O even-handed Nature! we confessThis life that men so honor, love, and blessHas filled thine olden measure. Not the lessWe count the precious seasons that remain;Strike not the level of the golden grain,But heap it high with years, that earth may gainWhat heaven can lose,—for heaven is rich in song:Do not all poets, dying, still prolongTheir broken chants amid the seraph throng,Where, blind no more, Ionia's bard is seen,And England's heavenly minstrel sits betweenThe Mantuan and the wan-cheeked Florentine?This was the first sweet singer in the cageOf our close-woven life. A new-born ageClaims in his vesper song its heritage:Spare us, oh, spare us long our heart's desire!Moloch, who calls our children through the fire,Leaves us the gentle master of the lyre.We count not on the dial of the sunThe hours, the minutes, that his sands have run;Rather, as on those flowers that one by oneFrom earliest dawn their ordered bloom displayTill evening's planet with her guiding rayLeads in the blind old mother of the day,We reckon by his songs, each song a flower,The long, long daylight, numbering hour by hour,Each breathing sweetness like a bridal bower.His morning glory shall we e'er forget?His noontide's full-blown lily coronet?His evening primrose has not opened yet;Nay, even if creeping Time should hide the skiesIn midnight from his century-laden eyes,Darkened like his who sang of Paradise,Would not some hidden song-bud open brightAs the resplendent cactus of the nightThat floods the gloom with fragrance and with light?How can we praise the verse whose music flowsWith solemn cadence and majestic close,Pure as the dew that filters through the rose?How shall we thank him that in evil daysHe faltered never,—nor for blame, nor praise,Nor hire, nor party, shamed his earlier lays?But as his boyhood was of manliest hue,So to his youth his manly years were true,All dyed in royal purple through and through!He for whose touch the lyre of Heaven is strungNeeds not the flattering toil of mortal tongue:Let not the singer grieve to die unsung!Marbles forget their message to mankind:In his own verse the poet still we find,In his own page his memory lives enshrined,As in their amber sweets the smothered bees,—As the fair cedar, fallen before the breeze,Lies self-embalmed amidst the mouldering trees.Poets, like youngest children, never growOut of their mother's fondness. Nature soHolds their soft hands, and will not let them go,Till at the last they track with even feetHer rhythmic footsteps, and their pulses beatTwinned with her pulses, and their lips repeatThe secrets she has told them, as their own:Thus is the inmost soul of Nature known,And the rapt minstrel shares her awful throne!O lover of her mountains and her woods,Her bridal chamber's leafy solitudes,Where Love himself with tremulous step intrudes,Her snows fall harmless on thy sacred fire:Far be the day that claims thy sounding lyreTo join the music of the angel choir!Yet, since life's amplest measure must be filled,Since throbbing hearts must be forever stilled,And all must fade that evening sunsets gild,Grant, Father, ere he close the mortal eyesThat see a Nation's reeking sacrifice,Its smoke may vanish from these blackened skies!Then, when his summons comes, since come it must,And, looking heavenward with unfaltering trust,He wraps his drapery round him for the dust,His last fond glance will show him o'er his headThe Northern fires beyond the zenith spreadIn lambent glory, blue and white and red,—The Southern cross without its bleeding load,The milky way of peace all freshly strowed,And every white-throned star fixed in its lost abode!
O even-handed Nature! we confessThis life that men so honor, love, and blessHas filled thine olden measure. Not the less
We count the precious seasons that remain;Strike not the level of the golden grain,But heap it high with years, that earth may gain
What heaven can lose,—for heaven is rich in song:Do not all poets, dying, still prolongTheir broken chants amid the seraph throng,
Where, blind no more, Ionia's bard is seen,And England's heavenly minstrel sits betweenThe Mantuan and the wan-cheeked Florentine?
This was the first sweet singer in the cageOf our close-woven life. A new-born ageClaims in his vesper song its heritage:
Spare us, oh, spare us long our heart's desire!Moloch, who calls our children through the fire,Leaves us the gentle master of the lyre.
We count not on the dial of the sunThe hours, the minutes, that his sands have run;Rather, as on those flowers that one by one
From earliest dawn their ordered bloom displayTill evening's planet with her guiding rayLeads in the blind old mother of the day,
We reckon by his songs, each song a flower,The long, long daylight, numbering hour by hour,Each breathing sweetness like a bridal bower.
His morning glory shall we e'er forget?His noontide's full-blown lily coronet?His evening primrose has not opened yet;
Nay, even if creeping Time should hide the skiesIn midnight from his century-laden eyes,Darkened like his who sang of Paradise,
Would not some hidden song-bud open brightAs the resplendent cactus of the nightThat floods the gloom with fragrance and with light?
How can we praise the verse whose music flowsWith solemn cadence and majestic close,Pure as the dew that filters through the rose?
How shall we thank him that in evil daysHe faltered never,—nor for blame, nor praise,Nor hire, nor party, shamed his earlier lays?
But as his boyhood was of manliest hue,So to his youth his manly years were true,All dyed in royal purple through and through!
He for whose touch the lyre of Heaven is strungNeeds not the flattering toil of mortal tongue:Let not the singer grieve to die unsung!
Marbles forget their message to mankind:In his own verse the poet still we find,In his own page his memory lives enshrined,
As in their amber sweets the smothered bees,—As the fair cedar, fallen before the breeze,Lies self-embalmed amidst the mouldering trees.
Poets, like youngest children, never growOut of their mother's fondness. Nature soHolds their soft hands, and will not let them go,
Till at the last they track with even feetHer rhythmic footsteps, and their pulses beatTwinned with her pulses, and their lips repeat
The secrets she has told them, as their own:Thus is the inmost soul of Nature known,And the rapt minstrel shares her awful throne!
O lover of her mountains and her woods,Her bridal chamber's leafy solitudes,Where Love himself with tremulous step intrudes,
Her snows fall harmless on thy sacred fire:Far be the day that claims thy sounding lyreTo join the music of the angel choir!
Yet, since life's amplest measure must be filled,Since throbbing hearts must be forever stilled,And all must fade that evening sunsets gild,
Grant, Father, ere he close the mortal eyesThat see a Nation's reeking sacrifice,Its smoke may vanish from these blackened skies!
Then, when his summons comes, since come it must,And, looking heavenward with unfaltering trust,He wraps his drapery round him for the dust,
His last fond glance will show him o'er his headThe Northern fires beyond the zenith spreadIn lambent glory, blue and white and red,—
The Southern cross without its bleeding load,The milky way of peace all freshly strowed,And every white-throned star fixed in its lost abode!
November3, 1864.
Camp Saxton, near Beaufort, S.C.December 11, 1862.
Haroun Alrashid, wandering in disguise through his imperial streets, scarcely happened upon a greater variety of groups than I, in my evening strolls among our own camp-fires.
Beside some of these fires, the men are cleaning their guns or rehearsing their drill,—beside others, smoking in silence their very scanty supply of the beloved tobacco,—beside others, telling stories and shouting with laughter over the broadest mimicry, in which they excel, and in which the officers come in for a full share. The everlasting "shout" is always within hearing, with its mixture of piety and polka, and its castanet-like clapping of the hands. Then there are quieter prayer-meetings, with pious invocations, and slow psalms, "deaconed out" from memory by the leader, two lines at a time, in a sort of wailing chant. Elsewhere, there areconversazioniaround fires, with a woman for queen of the circle,—her Nubian face, gay head-dress, gilt necklace, and white teeth, all resplendent in the glowing light. Sometimes the woman is spelling slow monosyllables out of a primer, a feat which always commands all ears,—they rightly recognizing a mighty spell, equal to the overthrowing of monarchs, in the magic assonance ofcat,hat,pat,bat, and the rest of it. Elsewhere, it is some solitary old cook, some aged Uncle Tiff, with enormous spectacles, who is perusing a hymn-book by the light of a pine splinter, in his deserted cooking-booth of palmetto-leaves. By another fire there is an actual dance, red-legged soldiers doing right-and-left, and "now-lead-de-lady-ober," to the music of a violin which is rather artistically played, and which may have guided the steps, in other days, of Barnwells and Hugers. And yonder is a stump-orator perched on his barrel, pouring out his exhortations to fidelity in war and in religion. To-night for the first time I have heard an harangue in a different strain, quite saucy, skeptical, and defiant, appealing to them in a sort of French materialistic style, and claiming some personal experience of warfare. "You don't know notin' about it, boys. You tink you's brave enough; how you tink, if you stan' clar in de open field,—here you, an' dar de Secesh? You's got to hab de right ting inside o' you.You must hab it 'served [preserved] in you, like dese yer sour plums dey 'serve in de barr'l; you's got to harden it down inside o' you, or it's notin'." Then he hit hard at the religionists:—"When a man's got de sperit ob de Lord in him, it weakens him all out, can't hoe de corn." He had a great deal of broad sense in his speech; but presently some others began praying vociferously close by, as if to drown this free-thinker, when at last he exclaimed, "I mean to fight de war through, an' die a good sojer wid de last kick,—dat'smyprayer!" and suddenly jumped off the barrel. I was quite interested at discovering this reverse side of the temperament, the devotional side preponderates so enormously, and the greatest scamps kneel and groan in their prayer-meetings with such entire zest. It shows that there is some individuality developed among them, and that they will not become too exclusively pietistic.
Their love of the spelling-book is perfectly inexhaustible,—they stumbling on by themselves, or the blind leading the blind, with the same pathetic patience which they carry into everything. The chaplain is getting up a school-house, where he will soon teach them as regularly as he can. But the alphabet must always be a very incidental business in a camp.
December 14.
Passages from prayers in the camp:—
"Let me so lib dat when I die I shallhab manners, dat I shall know what to say when I see my Heabenly Lord."
"Let me lib wid de musket in one hand, an' de Bible in de oder,—dat if I die at de muzzle ob de musket, die in de water, die on de land, I may know I hab de bressed Jesus in my hand, an' hab no fear."
"I hab lef' my wife in de land o' bondage; my little ones dey say eb'ry night, Whar is my fader? But when I die, when de bressed mornin' rises, when I shall stan' in de glory, wid one foot on de water an' one foot on de land, den, O Lord, I shall see my wife an' my little chil'en once more."
These sentences I noted down, as best I could, beside the glimmering camp-fire last night. The same person was the hero of a singular littlecontre-tempsat a funeral in the afternoon. It was our first funeral. The man had died in hospital, and we had chosen a picturesque burial-place above the river, near the old church, and beside a little nameless cemetery, used by generations of slaves. It was a regular military funeral, the coffin being draped with the American flag, the escort marching behind, and three volleys fired over the grave. During the services there was singing, the chaplain deaconing out the hymn in their favorite way. This ended, he announced his text,—"This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him, and delivered him out of all his trouble." Instantly, to my great amazement, the cracked voice of the chorister was uplifted, intoning the text, as if it were the first verse of another hymn. So calmly was it done, so imperturbable were all the black countenances, that I half began to conjecture that the chaplain himself intended it for a hymn, though I could imagine no prospective rhyme fortrouble, unless it were approximated bydebbil,—which is, indeed, a favorite reference, both with the men and with his Reverence. But the chaplain, peacefully awaiting, gently repeated his text after the chant, and to my great relief the old chorister waived all further recitative and let the funeral discourse proceed.
Their memories are a vast bewildered chaos of Jewish history and biography; and most of the great events of the past, down to the period of the American Revolution, they instinctively attribute to Moses. There is a fine bold confidence in all their citations, however, and the record never loses piquancy in their hands, though strict accuracy may suffer. Thus, one of my captains, last Sunday, heard a colored exhorter at Beaufort proclaim, "Paul may plant,and may polish wid water, but it won't do," in which thesainted Apollos would hardly have recognized himself.
Just now one of the soldiers came to me to say that he was about to be married to a girl in Beaufort, and would I lend him a dollar and seventy-five cents to buy the wedding outfit? It seemed as if matrimony on such moderate terms ought to be encouraged, in these days; and so I responded to the appeal.
December 16.
To-day a young recruit appeared here, who had been the slave of Colonel Sammis, one of the leading Florida refugees. Two white companions came with him, who also appeared to be retainers of the Colonel, and I asked them to dine. Being likewise refugees, they had stories to tell, and were quite agreeable: one was English-born, the other Floridian, a dark, sallow Southerner, very well-bred. After they had gone, the Colonel himself appeared. I told him that I had been entertaining his white friends, and after a while he quietly let out the remark,—
"Yes, one of those white friends of whom you speak is a boy raised on one of my plantations; he has travelled with me to the North and passed for white, and he always keeps away from the negroes."
Certainly no such suspicion had ever crossed my mind.
I have noticed one man in the regiment who would easily pass for white,—a little sickly drummer, aged fifty at least, with brown eyes and reddish hair, who is said to be the son of one of our commodores. I have seen perhaps a dozen persons as fair or fairer, among fugitive slaves, but they were usually young children. It touched me far more to see this man, who had spent more than half a lifetime in this low estate, and for whom it now seemed too late to be anything but a "nigger." This offensive word, by the way, is almost as common with them as at the North, and far more common than with well-bred slave-holders. They have meekly accepted it. "Want to go out to de nigger-houses, Sah," is the universal impulse of sociability, when they wish to cross the lines. "He hab twenty house-servants, an' two hundred head o' nigger," is a still more degrading form of phrase, in which the epithet is limited to the field-hands, and they estimated like so many cattle. This want of self-respect of course interferes with the authority of the non-commissioned officers, which is always difficult to sustain, even in white regiments. "He needn't try to play de white man ober me," was the protest of a soldier against his corporal the other day. To counteract this, I have often to remind them that they do not obey their officers because they are white, but because they are their officers; and guard-duty is an admirable school for this, because they readily understand that the sergeant or corporal of the guard has for the time more authority than any commissioned officer who is not on duty. It is necessary also for their superiors to treat the non-commissioned officers with careful courtesy, and I often caution the line-officers never to call them "Sam" or "Will," nor omit the proper handle to their names. The value of the habitual courtesies of the regular army is exceedingly apparent with these men: an officer of polished manners can wind them round his finger, while white soldiers seem rather to prefer a certain roughness. The demeanor of my men to each other is very courteous, and yet I see none of that sort of upstart conceit which is sometimes offensive among free negroes at the North, the dandy-barber strut. This is an agreeable surprise, for I feared that freedom and regimentals would produce precisely that.
They seem the world's perpetual children, docile, gay, and lovable, in the midst of this war for freedom on which they have intelligently entered. Last night, before "taps," there was the greatest noise in camp that I had ever heard, and I feared some riot. On going out, I found the most tumultuoussham-fight proceeding in total darkness, two companies playing like boys, beating tin cups for drums. When some of them saw me they seemed a little dismayed, and came and said, beseechingly,—"Cunnel, Sah, you hab no objection to we playin', Sah?"—which objection I disclaimed; but soon they all subsided, rather to my regret, and scattered merrily. Afterward I found that some other officer had told them that I considered the affair too noisy, so that I felt a mild self-reproach when one said, "Cunnel, wish you had let we play a little longer, Sah." Still I was not sorry, on the whole; for these sham-fights between companies would in some regiments lead to real ones, and there is a latent jealousy here between the Florida and South-Carolina men, which sometimes makes me anxious.
The officers are more kind and patient with the men than I should expect, since the former are mostly young, and drilling tries the temper; but they are aided by hearty satisfaction in the results already attained. I have never yet heard a doubt expressed among the officers as to thesuperiorityof these men to white troops in aptitude for drill and discipline, because of their imitativeness and docility, and the pride they take in the service. One captain said to me to-day, "I have this afternoon taught my men to load-in-nine-times, and they do it better than we did it in my former company in three months." I can personally testify that one of our best lieutenants, an Englishman, taught a part of his company the essential movements of the "school for skirmishers" in a single lesson of two hours, so that they did them very passably, though I feel bound to discourage such haste. However, I "formed square" on the third battalion-drill. Three-fourths of drill consist of attention, imitation, and a good ear for time; in the other fourth, which consists of the application of principles, as, for instance, performing by the left flank some movement before learned by the right, they are perhaps slower than better-educated men. Having belonged to five different drill-clubs before entering the army, I certainly ought to know something of the resources of human awkwardness, and I can honestly say that they astonish me by the facility with which they do things. I expected much harder work in this respect.
The habit of carrying burdens on the head gives them erectness of figure, even where physically disabled. I have seen a woman, with a brimming water-pail balanced on her head,—or perhaps a cup, saucer, and spoon,—stop suddenly, turn round, stoop to pick up a missile, rise again, fling it, light a pipe, and go through many evolutions with either hand or both, without spilling a drop. The pipe, by the way, gives an odd look to a well-dressed young girl on Sunday, but one often sees that spectacle. The passion for tobacco among our men continues quite absorbing, and I have piteous appeals for some arrangement by which they can buy it on credit, as we have yet no sutler. Their imploring, "Cunnel, we can'tlibwidout it, Sah," goes to my heart; and as they cannot read, I cannot even have the melancholy satisfaction of supplying them with the excellent anti-tobacco tracts of Mr. Trask.
December 19.
Last night the water froze in the adjutant's tent, but not in mine. To-day has been mild and beautiful. The blacks say they do not feel the cold so much as the white officers do, and perhaps it is so, though their health evidently suffers more from dampness. On the other hand, while drilling on very warm days, they have seemed to suffer more from heat than their officers. But they dearly love fire, and at night will always have it, if possible, even on the minutest scale,—a mere handful of splinters, that seems hardly more efficacious than a friction-match. Probably this is a natural habit for the short-lived coolness of an out-door country; and then there is something delightful in this rich pine, which burns likea tar-barrel. It was perhaps encouraged by the masters, as the only cheap luxury the slaves had at hand.
As one grows more acquainted with the men, their individualities emerge; and I find first their faces, then their characters, to be as distinct as those of whites. It is very interesting the desire they show to do their duty and to improve as soldiers; they evidently think about it, and see the importance of the thing; they say to me that we white men cannot stay and be their leaders always, and that they must learn to depend on themselves, or else relapse into their former condition.
Beside the superb branch of uneatable bitter oranges which decks my tent-pole, I have to-day hung up a long bough of finger-sponge, which floated to the riverbank. As winter advances, butterflies gradually disappear: one species (aVanessa) lingers; three others have vanished since I came. Mocking-birds are abundant, but rarely sing; once or twice they have reminded me of the red thrush, but are inferior, as I have always thought. The colored people all say that it will be much cooler; but my officers do not think so, perhaps because last winter was so unusually mild,—with only one frost, they say.
December 20.
Philoprogenitiveness is an important organ for an officer of colored troops; and I happen to be well provided with it. It seems to be the theory of all military usages, in fact, that soldiers are to be treated like children; and these singular persons, who never know their own age till they are past middle life, and then choose a birthday with such precision,—"Fifty year old, Sah, de fus' last April,"—prolong the privilege of childhood.
I am perplexed nightly for counter-signs,—their range of proper names is so distressingly limited, and they make such amazing work of every new one. At first, to be sure, they did not quite recognize the need of any variation: one night some officer asked a sentinel whether he had the countersign yet, and was indignantly answered,—"Should tink I hab 'em, hab 'em for a fortnight"; which seems a long epoch for that magic word to hold out. To-night I thought I would have "Fredericksburg," in honor of Burnside's reported victory, using the rumor quickly, for fear of a contradiction. Later, in comes a captain, gets the countersign for his own use, but presently returns, the sentinel having pronounced it incorrect. On inquiry, it appears that the sergeant of the guard, being weak in geography, thought best to substitute the more familiar word, "Crockery-ware"; which was, with perfect gravity, confided to all the sentinels, and accepted without question. O life! what is the fun of fiction beside thee?
I should think they would suffer and complain, these cold nights; but they say nothing, though there is a good deal of coughing. I should fancy that the scarlet trousers must do something to keep them warm, and wonder that they dislike them so much, when they are so much like their beloved fires. They certainly multiply fire-light, in any case. I often notice that an infinitesimal flame, with one soldier standing by it, looks like quite a respectable conflagration, and it seems as if a group of them must dispel dampness.
December 21.
To a regimental commander no book can be so fascinating as the consolidated Morning Report, which is ready about nine, and tells how many in each company are sick, absent, on duty, and so on. It is one's newspaper and daily mail; I never grow tired of it. If a single recruit has come in, I am always eager to see how he looks on paper.
To-night the officers are rather depressed by rumors of Burnside's being defeated, after all. I am fortunately equable and undepressible; and it is very convenient that the men know too little of the events of the war to feel excitement or fear. They know General Saxtonand me,—"de General" and "de Cunnel,"—and seem to ask no further questions. We are the war. It saves a great deal of trouble, while it lasts, this childlike confidence; nevertheless, it is our business to educate them to manhood, and I see as yet no obstacle. As for the rumor, the world will no doubt roll round, whether Burnside is defeated or succeeds.
Christmas Day.
Christmas Day.
"We'll fight for libertyTill de Lord shall call us home;We'll soon be freeTill de Lord shall call us home."
"We'll fight for libertyTill de Lord shall call us home;We'll soon be freeTill de Lord shall call us home."
This is the hymn which the slaves at Georgetown, South Carolina, were whipped for singing when President Lincoln was elected. So said a little drummer-boy, as he sat at my tent's edge last night and told me his story; and he showed all his white teeth as he added,—"Dey tink 'de Lord' meant for say de Yankees."
Last night, at dress-parade, the adjutant read General Saxton's Proclamation for the New-Year's Celebration. I think they understood it, for there was cheering in all the company-streets afterwards. Christmas is the great festival of the year for this people; but, with New-Year's coming after, we could have no adequate programme for to-day, and so celebrated Christmas Eve with pattern simplicity. We omitted, namely, the mystic curfew which we call "taps," and let them sit up and burn their fires and have their little prayer-meetings as late as they desired; and all night, as I waked at intervals, I could hear them praying and "shouting" and clattering with hands and heels. It seemed to make them very happy, and appeared to be at least an innocent Christmas dissipation, as compared with some of the convivialities of the "superior race" hereabouts.
December 26.
The day passed with no greater excitement for the men than target-shooting, which they enjoyed. I had the private delight of the arrival of our much-desired surgeon and his nephew, the captain, with letters and news from home. They also bring the good tidings that General Saxton is not to be removed, as had been reported.
Two different stands of colors have arrived for us, and will be presented at New-Year's,—one from friends in New York, and the other from a lady in Connecticut. I see that "Frank Leslie's Illustrated Weekly" of December twentieth has a highly imaginative picture of the muster-in of our first company, and also of a skirmish on the late expedition.
I must not forget the prayer overheard last night by one of the captains:—"O Lord! when I tink ob dis Kismas and las' year de Kismas. Las' Kismas he in de Secesh, and notin' to eat but grits, and no salt in 'em. Dis year in de camp, and too much victual!" This "too much" is a favorite phrase out of their grateful hearts, and did not in this case denote an excess of dinner,—as might be supposed,—but of thanksgiving.
December 29.
Our new surgeon has begun his work most efficiently: he and the chaplain have converted an old gin-house into a comfortable hospital, with ten nice beds and straw pallets. He is now, with a hearty professional faith, looking round for somebody to put into it. I am afraid the regiment will accommodate him; for, although he declares that these men do not sham sickness, as he expected, their catarrh is an unpleasant reality. They feel the dampness very much, and make such a coughing at dress-parade that I have urged him to administer a dose of cough-mixture, all round, just before that pageant. Are the colored racetough? is my present anxiety; and it is odd that physical insufficiency, the only discouragement not thrown in our way by the newspapers, is the only discouragement which finds any place in our minds. They are used to sleeping in-doorsin winter, herded before fires, and so they feel the change. Still, the regiment is as healthy as the average, and experience will teach us something.[B]
December 30.
On the first of January we are to have a slight collation, ten oxen or so, barbecued,—or not properly barbecued, but roasted whole. Touching the length of time required to "do" an ox, no two housekeepers appear to agree. Accounts vary from two hours to twenty-four. We shall happily have enough to try all gradations of roasting, and suit all tastes, from Miss A.'s to mine. But fancy me proffering a spare-rib, well done, to some fair lady! What ever are we to do for spoons and forks and plates? Each soldier has his own, and is sternly held responsible for it by "Army Regulations." But how provide for the multitude? Is it customary, I ask you, to help to tenderloin with one's fingers? Fortunately, the Major is to see to that department. Great are the advantages of military discipline: for anything perplexing, detail a subordinate.
New-Year's Eve.
My housekeeping at home is not, perhaps, on any very extravagant scale. Buying beefsteak, I usually go to the extent of two or three pounds. Yet when, this morning at daybreak, the quartermaster called to inquire how many cattle I would have killed for roasting, I turned over in bed, and answered composedly, "Ten,—and keep three to be fatted."
Fatted, quotha! Not one of the beasts at present appears to possess an ounce of superfluous flesh. Never were seen such lean kine. As they swing on vast spits, composed of young trees, the fire-light glimmers through their ribs, as if they were great lanterns. But no matter, they are cooking,—nay, they are cooked.
One at least is taken off to cool, and will be replaced to-morrow to warm up. It was roasted three hours, and well done, for I tasted it. It is so long since I tasted fresh beef that forgetfulness is possible; but I fancied this to be successful. I tried to imagine that I liked the Homeric repast, and certainly the whole thing has been far more agreeable than was to be expected. The doubt now is, whether I have made a sufficient provision for my household. I should have roughly guessed that ten beeves would feed as many million people, it has such a stupendous sound; but General Saxton predicts a small social party of five thousand, and we fear that meat will run short, unless they prefer bone. One of the cattle is so small, we are hoping it may turn out veal.
For drink, we aim at the simple luxury of molasses-and-water, a barrel per company, ten in all. Liberal housekeepers may like to know that for a barrel of water we allow three gallons of molasses, half a pound of ginger, and a quart of vinegar,—this last being a new ingredient for my untutored palate, though all the rest are amazed at my ignorance. Hard bread, with more molasses, and a dessert of tobacco, complete the festive repast, destined to cheer, but not inebriate.
On this last point, of inebriation, this is certainly a wonderful camp. For us, it is absolutely omitted from the list of vices. I have never heard of a glass of liquor in the camp, nor of any effort either to bring it in or to keep it out. A total absence of the circulating-medium might explain the abstinence,—not that it seems to have that effect with white soldiers,—but it would not explain the silence. The craving for tobacco is constant and not to be allayed, like that of a mother for her children; but I havenever heard whiskey even wished for, save on Christmas Day, and then only by one man, and he spoke with a hopeless ideal sighing, as one alludes to the Golden Age. I am amazed at this total omission of the most inconvenient of all camp-appetites. It certainly is not the result of exhortation, for there has been no occasion for any, and even the pledge would scarcely seem efficacious where hardly anybody can write.
I do not think there is a great visible eagerness for to-morrow's festival: it is not their way to be very jubilant over anything this side of the New Jerusalem. They know also that those in this Department are nominally free already, and that the practical freedom has to be maintained, in any event, by military success. But they will enjoy it greatly, and we shall have a multitude of people.
January 1, 1863(evening).
A happy New-Year to civilized, people,—mere white folks. Our festival has come and gone, with perfect success, and our good General has been altogether satisfied. Last night the great fires were kept smouldering in the pits, and the beeves were cooked more or less, chiefly more,—during which time they had to be carefully watched, and the great spits turned by main force. Happy were the merry fellows who were permitted to sit up all night, and watch the glimmering flames that threw a thousand fantastic shadows among the great gnarled oaks. And such a chattering as I was sure to hear, whenever I awoke, that night!
My first greeting to-day was from one of the most stylish sergeants, who approached me with the following little speech, evidently the result of some elaboration:—
"I tink myself happy, dis New-Year's Day, for salute my own Cunnel. Dis day las' year I was servant to a Cunnel ob Secesh; but now I hab de privilege for salute my own Cunnel."
That officer, with the utmost sincerity, reciprocated the sentiment.
About ten o'clock the people began to collect by land, and also by water,—in steamers sent by General Saxton for the purpose; and from that time all the avenues of approach were thronged. The multitude were chiefly colored women, with gay handkerchiefs on their heads, and a sprinkling of men, with that peculiarly respectable look which these people always have on Sundays and holidays. There were many white visitors also,—ladies on horseback and in carriages, superintendents and teachers, officers and cavalry-men. Our companies were marched to the neighborhood of the platform, and allowed to sit or stand, as at the Sunday services; the platform was occupied by ladies and dignitaries, and by the band of the Eighth Maine, which kindly volunteered for the occasion; the colored people filled up all the vacant openings in the beautiful grove around, and there was a cordon of mounted visitors beyond. Above, the great live-oak branches and their trailing moss; beyond the people, a glimpse of the blue river.
The services began at half-past eleven o'clock, with prayer by our chaplain, Mr. Fowler, who is always, on such occasions, simple, reverential, and impressive. Then the President's Proclamation was read by Dr. W. H. Brisbane, a thing infinitely appropriate, a South-Carolinian addressing South-Carolinians; for he was reared among these very islands, and here long since emancipated his own slaves. Then the colors were presented to us by the Rev. Mr. French, a chaplain who brought them from the donors in New York. All this was according to the programme. Then followed an incident so simple, so touching, so utterly unexpected and startling, that I can scarcely believe it on recalling, though it gave the key-note to the whole day. The very moment the speaker had ceased, and just as I took and waved the flag, which now for the first time meant anything to these poor people, there suddenly arose, close beside the platform, a strong male voice, (but rather cracked and elderly,) intowhich two women's voices instantly blended, singing, as if by an impulse that could no more be repressed than the morning note of the song-sparrow,—
"My Country, 'tis of thee,Sweet land of liberty,Of thee I sing!"
"My Country, 'tis of thee,Sweet land of liberty,Of thee I sing!"
People looked at each other, and then at us on the platform, to see whence came, this interruption, not set down in the bills. Firmly and irrepressibly the quavering voices sang on, verse after verse; others of the colored people joined in; some whites on the platform began, but I motioned them to silence. I never saw anything so electric; it made all other words cheap; it seemed the choked voice of a race at last unloosed. Nothing could be more wonderfully unconscious; art could not have dreamed of a tribute to the day of jubilee that should be so affecting; history will not believe it; and when I came to speak of it, after it was ended, tears were everywhere. If you could have heard how quaint and innocent it was! Old Tiff and his children might have sung it; and close before me was a little slave-boy, almost white, who seemed to belong to the party, and even he must join in. Just think of it!—the first day they had ever had a country, the first flag they had ever seen which promised anything to their people, and here, while mere spectators stood in silence, waiting for my stupid words, these simple souls burst out in their lay, as if they were by their own hearths at home! When they stopped, there was nothing to do for it but to speak, and I went on; but the life of the whole day was in those unknown people's song.
Receiving the flags, I gave them into the hands of two fine-looking men, jet-black, as color-guard, and they also spoke, and very effectively,—Sergeant Prince Rivers and Corporal Robert Sutton. The regiment sang "Marching Along," and then General Saxton spoke, in his own simple, manly way, and Mrs. Frances D. Gage spoke very sensibly to the women, and Judge Stickney, from Florida, added something; then some gentlemen sang an ode, and the regiment the John Brown song, and then they went to their beef and molasses. Everything was very orderly, and they seemed to have a very gay time. Most of the visitors had far to go, and so dispersed before dress-parade, though the band stayed to enliven it. In the evening we had letters from home, and General Saxton had a reception at his house, from which I excused myself; and so ended one of the most enthusiastic and happy gatherings I ever knew. The day was perfect, and there was nothing but success.
I forgot to say, that, in the midst, of the services, it was announced that General Fremont was appointed Commander-in-Chief,—an announcement which was received with immense cheering, as would have been almost anything else, I verily believe, at that moment of high-tide. It was shouted across by the pickets above,—a way in which we often receive news, but not always trustworthy.
FOOTNOTES:[B]A second winter's experience removed all this solicitude, for they learned to take care of themselves. During the first February the sick-list averaged about ninety, during the second about thirty,—this being the worst month in the year, for blacks. Charity ought, perhaps, to withhold the information that during the first winter we had three surgeons, and during the second only one.
[B]A second winter's experience removed all this solicitude, for they learned to take care of themselves. During the first February the sick-list averaged about ninety, during the second about thirty,—this being the worst month in the year, for blacks. Charity ought, perhaps, to withhold the information that during the first winter we had three surgeons, and during the second only one.
[B]A second winter's experience removed all this solicitude, for they learned to take care of themselves. During the first February the sick-list averaged about ninety, during the second about thirty,—this being the worst month in the year, for blacks. Charity ought, perhaps, to withhold the information that during the first winter we had three surgeons, and during the second only one.
I came to America to see and hear, not to lecture. But when I was invited by the Boston "Fraternity" to lecture in their course, and permitted to take the relations between England and America as my subject, I did not feel at liberty to decline the invitation. England is my country. To America, though an alien by birth, I am, as an English Liberal, no alien in heart. I deeply share the desire of all my political friends in England and of the leaders of my party to banish ill-feeling and promote good-will between the two kindred nations. My heart would be cold, if that desire were not increased by the welcome which I have met with here. More than once, when called upon to speak, (a task little suited to my habits and powers,) I have tried to make it understood that the feelings of England as a nation towards you in your great struggle had not been truly represented by a portion of our press. Some of my present hearers may, perhaps, have seen very imperfect reports of those speeches. I hope to say what I have to say with a little more clearness now.
There was between England and America the memory of ancient quarrels, which your national pride did not suffer to sleep, and which sometimes galled a haughty nation little patient of defeat. In more recent times there had been a number of disputes, the more angry because they were between brethren. There had been disputes about boundaries, in which England believed herself to have been overreached by your negotiators, or, what was still more irritating, to have been overborne because her main power was not here. There had been disputes about the Right of Search, in which we had to taste the bitterness, now not unknown to you, of those whose sincerity in a good cause is doubted, when, in fact, they are perfectly sincere. You had alarmed and exasperated us by your Ostend manifesto and your scheme for the annexation of Cuba. In these discussions some of your statesmen had shown towards us the spirit which Slavery does not fail to engender in the domestic tyrant; while, perhaps, some of our statesmen had been too ready to presume bad intentions and anticipate wrong. In our war with Russia your sympathies had been, as we supposed, strongly on the Russian side; and we—even those among us who least approved the war—had been scandalized at seeing the American Republic in the arms of a despotism which had just crushed Hungary, and which stood avowed as the arch-enemy of liberty in Europe. In the course of that war an English envoy committed a fault by being privy to recruiting in your territories. The fault was acknowledged; but the matter was pressed by your Government in a temper which we thought showed a desire to humiliate, and a want of that readiness to accept satisfaction, when frankly tendered, which renders the reparation of an unintentional offence easy and painless between men of honor. These wounds had been inflamed by the unfriendly criticism of English writers, who visited a new country without the spirit of philosophic inquiry, and who in collecting materials for the amusement of their countrymen sometimes showed themselves a little wanting in regard for the laws of hospitality, as well as in penetration and in largeness of view.
Yet beneath this outward estrangement there lay in the heart of England at least a deeper feeling, an appeal to which was never unwelcome, even in quarters where the love of American institutions least prevailed. I will venture to repeat some words from a lecture addressed a short time before this war to the University of Oxford, which at that time had among its students an English Prince. "The loss of the AmericanColonies," said the lecturer, speaking of your first Revolution, "was perhaps in itself a gain to both countries. It was a gain, as it emancipated commerce and gave free course to those reciprocal streams of wealth which a restrictive policy had forbidden to flow. It was a gain, as it put an end to an obsolete tutelage, which tended to prevent America from learning betimes to walk alone, while it gave England the puerile and somewhat dangerous pleasure of reigning over those whom she did not and could not govern, but whom she was tempted to harass and insult. A source of military strength colonies can scarcely be. You prevent them from forming proper military establishments of their own, and you drag them, into your quarrels at the price of undertaking their defence. The inauguration of free trade was in fact the renunciation of the only solid object for which our ancestors clung to an invidious and perilous supremacy, and exposed the heart of England by scattering her fleet and armies over the globe. It was not the loss of the Colonies, but the quarrel, that was one of the greatest, perhaps the greatest disaster that ever befell the English race. Who would not give up Blenheim and Waterloo, if only the two Englands could have parted from each other in kindness and in peace,—if our statesmen could have had the wisdom, to say to the Americans generously and at the right season, 'You are Englishmen, like ourselves; be, for your own happiness and for our honor, like ourselves, a nation'? But English statesmen, with all their greatness, have seldom known how to anticipate necessity; too often the sentence of history on their policy has been, that it was wise, just, and generous, but too late. Too often have they waited for the teaching of disaster. Time will heal this, like other wounds. In signing away his own empire, George III. did not sign away the empire of English liberty, of English law, of English literature, of English religion, of English blood, or of the English tongue. But though the wound will heal,—and that it may heal ought to be the earnest desire of the whole English name,—history can never cancel the fatal page which robs England of half the glory and half the happiness of being the mother of a great nation." Such, I say, was the language addressed to Oxford in the full confidence that it would be well received.
And now all these clouds seemed to have fairly passed away. Your reception of the Prince of Wales, the heir and representative of George III., was a perfect pledge of reconciliation. It showed that beneath a surface of estrangement there still remained the strong tie of blood. Englishmen who loved the New England as well as the Old were for the moment happy in the belief that the two were one again. And, believe me, joy at this complete renewal of our amity was very deeply and widely felt in England. It spread far even among the classes which have shown the greatest want of sympathy for you in the present war.
England has diplomatic connections—she has sometimes diplomatic intrigues—with the Great Powers of Europe. For a real alliance she must look here. Strong as is the element of aristocracy in her Government, there is that in her, nevertheless, which makes her cordial understandings with military despotisms little better than smothered hate. With you she may have a league of the heart. We are united by blood. We are united by a common allegiance to the cause of freedom. You may think that English freedom falls far short of yours. You will allow that it goes beyond any yet attained by the great European nations, and that to those nations it has been and still is a light of hope. I see it treated with contempt here. It is not treated with contempt by Garibaldi. It is not treated with contempt by the exiles from French despotism, who are proud to learn the English tongue, and who find in our land, as they think, the great asylum of the free. Let England and America quarrel. Let your weight be cast into the scale against us, when we struggle with the great conspiracyof absolutist powers around us, and the hope of freedom in Europe would be almost quenched. Hampden and Washington in arms against each other! What could the Powers of Evil desire more? When Americans talk lightly of a war with England, one desires to ask them what they believe the effects of such a war would be on their own country. How many more American wives do they wish to make widows? How many more American children do they wish to make orphans? Do they deem it wise to put a still greater strain on the already groaning timbers of the Constitution? Do they think that the suspension of trade and emigration, with the price of labor rising and the harvests of Illinois excluded from their market, would help you to cope with the financial difficulties which fill with anxiety every reflecting mind? Do they think that four more years of war-government would render easy the tremendous work of reconstruction? But the interests of the great community of nations are above the private interests of America or of England. If war were to break out between us, what would become of Italy, abandoned without help to her Austrian enemy and her sinister protector? What would become of the last hopes of liberty in France? What would become of the world?
English liberties, imperfect as they may be,—and as an English Liberal of course thinks they are,—are the source from which your liberties have flowed, though the river may be more abundant than the spring. Being in America, I am in England,—not only because American hospitality makes me feel that I am still in my own country, but because our institutions are fundamentally the same. The great foundations of constitutional government, legislative assemblies, parliamentary representation, personal liberty, self-taxation, the freedom of the press, allegiance to the law as a power above individual will,—all these were established, not without memorable efforts and memorable sufferings, in the land from which the fathers of your republic came. You are living under the Great Charter, the Petition of Eight, the Habeas Corpus Act, the Libel Act. Perhaps you have not even yet taken from us all that, if a kindly feeling continues between us, you may find it desirable to take. England by her eight centuries of constitutional progress has done a great work for you, and the two nations may yet have a great work to do together for themselves and for the world. A student of history, knowing how the race has struggled and stumbled onwards through the ages until now, cannot believe in the finality and perfection of any set of institutions, not even of yours. This vast electioneering apparatus, with its strange machinery and discordant sounds, in the midst of which I find myself,—it may be, and I firmly believe it is, better for its purpose than anything that has gone before it; but is it the crowning effort of mankind? If our creed—the Liberal creed—be true, American institutions are a great step in advance of the Old World; but they are not a miraculous leap into a political millennium. They are a momentous portion of that continual onward effort of humanity which it is the highest duty of history to trace; but they are not its final consummation. Model Republic! How many of these models has the course of ages seen broken and flung disdainfully aside! You have been able to do great things for the world because your forefathers did great things for you. The generation will come which in its turn will inherit the fruits of your efforts, add to them a little of its own, and in the plenitude of its self-esteem repay you with ingratitude. The time will come when the memory of the Model Republicans of the United States, as well as that of the narrow Parliamentary Reformers of England, will appeal to history, not in vain, to rescue it from the injustice of posterity, and extend to it the charities of the past.
New-comers among the nations, you desire, like the rest, to have a history. You seek it in Indian annals, you seek itin Northern sagas. You fondly surround an old windmill with the pomp of Scandinavian antiquity, in your anxiety to fill up the void of your unpeopled past. But you have a real and glorious history, if you will not reject it,—monuments genuine and majestic, if you will acknowledge them as your own. Yours are the palaces of the Plantagenets,—the cathedrals which enshrined our old religion,—the illustrious hall in which the long line of our great judges reared, by their decisions, the fabric of our law,—the gray colleges in which our intellect and science found their earliest home,—the graves where our heroes and sages and poets sleep. It would as ill become you to cultivate narrow national memories in regard to the past as it would to cultivate narrow national prejudices at present. You have come out, as from other relics of barbarism which still oppress Europe, so from the barbarism of jealous nationality. You are heirs to all the wealth of the Old World, and must owe gratitude for a part of your heritage to Germany, France, and Spain, as well as to England. Still, it is from England that you are sprung; from her you brought the power of self-government which was the talisman of colonization and the pledge of your empire here. She it was, that, having advanced by centuries of effort to the front of the Old World, became worthy to give birth to the New. From England you are sprung; and if the choice were given you among all the nations of the world, which would you rather choose for a mother?
England bore you, and bore you not without a mother's pangs. For the real hour of your birth wag the English Revolution of the seventeenth century, at once the saddest and the noblest period of English history,—the noblest, whether we look to the greatness of the principles at stake, or to the grandeur of the actors who fill the scene. This is not the official version of your origin. The official version makes you the children of the revolutionary spirit which was abroad in the eighteenth century and culminated in the French Revolution. But this robs you of a century and a half of antiquity, and of more than a century and a half of greatness. Since 1783 you have had a marvellous growth of population and of wealth,—things not to be spoken of, as cynics have spoken of them, without thankfulness, since the added myriads have been happy, and the wealth has flowed not to a few, but to all. But before 1783 you had founded, under the name of an English Colony, a community emancipated from feudalism; you had abolished here and doomed to general abolition hereditary aristocracy, and that which is the essential basis of hereditary aristocracy, primogeniture in the inheritance of land. You had established, though under the semblance of dependence on the English crown, a virtual sovereignty of the people. You had created the system of common schools, in which the sovereignty of the people has its only safe foundation. You had proclaimed, after some misgivings and backslidings, the doctrine of liberty of conscience, and released the Church from her long bondage to the State. All this you had achieved while you still were, and gloried in being, a colony of England. You have done great things, since your quarrel with George III., for the world as well as for yourselves. But for the world, perhaps, you had done greater things before.
In England the Revolution of the seventeenth century failed. It failed, at least, as an attempt to establish social equality and liberty of conscience. The feudal past, with a feudal Europe to support it, sat too heavy on us to be cast off. By a convulsive effort we broke loose, for a moment, from the hereditary aristocracy and the hierarchy. For a moment we placed a popular chief in power, though Cromwell was obliged by circumstances, as well as impelled by his own ambition, to make himself a king. Butwhen Cromwell died before his hour, all was over for many a day with the party of religious freedom and of the people. The nation had gone a little way out of the feudal and hierarchical Egypt; but the horrors of the unknown Wilderness, and the memory of the flesh-pots, overpowered the hope of the Promised Land; and the people returned to the rule of Pharaoh and his priests amidst the bonfires of the Restoration. Something had been gained. Kings became more careful how they cut the subject's purse; bishops, how they clipped the subject's ears. Instead of being carried by Laud to Rome, we remained Protestants after a sort, though without liberty of conscience. Our Parliament, such as it was, with a narrow franchise and rotten boroughs, retained its rights; and in time we secured the independence of the judges and the integrity of an aristocratic law. But the great attempt had miscarried. English society had made a supreme effort to escape from feudalism and the hierarchy into social justice and religious freedom, and that effort had failed.
Failed in England, but succeeded here. The yoke which in the mother-country we had not strength to throw off, in the colony we escaped; and here, beyond the reach of the Restoration, Milton's vision proved true, and a free community was founded, though in a humble and unsuspected form, which depended on the life of no single chief, and lived on when Cromwell died. Milton, when the night of the Restoration closed on the brief and stormy day of his party, bated no jot of hope. He was strong in that strength of conviction which assures spirits like his of the future, however dark the present may appear. But, could he have beheld it, the morning, moving westward in the track of the Puritan emigrants, had passed from his hemisphere only to shine again in this with no fitful ray, but with a steady brightness which will one day reillumine the feudal darkness of the Old World.
The Revolution failed in England. Yet in England the party of Cromwell and Milton still lives. It still lives; and in this great crisis of your fortunes, its heart turns to you. On your success ours depends. Now, as in the seventeenth century, the thread of our fate is twined with the thread of yours. An English Liberal comes here, not only to watch the unfolding of your destiny, but to read his own.
Even in the Revolution of 1776 Liberal England was on your side. Chatham was your spokesman, as well as Patrick Henry. We, too, reckon Washington among our heroes. Perhaps there may have been an excuse even for the King. The relation of dependence which you as well as he professed to hold sacred, and which he was bound to maintain, had long become obsolete. It was time to break the cord which held the child to its mother; and probably there were some on your side, from the first, or nearly from the first, resolved to break it,—men instinct with the revolutionary spirit, and bent on a Republic. All parties were in a false position; and they could find no way out of it better than civil war. Good-will, not hatred, is the law of the world; and seldom can history—even the history of the conqueror—look back on the results of war without regret. England, scarcely guilty of the offence of her monarch, drank the cup of shame and disaster to the dregs. That war ruined the French finances, which till then might have been retrieved, past the hope of redemption, and precipitated the Revolution which hurled France through anarchy into despotism, and sent Lafayette to a foreign dungeon, and his master to the block. You came out victorious; but, from the violence of the rupture, you took a political bias not perhaps entirely for good; and the necessity of the war blended you, under equivocal conditions, with other colonies of a wholly different origin and character, which then "held persons to service," and are now your half-dethroned tyrant, the Slave Power. This Revolution will lead to a revision of many things,—perhaps to a partial revision of your history. Meantime,let me repeat, England counts Washington among her heroes.
And now as to the conduct of England towards you in this civil war. It is of want of sympathy, if of anything, on our part, not of want of interest, that you have a right to complain. Never, within my memory, have the hearts of Englishmen been so deeply moved by any foreign struggle as by this civil war,—not even, if I recollect aright, by the great European earthquake of 1848. I doubt whether they were more moved by the Indian mutiny or by our war with Russia. It seemed that history had brought round again the great crisis of the Thirty Years' War, when all England throbbed with the mortal struggle waged between the powers of Liberty and Slavery on their German battle-field; for expectation can scarcely have been more intense when Gustavus and Tilly were approaching each other at Leipsic than it was when Meade and Lee were approaching each other at Gettysburg. Severed from us by the Atlantic, while other nations are at our door, you are still nearer to us than all the world beside.
It is of want of sympathy, not of want of interest, that you have to complain. And the sympathy which has been withheld is not that of the whole nation, but that of certain classes, chiefly of the class against whose political interest you are fighting, and to whom your victory brings eventual defeat. The real origin of your nation is the key to the present relations between you and the different parties in England. This is the old battle waged again on a new field. We will not talk too much of Puritans and Cavaliers. The soldiers of the Union are not Puritans, neither are the planters Cavaliers, But the present civil war is a vast episode in the same irrepressible conflict between Aristocracy and Democracy; and the heirs of the Cavalier in England sympathize with your enemies, the heirs of the Puritan with you.
The feeling of our aristocracy, as of all aristocracies, is against you. It does not follow, nor do I believe, that as a body they would desire or urge their Government to do you a wrong, whatever spirit may be shown by a few of the less honorable or more violent members of their order. With all their class sentiments, they are Englishmen, trained to walk in the paths of English policy and justice. But that their feelings should be against you is not strange. You are fighting, not for the restoration of the Union, not for the emancipation of the negro, but for Democracy against Aristocracy; and this fact is thoroughly understood by both parties throughout the Old World. As the champions of Democracy, you may claim, and you receive, the sympathy of the Democratic party in England and in Europe; that of the Aristocratic party you cannot claim. You must bear it calmly, if the aristocracies mourn over your victories and triumph over your defeats. Do the friends of Democracy conceal their joy when a despotism or an oligarchy bites the dust?
The members of our aristocracy bear you no personal hatred. An American going among them even now meets with nothing but personal courtesy and kindness. Under ordinary circumstances they are not indifferent to your good-will, nor unconscious of the tie of blood. But to ask them entirely to forget their order would be too much. In the success of a commonwealth founded on social and political equality all aristocracies must read their doom. Not by arms, but by example, you are a standing menace to the existence of political privilege. And the thread of that existence is frail. Feudal antiquity holds life by a precarious tenure amidst the revolutionary tendencies of this modern world. It has gone hard with the aristocracies throughout Europe of late years, though the French Emperor, as the head of the Reaction, may create a mock nobility round his upstart throne. The Roman aristocracy was an aristocracy of arms and law. The feudal aristocracy of the Middle Ages was an aristocracy of arms and in some measure of law; it served the cause of political progress in its hourand after its kind; it confronted tyrannical kings when the people were as yet too weak to confront them; it conquered at Runnymede, as well as at Hastings. But the aristocracies of modern Europe are aristocracies neither of arms nor of law. They are aristocracies of social and political privilege alone. They owe, and are half conscious that they owe, their present existence only to factitious weaknesses of human nature, and to the antiquated terrors of communities long kept in leading-strings and afraid to walk alone. If there were nothing but reason to dispel them, these fears might long retain their sway over European society. But the example of a great commonwealth flourishing here without a privileged class, and of a popular sovereignty combining order with progress, tends, however remotely, to break the spell. Therefore, as a class, the English nobility cannot desire the success of your Republic. Some of the order there are who have hearts above their coronets, as there are some kings who have hearts above their crowns, and who in this great crisis of humanity forget that they are noblemen, and remember that they are men. But the order, as a whole, has been against you, and has swayed in the same direction all who were closely connected with it or dependent on it. It could not fail to be against you, if it was for itself. Be charitable to the instinct of self-preservation. It is strong, sometimes violent, in us all.
In truth, it is rather against the Liberals of England than against you that the feeling of our aristocracy is directed. Liberal leaders have made your name odious by pointing to your institutions as the condemnation of our own. They did this too indiscriminately perhaps, while in one respect your institutions were far below our own, inasmuch as you were a slaveholding nation. "Look," they were always saying, "at the Model Republic,—behold its unbroken prosperity, the harmony of its people under the system of universal suffrage, the lightness of its taxation,—behold, above all, its immunity from war!" All this is now turned upon us as a taunt; but the taunt implies rather a sense of escape on the part of those who utter it than malignity, and the answer to it is victory.
What has been said of our territorial aristocracy may be said of our commercial aristocracy, which is fast blending with the territorial into a government of wealth. This again is nothing new. History can point to more cases than one in which the sympathies of rich men have been regulated by their riches. The Money Power has been cold to your cause throughout Europe,—perhaps even here. In all countries great capitalists are apt to desire that the laborer should be docile and contented, that popular education should not be carried dangerously high, that the right relations between capital and labor should be maintained. The bold doctrines of the slave-owner as to "free labor and free schools" may not be accepted in their full strength; yet they touch a secret chord. But we have friends of the better cause among our English capitalists as well as among our English peers. The names of Mr. Baring and Mr. Thomas Bayley Potter are not unknown here. The course taken by such men at this crisis is an earnest of the essential unity of interest which underlies all class-divisions,—which, in our onward progress toward the attainment of a real community, will survive all class-distinctions, and terminate the conflict between capital and labor, not by making the laborer the slave of the capitalist, nor the capitalist the slave of the laborer, but by establishing between them mutual good-will, founded on intelligence and justice.
And let the upper classes of England have their due. The Lancashire operatives have been upon the other side; yet not the less have they received ready and generous help in their distress from all ranks and orders in the land.
It would be most unworthy of a student of history to preach vulgar hatred of an historic aristocracy. The aristocracyof England has been great in its hour, probably beneficent, perhaps indispensable to the progress of our nation, and so to the foundation of yours. Do you wish for your revenge upon it? The road to that revenge is sure. Succeed in your great experiment. Show by your example, by your moderation and self-control through this war and after its close, that it is possible for communities, duly educated, to govern themselves without the control of an hereditary order. The progress of opinion in England will in time do the rest. War, forced by you upon the English nation, would only strengthen the worst part of the English aristocracy in the worst way, by bringing our people into collision with a Democracy, and by giving the ascendancy, as all wars not carried on for a distinct moral object do, to military passions over political aspirations. Our war with the French Republic threw back our internal reforms, which till then had been advancing, for a whole generation. Even the pockets of our land-owners would not suffer, but gain, by the war; for their rents would be raised by the exclusion of your corn, and the price of labor would be lowered by the stoppage of emigration. The suffering would fall, as usual, on the people.
The gradual effect of your example may enable European society finally to emerge from feudalism, in a peaceful way, without violent revolutions. Every one who has studied history must regard violent revolutions with abhorrence. A European Liberal ought to be less inclined to them than ever, when he has seen America, and received from the sight, as I think he may, a complete assurance of the future.
I have spoken of our commercial aristocracy generally. Liverpool demands word by itself. It is the stronghold of the Southern party in England: from it hostile acts have proceeded, while from other quarters there have proceeded only hostile words. There are in Liverpool men who do honor to the name of British merchant; but the city as a whole is not the one among all our commercial cities in which moral chivalry is most likely to be found. In Manchester, cotton-spinning though it be, there is much that is great,—a love of Art, displayed in public exhibitions,—a keen interest in great political and social questions,—literature,—even religious thought,—something of that high aspiring spirit which made commerce noble in the old English merchant, in the Venetian and the Florentine. In Liverpool trade reigns supreme, and its behests, whatever they may be, are pretty sure to be eagerly obeyed. And the source of this is to be found, perhaps, partly in the fact that Liverpool is an old centre of the Slavery interest in England, one of the cities which have been built with the blood of the slave. As the great cotton port, it is closely connected with the planters by trade,—perhaps also by many personal ties and associations. It is not so much an English city as an offset and outpost of the South, and a counterpart to the offsets and outposts of the South in some of your great commercial cities here. No doubt, the shame of Liverpool Alabamas falls on England. England must own that she has produced merchants who disgrace their calling, contaminated by intercourse with the slave-owner, regardless of the honor and interest of their country, ready to plunge two kindred nations into a desolating war, if they can only secure the profits of their own trade. England must own that she has produced such men; but does this disgrace attach to her alone?
The clergy of the State Church, like the aristocracy, have probably been as a body against you in this struggle. In their case too, not hatred of America, but the love of their own institution, is the cause. If you are a standing menace to aristocracies, you are equally a standing menace to State Churches. A State Church rests upon the assumption that religion would fall, if it were not supported by the State. On this ground it is that the European nations endure the startling anomalies of their State Churches,—theinterference of irreligious politicians in religion, the worldliness of ambitious ecclesiastics, the denial of liberty of conscience, the denial of truth. Therefore it is that they will see the canker of doubt slowly eating into faith beneath the outward uniformity of a political Church, rather than risk a change, which, as they are taught to believe, would bring faith to a sudden end. But the success of the voluntary system here is overthrowing this assumption. Shall I believe that Christianity deprived of State support must fall, when I see it without State support not only standing, but advancing with the settler into the remotest West? Will the laity of Europe long remain under their illusion in face of this great fact? Already the State Churches of Europe are placed in imminent peril by the controversies which, since religious life has reawakened among us, rend them from within, and by their manifest inability to satisfy the craving of society for new assurance of its faith. I cannot much blame the High-Church bishop who goes to Lord Palmerston to ask for intervention in company with Lord Clanricarde and Mr. Spence. You express surprise that the son of Wilberforce is not with you; but Wilberforce was not, like his son, a bishop of the State Church. Never in the whole course of history has the old order of things yielded without a murmur to the new. You share the fate of all innovators: your innovations are not received with favor by the powers which they threaten ultimately to sweep away.
To come from our aristocracy and landed gentry to our middle class. We subdivide the middle class into upper and lower. The upper middle class, comprising the wealthier tradesmen, forms a sort of minor aristocracy in itself, with a good deal of aristocratic feeling towards those beneath it. It is not well educated, for it will not go to the common schools, and it has few good private schools of its own; consequently, it does not think deeply on great political questions. It is at present very wealthy; and wealth, as you know, does not always produce high moral sentiment. It is not above a desire to be on the genteel side. It is not free from the worship of Aristocracy. That worship is rooted in the lower part of our common nature. Is fibres extend beyond the soil of England, beyond the soil of Europe. America has been much belied, if she is entirely free from this evil, if there are not here also men careful of class-distinctions, of a place in fashionable society, of factitious rank which parodies the aristocracy of the Old World. There is in the Anglo-Saxon character a strange mixture of independence and servility. In that long course of concessions by which your politicians strove—happily for the world and for yourselves they strove in vain—to conciliate the slave owning aristocracy of the South, did not something of social servility mingle with political fear?