Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 by Various

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[Footnote C: History of Civilisation in England, Vol. I. Chap. VIII.]

But the great Frenchman's master-stroke was his treaty with Gustavus
Adolphus. With that keen glance of his, he saw and knew Gustavus while
yet the world knew him not,--while he was battling afar off in the wilds
of Poland. Richelieu's plan was formed at once. He brought about a
treaty between Gustavus and Poland; then he filled Gustavus's mind with
pictures of the wrongs inflicted by Austria on German Protestants,
hinted to him probably of a new realm, filled his treasury, and finally
hurled against Austria the man who destroyed Tilly, who conquered
Wallenstein, who annihilated Austrian supremacy at the Battle of Lueizen,
who, though in his grave, wrenched Protestant rights from Austria at the
Treaty of Westphalia, who pierced the Austrian monarchy with the most
terrible sorrows it ever saw before the time of Napoleon.

To the main objects of Richelieu's policy already given might be added
two subordinate objects.

The first of these was a healthful extension of French territory. In
this Richelieu planned better than the first Napoleon; for, while he did
much to carry France out to her natural boundaries, he kept her always
within them. On the South he added Roussillon, on the East, Alsace, on
the Northeast, Artois.

The second subordinate object of his policy sometimes flashed forth
brilliantly. He was determined that England should never again interfere
on French soil. We have seen him driving the English from La Rochelle
and from the Isle of Rhe; but he went farther. In 1628, on making some
proposals to England, he was repulsed with English haughtiness.
"They shall know," said the Cardinal, "that they cannot despise me."
Straightway one sees protests and revolts of the Presbyterians of
Scotland, and Richelieu's agents in the thickest of them.

And now what was Richelieu's statesmanship in its sum?

I. In the Political Progress of France, his work has already been
sketched as building monarchy and breaking anarchy.

Therefore have men said that he swept away old French liberties. What
old liberties? Richelieu but tore away the decaying, poisonous husks
and rinds which hindered French liberties from their chance at life and
growth.

Therefore, also, have men said that Richelieu built up absolutism. The
charge is true and welcome. For, evidently, absolutism was the only
force, in that age, which could destroy the serf-mastering caste. Many a
Polish patriot, as he to-day wanders through the Polish villages, groans
that absolutism was not built to crush that serf-owning aristocracy
which has been the real architect of Poland's ruin. Any one who reads to
much purpose in De Mably, or Guizot, or Henri Martin, knows that this
part of Richelieu's statesmanship was but a masterful continuation of
all great French statesmanship since the twelfth-century league of king
and commons against nobles, and that Richelieu stood in the heirship of
all great French statesmen since Suger. That part of Richelieu's work,
then, was evidently bedded in the great line of Divine Purpose running
through that age and through all ages.

II. In the _Internal Development of France_, Richelieu proved himself a
true builder. The founding of the French Academy and of the Jardin des
Plantes, the building of the College of Plessis, and the rebuilding of
the College of the Sorbonne, are among the monuments of this part of his
statesmanship. His, also, is much of that praise usually lavished on
Louis XIV. for the career opened in the seventeenth century to science,
literature, and art. He was also a reformer, and his zeal was proved,
when, in the fiercest of the La Rochelle struggle, he found time to
institute great reforms not only in the army and navy, but even in the
monasteries.

III. On the _General Progress of Europe_, his work must be judged as
mainly for good. Austria was the chief barrier to European progress, and
that barrier he broke. But a far greater impulse to the general progress
of Europe was given by the idea of Toleration which he thrust into the
methods of European statesmen. He, first of all statesmen in France,
saw, that, in French policy, to use his own words, "A Protestant
Frenchman is better than a Catholic Spaniard"; and he, first of all
statesmen in Europe, saw, that, in European policy, patriotism, must
outweigh bigotry.

IV. His _Faults in Method_ were many. His under-estimate of the
sacredness of human life was one; but that was the fault of his age.
His frequent working by intrigue was another; but that also was a vile
method accepted by his age. The fair questions, then, are,--Did he not
commit the fewest and smallest wrongs possible in beating back those
many and great wrongs? Wrong has often a quick, spasmodic force; but was
there not in _his_ arm a steady growing force, which could only be a
force of right?

V. His _Faults in Policy_ crystallized about one: for, while he subdued
the serf-mastering nobility, he struck no final blow at the serf-system
itself.

Our running readers of French history need here a word of caution. They
follow De Tocqueville, and De Tocqueville follows Biot in speaking of
the serf-system as abolished in most of France hundreds of years before
this. But Biot and De Tocqueville take for granted a knowledge in their
readers that the essential vileness of the system, and even many of its
most shocking outward features, remained.

Richelieu might have crushed the serf-system, really, as easily as Louis
X. and Philip the Long had crushed it nominally. This Richelieu did not.

And the consequences of this great man's great fault were terrible.
Hardly was he in his grave, when the nobles perverted the effort of
the Paris Parliament for advance in liberty, and took the lead in the
fearful revolts and massacres of the Fronde. Then came Richelieu's
pupil, Mazarin, who tricked the nobles into order, and Mazarin's pupil,
Louis XIV., who bribed them into order. But a nobility borne on high by
the labor of a servile class must despise labor; so there came those
weary years of indolent gambling and debauchery and "serf-eating" at
Versailles.

Then came Louis XV., who was too feeble to maintain even the poor decent
restraints imposed by Louis XIV.; so the serf-mastering caste became
active in a new way, and their leaders in vileness unutterable became at
last Fronsac and De Sade.

Then came "the deluge." The spirit of the serf-mastering caste, as left
by Richelieu, was a main cause of the miseries which brought on the
French Revolution. When the Third Estate brought up their "portfolio of
grievances," for one complaint against the exactions of the monarchy
there were fifty complaints against the exactions of the nobility.[D]

[Footnote D: See any _Resume des Cahiers_,--even the meagre ones in
Buchez and Roux, or Le Bas, or Cheruel.]

Then came the failure of the Revolution in its direct purpose; and of
this failure the serf-mastering caste was a main cause. For this caste,
hardened by ages of domineering over a servile class, despite fourth of
August renunciations, would not, could not, accept a position compatible
with freedom and order: so earnest men were maddened, and sought to tear
out this cancerous mass, with all its burning roots.

But for Richelieu's great fault there is an excuse. His mind was
saturated with ideas of the impossibility of inducing freed peasants to
work,--the impossibility of making them citizens,--the impossibility, in
short, of making them _men_. To his view was not unrolled the rich newer
world-history, to show that a working class is most dangerous when
restricted,--that oppression is more dangerous to the oppressor than to
the oppressed,--that, if man will hew out paths to liberty, God will
hew out paths to prosperity. But Richelieu's fault teaches the world not
less than his virtues.

At last, on the third of December, 1642, the great statesman lay upon
his death-bed. The death-hour is a great revealer of motives, and as
with weaker men, so with Richelieu. Light then shot over the secret of
his whole life's plan and work.

He was told that he must die: he received the words with calmness. As
the Host, which he believed the veritable body of the Crucified, was
brought him, he said, "Behold my Judge before whom I must shortly
appear! I pray Him to condemn me, if I have ever had any other motive
than the cause of religion and my country." The confessor asked him if
he pardoned his enemies: he answered, "I have none but those of the
State."

So passed from earth this strong man. Keen he was in sight, steady in
aim, strong in act. A true man,--not "non-committal," but wedded to a
great policy in the sight of all men: seen by earnest men of all times
to have marshalled against riot and bigotry and unreason divine forces
and purposes; seen by earnest men of these times to have taught the true
method of grasping desperate revolt, and of strangling that worst foe of
liberty and order in every age,--a serf-owning aristocracy.

UNDER THE SNOW.

The spring had tripped and lost her flowers,
The summer sauntered through the glades,
The wounded feet of autumn hours
Left ruddy footprints on the blades.

And all the glories of the woods
Had flung their shadowy silence down,--
When, wilder than the storm it broods,
She fled before the winter's frown.

For _her_ sweet spring had lost its flowers,
She fell, and passion's tongues of flame
Ran reddening through the blushing bowers,
Now haggard as her naked shame.

One secret thought her soul had screened,
When prying matrons sought her wrong,
And Blame stalked on, a mouthing fiend,
And mocked her as she fled along.

And now she bore its weight aloof,
To hide it where one ghastly birch
Held up the rafters of the roof,
And grim old pine-trees formed a church.

'Twas there her spring-time vows were sworn,
And there upon its frozen sod,
While wintry midnight reigned forlorn,
She knelt, and held her hands to God.

The cautious creatures of the air
Looked out from many a secret place,
To see the embers of despair
Flush the gray ashes of her face.

And where the last week's snow had caught
The gray beard of a cypress limb,
She heard the music of a thought
More sweet than her own childhood's hymn.

For rising in that cadence low,
With "Now I lay me down to sleep,"
Her mother rocked her to and fro,
And prayed the Lord her soul to keep.

And still her prayer was humbly raised,
Held up in two cold hands to God,
That, white as some old pine-tree blazed,
Gleamed far o'er that dark frozen sod.

The storm stole out beyond the wood,
She grew the vision of a cloud,
Her dark hair was a misty hood,
Her stark face shone as from a shroud.

Still sped the wild storm's rustling feet
To martial music of the pines,
And to her cold heart's muffled beat
Wheeled grandly into solemn lines.

And still, as if her secret's woe
No mortal words had ever found,
This dying sinner draped in snow
Held up her prayer without a sound.

But when the holy angel bands
Saw this lone vigil, lowly kept,
They gathered from her frozen hands
The prayer thus folded, and they wept.

Some snow-flakes--wiser than the rest--
Soon faltered o'er a thing of clay,
First read this secret of her breast,
Then gently robed her where she lay.

The dead dark hair, made white with snow,
A still stark face, two folded palms,
And (mothers, breathe her secret low!)
An unborn infant--asking alms.

God kept her counsel; cold and mute
His steadfast mourners closed her eyes,
Her head-stone was an old tree's root,
Be mine to utter,--"Here she lies."

SLAVERY, IN ITS PRINCIPLES, DEVELOPMENT, AND EXPEDIENTS.

Within the memory of men still in the vigor of life, American Slavery
was considered by a vast majority of the North, and by a large minority
of the South, as an evil which should, at best, be tolerated, and not
a good which deserved to be extended and protected. A kind of
lazy acquiescence in it as a local matter, to be managed by local
legislation, was the feeling of the Free States. In both the Slave and
the Free States, the discussion of the essential principles on which
Slavery rests was confined to a few disappointed Nullifiers and a few
uncompromising Abolitionists, and we can recollect the time when Calhoun
and Garrison were both classed by practical statesmen of the South and
North in one category of pestilent "abstractionists." Negro Slavery
was considered simply as a fact; and general irritation among most
politicians of all sections was sure to follow any attempt to explore
the principles on which the fact reposed. That these principles had the
mischievous vitality which events have proved them to possess, few of
our wisest statesmen then dreamed, and we have drifted by degrees into
the present war without any clear perception of its animating causes.

The future historian will trace the steps by which the subject of
Slavery was forced on the reluctant attention of the citizens of the
Free States, so that at last the most cautious conservative could not
ignore its intrusive presence, could not banish its reality from his
eyes, or its image from his mind. He will show why Slavery, disdaining
its old argument from expediency, challenged discussion on its
principles. He will explain the process by which it became discontented
with toleration within its old limits, and demanded the championship
or connivance of the National Government in a plan for its limitless
extension. He will indicate the means by which it corrupted the Southern
heart and Southern brain, so that at last the elemental principles of
morals and religion were boldly denied, and the people came to "believe
a lie." He will, not unnaturally, indulge in a little sarcasm, when
he comes to consider the occupation of Southern professors of ethics,
compelled by their position to scoff at the "rights" of man, and
Southern professors of theology, compelled by their position to teach
that Christ came into the world, not so much to save sinners, as to
enslave negroes. He will be forced to class these among the meanest
and most abject slaves that the planters owned. In treating of the
subserviency of the North, he will be constrained to write many a page
which will flush the cheeks of our descendants with indignation and
shame. He will show the method by which Slavery, after vitiating the
conscience and intelligence of the South, contrived to vitiate in part,
and for a time, the conscience and intelligence of the North. It will
be his ungrateful task to point to many instances of compliance and
concession on the part of able Northern statesmen which will deeply
affect their fame with posterity, though he will doubtless refuse to
adopt to the full the contemporary clamor against their motives. He will
understand, better than we, the amount of patriotism which entered
into their "concessions," and the amount of fraternal good-will which
prompted their fatal "compromises." But he will also declare that the
object of the Slave Power was not attained. Vacillating statesmen and
corrupt politicians it might address, the first through their fears,
the second through their interests; but the intrepid and incorruptible
"people" were but superficially affected. A few elections were gained,
but the victories were barren of results. From political defeat the free
people of the North came forth more earnest and more united than ever.

The insolent pretensions of the Slavocracy were repudiated; its
political and ethical maxims were disowned; and after having stirred the
noblest impulses of the human heart by the spectacle of its tyranny, its
attempt to extend that tyranny only roused an insurrection of the human
understanding against the impudence of its logic. The historian can then
only say, that the Slave Power "seceded," being determined to form a
part of no government which it could not control. The present war is to
decide whether its real force corresponds to the political force it has
exerted heretofore in our affairs.

That this war has been forced upon the Free States by the "aggressions"
of the Slave Power is so plain that no argument is necessary to sustain
the proposition. It is not so universally understood that the Slave
Power is aggressive by the necessities of the wretched system of labor
on which its existence is based. By a short exposition of the principles
of Slavery, and the expedients it has practised during the last twenty
or thirty years, we think that this proposition can be established.

And first it must be always borne in mind, that Slavery, as a system,
is based on the most audacious, inhuman, and self-evident of lies,--the
assertion, namely, that property can be held in men. Property applies to
things. There is a meta-physical impossibility implied in the attempt to
extend its application to persons. It is possible, we admit, to ordain
by local law that four and four make ten, but such an exercise of
legislative wisdom could not overcome certain arithmetical prejudices
innate in our minds, or dethrone the stubborn eight from its accustomed
position in our thoughts. But you might as well ordain that four and
four make ten as ordain that a man has no right to himself, but can
properly be held as the chattel of another. Yet this arrogant falsehood
of property in men has been organized into a colossal institution. The
South calls it a "peculiar" institution; and herein perhaps consists
its peculiarity, that it is an absurdity which has lied itself into a
substantial form, and now argues its right to exist from the fact of its
existence. Doubtless, the fact that a thing exists proves that it has
its roots in human nature; but before we accept this as decisive of
its right to exist, it may be well to explore those qualities in human
nature, "peculiar" and perverse as itself, from which it derives
its poisonous vitality and strength. It is plain, we think, that an
institution embodying an essential falsity, which equally affronts the
common sense and the moral sense of mankind, and which, as respects
chronology, was as repugnant to the instincts of Homer as it is to the
instincts of Whittier, must have sprung from the unblessed union of
wilfulness and avarice, of avarice which knows no conscience, and of
wilfulness that tramples on reason; and the marks of this parentage,
the signs of these its boasted roots in human nature, are, we are
constrained to concede, visible in every stage of its growth, in every
argument for its existence, in every motive for its extension.

It is not, perhaps, surprising that some of the advocates of Slavery do
not relish the analysis which reveals the origin of their institution
in those dispositions which connect man with the tiger and the wolf.
Accordingly they discourage, with true democratic humility, all
genealogical inquiries into the ancestry of their system, substitute
generalization for analysis, and, twisting the maxims of religion into
a philosophy of servitude, bear down all arguments with the sounding
proposition, that Slavery is included in the plan of God's providence,
and therefore cannot be wrong. Certain thinkers of our day have asserted
the universality of the religious element in human nature: and it must
be admitted that men become very pious when their minds are illuminated
by the discernment of a Providential sanction for their darling sins,
and by the discovery that God is on the side of their interests and
passions. Napoleon's religious perceptions were somewhat obtuse, as
tried by the standards of the Church, yet nothing could exceed the depth
of his belief that God "was with the heaviest column"; and the most
obdurate jobber in human flesh may well glow with apostolic fervor, as,
from the height of philosophic contemplation to which this principle
lifts him, he discerns the sublime import of his Providential mission.
It is true, he is now willing to concede, that a man's right to himself,
being given by God, can only by God be taken away. "But," he exultingly
exclaims, "it _has_ been taken away by God. The negro, having always
been a slave, must have been so by divine appointment; and I, the mark
of obloquy to a few fanatical enthusiasts, am really an humble agent in
carrying out the designs of a higher law even than that of the State, of
a higher will even than my own." This mode of baptizing man's sin and
calling it God's providence has not altogether lacked the aid of certain
Southern clergymen, who ostentatiously profess to preach Christ and Him
crucified, and by such arguments, we may fear, crucified _by them_.
Here is Slavery's abhorred riot of vices and crimes, from whose
soul-sickening details the human imagination shrinks aghast,--and over
all, to complete the picture, these theologians bring in the seraphic
countenance of the Saviour of mankind, smiling celestial approval of the
multitudinous miseries and infamies it serenely beholds!

It may be presumptuous to proffer counsel to such authorized expositors
of religion, but one can hardly help insinuating the humble suggestion,
that it would be as well, if they must give up the principles of
liberty, not to throw Christianity in. We may be permitted to doubt the
theory of Providence which teaches that a man never so much serves God
as when he serves the Devil. Doubtless, Slavery, though opposed to God's
laws, is included in the plan of God's providence, but, in the long run,
the providence most terribly confirms the laws. The stream of events,
having its fountains in iniquity, has its end in retribution. It is
because God's laws are immutable that God's providence can be _foreseen_
as well as seen. The mere fact that a thing exists, and persists in
existing, is of little importance in determining its right to exist,
or its eventual destiny. These must be found in an inspection of the
principles by which it exists; and from the nature of its principles,
we can predict its future history. The confidence of bad men and the
despair of good men proceed equally from a too fixed attention to the
facts and events before their eyes, to the exclusion of the principles
which underlie and animate them; for no insight of principles, and of
the moral laws which govern human events, could ever cause tyrants to
exult or philanthropists to despond.

If we go farther into this question, we shall commonly find that the
facts and events to which we give the name of Providence are the acts
of human wills divinely overruled. There is iniquity and wrong in these
facts and events, because they are the work of free human wills. But
when these free human wills organize falsehood, institute injustice, and
establish oppression, they have passed into that mental state where
will has been perverted into wilfulness, and self-direction has been
exaggerated into self-worship. It is the essence of wilfulness that it
exalts the impulses of its pride above the intuitions of conscience
and intelligence, and puts force in the place of reason and right. The
person has thus emancipated himself from all restraints of a law higher
than his personality, and acts _from_ self, _for_ self, and in sole
obedience _to_ self. But this is personality in its Satanic form; yet it
is just here that some of our theologians have discovered in a person's
actions the purposes of Providence, and discerned the Divine intention
in the fact of guilt instead of in the certainty of retribution.
The tyrant element in man is found in this Satanic form of his
individuality. His will, self-released from restraint, preys upon and
crushes other wills. He asserts himself by enslaving others, and mimics
Divinity on the stilts of diabolism. Like the barbarian who thought
himself enriched by the powers and gifts of the enemy he slew, he
aggrandizes his own personality, and heightens his own sense of freedom,
through the subjection of feebler natures. Ruthless, rapacious, greedy
of power, greedy of gain, it is in Slavery that he wantons in all
the luxury of injustice, for it is here that he tastes the exquisite
pleasure of depriving others of that which he most values in himself.

Thus, whether we examine this system in the light of conscience and
intelligence, or in the light of history and experience, we come to but
one result,--that it has its source and sustenance in Satanic energy, in
Satanic pride, and in Satanic greed. This is Slavery in itself, detached
from the ameliorations it may receive from individual slaveholders.
Now a bad system is not continued or extended by the virtues of any
individuals who are but partially corrupted by it, but by those who
work in the spirit and with the implements of its originators. Every
amelioration is a confession of the essential injustice of the thing
ameliorated, and a step towards its abolition; and the humane and
Christian slaveholders owe their safety, and the security of what they
are pleased to call their property, to the vices of the hard and stern
spirits whom they profess to abhor. If they invest in stock of the
Devil's corporation, they ought not to be severe on those who look out
that they punctually receive their dividends. The true slaveholder feels
that he is encamped among his slaves, that he holds them by the right of
conquest, that the relation is one of war, and that there is no crime he
may not be compelled to commit in self-defence. Disdaining all cant,
he clearly perceives that the system, in its practical working, must
conform to the principles on which it is based. He accordingly believes
in the lash and the fear of the lash. If he is cruel and brutal, it may
as often be from policy as from disposition, for brutality and cruelty
are the means by which weaker races are best kept "subordinated" to
stronger races; and the influence of his brutality and cruelty is felt
as restraint and terror on the plantation of his less resolute neighbor.
And when we speak of brutality and cruelty, we do not limit the
application of the words to those who scourge, but extend it to some of
those who preach,--who hold up heaven as the reward of those slaves who
are sufficiently abject on earth, and threaten damnation in the next
world to all who dare to assert their manhood in this.

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