Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 by Various

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In this national crisis, it is not argument that we want, but that rare
courage which dares commit itself to a principle, believing that Nature
is its ally, and will create the instruments it requires, and more than
make good any petty and injurious profit which it may disturb. There
never was such a combination as this of ours, and the rules to meet it
are not set down in any history. We want men of original perception and
original action, who can open their eyes wider than to a nationality,
namely, to considerations of benefit to the human race, can act in the
interest of civilization. Government must not be a parish clerk, a
justice of the peace. It has, of necessity, in any crisis of the State,
the absolute powers of a Dictator. The existing Administration is
entitled to the utmost candor. It is to be thanked for its angelic
virtue, compared with any executive experiences with which we have been
familiar. But the times will not allow us to indulge in compliment. I
wish I saw in the people that inspiration which, if Government would not
obey the same, it would leave the Government behind, and create on the
moment the means and executors it wanted. Better the war should more
dangerously threaten us,--should threaten fracture in what is still
whole, and punish us with burned capitals and slaughtered regiments, and
so exasperate the people to energy, exasperate our nationality. There
are Scriptures written invisibly on men's hearts, whose letters do not
come out until they are enraged. They can be read by war-fires, and by
eyes in the last peril.

We cannot but remember that there have been days in American history,
when, if the Free States had done their duty, Slavery had been blocked
by an immovable barrier, and our recent calamities forever precluded.
The Free States yielded, and every compromise was surrender, and invited
new demands. Here again is a new occasion which Heaven offers to sense
and virtue. It looks as if we held the fate of the fairest possession
of mankind in our hands, to be saved by our firmness or to be lost by
hesitation.

The one power that has legs long enough and strong enough to cross the
Potomac offers itself at this hour; the one strong enough to bring all
the civility up to the height of that which is best prays now at the
door of Congress for leave to move. Emancipation is the demand of
civilization. That is a principle; everything else is an intrigue. This
is a progressive policy,--puts the whole people in healthy, productive,
amiable position,--puts every man in the South in just and natural
relations with every man in the North, laborer with laborer.

We shall not attempt to unfold the details of the project of
emancipation. It has been stated with great ability by several of its
leading advocates. I will only advert to some leading points of the
argument, at the risk of repeating the reasons of others.[B]

[Footnote B: I refer mainly to a Discourse by the Rev. M.D. Conway,
delivered before the "Emancipation League," in Boston, in January last.]

The war is welcome to the Southerner: a chivalrous sport to him, like
hunting, and suits his semi-civilized condition. On the climbing scale
of progress, he is just up to war, and has never appeared to such
advantage as in the last twelve-month. It does not suit us. We are
advanced some ages on the war-state,--to trade, art, and general
cultivation. His laborer works for him at home, so that he loses no
labor by the war. All our soldiers are laborers; so that the South, with
its inferior numbers, is almost on a footing in effective war-population
with the North. Again, as long as we fight without any affirmative step
taken by the Government, any word intimating forfeiture in the rebel
States of their old privileges under the law, they and we fight on the
same side, for Slavery. Again, if we conquer the enemy,--what then? We
shall still have to keep him under, and it will cost as much to hold him
down as it did to get him down. Then comes the summer, and the fever
will drive our soldiers home; next winter, we must begin at the
beginning, and conquer him over again. What use, then, to take a fort,
or a privateer, or get possession of an inlet, or to capture a regiment
of rebels?

But one weapon we hold which is sure. Congress can, by edict, as a part
of the military defence which it is the duty of Congress to provide,
abolish slavery, and pay for such slaves as we ought to pay for. Then
the slaves near our armies will come to us: those in the interior will
know in a week what their rights are, and will, where opportunity
offers, prepare to take them. Instantly, the armies that now confront
you must run home to protect their estates, and must stay there, and
your enemies will disappear.

There can be no safety until this step is taken. We fancy that the
endless debate, emphasized by the crime and by the cannons of this war,
has brought the Free States to some conviction that it can never go well
with us whilst this mischief of Slavery remains in our politics, and
that by concert or by might we must put an end to it. But we have too
much experience of the futility of an easy reliance on the momentary
good dispositions of the public. There does exist, perhaps, a popular
will that the Union shall not be broken,--that our trade, and therefore
our laws, must have the whole breadth of the continent, and from Canada
to the Gulf. But, since this is the rooted belief and will of the
people, so much the more are they in danger, when impatient of defeats,
or impatient of taxes, to go with a rush for some peace, and what kind
of peace shall at that moment be easiest attained: they will make
concessions for it,--will give up the slaves; and the whole torment of
the past half-century will come back to be endured anew.

Neither do I doubt, if such a composition should take place, that the
Southerners will come back quietly and politely, leaving their haughty
dictation. It will be an era of good feelings. There will be a lull
after so loud a storm; and, no doubt, there will be discreet men from
that section who will earnestly strive to inaugurate more moderate and
fair administration of the Government, and the North will for a time
have its full share and more, in place and counsel. But this will not
last,--not for want of sincere good-will in sensible Southerners, but
because Slavery will again speak through them its harsh necessity. It
cannot live but by injustice, and it will be unjust and violent to the
end of the world.

The power of Emancipation is this, that it alters the atomic social
constitution of the Southern people. Now their interest is in keeping
out white labor; then, when they must pay wages, their interest will be
to let it in, to get the best labor, and, if they fear their blacks, to
invite Irish, German, and American laborers. Thus, whilst Slavery makes
and keeps disunion, Emancipation removes the whole objection to union.
Emancipation at one stroke elevates the poor white of the South, and
identifies his interest with that of the Northern laborer.

Now, in the name of all that is simple and generous, why should not
this great right be done? Why should not America be capable of a second
stroke for the well-being of the human race, as eighty or ninety years
ago she was for the first? an affirmative step in the interests of human
civility, urged on her, too, not by any romance of sentiment, but by
her own extreme perils? It is very certain that the statesman who shall
break through the cobwebs of doubt, fear, and petty cavil that lie
in the way, will be greeted by the unanimous thanks of mankind. Men
reconcile themselves very fast to a bold and good measure, when once it
is taken, though they condemned it in advance. A week before the two
captive commissioners were surrendered to England, every one thought it
could not be done: it would divide the North. It was done, and in two
days all agreed it was the right action. And this action which costs so
little (the parties injured by it being such a handful that they can
very easily be indemnified) rids the world, at one stroke, of this
degrading nuisance, the cause of war and ruin to nations. This measure
at once puts all parties right. This is borrowing, as I said, the
omnipotence of a principle. What is so foolish as the terror lest the
blacks should be made furious by freedom and wages? It is denying these
that is the outrage, and makes the danger from the blacks. But justice
satisfies everybody,--white man, red man, yellow man, and black man. All
like wages, and the appetite grows by feeding.

But this measure, to be effectual, must come speedily. The weapon is
slipping out of our hands. "Time," say the Indian Scriptures, "drinketh
up the essence of every great and noble action which ought to be
performed, and which is delayed in the execution."

I hope it is not a fatal objection to this policy that it is simple and
beneficent thoroughly, which is the attribute of a moral action. An
unprecedented material prosperity has not tended to make us Stoics or
Christians. But the laws by which the universe is organized reappear at
every point, and will rule it. The end of all political struggle is
to establish morality as the basis of all legislation. It is not free
institutions, 't is not a republic, 't is not a democracy, that is the
end,--no, but only the means. Morality is the object of government.
We want a state of things in which crime shall not pay. This is the
consolation on which we rest in the darkness of the future and the
afflictions of to-day, that the government of the world is moral, and
does forever destroy what is not.

It is the maxim of natural philosophers, that the natural forces wear
out in time all obstacles, and take place: and 't is the maxim of
history, that victory always falls at last where it ought to fall; or,
there is perpetual march and progress to ideas. But, in either case,
no link of the chain can drop out. Nature works through her appointed
elements; and ideas must work through the brains and the arms of good
and brave men, or they are no better than dreams.

* * * * *

Since the above pages were written, President Lincoln has proposed to
Congress that the Government shall cooeperate with any State that shall
enact a gradual abolishment of Slavery. In the recent series of national
successes, this Message is the best. It marks the happiest day in the
political year. The American Executive ranges itself for the first time
on the side of freedom. If Congress has been backward, the President has
advanced. This state-paper is the more interesting that it appears to be
the President's individual act, done under a strong sense of duty. He
speaks his own thought in his own style. All thanks and honor to the
Head of the State! The Message has been received throughout the country
with praise, and, we doubt not, with more pleasure than has been spoken.
If Congress accords with the President, it is not yet too late to begin
the emancipation; but we think it will always be too late to make it
gradual. All experience agrees that it should be immediate. More and
better than the President has spoken shall, perhaps, the effect of this
Message be,--but, we are sure, not more or better than he hoped in his
heart, when, thoughtful of all the complexities of his position, he
penned these cautious words.

* * * * *

COMPENSATION.

In the strength of the endeavor,
In the temper of the giver,
In the loving of the lover,
Lies the hidden recompense.

In the sowing of the sower,
In the fleeting of the flower,
In the fading of each hour,
Lurks eternal recompense.

A MESSAGE OF JEFF DAVIS IN SECRET SESSION.

CONJECTURALLY REPORTED BY H. BIGLOW.

_To the Editors of the_ ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

Jaalam, 10th March, 1862.

GENTLEMEN,--My leisure has been so entirely occupied with the hitherto
fruitless endeavour to decypher the Runick inscription whose fortunate
discovery I mentioned in my last communication, that I have not found
time to discuss, as I had intended, the great problem of what we are to
do with slavery, a topick on which the publick mind in this place is at
present more than ever agitated. What my wishes and hopes are I need
not say, but for safe conclusions I do not conceive that we are yet
in possession of facts enough on which to bottom them with certainty.
Acknowledging the hand of Providence, as I do, in all events, I am
sometimes inclined to think that they are wiser than we, and am willing
to wait till we have made this continent once more a place where
freemen can live in security and honour, before assuming any further
responsibility. This is the view taken by my neighbour Habakkuk
Sloansure, Esq., the president of our bank, whose opinion in the
practical affairs of life has great weight with me, as I have generally
found it to be justified by the event, and whose counsel, had I followed
it, would have saved me from an unfortunate investment of a considerable
part of the painful economies of half a century in the Northwest-Passage
Tunnel. After a somewhat animated discussion with this gentleman, a
few days since, I expanded, on the _audi alteram partem_ principle,
something which he happened to say by way of illustration, into the
following fable.

FESTINA LENTE.

Once on a time there was a pool
Fringed all about with flag-leaves cool
And spotted with cow-lilies garish,
Of frogs and pouts the ancient parish.
Alders the creaking redwings sink on,
Tussocks that house blithe Bob o' Lincoln.
Hedged round the unassailed seclusion,
Where muskrats piled their cells Carthusian;
And many a moss-embroidered log,
The watering-place of summer frog,
Slept and decayed with patient skill,
As watering-places sometimes will.

Now in this Abbey of Theleme,
Which realized the fairest dream
That ever dozing bull-frog had,
Sunned on a half-sunk lily-pad,
There rose a party with a mission
To mend the polliwogs' condition,
Who notified the selectmen
To call a meeting there and then.
"Some kind of steps." they said, "are needed;
They don't come on so fast as we did:
Let's dock their tails; if that don't make 'em
Frogs by brevet, the Old One take 'em!
That boy, that came the other day
To dig some flag-root down this way,
His jack-knife left, and 't is a sign
That Heaven approves of our design:
'T were wicked not to urge the step on,
When Providence has sent the weapon."

Old croakers, deacons of the mire,
That led the deep batrachiain choir,
_Uk! Uk! Caronk!_ with bass that might
Have left Lablache's out of sight,
Shook knobby heads, and said, "No go!
You'd better let 'em try to grow:
Old Doctor Time is slow, but still
He does know how to make a pill."

But vain was all their hoarsest bass,
Their old experience out of place,
And, spite of croaking and entreating,
The vote was carried in marsh-meeting.

"Lord knows," protest the polliwogs,
"We're anxious to be grown-up frogs;
But do not undertake the work
Of Nature till she prove a shirk;
'T is not by jumps that she advances,
But wins her way by circumstances:
Pray, wait awhile, until you know
We're so contrived as not to grow;
Let Nature take her own direction,
And she'll absorb our imperfection;
_You_ mightn't like 'em to appear with,
But we must have the things to steer with."

"No," piped the party of reform,
"All great results are ta'en by storm;
Fate holds her best gifts till we show
We've strength to make her let them go:
No more reject the Age's chrism,
Your cues are an anachronism;
No more the Future's promise mock,
But lay your tails upon the block,
Thankful that we the means have voted
To have you thus to frogs promoted."

The thing was done, the tails were cropped,
And home each philotadpole hopped,
In faith rewarded to exult,
And wait the beautiful result.
Too soon it came; our pool, so long
The theme of patriot bull-frogs' song,
Next day was reeking, fit to smother,
With heads and tails that missed each other,--
Here snoutless tails, there tailless snouts:
The only gainers were the pouts.

MORAL.

From lower to the higher next,
Not to the top, is Nature's text;
And embryo Good, to reach full stature,
Absorbs the Evil in its nature.

I think that nothing will ever give permanent peace and security to
this continent but the extirpation of Slavery therefrom, and that the
occasion is nigh; but I would do nothing hastily or vindictively, nor
presume to jog the elbow of Providence. No desperate measures for me
till we are sure that all others are hopeless,--_flectere si nequeo
SUPEROS, Acheronta movebo_. To make Emancipation a reform instead of
a revolution is worth a little patience, that we may have the Border
States first, and then the non-slaveholders of the Cotton States with us
in principle,--a consummation that seems to me nearer than many imagine.
_Fiat justitia, ruat coelum,_ is not to be taken in a literal sense by
statesmen, whose problem is to get justice done with as little jar as
possible to existing order, which has at least so much of heaven in it
that it is not chaos. I rejoice in the President's late Message, which
at last proclaims the Government on the side of freedom, justice, and
sound policy.

As I write, comes the news of our disaster at Hampton Roads. I do not
understand the supineness which, after fair warning, leaves wood to an
unequal conflict with iron. It is not enough merely to have the right
on our side, if we stick to the old flint-lock of tradition. I have
observed in my parochial experience (_haud ignarus mali_) that the Devil
is prompt to adopt the latest inventions of destructive warfare, and may
thus take even such a three-decker as Bishop Butler at an advantage. It
is curious, that, as gunpowder made armour useless on shore, so armour
is having its revenge by baffling its old enemy at sea,--and that, while
gunpowder robbed land-warfare of nearly all its picturesqueness to give
even greater stateliness and sublimity to a sea-fight, armour bids fair
to degrade the latter into a squabble between two iron-shelled turtles.

Yours, with esteem and respect,

HOMER WILBUR, A.M.

P.S. I had wellnigh forgotten to say that the object of this letter is
to inclose a communication from the gifted pen of Mr. Biglow.

I sent you a messige, my friens, t' other day,
To tell you I'd nothin' pertickler to say:
'T wuz the day our new nation gut kin' o' stillborn,
So't wuz my pleasant dooty t' acknowledge the corn,
An' I see clearly then, ef I didn't before,
Thet the _augur_ in inauguration means _bore_.
I needn't tell _you_ thet my messige wuz written
To diffuse correc' notions in France an' Gret Britten,
An' agin to impress on the poppylar mind
The comfort an' wisdom o' goin' it blind,--
To say thet I didn't abate not a hooter
O' my faith in a happy an' glorious futur',
Ez rich in each soshle an' p'litickle blessin'
Ez them thet we now hed the joy o' possessin',
With a people united, an' longin' to die
For wut _we_ call their country, without askin' why,
An' all the gret things we concluded to slope for
Ez much within reach now ez ever--to hope for.
We've all o' the ellermunts, this very hour,
Thet make up a fus'-class, self-governin' power:
We've a war, an' a debt, an' a flag; an' ef this
Ain't to be inderpendunt, why, wut on airth is?
An' nothin' now henders our takin' our station
Ez the freest, enlightenedest, civerlized nation,
Built up on our bran'-new politickle thesis
Thet a Guv'ment's fust right is to tumble to pieces,--
I say nothin' henders our takin' our place
Ez the very fus'-best o' the whole human race,
A-spittin' tobacker ez proud ez you please
On Victory's bes' carpets, or loafin' at ease
In the Tool'ries front-parlor, discussin' affairs
With our heels on the backs o' Napoleon's new chairs,
An' princes a-mixin' our cocktails an' slings,--
Excep', wal, excep' jest a very few things,
Sech ez navies an' armies an' wherewith to pay,
An' gittin' our sogers to run t' other way,
An' not be too over-pertickler in tryin'
To hunt up the very las' ditches to die in.

Ther' are critters so base thet they want it explained
Jes' wut is the totle amount thet we've gained,
Ez ef we could maysure stupenjious events
By the low Yankee stan'ard o' dollars an' cents:
They seem to forgit, thet, sence last year revolved,
We've succeeded in gittin' seceshed an' dissolved,
An' thet no one can't hope to git thru dissolootion
'Thout sonic kin' o' strain on the best Constitootion.
Who asks for a prospec' more flettrin' an' bright,
When from here clean to Texas it's all one free fight?
Hain't we rescued from Seward the gret leadin' featurs
Thet makes it wuth while to be reasonin' creaturs?
Hain't we saved Habus Coppers, improved it in fact,
By suspending the Unionists 'stid o' the Act?
Ain't the laws free to all? Where on airth else d' ye see
Every freeman improvin' his own rope an' tree?

It's ne'ssary to take a good confident tone
With the public; but here, jest amongst us, I own
Things looks blacker 'n thunder. Ther' 's no use denyin'
We're clean out o' money, an' 'most out o' lyin',--
Two things a young nation can't mennage without,
Ef she wants to look wal at her fust comin' out;
For the fust supplies physickle strength, while the second
Gives a morril edvantage thet's hard to be reckoned:
For this latter I'm willin' to du wut I can;
For the former you'll hev to consult on a plan,--
Though our _fust_ want (an' this pint I want your best views on)
Is plausible paper to print I.O.U.s on.
Some gennlemen think it would cure all our cankers
In the way o' finance, ef we jes' hanged the bankers;
An' I own the proposle 'ud square with my views,
Ef their lives wuzn't all thet we'd left 'em to lose.
Some say thet more confidence might be inspired,
Ef we voted our cities an' towns to be fired,--
A plan thet 'ud suttenly tax our endurance,
Coz 't would be our own bills we should git for th' insurance;
But cinders, no metter how sacred we think 'em,
Mightn't strike furrin minds ez good sources of income,
Nor the people, perhaps, wouldn't like the eclaw
O' bein' all turned into paytriots by law.
Some want we should buy all the cotton an' burn it,
On a pledge, when we've gut thru the war, to return it,--
Then to take the proceeds an' hold _them_ ez security
For an issue o' bonds to be met at maturity
With an issue o' notes to be paid in hard cash
On the fus' Monday follerin' the 'tarnal Allsmash:
This hez a safe air, an', once hold o' the gold,
'Ud leave our vile plunderers out in the cold,
An' _might_ temp' John Bull, ef it warn't for the dip he
Once gut from the banks o' my own Massissippi.
Some think we could make, by arrangin' the figgers,
A hendy home-currency out of our niggers;
But it wun't du to lean much on ary sech staff,
For they're gittin' tu current a'ready, by half.
One gennleman says, ef we lef' our loan out
Where Floyd could git hold on 't, _he_'d take it, no doubt;
But 't ain't jes' the takin', though 't hez a good look,
We mus' git sunthin' out on it arter it's took,
An' we need now more 'n ever, with sorrer I own,
Thet some one another should let us a loan,
Sence a soger wun't fight, on'y jes' while he draws his
Pay down on the nail, for the best of all causes,
'Thout askin' to know wut the quarrel's about,--
An' once come to thet, why, our game is played out.
It's ez true ez though I shouldn't never hev said it
Thet a hitch hez took place in our system o' credit;
I swear it's all right in my speeches an' messiges,
But ther' 's idees afloat, ez ther' is about sessiges:
Folks wun't take a bond ez a basis to trade on,
Without nosin' round to find out wut it's made on,
An' the thought more an' more thru the public min' crosses
Thet our Treshry hez gut 'mos' too many dead hosses.
Wut's called credit, you see, is some like a balloon,
Thet looks while it's up 'most ez harnsome 'z a moon,
But once git a leak in 't an' wut looked so grand
Caves righ' down in a jiffy ez flat ez your hand.
Now the world is a dreffle mean place, for our sins,
Where ther' ollus is critters about with long pins
A-prickin' the globes we've blowcd up with sech care,
An' provin' ther' 's nothin' inside but bad air:
They're all Stuart Millses, poor-white trash, an' sneaks,
Without no more chivverlry 'n Choctaws or Creeks,
Who think a real gennleman's promise to pay
Is meant to be took in trade's ornery way:
Them fellers an' I couldn' never agree;
They're the nateral foes o' the Southun Idee;
I'd gladly take all of our other resks on me
To be red o' this low-lived politikle 'con'my!

Now a dastardly notion is gittin' about
Thet our bladder is bust an' the gas oozin' out,
An' onless we can mennage in some way to stop it,
Why, the thing's a gone coon, an' we might ez wal drop it.
Brag works wal at fust, but it ain't jes' the thing
For a stiddy inves'ment the shiners to bring,
An' votin' we're prosp'rous a hundred times over
Wun't change bein' starved into livin' on clover.
Manassas done sunthin' tow'rds drawin' the wool
O'er the green, anti-slavery eyes o' John Bull:
Oh, _warn't_ it a godsend, jes' when sech tight fixes
Wuz crowdin' us mourners, to throw double-sixes!
I wuz tempted to think, an' it wuzn't no wonder,
Ther' wuz reelly a Providence,--over or under,--
When, all packed for Nashville, I fust ascertained
From the papers up North wut a victory we'd gained,
'T wuz the time for diffusin' correc' views abroad
Of our union an' strength an' relyin' on God;
An', fact, when I'd gut thru my fust big surprise,
I much ez half b'lieved in my own tallest lies,
An' conveyed the idee thet the whole Southun popperlace
Wuz Spartans all on the keen jump for Thermopperlies,
Thet set on the Lincolnites' bombs till they bust,
An' fight for the priv'lege o' dyin' the fust;
But Roanoke, Bufort, Millspring, an' the rest
Of our recent starn-foremost successes out West,
Hain't left us a foot for our swellin' to stand on,--

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