Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 by Various

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The doctrine that a minister is to maintain some ethereal, unearthly
station, where, wrapt in divine contemplation, he is to regard with
indifference the actual struggles and realities of life, is a sickly
species of sentimentalism, the growth of modern refinement, and
altogether too moonshiny to have been comprehended by our stout-hearted
and very practical fathers. With all their excellences, they had nothing
sentimental about them; they were bent on reducing all things to
practical, manageable realities. They would not hear of churches, but
called them meeting-houses; they would not be called clergymen, but
_ministers_ or servants,--thereby signifying their calling to real,
tangible work among real men and things.

As we have already said, in the beginnings of New England, the Church
and State were identical, and the clergy _ex officio_ the main
counsellors and directors of the Commonwealth; and when this especial
prerogative was relinquished, they naturally retained something of the
bent it had given them.

An interesting portion of these sketches comprises the lives of
ministers during our Revolutionary struggle, showing how ardently and
manfully at that time the clergy headed the people. Many of them went
into the army as chaplains; one or two, more zealous still, even took up
temporal arms; while the greater number showered the enemy with sermons,
tracts, and pamphlets.

Some of the more zealous politicians among them did not scruple to bring
their sentiments even into the prayers of the church. We recollect
an anecdote of a stout Whig minister of New Haven, who, during the
occupation of the town by the British, was ordered to offer public
prayers for the King, which he did as follows: "O Lord, bless thy
servant, King George, and grant unto him wisdom; for thou knowest, O
Lord, _he needs it_."

So afterwards, in the time of the Embargo, Parson Eaton, of Harpswell, a
Federalist, is recorded to have introduced his prayer for the President
in a formula which might be recommended at the present day for the use
of the people of Kansas. "Forasmuch as thou hast commanded us to pray
for our enemies, we pray for the President of these United States, that
his heart may be turned to just counsels," etc.

This same Parson Eaton distinguished himself also for his patriotic
enthusiasm in Revolutionary times. When the British had burned Falmouth,
(Portland,) a messenger came to Harpswell to beat up for recruits to the
Continental forces. Not succeeding to his mind, he went to Parson Eaton,
one Sunday morning, and begged him to say something for him in the
course of the day's services. "It is my sacramental Sabbath," said the
valiant Doctor, "and I cannot. But at the going down of the sun I will
speak to my people." And accordingly, that very evening, Bible in hand,
on the green before the meeting-house, Dr. Eaton addressed the people,
denouncing the curse of Meroz on those who came not up to the help of
the country, and recruits flowed in abundantly.

The pastors of New England were always in their sphere moral reformers.
Profitable and popular sins, though countenanced by long-established
custom, were fearlessly attacked. No sight could be more impressive than
that of Dr. Hopkins--who with all his power of mind was never a popular
preacher, and who knew he was not popular--rising up in Newport pulpits
to testify against the slave-trade, then as reputable and profitable a
sin as slave-holding is now. He knew that Newport was the stronghold
of the practice, and that the probable consequence of his faithfulness
would be the loss of his pulpit and of his temporal support; but none
the less plainly and faithfully did he testify. Fond as he was of
doctrinal subtilties, keen as was his analysis of disinterested
benevolence, he did not, like some in our day, confine himself to
analyzing virtue in the abstract, but took upon himself the duty of
practicing it in the concrete without fear of consequences,--well
knowing that there is no logic like that of consistent action.

We should do injustice to our subject, if we did not add a testimony to
the peculiarly religious character and influence of the men of whom we
speak. Shrewd, practical, capable, as they were, in the affairs of this
life, perfectly natural and human as were their characters, still they
were in the best sense unworldly men. Religion was the deep underlying
stratum on which their whole life was built. Like the granite framework
of the earth, it sunk below all and rose above all else in their life.
No _Acta Sanctorum_ contain more pathetic pictures of simple and
all-absorbing godliness than were displayed by the subjects of these
sketches. However they may have differed among themselves as to the
metaphysical adjustment of the Calvinistic system, all agreed in so
presenting it as to make God all in all.

Doctor Arnold says it is necessary for the highest development of
the soul that it should have somewhere an object of entire reverence
enthroned above all possibility of doubt or criticism. Now a radically
democratic system, like that of New England, at once sweeps all
factitious reliances of this kind from the soul. No crown, no court,
no nobility, no ritual, no hierarchy,--the beautiful principles of
reverence and loyalty might have died out of the American heart, had not
these men by their religious teachings upborne it as on eagles' wings to
the footstool of the King Eternal, Immortal, Invisible. Hence we see why
what was commonly called among them the "Doctrine of Divine Sovereignty"
acquired so prominent a place in their preaching and their hearts. They
were men of deep reverence and profound loyalty of nature, from whom
every lower object for the repose of these qualities had been torn
away,--who concentrated on God alone those sentiments of faith and
fealty which in other lands are divided with Church and King. Hence,
more than that of any other clergy, their preaching contemplated God as
King and Ruler. Submission to him without condition, without limit,
they both preached and practised. _Unconditional submission_ was as
constantly on their lips God-ward as it was sparingly uttered man-ward.

No picture of the "good parson" that was ever drawn could exceed in
beauty that of the Rev. Jeremiah Hallock, whose life and manners had
that indescribable beauty, completeness, and sacredness, which religion
sometimes gives when shining out through a peculiarly congenial natural
temperament,--yet we must confess we are as much interested and
impressed with its effects in those wilder and more erratic
temperaments, such as Bellamy, Backus, and Moody, where genius and
passion were so combined as to lead to many inconsistencies. This book
is a record of how manfully many such men battled with themselves,
repairing the faults of their hasty and passionate hours by the true and
honest humility of their better ones, so that, as one has said of our
Pilgrim Fathers, we feel that they may have been endeared to God even by
their faults.

The pastoral labors of these ministers were abounding. Two and sometimes
three services on the Sabbath, and a weekly lecture, were only the
beginning of their labors. Multitudes of them held circuit meetings, to
the number of two or three a week, in the outskirts of their parishes;
besides which they labored conversationally from house to house with
individuals.

Gradual, indefinite, insensible amelioration of character was not by any
means the only or the highest aim of their preaching. They sought to
make religion as definite and as real to men as their daily affairs, and
to bring them, as respects their spiritual history, to crises as marked
and decided as those to which men are brought in temporal matters.
They must become Christians now, today; the change must be immediate,
all-pervading, thorough.

Such a style of preaching, from men of such power, could not be without
corresponding results, especially as it was based always upon strong
logical appeals to the understanding. From it resulted, from time to
time, periods which are marked in these narratives as revivals of
religion,--seasons in which the cumulative force of the instructions and
power of the pastor, recognized by that gracious assistance on which he
always depended, reached a point of outward development that affected
the whole social atmosphere, and brought him into intimate and
confidential knowledge of the spiritual struggles of his flock.
The preaching of the pastor was then attuned and modified to these
disclosures, and his metaphysical system shaped and adapted to what he
perceived to be the real wants and weaknesses of the soul. Hence arose
modifications of theology,--often interfering with received theory, just
as a judicious physician's clinical practice varies from the book. Many
of the theological disputes which have agitated New England have arisen
in the honest effort to reconcile accepted forms of faith with the
observed phenomena and real needs of the soul in its struggles
heavenward.

* * * * *

A BRIEF REVIEW OF THE KANSAS USURPATION.

If it had been the avowed intention of the dominant party in this
country to disgust the people by a long and systematic course of
wrong-doing,--if it had wished to prove that it was indissolubly wedded
to injustice, inconsistency, and error, it could not have chosen a
better method of doing so than it has actually pursued, in the entire
management of the Kansas question. From the beginning to the end, that
has been both a blunder and a crime. Nothing more atrocious,--nothing
more perverse,--nothing more foolish, as a matter of policy,--and
we might add, but for the seriousness of the subject, nothing more
ludicrous,--has occurred in our history, than the attempt, which has now
been persisted in for several years, to force the evils of Slavery upon
a people who cannot and will not endure them.

We say, to force the evils of slavery upon an unwilling people,--because
such has been and is the only end of this protracted endeavor. The
authors of the scheme have scarcely shown the ordinary cunning of
rogues, which conceals its ulterior purposes. Disdaining the advice
of Mrs. Peachum to her daughter Polly, to be "somewhat nice" in her
deviations from virtue, they have advanced bravely and flagrantly to
their nefarious object. They have been reckless, defiant, aggressive;
but, unfortunately for them, they have not been sagacious. The thin
disguise of principle under which they masked their designs at the
outset--as it were a bit of oiled paper--was soon torn away; the plot
betrayed its inherent wickedness from step to step; the instruments
selected to execute it have one after another abandoned the task,
as quite impracticable for any honest mortal; and now these whilom
advocates of "Popular Sovereignty" stand exposed to the scorn and
derision of the country, as nothing less than what their opponents all
along declared them to be,--the sworn champions of Slavery-Extension.
All the movements and changes of their external policy find their
explication in the single phrase, the actual and the political
advancement of the interests of Slavery.

It is humiliating to an American citizen to cast his eyes back, even for
a moment, to the history of this Kansas plot,--humiliating in many ways;
but in none more so than in the revelation it makes of the depth
and extent of party-servility in the Northern mind. Throughout the
proceedings of the "Democracy" towards the unhappy settlers of Kansas,
it is difficult to place the finger on a single act of large, just, or
generous policy; every step in it appears to have developed some new
outrage or some new fraud; and yet, every step in it has also elicited
new shouts of approval from the echoing lieges and bondmen of "the
Party." We should willingly, therefore, turn away from the theme, but
that we believe the end is not yet come; a review of its past may
instruct us as to its future. For it is not always true, as Coleridge
says, that experience, like the stern-lights of a ship, illuminates only
the track it has left; the lights may be hung upon the bows, and the
spectator be enabled to discern, by means of them, no less, the way in
which it is going.

A "Territory," viewed in connection with the political system of
the United States, must be confessed to be a somewhat erratic and
embarrassing member. Few or no specific provisions are made for it in
the Organic Law, which applies primarily, and quite exclusively,
to "States." The word is mentioned there but once,--in the clause
empowering Congress to "make all needful rules and regulations
respecting the territory or other property belonging to the United
States,"--and here it occurs in a somewhat doubtful sense. Judging by
the mere letter or obvious import of the Constitution, the right of
acquiring and governing territory would seem to be a _casus omissus_, or
a power overlooked. Accordingly, Mr. Webster went so far as to assert
that the framers of it never contemplated its extension beyond the
original limits of the country;[A] but this we can scarcely believe of
men so far-seeing and sagacious. It were a better opinion, which
Mr. Benton has recently urged, that the acquisition and control of
territories are necessary incidents of the sovereign and proprietary
character of the government created by the Constitution.[B] But be
this as it may, whatever the theoretic origin of the right to acquire
territory,--whatever the origin of the right to govern it,--whether the
former be derived from the war-making power, which implies conquest, or
from the treaty-making power, which implies purchase,--and whether the
latter be derived from an express grant or is involved as necessary to
the execution of other grants, both questions were definitively settled
by long and universally accepted practice. Under the actual legislation
of Congress, running over a period of sixty years,--a legislation
sanctioned by all administrations, by all departments of the government,
by all the authorities of the individual States, by all statesmen of all
parties, and by frequent popular recognitions,--prescription has taken
the force of law, and that which might once be theoretically doubtful
became forever practically valid and legitimate.

[Footnote A: Works, Vol. V. p. 306.]

[Footnote B: See his late pamphlet on the Dred Scott decision, which
we may say, without adopting its conclusions, every statesman ought to
read.]

It was not till within the last few years that the right of Congress
over the Territories was questioned. Certain classes of politicians then
discovered that the whole of our past statesmanship had been a mistake,
and that the time had come to propound a new doctrine. No! they said, it
is not Congress, not the Federal Government, which is entitled to govern
the Territories, but the Territories themselves,--which means the
handful of their original occupants. The real sovereignty resides in
the squatters, and Squatter Sovereignty is the charm which dispels
all difficulties. Alas! it was rather like the ingredients mingled by
Macbeth's hags, only "a charm of powerful trouble." Overlooking the fact
that the Territories were Territories precisely because they were not
States, this absurd theory proposed to confer the highest character of
an organized political existence upon a society wholly inchoate. As
_land_, the Territories were the property of the United States, to be
disposed of and regulated by the will of Congress; as _collections of
men_, they were yet immature communities, having in reality no social
being, and in that light also wisely and benevolently subjected to the
will of Congress; but Squatter Sovereignty elevated them, _willy nilly_,
to an independent self-subsistence. They were declared full-formed and
fledged before they were out of the shell. A mere conglomeration of
emigrants, Indian traders, and half-breeds was invested with all the
functions of a mature and ripened civilization. Long ere there were
people enough in any Territory to furnish the officers of a regular
government,--before they possessed any of the apparatus of court-houses,
jails, legislative chambers, etc., essential to a regular
government,--before they lived near enough to each other, in fact,
to constitute a respectable town-meeting,--before they could pay the
expenses or gather the means of their own defence from the Indians,
these wonderful entities were held to be endowed with the right of
entering into the most complicated relations and of forming the most
important institutions for themselves,--and not only for themselves, but
for their posterity.

This puerile dogma was asserted ostensibly in the interest of Slavery,
in order to get rid of the power of Congress over that subject; but the
real source of it was the cowardice of those invertebrate and timorous
politicians who desired to evade the responsibility of expressing
opinions concerning this power. General Cass was the putative father of
it, and it might well have come from one of his pliancy and calibre; but
as Slavery itself, embodied in the person of Calhoun, scouted the feeble
bantling, there was soon no one so mean as to confess the paternity.
Abandoned of its begetters, Squatter Sovereignty wandered the streets
like a squalid and orphaned outcast, begging anybody and everybody to
take it in, and finding no creditable welcome anywhere.

Calhoun and his friends, no less anxious than Cass and his friends
to rescue Slavery from the discretion of Congress, though for other
reasons, contrived to find a more respectable excuse for such a policy.
As California and New Mexico--both free soil--had lately been acquired,
they contended that the moment new territories attached to the United
States, the same moment the Constitution attached to them; and inasmuch
as the Constitution guarantied the existence of Slavery, _presto_,
Slavery must be regarded as existing under it in the Territories! This,
we say, was more respectable ground than Squatter Sovereignty, because
it met the question more fairly in the face; yet, considered either as
dialectics or history, it was not one whit less absurd. We do not wonder
that Webster, and all the other sound lawyers of the nation, heard such
an announcement of Constitutional hermeneutics with utter surprise and
astonishment. It was enough to astound even the veriest tyro in the law.
The Constitution--and especially by all the premises of the State-Rights
school--is a mere compact between the States; it confers no powers but
delegated and enumerated powers, and such as are indispensable to the
execution of these; and nowhere is there a clause or letter in
it extending its operation beyond the States. Even in respect to
acknowledged powers, these are inoperative until carried into effect by
a special act of Congress; they have no vitality in themselves,--they
are only dead provisions or forms till Congress has breathed into them
the breath of life; and thence to argue that of their own energy they
may leap into or embrace the Territories is to argue that a corpse may
on its own motion rise and walk.

But granting this caoutchouc property, this migratory power, in the
Constitution, the inference that it would take Slavery with it is a
still more monstrous error than the original premises. Slavery as such
is not recognized or guarantied by the Federal Constitution. Whatever
the five slave-holding judges of the Supreme Court may seek to maintain,
they cannot upset the universal logic of the law, nor extinguish the
fundamental principles of our political system. Slavery exists only by
the local or municipal usage of the States in which it exists; it is
there universally defined as a right of property in man; whereas
the Constitution of the United States, in all its prohibitions and
provisions, designates and acts upon human beings only as persons.
Whatever their characters or relations under the laws of the States,
they are, under the Federal Constitution, MEN. Nowhere in that immortal
paper is there an iota or tittle which gives countenance to the idea
that human beings may be held as property. It speaks of "persons held to
service or labor," as apprentices, for instance,--and of persons other
than free, _i.e._ not politically citizens, as Indians and some negroes;
but it does not speak of Slaves or of Slavery; on the contrary, in every
part, it legislates for men solely as men. The laws of each State, and
the relations of the various inhabitants of each State, it of course
recognizes as valid within each State; but it recognizes them as resting
exclusively on the municipal authority of the State, and not on its own
authority. Against nothing did the framers of the Constitution more
strenuously contend than against the admission of any phrase sanctioning
the tenure of man as property. They refused even to allow of the use
of the word _servitude_, so much did they hate the thing; and Madison
expressed their almost unanimous sentiment when he exclaimed, "We intend
this Constitution to be THE GREAT CHARTER OF HUMAN LIBERTY to the unborn
millions who shall yet enjoy its protection, and who should not see that
such an institution as Slavery was ever known in our midst." In
that spirit was the instrument framed, and in that spirit was it
administered, while its framers lived.

Nevertheless, under the twofold pretence we have cited,--the one
reconciling the conscience with the cowardice of the North, and the
other conceding the arrogant pretensions of the South,--the negation
of the power of the central government over Slavery was carried into
effect. By a legislative hocus-pocus, known as the Compromise Measures
of 1850, Congress, contrary to the uniform tendency of bodies entrusted
with a discretion, vacated instead of enlarging its powers. Its
sovereign function of territorial legislation was abdicated, in favor of
that wretched and ragged pretender, Squatter Sovereignty; and silly or
misguided people everywhere, who professed to regard as dangerous that
political excitement and agitation which are the life of republics,
hailed the accession of King Log as a glorious triumph of legitimacy.
In the remanding of a delicate question from the central to a
local jurisdiction, in the conversion of a general into a topical
inflammation, they affected to see an end of the difficulty, a cure to
the disease. But no expectation could have been less wise. It was a
transfer, and a possible postponement, but not a settlement of the
trouble. Had they looked deeper, they would have discerned that the
dispute in regard to Slavery is involved in the very structure of our
government, which links two incompatible civilizations under the same
head, which compels a struggle for political power between the diverse
elements by the terms and conditions of their union, and which, if the
contest is suppressed at one time or place, forces it to break out
at another, and will force it to break out incessantly, until either
Freedom or Slavery has achieved a decisive triumph.

The principle of the non-interference of Congress with the Territories
once secured, there yet stood in the way of its universal application
the time-honored agreement called the Missouri Compromise. Down to
the year 1820, Congress had legislated to keep Slavery out of the
Territories; but at that disastrous era, a weak dread of civil
convulsion led to the surrender of a single State (Missouri) to this
evil,--under a solemn stipulation and warrant, however, that it should
never again be introduced north of a certain line. Originating with the
Slave-holders, and sustained by the Slave-holders, this compact was
sacredly respected by them for thirty-three years; it was respected
until they had got out of it all the advantages they could, and until
Freedom was about to reap _her_ advantages,--when they began to denounce
it as unconstitutional and void. A Northern Senator--whose conduct then
we shall not characterize, as he seems now to be growing weary of the
hard service into which he entered--was made the instrument of its
overthrow. That hallowed landmark, which had lifted its awful front
against the spread of Slavery for more than an entire generation, was
obliterated by a quibble, and the morning sun of the 22d of May, 1854,
rose for the last time "on the guarantied and certain liberties of
all the unsettled and unorganized region of the American Continent."
Everything there was of honor, of justice, of the love of truth and
liberty, in the heart of the nation, was smitten by this painful blow;
the common sense of security felt the wound; the consoling consciousness
that the faith of men might be relied upon was removed by it; and to the
general imagination, in fact, it seemed as if some mighty charm, which
had stayed the issue of untold calamities, were suddenly and wantonly
broken.

Thus, after the Constitution had been perverted in its fundamental
character,--after Congress had been despoiled of one of its most
important functions,--after a compact, made sacred by the faith,
the feelings, and the hopes of the third of a century, was torn in
pieces,--the road was clear for the organization of the Kansas and
Nebraska Territories. It was given out, amid jubilations which could not
have been louder, if they had been the spontaneous greetings of some
real triumph of principle, that henceforth and forever the inhabitants
of the Territories would be called to determine their "domestic
institutions" for themselves. Under this theory, and amid these shouts,
Kansas was opened for settlement; and it was scarcely opened, before it
became, as might have been expected, the battleground for the opposing
civilizations of the Union, to renew and fight out their long quarrel
upon. From every quarter of the land settlers rushed thither, to take
part in the wager of battle. They rushed thither, as individuals and as
associations, as Yankees and as Corn-crackers, as Blue Lodges and as
Emigrant Aid Societies; and most of them went, not only as it was their
right, but as it was their duty to do. Congress had invited them in; it
had abandoned legitimate legislation in order to substitute for it a
scramble between the first comers; and it had said to every man who knew
that Slavery was more than a simple local interest, that it was in fact
an element of the general political power, "Come and decide the issue
here!"

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