Baltimore and The Nineteenth of April, 1861 Part 9

"As you have not received any instructions from Washington in regard to the course to be pursued with me, I shall consider myself in your custody until you have had ample time to write to Washington and obtain a reply.

"I desire it, however, to be expressly understood that no further extension of my parole is asked for, or would be accepted at this time.

"It is my right and my wish to return to Baltimore, to resume the performance of my official and private duties.

Respectfully, "GEO. WM. BROWN."

"DEPARTMENT OF STATE, "WASHINGTON, _January 6, 1862_.

"JOHN S. KEYS, Esq., U. S. Marshal, _Boston_.

"_Sir_:--Your letter of the 4th inst., relative to George W.

Brown, has been received.

"In reply, I have to inform you that, if he desires it, you may extend his parole to the period of thirty days. If not, you will please recommit him to Fort Warren and report to this Department.

"I am, sir, very respectfully, "Your obedient servant, "F. W. SEWARD, "_Acting Secretary of State_."

"BOSTON, _January 10, 1862_.

"MARSHAL KEYS, _Boston_.

"_Sir_:--In my note to you of the 4th inst. I stated that I did not desire a renewal of my parole, but that it was my right and wish to return to Baltimore, to resume the performance of my private and official duties.

"My note was, in substance, as you informed me, forwarded to Hon.

W. H. Seward, Secretary of State, in a letter from you to him.

"In reply to your communication, F. W. Seward, Acting Secretary of State, wrote to you under date of the 6th inst. that 'you may extend the parole of George W. Brown if he desires it, but if not, you are directed to recommit him to Fort Warren.'

"It was hardly necessary to give me the option of an extension of parole which I had previously declined, but the offer renders it proper for me to say that the parole was applied for by my friends, to enable me to attend to important private business, affecting the interests of others as well as myself; that the necessities growing out of this particular matter of business no longer exist, and that I cannot consistently with my ideas of propriety, by accepting a renewal of the parole, place myself in the position of seeming to acquiesce in a prolonged and illegal banishment from my home and duties.

Respectfully, "GEO. WM. BROWN."

On the 11th of January, 1862, I returned to Fort Warren, and on the 14th an offer was made to renew and extend my parole to ninety days upon condition that I would not pa.s.s south of Hudson River. This offer I declined. My term of office expired on the 12th of November, 1862, and soon afterwards I was released, as I have just stated.

It is not my purpose to enter into an account of the trials and hardships of prison-life in the crowded forts in which we were successively confined under strict and sometimes very harsh military rule, but it is due to the memory of the commander at Fort Warren, Colonel Justin Dimick, that I should leave on record the warm feelings of respect and friendship with which he was regarded by the prisoners who knew him best, for the unvarying kindness and humanity with which he performed the difficult and painful duties of his office. As far as he was permitted to do so, he promoted the comfort and convenience of all, and after the war was over and he had been advanced to the rank of General, he came to Baltimore as the honored guest of one of his former prisoners, and while there received the warm and hearty greeting of others of his prisoners who still survived.

CHAPTER IX.

A PERSONAL CHAPTER.

I have now completed my task; but perhaps it will be expected that I should clearly define my own position. I have no objection to do so.

Both from feeling and on principle I had always been opposed to slavery--the result in part of the teaching and example of my parents, and confirmed by my own reading and observation. In early manhood I became prominent in defending the rights of the free colored people of Maryland. In the year 1846 I was a.s.sociated with a small number of persons, of whom the Rev. William F. Brand, author of the "Life of Bishop Whittingham," and myself, are the only survivors. The other members of the a.s.sociation were Dr. Richard S. Steuart, for many years President of the Maryland Hospital for the Insane, and himself a slaveholder; Galloway Cheston, a merchant and afterwards President of the Board of Trustees of the Johns Hopkins University; Frederick W.

Brune, my brother-in-law and law-partner; and Ramsay McHenry, planter.

We were preparing to initiate a movement tending to a gradual emanc.i.p.ation within the State, but the growing hostility between the North and the South rendered the plan wholly impracticable, and it was abandoned.

My opinions, however, did not lead me into sympathy with the abolition party. I knew that slavery had existed almost everywhere in the world, and still existed in some places, and that, whatever might be its character elsewhere, it was not in the Southern States "the sum of all villainy." On the contrary, it had a.s.sisted materially in the development of the race. Nowhere else, I believe, had negro slaves been so well treated, on the whole, and had advanced so far in civilization. They had learned the necessity, as well as the habit, of labor; the importance--to some extent at least--of thrift; the essential distinctions between right and wrong, and the inevitable difference to the individual between right-doing and wrong-doing; the duty of obedience to law; and--not least--some conception, dim though it might be, of the inspiring teachings of the Christian religion.

They had learned also to cherish a feeling of respect and good will towards the best portion of the white race, to whom they looked up, and whom they imitated.

I refused to enlist in a crusade against slavery, not only on const.i.tutional grounds, but for other reasons. If the slaves were freed and clothed with the right of suffrage, they would be incapable of using it properly. If the suffrage were withheld, they would be subjected to the oppression of the white race without the protection afforded by their masters. Thus I could see no prospect of maintaining harmony without a disastrous change in our form of government such as prevailed after the war, in what is called the period of reconstruction. If there were entire equality, and an intermingling of the two races, it would not, as it seemed to me, be for the benefit of either. I knew how strong are race prejudices, especially when stimulated by compet.i.tion and interest; how cruelly the foreigners, as they were called, had been treated by the people in California, and the Indians by our people everywhere; and how, in my own city, citizens were for years ruthlessly deprived by the Know-Nothing party of the right of suffrage, some because they were of foreign birth, and some because they were Catholics. The problem of slavery was to me a Gordian knot which I knew not how to untie, and which I dared not attempt to cut with the sword. Such a severance involved the horrors of civil war, with the wickedness and demoralization which were sure to follow.

I was deeply attached to the Union from a feeling imbibed in early childhood and constantly strengthened by knowledge and personal experience. I did not believe in secession as a const.i.tutional right, and in Maryland there was no sufficient ground for revolution. It was clearly for her interest to remain in the Union and to free her slaves. An attempt to secede or to revolt would have been an act of folly which I deprecated, although I did believe that she, in common with the rest of the South, had const.i.tutional rights in regard to slavery which the North was not willing to respect.

It was my opinion that the Confederacy would prove to be a rope of sand. I thought that the seceding States should have been allowed to depart in peace, as General Scott advised, and I believed that afterwards the necessities of the situation and their own interest would induce them to return, severally, perhaps, to the old Union, but with slavery peacefully abolished; for, in the nature of things, I knew that slavery could not last forever.

Whether or not my opinions were sound and my hopes well founded, is now a matter of little importance, even to myself, but they were at least sincere and were not concealed.

There can be no true union in a Republic unless the parts are held together by a feeling of common interest, and also of mutual respect.

That there is a common interest no reasonable person can doubt; but this is not sufficient; and, happily, there is a solid basis for mutual respect also.

I have already stated the grounds on which, from their point of view, the Southern people were justified in their revolt, and even in the midst of the war I recognized what the South is gradually coming to recognize--that the grounds on which the Northern people waged war--love of the Union and hatred of slavery--were also ent.i.tled to respect.

I believe that the results achieved--namely, the preservation of the Union and the abolition of slavery--are worth all they have cost.

And yet I feel that I am living in a different land from that in which I was born, and under a different Const.i.tution, and that new perils have arisen sufficient to cause great anxiety. Some of these are the consequences of the war, and some are due to other causes. But every generation must encounter its own trials, and should extract benefit from them if it can. The grave problems growing out of emanc.i.p.ation seem to have found a solution in an improving education of the whole people. Perhaps education is the true means of escape from the other perils to which I have alluded.

Let me state them as they appear to me to exist.

Vast fortunes, which astonish the world, have suddenly been acquired, very many by methods of more than doubtful honesty, while the fortunes themselves are so used as to benefit neither the possessors nor the country.

Republican simplicity has ceased to be a reality, except where it exists as a survival in rural districts, and is hardly now mentioned even as a phrase. It has been superseded by republican luxury and ostentation. The ma.s.s of the people, who cannot afford to indulge in either, are sorely tempted to covet both.

The individual man does not rely, as he formerly did, on his own strength and manhood. Organization for a common purpose is resorted to wherever organization is possible. Combinations of capital or of labor, ruled by a few individuals, bestride the land with immense power both for good and evil. In these combinations the individual counts for little, and is but little concerned about his own moral responsibility.

When De Tocqueville, in 1838, wrote his remarkable book on Democracy in America, he expressed his surprise to observe how every public question was submitted to the decision of the people, and that, when the people had decided, the question was settled. Now politicians care little about the opinions of the people, because the people care little about opinions. Bosses have come into existence to ply their vile trade of office-brokerage. Rings are formed in which the bosses are masters and the voters their henchmen. Formerly decent people could not be bought either with money or offices. Political parties have always some honest foundation, but rings are factions like those of Rome in her decline, having no foundation but public plunder.

Communism, socialism, and labor strikes have taken the place of slavery agitation. Many people have come to believe that this is a paternal Government from which they have a right to ask for favors, and not a Republic in which all are equal. Hence States, cities, corporations, individuals, and especially certain favored cla.s.ses, have no scruple in getting money somehow or other, directly or indirectly, out of the purse of the Nation, as if the Nation had either purse or property which does not belong to the people, for the benefit of the whole people, without favor or partiality towards any.

In many ways there is a dangerous tendency towards the centralization of power in the National Government, with little opposition on the part of the people.

Paper money is held by the Supreme Court to be a lawful subst.i.tute for gold and silver coin, partly on the ground that this is the prerogative of European governments.[16] This is strange const.i.tutional doctrine to those who were brought up in the school of Marshall, Story, and Chancellor Kent.

[Footnote 16: Legal Tender Case, Vol. 110 U. S. Reports, p. 421.]

The administration of cities has grown more and more extravagant and corrupt, thus leading to the creation of immense debts which oppress the people and threaten to become unmanageable.

The national Congress, instead of faithfully administering its trust, has become reckless and wasteful of the public money.

But, notwithstanding all this, I rejoice to believe that there is a reserve of power in the American people which has never yet failed to redress great wrongs when they have come to be fully recognized and understood.