The Reverend Mr. Fairweather breathed with more freedom. The Doctor saw into his soul through those awful spectacles of his,—into it and beyond it, as one sees through a thin fog. But it was with a real human kindness, after all. He felt like a child before a strong man; but the strong man looked on him with a father's indulgence. Many and many a time, when he had come desponding and bemoaning himself on account of some contemptible bodily infirmity, the old Doctor had looked at him through his spectacles, listened patiently while he told his ailments, and then, in his large parental way, given him a few words of wholesome advice, and cheered him up so that he went off with a light heart, thinking that the heaven he was so much afraid of was not so very near, after all. It was the same thing now. He felt, as feeble natures always do in the presence of strong ones, overmastered, circumscribed, shut in, humbled; but yet it seemed as if the old Doctor did not despise him any more for what he considered weakness of mind than he used to despise him when he complained of his nerves or his digestion.
Men who seeintotheir neighbors are very apt to be contemptuous; but men who seethroughthem find something lying behind every human soul which it is not for them to sit in judgment on, or to attempt to sneer out of the order of God's manifold universe.
Little as the Doctor had said out of which comfort could be extracted, his genial manner had something grateful in it. A film of gratitude came over the poor man's cloudy, uncertain eye, and a look of tremulous relief and satisfaction played about his weak mouth. He was gravitating to the majority, where he hoped to find "rest"; but he was dreadfully sensitive to the opinions of the minority he was on the point of leaving.
The old Doctor saw plainly enough what was going on in his mind.
"I sha'n't quarrel with you," he said,—"you know that very well; but you mustn't quarrel with me, if I talk honestly with you; it isn't everybody that will take the trouble. You flatter yourself that you will make a good many enemies by leaving your old communion. Not so many as you think. This is the way the common sort of people will talk:—'You have got your ticket to the feast of life, as much as any other man that ever lived. Protestantism says,—'Help yourself; here's a clean plate, and a knife and fork of your own, and plenty of fresh dishes to choose from.' The Old Mother says,—'Give me your ticket, my dear, and I'll feed you with my gold spoon off these beautiful old wooden trenchers. Such nice bits as those good old gentlemen have left for you!' There is no quarrelling with a man who prefers broken victuals.' That's what the rougher sort will say; and then, where one scolds, ten will laugh. But, mind you, I don't either scold or laugh. I don't feel sure that you could very well have helped doing what you will soon do. You know you were never easy without some medicine to take when you felt ill in body. I'm afraid I've given you trashy stuff sometimes, just to keep you quiet. Now, let me tell you, there is just the same difference in spiritual patients that there is in bodily ones. One set believes in wholesome ways of living, and another must have a great list of specifics for all the soul's complaints. You belong with the last, and got accidentally shuffled in with the others."
The minister smiled faintly, but did not reply. Of course, he considered that way of talking as the result of the Doctor's professional training. It would not have been worth while to take offence at his plain speech, if he had been so disposed; for he might wish to consult him the next day as to "what he should take" for his dyspepsia or his neuralgia.
He left the Doctor with a hollow feeling at the bottom of his soul, as if a good piece of his manhood had been scooped out of him. His hollow aching did not explain itself in words, but it grumbled and worried down among the unshaped thoughts which lie beneath them. He knew that he had been trying to reason himself out of his birthright of reason. He knew that the inspiration which gave him understanding was losing its throne in his intelligence, and the almighty Majority-Vote was proclaiming itself in its stead. He knew that the great primal truths, which each successive revelation only confirmed, were fast becoming hidden beneath the mechanical forms of thought, which, as with all new converts, engrossed so large a share of his attention. The "peace," the "rest," which he had purchased, were dearly bought to one who had been trained to the arms of thought, and whose noble privilege it might have been to live in perpetual warfare for the advancing truth which the next generation will claim as the legacy of the present.
The Reverend Mr. Fairweather was getting careless about his sermons. He must wait the fitting moment to declare himself; and in the mean time he was preaching to heretics. It did not matter much what he preached, under such circumstances. He pulled out two old yellow sermons from a heap of such, and began looking over that for the forenoon. Naturally enough, he fell asleep over it, and, sleeping, he began to dream.
He dreamed that he was under the high arches of an old cathedral amidst a throng of worshippers. The light streamed in through vast windows, dark with the purple robes of royal saints, or blazing with yellow glories around the heads of earthly martyrs and heavenly messengers. The billows of the great organ roared among the clustered columns, as the sea breaks amidst the basaltic pillars which crowd the great cavern of the Hebrides. The voice of the alternate choirs of singing boys swung back and forward, as the silver censer swung in the hands of the white-robed children. The sweet cloud of incense rose in soft, fleecy mists, full of penetrating suggestions of the East and its perfumed altars. The knees of twenty generations had worn the pavement; their feet had hollowed the steps; their shoulders had smoothed the columns. Dead bishops and abbots lay under the marble of the floor in their crumbled vestments; dead warriors, in their rusted armor, were stretched beneath their sculptured effigies. And all at once all the buried multitudes who had ever worshipped there came thronging in through the aisles. They choked every space, they swarmed into all the chapels, they hung in clusters over the parapets of the galleries, they clung to the images in every niche, and still the vast throng kept flowing and flowing in, until the living were lost in the rush of the returning dead who had reclaimed their own. Then, as his dream became more fantastic, the huge cathedral itself seemed to change into the wreck of some mighty antediluvian vertebrate; its flying-buttresses arched round like ribs, its piers shaped themselves into limbs, and the sound of the organ-blast changed to the wind whistling through its thousand-jointed skeleton.
And presently the sound lulled, and softened and softened, until it was as the murmur of a distant swarm of bees. A procession of monks wound along through an old street, chanting, as they walked, In his dream he glided in among them and bore his part in the burden of their song. He entered with the long train under a low arch, and presently he was kneeling in a narrow cell before an image of the Blessed Maiden holding the Divine Child in her arms, and his lips seemed to whisper,—
Sancta Maria, ora pro nobis!
He turned to the crucifix, and, prostrating himself before the spare, agonizing shape of the Holy Sufferer, fell into a long passion of tears and broken prayers. He rose and flung himself, worn-out, upon his hard pallet, and, seeming to slumber, dreamed again within his dream. Once more in the vast cathedral, with throngs of the living choking its aisles, amidst jubilant peals from the cavernous depths of the great organ, and choral melodies ringing from the fluty throats of the singing boys. A day of great rejoicings,—for a prelate was to be consecrated, and the bones of the mighty skeleton-minster were shaking with anthems, as if there were life of its own within its buttressed ribs. He looked down at his feet; the folds of the sacred robe were flowing about them: he put his hand to his head; it was crowned with the holy mitre. A long sigh, as of perfect content in the consummation of all his earthly hopes, breathed through the dreamer's lips, and shaped itself, as it escaped, into the blissful murmur—
Ego sum Episcopus!
One grinning gargoyle looked in from beneath the roof through an opening in a stained window. It was the face of a mocking fiend, such as the old builders loved to place under the eaves to spout the rain through their open mouths. It looked at him, as he sat in his mitred chair, with its hideous grin growing broader and broader, until it laughed out aloud,— such a hard, stony, mocking laugh, that he awoke out of his second dream through his first into his common consciousness, and shivered, as he turned to the two yellow sermons which he was to pick over and weed of the little thought they might contain, for the next day's service.
The Reverend Chauncy Fairweather was too much taken up with his own bodily and spiritual condition to be deeply mindful of others. He carried the note requesting the prayers of the congregation in his pocket all day; and the soul in distress, which a single tender petition might have soothed, and perhaps have saved from despair or fatal error, found no voice in the temple to plead for it before the Throne of Mercy!
* * * * *
If, as is believed by many statisticians, the census of 1860 should show that the centre of population and power in these United States is steadily advancing westward, and that by the year 1880 it will be at some point on the Great Lakes, then, certainly, the history and resources of those inland seas cannot fail to be interesting to the general reader.
It happens that the Indian traditions of this region possess more of the coherence of history than those of other parts of the country; and, as preserved by Schoolcraft and embalmed in the poetry of Longfellow, they show well enough by the side of the early traditions of other primitive peoples. The conquest of the Lake-shore region by San-ge-man and his Ojibwas may be as trustworthy a tale as the exploits of Romulus and Remus; and when we emerge into the light of European record, we find the Jesuit missionaries preaching the gospel at St. Ignace and the Sault St. Mary almost as early as the so-called Cavaliers were planting tobacco at Jamestown, or the Pilgrims smiting the heathen at Plymouth.
The first white persons who penetrated into the Upper Lake region were two young fur-traders who left Montreal for that purpose in 1654, and remained two years among the Indian tribes on those shores. We are not informed of the details of this journey; but it appears that they returned with information relative to Lake Superior, and perhaps Lake Michigan and Green Bay; for in 1659 the fur-traders are known to have extended their traffic to that bay. The first settlement of Wisconsin may be dated in 1665, when Claude Allouez established a mission at La Pointe on Lake Superior. This was before Philadelphia was founded by William Penn.
The first account we have of a voyage on Lake Michigan was by Nicholas Perrot, who, accompanied by some Pottawattomies, passed from Green Bay to Chicago, in 1670. Two years afterwards the same voyage was undertaken by Allouez and Dablon. They stopped at the mouth of the Milwaukie River, then occupied by Kickapoo Indians. In 1673, Fathers Marquette and Joliet went from Green Bay to the Neenah or Fox River, and, descending the Wisconsin, discovered the Mississippi on the 17th of June.
In 1679, La Salle made his voyage up the Lakes in the Griffin, the first vessel built above the Falls of Niagara. This vessel, the pioneer of the great fleet which now whitens those waters, was about sixty tons burden, and carried five guns and thirty-four men. La Salle loaded her at Green Bay with a cargo of furs and skins, and she sailed on the 18th of September for Niagara, where she never arrived, nor was any news of her ever received. The Griffin, with her cargo, was valued at sixty thousand livres. Thus the want of harbors on Lake Michigan began to be felt nearly two hundred years ago; and the fate of the Griffin was only a precursor of many similar calamities since.
About 1760 was the end of what may be called the religious epoch in the history of the Northwest, when the dominion passed from French to English hands, and the military period commenced. This lasted about fifty years, during which time the combatants were French, English, Indians, and Americans. Much blood was shed in desultory warfare. Detroit, Mackinac, and other posts were taken and retaken; in fact, there never was peace in that land till after the naval victory of Perry in 1813, when the command of the Lakes passed to the Americans.
Our military and naval expeditions in the Northwest were, however, remarkably unfortunate in that war. For want of a naval force on the Lakes,—a necessity which had been pointed out to the Government by William Hull, then Governor of the Northwest Territory, before the declaration of war,—the posts of Chicago, Mackinac, and Detroit were taken by the British and their Indian allies in 1812, and kept by them till the next year, when the energy and perseverance of Perry and his Rhode-Islanders created a fleet upon Lake Erie, and swept the British vessels from that quarter.
In 1814, an American squadron of six brigs and schooners sailed from Lake Erie to retake the post of Mackinac. Colonel Croghan commanded the troops, which were landed under cover of the guns of the squadron. They were attacked in the woods on the back of the island by the British and Indians. Major Holmes, who led the Americans, was killed, and his men retreated in confusion to the ships, which took them on board and sailed away. The attack having failed, Captain Sinclair, who commanded the squadron, returned to Lake Erie with the brigs Niagara and Saint Lawrence and the schooners Caledonia and Ariel, leaving the Scorpion and Tigress to operate against the enemy on Lake Huron. The British schooner Nancy, being at Nattawasaga, under the protection of a block-house mounting two twenty-four pounders, the American schooners proceeded to attack her, and, after a short action, destroyed the vessel and the block-house, the British escaping in their boats. Soon, after, the American schooners returned to the neighborhood of St. Joseph, where they were seen by some Indians, who reported at Mackinac that they were about five leagues apart. An expedition was directly fitted out to capture them; and Major Dickson, commander of the post, and Lieutenant Worsley, who had retreated from the block-house above-mentioned, started with one hundred men in four boats.
On the third of September, at six o'clock, P.M., they found the Tigress at anchor, and came within one hundred yards unobserved, when a smart fire of grape and musketry was opened upon them. They advanced, and, two boats hoarding her on each side, she was carried, after a short contest, in which the British lost seven men, killed and wounded, and the Americans, out of a crew of twenty-eight, had three killed and two wounded. The prisoners having been sent to Mackinac, the Tigress was got under way the next day, still keeping the American colors flying, and proceeded in search of the Scorpion. On the fifth, they came in sight of her, and, as those on board knew nothing of what had happened to the Tigress, were suffered to approach within two miles. At daylight the next morning, the Tigress was again got under way, and running alongside her late consort, the British carried her by boarding, after a short scuffle, in which four of the Scorpion's crew were killed and wounded, and one of the British wounded. The schooners were fine new vessels, of one hundred tons burden each, and had on board large quantities of arms and ammunition.
This account of the earliest naval action on the Upper Lakes is taken from a British source; for, as may well be imagined, it has never found its way into any American Naval History or Fourth of July Oration.
It appears as if the American Government, during the War of 1812, either from ignorance of the value of the Northwest, or, as some think, from a fear lest it might, if conquered, become free territory, were very inefficient in their efforts in that direction. As, however, the same imbecility was displayed in other quarters, for example, at Washington, where they allowed the capital to be taken by a handful of British troops, and as the Yankee who was in the fight said, "They didn't seem to take no interest," we must acquit the administration of Mr. Madison of anything worse than going to war without adequate preparation.
After the War of 1812 was over, the Northwestern Territory was held by our Government by a kind of military occupation for some twenty years, when, the Indian title having been extinguished, white settlers began to occupy Northern Illinois and Wisconsin. The Sacs and Foxes, having repented of their surrender of this fair country, reentered it in 1832, but after a short contest were expelled and driven westward, and the working period commenced. Large cities have sprung up on the Lake shores, and the broad expanse of Lake Michigan is now whitened by a thousand sails; and even the rocky cliffs of Superior echo the whistle of the propeller, instead of the scream of the bald eagle.
Perhaps the ship-owners of the Atlantic cities are hardly aware of the growth of this Lake commerce within the last twenty years, and that it is now nearly equal in amount to the whole foreign trade of the country. Before entering on the statistics of this trade, however, we will give a brief description of the Lakes themselves.[A]
[Footnote A: We are indebted for our facts and details to Lapham'sWisconsin, Foster and Whitney'sReport, Agassiz'sLake Superior, and works of similar character.]
Lake Superior, the largest expanse of fresh water on the globe, is 355 miles in length, 160 in breadth, with a depth of 900 feet. It contains 32,000 square miles of surface, which is elevated 627 feet above the surface of the ocean, while portions of its bed are several hundred feet below it. Its coast is 1500 miles in extent, with irregular, rocky shores, bold headlands, and deep bays. It contains numerous islands, one of which, Isle Royale, has an area of 230 square miles. The shores of this lake are rock-bound, sometimes rising into lofty cliffs and pinnacles, twelve or thirteen hundred feet high. Where the igneous rocks prevail, the coast is finely indented; where the sandstones abound, it is gently curved. Lake Superior occupies an immense depression, for the most part excavated out of the soft and yielding sandstone. Its configuration on the east and north has been determined by an irregular belt of granite, which forms a rim, effectually resisting the further action of its waters. The temperature of the water in summer is about 40°.
Lake Huron connects with Superior by the St. Mary's River, and is 260 miles long and 160 broad; its circumference is 1100 miles, its area 20,400. Georgian Bay, 170 miles long and 70 broad, forms the northeast portion, and lies within British jurisdiction. Saginaw, a deep and wide-mouthed bay, is the principal indentation on the western coast. The rim of this lake is composed mostly of detrital rocks, which are rarely exposed. In the northern portion of the lake, the trap-rocks on the Canada side intersect the coast. The waters are as deep as those of Superior, and possess great transparency. They rarely attain a higher temperature than 50°, and, like those of Superior, have the deep-blue tint of the ocean. The northern coast of Lake Huron abounds in clusters of islands; Captain Bayfield is said to have landed on 10,000 of them, and to have estimated their number at 30,000.
Lake Michigan, called by the early voyagers Lac des Illinois, is next in size to Superior, being 320 miles in length and 100 in breadth, with a circumference, including Green Bay, of 1300 miles. It contains 22,000 miles of surface, with a depth of 900 feet in the deeper parts, though near the shore it grows gradually shoal. The rocks which compose its rim are of a sedimentary nature, and afford few indentations for harbors. The shores are low, and lined in many places with immense sand-banks. Green Bay, or Bale des Puans of the Jesuits, on the west coast, is 100 miles long and 20 broad. Great and Little Traverse Bays occur on the eastern coast, and Great and Little Bays des Noquets on the northern. One cluster of islands is found at the outlet of the main lake, and another at that of Green Bay. Lake Michigan is the only one of the Great Lakes which lies wholly within American jurisdiction.
Lake Erie is 240 miles in length, 60 in breadth, and contains an area of 9,600 square miles. It lies 565 feet above the sea-level, and is the shallowest of all the Lakes, being only 84 feet in mean depth. Its waters, in consequence, have the green color of the sea in shallow bays and harbors. It is connected with Lake Huron by the St. Clair River and Lake, a shallow expanse of water, twenty miles wide, and by Detroit River.
Lake Ontario is 180 miles in length and 55 in breadth, containing 6,300 square miles. It is connected with Lake Erie by the Niagara River, and also by the Welland Canal, which admits the passage of vessels of large burden. This lake lies at a lower level than the others, being only 230 feet above the sea. It is, however, about 500 feet in depth.
The whole area of these lakes is over 90,000 miles, and the area of land drained by them, 335,515 miles.
The presence of this great body of water modifies the range of the thermometer, lessening the intensity of the cold in winter and of the heat in summer, and gives a temperature more uniform on the Lake coasts than is found in a corresponding latitude on the Mississippi.
The difference between the temperature of the air and that of the Lakes gives rise to a variety of optical illusions, known asmirage.Mountains are seen with inverted cones; headlands project from the shore where none exist; islands clothed with verdure, or girt with cliffs, rise up from the bosom of the lake, remain awhile, and disappear. Hardly a day passes, during the summer, without a more or less striking exhibition of this kind. The same phenomena of rapidly varying refraction may often be witnessed at sunset, when the sun, sinking into the lake, undergoes a most striking series of changes. At one moment it is drawn out into a pear-like shape; the next it takes an elliptical form; and just as it disappears, the upper part of its disk becomes elongated into a ribbon of light, which seems to float for a moment upon the surface of the water.
Thunder-storms of great violence are not unusual, and sudden gusts of wind spring up on the Lakes, and those who navigate them pass sometimes instantaneously from a current of air blowing briskly in one direction into one blowing with equal force from the opposite quarter. The lower sails of a vessel are sometimes becalmed, while a smart breeze fills the upper.
The storms which agitate the Lakes, though less violent than the typhoons of the Indian Ocean or the hurricanes of the Atlantic, are still very dangerous to mariners; and, owing to the want of sea-room, and the scarcity of good harbors, shipwrecks are but too common, and frequently attended with much loss of life. A short, ugly sea gets up very quickly after the wind begins to blow hard, and subsides with equal celerity when the wind goes down.
The fluctuations in the level of the waters of these lakes have attracted much attention among scientific observers; and as early as 1670, Father Dablon, in his "Relations," says,—"As to the tides, it is difficult to lay down any correct rule. At one time we have found the motion of the waters to be regular, and at others extremely fluctuating. We have noticed, however, that at full moon and new moon the tides change once a day for eight or ten days, while during the remainder of the time there is hardly any change perceptible…. Three things are remarkable: 1st. That the currents set almost constantly in one direction, namely, towards the Lake of the Illinois, [Michigan,] which does not prevent their ordinary rise and fall; 2d. That they almost invariably setagainstthe wind,—sometimes with as much force as the tides at Quebec,—and we have seen ice moving against the wind as fast as boats under full sail; 3d. That among these currents we have discovered the emission of a quantity of water which seems to spring up from the bottom."
Father Dablon is of opinion that the waters of Lake Superior enter into the Straits by a subterranean passage. This theory, he says, is necessary to explain two things, namely: 1st. Without such a passage, it is impossible to say what becomes of the waters of Lake Superior. This vast lake has but one visible outlet, namely, the River of St. Mary; while it receives the waters of a large number of rivers, some of which are of greater dimensions than the St. Mary. What, then, becomes of the surplus water? 2d. The difficulty of explaining whence come the waters of Huron and Michigan. Very few rivers flow into these lakes, and their volume of water is such as to fortify the belief that it must be supplied through the subterranean river entering the Straits.
A large number of facts have been collected by Messrs. Foster and Whitney on the subject of these oscillations of the Lake level; and, in fact, these phenomena have been for a long time familiar to the residents on the Lake shores. They are generally attributed by scientific men to atmospheric disturbances, which, by increasing or diminishing the atmospheric pressure, produce a corresponding rise or fall in the water-level. These are the sudden and irregular fluctuations.
The gradual fluctuations are probably caused by the variable amount of rain which falls in the vast area of country drained by the Lakes. Thus, at Fort Brady, where the mean of five years' observations is 29.68 inches, the extremes are 36.92 and 22.44.
An idea has been long prevalent among the old residents, derived from the Indians, that there is a variation of the Lake surface which extends over a period of fourteen years,—that is, the Lakes rise for seven years, and fall for seven years. The records kept by accurate observers at various points on the Lakes for the last ten years do not seem to confirm this theory; but it has been well established by the recent observations of Colonel Graham, at both ends of Lake Michigan, that there is a semi-diurnal lunar tide on that lake of at least one third of a foot.
The evaporation from this great water-surface must be immense. It has been estimated at 11,800,000,000,000 cubic feet per annum; and in this way alone can we account for the difference between the volume of water which enters the Lakes and that which leaves them at the Falls of Niagara. Immense as is the quantity of water which pours over the Falls, it is small in comparison with the floods which combine to make up the Upper Lakes.
In the year 1832, about the close of the Black Hawk War, the tonnage of the Lakes was only 7,000 tons. In 1845 it had increased to 132,000 tons, and in 1858 it was 404,301 tons. Or, if we take Chicago, the chief city of the Lakes, we find that her imports and exports were,—
Imports. Exports. In 1836, $ 325,203 $ 1,000 " 1851, 24,410,400 5,395,471 " 1859, estimated 60,000,000 24,280,890
In the year 1858, there were on the Lakes,—
American vessels, 1,194. Tonnage, 399,443Canadian " 321. " 59,580
Value of American tonnage on theLakes, $16,000,000
Value of Lake commerce, importand exports, $600,000,000
Number of seamen employed, 13,000
Taking the island of Mackinac as the geographical centre of this navigation, we find the distances as follows:—
Miles.From Mackinac to head of Lake Superior 550" " " Chicago 350" " " East end of GeorgianBay 300" " " Buffalo 700" " " Gulf of St. Lawrence 1,600
Or ninety thousand miles of lakes and rivers, extending half across the continent.
The following table shows the amount of tonnage belonging to different cities in 1857:—
Tons. Tons.New York, 1,377,424 Charleston, 56,430Boston, 447,966 Detroit, 57,707Bath, 189,932 New Bedford, 152,799Baltimore, 191,618 New Orleans, 173,167Providence, 15,152 Cleveland, 63,361Philadelphia, 211,380 Chicago, 67,316Buffalo, 100,226 Milwaukie, 22,339
This shows that Chicago had in 1857, being then twenty-five years old, a larger tonnage than Charleston, the capital of the Palmetto Kingdom; and Milwaukie, still younger than Chicago, owned a larger amount of tonnage than the old and wealthy city of Providence.
In 1857, the export of grain from the Lake ports was sixty-five million bushels; in 1860, it was estimated at one hundred millions.
The coal-trade of Cleveland, in 1858, was 129,000 tons. A large amount was also shipped from Erie.
In 1858, the salt-trade of the Lakes amounted to more than six hundred thousand barrels, most of which was shipped from the port of Oswego on Lake Ontario.
The lumber received at Chicago in 1858 amounted to: Boards, 273,000,000 feet; shingles, 254,000,000; lath, 45,000,000: worth $2,442,500.
The present navigable outlets to this great commerce are three in number. First, the Erie Canal, from Buffalo to Albany, which, in its enlarged form, takes probably two-thirds of the productions of the Lake regions. Second, the River St. Lawrence, which, by means of the Welland Canal, secures a good share of the trade. Third, the Illinois and Michigan Canal, which conveys large quantities of lumber, salt, and other heavy goods to the Illinois River and the Mississippi. Of course, more or less produce is taken to the seaboard by the railroads; but, even if they could compete in price with water-carriage, it is evident that they are incapable of moving the surplus grain of the Northwest, as it now is. Another great navigable outlet to the Lakes is needed, so that vessels of the largest class may sail from the elevators of Chicago to the Liverpool docks without breaking bulk; and in reference to this, a survey has recently been made by Thomas C. Clarke, under the direction of the Canadian Government, for a ship-navigation between Montreal and Lake Huron, by way of the Ottawa River, Lake Nipissing, and French River. The Report shows that the cost of the work for vessels of one thousand tons burden would be twelve million dollars,—and that it would cut off a distance nearly equal to the whole length of Lakes Erie and Ontario, thus saving from three hundred and fifty to four hundred miles of navigation. In view of the fact that the navigation of St. Clair and Erie is the most troublesome and dangerous part of the voyage, this plan certainly deserves attention.
It is easy to see what a prolific nursery of seamen this Lake commerce must be, and how valuable a resource in a war with any great naval power. It is a resource which was wholly wanting to us in the War of 1812, when Commodore Perry had to bring his sailors from the seaboard with great difficulty and expense. In any future war with England, supposing such an unhappy event to take place, our great numerical superiority upon the Lakes in both vessels and sailors would not only insure our supremacy there, but also afford a large surplus of men for our ocean marine.
But it may be said that these men are only fresh-water sailors, after all, and are not to be relied upon for ocean-navigation. We know there used to be a notion prevailing, that neither Lake vessels nor Lake men would do for salt water; but in 1856, the schooner Dean Richmond took a cargo of wheat from Chicago to Liverpool, beating a large fleet of ocean craft from Quebec across the Atlantic, and otherwise behaving so well as to cause the sale of the vessel in England. This voyage encouraged others to try the experiment, and in 1859 from thirty to forty Lake vessels loaded for ocean ports.
That this trade will be very much increased there is no doubt, since it affords occupation for the Lake marine in the winter, when the Lake ports are closed by ice.
On the western shore of Lake Michigan there are large settlements of Norwegians and Swedes, many of whom follow the Lakes as fishermen and sailors. Descendants of the old Northern sea-kings, they are as hardy and adventurous here as in their Scandinavian homes, and run their vessels earlier and later in the season than other men are willing to do.
Science might have anticipated, however, that vessels built for fresh-water navigation, and loaded at Lake ports, would have an advantage on the ocean over those loaded on salt water. As is the density of the water of any sea, so is the displacement, or the sinking of the vessel therein. Therefore a vessel can carry a larger cargo in salt water than she can in fresh; and so, a Lake craft, loading at Chicago as deep as she can swim, will find herself, when she reaches the ocean, much more buoyant and lively. So, also, as, the more sail a vessel carries, the deeper she penetrates the water, it follows, that, the more dense the water, the more sail she can carry.
In proof of these statements, the "Merchants' Magazine" tells us, that English vessels bound up the Black Sea take smaller cargoes than those going to the Mediterranean, because, the former being much less salt than the latter, vessels are less buoyant thereon, and can carry less. This difference in buoyancy will probably be enough to offset the higher seas and rougher weather of the Atlantic.
Thus it appears that this great basin extends through so many degrees of latitude that its lakes and streams connect with the mineral regions and pine forests of the North, the wheat- and corn-lands and cattle-ranges of the Middle States, and the cotton-and sugar-plantations of the South.
The pine forests of Maine, it is well known, have been for some time failing, under the great demand upon them; and the only resource will soon be in those of Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Michigan, from which many cargoes have been already sent to the Atlantic ports. The amount of lumber made in these pineries in 1860 is estimated at twelve hundred million feet, worth between eight and nine millions of dollars. Most of this goes to the country west of the Lakes,—to Chicago, to St. Louis, and even down the river to New Orleans. Since railroads have penetrated the great prairies and made them habitable, the demand for pine lumber has greatly increased both for building and fencing; and it has been estimated, that, if every quarter-section of land in Iowa and Illinois were surrounded with a "three-board" fence, it would consume every foot of pine-timber in Michigan.
As to the copper and iron mines of Lake Superior, many dabblers in fancy stocks are but too well acquainted with them, and many burned fingers testify against those investments of capital. Still, the amount of mineral is immense, and the quality of the purest; and these mines will no doubt pay well, if worked with skill and capital.
Since 1845, one hundred and sixteen copper-mining companies have been organized in Michigan, under the general law of the State; and the amount of capital invested in them is estimated at six millions of dollars. Most of this is lost. On the other hand, the "Cliff" and "Minnesota" mines have returned over two millions of dollars in dividends. The latter is said to have paid, in 1858, a dividend of $300,000 on a paid-up capital of $66,000. Mining is a lottery, and this brilliant prize cannot conceal the fact that blanks fall to the lot of by far the more numerous part of the ticket-holders.
The opening of the Sault Canal has very much aided in developing the resources of the Upper Peninsula. In 1845, the Lake Superior fleet consisted of three schooners. In 1860, one hundred vessels passed through the canal, loaded with supplies for the mining country, and returned with cargoes of copper and iron ore and fish. The copper is smelted in Detroit, Cleveland, and Boston. In 1859, 3,000 tons were landed in Detroit, producing from 60 to 70 per cent of ingot copper, being among the purest ores in the world.
The iron ore of this region is also of extraordinary purity; and for all purposes where great strength and tenacity are required, it is unrivalled, as the following table, showing the relative strength, per square inch, as compared with other kinds of iron, will prove:—
Best Swedish …… 58.184English cable…… 59.105Essex Co., N.Y….. 59.962Lancaster, Pa…… 58.661Common English …. 30.000Best Russia ……. 76.069Lake Superior ….. 89.582
With such iron to be had of American manufacture, why should we use a rotten English article for car-wheels and boiler-plates, and so sacrifice the lives of thousands every year? Because, by an unwise legislation, the foreign article is made a little cheaper to the American consumer.
There are ten large forges in operation in Michigan, with a capital of over two millions of dollars; and the shipments of ore from Marquette in 1859 were over 75,000 tons. The country back of Marquette is full of mountains of iron ore, yielding 60 or 70 per cent, of pure metal, sufficient to supply the world for ages.
Traces have been found, through the whole of this copper-region, of a rude species of mining practised here long before it became known to the whites. The existing races of Indians had not even a tradition by whom it was done; and the excavations were unknown to them, until pointed out by the white man. Messrs. Foster and Whitney, in their survey of the copper-lands, found a pine-stump ten feet in circumference, which must have grown, flourished, and died since the mound of earth upon which it stood was thrown out. Mr. Knapp discovered, in 1848, a deserted mine or excavation, in which, under eighteen feet of rubbish, he found a mass of native copper weighing over six tons, resting on billets of oak supported by sleepers of the same material. The ancient miners had evidently raised the mass about five feet, and then abandoned it. Around it, among the accumulation of rubbish, were found a large number of stone hammers, and some copper chisels, but no utensils of iron. In some instances, explorers have been led to select valuable mining-sites by the abundance of these stone hammers found about the ground. Traces of tumuli have also been found in these regions, which would seem to indicate some connection between these ancient miners and the mound-builders of the Mississippi Valley,—especially as in those western mounds copper rings have frequently been found.
The economical value of the Lake fisheries is considerable. The total catch of white-fish, trout, and pickerel, the only kinds which are packed, to any extent, was estimated for 1859 at 110,000 barrels, worth about $880,000. These find a market through the States of Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois; besides a large quantity which are consumed in a fresh state, in the Lake cities and towns.
The White-Fish, (Coregonus Albus,) which is the most valuable of all, somewhat resembles the shad in appearance and taste. It is taken in seines and other nets,—never with the hook. The white-fish of Lake Superior are larger, fatter, and of finer flavor than any others. In this lake they have sometimes been taken weighing fifteen pounds. At the Sault they are taken in the rapids with dip-nets, by the Chippewas who live in that vicinity, and are of very fine flavor; those of Detroit River and the Straits of Mackinac are also very good; but when you go south, into Lake Erie or Michigan, the quality of the fish deteriorates. Few travellers ever taste a white-fish in perfection. As eaten upon hotel-tables at Buffalo or Chicago, it is a poor and tasteless fish. But, as found at the old French boarding-houses at Mackinac or the Sault, or, better still, cooked fresh from the icy waters on the rocky shores of Superior, it is, to our thinking, the best fish that swims,—better than the true salmon or brook-trout. The famous fish once so plenty in Otsego Lake, but now nearly extinct, was aCoregonus, and first cousin to this one of the Great Lakes.
So Sebago Lake, near Portland, some fifty years ago, boasted of a delicious red-fleshed trout, of large size, which has in these latter times, from netting or some other improper fishing, nearly or quite disappeared from those waters, leaving upon the palates of old anglers the remembrance of a flavor higher and richer than anything now remaining.
The Lake Trout, or Mackinac Salmon, is the largest of the family ofSalmonidoe, growing, it is said, sometimes to the weight of one hundred pounds. From twenty to thirty pounds is not uncommon, which is much larger than the average ofSalmo Salar, the true salmon. Truth compels us to add, however, that our salmon of the Lakes is inferior to his kinsman of the salt water; though, as in the case of the white-fish, he has been slandered by ignorant people, such as newspaper letter-writers, and the like. When taken from the clear, cold waters of Lake Huron or the Straits, and boiled as nearly alive as humanity will permit,Salmo Namaycushis nearly equal to the true salmon; but after two or three days in ice, "how stale, flat, and unprofitable!"
The Muskelunge (Esox Estor) is peculiar to this basin, and is the largest of the pickerels, weighing from ten to eighty pounds. It is a very handsome and game fish, and is the king, or tyrant, of the water, devouring without mercy everything smaller than itself; though its favorite food is the white-fish, which, perhaps, accounts for the superior flavor of this huge pike, which is one of the very best of fresh-water fishes.
Another excellent fish for the table is the Pike-Perch, (Lucio-Perca) or Glass-Eyed Pike, from his large, brilliant eyes. In Ohio, it is called the salmon, and by the Canadians the pickerel, while, with singular perversity, they persist in calling our pickerel a pike. It is a very firm, well-flavored fish, weighing from two to ten pounds, and is found in all the Great Lakes.
Professor Agassiz was the first to describe a large and valuable species of pike, which he found in Lake Superior,—the Northern Pike (Esox Boreus). This is the most common species of pike in the St. Lawrence basin, though usually confounded with the common pickerel (Esox Reticulatus). It grows to the size of fifteen or twenty pounds, and is a better table-fish thanEsox Reticulatus. It may be distinguished by the rows of spots sides, of a lighter color than the ground upon which they are arranged. It differs from the Muskelunge in having the lower jaw full of teeth; whereas in the Muskelunge the anterior half of the lower jaw is toothless.
All the streams which empty into Lake Superior, those of the north shore of Lake Huron, the west shore of Lake Michigan as far as Lake Winnebago, and all the streams of Lake Ontario, contain the Speckled Trout (Salmo Fontinalis); while they are not found in the streams on the southern coasts of Lake Michigan, or (so far as we know) in the streams of Lake Erie. What can determine this limitation of the range of the species? It cannot be latitude, since trout are found in Pennsylvania and Virginia. It is not longitude, since they occur in the head-waters of the Iowa rivers. So Professor Agassiz found that Lake Superior contained species which were not to be found in the other lakes, and that the other lakes, again, contained species which did not occur in Lake Superior. He says, in his work on Lake Superior,
"It is the great question of the unity or plurality of creations; it is not less the question of the origin of animals from single pairs or in large numbers; and, strange to say, a thorough examination of the fishes of Lake Superior, compared with those of the adjacent waters, is likely to throw more light upon such questions, than all traditions, however ancient, however near in point of time to the epoch of Creation itself."
In Lake Superior is likewise found that remarkable salmon, the Siscowet,—which is so fat and luscious as to be uneatable in a fresh state, and requires to be salted to render it fit for food. It commands a much higher price by the barrel than the lake-trout or white-fish, and is rarely to be met with out of the Lake cities.
In this basin is also found the Gar-Pike, (Lepidosteus,) a singular animal, which is the only living representative of the fishes that existed in the early ages of the earth's history,—and which, by its formidable array of teeth, its impenetrable armor, and its swiftness and voracity, gives us some idea of the terrible creatures which peopled the waters of that period.
We have thus hastily sketched the character and indicated the resources of that great Northwest, which, little more than fifty years ago a wilderness, is now a cluster of republics holding more than the balance of power in the Union. Idle speculatists, terrified by the violence of South Carolina, and believing that on her withdrawal the sky is to fall, are already predicting the dismemberment of East and West. But we think the chance of it is growing less, year by year. The two are now bound indissolubly together by lines of railroad, which, during a part of the year, are the most convenient outlet of the West toward the sea. Those States, just as they are arriving at a controlling influence in the affairs of a great and powerful nation, are hardly likely to seclude themselves from the rest of the world in what would, from its position, be at best an insignificant republic.
* * * * *
We do not believe that any government—no, not the Rump Parliament on its last legs—ever showed such pitiful inadequacy as our own during the past two months. Helpless beyond measure in all the duties of practical statesmanship, its members or their dependants have given proof of remarkable energy in the single department of peculation; and there, not content with the slow methods of the old-fashioned defaulter, who helped himself only to what there was, they have contrived to steal what there was going to be, and have peculated in advance by a kind of official post-obit. So thoroughly has the credit of the most solvent nation in the world been shaken, that an administration which still talks of paying a hundred millions for Cuba is unable to raise a loan of five millions for the current expenses of Government. Nor is this the worst; the moral bankruptcy at Washington is more complete and disastrous than the financial, and for the first time in our history the Executive is suspected of complicity in a treasonable plot against the very life of the nation.
Our material prosperity for nearly half a century has been so unparalleled, that the minds of men have become gradually more and more absorbed in matters of personal concern; and our institutions have practically worked so well and so easily, that we have learned to trust in our luck, and to take the permanence of our government for granted. The country has been divided on questions of temporary policy, and the people have been drilled to a wonderful discipline in the manoeuvres of party-tactics; but no crisis has arisen to force upon them a consideration of the fundamental principles of our system, or to arouse in them a sense of national unity, and make them feel that patriotism was anything more than a pleasing sentiment,—half Fourth of July and half Eighth of January,—a feeble reminiscence, rather than a living fact with a direct bearing on the national well-being. We have had long experience of that unmemorable felicity which consists in having no history, so far as history is made up of battles, revolutions, and changes of dynasty; but the present generation has never been called upon to learn that deepest lesson of politics which is taught by a common danger, throwing the people back on their national instincts, and superseding party-leaders, the peddlers of chicane, with men adequate to great occasions and dealers in destiny. Such a crisis is now upon us; and if the virtue of the people make up for the imbecility of the Executive, as we have little doubt that it will, if the public spirit of the whole country be awakened in time by the common peril, the present trial will leave the nation stronger than ever, and more alive to its privileges and the duties they imply. We shall have learned what is meant by a government of laws, and that allegiance to the sober will of the majority, concentrated in established forms and distributed by legitimate channels, is all that renders democracy possible, is its only conservative principle, the only thing that has made and can keep us a powerful nation instead of a brawling mob.
The theory, that the best government is that which governs least, seems to have been accepted literally by Mr. Buchanan, without considering the qualifications to which all general propositions are subject. His course of conduct has shown up its absurdity, in cases where prompt action is required, as effectually as Buckingham turned into ridicule the famous verse,—
"My wound is great, because it is so small," by instantly adding,—
"Then it were greater, were it none at all."
Mr. Buchanan seems to have thought, that, if to govern little was to govern well, then to do nothing was the perfection of policy. But there is a vast difference between letting well alone and allowing bad to become worse by a want of firmness at the outset. If Mr. Buchanan, instead of admitting the right of secession, had declared it to be, as it plainly is, rebellion, he would not only have received the unanimous support of the Free States, but would have given confidence to the loyal, reclaimed the wavering, and disconcerted the plotters of treason in the South.
Either we have no government at all, or else the very word implies the right, and therefore the duty, in the governing power, of protecting itself from destruction and its property from pillage. But for Mr. Buchanan's acquiescence, the doctrine of the right of secession would never for a moment have bewildered the popular mind. It is simply mob-law under a plausible name. Such a claim might have been fairly enough urged under the old Confederation; though even then it would have been summarily dealt with, in the case of a Tory colony, if the necessity had arisen. But the very fact that we have a National Constitution, and legal methods for testing, preventing, or punishing any infringement of its provisions, demonstrates the absurdity of any such assumption of right now. When the States surrendered their power to make war, did they make the single exception of the United States, and reserve the privilege of declaring war against them at any moment? If we are a congeries of mediaeval Italian republics, why should the General Government have expended immense sums in fortifying points whose strategic position is of continental rather than local consequence? Florida, after having cost us nobody knows how many millions of dollars and thousands of lives to render the holding of slaves possible to her, coolly proposes to withdraw herself from the Union and take with her one of the keys of the Mexican Gulf, on the plea that her slave-property is rendered insecure by the Union. Louisiana, which we bought and paid for to secure the mouth of the Mississippi, claims the right to make her soil French or Spanish, and to cork up the river again, whenever the whim may take her. The United States are not a German Confederation, but a unitary and indivisible nation, with a national life to protect, a national power to maintain, and national rights to defend against any and every assailant, at all hazards. Our national existence is all that gives value to American citizenship. Without the respect which nothing but our consolidated character could inspire, we might as well be citizens of the toy-republic of San Marino, for all the protection it would afford us. If our claim to a national existence was worth a seven-years' war to establish, it is worth maintaining at any cost; and it is daily becoming more apparent, that the people, so soon as they find that secession means anything serious, will not allow themselves to be juggled out of their rights, as members of one of the great powers of the earth, by a mere quibble of Constitutional interpretation.
We have been so much accustomed to the Buncombe style of oratory, to hearing men offer the pledge of their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor on the most trivial occasions, that we are apt to allow a great latitude in such matters, and only smile to think how small an advance any intelligent pawn-broker would be likely to make on securities of this description. The sporadic eloquence that breaks out over the country on the eve of election, and becomes a chronic disease in the two houses of Congress, has so accustomed us to dissociate words and things, and to look upon strong language as an evidence of weak purpose, that we attach no meaning whatever to declamation. Our Southern brethren have been especially given to these orgies of loquacity, and have so often solemnly assured us of their own courage, and of the warlike propensities, power, wealth, and general superiority of that part of the universe which is so happy as to be represented by them, that, whatever other useful impression they have made, they insure our never forgetting the proverb about the woman who talks of her virtue. South Carolina, in particular, if she has hitherto failed in the application of her enterprise to manufacturing purposes of a more practical kind, has always been able to match every yard of printed cotton from the North with a yard of printed fustian, the product of her own domestic industry. We have thought no harm of this, so long as no Act of Congress required the reading of the "Congressional Globe." We submitted to the general dispensation of long-windedness and short-meaningness as to any other providential visitation, endeavoring only to hold fast our faith in the divine government of the world in the midst of so much that was past understanding. But we lost sight of the metaphysical truth, that, though men may fail to convince others by a never so incessant repetition of sonorous nonsense, they nevertheless gradually persuade themselves, and impregnate their own minds and characters with a belief in fallacies that have been uncontradicted only because not worth contradiction. Thus our Southern politicians, by dint of continued reiteration, have persuaded themselves to accept their own flimsy assumptions for valid statistics, and at last actually believe themselves to be the enlightened gentlemen, and the people of the Free States the peddlers and sneaks they have so long been in the habit of fancying. They have argued themselves into a kind of vague faith that the wealth and power of the Republic are south of Mason and Dixon's line; and the Northern people have been slow in arriving at the conclusion that treasonable talk would lead to treasonable action, because they could not conceive that anybody should be so foolish as to think of rearing an independent frame of government on so visionary a basis. Moreover, the so often recurring necessity, incident to our system, of obtaining a favorable verdict from the people, has fostered in our public men the talents and habits of jury-lawyers at the expense of statesmanlike qualities; and the people have been so long wonted to look upon the utterances of popular leaders as intended for immediate effect and having no reference to principles, that there is scarcely a prominent man in the country so independent in position and so clear of any suspicion of personal or party motives, that they can put entire faith in what he says, and accept him either as the leader or the exponent of their thoughts and wishes. They have hardly been able to judge with certainty from the debates in Congress whether secession were a real danger, or only one of those political feints of which they have had such frequent experience.
Events have been gradually convincing them that the peril was actual and near. They begin to see how unwise, if nothing worse, has been the weak policy of the Executive in allowing men to play at Revolution till they learn to think the coarse reality as easy and pretty as the vaudeville they have been acting. They are fast coming to the conclusion that the list of grievances put forward by the secessionists is a sham and a pretence, the veil of a long-matured plot against republican institutions. And it is time the traitors of the South should know that the Free States are becoming every day more united in sentiment and more earnest in resolve, and that, so soon as they are thoroughly satisfied that secession is something more than empty bluster, a public spirit will be aroused that will be content with no half-measures, and which no Executive, however unwilling, can resist.
The country is weary of being cheated with plays upon words. The United States are a nation, and not a mass-meeting; theirs is a government, and not a caucus,—a government that was meant to be capable, and is capable, of something more than the helplessplease don'tof a village constable; they have executive and administrative officers that are not mere puppet-figures to go through the motions of an objectless activity, but arms and hands that become supple to do the will of the people so soon as that will becomes conscious and defines its purpose. It is time that we turned up our definitions in some more trustworthy dictionary than that of avowed disunionists and their more dangerous because more timid and cunning accomplices. Rebellion smells no sweeter because it is called Secession, nor does Order lose its divine precedence in human affairs because a knave may nickname it Coercion. Secession means chaos, and Coercion the exercise of legitimate authority. You cannot dignify the one nor degrade the other by any verbal charlatanism. The best testimony to the virtue of coercion is the fact that no wrongdoer ever thought well of it. The thief in jail, the mob-leader in the hands of the police, and the murderer on the drop will be unanimous in favor of this new heresy of the unconstitutionality of Constitutions, with its Newgate Calendar of confessors, martyrs, and saints. Falstaff's famous regiment would have volunteered to a man for its propagation or its defence. Henceforth let every unsuccessful litigant have the right to pronounce the verdict of a jury sectional, and to quash all proceedings and retain the property in controversy by seceding from the court-room. Let the planting of hemp be made penal, because it squints toward coercion. Why, the first great Secessionist would doubtless have preferred to divide Heaven peaceably, would have been willing to send Commissioners, must have thought Michael's proceedings injudicious, and could probably even now demonstrate the illegality of hell-fire to any five-year-old imp of average education and intelligence. What a fine world we should have, if we could only come quietly together in convention, and declare by unanimous resolution, or even by a two-thirds' vote, that edge-tools should hereafter cut everybody's fingers but his that played with them,—that, when two men ride on one horse, the hindmost shall always sit in front,—and that, when a man tries to thrust his partner out of bed and gets kicked out himself, he shall be deemed to have established his title to an equitable division, and the bed shall be thenceforth his as of right, without detriment to the other's privilege in the floor!
If secession be a right, then the moment of its exercise is wholly optional with those possessing it. Suppose, on the eve of a war with England, Michigan should vote herself out of the Union and declare herself annexed to Canada, what kind of a reception would her Commissioners be likely to meet in Washington, and what scruples should we feel about coercion? Or, to take a case precisely parallel to that of South Carolina,—suppose that Utah, after getting herself admitted to the Union, should resume her sovereignty, as it is pleasantly called, and block our path to the Pacific, under the pretence that she did not consider her institutions safe while the other States entertained such unscriptural prejudices against her special weakness in the patriarchal line. Is the only result of our admitting a Territory on Monday to be the giving it a right to steal itself and go out again on Tuesday? Or do only the original thirteen States possess this precious privilege of suicide? We shall need something like a Fugitive Slave Law for runaway republics, and must get a provision inserted in our treaties with foreign powers, that they shall help us catch any delinquent who may take refuge with them, as South Carolina has been trying to do with England and France. It does not matter to the argument, except so far as the good taste of the proceeding is concerned, at what particular time a State may make her territory foreign, thus opening one gate of our national defences and offering a bridge to invasion. The danger of the thing is in her making her territory foreign under any circumstances; and it is a danger which the Government must prevent, if only for self-preservation. Within the limits of the Constitution two sovereignties cannot coexist; and yet what practical odds does it make, if a State becomes sovereign by simply declaring herself so? The legitimate consequence of secession is, not that a State becomes sovereign, but that, so far as the General Government is concerned, she has outlawed herself, nullified her own existence as a State, and become an aggregate of riotous men who resist the execution of the laws.
We are told that coercion will be civil war; and so is a mob civil war, till it is put down. In the present case, the only coercion called for is the protection of the public property and the collection of the federal revenues. If it be necessary to send troops to do this, they will not be sectional, as it is the fashion nowadays to call people who insist on their own rights and the maintenance of the laws, but federal troops, representing the will and power of the whole Confederacy. A danger is always great so long as we are afraid of it; and mischief like that now gathering head in South Carolina may soon become a danger, if not swiftly dealt with. Mr. Buchanan seems altogether too wholesale a disciple of thelaissez-fairedoctrine, and has allowed activity in mischief the same immunity from interference which is true policy only in regard to enterprise wisely and profitably directed. He has been naturally reluctant to employ force, but has overlooked the difference between indecision and moderation, forgetting the lesson of all experience, that firmness in the beginning saves the need of force in the end, and that forcible measures applied too late may be made to seem violent ones, and thus excite a mistaken sympathy with the sufferers by their own misdoing. The feeling of the country has been unmistakably expressed in regard to Major Anderson, and that not merely because he showed prudence and courage, but because he was the first man holding a position of trust who did his duty to the nation. Public sentiment unmistakably demands, that, in the case of Anarchy vs. America, the cause of the defendant shall not be suffered to go by default. The proceedings in South Carolina, parodying the sublime initiative of our own Revolution with a Declaration of Independence that hangs the franchise of human nature on the kink of a hair, and substitutes for the visionary right of all men to the pursuit of happiness the more practical privilege of some men to pursue their own negro,—these proceedings would be merely ludicrous, were it not for the danger that the men engaged in them may so far commit themselves as to find the inconsistency of a return to prudence too galling, and to prefer the safety of their pride to that of their country.
It cannot be too distinctly stated or too often repeated, that the discontent of South Carolina is not one to be allayed by any concessions which the Free States can make with dignity or even safety. It is something more radical and of longer standing than distrust of the motives or probable policy of the Republican Party. It is neither more nor less than a disbelief in the very principles on which our government is founded. So long as they practically retained the government of the country, and could use its power and patronage to their own advantage, the plotters were willing to wait; but the moment they lost that control, by the breaking up of the Democratic Party, and saw that their chance of ever regaining it was hopeless, they declared openly the principles on which they have all along been secretly acting. Denying the constitutionality of special protection to any other species of property or branch of industry, and in 1832 threatening to break up the Union unless their theory of the Constitution in this respect were admitted, they went into the late Presidential contest with a claim for extraordinary protection to a certain kind of property already the only one endowed with special privileges and immunities. Defeated overwhelmingly before the people, they now question the right of the majority to govern, except on their terms, and threaten violence in the hope of extorting from the fears of the Free; States what they failed to obtain from their conscience and settled convictions of duty. Their quarrel is not with the Republican Party, but with the theory of Democracy.
The South Carolina politicians have hitherto shown themselves adroit managers, shrewd in detecting and profiting by the weaknesses of men; but their experience has not been of a kind to give them practical wisdom in that vastly more important part of government which depends for success on common sense and business-habits. The members of the South Carolina Convention have probably less knowledge of political economy than any single average Northern merchant whose success depends on an intimate knowledge of the laws of trade and the world-wide contingencies of profit and loss. Such a man would tell them, as the result of invariable experience, that the prosperity of no community was so precarious as that of one whose very existence was dependent on a single agricultural product. What divinity hedges cotton, that competition may not touch it,—that some disease, like that of the potato and the vine, may not bring it to beggary in a single year, and cure the overweening conceit of prosperity with the sharp medicine of Ireland and Madeira? But these South Carolina economists are better at vaporing than at calculation. They will find to their cost that the figure's of statistics have little mercy for the figures of speech, which are so powerful in raising enthusiasm and so helpless in raising money. The eating of one's own words, as they must do, sooner or later, is neither agreeable nor nutritious; but it is better to do it before there is nothing else left to eat. The secessionists are strong in declamation, but they are weak in the multiplication-table and the ledger. They have no notion of any sort of logical connection between treason and taxes. It is all very fine signing Declarations of Independence, and one may thus become a kind of panic-price hero for a week or two, even rising to the effigial martyrdom of the illustrated press; but these gentlemen seem to have forgotten, that, if their precious document should lead to anything serious, they have been signing promises to pay for the State of South Carolina to an enormous amount. It is probably far short of the truth to say that the taxes of an autonomous palmetto republic would be three times what they are now. To speak of nothing else, there must be a military force kept constantly on foot; and the ministers of King Cotton will find that the charge made by a standing army on the finances of the new empire is likely to be far more serious and damaging than can be compensated by the glory of a great many such "spirited charges" as that by which Colonel Pettigrew and his gallant rifles took Fort Pinckney, with its garrison of one engineer officer and its armament of no guns. Soldiers are the most costly of all toys or tools. The outgo for the army of the Pope, never amounting to ten thousand effective men, in the cheapest country in the world, has been half a million of dollars a month. Under the present system, it needs no argument to show that the Non-slaveholding States, with a free population considerably more than double that of the Slave-holding States, and with much more generally distributed wealth and opportunities of spending, pay far more than the proportion predicable on mere preponderance in numbers of the expenses of a government supported mainly by a tariff on importations. And it is not the burden of this difference merely that the new Cotton Republic must assume. They will need as large, probably a larger, army and navy than that of the present Union; as numerous a diplomatic establishment; a postal system whose large yearly deficit they must bear themselves; and they must assume the main charges of the Indian Bureau. If they adopt free trade, they will alienate the Border Slave-States, and even Louisiana; if a system of customs, they have cut themselves off from the chief consumers of foreign goods. One of the calculations of the Southern conspirators is to render the Free States tributary to their new republic, by adopting free trade and smuggling their imported goods across the border. But this is all moonshine; for, even if smuggling could not be prevented as easily as it now is from the British Provinces, how long would it be before the North would adapt its tariff to the new order of things? And thus thrown back upon direct taxation, how many years would it take to open the eyes of the poorer classes of Secessia to the hardship of their position and its causes? Their ignorance has been trifled with by men who cover treasonable designs with a pretence of local patriotism. Neither they nor their misleaders have any true conception of the people of the Free States, of those "white slaves" who in Massachusetts alone have a deposit in the Savings Banks whose yearly interest would pay seven times over the four hundred thousand dollars which South Carolina cannot raise.
But even if we leave other practical difficulties out of sight, what chance of stability is there for a confederacy whose very foundation is the principle that any member of it may withdraw at the first discontent? If they could contrive to establish a free-trade treaty with their chief customer, England, would she consent to gratify Louisiana with an exception in favor of sugar? Some of the leaders of the secession movement have already become aware of this difficulty, and accordingly propose the abolition of all State lines,—the first step toward a military despotism; for, if our present system have one advantage greater than another, it is the neutralization of numberless individual ambitions by adequate opportunities of provincial distinction. Even now the merits of the Napoleonic system are put forward by some of the theorists of Alabama and Mississippi, who doubtless have as good a stomach to be emperors as ever Bottom had to a bottle of hay, when his head was temporarily transformed to the likeness of theirs,—and who, were they subjects of the government that looks so nice across the Atlantic, would, ere this, have been on their way to Cayenne, a spot where such red-peppery temperaments would find themselves at home.
The absurdities with which the telegraphic column of the newspapers has been daily crowded, since the vagaries of South Carolina finally settled down into unmistakable insanity, would give us but a poor opinion of the general intelligence of the country, did we not know that they were due to the necessities of "Our Own Correspondent." At one time, it is Fort Sumter that is to be bombarded with floating batteries mounted on rafts behind a rampart of cotton-bales; at another, it is Mr. Barrett, Mayor of Washington, announcing his intention that the President-elect shall be inaugurated, or Mr. Buchanan declaring that he shall cheerfully assent to it. Indeed! and who gave them any choice in the matter? Yesterday, it was General Scott who would not abandon the flag which he had illustrated with the devotion of a lifetime; to-day, it is General Harney or Commodore Kearney who has concluded to be true to the country whose livery he has worn and whose bread he has eaten for half a century; to-morrow, it will be Ensign Stebbins who has been magnanimous enough not to throw up his commission. What are we to make of the extraordinary confusion of ideas which such things indicate? In what other country would it be considered creditable to an officer that he merely did not turn traitor at the first opportunity? There can be no doubt of the honor both of the army and navy, and of their loyalty to their country. They will do their duty, if we do ours in saving them a country to which they can be loyal.
We have been so long habituated to a kind of local independence in the management of our affairs, and the Central Government has fortunately had so little occasion for making itself felt at home and in the domestic concerns of the States, that the idea of its relation to us as a power, except for protection from without, has gradually become vague and alien to our ordinary habits of thought. We have so long heard the principle admitted, and seen it acted on with advantage to the general weal, that the people are sovereign in their own affairs, that we must recover our presence of mind before we see the fallacy of the assumption, that the people, or a bare majority of them, in a single State, can exercise their right of sovereignty as against the will of the nation legitimately expressed. When such a contingency arises, it is for a moment difficult to get rid of our habitual associations, and to feel that we are not a mere partnership, dissolvable whether by mutual consent or on the demand of one or more of its members, but a nation, which can never abdicate its right, and can never surrender it while virtue enough is left in the people to make it worth retaining. It would seem to be the will of God that from time to time the manhood of nations, like that of individuals, should be tried by great dangers or by great opportunities. If the manhood be there, it makes the great opportunity out of the great danger; if it be not there, then the great danger out of the great opportunity. The occasion is offered us now of trying whether a conscious nationality and a timely concentration of the popular will for its maintenance be possible in a democracy, or whether it is only despotisms that are capable of the sudden and selfish energy of protecting themselves from destruction.