Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 by Various
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Various >> Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861
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The modern world differs in this matter entirely from the ancient world;
and though the change is perfect only in Christendom, the effect of it
is felt in countries where the Christian religion does not prevail, but
into which Christian armies and Christian merchants have penetrated.
Christendom is the leading portion of the world, and is fast giving
law to lands in which Christianity is still hated. It is the policy of
Christendom that orders the world. A Christian race rules over the whole
of that immense country, or collection of countries, which is known as
India. Another Christian race threatens to seize upon Persia. Christians
from the extreme West of Europe have dictated the terms of treaties to
the Tartar lords of China; and Christians from America have led the way
in breaking through the exclusive system of Japan. Christian soldiers
have for a year past acted as the police of Syria, Christianity's early
home, but now held by the most bigoted and cruel of Mussulmans; and it
is only the circumstance that they cannot agree upon a division of the
spoil that prevents the five great powers of Europe--the representatives
of the leading branches of the Christian religion--from partitioning
the vast, but feeble Ottoman Empire. The Christian idea of man's
brotherhood, so powerful in itself, is supported by material forces so
vast, and by ingenuity and industry so comprehensive and so various in
themselves and their results, that it must supersede all others, and
be accepted in every country where there are people capable of
understanding it. From the time of the first Crusade there has been a
steady tendency to the unity of Christian countries; and notwithstanding
all their conflicts with one another, and partly as one of the effects
of those conflicts, they have "fraternized," until now there exists a
mighty Christian Commonwealth, the members of which ought to be able to
govern the world in accordance with the principles of a religion that is
in itself peace. Under the influence of these principles, the Christian
nations, though not in equal degrees, have developed their resources,
and a commercial system has been created which has enlisted the material
interests of men on the same side with the highest teachings of the
purest religion. Selfishness and self-denial march under the same
banner, and men are taught to do unto others as they would that others
should do unto them, because the rule is as golden economically as it is
morally. This teaching, however, it must be allowed, is very imperfectly
done, and it encounters so many disturbing forces to its proper
development that an observer of the course of Christian nations might be
pardoned, if he were at times to suppose there is little of the spirit
of Christianity in the ordering of the policy of Christendom, and also
that the true nature of material interests is frequently misunderstood.
Still, it is undeniable that there is a general bond of union in
Christendom, and that no part of that division of the world can be
injured or improved without all the other parts of it being thereby
affected. What is known as "the business world" exists everywhere, but
it is in Christendom that it has its principal seats, and in which its
mightiest works are done. It forms one community of mankind; and what
depresses or exalts one nation is felt by its effects in all nations.
There cannot be a Russian war, or a Sepoy mutiny, or an Anglo-French
invasion of China, or an emancipation of the serfs of Russia, without
the effect thereof being sensibly experienced on the shores of Superior
or on the banks of the Sacramento; and the civil war that is raging in
the United States promises to produce permanent consequences to the
inhabitants of Central India and of Central Africa. The wars, floods,
plagues, and famines of the farthest East bear upon the people of the
remotest West. The Oregon flows in sympathy with the Ganges; and a very
mild winter in New England might give additional value to the ice-crop
of the Neva. So closely identified are all nations at this time, that
the hope that there may be no serious difficulties between the United
States and the Western powers of Europe, as a consequence of the Federal
Government's blockade of the Southern ports of the Union, is based as
much upon the prospect of the European food-crops being small this year
as upon the sense of justice that may exist in the bosoms of the rulers
of France and England. If those crops should prove to be of limited
amount, peace could be counted upon; if abundant, we might as well make
ample preparation for a foreign war. Nations threatened with scarcity
cannot afford to begin war, though they may find themselves compelled
to wage it. A cold season in Europe would be the best security that we
could have that we shall not be vexed with European intervention in
our troubles; for then Europeans would desire to have the privilege
of securing that portion of our food which should not be needed for
home-consumption. This is the fair side of the picture that is presented
by the bond of nations. There is another side to the picture, which is
far from being so agreeable to us, and which may be called the Cotton
side; and it is because England, and to a lesser degree France, is
of opinion that American cotton must be had, that our civil troubles
threaten to bring upon us, if not a foreign war, at least grave disputes
and difficulties with those European nations with which we are most
desirous of remaining on the best of terms, and to secure the friendship
of which all Americans are disposed to make every sacrifice that is
compatible with the preservation of national honor.
From the beginning of the troubles in this country that have led to
civil war, the desire to know what course would be pursued by the
principal nations of Europe toward the contending parties has been very
strongly felt on both sides; but the feeling has been greater on the
side of the rebels than on that of the nation, because the rebellion has
depended even for the merest chance of success upon the favorable view
of European governments, and the nation has got beyond the point of
caring much for the opinions or the actions of those governments. The
Union's existence depends not upon European friendship or enmity; but
without the aid of the Old World, the new Confederacy could not look for
success, had it received twice the assistance it did from the Buchanan
administration, and were it formed of every Slaveholding State, with
not a Union man in it to wound the susceptible minds of traitors by his
presence. The belief among the friends of order was, that Europe would
maintain a rigid neutrality, not so much from regard to this country as
from disgust at the character of the Confederacy's polity, and at the
opinions avowed by its officers, its orators, and its journals, opinions
which had been most forcibly illustrated in advance by acts of the
grossest robbery. That any civilized nation should be willing to afford
any countenance, and exclusively on grounds of interest, to a band of
ruffians who avowed opinions that could not now find open supporters
in Bokhara or Barbary, was what the American people could not believe.
Conscious that the Southern rebellion was utterly without provocation,
and that it had been brought about by the arts of disappointed
politicians, most of us were convinced that the rebels would be
discountenanced by the rulers of every European state to whom their
commissioners should apply either for recognition or for assistance.
We knew the power of King Cotton was great, though much exaggerated in
words by his servile subjects; but we did not, because we could not,
believe that he was able to control the policy of old empires, to
subvert the principle of honor upon which aristocracies profess to rely
as their chief support, and to turn whole nations from the roads in
which they had been accustomed to travel. That Cotton has done this we
do not assert; but it has done not a little to show how feeble; the
regard of certain classes in Europe for morality, when adherence to
principle may possibly cause them some trouble, and perhaps lead to some
loss. If the Southern plant has not become the tyrant of Europe, as for
a long time it was of America, it has certainly done much in a brief
time to unsettle English opinion, and to convert the Abolitionists of
Great Britain, the men who could tax the whites of their empire in the
annual interest of one hundred million dollars in order that the slavery
of the blacks in that empire might come to an end, into the supporters
of American slavery, and of its extension over this continent, which
might be made into a Cotton paradise, if the supply of negroes from
Africa should not be interrupted; and the logical conclusion from the
position laid down by Lord John Russell is, that the slave-trade must
be revived, as that is what his "belligerent" friends of the Southern
Confederacy are contending for. The American people had long been
taunted by the English with their subserviency to the slaveholding
interest, and with their readiness to sacrifice the welfare of a weak
and wronged race on the altars of Mammon. Whether these taunts were
well deserved by us, we shall not stop to inquire; but it is the most
melancholy of facts, that, no sooner have we given the best evidence
which it is in our power to give of our determination to confine slavery
within its present limits, and to put an end to the abuse of our
Government's power by the slaveholders, than the Government of Great
Britain, acting as the agent and representative of the British nation,
places itself directly across our path, and prepares to tell us to
stay our hand, and not dare to meddle with the institution of slavery,
because from the success of that institution proceeds cotton, and upon
the supply of cotton not being interfered with depend the welfare and
the strength of the liberty-and-order loving and morality-and-religion
worshipping race! So far as they have dared to do it, the British
ministers have placed their country on the side of those men who have
revolted in America because they saw that they could no longer make use
of slavery to misgovern the Union; and we must wait to see how far they
are to be supported by the opinion of that country, before a distinction
can be made between the ministers and the people. Left to themselves,
and unbiased by any of those selfish motives that go to make up the sum
of politics, we have not the slightest doubt that the English people, in
the proportion of ten to one, would decide in behalf of the supporters
of freedom in this country; but we are by no means so sure that the
ministers would not be sustained, were they to plunge their country into
a third American War, and sustained, too, in sending fleets to raise
our blockade of the American coast of Africa, and armies to fight the
battles of Slavery in Virginia and the Carolinas, where British officers
stole negroes eighty years ago, and sent them to the West India markets,
and found that that kind of commerce flourished well in war. A war for
the maintenance of American slavery, and to secure for slaveholders
the full and perfect enjoyment of all the "rights" of their "peculiar"
property, would be no worse than was the war which was waged against our
ancestors of the Revolution, or than those wars which were carried on
against Republican and Imperial France, ostensibly for the preservation
of order, but really for the restoration of a despotism which cannot now
find a single apologist on earth. There is often a wide distinction to
be made between a nation and its government, as our own recent history
but too deplorably proves; and the men who govern England may be enabled
to do that now which has more than once been done by their predecessors,
array their country in support of evil against that country's sense and
wishes. We should be prepared for this, and should look the evil that
threatens us fairly in the face, as the first thing to be done to
prevent it from getting beyond the threatening-point. The words of Sir
Boyle Roche, that the best way to avoid danger is to meet it plump, are
strikingly applicable to our condition. If we would not have a foreign
war on our hands before we shall have settled with the rebels, we should
make it very clear to foreigners that to fight with us would be a sort
of business that would be sure not to pay.
That war may follow from the course which England has elected to pursue
toward the parties to our civil conflict will not appear a strange view
of affairs to those who know something of the history of Great Britain
and the United States in the early part of this century. That which the
British Government is now doing bears strong resemblance to the course
which the same Government, with different ministers, pursued toward the
United States during the war with Napoleon I., and which led to the
contest of 1812,--a contest which Franklin had predicted, and which he
said would be our War of _Independence_, as that of 1775-83 had been
our War of _Revolution_. The same ignorance of America, and the same
disposition to insult, to annoy, and to injure Americans, that were so
common under the ministries of Pitt, Portland, and Perceval, and which
move both our mirth and our indignation when we read of them long after
the tormentors and the tormented have gone to their last repose, are
exhibited by the Palmerston Ministry,--though it is but justice to Lord
Palmerston to say, that he has borne himself more manfully toward us
than have his associates. England treats us as she would not dare to
treat any European power, making an exception in our case to her
general policy, which has been, since 1815, to truckle before her
contemporaries. She has crouched before France repeatedly, when she
had much better ground for fighting her than she now has for taking
preliminary steps to fight us. We are not entitled to the same treatment
that she thinks is due to the nations of the continent of Europe. She
cannot rid herself of the feeling that we still are colonists, and that
the rules which apply to her intercourse with old nations cannot apply
to her intercourse with us, the United States having been a portion of
the British Empire within the recollection of persons yet living. No
sooner, therefore, had a state of things arisen here that seemed to
warrant a renewal of the insulting treatment that was a thing of course
in 1807, than we were made to see how hollow were those professions of
friendship for America that were not uncommon in the mouths of British
statesmen during the ten or twelve years that preceded the advent of
Secession. So long as we were deemed powerful, we received assurances of
"the most distinguished consideration"; but we have at last ascertained
that those assurances were as false as they are when they are appended
to the letter of some diplomatist who is engaged in the work of cheating
some one who is neither better nor worse than himself. It is positively
mortifying to think how shockingly we have been taken in, and that the
"cordial understanding" that had, apparently, been growing up between
the two nations was a misunderstanding throughout, though we were
sincere in desiring its existence. Perhaps, when the evidences of the
strength that we possess, in spite of Secession, shall have all been
placed before the rulers of England, they will be found less ready to
quarrel with the American people than they were a month ago. A nation
that is capable of placing a quarter of a million of men in the field in
sixty days, and of giving to that immense force a respectable degree of
consistency and organization, is worth being conciliated after having
been insulted. But would any amount of conciliation suffice to restore
the feeling that existed here when the Prince of Wales was our guest? We
fear that it would not, and that for some years to come the sentiment
in America toward England will be as hostile as it was in the last
generation, when it was in the power of any politician to make political
capital by assailing the mother-land. The belief is created that England
in her heart hates us as profoundly as ever she did, that the forty-six
years' peace has produced no change in her feeling with respect to us,
and that she is watching ever for an opportunity to gratify the grudge
of which we are the object. Practically it will matter very little
whether this belief shall be well founded or not, so long as English
ministers, whether from want of judgment or from any other cause, shall
omit no occasion for the insulting and annoying of the United States. An
opinion that is sincerely held by the people of a powerful nation is in
itself a fact of the first importance, no matter whether it be founded
in truth or not; and if the blundering of another powerful nation shall
help to maintain that opinion, that nation would have no right to
complain of any consequences that should follow from its inability to
comprehend the condition of its neighbor. This country will not submit
to the degradation which England would inflict upon it, and which no
other European nation appears inclined to aid the insular empire in
inflicting. Even Spain, proverbially foolish in her foreign policy, and
seemingly unable to get within a hundred years of the present time,
observes a decorum in the premises to which Great Britain is a stranger.
The manner of proceeding on the part of the British Government, and
the arguments which have been put forward in justification of its
pro-slavery policy, are serious aggravations of its original offence.
The first declaration of Lord John Russell, Secretary of State for
Foreign Affairs, was to the effect that England would not show any favor
to the Secessionists. His subordinate (Lord Wodehouse, Under-Secretary
of State for Foreign Affairs) was even more emphatic than his chief in
speaking to the same purpose. Suddenly, the Foreign Secretary turned
about, with a facility and promptness for which men had not been
prepared even by his rapid changes on the questions of the Russian War
and Italian Nationality, and said that the Southern Confederacy would be
recognized as a belligerent, which is, to all intents and purposes of a
practical character, the same thing as acknowledging it to be a nation.
What was the cause of this sudden change? We have only to look at the
dates of the events that, followed the fall of Fort Sumter to find an
answer. Lord John Russell believed that the capital of the United States
had fallen into the hands of the rebels, and he was anxious to please
the masters of the cotton-fields by showing them that he had not waited
to hear of their victory to behold their virtues. There was some excuse
for his belief that the raid upon Washington had succeeded; for down to
the 27th of April there was but too much reason for supposing that that
city was in serious danger of becoming the prey of the Confederates,
who might have taken it, if they had been half as forward in their
preparations for war as they were supposed to have been by the chiefs of
the British Government. But this belief that the rebels had delivered
an effective blow at the Union only places the meanness of Lord John
Russell and his associates in a worse light than we could view it in,
if they had acted solely upon principle. Their political opinions had
pledged them to oppose the principles of the Secessionists; but they
were in a hurry to give all the support they could to those principles,
because they had come to the conclusion that victory was to be with the
Secessionists. They desired to appropriate the merit of being the first
of European statesmen to welcome the destroyers of the American Union
into the family of nations. Had the event justified their expectations,
they would have gained much by their action, and would have enjoyed
whatever of glory the European world might have been disposed to accord
to the allies of American pirates.
The Royal Proclamation of May 13th, in which the neutrality of England
is peremptorily laid down, and all British subjects are forbidden to
take any part in the war "between the Government of the United States of
America and certain States calling themselves the Confederate States of
America," is a paper in many respects most offensive to the people of
this country, though probably it was better in its intention than it
is in its execution. That part of it which most concerns us is the
recognition of "any blockade lawfully and actually established by or on
behalf of either of the said contending parties." It is important to us
that the British Government has admitted our right to blockade the ports
of the rebels, provided we shall do so in force; and though Lord Derby
has exhibited his ignorance of our naval power by saying that we cannot
enforce the blockade we have declared and instituted, we shall show to
the world, before the next cotton-crop shall be ready for exportation,
that we are fully up to the work that is demanded of us, by having at
least one hundred vessels, strongly armed and well manned, employed in
watching every part of the Southern coast to which any foreign ship
would think of going with a cargo or for the purpose of receiving one.
The naval strength of the Union is as capable of vast and effective
development as its military strength; and there is no reason why we
should not have afloat, and ready for action, by the beginning of
autumn, fleets sufficient to close up the Confederate ports as
thoroughly as the Allies closed those of Russia in 1854-6, and the
advanced guard of other fleets to be made ready to contend with the
forces that insolent foreign nations may send into the waters of America
for the purpose of fighting the battles of the slaveholders.
With the single exception of the admission of the right of blockade, the
Royal Proclamation is unfriendly to the United States. It admits the
right of the Confederacy's Government to issue letters of marque, from
which it follows that American ships captured by cruisers of the rebels
could be taken into English ports, and there sold, after having been
condemned by prize courts sitting at any one of the places belonging
to the Confederacy. This is no light aid to the pirates; for there are
English ports on every sea, and on almost every one of the ocean's
tributaries. Vessels belonging to America, and captured by the
Confederacy's privateers in the Mediterranean, could be taken into
Gibraltar, into Valetta, and into Corfu, all of which are English ports.
Those captured in the Mexican Gulf and the Caribbean could be sent into
any one of the many ports that belong to England in the West Indies.
If captured in the North Atlantic, or the Baltic, or any other of the
waters of Northern Europe, they could be sent into the ports of England,
Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. In the South Atlantic are St. Helena and
Cape Town, which would afford shelter to Mr. Davis's privateers and
their prizes. In the East Indies British ports are numerous, from Aden
to the last places wrested from the Chinese, and they would be all open
to the enterprise of the Confederacy's cruisers. In the Pacific are
the English harbors on the Northwest Coast; and in Australia there are
British ports that ought, considering their origin, to be particularly
friendly to men who should enter the navy of the Secessionists. England
has in advance provided places for the transaction of all the business
that shall be necessary to render privateering profitable to the
"lawless brood" of the whole world. Into all of her thousand seaports
could the lucky Confederates go, and dispose of their captures, just as
the old Buccaneers used to sell their prizes in the ports of the English
colonies. Nor could all the efforts of all the navies of the world
prevent privateers from preying upon our commerce, as they are to be
commissioned in foreign countries, and will sail from the ports of those
countries. The East Indian seas, the Levant, and the Caribbean are the
old homes and haunts of pirates; and under the encouragement which
England is disposed to afford to piracy, for the especial benefit
of Slavery, the buccaneering business could not fail to flourish
exceedingly. True, our Government would not allow privateers to be
fitted out in our ports, during the Russian War, to prey upon the
commerce of France and England; but what of that? One good turn does
_not_ deserve another, according to the public morality of nations so
orderly and pious as are England and France.
According to the Royal Proclamation, the blockade of any one of the
Northern ports by one of the ships of the Secessionists would be as
lawful an act as the blockade of Charleston by a dozen of the Union's
cruisers; and England allows that a privateer from Pensacola could seize
an English ship that should be engaged in bringing arras to New York or
Philadelphia. Thus are the two "parties" to the war placed on the same
footing by the decision of the English Government, though the one party
is a nation having treaties with England, and engaged in maintaining the
cause of order, and the other is only a band of conspirators, who have
established their power through the institution of a system of terror,
much after the fashion of Monsieur Robespierre and his associates, whose
conduct was so offensive to all Britons seven-and-sixty years ago. But
Montgomery is much farther from England than Paris, and the French had
no cotton to tempt the British statesmen of 1793-4 to strike an account
between manufacturing and morality. Distance and time appear to have
united their powers to make things appear fair in the eyes of Russell
that inexpressibly horrible to those of "the monster Pitt."
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