The Writings of James Russell Lowell in Prose and Poetry Part 4

It was not till after the Southern politicians had firmly established their system of governing the country by an alliance with the Democratic party of the Free States, on the basis of a division of offices, that they dreamed of making their "inst.i.tution" the chief concern of the nation. As we follow Mr. Greeley's narrative, we see them first pleading for the existence of slavery, then for its equality, and at last claiming for it an absolute dominion. Such had been the result of uniform concession on the part of the North for the sake of Union, such the decline of public spirit, that within sixty years of the time when slaveholders like George Mason of Virginia could denounce slavery for its inconsistency with the principles on which our Revolution had triumphed, the leaders of a party at the North claiming a kind of patent in the rights of man as an expedient for catching votes were decrying the doctrines of the Declaration of Independence as visionary and impracticable. Was it the Slave or the Free States that had just cause to be alarmed for their peculiar inst.i.tutions? And, meanwhile, it had been discovered that slavery was conservative! It would protect a country in which almost every voter was a landholder from any sudden frenzy of agrarianism! In the South it certainly conserved a privileged cla.s.s, and prevented a general debauch of education; but in the North it preserved nothing but political corruption, subserviency, cant, and all those baser qualities which unenviably distinguish man from the brutes.

The nation had paid ten millions for Texas, an extension of the area of freedom, as it was shamelessly called, which was to raise the value of slaves in Virginia, according to Mr. Upshur, and did raise it, fifty per cent. It was next proposed to purchase Cuba for one hundred millions, or to take it by force if Spain refused to sell. And all this for fear of abolition. This was paying rather dearly for our conservative element, it should seem, especially when it stood in need of such continual and costly conservation. But it continued to be plain to a majority of voters that democratic inst.i.tutions absolutely demanded a safeguard against democracy, and that the only insurance was something that must be itself constantly insured at more and more ruinous rates. It continued to be plain also that slavery was purely a matter of local concern, though it could help itself to the national money, force the nation into an unjust war, and stain its reputation in Europe with the buccaneering principles proclaimed in the Ostend Manifesto. All these were plainly the results of the ever-increasing and unprovoked aggressions of Northern fanaticism. To be the victims of such injustice seemed not unpleasing to the South. Let us sum up the items of their little bill against us. They demanded Missouri,--we yielded; they could not get along without Texas,--we _re_-annexed it; they must have a more stringent fugitive-slave law,--we gulped it; they must no longer be insulted with the Missouri Compromise,--we repealed it. Thus far the North had surely been faithful to the terms of the bond. We had paid our pound of flesh whenever it was asked for, and with fewer wry faces, inasmuch as Brother Ham underwent the incision.

Not at all. We had only surrendered the principles of the Revolution; we must give up the theory also, if we would be loyal to the Const.i.tution.

We entirely agree with Mr. Greeley that the quibble which would make the Const.i.tution an anti-slavery doc.u.ment, because the word _slave_ is not mentioned in it, cannot stand a moment if we consider the speeches made in Convention, or the ideas by which the action of its members was guided. But the question of slavery in the Territories stands on wholly different ground. We know what the opinions of the men were who drafted the Const.i.tution, by their own procedure in pa.s.sing the Ordinance of 1787. That the North should yield all claim to the common lands was certainly a new interpretation of const.i.tutional law. And yet this was practically insisted on by the South, and its denial was the more immediate occasion of rupture between the two sections. But, in our opinion, the real cause which brought the question to the decision of war was the habit of concession on the part of the North, and the inability of its representatives to say _No_, when policy as well as conscience made it imperative. Without that confidence in Northern pusillanimity into which the South had been educated by their long experience of this weakness, whatever might have been the secret wish of the leading plotters, they would never have dared to rush their fellow-citizens into a position where further compromise became impossible.

Inextricably confused with the question of Slavery, and essential to an understanding of the motives and character of the Southern people as distinguished from their politicians, is the doctrine of State Rights.

On this topic also Mr. Greeley furnishes all the data requisite to a full understanding of the matter. The dispute resolves itself substantially into this: whether the adoption of the Const.i.tution established a union or a confederacy, a government or a league, a nation or a committee. This also is a question which can only be determined by a knowledge of what the Convention of 1787 intended and accomplished, and the States severally acceded to,--it being of course understood that no State had a right, or at the time pretended any right, to accept the Const.i.tution with mental reservations. On this subject we have ample and unimpeachable testimony in the discussions which led to the calling of the Convention, and the debates which followed in the different conventions of the States called together to decide whether the new frame of government should be accepted or rejected. The conviction that it was absolutely necessary to remodel the Articles of Confederation was wrought wholly by an experience of the inadequacy of the existing plan (under which a single State could oppose its veto to a law of Congress), from, the looseness of its cohesion and its want of power to compel obedience. The principle of coercive authority, which was represented as so oppressively unconst.i.tutional by the friends of Secession in the North as well as the South four years ago, was precisely that which, as its absence had brought the old plan to a dead-lock, was deemed essential to the new.

The formal proposal for a convention, originated by Hamilton, was seconded by one State after another. Here is a sample of Virginian public sentiment at that time, from the "instructions to their representatives," by several const.i.tuencies: "Government without coercion is a proposition at once so absurd and self-contradictory that the idea creates a confusion of the understanding; it is form without substance, at best a body without a soul." Oliver Ellsworth, advocating the adoption of the Const.i.tution in the Convention of Connecticut, says: "A more energetic system is necessary. The present is merely advisory. It has no coercive power. Without this, government is ineffectual, or rather is no government at all." Earlier than this Madison had claimed "an implied right of coercion" even for the Confederate Congress, and Jefferson had gone so far as to say that they possessed it "by the law of nature." The leading objections to the new Const.i.tution were such as to show the general belief that the State sovereignties were to be absorbed into the general government in all matters of national concern. But the unhappy ingenuity of Mr. Jefferson afterwards devised that theory of strict construction which would enable any State to profit by the powers of the Const.i.tution so long as it was for her interest or convenience, and then, by pleading its want of powers, to resolve the helpless organization once more into the incoherence of confederacy. By this dexterous legerdemain, the Union became a string of juggler's rings, which seems a chain while it pleases the operator, but which, by bringing the strain on the weak point contrived for the purpose, is made to fall easily asunder and become separate rings again. An adroit use of this theory enabled the South to gain one advantage after another by threatening disunion, and led naturally, on the first effective show of resistance, to secession.

But in order that the threat might serve its purpose without the costly necessity of putting it in execution, the doctrine of State Rights was carefully inculcated at the South by the same political party which made belief in the value of the Union a fanaticism at the North. On one side of Mason and Dixon's line it was lawful, and even praiseworthy, to steal the horse; on the other, it was a hanging matter to look over the fence.

But in seeking for the cause of the rebellion, with any fairness toward the Southern people, and any wish to understand their motives and character, it would be unwise to leave out of view the fact that they have been carefully educated in the faith that secession is not only their right, but the only safeguard of their freedom. While it is perfectly true that the great struggle now going on is intrinsically between right and privilege, between law and license, and while on the part of its leaders the Southern revolt was a conspiracy against popular government, and an attempt to make a great Republic into a mere convenient drudge for Slavery, yet we should despair of our kind did we believe that the rank and file of the Confederate armies were consciously spending so much courage and endurance on behalf of barbarism. It is more consoling, as it is nearer the truth, to think that they are fighting for what they have been taught to believe their rights, and their inheritance as a free people. The high qualities they have undoubtedly shown in the course of the war, their tenacity, patience, and discipline, show that, under better influences, they may become worthy to take their part in advancing the true destinies of America.

It is yet too early to speculate with much confidence on the remote consequences of the war. One of its more immediate results has already been to disabuse the Southern mind of some of its most fatal misconceptions as to Northern character. They thought us a trading people, incapable of lofty sentiment, ready to sacrifice everything for commercial advantage,--a heterogeneous rabble, fit only to be ruled by a superior race. They are not likely to make that mistake again, and must have learned by this time that the best blood is that which has in it most of the iron of purpose and constancy. War, the sternest and dearest of teachers, has already made us a soberer and older people on both sides. It has brought questions of government and policy home to us as never before, and has made us feel that citizenship is a duty to whose level we must rise, and not a privilege to which we are born. The great principles of humanity and politics, which had faded into the distance of abstraction and history, have been for four years the theme of earnest thought and discussion at every fireside and wherever two men met together. They have again become living and operative in the heart and mind of the nation. What was before a mighty population is grown a great country, united in one hope, inspired by one thought, and welded into one power. But have not the same influences produced the same result in the South, and created there also a nation hopelessly alien and hostile? To a certain extent this is true, but not in the unlimited way in which it is stated by enemies in England, or politicians at home, who would gladly put the people out of heart, because they themselves are out of office. With the destruction of slavery, the one object of the war will have been lost by the Rebels, and its one great advantage gained by the government. Slavery is by no means dead as yet, whether socially in its relation of man to man, or morally in its hold on public opinion and its strength as a political superst.i.tion. But there is no party at the North, considerable in numbers or influence, which could come into power on the platform of making peace with the Rebels on their own terms. No party can get possession of the government which is not in sympathy with the temper of the people, and the people, forced into war against their will by the unprovoked attack of pro-slavery bigotry, are resolved on pushing it to its legitimate conclusion. War means now, consciously with many, unconsciously with most, but inevitably, abolition. Nothing can save slavery but peace. Let its doom be once accomplished, or its reconstruction (for reconstruction means nothing more) clearly seen to be an impossibility, and the bond between the men at the South who were willing to destroy the Union, and those at the North who only wish to save it, for the sake of slavery, will be broken. The ambitious in both sections will prefer their chances as members of a mighty empire to what would always be secondary places in two rival and hostile nations, powerless to command respect abroad or secure prosperity at home. The ma.s.ses of the Southern people will not feel too keenly the loss of a kind of property in which they had no share, while it made them underlings, nor will they find it hard to reconcile themselves with a government from which they had no real cause of estrangement. If the war be waged manfully, as becomes a thoughtful people, without insult or childish triumph in success, if we meet opinion with wiser opinion, waste no time in badgering prejudice till it become hostility, and attack slavery as a crime against the nation, and not as individual sin, it will end, we believe, in making us the most powerful and prosperous community the world ever saw. Our example and our ideas will react more powerfully than ever on the Old World, and the consequence of a rebellion, aimed at the natural equality of all men, will be to hasten incalculably the progress of equalization over the whole earth.

Above all, Freedom will become the one absorbing interest of the whole people, making us a nation alive from sea to sea with the consciousness of a great purpose and a n.o.ble destiny, and uniting us as slavery has. .h.i.therto combined and made powerful the most hateful aristocracy known to man.

McCLELLAN OR LINCOLN?

1864

The spectacle of an opposition waiting patiently during several months for its principles to turn up would be amusing in times less critical than these. Nor was this the worst. If there might be persons malicious enough to think that the Democratic party could get along very well without principles, all would admit that a candidate was among the necessaries of life. Now, where not only immediate policy, but the very creed which that policy is to embody, is dependent on circ.u.mstances, and on circ.u.mstances so shifting and doubtful as those of a campaign, it is hard to find a representative man whose name may, in some possible contingency, mean enough, without, in some other equally possible contingency, meaning too much. The problem was to hunt up somebody who, without being anything in particular, might be anything in general, as occasion demanded. Of course, the professed object of the party was to save their country, but which _was_ their country, and which it would be most profitable to save, whether America or Secessia, was a question that Grant or Sherman might answer one way or the other in a single battle. If only somebody or something would tell them whether they were for war or peace! The oracles were dumb, and all summer long they looked anxiously out, like Sister Anne from her tower, for the hero who should rescue unhappy Columbia from the Republican Bluebeard. Did they see a cloud of dust in the direction of Richmond or Atlanta? Perhaps Grant might be the man, after all, or even Sherman would answer at a pinch. When at last no great man would come along, it was debated whether it might not be better to nominate some one without a record, as it is called, since a n.o.body was clearly the best exponent of a party that was under the unhappy necessity of being still uncertain whether it had any recognizable soul or not. Meanwhile, the time was getting short and the public impatience peremptory.

"Under which king, bezonian? Speak, or die!"

The party found it alike inconvenient to do the one or the other, and ended by a compromise which might serve to keep them alive till after election, but which was as far from any distinct utterance as if their mouths were already full of that official pudding which they hope for as the reward of their amphibological patriotism. Since it was not safe to be either for peace or war, they resolved to satisfy every reasonable expectation by being at the same time both and neither. If you are warlike, there is General McClellan; if pacific, surely you must be suited with Mr. Pendleton; if neither, the combination of the two makes a _tertium quid_ that is neither one thing nor another. As the politic Frenchman, kissing the foot of St. Peter's statue (recast out of a Jupiter), while he thus did homage to existing prejudices, hoped that the Thunderer would remember him if he ever came into power again, so the Chicago Convention compliments the prevailing warlike sentiment of the country with a soldier, but holds the civilian quietly in reserve for the future contingencies of submission. The nomination is a kind of political _What-is-it?_ and voters are expected, without asking impertinent questions, to pay their money and make their own choice as to the natural history of the animal. Looked at from the Northern side, it is a raven, the bird of carnage, to be sure, but whitewashed and looking as decorously dove-like as it can; from the Southern, it is a dove, blackened over for the nonce, but letting the olive-branch peep from under its wing.

A more delicate matter for a convention, however, even than the selection of candidates, is the framing of a platform for them to stand upon. It was especially delicate for a gathering which represented so many heterogeneous and almost hostile elements. So incongruous an a.s.semblage has not been seen since the host of Peter the Hermit, unanimous in nothing but the hope of plunder and of reconquering the Holy Land of office. There were War Democrats ready to unite in peace resolutions, and Peace Democrats eager to move the unanimous nomination of a war candidate. To make the confusion complete, Mr. Franklin Pierce, the dragooner of Kansas, writes a letter in favor of free elections, and the maligners of New England propose a Connecticut Yankee as their favorite nominee. The Convention was a rag-bag of dissent, made up of bits so various in hue and texture that the managers must have been as much puzzled to arrange them in any kind of harmonious pattern as the thrifty housewife in planning her coverlet out of the parings of twenty years' dressmaking. All the odds and ends of personal discontent, every shred of private grudge, every resentful rag snipped off by official shears, sc.r.a.ps of Rebel gray and leavings of Union blue,--all had been gathered, as if for the tailoring of Joseph's coat; and as a Chatham Street broker first carefully removes all marks of previous ownership from the handkerchiefs which find their way to his counter, so the temporary chairman advised his hearers, by way of a preliminary caution, to surrender their convictions. This, perhaps, was superfluous, for it may be doubted whether anybody present, except Mr. Fernando Wood, ever legally had one, though Captain Rynders must have brought many in his following who richly deserved it.

Mr. Belmont, being chosen to represent the Democracy of Mammon, did little more than paraphrase in prose the speech of that fallen financier in another rebellious conclave, as reported by Milton:--

"How in safety best we may Compose our present evils, with regard Of what we are and were, dismissing quite All thoughts of war."

But we turn from the momentary elevation of the banker, to follow the arduous labors of the Committee on Resolutions.[4] The single end to be served by the platform they were to construct was that of a bridge over which their candidate might make his way into the White House.

But it must be so built as to satisfy the somewhat exacting theory of construction held by the Rebel emissaries at Niagara, while at the same time no apprehensions as to its soundness must be awakened in the loyal voters of the party. The war plank would offend the one, the State Rights plank excite the suspicion of the other. The poor fellow in aesop, with his two wives, one pulling out the black hairs and the other the white, was not in a more desperate situation than the Committee,--MacHeath, between his two doxies, not more embarra.s.sed. The result of their labors was, accordingly, as narrow as the pathway of the faithful into the Mahometan paradise,--so slender, indeed, that Blondin should have been selected as the only candidate who could hope to keep his balance on it, with the torrent of events rushing ever swifter and louder below. It might sustain the somewhat light Unionism of Mr. Pendleton, but would General McClellan dare to trust its fragile footing, with his Report and his West Point oration, with his record, in short, under his arm? Without these doc.u.ments General McClellan is a n.o.body; with them, before he can step on a peace platform, he must eat an amount of leek that would have turned the stomach of Ancient Pistol himself. It remained to be seen whether he was more in favor of being President than of his own honor and that of the country.

[4] The _Platform of the Chicago Convention_ was published in the public journals 30th August.

The Resolutions of the Chicago Convention, though they denounce various wrongs and evils, some of them merely imaginary, and all the necessary results of civil war, propose only one thing,--surrender. Disguise it as you will, flavor it as you will, call it what you will, umble-pie is umble-pie, and nothing else. The people instinctively so understood it.

They rejected with disgust a plan whose mere proposal took their pusillanimity for granted, and whose acceptance a.s.sured their self-contempt. At a moment when the Rebels would be checkmated in another move, we are advised to give them a knight and begin the game over again. If they are not desperate, what chance of their accepting offers which they rejected with scorn before the war began? If they are not desperate, why is their interest more intense in the result of our next Presidential election than even in the campaign at their very door? If they were not desperate, would two respectable men like Messrs. Clay and Holcomb endure the society of George Saunders? General McClellan himself admitted the righteousness of the war by volunteering in it, and, the war once begun, the only real question has been whether the principle of legitimate authority or that of wanton insurrection against it should prevail,--whether we should have for the future a government of opinion or of brute force. When the rebellion began, its leaders had no intention to dissolve the Union, but to reconstruct it, to make the Montgomery Const.i.tution and Jefferson Davis supreme over the whole country, and not over a feeble fragment of it. They knew, as we knew, the weakness of a divided country, and our experience of foreign governments during the last four years has not been such as to lessen the apprehension on that score, or to make the consciousness of it less pungent in either of the contending sections. Even now, Jefferson Davis is said to be in favor of a confederation between the Free and the Slave States. But what confederation could give us back the power and prestige of the old Union? The experience of Germany surely does not tempt to imitation. And in making overtures for peace, with whom are we to treat? Talking vaguely about "the South," "the Confederate States," or "the Southern people," does not help the matter; for the cat under all this meal is always the _government_ at Richmond, men with everything to expect from independence, with much to hope from reconstruction, and sure of nothing but ruin from reunion.

And these men, who were arrogant as equals and partners, are to be moderate in dictating terms as conquerors! If the people understood less clearly the vital principle which is at hazard in this contest, if they were not fully persuaded that Slavery and State Eights are merely the counters, and that free inst.i.tutions are the real stake, they might be deluded with the hope of compromise. But there are things that are not subjects of compromise. The honor, the conscience, the very soul of a nation, cannot be compromised without ceasing to exist. When you propose to yield a part of them, there is already nothing left to yield.

And yet this is all that the party calling itself Democratic, after months of deliberation, after four years in which to study the popular mind, have to offer in the way of policy. It is neither more nor less than to confess that they have no real faith in popular self-government, for it is to a.s.sume that the people have neither common nor moral sense. General McClellan is to be put in command of the national citadel, on condition that he immediately offers to capitulate. To accept the nomination on these terms was to lose, not only his election, but his self-respect. Accordingly, no sooner was the damaging effect of the platform evident than it was rumored that he would consent to the candidacy, but reject the conditions on which alone it was offered. The singular uniform, half Union-blue and half Confederate--gray, in which it was proposed by the managers at Chicago to array the Democratic party, while it might be no novelty to some camp-followers of the New York delegation familiar with the rules of certain of our public inst.i.tutions, could hardly be agreeable to one who had worn the livery of his country with distinction. It was the scene of Petruchio and the tailor over again:--

_Gen. McC._ "Why, what, i' th' Devil's name, tailor, call'st thou this?"

_Committee._ "You bid me make it orderly and well, According to the fashion and the time."

_Gen. McC._ "Marry, I did; but, if you be remembered, _I did not bid you mar it to the time._"

Between the nomination and acceptance came the taking of Atlanta, marring the coat to the time with a vengeance, and suggesting the necessity of turning it,--a sudden cure which should rank among the first in future testimonials to the efficacy of Sherman's lozenges. Had General McClellan thrust the resolutions away from him with an honest scorn, we should have nothing to say save in commendation. But to accept them with his own interpretation, to put upon them a meaning utterly averse from their plain intention, and from that understanding of them which the journals of his own faction clearly indicated by their exultation or their silence, according as they favored Confederacy or Union, is to prepare a deception for one of the parties to the bargain. In such cases, which is commonly cheated, the candidate, or the people who vote for him? If the solemn and deliberate language of resolutions is to be interpreted by contraries, what rule of hermeneutics shall we apply to the letter of a candidate? If the Convention meant precisely what they did not say, have we any a.s.surance that the aspirant has not said precisely what he did not mean? Two negatives may const.i.tute an affirmative, but surely the affirmation of two contradictory propositions by parties to the same bargain a.s.sures nothing but misunderstanding.

The resolutions were adopted with but four dissenting votes; their meaning was obvious, and the whole country understood it to be peace on any conditions that would be condescended to at Richmond. If a nation were only a contrivance to protect men in gathering gear, if territory meant only so many acres for the raising of crops, if power were of worth only as a police to prevent or punish crimes against person and property, then peace for the mere sake of peace were the one desirable thing for a people whose only history would be written in its cash-book. But if a nation be a living unity, leaning on the past by tradition, and reaching toward the future by continued aspiration and achievement,--if territory be of value for the raising of men formed to high aims and inspired to n.o.ble deeds by that common impulse which, springing from a national ideal, gradually takes authentic shape in a national character,--if power be but a gross and earthy bulk till it be ensouled with thought and purpose, and of worth only as the guardian and promoter of truth and justice among men,--then there are misfortunes worse than war and blessings greater than peace. At this moment, not the Democratic party only, but the whole country, longs for peace, and the difference is merely as to the price that shall be paid for it. Shall we pay in degradation, and sue for a cessation of hostilities which would make chaos the rule and order the exception, which would not be peace, but toleration, not the repose of manly security, but the helpless quiet of political death? Or shall we pay, in a little more present suffering, self-sacrifice, and earnestness of purpose, for a peace that shall be as lasting as honorable, won as it will be by the victory of right over wrong, and resting on the promise of G.o.d and the hope of man? We believe the country has already made up its mind as to the answer, and will prove that a democracy may have as clear a conception of its interests and duties, as fixed a purpose in defending the one and fulfilling the other, a will as united and prompt, as have hitherto been supposed to characterize forms of government where the interests were more personal and the power less diffused.

Fortunately, though some of General McClellan's indiscreet friends would make the coming election to turn upon his personal quarrel with the administration, the question at issue between the two parties which seek to shape the policy of the country is one which manifestly transcends all lesser considerations, and must be discussed in the higher atmosphere of principle, by appeals to the reason, and not the pa.s.sions, of the people. However incongruous with each other in opinion the candidates of the Democratic party may be, in point of respectability they are unexceptionable. It is true, as one of the candidates represents war and the other peace, and "when two men ride on one horse, one must ride behind," that it is of some consequence to know which is to be in the saddle and which on the croup; but we will take it for granted that General McClellan will have no more delicacy about the opinions of Mr. Pendleton than he has shown for those of the Convention. Still, we should remember that the General may be imprudent enough to die, as General Harrison and General Taylor did before him, and that Providence may again make "of our pleasant vices whips to scourge us." We shall say nothing of the sectional aspect of the nomination, for we do not believe that what we deemed a pitiful electioneering clamor, when raised against our own candidates four years ago, becomes reasonable argument in opposing those of our adversaries now. The point of interest, then, is simply this: What can General McClellan accomplish for the country which Mr. Lincoln has failed to accomplish? In what respect would their policies differ? And, supposing them to differ, which would be most consistent with the honor and permanent well-being of the nation?

General McClellan, in his letter of acceptance,[5] a.s.sumes that, in nominating him, "the record of his public life was kept in view" by the Convention. This will enable us to define with some certainty the points on which his policy would be likely to differ from that of Mr.

Lincoln. He agrees with him that the war was a matter of necessity, not of choice. He agrees with him in a.s.suming a right to emanc.i.p.ate slaves as a matter of military expediency, differing only as to the method and extent of its application,--a mere question of judgment. He agrees with, him as to the propriety of drafting men for the public service, having, indeed, been the first to recommend a draft of men whom he was to command himself. He agrees with him that it is not only lawful, but politic, to make arrests without the ordinary forms of law where the public safety requires it, and himself both advised and accomplished the seizure of an entire Legislature. So far there is no essential difference, and beyond this we find very little, except that Mr.

Lincoln was in a position where he was called on to act with a view to the public welfare, and General McClellan in one where he could express abstract opinions, without the responsibility of trial, to be used hereafter for partisan purposes as a part of his "record." For example, just after his failure to coerce the State of Virginia, he took occasion to instruct his superiors in their duty, and, among other things, stated his opinion that the war "should not be a war looking to the subjugation of the people of any State," but "should be against armed forces and political organizations." The whole question of the right to "coerce a sovereign State" appears to have arisen from a confusion of the relations of a State to its own internal policy and to the general government. But a State is certainly a "political organization," and, if we understand General McClellan rightly, he would coerce a State, but not the people of it,--a distinction which we hope he appreciates better than its victims would be likely to do. We find here also no diversity in principle between the two men, only that Mr. Lincoln has been compelled to do, while General McClellan has had the easier task of telling us what he would do. After the Peninsular campaign, we cannot but think that even the latter would have been inclined to say, with the wisest man that ever spoke in our tongue, "If to do were as easy as to know what 'twere good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men's cottages princes' palaces."

[5] This letter was published in the public journals 9 September.

The single question of policy on which General McClellan differs from Mr. Lincoln, stripped of the conventional phrases in which he drapes it, is Slavery. He can mean nothing else when he talks of "conciliation and compromise," of receiving back any State that may choose to return "with a full guaranty of all its const.i.tutional rights." If it be true that a rose by any other name will smell as sweet, it is equally true that there is a certain species of toadstool that would be none the less disgusting under whatever _alias_. Compromise and conciliation are both excellent things in their own way, and in the fitting time and place, but right cannot be compromised without surrendering it, and to attempt conciliation by showing the white feather ends, not in reconcilement, but subjection. The combined ignorance of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus as to what had been going on while they were in their cavern would hardly equal that of General McClellan alone as to the political history of the country. In the few months between Mr.

Lincoln's election and the attack on Fort Sumter we tried conciliation in every form, carrying it almost to the verge of ignominy. The Southern leaders would have none of it. They saw in it only a confession of weakness, and were but the more arrogant in their demand of all or nothing. Compromise we tried for three quarters of a century, and it brought us to where we are, for it was only a fine name for cowardice, and invited aggression. And now that the patient is dying of this drench of lukewarm water, Doctor Sangrado McClellan gravely prescribes another gallon. If that fail to finish him, why, give him a gallon more.

We wish it were as easy to restore General McClellan's army to what it was before the Peninsular campaign as he seems to think it is to put the country back where it was at the beginning of the war. The war, it is true, was undertaken to a.s.sert the sovereignty of the Const.i.tution, but the true cause of quarrel was, not that the South denied the supremacy of that instrument, but that they claimed the sole right to interpret it, and to interpret it in a sense hostile to the true ideal of the country, and the clear interests of the people. But circ.u.mstances have changed, and what was at first a struggle to maintain the outward form of our government has become a contest to preserve the life and a.s.sert the supreme will of the nation. Even in April, 1861, underneath that desire for legal sanction common to our race, which expressed itself in loyalty to the Const.i.tution, there was an instinctive feeling that the very germinating principle of our nationality was at stake, and that unity of territory was but another name for unity of idea; nay, was impossible without it, and undesirable if it were possible. It was not against the Const.i.tution that the Rebels declared war, but against free inst.i.tutions; and if they are beaten, they must submit to the triumph of those inst.i.tutions. Their only chance of const.i.tutional victory was at the polls. They rejected it, though it was in their grasp, and now it is for us, and not them, to dictate terms. After all the priceless blood they have shed, General McClellan would say to them, "Come back and rule us." Mr. Lincoln says, "Come back as equals, with every avenue of power open to you that is open to us; but the advantage which the slaveholding interest wrung from the weakness of the fathers your own madness has forfeited to the sons."

General McClellan tells us that if the war had been conducted "in accordance with those principles which he took occasion to declare when in active service, reconciliation would have been easy." We suppose he refers to his despatch of July 7th, 1862, when, having just demonstrated his incapacity in the profession for which he had been educated, he kindly offered to take the civil policy of the country under his direction, expecting, perhaps, to be more successful in a task for which he was fitted neither by training nor experience. It is true he had already been spoken of as a possible candidate for the Presidency, and that despatch was probably written to be referred to afterwards as part of the "record" to which he alludes in his recent letter. Indeed, he could have had no other conceivable object in so impertinent a proceeding, for, up to that time, the war had been conducted on the very principles he recommended; nay, was so conducted for six months longer, till it was demonstrated that reconciliation was not to be had on those terms, and that victory was incompatible with them. Mr. Lincoln was forced into what General McClellan calls a radical policy by the necessity of the case. The Rebels themselves insisted on convincing him that his choice was between that and failure. They boasted that slavery was their bulwark and a.r.s.enal; that, while every Northern soldier withdrew so much from the productive industry of the Union, every fighting-man at the South could be brought into the field, so long as the negroes were left to do the work that was to feed and clothe him. Were these negroes property? The laws of war justified us in appropriating them to our own use. Were they population? The laws of war equally justified us in appealing to them for aid in a cause which was their own more than it was ours. It was so much the worse for the South that its property was of a kind that could be converted from chattels into men, and from men into soldiers, by the scratch of a pen. The dragon's teeth were not of our sowing, but, so far from our being under any obligation not to take into our service the army that sprang from them, it would have been the extreme of weakness and folly not to do it. If there be no provision in the Const.i.tution for emanc.i.p.ating the negroes, neither is there any for taking Richmond; and we give General McClellan too much credit for intelligence and patriotism to suppose that if, when he asked for a hundred thousand more men at Harrison's Bar, he had been told that he could have black ones, he would have refused them.

But supposing the very improbable chance of General McClellan's election to the Presidency, how would he set about his policy of conciliation? Would he disarm the colored troops? In favor of prosecuting the war, as he declares himself to be, this would only necessitate the draft of just so many white ones in their stead. Would he recall the proclamation of freedom? This would only be to incite a servile insurrection. The people have already suffered too much by General McClellan's genius for retreat, to follow him in another even more disastrous. But it is idle to suppose that the Rebels are to be appeased by any exhibition of weakness. Like other men, they would take fresh courage from it. Force is the only argument to which they are in a condition to listen, and, like other men, they will yield to it at last, if it prove irresistible. We cannot think that General McClellan would wish to go down to posterity as the President who tried to restore the Union by the reenslaving of men who had fought in its defence, and had failed in the attempt. We doubt if he had any very clear conception of what he meant by conciliation and compromise, except as a gloss to make the unconditional surrender doctrine of the Chicago Convention a little less odious. If he meant more, if he hoped to gain political strength by an appeal to the old pro-slavery prejudices of the country, he merely shows the same unfortunate unconsciousness of the pa.s.sage of time, and the changes it brings with it, that kept him in the trenches at Yorktown till his own defeat became inevitable. Perhaps he believes that the Rebels would accept from him what they rejected with contempt when offered by Mr.

Lincoln,--that they would do in compliment to him what they refused to do from the interest of self-preservation. If they did, it would simply prove that they were in a condition to submit to terms, and not to dictate them. If they listened to his advances, their cause must be so hopeless that it would be a betrayal of his trust to make them. If they were obstinate, he would be left with the same war on his hands which has forced Mr. Lincoln into all his measures, and which would not be less exacting on himself. As a peace candidate he might solicit votes with some show of reason, but on a war platform we see no good reason for displacing Mr. Lincoln in his favor except on personal grounds; and we fear that our campaigns would hardly be conducted with vigor under a President whom the people should have invested with the office by way of poultice for his bruised sensibilities as a defeated commander. Once in the Presidential chair, with a country behind him insisting on a re-establishment of the Union, and a rebellion before him deaf to all offers from a government that faltered in its purposes, we do not see what form of conciliation he would hit upon by which to persuade a refractory "political organization," except that practised by Hood's butcher when he was advised to try it on a drove of sheep.

"He seized upon the foremost wether, And hugged and lugged and tugged him neck and crop, Just _nolens volens_ through the open shop (If tails came off he did not care a feather); Then, walking to the door and smiling grim, He rubbed his forehead and his sleeve together,-- There! I've _con_ciliated him!'"

It is idle, however, to think of allaying angry feeling or appeasing resentment while the war lasts, and idler to hope for any permanent settlement, except in the complete subjugation of the rebellion. There are persons who profess to be so much shocked at the _word_ subjugation as to be willing that we should have immediate experience of the _thing_, by receiving back the Rebels on their own conditions. Mr.

Lincoln has already proclaimed an amnesty wide enough to satisfy the demands of the most exacting humanity, and they must reckon on a singular stupidity in their hearers who impute ferocious designs to a man who cannot nerve his mind to the shooting of a deserter or the hanging of a spy. Mr. Lincoln, in our judgment, has shown from the first the considerate wisdom of a practical statesman. If he has been sometimes slow in making up his mind, it has saved him the necessity of being hasty to change it when once made up, and he has waited till the gradual movement of the popular sentiment should help him to his conclusions and sustain him in them. To be moderate and unimpa.s.sioned in revolutionary times that kindle natures of more flimsy texture to a blaze may not be a romantic quality, but it is a rare one, and goes with those ma.s.sive understandings on which a solid structure of achievement may be reared. Mr. Lincoln is a long-headed and long-purposed man, who knows when he is ready,--a secret General McClellan never learned. That he should be accused of playing Cromwell by the Opposition, and reproached with not being Cromwellian enough by the more ardent of his own supporters, is proof enough that his action has been of that firm but deliberate temper best suited to troublous times and to const.i.tutional precedents. One of these accusations is the unworthy fetch of a party at a loss for argument, and the other springs from that exaggerated notion of the power of some exceptional characters upon events which Carlyle has made fashionable, but which was never even approximately true except in times when there was no such thing as public opinion, and of which there is no record personal enough to a.s.sure us what we are to believe. A more sincere man than Cromwell never lived, yet they know little of his history who do not know that his policy was forced to trim between Independents and Presbyterians, and that he so far healed the wounds of civil war as to make England dreaded without satisfying either. We have seen no reason to change our opinion of Mr. Lincoln since his wary scrupulousness won him the applause of one party, or his decided action, when he was at last convinced of its necessity, made him the momentary idol of the other. We will not call him a great man, for over-hasty praise is too apt to sour at last into satire, and greatness may be trusted safely to history and the future; but an honest one we believe him to be, and with no aim save to repair the glory and greatness of his country.

But fortunately it is no trial of the personal merits of opposing candidates on which the next election is to p.r.o.nounce a verdict. The men set up by the two parties represent principles utterly antagonistic, and so far-reaching in their consequences that all personal considerations and contemporary squabbles become as contemptible in appearance as they always are in reality. However General McClellan may equivocate and strive to hide himself in a cloud of ink, the man who represents the party that deliberately and unanimously adopted the Chicago Platform is the practical embodiment of the principles contained in it. By ignoring the platform, he seems, it is true, to nominate himself; but this, though it may be good evidence of his own presumption, affords no t.i.ttle of proof that he could have been successful at Chicago without some distinct previous pledges of what his policy would be. If no such pledges were given, then the Convention nominated him with a clear persuasion that he was the sort of timber out of which tools are made. If they were not given, does not the acceptance of the nomination under false pretences imply a certain sacrifice of personal honor? And will the honor of the country be safe in the hands of a man who is careless of his own? General McClellan's election will be understood by the South and by the whole country as an acknowledgment of the right of secession,--an acknowledgment which will resolve the United States into an a.s.sociation for insurance against any risk of national strength and greatness by land or sea. Mr. Lincoln, on the other hand, is the exponent of principles vital to our peace, dignity, and renown,--of all that can save America from becoming Mexico, and insure popular freedom for centuries to come.

It is the merest electioneering trick to say that the war has been turned from its original intention, as if this implied that a cheat had thereby been put upon the country. The truth is, that the popular understanding has been gradually enlightened as to the real causes of the war, and, in consequence of that enlightenment, a purpose has grown up, defining itself slowly into clearer consciousness, to finish the war in the only way that will keep it finished, by rooting out the evil principle from which it sprang. The country has been convinced that a settlement which should stop short of this would be nothing more than a truce favorable only to the weaker party in the struggle, to the very criminals who forced it upon us. The single question is, Shall we have peace by submission or by victory? General McClellan's election insures the one, Mr. Lincoln's gives us our only chance of the other. It is Slavery, and not the Southern people, that is our enemy; we must conquer this to be at peace with them. With the relations of the several States of the Rebel Confederacy to the Richmond government we have nothing to do; but to say that, after being beaten as foreign enemies, they are to resume their previous relations to our own government as if nothing had happened, seems to us a manifest absurdity. From whom would General McClellan, if elected under his plan of conciliation, exact the penalties of rebellion? The States cannot be punished, and the only merciful way in which we can reach the real criminals is by that very policy of emanc.i.p.ation whose efficacy is proved by the bitter opposition of all the allies of the Rebellion in the North. This is a punishment which will not affect the independence of individual States, which will improve the condition of the ma.s.s of the Southern population, and which alone will remove the rock of offence from the pathway of democratic inst.i.tutions. So long as slavery is left, there is antipathy between the two halves of the country, and the recurrence of actual war will be only a question of time. It is the nature of evil to be aggressive. Without moral force in itself, it is driven, by the necessity of things, to seek material props. It cannot make peace with truth, if it would. Good, on the other hand, is by its very nature peaceful. Strong in itself, strong in the will of G.o.d and the sympathy of man, its conquests are silent and beneficent as those of summer, warming into life, and bringing to blossom and fruitage, whatever is wholesome in men and the inst.i.tutions of men.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN

1864-1865.

There have been many painful crises since the impatient vanity of South Carolina hurried ten prosperous Commonwealths into a crime whose a.s.sured retribution was to leave them either at the mercy of the nation they had wronged, or of the anarchy they had summoned but could not control, when no thoughtful American opened his morning paper without dreading to find that he had no longer a country to love and honor.

Whatever the result of the convulsion whose first shocks were beginning to be felt, there would still be enough square miles of earth for elbow-room; but that ineffable sentiment made up of memory and hope, of instinct and tradition, which swells every man's heart and shapes his thought, though perhaps never present to his consciousness, would be gone from it, leaving it common earth and nothing more. Men might gather rich crops from it, but that ideal harvest of priceless a.s.sociations would be reaped no longer; that fine virtue which sent up messages of courage and security from every sod of it would have evaporated beyond recall. We should be irrevocably cut off from our past, and be forced to splice the ragged ends of our lives upon whatever new conditions chance might leave dangling for us.

We confess that we had our doubts at first whether the patriotism of our people were not too narrowly provincial to embrace the proportions of national peril. We felt an only too natural distrust of immense public meetings and enthusiastic cheers.

That a reaction should follow the holiday enthusiasm with which the war was entered on, that it should follow soon, and that the slackening of public spirit should be proportionate to the previous over-tension, might well be foreseen by all who had studied human nature or history.

Men acting gregariously are always in extremes. As they are one moment capable of higher courage, so they are liable, the next, to baser depression, and it is often a matter of chance whether numbers shall multiply confidence or discouragement. Nor does deception lead more surely to distrust of men than self-deception to suspicion of principles. The only faith that wears well and holds its color in all weathers is that which is woven of conviction and set with the sharp mordant of experience. Enthusiasm is good material for the orator, but the statesman needs something more durable to work in,--must be able to rely on the deliberate reason and consequent firmness of the people, without which that presence of mind, no less essential in times of moral than of material peril, will be wanting at the critical moment.