nations life. Puritanic efforts in the oppo site direction have alternately threatened us with an archy or Caesarism. We have followed its fortunes in both hemispheres and have found it to be a blind, de structive force with no constructive capacity. In toolcraft it has shown marvelous aptitude, but in Statecraft it is both a fraud and a failure.
And yet Puritanism has produced its great men like Webster, who, in his 7th of March speech in the Senate chamber, transcended the narrow limits of section and party. For that noble utterance, the greatest of his life, he was hounded to the death by curs of high and low degree. In this grand protest against the narrow states manship we have been criticizing and condemning, he pictures the American Union "stretching across the breadth of a vast continent," the pride of a happy, united people and the envy of the nations.
"Realizing," he adds, "on a mighty scale the beautiful description of the ornamental border of the buckler of Achilles
Now the broad shield complete, the artist crowned With his last hand and poured the ocean round, In living silver seemed the waves to roll And beat the bucklers verge and bound the whole."
A BRACE OF DOCTRINAIRES.
MISCEGENATION.
THE REVIEWER REVIEWED FALSE STATEMENTS EX POSED AND FALSE SEASONING REFUTED AN EXPERIMENT STATION SUGGESTED.
One of the latest contributions to the literature of this subject may be found in the January number of the (Northern) Methodist Quarterly Review. It is from the prolific pen of Dr. Abel Stevens, of New York, who for the time being is a resident of Paris. Dr. Stevens is one of the advanced thinkers of his denomination and is of no mean reputation amongst them as a church historian. He may therefore be regarded as a representative man. It is this fact that gives to his article its chief value and that alone entitles it to a reply. It proffers also a solu tion of the negro problem which indicates the drift of popular sentiment in the Northern Methodist Church. That church, in numerical strength and possibly in po litical influence, occupies the front rank amongst our ec clesiastical organizations. This solution, which Dr. Ste vens claims to be the final and historical adjustment of the whole controversy respecting the negro, reveals alike the weakness and desperation of Radical statesmanship.
Rightly interpreted it is a reluctant confession that their former methods have been the merest political abortions. It clearly imports that emancipation has been a failure that the conferring of the ballot has been av cheat, and that education, elementary or higher, is it-
84
self a delusion. The entire Radical programme, includ ing the constitutional amendments and the exploded civil rights bill, which were foisted on the country by bayonet rule, are tacitly acknowledged to be utterly in adequate to the elevation of the negro to a plane of equality with the white race. As the last resort of baf fled trickery, as the forlorn hope of a sinking party, we have now thrust upon us the naked issue of unrestricted intermarriage on this continent.
Here and there throughout his elaborate article, Dr. Stevens affects an apologetic tone, which shows that he is either lacking in thoroughness of conviction, or else that he has a set purpose to mislead the incautious reader. At other times he is outspoken in his utterances, as when he says that "the prejudice which ordained the color line* amongst us was an egregious social fallacy.1 Still more when he stigmatizes the race instinct which God designed for the conservation of the integrity of species as "a whimsical prejudice that should be thrown to the winds." These bold assertions are unmistakable. They present the issue squarely, which we propose to meet with perfect fairness, and yet with uncompromising fidelity to the right, as we shall be enabled to see the right.
It behooves us, however, before reaching the main question, to dispose of some
PRBLIMINABV STATEMENTS
which he makes the premises of his entire argument. These statements he produces from an article published in this same Review in July, 1883. They relate almost exclusively to certain tabulated statistics of the present
85
and prospective population of the United States. They were prepared by Professor Gilliam and M. Simonin, a French geographer of considerable celebrity. According to the estimate of one of these authorities (Professor Gilliam), we shall have in ninety years within our pres ent national limits a negro population of one hundred and ninety millions. We have elsewhere shown the fallacy of this statement, contradictory as it is of all for mer experience in this country and in the West Indies. We insist that our present multiplication table must be revised and corrected, or else the present ratioof blacks and whites will be at least maintained, and most proba bly greatly augmented, in favor of the former. So that, whether the estimate be right or wrong, the whole state ment is an arithmetical bugaboo that can only frighten the inmates of the nursery.
M. Simonin likewise predicts that three hundred and twenty years from date we shall have an American popu lation of one billion and six hundred millions, exceeding by two hundred millions the total population of the earth at the present day. Whereupon Dr. Stevens in one breath scoffs at the idea of the social proscription of the blacks in the face of such numerical aggregates, and in the next snaps his fingers defiantly in the teeth of the Malthusians.
We shall not stay to consider these fabulous estimates. Conslusions based on such a flimsy foundation are as un worthy of belief as the millenarian prophecies of Joe Miller or the crazy vaticinations of Mother Shipton.
A man need not master the learning of Malthus to understand that wars, pestilences, famines and similar mishaps materially modify and sometimes greatly lessen
86
MISCEGENATION.
the growth of population. As for Professor Gilliams ex orbitant figures, they cannot be reached in two hundred years, still less in ninety years, unless some malignant deity should quadruple the procreative capacity of the negro. As respects M. Simonins grand total it is too preposterous for serions refutation.
But we come now to consider what Dr. Stevens has styled
"OUR AFRICAN PROBLEM."
Why does this learned divine misstate the question ? Wherefore does he substitute African problem for negro problem T Certainly not for the sake of euphony, for in this regard negro is a better word than African. Is he handicapped by the term negro because of the odium as sociated with it ? Or shall we say it is the uncanny trick of a controversialist more intent on triumph than truth ? Charity, "which hopeth all things," might suggest that ignorance was the cause of this singular misstatement. If so we beg to remind the Doctor that whilst all negroes are Africans by nativity or descent, the converse of the proposition is not true, that all Africans are negroes. This fact is vastly important to a correct solution of our pro blem, and yet it is practically and logically overlooked by some who undertake its discussion. Nor is a dark complexion and wooly hair the distinctive mark of the negro. Rather it is his deficient frontal brain, his prog nathous jaws, his general anatomical structure, extending from the occiput to the os cakis. We may truthfully sub join a physical and mental organism that approximates the Pithecoid man of Darwin and Haeckel. But Dr. Stevens blunder is not simply ethnological; it is more over geographical. The negro race proper is restricted
MISCEGENATION.
87
to a district on the vest coast of Africa, lying between
the equator and the; twelfth degree of northern latitude and extending a few hundred miles into the interior. As Fritchard, the great monogamist, and therefore an unexceptionable witness to Dr. Stevens, testifies he is only a little less circumscribed than the stunted hyper boreans of Northern Asia, or the equally diminutive Lapps and Esquimaux of Arctic Europe and America. There are negroid races elsewhere, both in Africa, New Guinea and the Philipine Islands, but this does not in anywise affect our argument. From these degraded tribes of Western Africa, who for thousands of years have not risen above fetisch worship in religion whose vo cabulary is composed of a few hundred words who have contributed nothing to the enlightenment or enrichment of mankind from these tribes have sprung nine-tenths of the four millions of our lately emancipated Southern slaves.
Domestic slavery, which Dr. Stevens and his whole tribe of negrophilists have time and again denounced as the "sum of all villainies," was a most healthful disci pline for these wretched barbarians, as their present im proved condition attests. So much improved, indeed, that our opponent writes flippantly of him as the prospective President or Vice-President of this nation. He even dubs him "the Fienchman of the new world in the eti quette of manners and dress." Shade of Chesterfield, re buke the blasphemy I
And yet, despite these pleasant sayings and rose^colored prophecies, he is evidently fearful of the negros destiny
when brought in conflict with the white race. Between 6
88
MISCEGENATION.
the lines we read "Help me, Cassias, or I sink." After taxing his brain to its utmost tension, he can see no conceivable solution of the African (?) problem, except colonization or amalgamation, thereby virtually saying education is good the elective franchise is helpful Federal legislation may put off the evil day. But noth ing short of wholesale expatriation or gradual extinction by intermarriage with the higher race can save the negro from the bondage of a caste more rigid than that of Hindooism. Were we not justified in saying that Dr. Stevens article revealed the weakness or desperation of Radical statesmanship ?
We have somewhere read of a learned Buddhist who spent a score of years in the speechless contemplation of his own navel. It is fair to conclude that in the process of years this self-absorbed devotee came to regard his umbilicus as the hub of the universe. So probably with our venerable opponent. He has so long considered the negro as the principal factor in American civilization thathisbrain is confused and his statesmanship decidedly muddled. He may, however, put away his apprehen sions. A kind Providence and sound statesmanship will care for "our brother in black." The negro will find, and if wisely let alone fay silly marplots will keep, his proper social level. Barring exceptional cases, he will continue to eat and sleep and labor at intervals as he has done since the dawn of "blessed freedom." In the rural dis tricts, for at least another century he will be the same jovial darkey that he was in the old plantation days.
We agree for once with Dr. Stevens that Prof. Gilliams scheme of colonization is largely impracticable. The negro is not nomadic in his tendencies. Without some
MISCEGENATION.
89
measure of physical coercion, or some sort of moral stress, he will remain about his old haunts with the tenacity of our domestic cat. There remains, then, but one alter native, miscegenation, and we shall proceed at once to remove this surviving prop of his tottering theory.
Dr. Stevens has the hardihood to characterize this
abomination as both the scientific and historical splution of the problem. As for the scientific phase of the sub ject, he has recourse for illustration to the inter-breeding of horses and cattle. In utter defiance of ethnology, and with a profound contempt for the lessons of history, sacred and profane, he applies this reasoning to the inter
breeding of human races. He does this, too, with no seeming compunctions of
conscience, and with no perceptible scruples of decency. With an air of perfect nonchalance he speaks of Bishop Haven fraternizing with the humblest black man, and extending knightly gallantries to handsome colored women. As he learnedly remarks, "de gustibus mm est disputandum." We have no quarrel with his Latin, com monplace as it is, but we must dissent from his logic. His suggestions on this point, we venture to say, without fear of his precept or Bishop Havens example, are coarse to vulgarity, and altogether unbefitting a promi nent minister of the gospel. They are better suited to the pages of- a Police Gazette than the pages of a Quarterly Review. With this emphatic protest, we waive the ques tion of taste and proceed to examine his scientific proofs.
Dr. Morton, the greatest of American ethnologists* alleges, in the " Types of Mankind," that there is no instance on record where an inferior race has been im proved in a degree by this process of amalgamation
90
MISCEGENATION.
that it has not been damaging in a larger measure to the higher race. So that on striking the balance there was a net loss to oar common humanity. Besides, the same great scientist mentions cases, notably that of the Ber bers the Numidians of Sallust whose civilization was destroyed by this identical process. To little purpose, therefore, does Dr. Stevens allude to the superior intel ligence of the mulatto and the physical beauty of the quadroon. It is more than questionable, in the light of ethnological research, to say nothing of the moral bearing f>f these non-ecclesiastical unions, whether there is not in the end both physical and intellectual degra dation.
Dr. Stevens, however, endeavors to strengthen his po sition by
HISTORICAL REFERENCES.
The examples he adduces are singularly unfortunate for his hypothesis. In regard to England, France and Spain, he speaks of " homogeneous populations compounded of various races." Suppose we allow what has been grave ly disputed by eminent authorities that the descend ants of the dark-skinned Euskarians are an important element in the present population of England. What conceivable bearing does this have on the question of amalgamation between the Aryan and negro races? Were these Euskarians negroes in physical or mental traits or habitudes ? Were they not instead, as much as the Greeks, a collateral branch of that grand Aryan race that set forth from the plateaus of Central Asia on its mission of world conquest and world redemption be fore the pyramids were built, or possibly before Babylon was founded ? This Euskarian element, if it still exists,
MISCEGKNATION.
91
is found in the mines of Cornwall and the mountain* re cesses of Wales. It is the Teutonic element, not less than eighty per cent, of the total population, which has made England the mistress of the seas and the arbiter of the continents. This Teutonic blood, traceable to the fierce Vikings of Norway and Denmark, pulsated in the heart-throbs of those great admirals, Blake and Nelson. This same blood headed the charge at Balaklava, the Thermopylae of modern history; it courses in the veins of Graham, who but yesterday planted the cross of St. George upon the forts and battlements of Tokar.
So likewise of Prance. With" occasional admixtures of Italian and Spanish blood aloug the Mediterranean coast and Pyrenean border, there has been no amalga mation. Her blood is as pure from taint as the lilies which once emblazoned her national standards.
Neither has any race been more jealous of foreign ad mixture than the high-born Castilian and the brave Arragonese. The five centuries of Moorish dominion in troduced some impurities in the southern departments, but the conquest of Grenada by Ferdinand the Catholic, and the subsequent expulsion of the Morecos, rid the peninsular of that pestilence. Yet these Moors, be it re membered, were no more negroes than the Indians of the far West.
The tradition of the English stage, which make Othello, who won the fair Desdemona, a negro, are without histor ical basis. If it were otherwise, the denouement of that tragedy will not help Dr. Stevens argument.
Leaving the highly cultured nations of Europe, he takes us to Africa as furnishing the best examples of race advancement by virtue of amalgamation. Especially
92
MISCEGENATION.
does he speak with much confidence of a mysterious race, known as Pouls or Reds, which by inter-breeding with the natives have reared up a noble Semite-African race spreading from Nubia to Senegambia. All of this he writes of the semi-barbarous tribes of Soudan and Darfour. The whole thing is a veritable cock and bull story as purely fanciful as the monkish legend of Prester John. With equal credulity he refers to the Kaffirs of Southern Africa as the ethnical resultant of the mingling of higher and lower races.
If Dr. Stevens will take the pains to read Froudes Notes on South Africa, he will learn that this distin guished historian had no appreciation of this lazy and thieving horde of savages. The British government has expended millions of pounds sterling for their education and material betterment, but they are still wholly inca pable of self-government.
Africa is justly called the dark continent. Once the seat of civilization, it has for thousands of years, with a few partial exceptions, been the dwelling-place of sav age beasts and monstrous serpents and deformed types of humanity." Her tropical climate and her defective water system may in part account for this strange phenome non ; but we are firmly persuaded that the wide-spread amalgamation of races has not been without its influ ence. From Morocco to Cape Town they are a genera tion of hybrids. The song of the witches in Macbeth
"Black spirits and white, Bine spirits and gray,
Mingle, mingle, mingle, Mingle you that may,"
might be accepted for an African love ditty.
MISCEGENATION.
93
It is no exaggeration to say that many of the better tribes even knot and gender like frogs in the marshes or flies in the shambles. And this without regard to color, race or condition. In Hayti we have the first fruit of miscegenation, as seen in the bloody combats of blacks and mulattoes, but throughout Africa we see its ripe fruits in a physical and moral degradation that has scarcely a parallel on the globe. We have little hope of a brighter destiny for Africa, short of the providential extinction of the existing races. Commerce and Christianity are po tent factors, but hitherto they have accomplished but little. It is idle, therefore, to dream with the great Livingstone of a Christian empire in the heart of the conti nent, or to prophesy with Dr. Stevens of a good time coming, when the Congo shall be a commercial thorough fare for the nations.
Dr. Stevens next turns his attention to tropical and South America as a promising field for negro coloniza tion and amalgamation. We are free to assert that no where outside of Africa have the evils of amalgamation been more clearly defined than in Spanish America. Mexico, the ancient empire of the Aztecs, chiefly from this cause has become the jest and riddle of the politi cal world. The higher Spanish classes have preserved their blood from this shameful pollution. But the re mainder of the population are a mongrel brood, the pro duct of cohabitation between negroes, Indians and thrift less adventurers from all quarters of the earth. The out come of this mixture is seen in the catalogue of assassin ations, robberies and revolutions, the recital of which is sickening in the extreme. On the other hand, take the little Republic of Chill, shut tip between the Andes and
94
MISCEGENATION.
the Pacific, with only a small extent of arable land. Here we have a peaceful, prosperous commonwealth, with schools, churches, railroads, telegraphs and other marks of progressive civilization. In Chili there is a larger per centage of unmixed European blood than can be found elsewhere in Spanish America. Her next-door neighbor, Peru, the former empire of the Incas, has been dreadfully cursed with hybrids and Indians, and hence it is a lag gard in the race for national distinction. Yet again, Brazil, the most stable and powerful government of South America, has been a slaveholding community. We state on high official authority that, notwithstanding the pros pective abolition of slavery, the theory of miscegenation meets with as little favor in Brazil as in Georgia or South Carolina.
The conclusion of the whole matter is this, that from China to Peru the facts are overwhelmingly against mixed races that from the ancient Jews to the modern Germans, the pure-blooded races are the great forces and factors of the grandest civilizations.
Upon this proposed solution of Dr. Stevens we feel con strained to offer a few additional observations. He is quite sanguine in regard to the successful working of his scheme, but we have very serious misgivings. With the Northern States, especially New England, where the ne gro element is an almost infinitesimal fraction, it is a question of purely speculative interest, or at most petty political advantage. Not so with the late slaveholding States of the Union. It is with them a question of mo mentous import.
We suggest and the suggestion ought not to give offense to Dr. Stevens or any of his aiders and abettors
MISCEGENATION.
95
that he project an experimental colony, in close proximi ty to Buuker Hill or Plymouth Rock, where his theory of hybridization may be thoroughly tested. We observe in the census tables that there is a large surplus of mar riageable females in Massachusetts. Let him, therefore, organize a joint-stock company, which shall purchase the necessary buildings and lands, and import a few hundred educated young negro men from Alabama or Georgia. They may be disposed of by some sort of matrimonial lottery. Let the General government, if needful, help the enterprise by a liberal appropriation from the Federal treasury. If at the end of fifty years Dr. Stevens or his successors have improved the breed of the Adamses and Franklins, the Winthrops and Websters, who have so grandly illustrated New England in the forum and cabinet, then we of the South will look with greater fa vor on his theory and place a higher estimate on his own honesty. As it now appears to us, his solution, both on its scientific and historical side, is a gratuitous insult to the nation at large. To the South it is not simply a shameful indignity, but a cold-blooded invitation to com mit sectional suicide. We hardly know whether to be most shocked by the meanness that concocted or the mal ice that prompted it.
THE NEGRO AS A NIHILIST.
In the concluding pages of his article, Dr. Stevens reads us a lecture on our political, social and relig ious duties to the negro. He warns us that his political grievances must be extinguished, his social disparage ments removed and the obnoxious "color line" blotted out in the American churches. We have neither leisure
96
MISCEGENATION.
nor inclination to parley with our opponent on these hackneyed topics. It is in order, however, to inquire if these grievances and disabilities do not inhere in the mental and physical constitution of the negro. If so, they are manifestly beyond the reach of legislati ve tinker ing, and are not to be remedied by statutory enactments, whether State or Federal.
Not a few of his utterances on this subject are reckless in spirit and revolutionary in tendency. Let him take heed how he prosecutes his fanatical crusade against our distinctive civilization. There is oftentimes a terrible rebound in these Nihilistic "prophesyings and preach ments." Our census statistics admonish us of other perils than negro expansion and negro ascendency in our na tional politics. The Eastern and Middle States are already feeling the pressure and burden of a surplus population. The question of subsistence in that quarter is fast becom ing a most perplexing social problem. The labor strikes that now and then frighten bloated capitalists from their propriety are essentially bread riots. These privileged classes, that have been enriched by government con tracts and unjust Congressional discrimination, are not above the danger-line. The bonded debt of the General government is not more sacred than were the vested rights of the South in her immense slave property. And yet this bonded debt is the basis of Wall street prosperity and State street shoddyism. The higher law, which Dr. Stevens more than once invokes in this discussion, may be applied to other purposes than the spoliation of the South. The enterprising Yankee has learned the art of manufacturing dynamite for foreign consumption. It may yet become available for domestic uses.
MISCKGENATI01T.
97
We disclaim the role of the alarmist. But we under stand thoroughly that, when the public conscience is persistently debauched through the life-time of a gener ation by such teachings as have emanated from the pul pit, press and platform of radicalism, such a seed time must have a corresponding harvest. This law of reproduction is the very Nemesis of classic mythology. If it should occur that, in the course of human events, the engineer is hoist by his own petard, it will be in this instance at least not merely an example of poetical jus tice, but of stern and righteous retribution.
We intend in all this no disparagement of liberty as differentiated from license.
THE DARK MOKANNA.
We recognize the deep philosophy embodied in the story of Ariosto, how that liberty sometimes appearsin the form" of a deadly hissing serpent. We would not despise or defame her even in this lowly and disgusting guise. But there is one instructive set off to this in the oriental legend of the Veiled Prophet of Khorassan. In that fair Province of the Sun the pseudo-prophet sat upon a throne high and lifted up. He ordered his glittering banner unfurled at his palace-gates with the inscription, "Free dom to the world."
But when the silver veil was lifted the impostor was unmasked, and instead of the beamful countenance of Gods anointed, lo! there were revealed the ghastly features of the dark Mokanna.
So of this negro craze. In its beginning its muffled tones were faint as the mutterings of distant thunder. Little did our patriot sires of those earlier and better days
98
MISCEGENATION.
of the Republic dream of the after-clap, loud as the crack of doom," which has fallen on our shivering ears. God in mercy spared them the spectacle of civil strife.
We of this generation have seen this and more. The legend of Mokanna is tame compared with the authentic history of this political mania. The very least of its enormities is that it is an imposture, for, to borrow the language of inspiration, "Its words are smoother than butter, but under its tongue is the venom of asps."
THE FREEDMAN IN CHANCERY.
IT is no easy matter for a writer, even of Shakespeares genius, to lose sight of his own nationality. When Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, moralizes on " the ills that flesh is heir to," and makes special mention of the "laws delay," he speaks not as a Dane, hut as an Englishman. Nowhere is the proverbial slowness of our transatlantic kinsmen more conspicuous than in their judicial admin istration. The semi-historic case of Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce is typical rather than exceptional. So that when we read in the January number of the Oentury Magazine Geo. W. Cables " Freedman Case in Equity," we felt our bowels of compassion moved toward our African fellow-citizen. Most assuredly his worst enemy could not wish for him a sadder fate than to be thrust into chancery. Rightly interpreted, it means vexation of spirit, profusion of red tape and a bill of costs frightful to contemplate.
Mr. Cable, although of Southern lineage, has great ly endeared himself to Northern publishers and readers by his pronounced negrophilism. It is not to be wondered at that his literary works have found ready sale amongst a population that choose "Uncle Toms Cabin" for their Sunday reading. Cables novels are largely indebted to that New England classic for what dramatic beauty and force they may contain. Mrs. Stowea book is indeed a work of singular literary
100
THE FREEDMAN IN CHANCERY.
merit, and bears about the same relation to the "Grandissimes" and "Old Creole Days" that honest roast-beef does to the most commonplace boarding-house hash. If Mr. C. had confined himself to his proper specialty as a writer of sensational novels, it would have been well for the Southern press to let him severely alone. But it is a graver matter when he poses as a statesman and at tempts the role of a social reformer. In this capacity .we challenge his authority to speak as a representative of the South, notwithstanding his ancestors were slave holders and himself a Confederate soldier. We shall not impugn his political honesty. There is a broad distinc tion on ethical grounds between a knave and a fool. It is seldom that we see a combination of the two. Such men are moral monsters and are well-nigh as inconceiv able as the centaurs and mermaids of classic mythology.
Mr. C, although as he asserts of Southern birth and blood, has chosen to align himself with a party hostile to Southern civilization as it was in the past and as it will continue to be in the future a party which, since its advent to power, has exhibited a capacity for blun dering that has no parallel in American history. Its entire management of the negro problem from Lincoln to Cleveland has been the most stupid bungling, except where it deserves to be characterized as infamous. It is too late to discuss the wisdom, or rather the unwis dom, of immediate emancipation and universal suffrage. They are parts of the organic law, and no serious effort will be made to unsettle them. It goes without asser tion that these sweeping revolutionary measures have signally failed to compass the object aimed at by their authors. On every hand it is conceded by the leaders
THE FREEDMAN IN CHANCERY.
101
of Republican thought that their expectations have been balked. Mr. Cable himself insists that the freedmans liberties are still abridged. Despairing of legal redress, he rushes into chancery, with what profitable results we shall presently see. Meanwhile he and his party will be held responsible to the country for the consequent and concomitant evils of their recon struction scheme. Just as incapable British statesman ship is responsible for the chronic unrest of Ireland just as the bitter fruits df its mal-administration are seen in the boycotting of Irish landlords, the Dublin and Tipperary riots, and have recently culminated in dynamite explosions in the crypts of Westminster Hall, so by parity of reasoning the Republican party is re sponsible before God and the country for the horrors of Ku-kluxism, the perils of illiterate suffrage and the shame and bloodshed of election riots. Nor is it more certain that Penianism in some form will continue its destructive work until home-rule is established in Ire land than it is that intestine broils will distract this nation until the autonomy of the States is vindicated and local self-government reinstated from the Potomac to the. Rio Grande. Rose-water remedies will not heal the distempers of the body politic. Civil rights bills, if they were adjudged constitutional and could be enforced Blair educational schemes, were they fully inaugu rated, would but skin and film the ulcerous spot. This Republican policy is based throughout on a radical misconception of the negros ethnological character. Herbert Spencer has said that the political superstition of the past was the divine right of kings. It is not less true that the political folly of the current age is that
102
THE FREEDMAN IN CHANCERY.
irreducible differences of race may not only be modified but obliterated by a change of conditions of existence. Starting from these premises, of which the merest tyro in science ought to be ashamed, such men as Tourgee and Cable are striving by partisan legislation and gov ernment patronage to hoist an inferior race to a plane of equality with the Southern whites.
A hot-house culture never yet produced a sturdy vege tation. It may produce a delicately-tinted and richlyscented flower to adorn the boUdoirof a fashionable belle. But the oak is the nursling of the storm. Not otherwise does it acquire that toughness of fibre which withstands the buffetings of the ocean billow and the terrible crash of the naval broadside. For all the purposes of good cit izenship, as well as industrial thrift and enterprise, the negro has been dwarfed and damnified by this persistent coddling of Republican statesmanship. It is unfortunate for him that he owes even his freedom, njt to the vigor of his own right arm, but to the bombs and bayonets of the North. It was a sorer calamity that after his eman cipation he was recognized as a ward of the nation. Thenceforth his self-constituted guardians sought to ele
vate him by legislative devices rather than by a normal process of self help and self-development.
We might cherish better hopes of the political destiny of the negro if he or his guardians had been in anywise instructed by the failures of the past. If we may judge, however, from The Freedmans Case in Equity/ they are both afflicted with judicial blindness. Mr. Cable prefaces his specific allegations with sundry grandiloquent flour ishes about the brotherhood of man. This pet phrase of Radical orators is alike vague and preposterous. Quatre-
*HR fREEDStAN IN CHANCERY.
163
fages, the eminent French scientist, himself a monogenist, tells us that a small remnant of the Iroquois a once powerful Indian confederacy in New York are succeed ing admirably as farmers. Are we to conclude, therefore, in the face of the facts of history and the discoveries of science, that the Pawnees and Dacotabs are Aryans in the Hunter stage of race development? Because a score, more or less, of black men (not negroes) have attained to a good degree of eminence as linguists or orators, are we to accept the mischievous dogma of the equality of the whites and blacks on this continent ? And yet this
phrase is made the basis of inflammatory appeals, from pulpit, press and platform, that keep the negro leverish and morbidly dissatisfied with his providential lot. In
this connection Mr. Cable records a vigorous protest against race instinct. Wiser than the great Creator who implanted this instinct for the conservation ot species, he stigmatizes it as a cruel prejudice. He seems to forget for the nonce that nowhere, outside of India, is the caste system more inexorable than in his favorite New Eng land. In the name of religious liberty the descendants of the Pilgrim fathers pilloried the Quakers and scourged the Baptists. In the name of Christianity they massacred the Indians and outlawed the Catholic Irish. Macaulay well says of the English Puritans that they condemned bear-baiting not from pity for the bear, but because the
sport was enjoyed by the London populace. So of their American cousins. These fought slavery to its exter mination not from love of the slaves, but from no higher
motive than an intense hatred of the Southern slave holder. Mr. Lincolns emancipation proclamation was
7
104
THE tfREEDMAU IN CHANCERY.
itself, as we have elsewhere said, a party expedient designed to bolster up a tottering administration. Back of the slavery agitation was a conflict of civilizations that are as distinct to-day as when Lee surrendered at Appomattox. In a word, it was a conflict of ideas and
traditions that precipitated the shock of arms. But we come now to consider the special grievances of
which he complains. Amongst them are the jury and con vict lease systems that obtain in several of the Southern States. We are free to confess that we are not in sym pathy with the convict lease system.
It does not in anywise affect the merits of the argu ment, but it may be edifying to Mr. Gable to learn that the lease system against which he inveighs is the legacy of a Radical State administration.
We have made personal efforts for its repeal or essen tial modification. With every possible precaution in the way of rigid prison inspection it is liable to grave abuses. It prevents to a large extent the proper classification of criminals. It furthermore practically ignores that re formatory feature that should always be prominent in prison discipline. While we may not in the name of a sickly humanitarianism seek to rescind the divine ordi nance that "the way of the transgressor is hard," yet we are bound for the sake of Christian charity to inflict no needless suffering. We have reason already to know that those having the official oversight of these convicts share in these views. They hold the lessees to a strict account, and besides spare no pains to ameliorate the condition, of the convicts as far as may be compatible with the ends of public justice. Whilst we regard the system as in trinsically vicious, we have no disposition to become
THK SKKEDMAN Uf CHAHCEBY.
105
the apologist of crime. We shall not follow the leader ship, of Mr. Cable, who, in his insane zeal, places these felons in the category of martyrs.
But whatever be the evils of this system of punish ment there is no semblance of a color line in the execu tion of the law. Whites and blacks fare alike. That an immense majority of the convicts are negroes, only shows the low moral status of the average Freedman. *It is a significant fact that neither elementary nor higher education has so far corrected or sensibly restrained these race proclivities to the perpetration of crime. A dis proportionately large per centage of these criminals are recruited from the class of educated negroes. This is indeed but one of innumerable facts going to refute the prevalent theory that reading and writing are in any appreciable degree a safeguard to either public or private morals. So far as the experiment of negro education has been already tested, whether in the West Indies or any part of the United States, it has been notoriously defi cient in satisfactory moral results. Nor have we just reasons to believe that if these accomplishments of read ing and writing came "by nature," as Dogberry alleges, that there would be any great moral advancement. Well
meaning philanthropists may keep astride of this edu cational hobby until they fall off from sheer weariness or extreme age, and yet it will remain a political truism that "you cannot extract golden conduct from leaden in stincts." As respects Mr. Cs assertion that the greater number of negroes are convicted because of white judges and juries it is of a piece with his merciless caricature of the Creole population of Louisiana. It is a gratuitous insult to the judiciary of the South, and while it adds to
106
THE FBEKDMAN IN CHANCERY.
the currency and market value of his literary wares in northern circles, it is none the less an nnwarrantahle im peachment. No man is excluded from the jury lists of Georgia, nor, as far as we are advised, of any lately slave State, on account of color or previous condition of servitude. The only qualifications prescribed for grand and petit jurors are uprightness and intelligence. The law operates with strict impartiality to the exclusion of the great body of the negroes and thousands of whites. Without some restriction of this sort, the jury trial, that fetisch of Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence, would become in the South at least as unreliable as Wager of Battle. That individual cases of hardship, and even oppression, may occur, is only to say that the administration of the law is not anywhere absolutely perfect.
Another allegation of Mr. Cable relates to the discrim ination against the Freedmen on Southern railways. It is not true as he postulates that the negroes are not pro vided with excellent accommodations on a majority of these roads. It is quite enough to say of his statement that it is characteristically false. Were it otherwise no fair-minded Southern man would sanction the discrim ination.
Under this head he dramatizes an incident which occurred within his own observation. A colored woman, with her little girl, were occupying the car set apart for negroes. At a way station a gang of penitentiary con victs, in irons, boarded the train and were assigned to the same car with the mother and child. According to his own testimony there was no preconcerted plan to hu miliate the colored woman. It was simply an unfortun ate contretemps that would scarcely happen once in a
THK FRKEDMAN IN CHANCEKY.
107
twelve month, possibly not in a decade. There is no proof that the woman herself felt the seeming indignity. Bnt on the strength of this isolated case, Mr. Cable falls to scolding like the veriest drab, or, rather, vapors like the redoubtable Bob Acres. It is the same logic that makes Mrs. Stowes Legree an average slave-dealer and Uncle Tom himself a typical plantation slave.
Suppose a Southern writer should speak of the Tewks-bury horror, whether fact or fiction, as characteristic of Massachusetts civilization. It would justly raise a howl of indignation from the hills of Berkshire to the sand beaches of Barnstable. And yet upon such exparte versions of isolated cases this political Matadore flaunts the bloody shirt to exasperate the freedman and to arouse the flagging zeal of stalwart Republicanism. Shame on such political pettifogging. It would disgrace a ward politician. We have traveled tens of thousands of miles on Southern railways in the last fifteen years and never witnessed, except in two or three cases, the slightest unfairness to the negro passengers. In these instances there was something of provocation. In some cases these reported outrages result, not from race prejudice, but
from the incompetency of railroad officials. Not unfrequently they grow out of the desire of some negro preacher or politicion to win a cheap newspaper; notoriety.
Mr. Gable takes another forward step in advocacy)of mixed sittings in churches and public schools. He favors likewise miscellaneous assemblages in theatres,
concert halls and other [places of popular resort. Not withstanding the emphatic decision of the National judiciary, he regards any separation of the races as a palpable infringement on the rights of his client. He
108
THE FREBDMAN IN CUANOERY.
submits, it is true, to the decision of a full bench of the Supreme Court, but he does it with a protest. Like a nisiprius lawyer, he talks glibly about the equities of the issue. Equity, forsooth, what does this poor dupe of Radical teachings know about law or equity ? Virtually it is an appeal to those higher law dogmas which in the past have been made the justification of every species of wickedness, national and individual. For the trustees of a church to confine the negroes to the gallery, or for the manager of a theatre to exclude a negro from the dress circle, is, in Mr. Cables judgment, a grievous in fliction not to be quietly endured. These terrible out rages occur under his own nose in many towns and cities of the North and West, and he has no word of rebuke for the offenders. But let the same thing transpire in the trouth and Mr. Cable splits the ears of the groundlings with his fiery denunciations of Rebel prejudice. And yet after these unmistakable declarations, Mr. Cable speaks of social equality as a "huge bug-bear," an im practicable and undesirable consummation. Are we to discredit his candor, or are we to discount his logic? One or the other we are constrained to do. It requires no spectacles, however, to read between the lines of this dis claimer a purpose aud plan to smuggle in this abomina tion under the guise of an alias. If honest, he is strangely ignorant of the inevitable conclusion contained in his premises. Race equality, for which he stoutly contends, involves social equality. Sooner or later, if we accept his political theory, his hypothetical "bug-bear" becomes a matter-of-fact Devil. We instinctively reverence an outspoken advocacy even for a wrong policy. That graybeard conspirator and assassin, John Brown, when he
THE FRKEDMAN IN CHANCERY.
109
kissed the child of the slave mother at the foot of the gal lows showed at least the courage of his convictions. But these political doctrinaires who by their officious inter meddling have complicated an otherwise simple problem they, one and all, have none of the stuff of which heroes and martyrs are made. And this brings to mind the nota ble reply of the French Chamber of Commerce toColbert, the Minister of Finance. When asked by that worthy official what he could do to foster the trade of the nation they responded in two words: Laissezfaire. Do NOTHING is wise counsel in many directions, pre-eminently so far as the negro problem is concerned. The forcing system as we have already intimated is an admitted failure. The ink of Judge Tourgees manuscript was scarcely dry when his specious "Appeal to Csesar" was answered ad versely in thunder tones at the ballot-box by a clear majority out of ten millions of American voters. This too, after a free ballot and a fair count. This besides after an almost military surveilance of election precincts in some quarters and unscrupulous mendacity and bare faced venality in all quarters by the party in power* The election of Cleveland and Hendricks was no mere party triumph, it was a political revolution, as much so as when William and Mary, with the approval of Lords and Commons mounted the throne which had been abdicated by the Stuart dynasty. It may mean tariff reform it may mean enforcement of the Civil service act it may comprehend economy and fidelity in all departments of the government of Washington. It does unquestionably mean the abandonment of that paternal policy which threatens to convert the negro race into a proletarian rabble to the detriment of our nationalin-
1 10
THK FREEDMAN IN CHANCERY.
dusiriee and hardly less to the utter demoralization of the negro himself.
The plain English of the popular verdict is that this pestilent agitation of sectional issues must cease; that the negro problem must be relegated to the State govern ments to whose jurisdiction it rightfully pertains. They may be safely trusted to manage all those questions re lating to the freedman with fairness and tenderness. They will notstimulatebis ambition nor foster his vanity, but they will help in all proper ways to improve his mental and moral condition. But even the State govern ments will act wisely in letting the problem alone and leaving its solution to the lapse of time and the direction of Providence.
The immense and increasing preponderance of the white population will contribute beyond any present estimation to its peaceful adjustment.
Political alarmists may speculate on the misleading census statistics of 1880, but well-defined physiological laws and moral habitudes will falsify their predictions.
Negro colonization is to us unpromising, and yet recent developments warrant the belief that there is a general and unconscious movement towards the table lands of Central Mexico. Such immense migrations were not in frequent in the early ages of the world. The migration of the Israelites, numbering three millions, from Egypt to Palestine was accomplished in forty years. It may be replied that this march of mystery was miraculous. We, take then, a migration on a lesser scale as late as the eighteenth century. In 1771 the Kalmuck Tartars, a thrifty and war-like people, becoming impatient of Rus sian domination, suddenly left their homes on the Volga
THE FRKEDMAy IN CHANCERY.
Ill
and migrated a distance of three thousand miles to the borders of China. According to the official statement of a Russian officer, this vast horde exceeded six hun dred thousand. They accomplished their journey in eighteen months with terrible suffering and loss of life. All along their desert march they were harrassed by the Cossacks of the Don.
The negros strong local attachments, coupled with his lack of enterprise, may prevent any great migratory movement of this sort.
Indeed, it is flippantly said by many writers of the Cable school that he is here to stay. But history very often repeats itself. The Negro Moses who is to conduct another exodus may now be wrestling with a blue back spelling-book in some of the public schools of Richmond or Mobile. Even, however, if the negro be a fixture as to his local habitation, there are many intercurrent events, both political and moral, that may solve this vexed question in the interests of humanity and civili zation. Nothing but continuous blundering can forestall this conclusion devoutly wished for by every patriot North, South, East and West. As for that class of polit ical malcontents who would perpetuate the reign of strife and discord, we leave them to the revenges of time and the stern retributions of impartial history.
We have now considered with the utmost fairness the alleged grievances of the negro. Many of these, we in sist, are not in a strict sense grievances, but, on the con trary, race disabilities, which are both inherent and im medicable. Others of these supposed wrongs are outside even of equity jurisdiction. According to the signifi cant phraseology of the English law, they are damnum
112
THE FREEDMAN IN CHANCKKY.
absque injuria. Here we leave the client and propose to say somewhat of his self-appointed counsel. Mr. Cable claims to be identified in sympathy, if not in interest, with his native South. This claim will strike every thoughtful reader as a grand impertinence. Prom the outset of his literary career he has scoffed at Southern literature and maligned Southern statesmanship. By the accident of birth he must be classed as a Southerner, but in his mental and moral make up he is a Yankee of an exaggerated type. Character, it is true, is not deter mined by degrees of latitude and longitude. Thousands of the noblest men and women were born and reared un der the wintry skies of New England, and not a few of them vote the Republican ticket. This is their unques tionable right. Nor do we question in the slightest Mr. Cables right to enforce the equities of the freedmans case with what array of facts and arguments he may be able to marshal. We do not maintain, however, that his methods are unbefitting the forum. He is at great pains to drag from dusty oblivion a section of the slave coda-of Louisiana to show the domineering spirit of the South ern slaveholder. But he finds it convenient to ignore the statute laws of several of the Northern States prohibit ing even the immigration of negroes under severe pen alties. By this argumentative trickery he puts himself out of court, for it is an invariable rule in chancery that he who demands equity must do equity. He is equally disingenuous when he charges any portion of the people of the South with the " virtual suffocation of the princi ples of human equity. In a word, the whole animus of his article has the flavor of genuine cod fish. There may be no blood relationship to the Yankee, but there
TflB FREKDHAN IN CHANCERY.
113
is, as before suggested, an unquestionable psychological kinship. He is therefore provincial in his intellectual scope, pragmatical in his instincts and prudential in his
ethics. His philosophy of life is crystallized in the pithy maxims of poor Richards almanac his notions of chiv alry are borrowed from Captain Miles Standish, the his torical prototype of Butlers Hudibras. While he has estranged the South, he has failed to win the respect of the North, for, from the days of Iscariot, the base Judean, to Benedict Arnold, the apostate hero of Bemis heights, men of every clime and creed have loved the treason but despised the traitor. As an abstract question, it little concerns the South what this modern Smelfungus may think of their civilization. The matter, however, assumes a different shape when he serves up his stale calumnies for the pages of a magazine that has national circulation. It was clearly incumbent on somebody to undertake the disagreeable task of confronting and con founding him. It has been our lot to perform this service. And now, after a patient hearing of " The Freedmans Case in Equity," the decree of the chancellor is that the bill be dismissed for want of equity at the cost of the complainant.
REVIEWS, SKETCHES AND ESSAYS.
A CHAPTER IN PSYCHOLOGY-VISIONS.
It is fortunate for mankind that the advancement of natural science has so thoroughly disenchanted the ma terial universe. The beautiful mythology of Greece, which peopled forest and stream, ocean and air with Dryads and Oreades, with nymphs and mermaids, can no longer boast an altar or a priest. Even the Gods of Olympus, with their quarrels and amours, are as dead as Egyptian Cheops beneath his pyramidal monument. So, too, with Thor and his huge thunder hammer, and Odin with his Valhalla reeking with the blood of the slain these and other divinities of that horrid superstition which once brooded like a nightmare over the cradle of the Teutonic races.
Nor has science spared the tiny elves and harmless fairies of the Mediaeval era. Their moonlight revels on the smooth-shaven green are no longer believed outside of nursery walls. Still less do the warlocks and witches, as aforetime, "keep the country side in fear." But while science has forever banished these weird fancies and these beautiful myths, it has spared the rainbow with its pris matic beauty and the sunset sky with its exquisite tints of purple and gold. The dowers still besprinkle both field and forest, and the myriad stars yet nightly blossom on the meadow-fields of heaven. Our earth, though scarred by the thunderbolt and seamed by the earthquake, is even now the Cosmos of Platos loftiest imagining.
118
A CHAPTER 1W PSYCHOLOGY--VISIONS.
Indeed, it is more than the ideal of the Greek philosophy. For it is our mother earth from whose womb we sprung, and in whose quiet, unpalpitating bosom we shall rest when this fitful, feverish life is no more.
What physical science has accomplished in the world of matter, psychological research is destined to achieve within the sphere of consciousness. When rightly un derstood, the laws of mind will appear as simple and fixed, as the law of gravitation or the law of molecular attraction. Those mysterious forces, whose analysis has
hitherto baffled the utmost endeavor of the human in tellect, shall become as familiar as the action of the five mechanical powers. What Niebuhr did for the early ages of Roman history some future philosopher will do for psychology. Two centuries have not elapsed since epilepsy was styled the morbus aacer and ascribed to a special supernatural influence. Within less than a hun dred years Sir Charles Bell discovered the difference be tween nerves of sensation and motion. And notwith standing the rapid progress since then made, the entire class of the neuroses are still a puzzle and opprobrium to
the medical faculty. We propose in this paper to furnish some facts and
observations which may fail to satisfy the metaphysical savant, but that will be both interesting and instructive
to the non-professional reader. Much that we shall say is not new to the advanced
student in this department of literature, but we do hope to group the facts and present the philosophy of the matter in a clearer light than has been done elsewhere.
In the year 1852, while on a visit to New York, we were brought by the merest chance in contact with
A CHAPTER D? PSYCHOLOGY VISIONS.
lid
Andrew Jackson Davis, the Poughkeepsie seer. It was in the office of the Messrs Fowler, the distinguished phrenologists. Ha was lying at full length on a conch. We were informed by Mr. L. N. Fowler that he had been for some hours in a trance. His breathing wan soft and not in the slightest degree stertorous; his pulse was beat ing with perfect regularity; his lips were closed but not compressed; his massive brow and his lower face were natural in expression and color. He was of medium stature and plethoric habit. Indeed, except his brow, which was truly imperial, he resembled more a Dutch burgomaster after a hearty luncheon and a full mug of beer than an oriental prophet wasted by a series of vigils and fastings.
The most curious fact about him was that his eyes were wide open and seemed staring at vacancy. They were slightly retroverted and utterly void of speculation. We were quite anxious for a half-hours conversation with him, but Mr. Fowler assured us that to arouse him would render him nervous and unhappy.
To us it appeared like a well-marked case of catalepsy, but a spiritualist would have denominated it a trance.
This was our first and last glimpse of a man who had developed from an ordinary writing medium into a seer not unworthy, as his disciples thought, to be styled the Swedenborg of the ninteenth century.
Between these seers were striking points of resem blance. Both claimed to have every day, and at times hourly, intercourse with inhabitants of the spirit-world, and both professed to receive revelations direct from heaven. Mr. Davis was, however, vastly inferior in gen-
8
120
A CHAPTER IN PSYCHOLOGY VISIONS.
eral literary and scientific culture to his Swedish predecessor. Swedenborgs life, indeed, may be divided into two distinct and dissimilar periods. The first period was occupied by the study of natural science, especially metallurgy and mineralogy, in both of which he attained to great proficiency. It was in the latter years of his life that he gave his attention to Biblical interpretation
and psychological lore. Then it was he became a seer and a dreamer of dreams.
Most of our readers have heard of that wonderful vision
that Swedenborg had during a visit to Amsterdam. In the midst of an animated discussion with a company of scientific friends, he suddenly ceased talking, and, with out a word of explanation, dashed out of the room into the street, shouting fire! fire I at the top of his voice. The startling outcry produced quite an uproar in the neighborhood. Some of his friends followed, and found him bareheaded in the street in a state of high nervous excitement. He presently declared that a terrific fire was raging in Stockholm. He described the progress of the conflagation from building to building as it ap proached the palace. He refused all entreaties to leave the street until he remarked, with evident gratification, that the flames were subdued and the palace saved.
According to the statement of Swedenborg and his dis ciples, the fire occurred at the precise time that he gave the alarm whilst hundreds of miles away from the scene of destruction.
If this account be reliable a matter which admits of debate it would be difficult to explain it on any other ground than coincidence or clairvoyance.
In connection with this we shall relate a vision of
A CHAPtEB IN PSYCHOLOGY VISIONS.
121
Andrew Jackson Davis contained in his "Harmonial Philosophy," a work that embraces the greater mysteries of the spiritualistic philosophy. The death of an amia ble and gifted wife had plunged Mr. Davis into a pro found melancholy that for several months had disquali fied him for writing or lecturing. His grief was intensi fied by the fact that during these months he was, as he affirms, in constant communication with all the spheres of spirit-life, except the lowest; and yet he had no tidings of her condition or destiny. In a state of great sadness and perplexity, he went to Boston to deliver a series of lectures. On the evening of his second lecture, while addressing a large audience, he became clearly con scious of his wifes presence. This, he remarks, greatly embarrassed him and caused him to abridge his lecture. As he left the hall he felt the pressure of her hand upon his arm. Hurrying to his hotel he found her at the foot of the stairway awaiting his arrival. He instantly mounted the stairway leading to his bed-chamber, and heard her footfalls as she went up after him. Unlocking his room he lighted the gas, and there stood the spiritform of his wife. He placed a chair for her and sat down by her side. He then asked her of her heavenly estate; to which she replied that it was rapturous beyond the power of utterance. After more conversation of the same general purport, he begged her to give him a description of heaven and its inhabitants. She consenting he drew up his writing desk and wrote the description at her dictation, while she stood gently leaning upon his should ers. The description itself would not be out of place in the Arcana Celealia of Swede nborg.
Both these visions are by representative men. It is
122
A CHAPTER IK PSYCHOLOGY--VISIONS.
either a subterfuge or a flat absurdity to allege that they were impostors like Simon Magus seeking to practice a pious fraud. Such reckless assertion dishonors the cause it is designed to serve.
What will you do, then, with the psychological pheno mena? As for the table-rappings of an ordinary seance, Dr. Carpenters theory of unconscious cerebration and expectant attention explains them without the interven tion of supernatural agency. The mysterious noises of the Epworth Rectory and the Rochester knockings are on a par with the Cocklane Ghost or the headless horse man of Sleepy Hollow. There is nothing about any of the diablerie of common spiritualism that is more marvelous than the feats of the Davenport Brothers, where the whole is conceded to be a cheat and a delusion. The slate-writing and mind-reading, which for a time occa sioned such a pother, has been demonstrated to be within the reach of a skillful prestidigitator.
But what of these visions ? Shall we with one blow of the sword cut the Gordian knot, and say that the seers are insane like hundreds of the inmates of our lunatic asylums ?
As genius has been attributed to a specific disease of brain tissue, shall we say that this kindred faculty or function is of like physical origin ? Such was the judg ment of the contemporaries of Davis and Swedenborg. Will it be the verdict of posterity ? Is the problem ripe for solution ? Meanwhile let us consider two or more equally remarkable visions.
The story of Joan of Arc, the warrior-maid of Orleans, has been the theme of song and history. In the outset of her eventful career she was a shepherd-girl of Domre-
A CHAPTER IN PSYCHOLOGY--VISIONS.
123
my, a village in the Province of Lorraine. Her life, tried by any standard, was blameless. Her piety, even in the fifteenth century, was signalized by her devotion to the rubric of her church. Besides, the gentleness of her nature was such that she was esteemed a saint amongst her kindred and neighbors. Her burning patriotism moreover was one of her chief excellencies. It was of a milder type than that of Judith, who slew Holofernes, or of Charlotte Corday, who, by a well-aimed dagger, rid the world of cit-eyed Marat. Hers was a more Christly sentiment, and yet it lacked not force because of its tenderness. Her beloved Prance was trodden under foot by an alien race. Poitiers and Cressy had prepared the way for Agincoart, which had doubly avenged the shame of Hastings by the overthrow and humiliation of the French government.
Joan pondered all these things in her heart, and they finally wrought her to such a frenzy of mind that in her lonely wanderings she soon began to hear "those airy voices that syllable mens names in desolate wilder nesses." Soon other illusions beset her. Visions of the Blessed Virgin, that whispered to her of peace, and others of Michael, the Archangel, of battles and judg ments that beckoned her forward to daring achievements from which her maiden heart shrunk with dismay. These experiences continued for months and years, and pres ently she begins to discover her mission, even the re demption and rehabilitation of her down-trodden father
land. The visions and voices revealed to her that this was to
be accomplished by raising the siege of Orleans, and the coronation of the dauphin, Charles VII., at Rheims.
124
A CHAPTER IN PSYCHOLOGY VISIONS.
That she met with discouragement in the form ofjibes and mockery and threats of imprisonment is not to be wondered at. Her most determined opponents were of her own household. She must be basely false to her own convictions of duty or else face the frown of a father whom she greatly reverenced. Nor what was to be less dreaded, she must forfeit the favor of her ghostly confessor, who was ready to conclude that her lofty patriotism was a Satanic impulse. This village curate was one of those petty ecclesiastics, "made up of half-tones and minor thirds," whose tribe, if it does not increase, most assuredly . does not perceptibly lessen with the march of the ages, who dangle at the coat-tails of men in authority, afraid to speak except with bated breath, satisfied to wear the faded and cast off toggery of dead superstitions and moribund theologies.
We turn aside to say that while we are planning a revision of creeds, we may as well revise the Litany, and incorporate this: from all such clerical babblers and block-heads, good Lord deliver the pulpit of the nine teenth century.
In spite of the cure Joan set out with an escort of two knights to the court of the dauphin at Chinon.
She was in full armor, mounted on a black horse, with the sword of Saint Catharine girded to her side, bearing a banner of snowy whiteness, which she herself had em broidered with fleura de lis.
On her arrival at court the dauphin at first refused to receive her. But when she selected him from amongst a crowd of courtiers and knelt at his feet, embracing his knees, and pronounced him thelawful heir, he relented.
A CHAPTER TS PSYCHOLOGY--VISIONS.
125
Still there were rude questionings and dubious headshakings amongst the magnates, temporal and ecclesi
astical. A jury of doctors of divinity was impaneled to in
vestigate her orthodoxy, and a jury of noble matrons was appointed to determine as to her virginity. She passed both ordeals unscathed. And now the tide was in her
favor. Fully persuaded of her divine vocation, she started
with an army of four thousand men for the relief of be leaguered Orleans. Effecting by wise stratagem her entry into the city, she encountered, as at Chinon, some opposition from the French leaders. As for the rank and file of the soldiery and the common citizens, they greeted her with an lo triumphe, recognizing her as an ambassa dress from God. Her own conduct was admirable no wavering of purpose no hysterical shriekings but a steadfast trust in the power and protection of heaven.
The result is matter of history the siege was aban doned by the English, and the utmost enthusiasm per vaded the ranks of the French armies. The first part of her work being finished, she addressed herself to the other task the crowning of the dauphin atRheims. The great victory at Patnay rendered this possible, and soon thereafter she stood by the dauphin with the sacred banner in her hand, while the archbishop solemnly anointed him King of France. From this hour Joan felt that her mission was ended, and she expressed an earnest desire, to. return to her humble home and resume
her business as a shepherdess. But her environments precluded the possibility. For
her a darker destiny was reserved. After being wounded
126
A CHAPTER IN PSYCHOLOGY VISIONS.
and captured, she was forsaken even by him whom she had helped to seat on the throne of his ancestors. Con demned to the flames for heresy and sorcery, she met her doom in the fish market of Rouen with the constancy of a martyr. With her latest breath she testified that the
voices and visions were from God. As for the complicity of England in this judicial
murder, it well-nigh justifies the slur of Michelet that
Pontius Pilate must have been an official of the English
government. Whether insane or inspired, Joan of Arc, far more
than the imbecility of Henry VI. and his courtiers, saved Northern France from becoming, like Ireland, an
appendage of the British crown. There was a wide difference between the simple-heart
ed peasant girl of Lorraine and that whilom monk of Erfurth, who came forth from his cloister and shook
Europe from end to end by his theses, and answered peal for peal the thunders of the Vatican. It is alto, gether aside from our plan to consider the controversies of that stormy sixteenth century. The jealousies of Augustinians and Dominicans, and Tetzels traffic in in dulgences and like ecclesiastical haberdashery, were prob ably the proximate cause. But behind and above these there were wrestlings of doubt and stragglings of faith that demanded somewhat far grander than priestly mummery, with its stupid adoration of wafer gods and its blind belief in the Holy Coat of Treves and the annual liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius. In the midst of these death-throes of hoary superstition, Martin Luther was summoned to the Diet of Worms. Armed with his Bible, and protected by an imperial safe conduct,
A CHAPTER IN PSYCHOLOGY VISIONS.
127
he went, with what result is well known. Silenced by the divine right of majorities, he was put under the ban of the empire, his books ordered to be burned, and all persons forbidden to furnish him food or shelter, as though the Lord God of Elijah, who nourished his fugitive pro phet by the ministry of angels, had abdicated the throne of the universe. A few days after Luthers leave taking of Worms, while passing through the forest of Thuringia, he was seized by two knights and straitly imprisoned in the fortified Castle of Wartburg. This constrained seclusion, so needful to his present safety, was one of the most important incidents of his life. There he gave him self to prayer and study. Wartburg was to Luther what the cave of Bethlehem was to Jerome or the Arabian desert to St. Paul. Away from the strife of tongues, he devoted himself to the translation of the Holy Scriptures into the German vernacular out of the original Greek and Hebrew text. That translation did more to restore German nationality and unity than did the splendid victories of Frederick the Great or the profound states manship of Bismarck. To it we are likewise indebted for the philosophy of Kant, the tragedies of Schiller and the Wilhelm Meister of Goethe. All through these ten months of retirement, however, his health was shat tered, and he was, moreover, grievously troubled with strange hallucinations. Were they aught else than the ordinary results of an earnest nature overwrought by intense and persistent toil ? Luther was not a seer in the common acceptation of that term. He had more liking for the concrete than the abstract. Witness his silly theory of con-substantiation. Indeed, his was a matter-of-fact mind, best suited to the sterner problems
128
A CHAPTER IN PSYCHOLOGY VISIONS.
of human life. And yet, at different periods of his his tory, he had his voices and visions.
When climbing the scala sancta at Rome, he heard a voice from heaven proclaiming "The just shall live by faith;" it was the key-note of the coming reformation. But his most notable experience of this sort was his vis ion of the devil at Wartburg.
The devil of Luthers creed was not the philosophical recluse of Miltons "Paradise Regained," nor was it the courtly and cultured Mephistophiles of Faust, nor was it the mere personification of the principle of evil, as the tamer theology of our day suggests. According to his conception, the devil was a veritable entity a fallen archangel characterized by St. Peter as a roaring lion the terrible red dragon of the Apocalypse.
While Luther, sick at heart and prostrated by nervous exhaustion, sat in his arm-chair busy with his Bible translation, suddenly a hideous apparition stood oppo site him. Here was the devil in proper person. Most men, of that age at least, would have swooned with terror or fled affrighted from the ghastly vision. Luther, who had declared his readiness to go to Leipsic in obedience to the call of duty, although it should rain Duke Georges nine days together, was of sterner stuff. Without so much as sounding a parley, but muttering his indignation through his clenched teeth, he seized his iron inkstand and hurled it with his utmost strength at the infernal visitor. The vision vanished immediately, but the in dentation made in the wall and the blotches of ink re main after more than three hundred years to attest the truth of the transaction and to confound the skepticism of the modern tourist.
A CHAPTER IN PSYCHOLOGY VISIONS.
129
We might speak of other visions only less striking than those already considered.
Sir Walter Scott, himself no mean authority on demonology, was startled on seeing Lord Byron confronting him in the hall as he passed from his study to his bed chamber at Abbottsford. He had been thinking much that evening of the great poet of whose sad death at Missolonghi he had received tidings that morning. He was perfectly self-possessed and endeavored fruitlessly to recall the apparition after its disappearance. Nearly all the college text-books on mental philosophy mention the spectres of Nicolai, the Berlin book-seller. These occurred periodically and were a matter of amusement rather than of alarm. In this case the spectres were traced to dis eased eyes, growing out of slight constitutional disturb ance. Thus viewed these spectres were of hardly more significance than the muscae wlitantes that frequently attend nervous disorders. The merry and ubiquitous spectre which haunted the English opium-eater in the guise of a Malay was also the result of some derange ment of the cerebral circulation.
The evil genius who kept his solemn tryst vith Brutus at Philippi belongs to a similar category. These smal ler illusions require only the simple reference we have made, but the remarkable visions above related we have examined somewhat in detail because of their intrinsic and historical value. It will have been discovered that they were all the product of the special circumstances in the midst of which they were developed. In every in stance there was an abnormal condition of the nervous centres induced by mental tension conjointly with a marked degree of expectant attention. In the case of
130
A CHAPTER IN PSYCHOLOGY VISIONS.
Swedenborg it may have been excessive anxiety about Stockholm amounting to nostalgia. In the case of Davis it was unquestionably a sense of bereavement and of isolation from his wife. With Joan of Arc it was a blend ing of religious revery with an ardent love of her native land. With Luther it was a deep-wrought sympathy for the flock of Christ which he saw ready to be devour ed and scattered by wolves and hirelings. In all these cases we recognize the power of faith.
Insanity in some of itsmultitudinous forms accounts for many of these phenomena. This is especially true if we accept the theories of emotional and momentary insani ty. Besides, there are states of semi-consciousness when we can with extreme difficulty distinguish between waking thoughts and dreaming fancies. These condi tions, if fully comprehended, would furnish us with a clue to mysteries which otherwise cannot be harmonized with well-established facts of scientific observation.
The question recurs with increased force: Is the prob lem of visions ripe for solution ? It might be rash either to affirm or deny. Mental physiology is yet in its in fancy. It may require another century of pains-taking investigation before we reach a vantage ground whence we may descry, much less explore, the continents and islands that lie embosomed in the vast outspread ocean of truth. There are yet innumerable facts undreamed of in our higher philosophy that may shed a flood of light on such perplexing inquiries as have been suggested by these brief studies in psychology. Meanwhile these manifes tations of the hidden forces of matter or mind, or both, may answer as an emphatic protest against materialism a positivism which at times threatens to subject, not only
A CHAPTER IS PSYCHOLOGY VISIONS.
131
all physical phenomena to the dominion of cold, mate rial laws, but to make the mind itself a secretion of the brain, and the sublimest thought, or the most volatile fancy, the product of molecular movement. Well for humanitys sake if it stayed its profane hand at this point. But instead it would eliminate God and provi dence from the universe. ^This is the ultimate fact of materialism, whether Locke or Spinoza be its inter preter.
The reaction which has taken place may go too far in the opposite direction. Such, indeed, has been the his tory of speculative thought in former ages.
One generation stone the prophets and another build and garnish their sepulchres. In the beginning of the Christian centuries Plato was "lord of the ascendant," but afterwards for a thousand years Aristotle was the master of every university of Europe. His categories were the sum total of all learning, and the syllogism the standard of all right reasoning.
Since the downfall of scholasticism we have had no rest from controversy, whether in philosophy or religion.
The current age is one of destructive criticism. Old faiths, theological and otherwise, are being sifted like wheat. The geocentric theory of the solar system and the six literal days of the Mosaic creation, once esteemed tests of orthodoxy, are abandoned. Nor is the end yet. This iconoclastic movement will not have spent its force until other errors, both in physics and metaphysics shall fall before the onward march of science like Dagon before the ark of God. Our consolation i^ this that truth and righteousnees can never be permanently overborne.
132
A CHAWBR IN PSYCHOLOGY VISIOSS.
It will be perceived that in this discussion we have studiously avoided any allusion to the visions of the Holy Scriptures. They occupy a different basis, even that of divine authority. Besides, they contain their own vindication in the greatness of the ends they sub serve. Pauls ascent to the third heaven was not a mo mentary ecstasy without an adequate purpose and a wise aim. It taught him a lesson of humility, the power of which even now reaches to the ends of the earth. Isaiahs vision in the temple was not only fitted to pre pare him for his arduous mission, but it has impressed succeeding ages with a just apprehension of Gods im maculate holiness. Peters mid-day vision on the house top of Simon, the tanner, was a symbol and prophecy of universal redemption. Johns vision of the New Jerusa lem, coming down from God out of heaven, was a fore token of a blessedness, the raptures of which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive.
In this, as in all other respects, the Bible demonstrates its divinity. Ecclesiastical councils, both general and provincial, have sometimes grievously perverted its meaning. These human interpretations and exegetical blunders shall share the doom of all error, but "the word of the Lord abideth forever."
MORMONISM-.WHATISIT-WHATWILL
YOU DO WITH IT?
THE various religions of mankind are largely the pro duct of physical environments. Climate, topography and even hydrography have an intimate relationship to religion as well as to agriculture and to commerce. How broad the contrast between the Druidical superstition of the ancient Britons and the beautiful mythology of the Greeks between the Odin worship of the Teutonic tribes and the dreamy Theoaophy of India. And yet, these diverse races all belong by language and lineage to the IndoGermanic family, and possess like ethnic endowments and capabilities. Wb at other adequate explanation than the one just proposed can be given of these divergent, if not conflicting, religious phenomena ? Nor is it less in harmony with these views that of the half-dozen bookreligions of mankind all of them originated in Southern or Southwestern Asia. If Mormonism, the youngest of them all, be rightly considered of Western origin, it at least claims to be of Semitic derivation. Englands in sular situation has contributed to make her "the mistress of the seas." Why may not the geographical conditions of Syria, and Arabia, and India, have contributed to make them the birth-place of great religious faiths which have ruled the world in ancient and modern times ? The fact itself may well excite our "special wonder," although it baffles our philosophical analysis.
134
MORMONISM.
In this connection it is interesting to observe the points of contact and resemblance between the Moham medanism of the East and the Mormonism of the West. History repeats itself after an interval of twelve hundred years. The Koran, equally with the Book of Mornon, purports to be a supplementary revelation. They both concede the divine origin of the Old and New Testament Scriptures. They both incorporate many of the doctrinal truths and historical statements of Judaism and Chris tianity. Mohammedanism, it iswell understood, was an open revolt against the idolatry of Arabia and the imageworship of the pseudo Christianty of the East. Planting itself squarely nn the two first precepts of the Decalogue, it went forth to evangelize the earth, not with drowsy homilies, but with sword and buckler.
Mormonism, dissatisfied with the dissensions of Chris tendom, and protesting against alleged social grievances, undertook to establish a theocracy on a sort of commun istic basis.
As we have already suggested, there was an affinity between their founders, as well as between the religious systems they established. Mohammed and Joseph Smith were both monogamists in the outset of their prophetical career. At a later period both of them professed to re ceive a special revelation authorizing and encouraging a plurality of wives. Both of them were destitute alike of learning and social position. Mohammed was, indeed, of the tribe of the Koreish, the hereditary guardians of the holy Kaaba. But this tribal relationship was of less importance than the title of an Italian count or a Ger man prince. It was at least consistent with poverty to the verge of mendicancy. He was, up to middle life, a
MORMONISM. .
135
commercial adventurer, and so remained until he luckily espoused his mistress, the amiable and wealthy Khadijah.
Smith was not only of humble parentage, but members of his immediate family were reputed to be sheep and cattle thieves. He was, however, never implicated in these depredations on the fold and herd. On the contra ry, from his boyhood he was regarded as pious. Hia religious susceptibilities were sufficiently marked to at tract public attention and cause him to be spoken of as visionary. He, too, had a fondness for mercantile ven tures. These enterprises were failures and ended in dis astrous bankruptcy. Wrecked in finance and shattered in health, he became, like Mohammed, a melancholy re cluse, shunning society and courting solitude. What the cave of Mt. Hara was to Mohammed, that was the hill, Cumorah, to Smith. In this state of physical disorder, it is not strange that he was favored with visions of glory and visitations of angels. These psychological phenom ena are the legitimate outcome of dyspeptic ailments and cerebral congestion. Modern science does more to re move or alleviate them by hydro-chloral or saccharated calomel than do the most approved methods of priestly
exorcism. In the theological parlance of the thirteenth century
Mohammed was stigmatized as a vulgar impostor, dis tinctly prefigured in the Apocalyptic writings. The charity of the nineteenth century has placed Joseph Smith in the same moral category. And yet, after the lapse of twelve hundred years, the former has a following of one hundred and fifty millions, and the latter, after
9
136
MORMONlflM.
fifty years, baa, according to the latest estimates, a discipleship of two hundred thousand. Can such phenom enal success be accounted for on the hypothesis of fraud and fanaticism, either singly or conjointly? Most as suredly not by the latter method, as these two elements of moral character are not only mutually exclusive, but mutually repellant, not less so than similar electricities. As for the theory of conscious fraud and willful imposture, it is embarrassed by. insuperable difficulties. Great as is the corruption of human nature, we are not prepared to accept the hasty generalization of David, that "all men are liars" from a deliberate preference of falsehood to truth. Even the bachelors of Salamanca, as Sancho Panza averred, did not tell lies except when it served a selfish purpose. Human depravity, according to the oppo site view, goes infinite lengths beyond the uttermost limits of St. Augustines dogma of original sin. More over, it discredits human testimony to such a degree that the administration of law, civil or criminal, is a sheer mockery, and the decision of the twelve judges of England as unreliable as the hazard of a die. Nor is the hypothesis, when applied to Mormonism, other than a two-edged sword that strikes at true as well as false re ligions. The syllogism of Hume in regard to the credi bility of Christian miracles becomes ex hypothesi an over whelming moral demonstration. If men will endure persecution, imprisonment and death to uphold what they know to be "an old wives fable," then it follows that our Christian evidences, from St. Pauls conversion to St. Johns vision of the final judgment, are in their last analysis a series of "argumentative white lies." We justly spurn the conclusion, but to be consistent we must
MORMONISM.
137
likewise reject the premises. These remarks, which are mainly prefatory, bring us to the practical question: "Mormonism what is it ?"
As regards the Book of Mormon, the historical basis of the church of the Latter-day Saints, there are two contra dictory statements. Accordi ng to the tradition of the Mor mon church, the contents of this book were originally written on plates of gold. Mormon, who was concerned in the arrangement and preservation of these records, was one of the few that survived the destruction of the Nephites in the sixth century of the Christian era. They were deposited for safe-keeping in or near the town of Manchester, in Western New York. In two distinct visions the angel, Moroni, revealed to Joseph Smith the place of their deposit. On the 22d of September, 1827, Smith received these records by the ministry of angels. Along with the golden plates there was found a pair of stone spectacles (attached to a breast-plate), which he called Urim and Thummim. With the aid of these he was enabled to translate the original language, styled "Reformed Egyptian," into our English vernacular. In making this translation Oliver Cowdery, one of his earliest converts, acted as the amanuensis of the prophet. This work of translation being completed, the book was published at Palmyra, New York, one Martin Harris defraying the expense of publication. The appendix contains the certificates of three witnesses who testify that they had seen the golden plates and beheld a vision of angels about the time of the alleged translation. In the same connection there is a certificate of eight other persons who corroborated the testimony of the three original witnesses. Of this number some are men of
188
MOKMONISH.
very doubtful veracity. Others of the eleven subse quently renounced Mormonism and confessed that the entire translation was a cheat. This statement comprises the whole of the affirmative historical evidence for the authenticity of the Book of Mormon.
The conflicting account is to this effect: Some years before Smiths alleged discovery of the golden plates, the Rev. Solomon Spalding, of Ohio, undertook to write a sort of historical romance founded upon the dispersion of the
ten tribes of Israel. According to the sworn testimony of his wife and others, it was chiefly written to beguile the tedium of a chronic illness. After Spaldings death the manuscript fell into the hands of Sidney Rigdon, himself a wild enthusiast, and through him reached the hands of Joseph Smith. The testimony in favor of this statement is invincible and forces us to the conclusion that the GOLDEN BOOK is as fabulous as the Poems of Ossian or the sacred books of the Cumean Sybil.
Nor are the internal evidences less conclusive against its claims to a supernatural origin. The story that this continent was peopled first by a colony of Jaredites, who left the plains of Shinar about the time of the confusion of tongues, and then by another colony of Nephites, who left Jerusalem six hundred years B. C., is more improba ble than the adventures of Robinson Crusoe or of Sinbad the Sailor. The condition of the art of navigation was of itself an insurmountable difficulty. Dr. Robertson, the learned historian of Charles V., attempted to meet the difficulty by asserting that a literal bridge once connect ed Africa with South America, but that it was de stroyed ages agone by wave and wind.. This and other puerile conceits to account for the presence of the abori-
MOBMONISM.
139
ginal inhabitants of North and South America, whom popular superstition had identified with the lost, tribes of Israel. So Mormonism further asserts that Christ, after his resurrection, manifested himself to the inhabit ants of this continent and established a grand Christian civilization that was overthrown about the year seven hundred of our era. Strange that it never occurred to these writers that these Indian tribes were possibly au tochthonous, and that the civilization, relics of which are seen in the ruined cities of Central America, is Aztec and not Asiatic. The Book of Mormon, by committing itself to these scientific absurdities, has sealed its own doom as a divine revelation.
As respects its doctrines, it is the veriest jumble of crudities and contradictions that can well be imagined. Its theism is essentially anthropomorphic. At this point it touches Buddhism and makes the God-head a subli mated humanity. It holds the doctrine of the transmi gration of souls, and teaches that the gifts of tongues, healing and prophecy, which were polemical in their very design, and therefore transitory, are the perpetual endowment of the church of the Latter-day Saints. It maintains also the truth of such monkish fancies as the literal restoration of the Jews and the personal reign of Christ on Mt. Zion for a thousand years. What is yet more decisive is that the style, not less than the matter, of parts of the book unmistakably point to Western New York and the present century as the time and place of its nativity. It contains frequent allusions to religious controversies and even political squabbles that are known to have agitated the popular mind of that particular locality just previous t<? its publication in
140
MORMONISM.
1830. These references were of course interpolated into the original manuscript of Spalding, either by Smith or, as is most probable, by Sidney Rigdon, who in the main manipulated this stupendous swindle.
These facts and aver m exits seem to be irreconcilable with the theory of Smiths sincerity. And yet, when we consider other facts of his former and subsequent history, we are constrained to allow that he was indeed a firstclass fanatic, but in no just sense a religions knave.
We have studied history to little purpose if we cannot harmonize these apparent discrepancies. Take the story of Socrates and his genius who admonished him always of impending evil. No greater fable is found in Esop or La Fontaine. And yet, are we prepared to join his ene mies who defamed him as a hypocrite, a reviler of the gods and a corrupter of the youth of Athens ? How shall we disp-pe of Emmanuel Swedenborg, who claimed to have daily converse with disembodied spirits ? What of his book on "Heaven and Hell" as intensely realistic in its descriptions as a school geography ? Have we yet to learn that a fanatic has method in his madness ? The old belief that the lunatic was inspired may after all have in it a modicum of philosophy.
No intelligent man of the present generation believes that Mohammed was a conscious trickster. So likewise the persistencewith which Smith pursued his purpose the bravery with which he confronted dangers and privations of no commonplace sort the calm intrepidity, with which he faced a murderous mob in the jail at Carthage, Illinois, all bear witness to his honesty. This conclusion is not in any sense affected by the truth or
MOBMONISH.
141
falsehood of his religion. Every creed has its martyrology.
Whatever may be our views on this point, already sufficiently discussed, we are next brought face to face with a more perplexing problem that demands a prompt solution.
"What will you do with it?" Driven from New York to Missouri, pushed back to Illinois, ousted by military force and mob violence from
Nauvoo, sojourning for a time beyond the Mississippi, their prophet and patriot dead, their beautiful temple destroyed, the fortunes of Mormonism seemed indeed desperate. With the opening Spring, however, of 1848, they set forth, under the leadership of Brigham Young, on an exodus to the Great Salt Lake Valley beyond the boundaries of Gentile civilization. Their journey was attended by perils and hardships that at least tested the thoroughness of their convictions. In the heart of Deseret they planted, to use their quaint vernacular, the first "stake of Zion." The first year of their settlement was marked by numerous disasters. Disease and drought conjoined to dismay and dishearten the infant colony. The former diminished their industrial resources and the latter damaged their crops, and even this scanty product was well-nigh consumed by armies of crickets from the neighboring mountains. But in a few years their skillful husbandry, aided by artificial irrigation, made the barren waste to blossom as the rose and to bloom like the garden of the Lord. The United States census statistics show that Utah has enjoyed more than an average share of material prosperity. The rapid in crease of population, with the equal growth of leading
142
MORMONISM.
industries, has been exceptional even in the annals of Western enterprise and progress. Nor have less material interests been overlooked. Education has kept pace in Utah with its advancement in portions of New England. In this respect it has outstripped several of the Middle and Western States. It claims likewise to have been singularly exempt from the omnipresent whisky curse and to suffer less than other communities from pauperism and prostitution.
But behind these scenes of thrift and progression there looms up in the background the deepening shadow of POLYGAMY, a grievous crime against God and humanity.
To conclude that this anomalous feature of Mormon society has in anywise contributed to the notably good results we have been considering is to perpetrate the familiar fallacy of non causa, pro causa.
It is not less illogical for Orson Hyde, one of the most distinguished of the Mormon elders, to attempt in a public disputation a scriptural defense of polygamy. The examples of Jacob, David and Solomon, so far from help ing bis argument, are literally destructive to his hypoth esis. Jacob was not only a polygamist, but a crafty and unscrupulous swindler. David was deeply defiled with blood-guiltiness. Solomon, with all his wisdom, was not less a royal debauchee than George IV. of England. The Bible records the polygamous crimes of .these men, not to condone but to condemn. In all these instances a retributive providence avenged their wrong-doing. Jacobs home life, in every stage of it, was embittered by his crime. David not only cowered under the stern re buke of Nathan, the prophet, but in the penitential Psalms we hear the wailings of a dismal woe. Solomon,
MORMOHI8M.
143
because of his strange wives and tbe multitude of bis concubines, insured the dismemberment and downfall of the kingdom of David.
The Old Testament does not contain a single utterance that justifies this abomination that maketh desolate the sanctuary of the home and degrades woman to the level of the brute. Christ and his apostles, in the new and better covenant, distinctly affirm what science teaches that monogamy is the original and normal relationship of the sexes.
American statesmanship has hitherto shown itself un able to grapple successfully with this difficult question. It has baffled the wisdom of successive administrations, Democratic and Republican. Congressional intervention also has so far signally failed either to remove or amelio rate this immense social evil. Some of the measures have assumed the shape of religious intolerance, and to that extent have been unjust and impolitic. The trite proverb, "The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church," has been amply illustrated in the past history of the Mormon sect. The murder of Joseph Smith and his brother, Hyram, and the needless destruction of the" temple at Nauvoo, were at least grave blunders. They gave a fresh impulse to a fanaticism they sought to crush. They invested a despised faith with a factitious dignity and its proscribed founder with a halo of heroism, if not with the crown of martyrdom. A repetition of the ex periment would be followed by similar results. In the main this doubtful policy has found its principal advo cates in those States where licentious divorce systems have well-nigh stripped the marriage vow of its proper sanctity. This class of religionists are not altogether fit.
1-14
MOKMONIBM.
persons to cast the first atone of obloquy at the misguided polygamista of Utah. Nor are the descendants of men who believed that toothless crones could by some "cantrap sleight" traverse the air on "aeronautic broomsticks" exactly suited to lecture the dupes of Mormonism on the evils of superstition. Nor, indeed, are we prepared to recognize the expediency of a territorial government by a military commission. Such a precedent would be dan gerous to constitutional liberty, as it opens a wide door to future inroads on the reserved rights of the States. It smacks too much of the "shot-gun policy," which has been denounced as a special characteristic of Southern civilization. It occurs to us that there is no urgency that warrants this appeal to the bayonet. Indeed, any effort to quarantine this moral pestilence is, in the light of both reason and experience, a hopeless undertaking. If: a military cordon as impassable as the lines of Wel lington at the Torres Vedras were drawn around the Ter ritory of Utah, it could not shut in this deadly malaria. It has long ceased to be a purely local question. It has already diffused itself through the adjacent States and Territories. Its missionaries are not less aggressive and self-sacrificing tt.an the Jesuit missionaries, who, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, dominated the leading courts of Europe, penetrated China and Japan, and under Dr. Francia founded a theocracy in the wilds ofSouth America. These Mormon missionaries have made converts by scores and hundreds in England, in Sweden, in Spain, and have organized "stakes of Zion" in the ends of the earth. We have to deal with it by other if not more Christian methods than are formulated in the Edmunds bill. There is a more excellent way for the sure
MORMOHISM.
145
if not speedy extirpation of this monstrous iniquity. Let us not become impatient or despondent Troth can alvrays afford to wait, because it is evermore in harmony with the fitness of things and the wise purpose* of tha eternal God.
First of all let it be the settled policy of the Federal government to keep Utah in a state of territorial pupil age until such time as she shall present a State constitu tion distinctly prohibitory of this polygamous enormity. In the meanwhilelet the most prudent men be appointed to official position men wise in council, firm in purpose and in full sympathy with the Christian sentiment of the age. As far as practicable let there be a stringent enforcement of the laws against polygamy. In order to insure this let every practical polygamistbe disqualified as judge or juror and such other disqualifications imposed as discriminate between the theoretical and practical polygamist. There are a variety of considerations that commend this expectant treatment rather than a harsher treatment to the acceptance of the government. There is in the bosom of the Mormon church itself a wide diversity of opinion in reference to this hideous vice. A minority, respectable for numbers and even for influence, deny that their founder ever sanctioned the introduction of polygamy into their creed. They insist that Brigham Young is mainly responsible for its existence. They allege that the pretended special revelation of 1843 was a palpable forgery an ingenious after-thought of Young to vindicate his own beastly sensualism. For the present these malcontents are classed as apostate Mormons, but they serve admirably well as the nucleus of an opposition that is yet destined to become formidable. This protest
146
MOBMONISM.
will be materially strengthened by the steady growth of the Christian population already equal to twenty per . cent, of the aggregate. As the matter now stands the members of the hierarchy and their satellites are the chief offenders, and the great body of the Mormons will refrain more and more from its practice for reasons of economy, if not from higher motives. In this way, with out resorting to a policy that would permanently alienate the Mormon masses, the wished-for consummation may be reached. But, as we have before intimated, this moral infection is no longer purely local.. It is spreading in all directions, and the public sentiment of the nation needs to be enlightened and reformed. The divorce laws of many of tha States of the Union are a reproach to Christianity, and in their measure are not less demoral izing than polygamy itself. As long as marriage is re garded as a mere civil contract, we may expect that lax views will obtain in legislatures and courts. We might not accept the theory of the Catholic Church as to the sacramental character of marriage, but we are as little inclined to indorse the extreme reaction of Protestantism which, in our estimation, is hardly less objectionable. The one is an error of -excess, the other of defect. No marriage should be deemed valid that is not suitably solemnized by an officiating magistrate or minister, and also properly registered. Moreoyer, the press and the pulpit should urge upon the legislative departments the repeal of these obnoxious laws, and upon the judicial department the necessity of greater caution in disrupting this sacred relationship.
Not only the polygamy of Utah, but these licentious divorce systems, are in conflict withthe race instincts
MORMONISM.
147
and immemorial traditions of our Aryan ancestors. Long before the age of Tacitus the countrymen of Arminius were not more distinguished for love of personal liberty than for their profound reverence" for motherhood and wifehood. These political and moral traits have been transmitted through successive generations and find their loftiest exponents in our nineteenth century civiliza tion. The proper geographical habitat of polygamy and its kindred social vices is in the far East amongst the Semitic tribes which, from the dawn of history, have trampled on the divine law of marriage. To one of these tribes which God had redeemed from bondage with a high hand and an outstretched arm, He proclaimed as one pre cept of the fiery law of Sinai THOU SHALT NOT CDKMIT
AJJULTEBY.
This precept the Great Teacher affirmed with higher sanctions and with a broader interpretation. On its faithful maintenance depend the purity of home-life, the prosperity of the State and the well-being of mankind.
AN EPISODE OF THE WAR.
ANDREWS AND HIS SCHEME.
No SINGLE event of oar Revolutionary struggle except it may be some decisive battle awakened a more pro found interest than the arrest, trial and execution of Major Andre, the British spy. It occurred at a period of the war hardly less gloomy than that which immediately preceded the victory of Trenton. Gates had just been ingloriously routed at Camden; Tarleton had for the nonce proved an over-match for Sumter, the game-cock of South Carolina; the Southern colonies, indeed, were overrun and well-nigh subjugated by Cornwallis and his myrmidons, while New York and the adjacent territory were held in the iron grasp of Sir Henry Clinton. At this alarming juncture Benedict Arnold, smarting under the reprimand of W ashington and instigated by a " vault ing ambition," conceived the project of betraying West Point into the enemys hands and had so notified the British commander. Sir Henry Clinton committed the negotiations to Major Andre, one of the most brilliant and trustworthy of his subaltern officers. Andre securedan interview with Arnold, and as the price of his treason guaranteed to him ten thousand pounds sterling and the commission of a brigadier-general in the British army. The consummation of this scheme would have" greatly imperiled the fortunes of the colonies, if it had not ulti mately defeated their independence. That it failed was
A BPI80DB~09 THB WAR.
149
due to the vigilance and integrity of Williams, Paulding and Van Wert, at Tarrytown, New York. Arnold effected his escape to live and die in shame and obscurity. Andre was captured, convicted -and executed, but his re mains repose beneath the groined arches of Westminster Abbey.
AH IMPORTANT STRATEGICAL FLAN.
The event of which we are now to apeak was not less daring in its design or less signifiaant in its bearing on the military fortunes of the Confederate States. That this is altogether a sober estimate will appear from the subjoined extract from the leading Atlanta daily under date of April 15,1862:
"We doubt if the victory of Manassas or Corinth were worth as much to us as the frustration of this grand coup d1 dot. It is not by any means certain that the annihi lation of Beauregards army at Corinth would be so fatal a blow to us as would have been the burning of the -bridges at this time and by these men."
Much more of like import might be gathered from the Southern -press, but we forbear on that point, and come now to consider the origin and design of this expedition. In the Spring of 1862 General Mitchell and his forces were encamped at Shelbyville, Tenn. General Mitchell had an eye on Hunts ville and its western communication, and was slowly advancing by that route towards Steven son and Chattanooga.
THB INSTIGATOR OF THB 8CHBKB.
At this time there appeared upon the scene a man of superb physique and of almost courtly address. This was j. J. Andrews, a native of West Virginia, but for many
150
AN EPISODE 09 THE WAR.
years a resident of Fleming county, Ky. Previous to the .war he had traded in the South, and from the beginning of the war had been engaged in a contraband traffic with the seceded States. He undoubtedly enjoyed the confi dence of both Federals and Confederates and came and went at will. Judging from my subsequent intercourse with him I should say he was a man of great natural sagacity, but of limited culture. He had the courage and enterprise of a frontier scout combined with the caution and quick perception of Vidocq, the great French de tective. Andrews visited Shelbyville for the purpose of submitting to General Mitchell a well digested plan for the destruction of the thirteen bridges of the railroad be tween Atlanta and Chattanooga.
WHAT MITCHELL WOULD GAIN.
General Mitchell was not slow to perceive the advan tages to be secured by the successful execution of the project. A mere glance at his military maps would show him that the immediate effect would be the isolation of Chattanooga and Knoxville so far as that important line of communication was concerned. It would leave him to prosecute his campaign against Chattanooga with lit tle danger of a mishap, and in conjunction with Morgan> then moving through Cumberland Gap, to complete the conquest of East Tennessee, overflowing with army sup plies and full of Federal recruits. At the same time in dispensable supplies and reinforcements would be cut off from Lees army, then confronted by McClellans army, and compelling from us at the close of the contest the abandonment of the line of Richmond and Petersburg. We mention some of these results as remote possibilities, but others were inevitable.
AN EPISODE OF THE \VAB.
151
General Mitchell, after a thorough investigation, re solved to furnish Andrews with every possible help. It is difficult to say whether the squad of twenty-four men who were to be placed at Andrews disposal were partly volunteers and partly detailed men, or whether they all belonged to the latter class. They all, however, were picked men, chosen. because of their soldierly qualities from three Ohio regiments, and they were certainly in formed that they were embarking upon a dangerous ex pedition. Only twenty-two men reported at Chattanooga and rendezvoused at Marietta, and among these was William Campbell, a civilian from Kentucky, who was prompted by a love of adventure. It is no slight evidence of the fidelity of these men that they confronted the perils and privations of their tedious journey from Shelbyville to Chattanooga and promptly answered the roll-call at Marietta on the morning of the fateful 12th of April, 1862.
Andrews and his party, to avoid suspicion, had pur chased tickets to different points on the road. A little after sunrise the northward bound train rolled up to the station and the party boarded it. Nine miles to Big Shanty and the struggle would begin. Upon the arrival of the train at that point the conductor announced, "Big Shanty twenty minutes for breakfast." The conductor, engineer indeed, all the attaches of the train and a large number of passengers went in for breakfast. The hour strikes. Andrews and his engineer, Brown, with prompt ness, and yet perfect composure, mounted the engine, while the remainder of the party occupied the three front cars, which in an instant were detached from the hinder
10
152
AN EPISODE Of TBE WAR.
part of the train. The steam-valve was pulled wide open, and in the presence of a brigade of troops the train bounded off at a rapid speed. Stopping, however, two or three miles above, they cut the telegraph lines and then resumed their flight at the rate of fifty miles per hour towards Kingston, where they knew they were to pass the regular down freight.
Meanwhile Captain W. A. Fuller, the conductor, Jeff. Cain, the engineer, and Anthony Murphy, an official of the road,- were not idle. They rushed from the breakfastroom in time to see the captured train disappear behind a curve. Fuller was a man of pluck and indomitable energy. He seemed at once to comprehend the situation. The party that had seized his engine were Federal sol diers in disguise. Without a moment lost in parleying he and Murphy and Cain started on foot in pursuit. Before they bad proceeded far they secured a hand-car and mounted that. Two miles from Carteisville, at Etowah station, they found to their delight an engine fired up and heading for Chattanooga. They at once im pressed it and dashed on after the fugitives at a break
neck speed. Andrews and his party were unavoidably delayed at Kingston by the non-arrival of a train. This delay well-nigh insured the failure of the enterprise. When Fuller and his party reached Kingston he was fully twenty-five minutes behind the captured train. And such was the promptness with which he pressed the hot pursuit that twenty-two miles farther on he came in sight of Andrews and his party tugging at a refractory rail which they only partially displaced.
Henceforward there was no interval for burning bridges. It was now reduced to a race for life and liberty with
AN EPISODE Of tBX WAR.
153
the odds against the fugitives. Mazeppa, bound on his wild Tartar steed, scouring the plains of the Ukraine, is a fitting type of the Federals as they burned the boxes and even the oil with which the engine was greased; passed Dalton, through the tunnel, over the Chickamauga bridge beyond Ringgold, their steam exhausted, and yet the indefatigable Fuller at their heels. Two of the cars had been detached, but Fuller would switch them off on a siding and push on with redoubled energy. The chase was up. Andrews gave the order: Sauve quipeut-- in plain English, Devil take the hindmost" leaped off the train, and with the others betook themselves to the forests on either side of the road. Fuller, of course, changed his tactics. Leaving his engine he impressed a mule with no saddle and a rope bridle, and mounting it continued the pursuit. In a little ~while for the coun try was aroused he was joined by others, and the forests were scoured and searched in all directions, resulting in the capture of seventeen of the fugitives.
In a few days all ot them were lodged in the Chatta nooga jail. _ There they remained until the month of June. Andrews, the leader, had been tried as a spy and convicted in the latter part of May. He, with another of the party, escaped, but Andrews was re captured on the 6th of June and was sent to Atlanta to be executed, while twelve others of the squad were ordered to Knoxville for
trial. On the 7th of June I was standing at the corner of
Decatur and Peach tree streets and noticed a column of soldiers approaching. I inquired what it meant, and was told that Captain Andrews, the spy, was being carried to the gallows. As the carriage containing the prisoner and
154
AH EPISODE Otf TBB_WAB.
Colonel 0. H. Jones, the Provost-marshal, arrived oppo site the point where I was standing, the carriage was halted and Colonel Jones asked me if I would go out and officiate as chaplain. I replied that 1 disliked to witness an execution of the sort and suggested that he procure some other minister. At this point the prisoner addressed me in rather a subdued tone and remarked: "I would be glad to have you go." I remarked to the Provost-marshal that I could not refuse such a request and immediately took my seat in the carriage beside the prisoner.
The carriage was escorted by a file of soldiers on either hand and followed by a vast multitude of people of all colors, sexes and conditions. The place of execution was not, as Colonel Avery states in his "History of Georgia," "near Walton Spring," but was distant not less than one and a half miles on Feachtree street road. As the pro cession moved at a funeral pace I had ample time for conversation with Andrews. He gave me a full history of his birth, parentage and adventures. He was, as be fore stated, a native of West Virginia. His parents were strict Presbyterians and at the time of his execution were residing in Southwestern Missouri. In reply to a question of mine, he said he had no family, although he added, with a slight tremor of his voice, he was to have been married on the 17th of June. He admitted that he was to have received a large sum for his services and the privilege to trade across the lines to the extent of $5,000 per month. He disclaimed all personal enmity to the (Southern people, but said that he was a Union man and he regarded the expedition he conducted as a legitimate military expedition. He was willing,-however, to abide his fate.
AS EPISODE OP THE WAS.
155
Of course I spoke to him on the subject of personal religion and his readiness for the summons of death. In reply he told me, with manifest emotion, that he had never united with the church, but that recently in his great and sere trouble he had tried to seek God. I labored to show him in a few words the way of salvation and urged him to let his last breath be an invocation for divine mercy. I remarked to him that if h.e wished to make any statement before his execution he would be allowed to do so. He then requested me to make the statement for him with such application as I thought proper.
Upon our arrival at the place of execution we found a very large assemblage eager to witness the horrors of the gibbet. The ground selected was a natural amphi theatre with the gallows in the centre. At the distance of forty feet from the gallows a strong rope was stretched in a circle so as to prevent intrusion. But few persons were allowed to enter the circle. Everything being pre pared, after a moments conference with the prisoner, during which I told him I should not remain to see the execution, I ascended the scaffold to address the multi tude. There was perfect order no jeers, no taunts, no unseemly behavior to mar the deep solemnity of the oc casion. I made the prisoners statement as nearly as pos sible in his own words and then endeavored to make a profitable use of the circumstances. At the close of this brief address I asked the Rev Mr. Conyers to lead in prayer, which he did in a most fervent supplication for the divine blessing on the prisoner. I again had a short conference with the prisoner, admonishing him that in
156
AN EPISODE OF THE WAR.
God solely was his help, bade him farewell and turned and walked directly back to the city.
Thus Captain Andrews, the leader of the expedition, had fallen; but more thrilling scenes were to follow, al though undreamed of by the writer. I have omitted to state hitherto that at this time I was pastor of Wesley Chapel, now the.First Methodist Church, Atlanta. On the 18th of June, 1862,1 was seated at an early dinner at the parsonage, when I received a message from the Provost-marshal requesting me to call at his office and accompany him on a visit to some Federal spies who were to be executed. In a few minutes I reached the office and found only a single clerk present. He informed me that Colonel Foreacre was called off and would return in a short while for me. Having learned from the clerk that they were to be executed that afternoon, I requested him to tell Colonel Foreacre that I had walked over to the jail. To this he assented, and remarked that I could readily gain admittance to them. In reaching the jail I passed by the parsonage of Trinity Church and asked the Rev. G. G. N. McDonell to join me. After a few words of explanation he consented to do so, remarking at the same time, " You must do the talking."
At the jail we were ushered into a large room, where we saw the seven doomed men. They impressed me at once as a body of remarkably fine-looking young men. Their names, as we subsequently learned, were: George D. Wilson, Company B, Second Ohio Regiment; M. A. Ross, Company A, Second Ohio Regiment; Wm. Camp bell, citizen of Kentucky; P. G. Shadrack, Company K, Second Ohio Regiment; Samuel Slavens, Thirty-third Ohio Regiment; S. Robinson, Company G, Thirty-third
AS EPISODE OP THE WAR.
157
Ohio Regiment; John Scott, Company K, Twenty-first Ohio Regiment. I have already said I was struck by their fine personnel. I could but notice also their cheer fulness under such painful environments. I saw at a glance that they were disinclined to be communicative. I arrested their attention in a moment, however, by say ing: "Gentlemen, we are the bearers of unwelcome tid ings to you." One of them then, quite to my amazement, inquired: " Is this the Rev. Mr. Scott ?" I answered, " Yes." I could not account for it otherwise than that he had seen in the city papers my name in connection with the execution of Captain Andrews.
At this point a large, well proportioned man (who was evidently an acknowledged leader among them), I think R. D. Wilson, said to me:
"What is the nature of the tidings you bring to us I" I replied: "Yotrhave been tried by the court-martial at Knoxville and convicted as spies and are to be exe cuted." He rejoined: "It is hard to be convicted as spies. We were informed that we were to be sent on a danger ous expedition under the leadership of Captain Andrews, but we never thought of being treated, if captured, other than as prisoners of war." I think another of the party asked: "How are we to be executed ?" "My understanding is by hanging." Wilson interposed with marked emphasis: "We would not care so much to be shot as soldiers, but to be hanged like a dog is a burning shame." I said: "Young gentlemen, we are not here to discuss the justice or injustice of the courts action. That is a matter over which we have no control. We have visited
158
AN EPISODE OF THE WAR.
you, as ministers of the gospel, for the sole purpose of helping you by our prayers and counsels to prepare for death, and it is my painful duty to tell you that the hour is at hand."
I saw in an instant anxiety and even horror depicted on every countenance. There was a momentary pause, when one of them, in a whisper more thrilling than a bugleblast, asked:
"When are we to be executed ?" I answered with a burdened heart, "In less than two hours." They were gallant men who would have stood unshak en in the imminent deadly breach. They were picked men, as I before said, chosen for their soldierly qualities, yet in a moment every cheek blanched to the lilys white ness. In another moment, however, they rallied and ap peared firm and unflinching. I said to them : "This hur ried execution seems hard and it is hard, and I disapprove of it with all my heart; but," I continued, war at the best is a cruel thing. You entered the army for the de fense of what you esteemed your countrys honor and safety. You expected to endure hardship and to suffer privation and if need be die. And now my brother McDonell and myself are here to aid you in this extremity." Thereupon I asked them one by one if they were church members. All responded in the negative. I then asked if any of them were accustomed to pray. One responded in the affirmative; another, seemingly the youngest, replied that he prayed sometimes, but not regularly; the others had been wholly neglectful of this duty. I then remarked that we were all forgetful of God and duty, but that He was merciful and longsuffering,
AN EPISODE OP THE WAR.
159
and that while the time.for preparation was short if they were truly penitent fiod could save them as well in an hour as in a twelvemonth. I proposed that we should together make our humble confession and hearty suppli cation to God for pardon and salvation. To this they all agreed. I proceeded then to recite a number of Scriptural passages applicable to their condition and we then bowed in prayer. During the prayer they were all sensibly affected.
As we rose from our knees one of them I am not sure at this late day whether Ross or Campbell gave me a Masonic signal which craftsmen are only permitted to use in seasons of supreme peril. I recognized it instantly and took him aside and satisfied myself that he was a "son of light." No one who has never been raised from a dead level to a living perpendicular oan appreciate my feelings. I said with a faltering voice:
"My brother, I will do what I can for you consistently with my obligations to the government to which I owe allegiance."
He replied: "I ask for nothing more. We are about to be executed with only a few hours notice. We had no intimation of it until you informed us. Now, can you not prevail on the military authorities to respite us one or two days ?"
I replied: "I will make an honest effort." The other prisoners must have heard a portion of the conversation, for they seemed quite elated. I knew that I must act promptly, so leaving brother McDonell to talk with them, I left the cell and went down into the front "prison-yard where a squadron of cavalry were already drawn up. They had, I found, been
160
AN EPISODE OF THE WAR.
waiting quietly for our appearance. Colonel W. J. Lawton had on that day assumed command.of the post. He was an old and highly-esteemed personal friend. I told him what had transpired in the cell and urged him to respite them at least until the next day; that to execute them on such short notice would be utterly indefensible; that he could easily cut off all possibility of escape. He was a man of generous impulses, and I saw he was greatly troubled and perplexed. He replied:
"I agree to all you say. I would most gladly afford them relief, but," he continued, "my orders are peremptory. I am required to execute them to-day and have not the slightest discretion. If I disobey my orders I am liable to be cashiered and disgraced."
He proposed to show me his orders, but I told him his statement was sufficient.
I was compelled to return and announce my failure. I was then asked if 1 would transmit some messages to their friends. I said certainly, if the military authorities would allow it. They then dictated their messages, brother McDonell writing three in his memorandum book and I writing four in mine. There were but slight verbal differences in their messages, and the following may be taken as a sample of the whole:
"I am to suffer death this afternoon for my loyalty. I am true to the old flag and trust in Gods mercy for sal vation."
The name of the party and number of his regiment was attached.
Having finished this work we heard the steady tramp of the officers up the prison stairway. . They filed into the cell and drew up the prisoners in front of them.
AN EPISODE OF THE WAR,
161
Everything was done with becoming gravity. The find ing of the court-martial was distinctly read and the order for their execution. At this point brother McDonell and myself withdrew to the prison-yard, where we in tended to take formal leave of them. In a little while they were marched out in single file and were stopped for myself and associate to address them in a few parting words. I said to them as I shook hands with every one: "I would accompany you, but I have said all that I could say. Look to God, and may He graciously bless yon and save you."
The last of the file was the youngest "somebodys darl ing" and he wept as he asked me still to pray for him. I saw them no more. They were executed and buried near the city cemetery.
The messages referred to were not sent because of some technical objection at the war department. And as eight of the original band escaped from the Atlanta jail in October thereafter there was less need of it. Some months, however, after the surrender I forwarded two, which were all that I could find among my papers. I received no reply, but in the fall of 1865 some gentleman called at my house in Atlanta, wishing to know where they were buried. I was at the time absent and he ob tained the infoi mation desired from other parties. Twenty eventful years have elapsed since these painful experi ences occurred. During these two decades what marvelous changes have been wrought! The song of the reaper and the clatter of machinery are now heard in the beauti ful valleys of North Georgia which once reverberated with the neighing of war steeds and the shouting of cap tains. The fields, too, like Chickamauga and Besaca and
162
AN EPISODE OF THE WAR.
New Hope, where charging standards went plunging through the smoke of battle and the storm of war, are now, while I am writing, white with an abundant har vest.
In looking through these twenty years lam constrained to admire the heroism of those gallant Ohio boys and their unwavering fidelity to their honest convictions. As stated in the early portion of this article, Andre found an honored resting place in Westminster Abbey, and those seven sleep undisturbed in the National Cem etery at Chattanooga until the reveille of the resurrection morn shall startle and arouse the "bivouac of the dead." Until that time comes, whether they wore the blue or gray, let fairy fingers weave wreaths of immortelles to deck their honored graves.
There, too, let Honor come, a pilgrim gray, To bless the sod that wraps their clay, And Freedom for a while repair And dwell a weeping hermit there.
THE CRUSADES.
GBEAT moral and political movements seldom proceed from light and transient causes, nor do they often de velop and mature in the life-time of a single generation. An example of this is found in the reformation of the sixteenth century. That memorable religious movement, which in its progress unsettled the faith of Christendom reformed the political geography of a continent in a word, permanently influenced the currents of human his tory, is older by a hundred years than the birth of Mar tin Luther.
As there were heroes before Agamemnon so there were reformers before the reformation. The pious labors of Wickliffe in England, of the learned Huss in Bohe mia, and the ardent Savanarola in Italy, prepared the public mind for the reformed doctrines. Even the gentle and gifted Erasmus, averse as he was to all agitation, helped the movement materially by his writings, and the reformatory councils of Basle and Constance hastened the day of its coming.
A better illustration, however, of our original state ment is furnished by the Crusades.
These stupendous events, which engrossed the mind of Europe for more than two entire centuries, were no Quixotic enterprises prompted by an idle and vagrant fancy. On the contrary, they sprung from a deep moral earnestness in the Christian population of Europe, and
164
THE CRUSADES.
they were slowly preparing through ages of Moslem op pression and cruelty.
The disciples of the false prophet of Mecca lorded it over the ancient heritage of Israel.
Even the Holy City was itself desecrated by the pres ence of the infidel. The mosque of Omar had supplanted the Temple of Solomon, and the banner of Islam ism was unfurled from the sacred heights of Mount Zion. These facts of themselves had long been distasteful to the in habitants of Christian Europe, and many a heart panted for an opportunity to expel the Moslem intruder from the soil of Palestine.
But there was yet another cause of profound dissatis faction. Thousands of devout pilgrims repaired annually to the sepulchre of our Saviour. They did this either in fulfillment of a pious vow, or else with the vain hope of expiating their sins by a species of work-righteousness. While the empire of the Caliphs remained, these pil grims were never seriously molested, but when the Turks acquired the dominion of Judea, a harsher policy was established. Henceforth the Holy Palmers were subjected to personal indignities burdened with pecuniary exac tions and in some cases they suffered imprisonment and death for their fidelity to their religion.
Tidings of these things would now and then reach the ear of Christendom. Not unfre^uenlly the story of these wrongs would be recited by wandering minstrels in the castles of the nobility and at the humble firesides of the peasantry. For more than a hundred years had the Catholic world brooded over these enormities, but while ecclesiastical conncilsremonstrated,andsuch enterprising popes a Sylvester the Second and Gregory the Seventh
TflB CRUSADES.
165
threatened, there was no systematic effort made to redress them.
Bat at last the hour and the man had met. Towards the close of the eleventh enfnry. Peter of Amiens, surnamed the Hermit, returned irom a tedious and perilous pilgrimage. His heart was all aglow with sympathy for the pilgrims and with resentment towards tie merciless Turks. Encouraged by the reigning pontiff, Urban the Second, and stimulated by a vision which bad been granted him from heaven, he traversed France and Italy, haranguing vast multitudes on the duty of rescuing the Holy Sepulchre from infidel sway.
Never was an orator more successful in his advocacy. All classes were moved to instant action by his passionate appeals. The robber-baron of the Rhine assumed the red cross and marshalled his sturdy retainers for the impend ing conflict the merchants of the towns and cities con tributed of their wealth to equip and subsist the mighty host, and soon from all quarters six hundred thousand valiant men rallied to the uplifted standard of the Lord. Forty thousand of this number becoming impatient of delay, set out under the leadership of Peter the Hermit and his nephew, Walter the Penniless.
As might have been foreseen, this undisciplined rabble were so wasted by disease and famine that hardly one sur vived the attempted march through the wilds of Bulga ria.
The main body, however, were more considerate. They were organized under the captaincy of Godfrey of Bou logne, one of the most accomplished warriors of that age. Godfrey proceeded to the work of conquest with due cir cumspection, and his first enterprises were eminently
166
THE CRUSADES.
successful. With resistless energy the army of the cross swept onward to the Bosphorus. Constantinople, ener vated by all the vices of oriental civilization, trembled before the march of the Crusaders, as the waning empire of the West had trembled at a visitation of the Vandals. This panic did not subside until Godfrey and his mili tant host were treading the soil of Asia. The Turks were unable to stem the whelming tide of invasion. Im pelled by a tierce fanaticism which no dangers could daunt and no hardships subdue, the Crusaders forced the principal strongholds of Syria and Palestine in quick succession, and in less than two years Jerusalem, the ob jective point of this bloody warfare, was straitly besieged in all its gates. The siege and capture of Jerusalem form the groundwork ofTassos immortal Epic, which such critics as Schlegel and Sismondi have not hesitated to class with the Iliad of Homer and the JEneid of Virgil. It was certainly characterized by deeds of gallantry which have been rarely equaled in the grim annals of war. The Turks made a most gallant defense, but were compelled at last to succumb to the courage and perse verance of the Crusaders. On the loth of July, 1099, the 7/allsof the city were scaled amidst the despairing shout, "It is the will of God." It was indeed an august specta cle when on the same day those steel-clad warriors from the farthest verge of Europe marched in solid array to the Church of the Resurrection and there reverently knelt at the tomb of Jesus.
Jerusalem being delivered, it was straightway consti tuted the capital city of a Latin kingdom. The ensigns of royalty were tendered to Godfrey by whose skill and prowess the victory had been achieved. He modestly de-
THE CRUSADES.
167
clined the proffered honor because he was unwilling to wear a kingly crown on the spot where the Saviour had worn a crown of thorns. Baldwin, of Flanders, however, accepted the position.
Every student of history is familiar with the varying fortunes of the newly-erected kingdom. Surrounded by a hostile population, it was never secure and needed con tinually to be upheld by foreign levies. For two hundred years it was engaged in a desperate struggle for existence. But neither the stalwart arm of Coeur de Leon, nor the saintly heroism of Louis of France, could save it from ultimate dissolution. Now and then, it is true, the cross would gleam in the ascendant, but gradually, yet steadily, the Saracenic power prevailed until the last hope of the Christians perished with the downfall of Ptolemais For the next century it was all that Catholic Europe could do to defend its own frontiers against Moslem invasion. More than once that invasion reached the walls of Bel grade, and even thundered impetuously at the gates of Vienna. These last mentioned facts may serve to teach us how utterly the Crusades failed as a military and po litical movement. Nor ought we to overlook the other lesson taught us by this eventful history that the, weapons of Christian warfare are not carnal, but spirit ual ; that its victories are bloodless, and that its loftiest triumphs are won, not by the clenched fist of controversy, but by the open palm of entreaty and persuasion.
Our task is, however, still incomplete. It remains for us to speak at some length of the commercial, social and literary influences of the Crusades on the Western world. These effects have been fully discussed in the pages of
11
168
THE CRUSADES.
Buckle and Guizot, but they merit our present consider ation.
Whatever may have been the cause, it is an indispu table fact that the rise of modern commerce very nearly coincides with the era of the Crusades. Nor can there be a doubt that the maritime prosperity of Venice, Genoa and Florence was greatly increased by these warlike oper ations. Venice, it is well known, was the great ship ping port of supplies and reinforcements. Nor was the effect less visible in the growing importance of the Hanseatic towns of Germany and the Netherlands. War of necessity gives an impulse to traffic in certain commodi ties, and when it is a foreign war it fosters the spirit of naval adventure. It is by no means fanciful to suppose that remotely, at least the Crusades may have incited to the brilliant nautical discoveries of Columbus, Magel
lan and Vasco di Gama. But the effects of the Crusades are more obvious on the
learning of Europe. It may not be generally known that for several centuries the Arabs were the literary masters of mankind. They could almost boast of a mo nopoly of the arts and sciences. At a period when the universities of Oxford, Paris and Padua had only a nomi nal existence, the seminaries of Cufa and Bassora were in a most flourishing condition. The scholastic philos ophy of the middle ages, which, whatever may be its de merits, was adorned by such writers as Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus, originated with Avicenna, the Arabic commentator on Aristotle.
Modern chemistry likewise, with its brilliant discov eries and its m&nifold applications to the arts, is the off spring of the alchemy of the East, and astronomy itself,
THE CRUSADES.
169
as expounded by Kepler and Herschel, is closely related to the astrology of Arabia and Chaldea. As for mathe matics we are indebted to the same source for our numer als and for our system of algebraic formulas. Much of the machinery, too, of our imaginative literature such as genii, dwarfs and giants is chiefly derived from the same source which inspired the Arabian Nights Enter tainments. It is worthy of note also, as bearing on our present inquiry, that the earliest dawn of the revival of learning occurred in Spain, France and Italy, which were most frequently brought in contact with Saracenic civil ization.
But there were yet more substantial benefits resulting from the intercourse with the East through the medium of the Crusades. Some of our most valuable discoveries and inventions as the mariners compass, gunpowder and the manufacture of paper from linen and cotton ragsare not original so far as Europe is concerned, but were imported directly from the East, or else introduced by the agency of the Moors of Spain. If these statements be correct, and we believe they are warranted by histori cal research, then are we debtors, not only to the polished Greeks, but to those also whom, with Chinese self-com
placency, we are accustomed to esteem as outside barba rians and infidels.
The civilization of modern Europe is in fact of a com
posite nature, produced by various influences emanating from different literary centres. The age of Pericles, of Augustus and of Haroun Al Raschid have all had an influence in its formation. At this distance of time it would be difficult to determine the share which each has had in its construction. Certain it is, however, that the
170
THE CRtJSADES.
last named has been highly beneficial, and this influence we owe to the Crusades. If the learning of Europe was
greatly affected by these causes, so likewise was its social life and its public manners.
It is frequently said that the Crusades were the off spring of chivalry; it is nearer the truth to say that chivalry, with its various orders of knighthood, is the child of the Crusades.
Of course we set down the fabulous stories of Arthur and the Bound Table and Charlemagne and his Paladians to the account of later invention. With these
exceptions, which are by no means historical, we find no definite traces of chivalry until after the days of Peter the Hermit.
Now, while we are not prepared to sympathize fully with Burke in his eloquent lamentation over the deca dence of chivalry while we are gratified indeed that
another age, which he stigmatizes as the age of " calcu lators and economists," has succeeded, yet we are not blind to the intrinsic beauties of that system which in spired the lays of the Troubadours, which embodied it self in the Black Prince, and which is so grandly delin eated in the pages of Ivanhoe.
The sentiment of honor which it inculcated is the best earthly substitute for the law of Christian duty. And while it has been greatly abused by the modern duelist, yet it must have had a humanizing effect on those rude warriors, whose immediate ancestors were the predatory Norsemen that for ages had subsisted by piracy, and whose very religion taught them the prin ciple of revenge, and that the perfection of their future
THE CRUSADES.
171
blessedness would consist in drinking mead from the skulls of their slaughtered enemies.
Under these circumstances a system like chivalry, which restrained their hereditary selfishness and soft ened their native ferocity, must have had a highly civ ilizing tendency.
There was another sentiment which the institutions and laws of chivalry both developed and strengthened. It was that of devotedness to the gentler sex and a read iness to succor the oppressed. However much knighterrantry may be caricatured by the inimitable Cervantes, there was much in it worthy of our warmest admira tion.
At a time when brute force was reputed the highest excellence, and when legal tribunals were frequently powerless to punish the wrong-doers, it was fortunate that there was a class of gallant knights whose sworn duty was loyalty to woman and a willingness to redress the wrongs of the helpless. Without some mitigating feature of this sort in the civilization of mediaeval Europe, life itself would have been an insupportable burden except to the titled and the wealthy. Nor is it too much to affirm that those sentiments of honor and love which chivalry everywhere cherished and enforced are the basis of modern courtesy and refinement. From them have proceeded the gentle charities of domestic life. Under their joint influence woman has been ele vated to her rightful position as the partner of mans joys and sorrows his help-meet and companion for life. And so generally is this truth acknowledged that it will hardly be deemed extravagant to assert that "a thousand
172
THE CRUSADKS.
swords would leap from their scabbards to avenge an in dignity offered to a true woman."
Enough, however, has been written to show how the Crusades have reacted upon our Western civilization. As military or religious enterprises they were for the
time admitted failures; but still they have left their impress on every succeeding generation. Nor are we quite sure that the great object for which the Crusaders so persistently struggled the recovery of Jerusalem may not be practically realized at no far-distant day.
The Crescent is visibly waning; the Euphrates, the Apocalyptic symbol of the Turkish Empire, is being dried up. The heroism of the allies at Inkermann and Balaklava have only postponed the period of the down fall of Mohammedan power. The probability is grow ing stronger with each revolving year that the standard of the Czar will yet wave in triumph from the towers of Stamboul. And while we may not subscribe to any theory which announces the literal restoration of the Jews, yet it is by no means an improbable opinion that Jerusalem will ere long be delivered from the bondage of the Turk, and the Holy Sepulchre and its kindred localities become once more the possession and heritage of Christendom.
REMINISCENCES OF AN ALABAMA CHANCELLOR.
CHANCELLOR JOHN FOSTER, of Alabama, was a notable man within the circle of his acquaintanceship. Like the late Judge Underwood, of the Georgia bench, he had no cordial sympathy with the masses, and in the main kept himself aloof from the straggle for place or pelf.
He was born amid the rugged hills of Berkshire, Mas sachusetts, about 1819, and was the only son of a widow of moderate fortune, who continued through life to occupy the old homestead.
Chancellor Foster claimed descent from the Pilgrims of Plymouth Rock, and sometimes, in a serio-comic way, boasted of his relationship to Captain Miles Standish, quite a military celebrity amongst the Puritan fathers.
When a mere lad he was placed at the boarding-school of John A. Lovell, at Mt. Pleasant, where he received his earliest training in elocution, an accomplishment in which he subsequently attained to great excellence.
While yet but fifteen years of age, he was entered at Williams College, Massachusetts, where he had for a class mate the late distinguished Dr. Chapin, between whom and himself there sprung up an intimacy that ripened into a life-long friendship. Dr. Griffin was then, as for many years afterwards, the president of the college. He was a staid divine of thorough scholarship, but of little brilliance in the pulpit. As often occurs, the weekly ser mons of the president were in bad odor with the students,
174 REMINISCENCES OF AN ALABAMA CHANCELLOB.
as much perhaps because of their prolixity as the ortho dox jumble of crude metaphysics and commonplace mor alizing. To belabor the average college student by the hour with a cut and dried disquisition on the quinquarticular controversy is a species of cruelty that calls loudly for the intervention of college trustees. Poster always cherished the profoundest respect for the virtues of his old preceptor, who, as he remarked, in some respects re sembled the Vicar of Wakefield, but his remembrance of his hyper-Calvinistic teaching inspired him with an abiding disgust for New England theology.
During his senior year an incident occurred that re lieved the monotony of student-life and produced no small stir in the village. A noted evangelist, Rev. Mr. Foote, of the Presbyterian church, in the midst of his journeyings, alighted on Williamstown. He immediately in augurated a series of revival meetings. His preaching was largely sensational, and was soon the theme of ad miring comment throughout the college and community. Dr. Griffin did not approve of the methods of the evan gelist, and did his utmost to keep his students away from what his sober Puritanism esteemed a feverish if not fa natical religious excitement.
Amongst other plans he addressed the senior class on the evils of enthusiasm, and expressed a desire for that class particularly to give neither aid nor comfort to the well-meaning but erratic divine. This, as might be readily imagined, only served to pique the curiosity of the seniors, and thenceforward they were regular attend ants on his ministry. Foster was amongst the most eager, and almost to his dying day he would reproduce some of Footes thrilling passages. Several of them,
REMINISCENCES OF AN ALABAMA CHANCELLOR. 175
except for a graver cast, were admirable specimens of the Talmadge school of the present day.
^Foster was very fond of describing a statuesque scene that transpired during the delivery of one of Footes ablest discourses. It was mid-winter and the snow lying on the ground to the depth of eighteen inches. The moon was full-orbed and shining from a cloudless sky. The church was packed from door to pulpit, and the large congregation was breathless in fixed attention. Suddenly there was heard the jingling of sleigh-bells. Presently a man of tall and symmetrical form strode down the aisle. He wore a dark cloak folded gracefully about him, and from under a head-gear that resembled the sombrero of a Spanish bandit there gleamed a pair of piercing black eyes. He baited midway the door and pulpit, and seemingly unmindful of the congregation, he folded his arms, stood bolt upright and riveted his gaze on the preacher. There was an audible rustle in the assemblage. The preacher for the nonce was discon certed. It was, however, momentary. Rallying his en ergies he pointed his lank finger at the strange visitant, and in a voice sepulchral in its hollowness, and yet dis tinct in its enunciation, exclaimed:
" ' Be them a spirit of health or goblin damned, Bringst thon airs from heaven or blasts from hell, Be thy intents wicked or charitable, Thon comest in such a questionable shape That I will speak to thee.
"I charge thee to See to the mountain lest the fires of Gods fury overtake thee."
The visitor paused but a single instant, and with a courtly bow turned on his heels and walked deliberately
176 REMINISCENCES OF AN ALABAMA CHANCELLOR.
out, mounted his sleigh and with an Indian yell went dashing out of the village.
No one seems to have been in the secret, and endless were the surmises of the village gossips as to the mean ing of the whole affair. The seniors no doubt held a clue to the mystery.
Foster, having completed his course at Williams Col lege, went to Troy, New York, and entered the office of the Hon. Ogden Hofftnan as a law student. Here he re mained for more than a year and then went to New York, where his histrionic talent was soon developed and ap preciated.
Forrest was then the "monarch of the mimic scene," and then as always a universal favorite with the Bowery boys. Forrest promptly recognized the remarkable gifts of the young law student for the drama and took him into his confidence. Without requiring him to serve the usual apprenticeship, he put him in the role of lago to his own Othello. Fosters rendition was eminently satis factory to the great American tragedian, and his profes sional success was assured. In this connection he made the intimate acquaintance of the Keans, the elder Booth and Vanderhoff and other lesser lights. He had a large stock of anecdotes, both grave and gay, of these early acquaintances, with which he sometimes delighted his circle of friends.
Forrest, however, who had a sincere and almost fatherly affection for him, dissuaded him from continuing on the stage and urged him to devote his attention to the legal profession as less vexatious and sure to give him a better social position. This advice was in harmony with his
REMINISCENCES OP AN ALABAMA CHANCELLOR. 177
own inclinations and he accordingly resolved to come to Georgia and commence the practice of the law.
Before setting out for his Southern destination, Forrest secured for him a profitable engagement at the Tremont theatre in Bost6n.
In this new field he played successfully in the roles of Sir Edward Mortimer, Beverly, Bertram and some of the leading Shakespearean roles. Ellen Tree, then in the zenith of her popularity, supported him, and Charlotte Cushman, just in the beginning of her career, played subordinate parts.
Having finished his engagement he sailed for Charles ton, and thence he proceeded to Hamilton, Georgia, a cosy village nestling at the base of Pine and Oak moun tains.
To the writer this mountain village is "the greenest spot in memorys waste." At the time it was a sort of educational centre. Two flourishing seminaries, under the rectorship of A. H. Scott, attracted a large patronage from several of the adjacent counties and no small num ber from distant parts of Georgia. As the rector was my honored father, it will not be amiss to say that such dis tinguished gentlemen as Hon. John A. Campbell, of the United States Supreme Court; Bishop George F. Pierce, Judges Linton Stephens, Martin J. Crawford and Iverson L. Harris, of the Supreme Court of Georgia; Chancellor Mason and Attorney-General J. W. A, Sanford, of Ala bama, and Senator Lamar, of Mississippi, and others hardly less eminent in civic and ecclesiastical positions, were his pupils at various periods of his life, nearly all of whom he prepared for the State University.
There was also a literary club in the village, composed
178 REMINISCENCES OF AN ALABAMA OHA5CKLLOR.
of Ingram, a graduate of Yale; Strong, an alumnus of Harvard; Foster, a graduate of Williams College; Crawford, of Mercer; Stephens, a brother of the "great Com moner ;" Baker and others.
Amongst other devices for lessening the tedium of vil lage life, they now and then resorted to amateur theatri cals. In this department Poster was supreme. It was for his sake chiefly that on one memorable occasion the club put on the boards the tragedy of William Tell. I cannot recall the entire cast, but Foster was of course the Swiss hero, and the writer, a lad of ten years, was the Albert of the occasion. A commodious court-room was the best hall that could be secured, and it was gorgeously, if not tastefully, fitted up. The eventful night arrived and the court-room was crowded to overflowing.
Fosters acting was superb, but when, after the apple scene, he bearded the tyrant, Gesler, he surpassed him self. A bevy of simple country folks who were in at tendance thought his rich orotund utterance and his tragic attitudes excessively funny and snickered very much to his annoyance. Fortunately at the crisis the drop curtain fell. Foster was in a towering rage, and said to his fellow-actors, with marked emphasis on the expletive, "Why," said he, with a disdainful toss of the head, "the fools laugh at high tragedy as if it was broad farce."
Shortly after this dramatic occurrence Chancellor Fos ter was happily married and removed to Jacksonville, Alabama, and formed a partnership with Colonel W. B. Martin, one of the most brilliant members of the Ala bama bar. For several years thereafter he devoted him-
BBMHttSCBNCES 09 AS ALABAMA CHANCELLOR. 179
self exclusively to his professional studies and to general literature.
He was an occasional contributor during this period to the press, writing amongst other things a series of humorous articles for the New York Spirit of the Times. One of these, "Daddy Biggs Sermon on Timber Gut," had an immense circulation in ante-bellum times.
He was frequently solicited to deliver literary addresses at college commencements. One of these, before the stu dents of the University of Alabama, brought him in pleasant association with A. B. Meek, Esq., and Mrs. Caroline Lee Hentz, both of them bright stars in the firmament of Southern literature.
About the same time he formed a strong personal friendship for Johnson Hooper, author of Simon Suggs. They both had a fund of rich humor, and with proper enterprise might have become the Josh Billings and Mark Twain of that era. The publishing facilities of the South, however, were then few and limited, and author ship as a profession was scarcely dreamed of by a major ity of Southern literateurs.
Notwithstanding Fosters Puritan descent he was in politics a Democrat of the Calhoun school. He accepted the State rights theory of the General government as inter preted by the Sage of Pendleton, and not as modified by the Hero of the Hermitage. This well-known fact, as well as his acknowledged ability as a jurist, secured his elec tion to the chancellorship of North Alabama. This high judicial position he held for eight years, meeting with the unqualified indorsement of the bench and bar of his district, and indeed of the entire State. He declined a third term and resumed the practice of law in connec-
180 REMINISCENCES OP AN ALABAMA CHANCELLOR.
tion with General W. H. Porney, a gallant Confederate chieftain and since an eminent member of the Federal Congress. He was tendered likewise the Chief Justiceship of the State under the Radical regime; but though urged by prominent Democrats to accept he promptly and utterly refused such an entangling alliance.
Chancellor Poster was, however, an active and influ ential member of the constitutional convention during the reconstruction period, and his patriotic, conservative course in that body was in strict keeping with his politi cal antecedents.
When Johnsons great Union convention assembled in Philadelphia he was present as a delegate from Alabama. He attended simply in obedience to the wishes of his fellow-citizens. He did not hesitate to say that the whole affair was a farce designed to tickle the inordinate vanity of the President and for the special diversion of the po litical groundlings both North and South.
Upon the adjournment of that convention he set forth on a last visit to his aged and widowed mother. Receiv ing her maternal blessing and a number of heir-looma handed down through several generations, he returned to New York.
Here he had an humorous adventure that deserves a place in these reminiscences. Walking up Broadway leis urely and without definite aim he observed the sign, "Madame , Clairvoyant." It occurred to him that this was a capital opportunity to while away a vacant hour. He mounted the stairway, rang the door-bell, and was almost instantly confronted by an Irish servant-girl, who asked if he desired an interview with Madame . He replied affirmatively and was straightway ushered into an ele-
feEMINlSCKNCES OP AN ALABAMA CHANCELLOR. 181
gant and elaborately furnished parlor. In a few minutes a handsome lady of uncertain age presented herself as Madame . "I suppose," said she with a bland expression, "that you desire to know something of the future ?" He re plied that he was a visitor from the South who had long been a student of black letter lore, and if she could spare the time from other engagements he would be glad to converse with her on topics in which they were both greatly interested. Seemingly struck by his bearing and not less by his truly Websterian brow, she signified her willingness by a graceful bow and seated herself for the conversation. At times, like Coleridge, Chancellor Foster was an admirable monologuist, and this style suiting his present purpose he adopted it.
"From early manhood, Madame," said he, "I have been perhaps too much addicted to the study of ths occult sciences. I have searched and sifted all the literature bearing upon demonology and its cognate branches. For myself I lament the decay of what many style supersti tion and have long believed that the progress of ration, alism has been at the expense of mans noblest impulses and loftiest aspirations.
"It is true that the philosophers stone has failed, nor has the elixir of life as yet been bottled and put on the market like Congress water or Champagne. Meanwhile who does not know that the experiments of the alchem ist, amidst his sooty alembics and retorts, has unfolded the secrets of chemistry. The Bosicrucian, banned by the church as in league with devils, was the fore runner of Galvani and Sir Humphrey Davy. Without the Rosicrucian, the telegraph and the safety-lamp would have no present existence. Astrology with its cycles laid
182 REMINISCENCES OF AS ALABAHA CHANCELLOR.
the foundation of modern astronomy. Is it unreasonable to think that the researches of Mesmer and Yon Reichenbach will yet develop a science of psychology that will explain the mysteries of ghosts and the profounder phi losophy of witchcraft and necromancy ? If Swedenborg forecasted the atomic theory, and Aristarchuf, of Samoa, the astronomy of Copernicus, why may not clairvoyance unveil the hidden things of spirit-life? But I fear, Madame, that I tax your patience and consume too much of your valuable time."
"Not at all," said Madame , "I shall be happy to hear you at greater length." "If," rejoined the Chan cellor, "you will not regard it as obstrusive, I will ven ture a few suggestions with regard to the methods of your art."
"Thank you," replied the charming clairvoyante." "Your reception-room," continued the chancellor, "is not in harmony with "your profession. Instead of this gairish gaslight there should be a dim, religious light from wax tapers, as in the cathedrals and minsters of the middle ages; in lieu of your elegant Brussels there should be a tessellated floor with suitable designs. Every article of furniture should wear a sombre tint. The ceil ing should be vaulted and embellished with the zodiacal signs, fringed with the gryphous and gules of heraldry. The walls ought to be paneled. On one there should be a picture of the witch of Endor bringing up from the under world the ghost of Samuel; on another, the witches of Macbeth on the blasted heath of Forres; on the third, Csesar arrested by the soothsayer on his way to the Sen ate House with the timely warning, Beware of the Mes of March, etc.; the fourth, Laocoon writhing in the
0* AlT AlABAltA CHAtfcSliOB.
crushing folds of the Pythian serpent. These decorations would contribute largely to your success. They would prepare the minds of your visitors for those revelations of the future, which the human mind, instinctively craves. It would be the cave of the Cumean Sybil adapted to modern taste."
Rising from his seat he said: "Now, Madame, what compensation is due you for this delightful seance T'
"I should be quite ungrateful," she replied, "if I were to make a professional charge in your case. Indeed, I am your debtor, and I must insist that you call and see me again during your stay in New York."
This was his last visit to the North. His health, never vigorous, was thoroughly shattered by the death of his accomplished and devoted wife. Crushed in spirit he began to show the marks of premature age. The labors of a heavy and lucrative law practice hastened the end.
The last time I met him was at his own house, a hand some villa in the Italian style, just on the outskirts of the village. The front yard was adorned with beauti ful shrubbery and choice flowers; but they evidently needed tor their training the "touch of a vanished hand." The birds, however, sang sweetly from the overhanging boughs of a few native forest trees, and the brook that meandered on its way to the Coosa was musical in that "leafy month of June."
Early on the following morning we walked together to the village cemetery, where his wife and my darling mother slept side by side. As he leaned against the en closure, with his massive forehead resting on his hands, the once strong man wept like a child. Few and sad
12
184 RKHUnSCKltCES 0* AN ALABAMA
were the words we spoke, for it was hallowed ground. We parted at the two graves of mother and daughter he to linger through months of severe illness and die, and I through strangely checkered years to bear lifes burdens as best I might.
Chancellor Foster is worthy of a more elaborate and permanent memorial thau these reminiscences. Hie in tellect was of the highest order, and his literary culture broad and deep. Perhaps the best tribute I can pay to his memory is to subjoin a brief extract from an article entitled "The Last Night of the Great Tragedian," which was published originally in a leading Southern magazine.
The elder Booth in his last role at Si Charles theatre, New Orleans, is his theme. He was an enthusiastic ad mirer of Booth, who belonged, as he says, to the "School of Nature," while his not less illustrious compeers, Macready and J. P. Kemble, belonged to the "School of Art." As a proof of the immense popularity of Booth with the French population of New Orleans, he mentions the fact that when Booth played at the French theatre the role of Orestes, in the "Andromaque," of Racine, that so per fect was his accentuation, and so thoroughly Parisian his delineation, that just as the curtain descended the whole audience shouted "Talma""Talma," with the wildest de light. If we had space for the entire article, the reader would have some conception of the variety and range of his reading, and would concur with us that in dramatic criticism he was the equal of William Hazlitt. But we give way to the extract. Having referred to Booths uncontrolable excitement in the rendition of Richard IIL and other characters, he continues:
09 AN ALABAMA CBABTCKLMR. 185
"How intensely an artist may suffer the agonies of a fictitious being he creates is illustrated in an anecdote of Godwin, the author of Caleb Williams, on which, as we have said, the play of the Iron Chest is founded.
"Observed Lord Byron to Godwin, Give the world an other Caleb Williams.
" My Lord, I suffered as much in imagining Caleb Williams as any character whose agonies 1 have described. Another work like that would kill me.
" No matter, write it, replied Byron. "But to return from this digression. Booth had faith fully studied the character of Sir Edward Mortimer. It in some respects, aside from guilt, resembled his own. The same delicate sense of honor, sensibility, gentleness of heart, were characteristic of both. He addressed Adam Winterton in the same gentle tones that he used towards his own faithful, attached servants at the Farm near Baltimore. The soliloquy of the mind of man/
That God-like spring of action,
which faintly reminds us of Hamlets soliloquy, was given in the quiet, simple, grave tone of a student or philoso pher pondering over the great ends of existence the ultimate destiny of man. In the library scene with Wilford, where he unfolds the terrible tale of his guilt, his stern resolve, notwithstanding the struggle of conscience, to barter honor, sweet peace of mind all, all for a name, that his spirit even in death embodied with heavens lightning, would strike the blaster of his memory dead in the churchyard, the audience rose from their seats and gazed in breathless silence on the scene as if controlled by the will of some mighty magician. Few who heard will ever forgot the remarkable interview with Helen.when, in
186 REMINISCENCES OP AN ALABAMA CHANCELLOR.
tones of touching pathos Sir Edward speaks of those warnings which that-grizzly monarch, Death, sends as forerunners of his certain visitation, having been of late frequent with him. Booth delivered these words as if conscious that the wings of Azrael were hurtling over him foreshadowing his own inevitable doom.
"But the actors greatest triumph was reserved for the last scene, one of the most powerful as well as most trying to an artists skill in the whole range of the English drama. When the unexpected yet, overwhelming evi dence of guilt comes with crushing force on the proud, sensitive nobleman, when he sees the temple of honor he had reared at such fearful cost prostrate in the dust
His ashes trampled on by the foot of scorn,
overcome by the awful revelation he falls headlong on the stage. Then after a pause, in which his confession of guilt is read, the fatal secret disclosed, he slowly revives, rolls hie despairing eyes wildly around and half conscious of his trembling situation exclaims :
I have been wandering with the damned, sure.
"Booths appearance at this time was fearfully grand. One in the pit involuntarily remarked, He looks like Satan, evidently having in his mind the idea of Satan, as described by the poet and painter by Milton and Martin. But soon consciousness flashes through thebrain-scorched criminal, memory unfolds the damning record, despair blackens all the future. Booths whole frame was con vulsed with agony; his eyes glared wildly around as the accusing furies rise dim and spectre-like before him. With one wild, shuddering shriek he fell writhing, convulsed, dying, on the stage. The audience was too deeply moved for applause; unbroken stillness prevails.
REMINISCENCES 0? AN ALABAMA CHANCKL10R. 187
At the sadly prophetic words, I am death-struck, by an occult sympathy every one felt that something unearthly was around him: that the veil which separates the visible from the invisible was about to be rent asunder; that the awful shadow of eternity was falling on him. And now in profound silence the black curtain slowly descends to melancholy music the GREAT TRAGEDIAN passes forever from the scene."
.
THE MODERN THEATER. THE origin of the drama is almost hidden in the depths of a remote antiquity. Thespis, its reputed founder, is alleged to have engrafted it on the orgies of Bacchus. In its earliest form it consisted of an ambulatory stage, with a single actor, whose face was besmeared with wine-lees, and who rhapsodized, in prose or verse, for the enter tainment of the Athenian populace. In process of time a second actor was introduced. A few years later still, the chorus, that indispensable adjunct of the Greek tragedy, was established as a means of preserving the unities of time, place and action. It was not, howe ?er, until the age of Eschylus and his illustrious compeers, Sophocles and Euripides, that the Greek drama was perfected. Each of these dramatic writers was characterized by some special excellence. Sophocles, however, seems to have combined the merits of both his rivals. He united the smooth versification of Euripides with the rugged sublim ity of Eschylus. After this period the drama steadily de clined amongst the Greeks until it degenerated into the low comedy, or rather the broad farce of Aristophanes. At Rome the classic drama can hardly be said to have enjoyed an independent existence. In this, as in most branches of literature and art, the Romans were in the main servile copyists of their Greek predecessors. These stern warriors, indeed, had little relish for the drama; they greatly preferred the gladiatorial combats of the
THK MODERN THEATER.
189
amphitheatre, or the daring feats of the hippodrome, to the genial pleasantries of Terence or the statelier verses of Ennius.
The modern, no less than the ancient drama, had a semi-religions origin. The earliest dramatic entertain ments of our English ancestors consisted of what were styled mysteries and moralities. These were founded on Scriptural events, and it was not an unusual thing for the persons ofthe Holy Trinity to be introduced as speak ers in the dialogue. The parish church was oftener than otherwise the scene of these representations, and they were always honored by the presence and patronage of the clergy. With the revival of learning, however, there was a rapid improvement in the dramatic literature of Europe. In England, Marlowe prepared the way for Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, one a prodigy of learning and the other a prodigy of genius, and both of them un rivaled by any of their successors.
In France, Corneille and Racine were acknowledged masters of French tragedy, whilst in Spain Calderon, by the splendor of his diction and the aptness of his delin eations, elevated the Spanish drama to the highest point of excellence.
In the latter part of the eighteenth century, Goethe and Schiller in Germany and Alfieri in Italy, seem to have caught the descending mantle of Shakespeare and greatly enriched the literature of the moderns.
This historical resume will prepare us to speak more advisedly of the modern theatre. It has become fashionionable of late years for the advocates and apologists of the theatre to stigmatize its opponents as fanatics in religion and Beotians in literary culture. We care but
190
THK MODERN THEATER.
little for these opprobrious terms, nor shall they deter us from a sober discussion of its literary, social and moral influences.
It is frequently urged in its behalf that its representa tions are calculated to instruct as well as amuse, and that the stage as an educational agent should not be lightly esteemed. We can readily conceive of a theatre so managed that it might contribute materially to the intellectual improvement of the masses. The best playa of Shakespeare and Schiller, were they presented prop erly, could not fail in some measure to instruct and ele vate an appreciative audience. But is it not an ad mitted fact that, except at a few principal theatres of Europe and America, the bill of fare served up is much inferior to the one just hypothesized. Instead of these world-renowned masters we have the blood-and-thunder tragedies of Nat. Lee or George Lillo, or, perchance, the tamer productions of Knowles or Kotzbue. Indeed, at a majority of theatres the vilest comedy and the most dis gusting farce is the intellectual feast to which the vota ries of the drama are invited night after night through out an entire season.
It is Hazlitt, we think, who says that there has been no English tragedy written since the Venice Preserved, of Otway. We should be inclined to make an exception in favor of Ion, Eoadne and a few others, but it is obviously true that the current literature of the English and American stage is infinitely below the Shakespearean level Nor do we hesitate to affirm that, as at present conducted, we should as soon seek for knowledge at a Punch and Judy show as at the greater number of our American theatres. They simply furnish a convenient
THE NODBBN THEATER.
191
opportunity for mental dissipation and engender an ha bitual dislike to patient intellectual -effort. We have yet to see a single young man who has been made either wiser or better by his play-going habits.
Bad, however, as the literary influences of the theatre may be, its moral effects are far more pernicious on the susceptible minds and hearts of our American youth. And yet, by an unexampled misnomer, it has been dubbed by its votaries a "School of Morals." Theat rical traditions, we know, speak of sundry London ap prentices and shop clerks that have been saved from
Newgate prison by the play of George Barnwell. We have heard also of professional gamesters who have been affected even to tears by the character of Beverly. These statements, supposing them to be true, do not outweigh the thousand testimonies to the demoralizing effects of play-going. If, indeed, the theatre be so favor able to virtue, how does it happen that seasons of the grossest profligacy are the times of its greatest pros perity? In that dissolute period that followed the Restoration when the king was a royal buffoon and an unblushing stipendiary of the French monarch when the palace itself was little better than a licensed brothel then it was that the churches were deserted while the play-houses of London were crowded to their
utmost capacity.
When terrorism was in the ascendant in France, and the best and bravest of her citizens were guillotined by the score, then it was that more than forty theatres were open every Sabbath evening in Paris alone. We will not positively affirm that there is a relation of cause and effect between these facts, but they do occur
192
THE MODKEH THEATXR.
too frequently in the same intimate connection to be set down as simple coincidences.
Leaving out of view, however, these historical proofs, we ask if it is probable that the young of either sex can habitually attend a place of amusement where re ligion is oftentimes ridiculed under the name of bigotry or asceticism where the injured husband is laughed at as a witless cuckold where in a word the gentle char ities of domestic life are made the sport of grin ning harlequins without sustaining serious detriment to their moral principles? It will _not do to deny our premises. These things are not barely tolerated; they are even applauded. What matters it if, by way of atonement to outraged decency, there is introduced an occasional platitude on the purity of a wifes love or the tenderness of a mothers affection? What though in the third or fifth act the several dramatis persona are dis posed of according to the strictest rules of poetical jus tice. The mischief is already done, and but one result, and that a demoralizing one, can follow such a system atic inculcation of evil principles.
Here then we have sufficient reason for the disfavor with which theatrical exhibitions are regarded by the Christian church. Neander assures us that the primi tive disciples withdrew altogether from them, and at tendance on them was considered a ground of excom munication. The testimony of the modern church is equally emphatic. All the leading Protestant sects at least have, through their several ecclesiastical jndicatories, condemned the modern theatre. This concurrent opinion of the fathers of Christendom and the learned
bishops and reverend clergy of the present age is enti-
THB MODKBBT THEATER.
193
tied to great weight in determining upon its moral tendencies. It would be flatly absurd to charge this verdict to the account of a morbid religionism rather than to the dispassionate convictions of a body of wise and pious men who are controlled by a regard to moral principle. Thus considered it is, we repeat, a most weighty testimony against the theatre.
There is yet another view of this subject which de serves attention. We refer now to the social bearings of dramatic entertainments. The associations of the theatre are in the highest degree objectionable. It is stated by a reliable writer that some years ago the man agers of the Tremont theatre petitioned the common council of Boston to allow them to open a bar-room in connection therewith. One reason assigned in favor of granting their petition was that a theatre could not prosper without a drinking-saloon was attached. This single fact speaks volumes against these places of pop ular amusement. It helps to establish a proposition that no candid man will gainsay that drunkenness is directly promoted by the theatre. The strange woman likewise that "flatttireth with her lips" is a regular patron of the drama. She resorts thither to ply her miserable vocation to ensnare the unwary youth and to entice him to the chambers of death. To sum up the whole argument in a few words, the moral atmos phere of the theatre is rendered absolutely pestilential by the habitual presence of the filth and off-scouring of a debauched city population. Those persons of refine ment who visit it now and then are powerless to with
stand the prevailing tendency.
194
THE MODERN THEATER.
In reply to all these objections and others that might he mentioned, it may be said that people must have some sort of social recreation the mind must be relazed. We subscribe most heartily to this declaration, but at the same time we insist that these social amuse ments shall be of a more rational and elevating kind. If the generous design of Hannah More to reform the theatre were practicable, then we might indulge some hope of its future. Hitherto all efforts in this direction have signally failed. And we fear it is destined to wax worse and worse until, like the circus and bear-garden, it shall have nothing to redeem it from the charge of unmitigated vulgarity.
Nor should we be lacking in sources of healthful en tertainment if the theatre were utterly abolished. We may have at a less expense than our present theatrical entertainments a series of literary and scientific lec tures. Such a series as Thackerays Humorists of the Eighteenth Century, or Dionysius Lardners Lectures on Science and Art, would wonderfully interest and in struct any American community. We may have also our musical festivals, where the best oratorios of Handel and the choicest operas of German and Italian masters may be rendered without injury to private or public morals. In addition to this every populous town should have its zoological and botanical gardens, where an hours pastime may be enjoyed by young and old.
In a thousand ways which we cannot stay even to suggest may the natural-craving of the mind for nov elty and excitement be safely gratified. If once a relish for these more elegant amusements is implanted in the soul, the youth will turn away with loathing and dig-
ME MODERN THEATER.
Id5
gust from the mouthing players the immodest danc ing girls and the tawdry decorations of the modern theatre. After all we should not forget that the manly virtues and the womanly graces are best cultivated in domestic seclusion.
We may still read Shakespeare around our own fire side. Whatever may be the fate of Covent Garden or Drury Lane, his immortality is assured. He holds the key that " opens the wicket" of the human heart, and coming generations shall worship at the shrine of his genius. Wherever there is a generous soul it will sym pathize with Hamlet, the Prince of Denmark, and Othello, the Moor of Venice. Wherever, too, there is an honest scorn for petty meanness and heartless vil lainy it will be aroused by the crafty lago and the unpitying Shylock.
These creations of dramatic genius will survive the "cloudcapped towers and gorgeous palaces" of earths mightiest capitals. To borrow the eloquent language of Dr. Johnson, slightly altered for our present purpose, the stream of time which sweeps away the monumental marbles of kings and conquerors shall leave unharmed
the adamant of Shakespeare.
MORAL HEROISM.
IT is a singular infatuation which has induced man kind for six thousand years to worship the "God of Forces." Influenced by this sentiment they have in all ages reared the monumental marble, not to the true bene factors of the race who have promoted the arts of peace, but most freqently to that other class whose blood-nursed laurels have been sown "in the furrows of battle and reaped by tbe sickles of death."
It will not be questioned that this tendency has been strengthened in the American mind by the experience of the four weary and eventful years of the late civil war.
Let us continue to honor the memory of our martyred countrymen whose bones lie bleaching on every battle field from Gettysburg to the Messilla Valley. Let us perpetuate in song and story their deeds of knightly daring let us evermore keep in kindly remembrance their unshaken loyalty to their own convictions of right and duty, and let the very places where they sleep in death become the "Delphian vales" and Mecca shrines" of our pilgrimage.
But we should sadly err if we were to forget that the loftiest heroism has no necessary connection with bat tles, sieges and hair-breadth scapes in the imminent deadly breach."
Tbat in the conflicts of life in the performance of its homeliest duties there is room and -opportunity for the
MO&Al HBBOlStt.
display of a heroism not less ennobling than that which sanctified the courage of a Jackson and crowned with unfading honors the brow of a Washington.
We allude of course to that moral heroism which is at once the sublimest virtue of the Christian religion and the grandest trait of universal humanity.
This heroism is often exhibited in the advocacy of an unwelcome truth, or in the defense of outraged innocence and down-trodden right. "I had rather be right than be President" was an utterance worthy of that great states man of Kentucky who plead so eloquently for the cause of oppressed Greece and South America. It is easy to swim with the current of public sentiment, but it re quires courage to breast the tide of popular ridicule, and yet more to confront the blinding storm of popular exe cration.
In one of the cartoons of Raphael there is a represen tation of Paul preaching at Athens. He is standing in the midst of Man Hill arraigned as "a setter forth of strange gods." At his feet is a city wholly given-to idola try; before him is the Areopagus which condemned Socrates himself as a corrnpter of youth and a reviler of the gods; around him are the Stoics and Epicureans, the master-spirits of Greek philosophy. Paul-is not for an instant abashed or dismayed; there in that august pres ence he preaches boldly Jesus and the resurrection.
Some years before a greater than Paul stood beneath the shadow of the temple on Mount Zion and denounced the scribes and Pharisees who sat in Moses seat as dissem blers and hypocrites. Paul and Jesus were both in a minority in their generation: one was crucified and the
198
MORAL fiEROtflM.
other beheaded, but the truths they proclaimed have long since made the circuit of the globe.
Nor have after ages been lacking in examples of moral heroism. Witness John HUBS before the Council of Con stance and Martin Luther before the Diet of Worms. We have nothing to do in this discussion with the merits of theological controversy. Whether Catholic or Protestant the latter scene must impress us as morally sublime. Summoned before the imperial diet as a heretic and a mover of sedition, Luther bravely confronts the vast as semblage of civil and ecclesiastical dignitaries, presided over by Charles V., the head of the mightiest monarchy of the world. Having concluded his masterly defense he paused for a moment and raising his right hand to , heaven he exclaimed slowly and solemnly: Here I stand; lean da no more! GOD HELP ME !
Whether right or wrong in his theological views, that single utterance gave the world assurance of a man.
This scene at the Diet of Worms is not unlike another scene in the British House of Peers. An aged nobleman, enfeebled by disease, is borne into the senate chamber of England. With some difficulties he rises to speak to a motion then pending for the more vigorous prosecution of the war against the American colonies. At first his voice is faint and tremulous, but as he proceeds it rings like a clarion, while he expostulates and warns and scathes with his merciless invective. The ministerial benches scowl defiance and but little sympathy is shown him from any quarter; but he goes right on with his task until he appeals in his highest style to the genius of the British constitution to protect the fame of England against the monstrous injustice of the Colonial policy.
MORAL HEROISM.
199
Both Luther and Chatham, like Paul and Jesus before them, were unheeded ; but who will deny that history has vindicated their wisdom and embalmed their heroism. We need more of this moral manhood in the councils of the nation in the present age. We are literally cursed with a set of driveling, time-serving statesmen who flatter the vices of the multitude, who bend to every wan ton breeze of public opinion, and who are shamefully defi cient in all that would fit them to rule the destinies of a
great people. Another theatre for the display of moral heroism is in
the patient suffering for truth and righteousness* sake. It is honorable to our race that every creed has had its
noble army of confessors and martyrs. We have nothing to do with the absolute truth of these creeds. They may be as full of scientific absurdities as the Vedas of the Hindoo; they may contain as many lying legends as the Koran or the Book of Mormon. The question is, does the man hold fast to his honest convictions in the face of obloquy and persecution? It would be strange if a Chris tian did not admire the death-scene of Socrates because, forsooth, he ordered his weeping attendants to sacrifice for him a cock to JEsculapius. It would be no less strange if a Protestant did not admire the heroism of Francis Xavier because he believed in the real presence and the infallibility of the pope. As we see this apostle of the Indies toiling under the burningsun of Hindostan or tra versing the crowded thoroughfares of Japan, we behold a manifestation of the same self-sacrificing philanthropy which hallowed the labors of Heber and Judson, and that
13
200
MOEAl HEROISM.
invested with the radiance of heaven the final agony of the sufferer on Calvary.
We confess that there is danger in this direction. Any opinion that would canonize John Brown or enroll Ravaillac amongst the martyrs is a perversion and a prosti tution of the sentiment for which we are pleading. In spite of their professions and pretexts one was a hired assassin the other was a border ruffian, partly demented by abolition lectures.
What shall we say, however, of the thousands who have perished on the scaffold or who have been broken bone by bone by the devilish enginery of superstition or of the tens of thousands who have languished and died in the dungeons of tyranny. These have passed away and left not even a record of their names or sufferings, but their good deeds are
A theme for angels when they celebrate The high-souled virtues which forgetful earth Has witnessed.
Moral heroism exhibits itself likewise in the unosten tatious discharge of duty. Many men, like the canting formalists of the olden time, do all their good deeds "to be seen of men." If, like their Scriptural prototypes, they do not literally pray at the street-corners nor sound a trumpet to attract the public gaze to their alms, yet they evidently affect "the stare and pressure of popu larity." Nothing short of a kingdom for a stage and princes and magnates to behold the swelling scene will satisfy their vain-glorious ambition. How different with the moral hero. He is content, like Buchanan or Carey, to plant the germ of truth in the heart of some tawny Asiatic, not doubting that in the round of years, or at
HSKOtSM.
201
least in the revolution of centuries, an ample harvest will crown his unselfish labors.
There is something sacred, almost divine, in that sense of duty which constrains a man to toil and strive with out any present tangible reward. Indeed, the perform ance of duty may involve personal hazard or the loss of fortune or fame, and yet the man tramples on the sug gestions of selfishness and dares to be "just and fear not," and is willing "to labor and to wait."
This species of heroism ia not restricted to any age or condition or to either sex.
Casablanca, the fair-haired boy of fourteen summers, obedient to his fathers word, illustrated it most signally as he stood manfully at his post amidst the terrible battle of the Nile, whilst crackling spar and consuming cordage and toppling masts and fiercely wreathing flames ad monished him to escape for his life. So, too, the lamented Rhett in our late struggle kept his .banner flying amidst the bowing walls and crumbling case-mates of Fort Sumter.
Men of low degree, as well as men of rank and influ ence, have often exhibited this heroism. That swarthy laborer that carries a hod or wields a chop axe is nerved to his task by the remembrance of wife and children. That poor needle-woman, the Pariah of Christian civili zation, works from weary chime to chime that she may provide for her half-famished offspring. Who can gaze on these exhibitions of unselfish love and not recognize a heroism that is unmatched in all the annals of warfare? We have already said that this species of heroism is not confined to either sex. We might have added that it is the chief ornament of Christian womanhood. Who will
202
MOBAL HB&OISM.
soon forget the labors of Charlotte Elizabeth amongst the degraded population of St. Giles, London ? Or who can cease to revere the character of Florence Nightingale who. forsook her ancestral halls to become a ministering spirit in the fever-hospitals of Scutari?
It is not the mission of woman to head charging squadrons on the battle-field nor to command the ap plause of listening Senates." This would be to unsex herself and to introduce chaos into the social system. But wherever ignorance is to be enlightened or anguish soothed or struggling virtue is to be helped there is her proper post of duty. Perhaps after all the noblest exhi bition of moral heroism which modern history furnishes is that which Wordsworth has commemorated in his poem of Grace Darling.
An humble fishermans daughter on the rude* bleak coast of Northumbria she was as gentle as if she had been reared in marble halls, and yet as daring as the knightliest spirit that ever shivered a lance in battle or at tournament. All night long a terrible tempest had beaten on that rock bound shore. In the gray twilight of the early morn Grace Darling espied a wreck in the offing. Presently human beings were seen clinging to the wreck. Grace urges her father to go with her to the rescue of these unfortunates. The old man, knowing the perils of the undertaking, shakes his head. But the high-spirited girl will not be denied. She beseeches him with greater earnestness, and the father, moved by her tears and entreaties, consents to make the noble venture. The boat is -launched and together they set forth on their perilous way. Heaven is propitious the wreck ia reached in safety, and after successive trips the last suf-
MORAL HEROISM.
203
ferer is rescued and lodged in the sheltering lighthouse. Here was an act of true heroism prompted by no mer
cenary motive inspired by no desire for human applause, but springing from a sense of duty to God and compas sion for fellow-men ready to perish. Well might Words
worth thus conclude his tribute to her worth:
"Shout, ye waves, Bend forth a song of triumph. Waves and winds Exult in this deliverance wrought through faith In Hini whose providence your rage has served! Ye screaming sea-mews in the concert join, And would that some immortal voice a voice Fitly attuned to all that gratitude Breathes out from floor or couch through pallid lips Of the survivors to the clouds might hear, Blended with praise of that parental love Beneath whose watchful eye the maiden grew Fiona and pure, modest and yet so brave,
Though young, so wise, though weak so resolute, Might carry to the clouds and to the stars, Yea, to celestial choirs, Grace Barlings name."
POPULAR FALLACIES
WE might readily fill a volume with facts pertinent to the matter under consideration. Indeed, there is hardly a single department of science, whether physical or met aphysical, in which error has not acquired a temporary foothold. As the vast primeval forests of the West have gradually yielded to the march of civilization and the inroads of husbandry, so the present domain of science has been conquered by the arduous toil of the most gifted men of the race through successive generations. It ia instructive to note the progress of mankind, and to con sider the errors which at different periods have asserted a fatal mastery over the popular mind and thereby ob structed that progress. One notable example of that class of errors to which we refer was judicial astrology.
Comte, the hierophant of modern infidelity, tells us that, after the downfall of fetichism, the heavenly bodies became the objects of idolatrous worship throughout the whole earth. The sun in his splendor the moon walk ing in brightness the stars in their courses were each and all regarded as divine dispensers of good and evil. They were supposed, by their conjunctions and opposi tions, to exert a mysterious influence on the fortunes of individuals and the destiny of nations. In after years there arose an order of men who claimed to predict with infallible certainty the result of an enterprise or the fate of a child when the one was born or the other undertaken under certain aspects of the stars.
POPULAR FALLACIES.
205
Thus, according to the teachings of this pseudo-science, were men fools by heavenly compulsion and rogues and
wantons by planetary influence. Absurd as this theory may seem to us, yet was it embraced by the wisest and best of the middle ages. Philosophers shuddered with
affright at the malign aspects of a horoscope, and whole kingdoms trembled with dismay at the appearance of a comet flaming athwart the midnight heavens. It re
quired centuries of scientific research to dissipate these terrors of superstition and to substitute the astronomy of Newton and Kepler for the fanciful speculations of
astrology. A remnant of this error is seen in the pre vailing belief that the weather is affected, if not con trolled, by the phases of the fickle and inconstant moon.
Even now there are thousands of honest housewives who plant peas and cabbage only when the moon is favorable, and hundreds of back-country farmers who sow and reap
in accordance with the same philosophy. Within less than two scores of years Professor Nichol, of Glasgow, thought it needful to write an article for a city journal,
in which he maintained that the opinion in question was utterly disproved by volumes of testimony founded on meteorological observations running through half a century. But after all the opinion, as we have before stated, still lingers, and it will require another hundred years to root it out of the popular mind of Europe and
America. A second popular fallacy, more harmful in its tenden
cies, was the belief in ghosts and witches. The Holy
Scriptures, as generally interpreted, seemed to justify this belief. There was the witch of Endorand the ghost
of Samuel that were made to sustain a host of lying leg-
206
POPULAR FALLACIES.
ends and to impart a coloring of truth to stories not less extravagant than the wildest absurdities of Gulliver and Munchausen. Nor was this belief confined to the illiter ate rabble. Even the British Parliament, affecting to copy the great Hebrew law-giver (whose enactments were sadly misapprehended), solemnly dacreed the most direful pains and penalties against the whole tribe of witches. No less pious and learned a chief-justice than Sir Matthew Hale deliberately adjudged a withered and toothless crone to be executed as a confederate of the devil in other words, as a common witch. The records, too, of the Salem witchcraft will ever remain as a mon ument of Puritanical folly and intolerance. They show how far inferior, in civilization at least, were the Plym outh fathers to the Cavaliers that settled on the banks of the James and the Rappahannock. That royal pe dant, James L, wrote an elaborate treatise on demonology, and so late as the eighteenth century the practical, matter of-fact burghers of London were sorely exercised with reference to the renowned ghost of Cocklane. We may laugh at these puerile conceits and childish fears of our ancestors, but it may be questioned if we are not in the same condemnation. A recent author has defined superstition to be "the physical dread of the unknown." As long, therefore, as thereare agents and forces in the universe that baffle our analysis and exceed our compre hension, so long will mankind at large be the victims of these weird fancies. What stronger proof could be de manded for this proposition than the late revival of nee-
omancy in the populous cities of the North and East ? As Joe Smith, a seedy mercantile bankrupt, has played the role of Mohammed in the early part of the nineteenth
POPULAR FALLACIES.
207
century, so the Fox girls and their humbler imitators have restored the empire of superstition. Spiritualism boldly claims to be the noblest development of religion, and Emanuel Swedenborg and Andrew Jackson Davis are the Isaiah and Ezekiel of this new dispensation. It would not surprise us a great deal to see ghostology in stalled as one of the sciences at Cambridge. At any rate there are already a large number in New England and elsewhere who habitually consult wizards and those who boast of familiar spirits.
Another fallacy that was once wonderfully popular is alchemy. The sacra fames awri has prompted men to spend years amidst the retorts and furnaces and alem bics of a sooty laboratory for the purpose of transmuting the baser metals into gold. And although all previous efforts for a thousand years have resulted in disappoint ment, yet may there still be found an occasional disciple of alchemy.
Medical science, too, has suffered greatly from similar fallacies. Only within the last century has it been pros ecuted as a strictly inductive science and been thus to a large extent freed from the control of quackery and em piricism. And still there are advertisements in leading newspapers in which some unscrupulous charlatan pro poses to heal the maladies that "flesh is heir to" by methods as unscientific as the conjurations of an Indian doctor. A large number of dupes credit his assertions and are usually robbed of health and money at one and the same time.
Nor has political economy escaped the blighting In fluence of popular error, ^hen Adam S.Tntb. wrote his "Wealth of Nations" there was scarcely a statesman in
208
POPULAR FALLACIES.
Europe that comprehended the elementary principles of that science. Indeed, so much were European cabinets occupied with war and its incidents that they rarely be
stowed a passing thought on the sources of national wealth or the means of promoting it. The relations of capital and labor and the questions of banking and commerce were overlooked amidst the clangor of trum pets and the clash of resounding arms. This was the age when Great Britain fancied her naval supremacy to rest on the Navigation Act and the Corn Laws to be the basis of her agricultural prosperity when tarifls and monop olies were brooding like a horrid nightmare over the in dustrial energies of the nation. This was the age like
wise when a French king was guilty of debasing the current coin of the realm and of revoking the edict of Nantes by which he almost depopulated some of the fairest provinces of his empire and drove two hundred thousand skillful artisans into exile.
It is not likely that any political party in any of the principal States of Christeadom will repeat these blun ders ; but there is yet a great deal in the jurisprudence and legislation of the present age of which our wiser pos terity will be ashamed.
But we need not protract this discussion. On every side there are still errors to be combatted. False theories in science, in art, in politics and in religion confront us at every step in the pathway of social progress. And while we should steadily keep in mind that change is not necessarily progress, whilst we should treat reverently the established faiths of mankind, yet we must not cling to the "dead past" so as to lose sight of the "living pres
ent" and much less the glorious coming future. "We
POPULAR FALLACIES.
209
are the ancients" was the motto of Lord Bacm. Like every other truth it is liable to perversion, but it is after all the soul of enterprise and the key-note of individual and national advancement.
Here is the true remedy for the errors of which we have spoken. Let knowledge be diffused through the medium of an unshackled press; let education be guaranteed to our whole population, and let the church still instruct and elevate the masses by her weekly ministrations. Then and only then will debasing superstitions and the pernicious errors that still haunt like guilty ghosts the twilight of our present imperfect civilization vanish as a dream in the light of the perfect day. Abiding in this sure and steadfast trust we can sympathize with Eng lands greatest living poet in the annexed beautiful lines which cannot be too often published:
"Ring oat the old, ring in the new; Ring happy bells across the mow; The year is going--let him go; Sing oat the false, ring in the true.
'Ring oat false pride in place and blood, The civic slander and the spite; Ring in the love of truth and right; Ring in the common lore of good.
"Ring ont old shapes of foul disease; Ring ont the narrowing lost of gold; Ring ont the thousand wan of old; Ring in the thousand years of peace.
"Ring in the Taliant man and free, The larger heart, the kindlier hand; Ring ont the darkness of the land; Ring in the Christ that is to be."
SALMAGUNDI.
SALMAGUNDI.
JUST now the daily press has much to say of the "sick man of Europe," meaning thereby the Turkish Empire. For more than a century Russia has been straggling for the control of the Black Sea and for the ontlet of the Bosphorns. Austria in the meanwhile has been ready to absorb the provinces of Servia and Moldavia. Egypt has also been restive and practically independent of the Sultan. There are evident signs of decrepitude; the Crescent is at last waning and some Scriptural expos itors see in the political events now transpiring the doom of the false prophet and the drying up of the Euphrates.
There was a time when Islamism was a power in the earth when men trembled more at the walking-stick of the Caliph Omar than at the sword of Charlemagne when the armies of Islam subsisted on water and barley bread and, nerved with the inspiration of a faith com pounded of an eternal truth and a necessary lie, estab lished a vaster empire than Rome ever shadowed with her eagles.
For a season Christianity itself seemed in imminent peril from the overshadowing influence of Moslem power.
The first check to its inroads was given by Charles Martel, who defeated them at Tours and drove them be yond the Pyrenees. This victory saved the Western Em pire from immediate overthrow, but its final deliverance was achieved by Sobieski, who hurled them back from
214
SALMAGUNDI.
the walls of Vienna to the plains of Adrianople. But for these timely reverses the Koran might to-day be ex pounded within the walls of Notre Dame and the Muez zin cry be heard on the streets of Madrid and Vienna.
Dynasties rise and fall; empires wax and wane; even nationalities and races vanish from the earth. The Sul
tan has been deposed and events point to another dis memberment similar to the partition of Poland. The victory at Inkermann and the charge of Balaklava seemed to delay but could not defeat the coming doom. Russia will receive the "lions share," and England, after a good deal of diplomatic bluster, will accept the situa tion with some additional guarantee of the integrity of her East Indian possessions. All things seem conspiring for the re-establishment of Christian ci vilization in West ern Asia. Political conquests are paving the way for missionary enterprise. The seven churches" may be quickened after the sleep of ages and Antioch and Jeru salem become again the centres of evangelical light and influence.
IN a late number of the Southern Review we have an elaborate article devoted to "Insectivorous Plants." Can it be, inquires a class of readers, that plants devour in sects as do toads and spiders ? Such is the indisputable testimony of naturalists in regard to more than one species.
This brings us to consider how little comparatively is yet known of vegetable physiology, and also how inti mate the relationship between the animal and vegetable kingdoms. Who will venture to say that the mimosa is
destitate of a genuine nervous system andthat the move ment of its leaves is wholly mechanical?
The highest authority, Dr. Hammond, of New York, now maintains, contrary to all previous speculations, that the brain is not the exclusive organ of the mind, but that the spinal cord and the nervous ganglia are con cerned both in volition and intellection. Thus the world moves. "The philosophy of one age is the common sense of the next." . The scientific dogmatism of one genera tion is the jest of the succeeding one. But reoenons a noa mautffM--that is, to insectivorous plants;
A notable example of this is the Dionea, popularly called "Venus Fly-trap." It is so constituted that a fly or other insect alighting- on the leaf is held fast until the leaf gradually encloses and ultimately digests and as
similates it. When we remember that by far the largest and most
luscious portion of our food is derived from vegetables and fruits, we surely will not begrudge the several varie ties of insectivorous plants the dainty tit-bits that they may seize and digest
There is indeed no limit to the wonders of the vegeta ble kingdom. The pitcher plant of the tropics, the com pass flower of the desert what conclusive proof do they furnish of special ends in creation ? How would the nomadic tribes of the East subsist without the kingly palm and its immense yield of dates? How would the tattooed dwellers of the South Seas be nourished without the bread-tree with its rich and abundant farinaceous meat?
Byron, who had an eye mainly for the night side of na14
216
SALMAGUNDI.
ture and providence, has paid the following tribute to
this remarkable phenomenon of vegetables:
The bread-tree which without the plough-share yields The nnreaped harvest of unfair-owed fields, And bakes its unadulterated loaves Without a furnace in nnpnrchased groves, And flings off famine from its fertile breast A priceless market for the gathering gnest.
SHELLEY concludes his preface to "Alastor" with the familiar lines:
The good die first, While they whose hearts are dry as summers dust Burn to the socket.
Whether these lines are original or borrowed, they are eminently truthful.
The veteran miser or gray-haired debauchee lags "super fluous on the stage," while some child of song like Mar garet Davidson, or some marvel of moral excellency like Henry Montague, is snatched away in the very prime of their years. The fairest flower of the household is smit ten by disease, and after years of suffering and patient watching and waiting she is borne forth to an untimely burial. Gods ways are often "past finding out." "Now we know in part," and this halfness of knowledge be trays us into many mistakes and murmurings.
At such a time we are shut up to the faith of that gospel which brings life and immortality to light. Hea ven is both a moral and logical necessity if we would escape the bottomless gulf of atheism.
We go to the graves of our early dead, and with the Marys of the gospel we see a vision of angels that whis-
217
per of the resurrection and point our hearts and hopes heavenward.
The burden is lifted from our sinking souls, and we rejoice in sure and steadfast hope of a land "where the rainbow never fades, and where the beautiful beings that in this earth-life are but flitting shadows shall abide in our presence forever."
TBX return of the Prince of Wales from his Eastern tour was the occasion of nolittle wine-bibbing and speechmaking at Guildhall.
There was an unusual display of silks and diamonds, and his Royal Highness must have been intensely grati fied with the tokens of an enthusiastic loyalty.
These manifestations, however, were not so much a tribute to the personal qualities of the Prince as to the idea of constitutional law which he represents. As for the Prince himself he, has as yet shown but little apti tude for affairs of government, and his most distinguished action when abroad was the shooting of a tiger from the back of an elephant.
It will be well for his Royal Highness to remember that Guildhall was in other days the scene of events not so flattering to royalty as the late imposing civic fete of the Lord Mayor. Nor should he forget that his now loyal countrymen beheaded a sovereign whom Bishop Burnett estimated the saintliest monarch of his age, and that afterwards they demanded an abdication of another whose greatest crime was religious bigotry.
It may be that the best thing he can do to secure a quiet reign is to keep aloof from entangling alliances whether at home or abroad.
218
SALMAfltlHDl.
Kingcraft was always a hazardous business, and in the latter half of the nineteenth century it will be doubly perilous. Kings and lords hold the balance of power be twixt the contending parties of Whig, Tory and Liberal, and a wise exercise of that power is the surest guarantee for the prolonged existence of either.
After all there is both in England and on the conti nent a democratic movement that forebodes disaster to kingly crowns and moribund aristocracies.
It may be heard as a deep and significant undertone to the festivities at Guildhall. It may be postponed for a season, but it would be easier far to arrest the sun in his majestic march through the heavens, or to stay the incoming tide of the Atlantic, than to defeat it finally. Servian insurrections, Hungarian revolutions, Commu nist outrages and Chartist demonstrations are but premo nitions of a mightier upheaval that shall leave scarce a vestige of imperialism from the Orkneys to Calabria. Whether thechange of constitutional forms will be fol lowed by any great amendment of the political or mate rial condition of the masses is a question we hesitate to answer.
We are equally at a loss to say whether this change will be wrought by fire and steel, as in the French revo lution, or by the gentler methods of the English revolu tion of 1688.
IN the earlier days of the National convention an im pulsive deputy, impatient of the "laws delay," rose from his seat and said: "Mr. President, I move that all knaves and dastards be arrested." This-sweeping motion might not be out of place in the halls of Congress. The enforce-
SALMAGUNDI.
219
meat of such an edict would be attended perhaps with serious embarrassments. We gravely question whether there are prison accommodations for all those who might be embraced in such a wholesale mittimus.
SOME years ago an adventurous tourist jj^lored the deepest recesses of the Pyramid of Cheops. In the in nermost chamber of the vast mausoleum he discovered, after diligent searching, a jeweled casket containing a handful of dust, the supposed remains of its founder. "Alas, poor Yorick!" To this level the mightiest and the meanest of earths toiling, scheming inhabitants must come at last. The Pharaohs are not exempt from the common destiny. Posthumous fame! what is its intrinsic worth, and how may it be secured? Gam flattery
soothe the dull, cold ear of death*
ONE of the best old English writers, Sir Thomas Browne, makes this striking observation: "Herostratus liveth that burned the temple of Diana, but the name of its builder is forgotten. Time has spared the epitaph of Adrians horse, but confounded his own."
Herodias, who demanded the head of the Baptist in a charger, is handed down in the sacred history; but the name of the Syrophenician woman is only preserved in the archives of heaven.
It might serve to quiet the too anxious pulse-beat of the ambitions to reflect that the stereotyped Hie Jacet will be his only epitaph, and even that, abraded by the tooth of time, will need to be renewed by some Old Mor tality from generation to generation.
It is far better to have your name in the Book of Life
220
SALMAGUKDI.
than engraved on tablets of gold; for the gold will canker, while the righteous will be had in everlasting
remembrance.
WB are English enough in our tastes to take kindly to clubisiH^ndeed the club is to England what the cafe is to France or the beer-garden to Germany, with this notable difference, that while club-life is not less convivial it is more exclusive and therefore is better suited to the selfish instincts of John Bull who dearly loves to1 mumble his bone in solitude. All of them* however, are sorry substitutes for the home life of say one hundred years ago. The English clubs in the eighteenth century meant something and were far above the level of a drinking-bout or even the some what higher plane of square or round dances. Take for illustration the Kit Cat Club with Swift vis a vis with Steele, both wits of a high order. What jests and puns that kept the table in a roar. And there, too, in dogged silence it may be, sat Addison, the prince of essayists, but a stupid conversationalist, and at his elbow Alexander Pope, thereafter to be enriched by a wretched
translation of the Iliad. Those teas, too, at Mrs. Thrales, where burly Sam.
Johnson spouted sesquipedalian words to the delecta tion of worshipful Boswell and indulged in an occa sional thrust at " poor Goldy " the last-named too rev erent or too timid to challenge or rebuke the imperi
ous autocrat. Those were rare occasions besides when Burke with
his divine grandiloquence measured swords with the brilliant Sheridan, not in high parliamentary debate,
bat in the playful cot and thrust of the dinner-table.
SALMAGUNDI.
221
Such scenes belong not only to a by-gone age, but to an extinct civilization.
Modern clubs, we venture to remark, whether in Boaton or New Orleans, are feeble imitations. A good bank balance secures admission and the bluest blood is at a serious discount unless supplemented by a heavy rent-roll. As to literary qualifications they are quite secondary, and as a consequence the literary features of the occasion are oftentimes such, gossip as may be heard to best advantage in a village sewing-circle, or else such platitudes as figure largely at an undergradu ates anniversary celebration.
WE,are fairly loyal to the stars and stripes, but we are constrained to say that we Americans are greatly lacking in the faculty of invention, aside from such intensely practical things as a McCormicks reaper or a Morses tel egraph. In this mechanical department we make a handsome showing as our patent office reports testify. But in literature and scholarship we beg or borrow.
WE are old enough to remember the storm of indigna tion which swept through the country when Dickens issued his "American Notes." For a season it was considered a mark of patriotism to denounce the au thor of the Pickwick Papers. Nor have we forgotten how we bolted with thanks the gracious sop tossed to us on a later occasion by Cannon Farrar-and Dean Stanley. This super-sensitiveness isa great national weakness that has its root in a prodigious national vanity.
222
SALHAGUHM.
MANY of our readers hare not lost light of the English governess who, when asked if Dante did not get his Barname of Alghieri from the fact that he was born in Al giers, innocently nodded assent. This brings in to say that really wise people are most ready to confess their ignorance. It is only yonr village schoolmaster who lays, claim to universal knowledge.
IT has been said that twenty men have done the real thinking for mankind in the last two thousand years.
The statement needs no material qualification. The original man of this generation stands an even chance to be a crank or a clown.
IT has been quite the fashion for Americans, in com mon with all English-speaking people, to extol the phi losophy of Bacon, and in almost equal measure to berate the philosophy of the schoolmen.
As applied to the experimental sciences the advant ages of the inductive method are undoubtedly very great. But to suppose that the deductive method is unworthy of confidence is a very grave misapprehension of the true intent and higher aim of philosophical research. Mills, in his elaborate "System of Logic," points out both the excellencies and defects of the Baconian method, and
shows that even in chemistry and astronomy the grandest results have been attained by the deductive rather than the inductive method. This holds more em phatically of sociology, ethnology and their correlative branches of learning. Indeed, the careful student of philosophy must have noted the fact that for a half cen-
SAIMAOOHM.
223
tnry at least them has been a marked tendency to revert to the more ancient systems. It would not be surprising if after all Dans Scotus and his great rival, Thomas Aquinas, should recover somewhat of their former popu larity.
"Fruit," which was the avowed end of Bacons philoso phy, must not be despised; but there are some things better than lightning rods, or safety-lamps, or steamshipper power-looms, or all the other boasted elements of material advancement.
In searching after inventions that shall cheapen breadstuffs, save labor, annihilate distance and multiply phys ical comforts, we may ignore the great truth that the "life is more than meat, and the body than raiment."
It admits of doubt whether our modern civilization; apart from the Christian influences which have largely modified it, has any superiority over that Greek culture which made Athens the seat of philosophy or that sterner discipline which made Borne the mistress of the world.
ALEXANDER POPE, next to Dryden, was the greatest master of English versification. His poetry was at times
Coldly correct and critically dull,
but his "Rape of the Lock," his "Eloisa" and "Abelard," and especially his translations of the "Iliad" and "Odys sey," will always entitle him to a high rank amongst the poets of England.
His "Essay on Man" and his "Epistles" are but a species of versified philosophy which is neither original nor profound. Indeed, both his philosophy and theology wen for many yean borrowed from Bolingbroke. Hia
224
SALMAGOTDL
final reconciliatioa to-the Church of Rome was one of those reactions that are not less strange than sudden in the history of men of letters.
Pope is generally regarded as the founder of a new school of poetry that boasted of Beattie, Collins, Gray, Swift and others of less note. This school was supplanted by Byron and Shelley of the Satanic, and Wordsworth and Coleridge of the Lake School.
Speaking of the Lake School suggests the eventful career of William Wordswortb, whilom poet-laureate of England.
When Wordsworth published his "Lyrical Ballads" he was for a time the butt of every village club of the Brit ish realm. Critics of high and low degree hurled their objurgations and anathemas at the poet of Windermere. In spite, however, of the sneers of penny-a-liners, and the weightier maledictions of reviewers, he steadily rose to the zenith of popularity. For twenty-five years the "Ercursion" has been reckoned the best philosophical poem of our language. With less fire than Childe Harold it is as a work of genius as much superior to it as the most exquisite cartoon of Raphael to the merest daub of a third-class artist.
DEQUINCEY had one trait that would have commended him to the favor of Dr. Johnson he was "a good hater." His dislike to Bonaparte verged on monomania. Not satisfied to denounce him as the "only barbarian of his time," he denies him even the merit of superior generalship in the sense that he allows it to Caesar and Charlemagne. In all this he but sympathizes with the British press, which for seventy years has never wearied
8ALHA6UBDI.
225
of misrepresenting the great Corsican, whether living or dead.
The truth is Bonaparte humiliated and impoverished England to a degree that was unbearable, and wLich England with all her magnanimity has never forgotten. We are no apologist for the massacre of Jaffa, the di vorcement of Josephine, the military murder of the Due DEnghien, and kindred enormities that have been charged against Bonaparte. If in these instances he sinned grievously most grievously did he answer it in his downfall and imprisonment. Nor can we forget, on the other hand, the signal service done for humanity when in the spirit of a true iconoclast he shivered like a pot ters vessel the effete dynasties of mediaeval Europe and reconstructed the political geography of a continent. If he failed to make Europe republican he put it beyond the power of any alliance of crowned dotards to render it Cossack.
IT is a striking observation of EMERSON that the Eng lish set a very high estimate on PLUCK. They have done some of the most stubborn fighting in the annals of war fare. The "Charge of the Light Brigade," which Tenny son immortalized, is hardly an exceptional instance of En glish valor. Marlborougb, Nelson, Blake and Wellington are but types of a race that from the days of Caractacus have exhibited the sublimest courage on land and sea. Even English statesmen are not lacking in this quality. Sidney Smith said of Lord John Russell that he was brave enough to take command of the channel fleet at an hours notice.
226
IT is seldom that we find in the columns of a country newspaper a literary waif of euch rare excellence as the subjoined picture from the pen of Mrs. D. D. Cox, of LaGrange, Georgia. It is a real treasure-trove and pre sents a scene worthy of the pencil of Albert Durer. It is located in LaGrange, Georgia:
" It was the night before the Light Guards left for the field of battle, and for the last time on this earth the members of that company, many of whom were also members of the church and choir, took the holy sac rament with the friends they were leaving behind Eyes unused to weep shed blinding tears on that occa sion, for well did we know that many around that sacred altar would never again drink of the sacramental wine until they took it anew in their Fathers kingdom. Mothers knelt at that altar by the side of precious sons just about to be sacrificed on the altar of their country. Fathers drank of the cup which commemorated the death of Gods only Son, and realized as they had never done before how great was his Fathers condescension in giving up his beloved Son. Sisters, with their arms wreathed around darling brothers clad for battle, felt how solemn and awful was the night when the disciples ate the last supper with the Master so soon to be taken from them. That mournful sacrament was a fitting re minder of tha doleful night before the death of the Son of God.
"The choir then joined with the congregation in singing those words so fraught with sadness:
" When shall we meet again Meet neer to sever;
When shall Peace wreath her chain Bound na foraverT
827
"Many sorrowful reminiscences are connected with the old church; many precious forms have been borne from its portals to the grave; many funeral dirges have sounded through its aisles; many wails of sorrow have echoed within its walls, but never a sadder scene than that sacramental occasion; and never a song more full of woe than that farewell hymn; and never bitterer tears fell within its sacred precincts than were shed over those grayclad communicants so soon to offer their precious bodies as a defense to their native land."
CHABLES THE TWELFTH, of Sweden,was Alexander the Great in miniature. With fewer resources than Philips illustrious son he was quite his equal in military genius. The hardy. Muscovite was, however, a more formidable adversary than the voluptuous Darius and his effeminate subjects, or else the disaster of Pultowa might have been as great a triumph as the victory of Arbela.
MOZABT was perhaps the most notable musical prod igy. At sixteen he had written operas that fascinated the Neapolitans, and at twenty was the pet of Joseph the Second and his brilliant court. At thirty-five he wrote his celebrated " Requiem " in anticipation of his death, which occurred shortly thereafter.
COLLKOB essays are not always of the highest order of literary merit, but the subjoined extract from the com position of a junior deserves to be read and remembered:
"From the earliest ages of human history man has been distinguished from the lower animals by a certain
228
indefinable yearning after an infinite being to whom he could look for help in time of need. Shall we term this blind impulse the instinct of worship T By whatever name it may be called it is worthy of our reverence, although the worshipper should stumble amidst the gross darkness of superstition.
"Whether we see it manifested in the tent-like temples of China, where the trembling devotee pours out his monosyllabic prayer to a Buddha of wood, or whether we see it dimly displayed in the mysterious rites of the land overshadowed with wings," or whether we stand in the luxuriant forests of Central America and gaze at the silent monolinths of Copan or Quirigua, or see it pictured on the crumbling walls of the temples of Palenque in any or all these phases it is the same sentiment that prompted the outcry of Job, Oh 1 that I knew where I might find Him/' and that inspired the prayer of Moses, I beseech thee show me thy face I
"As we contemplate this world-wide fact we conclude with the wisest and best of all generations that these searchings after the Infinite these inclinations at vari ous angles, so to speak, of the worlds myraids towards a higher life these gropings after God betoken the ex istence of a great All-Father, for whose paternal love and mercy the great throbbing heart of an orphan world yearns so mightily.
"And will not these weary and painful searchings be consummated in a glorious finding ? Shall not prophecy yet become history ? Are not the mountain-tops already tipped with the morning twilight of that millennial day when the religion of Christ shall be the worship of uni versal humanity ?"
8A1HA6DBDL
229
ODH first and indeed only personal acquaintance with Henry Timrod was in 1867 at Columbia, South Carolina. He was at the time writing on a political newspaper, the name of which we have forgotten. His figure was slight, almost petite. His face was not handsome, but his eyes shone with the light of genius. In manner he was simple as a child, and yet there was an air of earnest ness in look and tone that to us was strangely fascin ating. Timrod was one of the most promising of our American poets. He had gifts equal to Joaquin Miller or Walter Whitman, the Castor and Pollux of our pres ent literary firmament. If his life had not been cut short in its vernal bloom he would doubtless have en riched our literature with some splendid contribution that would have ranked him with Poe or Longfellow.
One of the best productions of his muse was a poem written for Scotfs Magazine, entitled " Our Willie." It was at the time greatly admired and ejctensively copied by the daily and weekly press. His bosom friend and brother poet, Paul H. Hayne, Esq., has recently edited a volume of his poetry which has been flatteringly re ceived by the English critics.
We ask the privilege of annexing the following verses which were furnished us in 1866:
TWO ROSES.
BY HKHBT TIHBOD.
Tea, in that dainty ivory shrine, With those two pallid buds I twine And fold away a dream divine.
Those one night adorned a hreast Where love had made his sacred neat And throned me as a life-long guest.
230
Near that chaste heart they seemd to me Types of far fairer flowers to be : The roaehads of a human tree
Buds that shall bloom beside my hearth, And there be held of richer worth Than all the kingliest gems of earth.
Ah me I the pathoa of the tbought 1 I had not deemed she wanted anght Yet what a tenderer charm it wrought!
I know not if she marked the flame That lit my cheek, but not for shame, When one sweet image dimly came.
There was a murmur soft and low, White folds of muslin parted slow, And little fingers played with snow !
How far my fancy dared to stray, A lovers reverence needs not say; Enough, the vision passed away
Passed In a mist of happy tears, While something in my tranced ears Hummed like the future in a seers.
FEW general readers are aware even of the existence of Moncure Conway, an American of considerable tranaAtlantic celebrity. He is the son of W. P. Conway, Esq., a banker of Fredericksburg, Virginia, and one of the most estimable .laymen in the General Conference of ,the M. E. Church, South, at Louisville, Kentucky. The father is a Methodist of the Wesleyan pattern a ge nial but deeply pious gentleman of the old school. The eon is a religionist of irregular views after the manner of Emerson and Parker.
SALMAGUNDI.
231
Mr. Moncure Con way has resided for some years in England, and is a frequent and popular contributor to the leading English and continental reviews. He is the intimate friend of Froude and Ruskin and was on quite confidential terms with Carlyle. Recently he has re turned to the United States and has been solicited to oc cupy the pulpit made vacant by the death of Theodore Parker.
EVERYBODY is familiar with Wirts description of the "Blind Preacher" in the "British Spy."
Some years ago we listened to a burst of pulpit elo quence not inferior in sublimity of thought and ex pression to the memorable passage which Wirt so much admired. The preacher was Bishop Wightman, of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. This gifted divine* in concluding a most elaborate discourse, was led to speak of the retributions of Providence as exemplified in the judicial condemnation and crucifixion of the Son of God.
He spoke with bated breath of Judas who betrayed Him for a paltry price, goaded by remorse, confessing his guilt and going out from the presence of his fellow con spirators and hanging himself; of Pilate who from a base, man-pleasing spirit had delivered him to be cruci fied, in a few years deposed and banished and dying in exile and disgrace; of Annas and Caiphas, hurled from their priestly position; of the whole multitude of the Jews who shouted, "Crucify him crucify him," them selves slain by thousands and crucified by hundreds; of
15
232
SALMAGTODI.
Jerusalem, the scene of this shameful act of deicide the city of kings, and priests and prophets, compassed by hostile armies its cloud-capped towers and gorgeous palaces and stately temple swept by the tempest of divine wrath its very foundation upturned by the ploughshare and sown with salt, the symbol of perpetual desolation. We have not reproduced the ipsisaima verba of the brilliant orator, but we have indicated the main current of his lofty thought. It was indeed a master piece worthy of Chalmers or Bossuet.
"THE winds and the waves," says Edward Gibbon, "are upon the side of the ablest navigators." This saying is almost identical with that attributed to Napoleon Prov idence always favors the heaviest battalions." Gibbon was a skeptic, and died a stubborn unbeliever in the super natural origin of Christianity. Napoleon, on the other hand, never wavered in his faith in the divinity of Christ and the other cardinal doctrines of the Catholic church. Whether he trod the burning desert sands of Egypt, or bivouacked under the midnight sky of Syria; whether elated by the glorious "sun of Austerlitz," or dishearten ed by the reverses of Leipsic, the forerunner of Waterloo, everywhere and at all times he had an unshaken faith in the providence of God.
No MODERN patron of literature has ever approximated the Roman Maecenas in his munificence to men of learn ing. Lorenzo de Medici, Frederick the Great and Joseph the Second were distinguished for their liberality, but any or all of these were niggards when compared to the
SALMAGUNDI.
233
prime minister of Augustus Caesar, the friend and com panion of Virgil and Horace.
In his first satire Horace speaks of the royal lineage of his illustrious patron, and it is generally conceded that Msecenas was a descendant of the ancient kings of Etru-
ria. As a statesman he was to Augustus what Sully was to Henry the Fourth or Richelieu to Louis the Great. Most of the stupendous enterprises and achievements of the goldon age of Roman history were due to the con summate statesmanship of Maecenas. And yet, in the midst of official engagements, he had leisure for the so ciety of poets and for the cultivation of rhetoric and philosophy. At his table were assembled the principal wits of that brilliant era. Very many he pensioned with princely generosity, and some of them he enriched by his noble benefactions. But although Msecenas was the steadfast friend of literature he was himself quite un
successful both in prose and verse. Very few of his writings have survived, and these have been severely criticised on account of their dullness and obscurity. The world, notwithstanding, owes him largely for that foster ing care that did much to develop and perpetuate the literature of the Augustan age. It is sad to remember that the latter years of Msecenas were embittered by do mestic griefs and by a nervous disorder that made life an almost insupportable burden. To the last, however, he
retained the esteem of his imperial master and the friendship of those who had shared his bounty in his earlier days.
RANDOLPH, of Roanoke, was fearfully tormented by the "Devil of Dyspepsia." His physical organism was sadly
234
SALMAGUNDI.
"out of joint." Many things in him which were esteemed eccentricities of genius were the direct results of disor dered digestion. After one or more centuries of research the sympathy between mind and body will be better un derstood. Meanwhile the neuroses will continue to be the opprobrium medicorum, and the victims of them, like Randolph, will bear the brunt of misconstruction and misrepresentation.
We have somewhere read to the following effect: "When an officious book-seller of Baltimore attempted to force himself upon Mr. Randolph in society, and began to play the game of Horaces interminable talker, Mr. Randolph, who had no fancy for a walk to the "gardens of Caesar," would not recognize him. Who are you, he said, turning his searching gaze upon his brazen face. Oh 1 said he, I am Mr. , of Baltimore glad to meet you, Mr. Randolph. I sold you some books, you remem ber. Ah, yes, said Randolph. Do I owe you anything 9 Oh, no, replied the book-seller, yon always paid your bills. Very well, sir, replied Randolph; good morning, sir, and so stalked away, leaving the intruder to digest the venom of his spleen." Randolphs dislike to Webster was proverbial at Wash ington. "On one occasion," says the same writer, who has preserved the foregoing anecdote, "his pet dog fol lowed him into the House of Representatives, and going to Mr. Websters seat barked at him most furiously. Put that dog out of the house, said the speaker. Ran dolph rose hastily and screamed, Let him alone that is my dog! Let him alone he has only treed a Yankee!" This savors of something more serious than mere ec centricity. It is at least near akin to madness, and yet
SALMAGUNDI.
235
there are innumerable incidents and anecdotes of a like sort related of the great orator.
Our own Stephens has sometimes been likened to him, but the resemblance extends no farther than a. shrill voice and a frail physique. Intellectually they are an tipodes ; Stephens was a statesman of the highest type Randolph was simply a popular orator; Stephens was a logician Randolph neither thought nor spoke consecu tively. Each was great in his sphere, but their spheres were widely dissimilar.
THEODORE PARKER happily remarks in his discourses of religion that "the world is only saved by crucified re deemers." The hemlock of Socrates, the dungeon of Gal ileo, above all the cross of Jesus, bear testimony to this truth.
Whether we attribute this fact to the blindness or the perverseness of mankind it is none the less humiliating. "The blood of the martyrs" is not only the seed of the church, but it is the root of every beneficent reform and every grand discovery that has blessed and bettered the world.
ONE of the saddest of literary biographies is that of William Cowper, the poet of Olney. A life-long victim of nervous disease he endured at times the most excru ciating tortures. During one of these crises of suffering he was driven to the verge of mad ness, almost to suicide. On this occasion he is said to have written that noble Christian lyric,
"God moves in a mysterious way," eta
236
SALMAGtTNDI.
He was distinguished for a tenderness of heart and a gentleness of manner that endeared him to a large circle of friends and admirers.
It was Cowper who wrote those lines which might serve as a motto for the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals:
"I would not place upon my list of friends Him who would needlessly set foot rfpon a worm."
LITERARY forgeries have been attempted in all ages, but usually with indifferent success.
When a school boy we read with intense interest the sorrowful story of Chattertons life and death. Endowed with the noblest gifts of intellect he was sadly deficient in those moral qualities that are indispensable to a true manhood. His effort to palm off his own crude produc tion as a relic of Rowley, the Bristol monk, brought him to dishonor and a suicides grave.
Macpherson for a time succeeded far better. Dr. Hugh Blair, of Edinburgh, made the poems of Ossian the theme of his university lectures, and some of the ripest scholars of the age were enraptured with these supposed remains of the son of Fingal.
Dr. Johnson was one of the first to suspect the impost ure. A devout believer in the second sight of the High lands he was as obstinate in his skepticism in regard to the historical Ossian. In a little while the literary world voted Ossian a myth, Macpherson a humbug and his book a bore. But in the end Macpherson abandoned literature for politics, secured a seat in Parliament and ultimately a tomb in Westminster Abbey.
SAUtASOTTDI.
287
As A POET, and especially as a dramatic poet, Charles Lamb was, we were about to write, a failure. Always excepting a few charming verses and an occasional Hne from "John Woodville A Tragedy," his poetry deserves to be forgotten. As an essayist, however, he will outlive his century. We do not know a more companionable book for a winters evening or a midsummers noon than the "Essays of Elia." The richest humor, the most spark ling fancy, the rarest practical wisdom, are all presented in a style which we may well characterize as classical English, equally removed from the affectation of Addison and the bluff mannerism of Johnson. Greater, however, than his genius was his devotion to Mary, his afflicted sister. Such constancy of attachment such selfimmolation indeed might almost atone for the moral aberrations which marred the otherwise spotless life of Lamb.
CARLYLE is responsible for the statement that when some one suggested to Dr. Johnson that Boswell thought of writing his (Johnsons) life, the Doctor replied that if he believed Boswell seriously contemplated such a thing he would prevent it by taking Boswells life. And yet Boswell, the prince of toadies, has by general consent produced the most charming of English biogra phies. It is certainly, however, an almost unexampled instance of hero worship that a man of gentle if not pa trician blood, of ample fortune and considerable literary culture, should devote the prime of his life to recording the minutest sayings and least dignified doings of Sam. Johnson; for Johnson, as is well understood, was of plebe-
238
SA1MAGUHDI.
ian extraction slovenly in his habits and not unfrequently coarse even to vulgarity.
Moreover, on all occasions he made Boswell the butt of his ridicule or spleen as might best serve his turn. In spite of this Boswell seems to have never faltered in his attachment, deeming it no small honor even to loosen the shoe-latchet of his idol.
We can forgive Johnson his extreme Toryism; we can condone his corruption of our vernacular by words of "learned length and thundering sound;" we can even pardon his supercilious contempt for poor Goldsmith, but we cannot excuse his atrabilious sneers and scoffs at poor Boswell. These were cruel if not cowardly.
Johnson, however, merits the highest praise for assert ing his independence of patronage, preferring to drudge for Cave, his publisher, for the merest pittance rather than dance attendance on any British Maecenas what ever. This was a " new departure" in literature, and while authorship has not been a gainful craft under the present regime, yet it has lost nothing in that respect since the days that Otway went supperless to his lodg ings in a garret and Butler was indebted to charity for a Christian burial.
DA. BLEDSOE, in one of the numbers of the Southern Review, has a very able and exhaustive article on the great revi\al movement under the leadership of Messrs. Moody and Sankey. Without approving all that is said or done by either of them he nevertheless gives the movement itself his hearty indorsement. He is partic ularly severe on sundry small divines who have vent ured to criticise the manner of Moody and the music of
SALMAGtrtrbt.
239
Sankey. His rebukes are timely and well-deserved. Ha says that a precocious school-girl has capped the climax by asserting that " Moodya grammar is awful bad."
MOST geologists, and not a few eminent and orthodox divines, question the literal universality of the Noachian deluge. As a theological question it is of as little im portance as that other question of the antiquity of man. Whether man has existed six thousand years, as is prob able in regard to the Adamic race, or forty thousand, as some of the prognathous tribes are supposed to have ex isted, is a matter that does not affect in the slightest de gree the inspiration of the Holy Scriptures.
But while the extent of the deluge may be debated the fact itself is incontrovertibly established. Aside from the testimony of Moses we have the testimony of tradi tion as embodied in the mythologies of the East. Every college-boy is familiar with the story of Deucalion, the Greek Noah, and his safe landing on a mountain of Thessaly. So likewise the inscriptions found at Nineveh and on the Egyptian tombs at Thebee and Memphis corrob orate the Scriptural narrative.
Nor is there anything improbable in the statement in Genesis. A change of a few hundred feet in the sealevel would overwhelm the American continent with the waves of the Atlantic. There is now a grSdual subsi dence of the coast of Greenland and of some northern portions of Europe which in a few thousand years would bring about a flood as fearful as that recorded in the Bible. It is gratifying to the Christian to know that the researches of science have been and will ever be helpful
240
SALMAGUNDI.
to Christianity. Scientific discoveries may sometimes clash with particular interpretations of the sacred writ ings, but true science and the Bible will always be in
harmony, for what after all is the outspread volume of the universe but the unwritten revelation of the majesty and mercy of God ?
THE "Man in the Iron Mask" is not a greater mystery than the author of the "Junius Letters." A half-score of volumes have been devoted to this knotty problem. Re views and magazines have likewise continued to "embroil the fray," and after well-nigh a century of disputation the question is unsettled. Of all the theories which have been propounded that which attributes them to Sir Phil ip Francis is by far the most plausible. The manner in which Mr. Stephens disposes of this hypothesis is hardly creditable to his scholarship or sagacity at other times and on other questions so admirable.
Macaulay, who had access to all the sources of in formation, has shown that the evidences, intrinsic and extrinsic, point unmistakably to Francis. Whoever Junius may have been he was a providential necessity in that age of official villainy and political corruption. With some of his utterances we have no sympathy. His scurrilous abuse of Mansfield is as little to our liking as his fulsome praises of John Wilkes, a pot-house patriot who owed his celebrity, not to his real merits, but to the blunders of a House of Commons hardly as decent as the Rump Parliament that brave old Cromwell dispersed in the name of God and the people of England.
SALMAGUNDI.
.
241
Bnt after all reasonable deductions on this score Junius did a work for England greater than Marlborougb at Blenheim or Nelson at Trafalgar. A real Junius, not a tame copyist, would be a. signal blessing to America in these "evil days" when "impious men bear sway." What a national infamy in this centennial year is the trickery of a Babcock and the unblushing bribery of Belknap; and yet more the struggle for position and the greed for money, in the pursuit of which womans virtue and mans honor are alike compromised.
Let the pulpit and the press, those mighty engines of civilization, denounce these vices in unmeasured terms.
OUR of the most instructive books for general reading is "Smellies Philosophy of Natural History." We have not seen it for many years; it may be out of print, but we would advise all who have a fancy for the curious lore that pertains to birds and beasts to procure it and read it closely. One of the most entertaining topics of the volume is "Animal Instinct." This has been improperly called the reason of brutes, implying that the lower ani mals never perform the process of reasoning.
There can be no doubt, however, that not only the an thropoid apes, but the dog, horse and elephant all reason within narrow limits as certainly as Socrates or Newton. Instinct is something apart from reason and belongs alike to man and the inferior animals. It is the con
servative faculty of the individual and the species. But for its existence and operation the earth, air and sea would be speedily depopulated. Some of the most in teresting illustrations of instinct are seen amongst the
242 .
SALMAGUNDI.
lower animals. The "busy bee of the nursery-hymn builds its waxen cells in faultless hexagons; the bearer constructs his dam with wonderful skill and accuracy; the spider weaves its web in concentric circles, and yet the bee knows nothing of geometry, the beaver has no skill in hydraulics, and the spider has not the faintest conception of Hogarths line of beauty. In these and a hundred other instances we recognize a merciful provi dence a providence that teaches the prudent ant to provide its meat in the summer, and guides the migra tory stork in its pathless flight through "the illimitable void" from the reedy marshes of the tropics to the shel tered coves and inlets of Hudson Bay. "Marvelous are thy works, Lord God Almighty! Just and true are thy ways, oh! thou King of Saints!"
THE most sincere and unselfish advocate of commun ism in modern time? was St. Simon, and its most learned champion was Charles Fourier both Frenchmen of the last and present century whilst the most practical friends of the movement were the Owens, father and son the latter a Western politician of much eminence. These and their less influential successors are accustomed to claim the first Christian church at Jerusalem as a Scriptural precedent for the social system they labored to inaugurate. Infidels, as most of them have been, they have yet exhibited no little anxiety to secure the sanc tion of Holy Writ for their revolutionary projects. Knowing full well that the Bible was authoritative on all questions with the masses of Christendom, they right-
SALMAGUNDI.
243
ly concluded that a Scriptural argument would be the moat effective weapon they could wield. We need hardly insist, however, that their whole reasoning on this sub ject is founded on a palpable perversion of the sacred records. The first disciples at Jerusalem did indeed have all things in common. The richest of them, like Barna bas, brought their fortunes and laid them at the feet of the apostles. But it must be remembered that they did this, not in obedience to a divine commandment, but rath er in obedience to the prompting of their new-born zeal for the church and their ardent affection for one another. Their conduct was in nowise constrained, or else it would have lacked that element of spontaneity which imparted to it its chief beauty and value. It may be that the sudden overthrow of Annanias and Sapphira interfered in some degree with the freedom of their ac tions ; but Peter, the head of the apostolic college, was careful to emphasize the fact that these guilty parties were smitten with instant death not for withholding
their landed estate from the common treasury, but for violating their voluntary pledges and so lying to the Holy Ghost. Their crime was sacrilege and hypocrisy and it was severely and deservedly punished.
The community of goods in the mother church of Christendom was a provisional arrangement to suit an emergency. It was adapted to the "present distress" which then existed at Jerusalem and it was discontinued after a very few years. Nothing analogous to it was ever contemplated or proposed either at Antioch, at Alexan dria or elsewhere.
The rights of property amongst the early Christians were regulated as in other cases by the civil law of the
244
SALMAGUNDI.
Roman empire. The frequent precepts found in the gospels and epistles were intended to guard the sanctity of private estates from unlawful invasion.
So much for the boasted Scriptural argument in sup port of the various forms of communism. Its advocates, however, defend it on other grounds some of them ex ceedingly plausible and well-calculated to mislead.
They justly argue that selfishness is predominant in our existing social organization, and that the progress of the race is hindered by vicious social regulations that ought to be at once and forever abolished. There are in fact two forces working in the bosom of society, and un fortunately for the happiness of mankind they are often in deadly antagonism. Popes oft-quoted line,
"Self-love and social are the same,"
is not merely a paradox it is a fallacy as applied to any social organization as yet realized on the earth.
It would be far easier to establish an elective affinity between oil and water than to establish the identity of these two principles. A period may arrive in the his tory of our race when these opposing forces may be beau tifully adjusted; but it will be in that golden age of which Virgil sings and Isaiah prophesies -when the lion and the lamb ahall lie down together, and the leopard shall eat straw like an ox, and the weaned child shall lay its hand with impunity on the cockatrices den. Accord ing to our chronology that happy time,-aHhough coming, is yet distant by some hundreds of years. Meanwhile we are compelled to legislate and plan with reference to a widely different condition of affairs. The true social philosophy consists in recognizing both of these forces and allowing for their joint operation and effect in any scheme
BAlMAGtTNDI.
2-45
of government or any form of social polity we may adopt. The communist in most instances seeks to make soci
ety a joint-stock company or a co-operative association. All are to labor for the common good and every one is to have a just share in the products of the skill and toil of of the whole. There is no sufficient opportunity afforded in this scheme for self-development. The tendency of it is to make man a machine; so that society would present to the eye a uniformity of dullness as utterly unlike what God would have it be as a Dutch landscape is un like the swelling uplands and quiet vales of our own Virginia.
Not only so, but most communists are as fierce in their enmity to marriage as to the rights of property. They substitute for this holy estate something which they style "freeloveism," based on the natural affinities of the sexes. To say nothing of the multitude who would play fast and loose with the marriage relation in such a state of society, it is a sufficient reply that the experience of mankind condem ns this in novation. The family relation is the great bond of society and it is tne conservator of good morals. The Romans, whose valor conquered the world and whose wisdom governed it for centuries, ap preciated the importance of the family to the well-being of the commonwealth when they conferred by solemn enactment the jus Irium liberorum.
Whatever, therefore, may be the merits of a social system, if it makes no provision for the domestic vir tues if it fails to cultivate the home-feeling it is, to say the least of it, a miserable abortion.
And yet, as we intimated in the beginning, there are evils in our present social organisation which ought to
246
be corrected. Whether these are to be cured by any plan of human devising is no longer problematical. They may be modified by wise legislation they may be lessened by the general diffusion of knowledge but they will never be utterly rooted out except by a super natural agency. That agency is revealed in the gospel; and in proportion as this conviction is carried out in our social economy, in the same ratio will the happiness of the individual citizen and the prosperity of the nation at large be enhanced.
It may be alleged, we know, that this argument ap pertains to the domain of theology and is out of place in a philosophical or political discussion. We deny both the premises and the conclusion. There can be no pos sible advancement of society apart from the elevation of the individual. The great blunder of Fourier and Owen was in overlooking this truth. Because of this all their settlements in Europe and America have fallen into de cay and ended in disastrous failure. Christianity begins with the individual, and then not with his outward but his interior life. It lays its restraining hand on the affections of the heart and the thoughts of the mind which are the springs of action. In this way it is ful filling its glorious mission; and while, therefore, it is a word of salvation to the perishing sinner it is a word of hope to the fallen race. Its. crowning glory will be the coming apocalypse of a new heaven and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness.