Choice Specimens of American Literature, and Literary Reader Part 19

The Etowah campaign terminated the military services of General Sevier.

Hereafter, we will have to record his not less important agency in the civil affairs of Tennessee.

[Footnote 40: A native of Tennessee. His Annals contain much valuable material.]

=_Charles Gayarre, 1805-._= (Manual, p. 490.)

From the "History of Louisiana."

=_135._= GENERAL JACKSON AT NEW ORLEANS.

His very physiognomy prognosticated what soul was encased within the spare but well-ribbed form which had that "lean and hungry look"

described by England's greatest bard as bespeaking little sleep of nights, but much of ambition, self-reliance, and impatience of control.

His lip and eye denoted the man of unyielding temper, and his very hair, slightly silvered, stood erect like quills round his wrinkled brow, as if they scorned to bend. Some sneered, it is true, at what they called a military tyro, at the impromptu general who had sprung out of the uncouth lawyer and the unlearned judge, who in arms had only the experience of a few months, acquired in a desultory war against wild Indians, and who was, not only without any previous training to his new profession, but also without the first rudiments of a liberal education, for he did not even know the orthography of his own native language.

Such was the man who, with a handful of raw militia, was to stand in the way of the veteran troops of England, whose boast it was to have triumphed over one of the greatest captains known in history. But those who entertained such distrust had hardly come in contact with General Jackson, when they felt that they had to deal with a master-spirit.

True, he was rough hewn from the rock, but rock he was, and of that kind of rock which Providence chooses to select as a fit material to use in its structures of human greatness. True, he had not the education of a lieutenant in a European army; but what lieutenant, educated or not, who had the will and the remarkable military adaptation so evident in General Jackson's intellectual and physical organization, ever remained a subaltern? Much less could General Jackson fail to rise to his proper place in a country where there was so much more elbow-room, and fewer artificial obstacles than in less favored lands. But, whatever those obstacles might have been, General Jackson would have overcome them all.

His will was of such an extraordinary nature that, like Christian faith, it could almost have accomplished prodigies and removed mountains. It is impossible to study the life of General Jackson without being convinced that this is the most remarkable feature of his character. His will had, as it were, the force and the fixity of fate; that will carried him triumphantly through his military and civil career, and through the difficulties of private life. So intense and incessantly active this peculiar faculty was in him, that one would suppose that his mind was nothing but will--a will so lofty that it towered into sublimity. In him it supplied the place of genius--or, rather, it was almost genius. On many occasions, in the course of his long, eventful life, when his shattered const.i.tution made his physicians despair of preserving him, he seemed to continue to live merely because it was his will; and when his unconquerable spirit departed from his enfeebled and worn-out body, those who knew him well might almost have been tempted to suppose that he had not been vanquished by death, but had at last consented to repose. This man, when he took the command at New Orleans, had made up his mind to beat the English; and, as that mind was so const.i.tuted that it was not susceptible of entertaining much doubt as to the results of any of its resolves, he went to work with an innate confidence which transfused itself into the population he had been sent to protect.

=_Brantz Mayer, 1809-._= (Manual, p. 490.)

From "Mexico, Aztec," &c.

=_136._= REKINDLING THE SACRED FIRE.

At the end of the Aztec or Toltec cycle of fifty-two years,--for it is not accurately ascertained to which of the tribes the astronomical science of Tenocht.i.tlan is to be attributed,--these primitive children of the New World believed that the world was in danger of instant destruction. Accordingly, its termination became one of their most serious and awful epochs, and they anxiously awaited the moment when the sun would be blotted out from the heavens, and the globe itself resolved once more into chaos. As the cycle ended in the winter, the season of the year, with its drearier sky and colder air, in the lofty regions of the valley, added to the gloom that fell upon the hearts of the people.

On the last day of the fifty-two years, all the fires in temples and dwellings were extinguished, and the natives devoted themselves to fasting and prayer. They destroyed alike their valuable and worthless wares; rent their garments, put out their lights, and hid themselves for awhile in solitude....

At dark on the last dread evening,--as soon as the sun had set, as they imagined, forever,--a sad and solemn procession of priests and people marched forth from the city to a neighboring hill, to rekindle the "New Fire." This mournful march was called "the procession of the G.o.ds," and was supposed to be their final departure from their temples and altars.

As soon as the melancholy array reached the summit of the hill, it reposed in fearful anxiety until the Pleiades reached the zenith in the sky, whereupon the priests immediately began the sacrifice of a human victim, whose breast was covered with a wooden shield, which the chief _flamen_ kindled by friction. When the sufferer received the fatal stab from the sacrificial knife of _obsidian,_ the machine was set in motion on his bosom until the blaze had kindled. The anxious crowd stood round with fear and trembling. Silence reigned over nature and man. Not a word was uttered among the countless mult.i.tude that thronged the hill-sides and plains, whilst the priest performed his direful duty to the G.o.ds. At length, as the fire sparks gleamed faintly from the whirling instrument, low sobs and e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns were whispered among the eager ma.s.ses. As the sparks kindled into a blaze, and the blaze into a flame, and the flaming shield and victim were cast together on a pile of combustibles which burst at once into the brightness of a conflagration, the air was rent with the joyous shouts of the relieved and panic-stricken Indians. Far and wide over the dusky crowds beamed the blaze like a star of promise.

Myriads of upturned faces greeted it from hills, mountains, temples, terraces, teocallis, house-tops, and city walls; and the prostrate mult.i.tudes hailed the emblem of light, life, and fruition, as a blessed omen of the restored favor of their G.o.ds, and the preservation of their race for another cycle. At regular intervals, Indian couriers held aloft brands of resinous wood, by which they transmitted the "New Fire" from hand to hand, from village to village, and town to town, throughout the Aztec empire. Light was radiated from the imperial or ecclesiastical center of the realm. In every temple and dwelling it was rekindled from the sacred source; and when the sun rose again on the following morning, the solemn procession of priests, princes, and subjects, which had taken up its march from the capital on the preceding night with solemn steps, returned once more to the abandoned capital, and, restoring the G.o.ds to their altars, abandoned themselves to joy and festivity, in token of grat.i.tude and relief from impending doom.

=_Albert James Pickett,[41] 1858-._= (Manual, p. 490.)

From "The History of Alabama."

=_137._= THE INDIANS AND THE EARLY SETTLERS OF ALABAMA.

During my youthful days, I was accustomed to be much with the Creek Indians, hundreds of whom came almost daily to the trading-house. For twenty years I frequently visited the Creek nation. Their green-corn dances, ball plays, war ceremonies, and manners and customs, are all fresh in my recollection. In my intercourse with them I was thrown into the company of many old white men called "Indian country men," who had for years conducted a commerce with them. Some of these men had come to the Creek nation before the Revolutionary War, and others, being tories, had fled to it during the war, and after it to escape from whig persecution. They were unquestionably the shrewdest and most interesting men with whom I ever conversed. Generally of Scotch descent, many of them were men of some education. All of them were married to Indian wives, and some of them had intelligent and handsome children.... I often conversed with the chiefs while they were seated in the shades of the spreading mulberry and walnut, upon the banks of the beautiful Tallapoosa. As they leisurely smoked their pipes, some of them related to me the traditions of their country. I occasionally saw Choctaw and Cherokee traders, and learned much from them. I had no particular object in view, at that time, except the gratification of a curiosity which led me, for my own satisfaction alone, to learn something of the early history of Alabama.

[Footnote 41: A native of North Carolina, who removed in early life to Alabama. His "History" abounds in interesting matter.]

=_Charles Wentworth Upham, 1802_= (Manual, pp. 490, 532.)

From the "History of Witchcraft and Salem Village."

=_138._= DEFEAT OF THE INDIAN KING PHILIP.

The Indians were carrying all before them. Philip was spreading conflagration, devastation, and slaughter around the borders, and striking sudden and deadly blows into the heart of the country. It was evident that he was consolidating the Indian power into irresistible strength.... From other scouting parties it became evident that this opinion was correct, and that the Indians were collecting stores and a.s.sembling their warriors somewhere, to fall upon the colonies at the first opening of spring. Further information made it certain that their place of gathering was in the Narragansett country, in the south-westerly part of the colony of Rhode Island. There was no alternative but, as a last effort, to strike the enemy at that point with the utmost available force.... It was between, one and two o'clock in the afternoon, and the short winter day was wearing away, Winslow saw the position at a glance, and, by the promptness of his decision, proved himself a great captain. He ordered an instant a.s.sault.

The Ma.s.sachusetts troops were in the van, the Plymouth, with the commander-in-chief, in the center, the Connecticut in the rear. The Indians had erected a block-house near the entrance, filled with sharpshooters, who also lined the palisades. The men rushed on, although it was into the Jaws of death, under an unerring fire. The block-house told them where the entrance was. The companies of Moseley and Davenport led the way. Moseley succeeded in pa.s.sing through. Davenport fell beneath three fatal shots, just within the entrance. Isaac Johnson, captain of the Roxbury company, was killed while on the log. But death had no terrors to that army. The center and rear divisions pressed up to support the front, and fill the gaps, and all equally shared the glory of the hour. Enough survived the terrible pa.s.sage to bring the Indians to a hand-to-hand fight within the fort. After a desperate straggle of nearly three hours, the savages were driven from their stronghold, and with the setting of that sun their power was broken. Philip's fortunes had received a decided overthrow, and the colonies were saved. In all military history there is not a more daring exploit. Never, on any field, has more heroic prowess been displayed.

=_John Lothrop Motley, 1814-._= (Manual, p. 532.)

From "The History of the United Netherlands."

=_139._= CHARACTER OF ALVA.

Ferdinando Alvarez de Toledo, Duke of Alva, was now in his sixtieth year. He was the most successful and experienced general of Spain, or of Europe. No man had studied more deeply, or practiced more constantly, the military science. In the most important of all arts at that epoch he was the most consummate artist. In the only honorable profession of the age he was the most thorough and the most pedantic professor. Having proved in his boyhood at Fontarabia, and in his maturity at Muhlberg, that he could exhibit heroism and headlong courage when necessary, he could afford to look with contempt upon the witless gibes which his enemies had occasionally perpetrated at his expense.... "Recollect,"

said he to Don John of Austria, "that the first foes with whom one has to contend are one's own troops--with their clamors for an engagement at this moment, and their murmurs about results at another; with their 'I thought that the battle should be fought,' or, 'It was my opinion that the occasion ought not to be lost.'"

On the whole, the Duke of Alva was inferior to no general of his age.

As a disciplinarian, he was foremost in Spain, perhaps in Europe.

A spendthrift of time, he was an economist of blood; and this was, perhaps, in the eye of humanity, his princ.i.p.al virtue.... Such were his qualities as a military commander. As a statesman, he had neither experience nor talent. As a man, his character was simple. He did not combine a great variety of vices; but those which he had were colossal, and he possessed no virtues. He was neither l.u.s.tful nor intemperate; but his professed eulogists admitted his enormous avarice, while the world has agreed that such an amount of stealth and ferocity, of patient vindictiveness and universal blood-thirstiness, were never found in a savage beast of the forest, and but rarely in a human bosom.

From "The History of the United Netherlands."

=_140._= SIEGE AND ABANDONMENT OF OSTEND.

The Archduke Albert and the Infanta Isabella entered the place in triumph, if triumph it could be called. It would be difficult to imagine a more desolate scene. The artillery of the first years of the seventeenth century was not the terrible enginery of destruction that it has become in the last third of the nineteenth, but a cannonade, continued so steadily and so long, had done its work. There were no churches, no houses, no redoubts, no bastions, no walls, nothing but a vague and confused ma.s.s of ruin. Spinola conducted his imperial guests along the edge of extinct volcanoes, amid upturned cemeteries, through quagmires, which once were moats, over huge mounds of sand, and vast shapeless ma.s.ses of bricks and masonry, which had been forts. He endeavored to point out places where mines had been exploded, where ravelins had been stormed, where the a.s.sailants had been successful, and where they had been bloodily repulsed. But it was all loathsome, hideous rubbish. There were no human habitations, no hovels, no casemates. The inhabitants had burrowed at last in the earth, like the dumb creatures of the swamps and forests. In every direction the d.y.k.es had burst, and the sullen wash of the liberated waves, bearing hither and thither the floating wreck of fascines and machinery, of planks and building materials, sounded far and wide over what should have been dry land. The great ship channel, with the unconquered Half-moon upon one side and the incomplete batteries and platforms of Bucquoy on the other, still defiantly opened its pa.s.sage to the sea, and the retiring fleets of the garrison were white in the offing. All around was the grey expanse of stormy ocean, without a cape or a headland to break its monotony, as the surges rolled mournfully in upon a desolation more dreary than their own. The atmosphere was murky and surcharged with rain, for the wild, equinoctial storm which had held Maurice spell-bound, had been raging over land and sea for many days. At every step the unburied skulls of brave soldiers who had died in the cause of freedom, grinned their welcome to the conquerors. Isabella wept at the sight. She had cause to weep. Upon that miserable sandbank more than a hundred thousand men had laid down their lives by her decree, in order that she and her husband might at last take possession of a most barren prize. This insignificant fragment of a sovereignty which her wicked old father had presented to her on his deathbed--a sovereignty which he had no more moral right or actual power to confer than if it had been in the planet Saturn--had at last been appropriated at the cost of all this misery. It was of no great value, although its acquisition had caused the expenditure of at least eight millions of florins, divided in nearly equal proportions between the two belligerents. It was in vain that great immunities were offered to those who would remain, or who would consent to settle in the foul Golgotha. The original population left the place in ma.s.s. No human creatures were left save the wife of a freebooter and her paramour, a journeyman blacksmith. This unsavory couple, to whom entrance into the purer atmosphere of Zeeland was denied, thenceforth shared with the carrion crows the amenities of Ostend.

From the Preface to the "Rise of the Dutch Republic."

=_141._= THE RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC.

The rise of the Dutch Republic must ever be regarded as one of the leading events of modern times. Without the birth of this great commonwealth, the various historical phenomena of the sixteenth and following centuries must have either not existed, or have presented themselves under essential modifications.... From the handbreadth of territory called the province of Holland, rises a power which wages eighty years' warfare with the most potent empire upon earth, and which, during the progress of the struggle, becoming itself a mighty state, and binding about its own slender form a zone of the richest possessions of earth, from pole to tropic, finally dictates its decrees to the empire of Charles.

... To the Dutch Republic, even more than to Florence at an earlier day is the world indebted for practical instruction in that great science of political equilibrium which must always become more and more important as the various states of the civilized world are pressed more closely together, and as the struggle for pre-eminence becomes more feverish and fatal. Courage and skill in political and military combinations enabled William the Silent to overcome the most powerful and unscrupulous monarch of his age. The same hereditary audacity and fertility of genius placed the destiny of Europe in the hands of William's great-grandson, and enabled him to mould into an impregnable barrier the various elements of opposition to the overshadowing monarchy of Louis XIV. As the schemes of the Inquisition and the unparalleled tyranny of Philip, in one century led to the establishment of the Republic of the United Provinces, so, in the next, the revocation of the Nantes Edict and the invasion of Holland are avenged by the elevation of the Dutch Stadholder upon the throne of the stipendiary Stuarts.

To all who speak the English language, the history of the great agony through which the republic of Holland was ushered into life must have peculiar interest, for it is a portion of the records of the Anglo-Saxon race--essentially the same whether in Friesland, England, or Ma.s.sachusetts.