Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. by Various

V >> Various >> Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI.

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[Footnote C: The words he uses are,--"To the memory of my mother I
_consecrate_ this volume."]

Mr. Buckle characterized as the sublimest passage in Shakspeare the
lines in the "Merchant of Venice,"--

"Look how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold!
There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st
But in his motion like an angel sings,
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherabims:
Such harmony is in immortal souls!
But whilst this muddy vesture of decay
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it."

Mr. Thayer suggested the similarity between the closing part of this
passage, about our deafness to the music of the stars, owing to the
"muddy vesture," and the sonnet of Blanco White which speaks of the
starry splendors to which our eyes are blinded by the light of day:--

"Mysterious Night! when our first parent knew
Thee, from report divine, and heard thy name,
Did he not tremble for this lovely frame,
This glorious canopy of light and blue?
Yet 'neath the curtain of translucent dew,
Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame,
Hesperus with the host of heaven came,
And lo! creation widened in man's view.
Who could have thought such darkness lay concealed
Within thy beams, O Sun? or who could find,
Whilst fly and leaf and insect stood revealed,
That to such countless orbs thou mad'st us blind?
Why do we, then, shun Death with anxious strife?
If Light can thus deceive, wherefore not Life?"

Mr. Buckle seemed to be struck by the comparison. He proceeded to speak
of Blanco White's memoirs as painfully interesting, and said that he
had always liked Archbishop Whately for adhering to White after the
desertion of the latter by old friends on account of his change of
belief.

* * * * *

The next few days were occupied in preparations for the voyage up the
Nile in company with my New York friends. Mr. Buckle had very kindly
taken great interest in our plans, and had earnestly advised me to go.
"You will do very wrong indeed," he said, "if you do not go." On the
19th of February we embarked; and as we saluted his boat, lying just
below us in the Nile, while our own shoved off, I little thought that I
should never see him again,--that his brilliant career was so shortly to
come to an untimely end. The serious conversation just recorded was the
last in which I took part with him.

Mr. Buckle remained in Cairo until the beginning of March, when he set
out with the two boys, and Mr. J.S. Stuart Glennie, across the Desert,
for Sinai and Petra. Greatly improved in health by the six weeks in
the Desert, (according to Mr. Glennie's letter,) he undertook the more
fatiguing travelling on horseback through Palestine. He fell ill on the
27th of April, but recovered his health, as it seemed, to such an extent
that Mr. Glennie parted from him on the 21st of May. On the 29th of May,
at Damascus, Mr. Buckle died. Among the incoherent utterances of his
illness, it was possible to distinguish the exclamation, "Oh, my book,
my book, I shall never finish my book!"

And beyond the grief felt in the loss of the kind friend and agreeable
companion, our plaint, in common with the whole world, ever must be,
that he did not live to finish his book.

CAVALRY SONG.

The squadron is forming, the war-bugles play.
To saddle, brave comrades, stout hearts for a fray!
Our captain is mounted,--strike spurs, and away!

No breeze shakes the blossoms or tosses the grain;
But the wind of our speed floats the galloper's mane,
As he feels the bold rider's firm hand on the rein.

Lo, dim in the starlight their white tents appear!
Ride softly! ride slowly! the onset is near!
More slowly! more softly! the sentry may hear!

Now fall on the Rebel--a tempest of flame!
Strike down the false banner whose triumph were shame!
Strike, strike for the true flag, for freedom and fame!

Hurrah! sheathe your swords! the carnage is done.
All red with our valor, we welcome the sun.
Up, up with the stars! we have won! we have won!

NO FAILURE FOR THE NORTH.

We have reached a point in the history of our national troubles where it
seems desirable to examine our present position, and to consider whether
we ought to surrender ourselves to despair, or congratulate ourselves on
decided success,--whether we should abandon all attempts to restore the
Union, assert the dignity of the Constitution, and punish treason, or
nerve ourselves to new effort, and determine to persevere in a righteous
cause so long as a single able-bodied man remains or a dollar of
available property is unexpended.

It may be, it must be, conceded that we commenced the contest with very
crude and inadequate notions of what war really is. We proposed to
decide the issue by appealing to the census and the tax-list,--tribunals
naturally enough occurring to a mercantile and manufacturing
community,--but how if the enemy prefer cannon and cold steel? Our first
campaign was in the field of statistics, and we found the results highly
satisfactory. Our great numerical superiority, aided by our immense
material resources, gave us an early and an easy victory. We outnumbered
the enemy everywhere, defeated them in every pitched battle, starved
them by a vigilant blockade, secured meanwhile the sympathy and support
of the whole civilized world by the holiness of our cause, and commanded
its respect by the display of our material power and our military
capacity,--and in a few short months crushed the Rebellion, restored
the Union, vindicated the Constitution, hung the arch-traitors, and saw
peace in all our borders. This was our campaign--on paper. But war is
something more than a sum in arithmetic. A campaign cannot be decided by
the rule of three. No finite power can control every contingency, and
have all the chances in its favor.

A Moorish legend, given to us in the graceful narrative of Washington
Irving, relates, that an Arabian astrologer constructed for the pacific
Aben Hafuz, King of Granada, a magical mode of repulsing all invaders
without risking the lives of his subjects or diminishing the contents of
the royal treasury. He caused a tower to be built, in the upper part of
which was a circular hall with windows looking towards every point of
the compass, and before each window a table supporting a mimic army of
horse and foot. On the top of the tower was a bronze figure of a Moorish
horseman, fixed on a pivot, with elevated lance. Whenever a foe was at
hand, the figure would turn in that direction, and level his lance as if
for action. No sooner was it reported to the vigilant monarch that the
magic horseman indicated the approach of an enemy, than His Majesty
hastened to the circular hall, selected the table at the point of the
compass indicated by the horseman's spear, touched with the point of a
magic lance some of the pigmy effigies before him, and belabored others
with the butt-end. A scene of confusion at once ensued in the mimic
army. Part fell dead, and the rest, turning their weapons upon each
other, fought with the utmost fury. The same scene was repeated in the
ranks of the advancing enemy. Each renewed attempt at invasion was
foiled by this easy and economical expedient, until the King enjoyed
rest even from rumors of wars.

Now this is a pleasing fiction, and highly creditable to the light and
airy fancy of the Moors. It almost makes one sigh that an astrologer so
fertile in resources is not still extant. It is difficult to conceive,
indeed, of a more felicitous arrangement for a monarch devoted to his
ease, and proof against all temptations to military glory, or for a
people wedded to peaceful pursuits, and ambitious only of material
prosperity. But no such fascinating substitute for fields of carnage is
available in our degenerate days,--"_C'est charmant, mais ce n'est pas
la guerre_."

Nor yet is any useful example furnished by the warlike qualities of the
army raised by Peter Stuyvesant for the reduction of Fort Casimir: not
even when we remember that it included "the Van Higginbottoms, a race of
schoolmasters, armed with ferules and birchen rods,--the Van Bummels,
renowned for feats of the trenches,--the Van Bunschotens, who were the
first that did kick with the left foot,"--with many other warriors
equally fierce and formidable. We must, however reluctantly, leave such
romantic legends and facetious chronicles, and learn more practical
lessons from the sober and instructive page of history. We shall there
find that war means alternate success and defeat, alternate hope and
disappointment, great suffering in the field, many vacant chairs at
many firesides, immense expenditures with little apparent result, "the
best-laid schemes" foiled by a thousand unexpected contingencies,
lamentable indecision in the cabinet, glaring blunders in the field,
stagnation of industry, and heavy taxation.

"War is a game, which, were the nations wise,
Kings would not play at."

But nations are not always wise, and war often becomes a necessity.
When, then, the necessity arises, it should be met manfully. The
question once deliberately decided that peace is no longer consistent
with national honor or national safety, the dread alternative must be
accepted with all its hazards and all its horrors. To organize only in
anticipation of certain and speedy success, to despise and underrate the
enemy, to inquire with how small an army and how limited an expenditure
the war can be carried on, is as unstatesmanlike as it is in flat
defiance of all historical teaching. But if we carry our folly still
farther in the same direction,--if we fail to take into grave account
the most obvious and inevitable incidents of actual warfare,--if in
our overweening confidence we neglect discipline, underrate the prime
importance of promptness and decision in action, certainty and celerity
in movement, and energy and activity in pursuit,--if, in a word, we
expect that the defences of the enemy are to fall into our hands by
means as unwarlike as those that decided the fate of Jericho, or dream
that because our cause is just every precedent in history and every
principle in human nature will be overruled in our favor,--then we
deserve to be outgeneralled, and are fortunate, if we escape final and
disastrous defeat.

Now has not this been precisely our cardinal and capital error, and
are we not to-day suffering its natural consequences? To the blind and
unreasoning confidence with which we began this war has succeeded a
reaction running into the very opposite extreme. We are given over to
a despondency quite as unwarrantable as the extravagance of our early
hopes. We demanded and expected impossibilities. Forgetting that the age
of miracles has passed, many are now bitterly complaining that nothing
has been accomplished, and predicting that all future efforts will
terminate in similar failure. Two years have not elapsed since the first
gun was fired at Fort Sumter; and yet we are amazed and mortified that
our forces have not overrun the whole South, that victory has not
crowned our arms in every battle, and that our flag does not float
triumphant over every acre of every State once called Confederate.
Whether this most desirable result could have been accomplished, if this
or that policy had been adopted at the outset, is one of those problems
that will never be solved; nor is the inquiry at present pertinent or
profitable. Let us rather ask whether, in view of the means actually
employed, our discontent with the existing condition of affairs is not
unmanly and unreasonable. We are to measure results, not by the efforts
that we ought to have put forth, nor by those which we should put forth,
if, with our dear-bought experience, we were called upon once more to
undertake such a gigantic enterprise. We must recall the aspect of
affairs when we first embarked on this perilous sea. We must remember
how ignorant we were of all the danger before us, how imperfect was the
chart by which our course was to be determined, how many shoals and
sunken rocks and crosscurrents we were to encounter, as yet unknown
to any pilot on board our noble ship of state, how little we knew of
navigation in such angry waters, under so stormy a sky.

Turn back the pages of history for two short years, and dwell a moment
on the picture presented to our eyes. A nation, enjoying to the utmost
the substantial benefits belonging to fifty years of profound peace and
unexampled prosperity, enervated by those habits of luxury which wealth
easily accumulated always fosters, with a standing army hardly large
enough to protect our Western frontier from the incursions of hostile
Indians, and a navy ludicrously small in proportion to the extent of our
sea-coast and the value of our commerce, is suddenly plunged into a war
covering such an extent of territory and calling for such an array of
power by sea and land as to dwarf into insignificance all modern wars,
hardly excepting the military operations of Napoleon I.

And it must be remembered that education and habit had trained us to an
implicit reliance on the sufficiency of our laws and the competency of
our Constitution to meet and decide every issue that could possibly be
presented. We could conceive of no public wrongs which could not be
redressed by an appeal to the ballot-box, and of no private injuries for
which our statutes did not provide a suitable remedy.

We were not only a law-abiding, but a peace-loving people. The report of
the revolver was not heard in our streets, nor was the glitter of the
bowie-knife seen in our bar-rooms. We deprecated mob-violence, and
disliked the summary proceedings of Judge Lynch. We took no pains to
conceal our horror of unnecessary bloodshed, and shared the views of
civilized Christendom about duelling. Now and then, to be sure, a
Southerner in one of his sportive moods would stab an inattentive waiter
in some Northern hotel, or a chivalrous son of South Carolina, elegantly
idling away a few years in a New-England university, would shoot some
base-born tutor, or, as an episode in Congressional proceedings, the
member from Arkansas would threaten to pull the nose, spit in the
face, and gouge out the eyes of the (profane participled) sneaking
Yankee,--meaning thereby a quiet, inoffensive member from Massachusetts.
But these incidents of Southern civilization were not frequent enough to
become fashionable. We still clung to our plebeian prejudices against
lawless violence, and persisted in believing that a swaggering bully
could not be an ornament to cultivated and refined society. In fact,
some excellent individuals at the North went so far as to seek to
disseminate these old-fashioned notions among their Southern brethren,
and made annual subscriptions to what was known (alas, that we must
use the historic tense!) as the "Southern Aid Society," having for its
praiseworthy object the support of ministers who should preach the
gospel to our ardent and impulsive neighbors. What a sad and significant
commentary is it upon the ingratitude of depraved human nature, that the
condescending clergyman who whilom consented to collect the offerings
of these discriminating philanthropists is now a chaplain in the
Confederate army, and is invoking the most signal judgments of Heaven
upon his former friends and fellow-laborers!

This, then, was our condition, and these were our habits, when we were
rudely awakened from our dreams of peace by the roar of cannon and the
clash of arms. What wonder that the startling summons found us all
unready for such a crisis? What wonder that our early preparations to
confront the issue thus forced upon us without note of warning were
hasty, incomplete, and quite inadequate to the emergency? Is it
discreditable to us that we were slow to appreciate the bitterness and
intensity of that hatred, which, long smouldering under the surface of
Southern society, burst forth at once into a wide-spread conflagration,
severing like flax all the ties of kindred, and all the bonds of
individual friendship and national intercourse which had united us for
half a century? Here was a section of our Union which had always
enjoyed equal rights with us under the Constitution, and had known the
Government only by its blessings,--nay, more, had actually, by the
confession of its own statesmen, controlled the internal administration
and dictated the foreign policy of the country since the adoption of the
Constitution; which had no substantial grievance to complain of, and
no fanciful injury which could not be readily redressed by legal and
constitutional methods. Are we to be blamed because we could not easily
bring ourselves to believe that an integral part of our nation, with
such a history, could, under a pretence so bald as to insult the common
sense of Christendom, rush headlong into a war which must close all its
avenues of commerce, paralyze all its industry, threaten the existence
of its cherished and peculiar institution,--in a word, whether
successful or unsuccessful, inevitably result in its political suicide?
At this very moment, accustomed as we have been for many sad and weary
months to the daily development of Southern folly and madness, it is
difficult, when we withdraw our minds from the present, to realize that
the whole war is not a hideous nightmare.

In view of all this, I ask, is it strange that we did not at once
comprehend all our danger, and did not enter the field with all our
forces,--determined to fight with desperate energy until every trace of
rebellion was crushed out? If, disturbed at midnight by footsteps in
your chamber, you start up from sound slumber to see a truculent-looking
vagabond prowling about your room with a lighted candle, do you not at
once spring to your feet, collar the intruder, and shout lustily for
help, if he prove too strong for you? Prompt and vigorous action in such
a case is simply the impulse of instinct. But how if you recognize in
the untimely visitor a member of your own household? Will you seize and
overpower him without asking a single question, or waiting for a word of
explanation? Will you not pause for some overt act of hostility, some
convincing proof of a fell purpose? Suppose it transpire that he really
means mischief, and you lose an important advantage by your delay to
strike. You may regret the result; but does it in the least tend to show
that you were cowardly or careless? Now was not this our exact dilemma?
Although the origin of the war and the circumstances attendant upon its
commencement are a thrice-told tale, are we not in danger of overlooking
their bearing upon all our subsequent action? And shall we not act
wisely, if we recur to them again and again, during this momentous
contest?

But, asks a timid Conservative,--from whose patient button the fingers
of an ardent apostle of peace have recently and most reluctantly
parted,--has not this war been shamefully mismanaged by the
Administration? have not contractors grown rich while soldiers have
suffered? have not incompetent generals been unjustly advanced, and
skilful commanders been summarily shelved? have we gained any advantages
at all commensurate with our loss of blood and our expenditure of money?
would not a cessation of hostilities on any terms be better than such
a war as we are now waging? If we might venture to suggest a word of
caution to our desponding friend, before attempting a reply to his
broadside of questions, we would say: Beware how you indulge in too much
conversation with a certain class of our citizens, whose hearty loyalty
has been more than doubted, and whose conversion to the beauties of
peace and the horrors of war is so sudden as to be very suspicious.
Examine their antecedents, and you will find, that, when "border
ruffians" in Kansas threatened with fire and sword the inoffensive
emigrants from New England, these gentlemen saw nothing unusual in such
proceedings, and answered all remonstrances with ridicule. Put them to
the question to-day, and it will appear, that, from the very beginning
of the struggle, all their sympathies have been with the South. They
will tell you that Northern Abolitionists are alone responsible for the
war; that the secession of the Southern States may have been unwise,
but was not unreasonable; that they have always condemned coercion and
advocated compromise; and that there is no safe and satisfactory way out
of our existing difficulties but--_peace_. What do they mean by peace?
Such peace as the highwayman, armed to the teeth, offers to the belated
traveller! Such peace as Benedict Arnold sought to negotiate with the
English general! They know that the South will accept no terms but the
acknowledgment of her independence, or the abject and unconditional
submission of the Free States. They reject the first alternative,
because they dare not go before the North on such an issue. Disguise it
as they may, they are willing to adopt the second. The party to which,
without an exception, these men belong, is powerless without the
cooperation of the South, and would consider no sacrifice of principle
too great, and no humiliation of the North too degrading, if it promised
the restoration of their political supremacy. Avoid all such men.
Distrust their advice. That way dishonor lies, and national disgrace.
If you are not "armed so strong in honesty" as to be proof against
such treasonable talk, you will soon be aware of a softening of your
backbone, and a lamentable loss of earnest, active patriotism. Take
counsel rather of your own common sense. Looking at the question in its
narrowest and most selfish bearings, you _know_ that we can neither
recede nor stand still. Submission Is slavery. Disunion paves the way
for endless secession, and eternal warfare between rising and rival
republics.

But there are other symptoms of disloyalty besides this persistent
demand for peace. There are indications of a desire to array sections of
the North against each other, and--Heaven save the mark!--by the
very politicians who have been most bitter in their denunciation of
"geographical parties." Here comes a little Western lawyer, with
unlimited resources of slang and slender capital of ideas, barely
redeemed from being an absolute blackguard by the humanizing influences
of a New England college, but showing fewer and fewer symptoms of
civilization as he forgets the lessons of his collegiate life; and _he_
delights an audience of New York "roughs," adopted citizens of Celtic
extraction, and lager-loving Germans, (do not cocks always crow longest
and loudest on a dung-hill?) by the novel information, that "Puritanism
is a reptile" and the cause of all our troubles, and that we shall never
fulfil our national destiny until Puritanism has been crushed. Let us
not elevate this nauseating nonsense into importance by attempting a
reply. Such men must be left to follow out their inevitable instincts.
They are not worth the trouble necessary to civilize them. Mr. Rarey
succeeded in taming a zebra from the London Zooelogical Gardens; but
a single lesson could not permanently reclaim the beast, and it soon
relapsed into its native and normal ferocity. One experiment sufficed
to show the power of the artist; no possible increase of value in the
educated animal would have justified a prolonged and perfect training.

You ask if we have gained any advantages commensurate with our efforts,
or with the high-sounding phrase of our declared purpose. Let us look at
this a moment. Suppose we begin with a glance at the other side of
the picture. Has all the boasting, have all the promises, been on the
Federal side? Did we hear nothing of the Confederate flag floating over
Faneuil Hall?--nothing of Washington falling into the hands of the
enemy?--nothing of a festive winter in Philadelphia and a
general distribution of spoils in New York?--nothing of foreign
intervention?--nothing of the cowardice of Northern Mudsills and
the omnipotence of King Cotton? Decidedly, the Rebels began with a
sufficiently startling programme. Let us see how far they have carried
it out. As they were clearly the assailants, we have an undoubted right
to ask what they have accomplished _aggressively_. We say, then, that,
excepting in the case of one brief raid, the soil of a single Free State
has never been polluted by the hostile tread of an invading force; that
every battle-field has been within the limits of States claimed as
Confederate; that, while the war has desolated whole States represented
in the Confederate Congress, not an acre north of Mason and Dixon's line
has suffered from the ravages of the Rebel armies. Was ever another
scorpion more completely surrounded and shut in by a cordon of fire?

This is surely something, but it is by no means all. Have _we_
accomplished nothing aggressively? We will call into court a witness
from the enemy's camp. Hear the recent testimony of a leading journal,
published in the Confederate capital:[A]--

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