Various - Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1.
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Various >> Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1.
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While the modern Democratic party firmly believed--as its majority still
seems to--that all this trouble was caused solely by the Abolitionists,
and simply for the sake of liberating some four millions of blacks, they
had at least some color for their iron conservatism. European humanity
did not agree with us; but we of America are more tropical in our
feelings, and so we made up our minds that it _was_ too bad to cut one
another's throats for the sake of benefiting certain 'fat and lazy
niggers,' who were probably rather better off as chattels than as free
men. But it is not from this point of view that the world is now
beginning to view the subject. Common-sense has ascertained clearly
enough that without the agitation of Abolition, the South would have
become intolerable and tyrannical--it was imperious, sectional, and
arrogant in the days of its weakness, while the Abolitionists scarcely
existed, and given to secession for any and every cause. The insolent,
individual independence which prompted the wearing of weapons, wild law
and wild life, free from mutual social obligations, contained within
itself the germs of withdrawal from a civilized and superior people and
a stable government. For such men, one pretense served as well as
another. They of South-Carolina employed Nullification long before they
dreamed of Anti-Abolition.
Still more absurd is the 'Democratic' opposition, since Abolition for
the sake of the Negro has been changed into the cry of _Emancipation for
the sake of the White Man_. Before this cry, before the inevitable and
mighty demand of the free white labor of the future on the territories
of the South, all protestations against 'meddling' with emancipation
shrivel up into trifles and become contemptible. The prayer of the ant
petitioning against the removal of a mountain, where a nation was to
found its capital, was not more verily frivolous and inconsiderable than
are these timid ones of 'let it alone!' And _why_ let it alone? The
Emancipation-for-the-sake-of-the-white-man party, as represented by
President Lincoln's Message, commending remuneration, asks for no undue
haste, no violent or sudden aggressive measures. It is satisfied to let
the South free itself when it shall be disposed so to do; simply
offering it a kindly aid when this measure shall become popular and
expedient. More than this we have never asked for in these columns; yet
it would be hard to imagine a term of 'newspaper abuse,' which has not
been given us by the 'Democratic' press. Yes, at a time when ninety-nine
men in a hundred in the free States avow that they would like to see
slavery 'out of the way,' if only to avoid the endless war which its
continuance _must_ entail, all mention of it is tabooed by the men who
claim to head the party of the virtual majority! No matter how far off
the friends of Emancipation and of the Administration are willing to
postpone the practical execution of the measure, 'it must not be
mentioned.' For the greater part, these Northern friends of the South at
present still earnestly desire the perpetual establishment of slavery
'on a constitutional basis.'
The contemptible efforts at Washington to build up a separate and
distinct Democratic party, when no party save that of the Union existed,
will condemn to everlasting opprobrium the Vallandighams, Carlisles,
Garret Davises, and other false friends of freedom, who at such a time
crowded together like hungry political cormorants, to hatch out the egg
of faction, and secure a prospective share of the spoils. Have these
'Conservatives' reflected on the disgraceful show which their names will
make _in history_, in after-years, when freedom shall have been
proclaimed throughout the land, and when those who opposed its progress
will appear like nothing else than traitors! Heaven help the men who, at
a time when others were gathering in full measure of glory in a holy
cause, were piling up naught but shame for their posterity. For it is
not more certain that God is just, than that the full measure of
iniquity will be heaped upon their names in the after-chronicles of
freedom.
Even to the present moment, the 'Conservative' alias the
'Democratic'--or the Black, alias the White--party struggles with might
and main to defend and protect its old Southern whippers-in, even at the
risk of dividing and distracting the Union. To effect this, it
has--almost successfully--insolently thrust the Commander-in-chief
forward as _its_ centre, and broadly slandered the Secretary of War and
President in no measured terms, as having toiled to defeat McClellan and
prolong the war. Through all the glossy web of lies, the light of truth
shines or will shine to their disgrace.
Chiefly and most unwisely is the conservative hand shown at present in
opposition to every proposition for confiscation or punishing the
rebels. After having hurried us by their cowardice and Southern
toad-eating into this war; after urging it by their contemptible
procrastination to its present tremendous proportions, they cry out
'humanity!' for the men who have murdered our relatives, and shake the
Constitution for protection over estates which have been directly used
to contribute to Southern war! While every mail from the South gives
fresh instances of desperation, and while we search in vain for a trace
of proof that there is the slightest hope of reconciliation, we are
still entreated to restore every thing in _statu quo ante bellum_, and
bear all the results of the war ourselves, as if forsooth we had been
after all in the wrong. And so the Vallandighams and Davises declare
that we were. 'Abolitionism caused it all,' they say, 'nothing but
Abolition.'
Meanwhile, the question urges itself on us every day with more pressing
power, how we are really to settle the whole difficulty? We see but one
course--the 'Northing' of the South. We are content to waive for the
present all theory or project of confiscation, save so far as promoting
the settlement of those soldiers and emigrants who may wish to settle in
the South is concerned. _This_ question demands consideration, and must
have it. Whether the lands to be appropriated for this purpose come
from rebel estates which have ministered to the war, or whether they are
to be taken from State property, they must be had; for the settlement of
the South and the proper rewarding of the army are matters of paramount
importance. The South can no longer exist in its present social
condition. People who believe, to use the language of their most
respectable journal, the Richmond _Whig_, that:
'Yankees are the most contemptible and detestable of God's
creation; vile wretches, whose daily sustenance consists in the
refuse of all other people; for they eat nothing that any body else
will buy;... who have long very properly looked upon themselves as
our social inferiors, as our serfs:'
People, we say, who believe this of us, must be taught to think
differently and truthfully. If they lived in China, it would be
otherwise; but linked to us as they are, we can no longer tolerate such
outrageous superciliousness as they manifest. Those among them who will
learn, may be taught; those who will not, must be supplanted by people
who are not too proud to work, who do not 'abominate the system of free
schools, because the schools are free,'[B] and revile free labor,
because it consists of 'greasy mechanics, filthy operatives, and
small-fisted farmers.' The task is great; but it must be accomplished.
The war is drawing to an end; but a greater and nobler task lies before
the soldiers and the free men of America--the extending of
_civilization_ into the South. Let us lift our minds above the narrow
limits of 'party,' and realize the mighty work which we have in hand.
Let the introduction of free labor to the South be in future the subject
to which every thinking American mind shall be devoted. Let them stream
in by millions!--the free laborers of all the world!--there is room for
them all; and the right of man to work never yet had such fair and just
opportunity to have justice done it. Agricultural aristocracy, supported
by involuntary servitude and unsupported by manufactures, has been
tried, and found worse than wanting. Let its place be filled as promptly
as possible by that truly higher aristocracy of industry and of culture
which is at present common to Europe and our own portion of America. The
turn of the North to rule has at length come. Let its reign be
inaugurated by great, noble, and philanthropic efforts to extend the
blessings of true civilization to all the continent.
I WAIT.
I wait--watching and weary, I wait;
You wander from the way!
My heart lies open, however late,
However you delay!
I wait--watching and weary, I wait;
But day must dawn at last!
Together, beyond the reach of fate,
Love shall redeem my past.
I wait, ah! forever I can wait;
Forever? I am brave:
Time can not fathom a love so great--
It waits beyond the grave!
TAKING THE CENSUS.
Moses Grant sat in his vine-grown arbor one fine afternoon in August. A
fine afternoon, I call it--a little sultry, to be sure, which made Moses
Grant's eyes heavy; but the hum of the bees that played around the white
clover-blossoms, and the sound of the leaves as they rustled in the warm
wind, and the richly colored clouds that floated around in the deep,
deep blue of the summer sky, and a thousand other things which I will
not pause to note, but which every observing reader has noted on many an
August day, made the afternoon I speak of as glorious as any afternoon
could be in all our glorious summer.
Moses Grant's eyes were heavy--or eye-lids, if the reader should be a
critic. He had brought a book from his daughter's book-case. He
remembered the volume--it was called _A Book of a Thousand Stories_--as
the one his daughter Mary read aloud one evening, when the witty turns
of speech put all the company into the best of humor. But, somehow, the
wit had now lost its point--the joke had lost its zest--and let him try
as he would to collect his scattered thoughts, and let him set his eyes
on his book never so firmly, his fancy would go on long journeys into
the past, and come back again, wearied more and more with each journey,
till at last it had sunk to rest, and Moses Grant's eyes were closed.
The bees buzzed on, the leaves quivered as before, and the great world
moved in its wonted way, yet our hero did not heed it; the world moved
on just the same, O reader! as it will one day move--one long, long
day--when you and I will not heed it.
Suddenly Moses Grant heard his name spoken. When aroused, he saw his
neighbor, Johnson, seated in the rustic chair that mated the one in
which he himself sat.
'Good-day, neighbor Johnson,' said Moses Grant. 'What in the world are
you doing with that great book?'
'I am taking the census.' And he began turning the leaves as if
searching for a lost place, remarking, laconically: 'Sultry.'
'Yes, a very close afternoon. But is it ten years since the census was
taken? It seems but as many months. Oh! well, time flies!'
And he looked at the beautiful sky and at the beautiful landscape, and
lingeringly at his own stately mansion, guarded by venerable trees that
his own hand had transplanted from the forest--and the great truth,
half-realized, yet almost as common as our daily life, that time was
sweeping all things into the dead past, day by day and year by year,
gave him a passing thought of how much he loved them.
The name of Moses Grant was duly inscribed in the book. Then the
question was asked by neighbor Johnson:
'When were you born?'
'In the year 1800--sixty years ago the day before yesterday--though I
declare I forgot all about my birthday.'
'Well, how much real estate shall I set down to you?'
'I _have_ said that I owned about fifty thousand dollars in that kind of
property, perhaps a little more, but not half as much as some persons
estimate.'
'Well, how much personal property?'
'I guess about twenty thousand will not go far out of the way, reckoning
mortgages and all.'
After a few minutes, which neighbor Johnson occupied by telling how Sime
Jones tried to get the appointment of census-taker by wriggling about in
an undignified way, and in talking about the prospects of his political
party, the visitor left the old man, (such we have a right to call him
since he has confessed his age,) and the old man (he would not thank us
for using the term so often, for he tries to think he is still
young--the old man, I must again repeat) fell a thinking. His eyes were
no longer closed, although his book _was_; he leaned forward in his
rustic chair, and commenced to talk aloud--which is said to be a growing
habit with most old men:
'Sixty years of human life!' The words were uttered slowly, as though
their full meaning were felt in the speaker's heart. After a little
while they were repeated: 'Sixty years of human life!' There was a
mournfulness in his voice now; it had sunk to the low, tender tones
that, years before, when his faithful wife vanished from earth, revealed
to all his friends that there was sadness in his heart, while there
seemed cheerfulness in his words. 'Welladay!' he continued; 'I have, at
any rate, been a _successful_ man. My business has prospered beyond my
expectations, and I am what people call a rich man. There was a time
when I feared I should come to want; but now, if I could but think so, I
have enough. And mine has been an industrious life. When I was elected
to the State Senate wasn't my name held up in the newspapers as an
example for young men? Wasn't my reputation admitted to be spotless?
Yes, I _have_ been a successful man--more successful than nearly all who
started with me.'
And he began to look more cheerful and contented. He again looked at his
mansion and broad fields, and again he opened his book. The jokes were
better now than a little while before.
But the bees buzzed on; the trees sang their old soothing song; the air
remained warm; and soon Moses Grant began to nod assent to his book,
though the matters it contained were not of opinion, but of fancy. By
which I mean that he grew sleepy.
* * * * *
Sudden darkness fell upon the earth. The sun, after sending its rays to
glitter in the river so brightly that Moses Grant put his hand over his
eyes as he looked from his arbor-door, went out, and the blackness of
night wrapped itself about the world. The elms, that had rattled their
deep green leaves in the wind, and the birch, that had so gracefully
bowed its slender, yellowish head, were all colorless now. There was no
storm-cloud to veil the heavens, and yet the sad-faced moon came not out
to remind the world of their lost loves and deferred hopes--nor the
stars, to twinkle in their silence, as though there were a great Soul in
the skies that longed to speak to men, but had no utterance save a
thousand love-lit eyes. All was darkness--dense, universal.
Yet Moses Grant had sat unmoved in his vine-grown arbor. His soul was
passionless, his face was calm. His book had fallen to the ground, and
his head rested on the back of his chair.
Suddenly there came a visitor to the arbor. Moses raised his head and
saw a being--whether man or woman I can not tell--with a face, oh! so
bright and calm, with eyes that looked from the deepest soul, and a pure
forehead that spoke of unworldly rest--a face that shone in its own
vista of light when all around was dark. The Presence bore an open book
in its hands, and came and stood before Moses Grant and looked earnestly
into his face.
'Who are you?' he cried, half in fear, before the calm look of his
visitor, and half in confidence, because of the look of love.
'I am the census-taker.'
'No, no; it was he who came a little while ago.'
'He was one census-taker--he came to learn how much you _seemed_ to
possess; I come to learn your _real_ possessions. I am the real
census-taker.'
Moses Grant knew not what it meant; he sat speechless, in wonder. He
would have fled, but he knew not where he could flee in the darkness; he
must remain with his strange visitor, as all men must one day stand
alone with an awakened Conscience.
'When were you born?' asked the Presence.
'Sixty years ago,' answered Moses.
'You understand me not. I do not ask for the time when you were born
into your outward show of life, but when you commenced to live.'
'Still I do not know your meaning,' said Moses.
'Then you have not yet been born. You exist--you do not live. Say not
again that you have lived sixty years, for your being has not yet
expanded into life.'
Oh! what great thoughts and dark memories came into the mind of Moses
Grant! Great thoughts of a nobler life of love than he had ever
known--of realities to which he was fast approaching--and a thousand
dark memories that he had often tried to obliterate from his mind. A
little while before, he thought he possessed a spotless reputation--and
so he did possess a spotless reputation when judged by human law. No man
ever knew him to steal; no man ever knew him to transgress any important
law. Nevertheless, he had had his own ends to gain, and he had gained
them. Yes--we might as well confess it--Moses Grant had lived a selfish
life. He knew how to take advantage of the technicalities of law, and he
knew how to be severe and unmerciful toward the poor. He remembered how,
years before, his son had longed for an education, and how the mother
had pleaded that he might go to school and to college, and how sternly
he said, 'No, I want him in my business;' and he remembered how he kept
him slaving at his uncongenial tasks, how he scolded because he still
pored over his books, until at last the mother had laid the poor boy in
the grave before he had attained to manhood. He remembered how the
mother grew paler day by day--she who had been such a help-meet in all
his selfish schemes of hoarding and saving; how she had talked more and
more about her 'dear lost boy,' till he, Moses Grant, commanded her
never to utter that name again in his presence; how the mother still
faded and faded, till at last she too, was laid in a quiet grave beside
her boy. All this came into the mind of Moses Grant. And then he
remembered how he had taken a poor widow's cottage, because his
mortgage-deed gave him the privilege--he never thought the _right_--to
take it; he remembered her sad face, that told of silent suffering, when
she moved with her children from the cottage her husband had built.
'How,' he asked, in the silence of his own mind, 'oh! how could they say
my reputation was unspotted?' Yet he had transgressed no outward law,
had forged no mortgage-deed. He only acted like a man who thought that
this world could only be enjoyed when he possessed a title-deed to it
all; like one who thought that above and beyond this world there was
nothing.
All this time has the Presence stood before Moses Grant, looking into
his troubled face with its piercing eyes, and reading his every thought.
'Answer me now,' it said, 'have you yet begun to live?'
Then there was another and greater struggle in the mind of Moses. Pride
said to him: 'Send this intrusive visitor away, or flee yourself.' But
still the visitor stood there, waiting so calmly, and again Moses
realized that the great world had faded from his vision; so he could
neither send away the intruder, nor fly himself. Still those calm eyes
looked into his inmost soul.
'Oh!' he cried at last, 'you have searched me through and through. No, I
have not lived--I have not been born, I have no life for you to record
in your book. Now, pray leave me--leave me in peace!'
'That were impossible,' said the Presence, 'you know not peace. You
pride yourself on your possessions; but how can you have life or
possessions, if they are not recorded in my book? The earth, that you
love so well, has faded away. It will return to you for a brief moment,
and then it will fade forever. What you now possess is but a shadow,
like a sun-gilt cloud in a summer sky--changing and changing, and fading
and fading, till at last it disappears. You have, if God wills, a few
more years of mortal existence, and then, oh! then, you must exchange
shadows for realities.'
'Leave me, oh! leave me!' cried Moses.
'Not yet; my mission is not fulfilled. Here in this book your name was
written sixty years age, as one _to be_ born. Here your ledger has been
kept, though you knew it not. Read the pages with your soul, and see how
your account stands.'
Oh! how dark the page. A line was drawn through the middle, from top to
bottom, and the good deeds were recorded on one side, in letters of
gold, and the bad deeds on the other side in letters of ink. As the
pages were turned, Moses looked eagerly for the bright letters, but they
were few--too few; while every page was almost filled with the black
records of selfish and sinful deeds. Every page made Moses Grant sicker
at heart, and he would gladly have withdrawn his eyes from the book, but
they were riveted, and he could not.
'O poor man!' exclaimed the Presence, in pity; 'how poor do you find
yourself, you who were a little while ago so rich! But you must read no
more, lest you sink in despair.'
And the book was closed. Moses Grant said not a word; his heart was too
full to speak--too full of grief--too empty of hope.
'Despair not,' continued the strange Presence. 'Your record is not yet
completed. You may yet cancel all those black letters by writing golden
ones over them--which is to pray with your remaining strength and days
for forgiveness. You have been a hard, selfish man, for sixty years.
Men, for their own interests, have called you respectable; but before
God you have merited displeasure and disapprobation. In the little time
you have left, perhaps you may not be able to leave the world as pure as
you began it; but you may hope for wonderful mercy and forbearance from
God our Father. Have courage, and faith, and hope, and you will yet be
rich indeed--rich in love and joy and peace undefiled, that fadeth not
away.'
Then the Presence vanished. Still Moses sat in his chair. But a hand was
laid on his forehead, and he awoke as he heard Mary say: 'Father, supper
is ready.' He drew his hand across his eyes, and arose from his chair.
He looked from his arbor-door. The world was all bathed in the light of
the declining sun. As he came out and looked on the landscape, he
thought that never before had he seen it so dreamy--never before had he
seen it so beautiful and so glorious, for never before had he so felt
the use of this world as a place in which to attain to the good and to
shun the evil, to overcome temptation and to aspire to life.
His daughter wondered what caused his tone to be so tender that night;
the next day his neighbors wondered that he visited a certain poor,
struggling widow, and gave her the house her husband once owned; and in
the months that have since passed, many a poor family has wondered what
has turned their former oppressor into such a provident friend.
_I_ only wonder that so old and selfish a man could have had so bright
and heavenly a dream.
* * * * *
A SENSIBLE EPITAPH.
'Reader, pass on: ne'er waste your time
On bad biography or bitter rhyme:
For what I _am_, this cumbrous clay insures,
And what I _was_, is no affair of yours.'
THE PELOPONNESUS IN MARCH.
'Fair clime I where every season smiles.
* * * * *
There, mildly dimpling, Ocean's check
Reflects the tints of many a peak
Caught by the laughing tides that lave
These Edens of the Eastern wave.
And if, at times, a transient breeze
Break the blue crystal of the seas,
Or sweep one blossom from the trees,
How welcome is each gentle air
That wakes and wafts the odors there!'
It was with thoughts like these running in our heads, that we found
ourselves, at about half-past four o'clock, on a dark, cloudy, windy
morning, March fifteenth, 18--, rolling slowly along the uneven road
that leads from Athens to the Piraeus. Our guide was Dhemetri, of
course--who ever heard of a guide that was not named Dhemetri? An
excellent guide he was, too, never missing his way, answering correctly
all our questions to which he knew the answers, and fabricating answers
to the rest as near the truth as his moderate knowledge of antiquity
would permit; providing us sedulously with creature comforts, and
besieging our hearts daily with delicious omelettes and endless strings
of figs. Arrived at the Piraeus, we were transferred, with beds, cooking
apparatus, and baggage, to the Lloyd steamer, whose cloud of steam and
smoke was seen dimly in the gray morning. At a reasonable time after the
hour advertised, we sailed into the open bay, passed near enough the
island of AEgina to see the ruined temple on one of its hights--almost to
count its columns--then coasted along the rugged shores of Argolis,
which we eagerly studied with the aid of a map. Here was the peninsula
Methana, and half hiding it, the island Calauria, where Demosthenes put
an end to his life, once the seat of a famous Amphictyony. Then the bold
promontory which shuts in the fertile valley of Troezer, then the
territory of Hermione, stretching between the mountains and the sea. We
touched at Hydhra, famed in the history of the Greek Revolution, a
strange, rambling town, picturesquely situated on a cleft in a bare
island of gray rock, and shortly after at Spetzia, a town of much the
same character; then toward night sailed into the beautiful bay of
Napoli, or Nauplia, once the capital of Greece.
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