Chapter III: Preface (3)

And when the fairy tale was done, the blue-eyed Ella said,
“Mama, please tell a story, too, before we go to bed,
And let it be a funny one, such as I like to hear,
‘Red Riding Hood,’ or ‘The Three Bears,’ or ‘Chicken Little-dear.’”

A smile beamed on the mother’s face, as the little prattler spoke,
And kissing her soft, rosy cheek, she thus the silence broke,
“I will tell you, my own darlings, a story that is true,
Of a little Southern maiden, with a skin of sable hue.

“Xariffe, her mother called her, a child of beauty rare,
With soft gazelle-like eyes, and curls of dark and shining hair,
A fairy form of perfect grace, and such artless winning ways
That none who saw her, e’er could fail her loveliness to praise.

“She sported mid the orange-groves in gleeful, careless play,
And her mother, as she gazed on her, in agony would pray,
‘My Father, God! be merciful! my cherished darling save
From the curse whose sum of bitterness is to be a female slave.’”

“God heard her prayer, but often He in wisdom doth withhold
The boon we crave, that we may be pure and refined like gold;
And the mother saw Xariffe grow in loveliness and grace,
Till the roses of five summers blushed in beauty on her face.

“At length, one day, one sunny day, when earth and heaven were bright,
The mother to her daily toil went forth at morning light;
At evening, when her task was done,--how can the tale be told?
She came back to her empty hut, to find her darling sold.

“Come nearer, my own precious ones, your soft white arms entwine
Around my neck, and kiss me close, sweet Ella, daughter mine;
Five years in beauty _thou_ hast bloomed, of my happy life a part,
Oh, God! I guess the anguish of that lone slave-mother’s heart.

“Now, darlings, go and kiss papa, and whisper your good-night,
Then hasten to your little beds, and sleep till morning light;
But oh! before you close your eyes, God’s care and blessing crave,
On the saddest of His children, that poor heartbroken slave.”

THE MAN-OWNER.

A friend of mine, on the ---- day of ----, 18--, (the dates it is unnecessary to specify,) became the owner of a man. He had never owned one before; and he has had so much trouble with him, that I doubt if he will ever allow himself to become owner of one again. My friend is not a Southerner; yet the circumstances by which so singular a dispensation fell to him, it is unnecessary for me to recount. I will briefly describe the master and the man, and show how they succeeded in their relationship.

The master was wholly respectable in his life and character; endowed with good sense; well enough off in the world, able to hire service, if he needed, and to pay for it: his temper not bad, though sometimes irritable;--he could be provoked as others can. He had strong passions, and sometimes in the course of his life they had got the better of him, and had led him to conduct which, in the coolness of his mind, he bitterly repented. Circumstances might have made a bad man of him. The instructions which he received in his childhood, the example of his parents, the respectable neighborhood in which he resided, the church which he attended, all had a favorable influence upon him. So he became a man of principle. He had not, indeed, the highest principles; he was no hero; he was not disposed to make himself a martyr. His religion was no other than the common religion of the church to which he was attached, and it demanded no peculiar sacrifice of him. He was a member of one of the leading political parties, and did his full duty in maintaining its cause. He called himself a patriot, however, not a partizan; and talked ever of his country, as the highest exemplification of the great principles of liberty, and considered the success of our institutions as the hope of humanity. Yet he loved his country,--not his race. He was not without charity to the poor; and was not unwilling to see them, individually, rising above destitution. Yet he did not like to associate with men lower in the social scale than himself; but had an ambition that impelled him to court the society of those whose station and influence were superior to his own. Nor did he care for, or believe in, any suggestions or plans, the object of which was the elevation of the poor as a class, and the levelling upwards of the human race. He thought that as a divine authority has declared to us, “ye have the poor with you always,” it was ordained that we should always have them,--that they were an exceedingly useful class, as a foundation in society, that the prosperous men of the world could not do without them, and that it was not best to give them too much hope of rising.

Perhaps you will say I have given you no very definite description of him. You will think, perhaps, were I called to write of him again, I might, at once, better make use of the words of the poet,

The annals of the human race,
Their ruins, since the world began,
Of him afford no other trace
Than this,--THERE LIVED A MAN!

I fear, however, that I shall be unable to be more particular in my description of the servant; It is said, “like master, like man,” and, indeed, leaving out the expressions above, which show the relationship of the master to the community and the church, the description of temper and of general, moral, and religious principle, would answer to be repeated now. Suffice it to say, the man was not bad; that is, not thoroughly bad. He cherished no secret desire for liberty. His master had no real fear of his attempting to escape. He loved his master; and some thought, who did not wholly know him, that never slave loved a master with more fondness and devotion. Yet I know that he was often disobedient. Passages,--not of arms,--but of ill-temper, of reproach, and of insolence, not unfrequently occurred between them. High words were used, hard looks and moody oftener still, perhaps, yet the master never struck his servant, nor did the servant ever offer violence towards his master. But at times, they would have been very glad to part company, if the one could have easily escaped, or the other could have made out to do without him. Much of the disobedience which gave serious offence to the master, was the result of inadvertence. Lessons, the most frequently enjoined, were forgotten; they were not always listened to with an obedient mind. Years long the master required this or that service from day to day, and yet the command was not once a year, I may say, attended to. Always the master was saying,--“to-morrow I shall turn over a new leaf with him;” but he had not energy enough to carry his purpose into effect. He intended to give his servant at least some moral education, to teach him self-control, to prevent his bursts of passion, not by the infliction of punishment, but by a true moral discipline; yet the work was always delayed, and never accomplished. You will say, the master had himself some idle fancies that he ought not to have indulged, and that a severer course would have been more successful. But he was one of those who doubt the advantages and shrink from the application of severity, and he would have been no more prompt and resolute and persevering with his servant than with himself.

At the commencement, I seemed to promise a story. But all my narrative is closed with a word more. The master was at the age of twenty-one, when he came into possession of his man. The connection will never be dissolved, except, at least, by death. Indeed, reader, if you have not already seen it, master and man were but one and the same person.

And this is the moral of my little fiction. Who will believe that any man ought to have the ownership of another, when it is so rare to find one of us wholly competent to govern and to own himself? Nay, the better a man is, and the more qualified to direct and to govern others with absolute sway, the less is he willing to take the responsibility of the disposal of them,--but seeing his own unfitness for the office of lord, even of himself, he prays, not that he may be a master of others, but himself a servant of God.

E. Buckingham
CAMBRIDGE, MASS., OCT., 1852.

DAMASCUS IN 1851.

No city has been more variously described than Damascus, because none has more contrasted features. A spruce Yankee, hearing “Silk Buckingham’s” description of his “Paradise,” and seeing merely narrow, half-paved, mat-covered streets, and dirty, mud-walled buildings, would prefer his native “Slabtown” to the “most refreshing scene in all our travels.” And yet Damascus is one of the wonders of the world, unrivalled in what is peculiarly its own, admitting no comparison with any existing city, revelling in a beauty and a splendor belonging to Islamism more than Christianity, characterizing the age of the Caliphs rather than of the Crystal Palace.

In antiquity it has no rival. Nineveh, Babylon, Palmyra, its contemporaries, have wholly perished; while this oldest inhabited place has lost none of its population, yielded none of its local preëminence, abandoned but one of the arts for which it was so renowned, and taken not a tinge of European thought, worship, life. It numbers not far from one hundred and fifty thousand souls, of whom twenty thousand may be Greek and Armenian Christians. It lies in an exquisite garden at the foot of Anti-Lebanon, in a plain of inexhaustible fertility, watered by innumerable brooklets from those ancient streams “Abana and Pharphar,” and shut in by vast groves of walnut and poplar, a “verdurous wall of Paradise,” which are all that the traveller sees for hours as he draws near the city of “Abraham’s steward.”

Originally the seat of a renowned kingdom, and once the capital of the Saracen empire, it is now the centre of an Ottoman Pashalik, but virtually the metropolis of Syria, as it was in the earliest time. Miss Martineau and some others carelessly give it a length of seven miles; but the real extent of the city-walls in any one direction is not more than two. The gardens and groves around, however, take the same name, and are over twenty miles in circuit, of a studied, picturesque wildness, shaded lanes, running side by side with merry brooks, the whole overshadowed by the deepest forest, and forming delicious relief from the sunburnt plains of Syria. Besides the walnut, so much prized for its fruit all through the East, and the poplar, the main dependence for building, the famous damson, or Damascene plum, abounds the citron, orange, and pomegranate spread their fruit around the vine is everywhere seen, and only three miles off stands the forest of damask rose-trees whence the most delicious attar is made. But a genuine American will prefer the walnut-tree to all others, because of its freedom of growth, massiveness of trunk, depth of shade, and impressive reminiscence of home. These trees, together with the mulberry, do very much for the commerce of the city. But, indeed, Damascus is the chief depot of manufactures for Syria. Silk goods cannot be bought to such advantage elsewhere, nor of such antique patterns, nor of genuine “damask” colors. The business has suffered somewhat of late, because Turkish husbands discovering that English prints are so much cheaper, and their wives fancying the flowing calicoes to be so much prettier than the patterns which their grandmothers wore, foreign goods are supplanting the domestic; and a macadamized road is contemplated from the city to its seaport Beiroot, whose effect would be to make British and French manufactures still more common, but, at the same time, to give free circulation to the handicraft of Damascus. As at Constantinople, Cairo, and elsewhere, each trade occupies its own quarter, the jewellers, pipe-makers, silk-dealers, grocers, saddlers, having each their exclusive neighborhood; none of the Bazars are such noble edifices as cluster around the mosque of St. Sophia; and in the rainy season (that is, during their winter) the pavement is so wretched and slippery, and such a mass of mud and water oozes down from the rotten awnings, that one does no justice to the unequalled richness of some of the fabrics and the grandeur of some of the khans. One traveller informs the public that there is a grand “Bazar for wholesale business” of variegated black and white marble, “surmounted by an ample dome,” with a lively fountain in the centre. There are _thirty-one_ such buildings, which _we_ should call Exchanges, bearing each the name of the Sultan who erected them. Those that I visited were contiguous to the only street which wears a name in the East, and that name, familiar to us in the book of Acts, “Strait,” Dritto, as your guide mumbles the word, a long avenue containing the only hotel in the city.

An oriental peculiarity which makes the large towns exceedingly interesting is, that every occupation is carried on out of doors, and right under your eyes as you stroll along. Here the silk web is stretched upon the outside wall of some extended building; here the butcher is dressing the meat, perhaps for your dinner, right upon the sidewalk; and here a sort of extempore sausage is cooking, so that one might almost eat it as he walks, a capital idea for hasty eaters, and a very nice article in its way. There is no other part of the world where so much cooking is to be seen all the while, and such loads of sweetmeats gladden the eyes of childhood, and such luscious compounds, scented with attar, spread temptation before every sense. The business of “El-Shans” might almost be headed by the five hundred public bakers, though the silk is still the principal manufacture, and there are reported to be seven hundred and forty-eight dealers in damask, thirty-four silk-winders, one hundred silk dyers, and one hundred and forty-three weavers of the same article.

The famous Damascus blades are nothing but an “antiquity” now,--they are uniformly called so by the people, were offered to our purchase in very small quantities by persons who knew nothing of their manufacture, at exorbitant prices, and in very uncouth forms. They appeared to be curiosities to them, as they certainly were to us, and are said to be sometimes manufactured in England. A mace, offered for sale among these scimetars of wavy steel, smacked of the Crusaders’ time, and was richly inlaid with gold; the fire-arms, or blunderbusses, were grotesque and unwieldy, richly mounted, and gorgeously ornamented.

An attempt is making in certain quarters to persuade the civilized world that Turkey has still some military power. Of this almost imperial city the citadel is but a mass of ruins. Count Guyon, a confederate general with Kossuth, and now a Turkish Pasha and drill-officer, assured us it would be repaired and strengthened; but the city-walls offer no defence against a modern army; and the Turkish soldier, notwithstanding his courage and endurance, cannot be bastinadoed into military science; neither have educated Christian officers, like Guyon, any real influence. I frequently saw the sentinels asleep while upon duty, and recent experience has proved them incapable of standing before a far smaller amount of really trained troops. Some of the barracks at Damascus are rather the finest which the Sultan possesses, and among the best in the world,--some, too, of the military exercises are pursued with a creditable zeal,--but, on the whole, a more slatternly corps of men was never seen, nor one less confident in themselves.

The christian curiosities of this oldest of inhabited cities, begin with the mosque of peculiar sanctity, once the site of St. John’s Cathedral, whose chamber of relics, containing a pretended head of the Baptist, is inaccessible even to Mussulmen, the priesthood excepted. Six huge Corinthian columns, once a part of its proud portico, are built into houses and stores, so that you get but faint glimpses of their beauty and size until you mount the flat mud-roof of the modern buildings and look down into the vast area of the temple, six hundred and fifty-feet by one hundred and fifty; and there find towering above you these massive, blackened remains of Christian architecture,--significant emblems of the triumph of the Crescent over the Cross,--and yet by their imperishableness a promise of renewed glory in some brighter future. That Islamism is hastening to decay is shown impressively enough in the grand dervish mosque and khan, once quite celebrated as the Syrian enthronement of this advanced guard of Mohammed; now nothing could seem more deserted, one minaret is threatening to fall, the spacious garden is all weed-grown, and few are left to mourn over the reverse: these banner-men of the prophet, no longer warriors, students, and apostles, do but beg their bread and drone their prayers, and exchange the reputation of fanatics for that of hypocrites; they are in fact monks of the mosque, like their brothers in celibacy, changing sadly enough from enthusiasm to formality, from the fervor of first love to the grave-like chillness of an exhausted ritual.

St. Paul is of course the great name at Damascus; and your dragoman is very certain always as to the place where he was lowered down the city-wall; then he takes you to the tomb of the soldier who befriended him, close at hand, and to the little underground chapel where the Apostle’s sight was restored. But having passed in turn under the sceptre of Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Jew, Roman, Arabian, Turk, every stone of these buildings could tell a most interesting tale, and every timber of the wall could answer with an experience corresponding to the out-door revolution.

But the grand attractions in this “Flower of the Levant and Florence of Turkey” are the coffee-houses, and the palaces of the rich. The writer of Eothen, I think it is, says, “there is one coffee-house at Damascus capable of containing a hundred persons:” a Damascus friend, a resident clergyman, carried me into one where he had himself seen, three thousand people on a gala-day, and several where hundreds of visitors would not make a crowd. This great necessity of Turkish life, this deliverance from the loneliness of an oriental home, this luxurious substitute for the daily newspaper, is carried to perfection here. First of all, comes the lofty dome-covered hall, surrounded by couches like beds, enlivened on all festivals by the Arabian Improvisator with his song and his tale; back of this are a number of rude arbors interlaced with noble shade-trees, and watered profusely by nimble brooks, the whole lighted every night by little pale lamps. These are the gossiping places for the Damascene gentlemen; where the fragrant tchébouque, the cool narghilch, or water-pipe, the delicious coffee, the indolent game at dominos, (I never saw chess played at the east,) is relieved by such domestic anecdotes as, according to my American friend, brand the domestic life of the city with beastly sensuality.

One would fain hope that these are the prejudices of an earnest missionary,--but until the residence of years had given familiarity with the language, any opinions of a visitor would be erroneous as well as presuming. Nothing, however, can bring back so powerfully the Arabian tales of enchantment as the interior of the wealthier Damascus houses. The outside is always mean and forbidding. You have sometimes to stoop under the rude, low gate; and the first court, surrounded only by servants’ rooms, has nothing of interest. But the second and third quadrangles become more and more spacious, and are always of variegated marble, containing a perpetually playing fountain, overhung by the orange, the citron, and the vine, whose fragrance floats dreamily on the moist air, lulling the senses to repose. The grand saloon I found to be always arranged pretty much the same. A lower part of the pavement near the door, is the place of deposit for slippers, shoes, and the pattens which Damascus women use so much in the winter, articles all of them never intended for ornament, and never fitted to the foot, but worn as loose as possible, and never within the sitting-room, but simply as a protection from out-door wet and soil. The lower portion of the room and its rug-strewn floor are of variegated marbles, then comes curiously carved woods, then painted stucco, decorated with mirrors rising to the distant gay-colored roof. The immense loftiness, the moist coolness, the gorgeous hues, the emblazoned texts from the Koran, the sweet murmur of the various fountains, the fragrance of the orange groves, succeed to the out-door dreariness like a dream of Haroun Al Raschid to the wearied pilgrim on desert sands. The divan, or wide sofa, on three sides of this hall, is far more agreeable in this enervating climate than any European furniture; only, in winter, as the ground underneath is permeated by leaky clay tubes bearing the waters of the Barrady, and there is no other heating apparatus save a brazer of charcoal, one is sometimes very chilly, and is tempted to exchange this tomblike dampness for a cozy corner near some friendly stove or familiar fire-place.

But the general impression which unintelligent strangers carries from Damascus is, that the people have what they want, and have gone wisely to work to realize their idea of earthly blessedness,--an indolent, sensual, dreamy one to you, but in their eyes no faint type of the Mussulman’s heaven.

F W Holland
CAMBRIDGE, MASS.

RELIGIOUS, MORAL, AND POLITICAL DUTIES.

What is morally wrong, cannot be made practically right. The laws of morality are taught in the Bible. They are unchangeable truths. No sophistry, no expediency, no compromise can set them aside.

If politics is the science of government, and if civil government is a divine institution, intended to protect the rights of all; if “an injury done to the meanest subject, is an injury done to the whole body;” and if “rulers must be just, ruling in the fear of God,” all legislation should be based on moral duty. Any enactments that have not this basis, are, in the Divine sight, null and void. If man is endowed by nature with inalienable rights, no legislation can rightfully wrest them from him. Any attempt to do it, is an infraction of the moral law. Our religious, moral, and political duties are identical and inseparable. It is the duty of all christian legislators so to act _now_, as they know all must act, when truth and righteousness shall have a universal prevalence on the earth.

Lindley Murray Moore.

WHY SLAVERY IS IN THE CONSTITUTION.

That the constitution of a country should guide its action is a _truism_ which none, perhaps, will be inclined to controvert. Indeed, so thoroughly is this sentiment inwrought into us, that we generally expect _practice_ will conform to the constitution. But does not this subject States or nations to misapprehension by others? South Carolina, for instance, abolishes the writ of _habeas corpus_ with regard to the colored people, and imprisons them, although citizens of the other States, when they enter her borders in any way. Now these are direct violations of the constitution of the United States, so direct, that they cannot be explained away. Nor do we think that South Carolina even attempts it. She openly says, that it is owing to the existence of slavery among them, that the _free_ colored man, coming into contact with the slaves, will taint them with notions of liberty which will make them discontented,--that therefore her own preservation, the first law of nature, requires her to do everything she can to keep the disturbing force out of her limits, even if she have to violate the constitution of the United States. This she asserts, too, when, at the formation of the constitution, she was one of the large slave-holding States,--when she had before her the example of every nation that had practised slavery, and when now her senators and representatives in Congress are sworn to support the constitution of the Union. Thus we see that it would be doing injustice to the constitution, were we to judge of it by the practice of South Carolina.

But the inquirer will not be satisfied with the South Carolina reason. He wants something more and better. He says, too, that these give good occasion to those exercising the powers of the government to confirm all law-abiding citizens in the belief that they are well protected by the constitution, and to let the world see how much the United States prize it. But supposing he were told that those who control the government feel, in this matter, with South Carolina,--that those who had the control of the government had no power to coerce South Carolina to perform her duty,--indeed, in a partizan view, that the person injured were _no_ party,--that, as a general thing, they could not even vote,--were unimportant, nay, insignificant. If those reasons will not satisfy him, he must be content with them, for it is not likely that he will get any other. We further see that injustice would be done by considering the _practice_ of a people as fairly representing their constitution.

A constitution,--the organic-law,--in truth, all other law is, in some degree, a restraint on men. It makes an umpire of right,--of reason,--which, if not the same in degree in all of us, is the same in nature. Yet it must be, to some extent, a restraint on the desires or selfish passions of men. In fact, it is only carrying out the rule of doing to others what they should do to us, and tends not only to preserve, but advance society. If no constitution or law agreeing with it existed, men would be left to the sway of their own passions--nearly always selfish--and they being many and very different in different persons, sometimes, indeed, altogether opposite, and of various intensity,--would, by their indulgence, tend to confusion, to the deterioration of society, and to its ultimate dissolution.

Now the people of the United States, without the least hesitation declare,--and they fully believe it--that we are the freest nation on earth. Other nations, doubtless, with equal sincerity say of themselves the same thing. In England where, as in other countries of the old world, there is a crowded population, raising to a high price everything eatable, the _operatives_, as they are called, find it difficult to sustain life. They work all the time they can, and, even after doing this, they sometimes perish for want of such food as a human being ought to eat. No one will say that affairs are well ordered here. Having no such state of things ourselves--for except in some of our large cities, no one starves to death--we think that to suffer one to die in this way is cruel and heartless. And we greatly upbraid them for it.

But here we have slavery,--a vicious usage which European nations, excepting one, have long since laid aside. This they have done not only because it was productive of innumerable visible evils, but because it greatly and injuriously affected the character of all concerned in it, and in this way the character of the whole community,--making one part of it proud and imperious,--another suppliant and servile. They upbraid us with it, as being more inconsistent with the high principles we profess, than any act tolerated among them is or can be with the principles they profess. Then whilst we wonder that with so much wealth as England unquestionably has, she should suffer her operatives to die for something to eat, she wonders that slavery--the worst thing known among men--should be permitted to raise its head, not only as high as the many good and exalted things we possess, but above them, making them, when necessary, give way to it and even contribute to its support. Indeed, it appears to them like Satan appearing in company with the sons of God, to accuse and try one of his children.

But all this is of no avail. It produces no satisfying results,--in fact nothing but mutual ill-will and irritation. It is no difficult thing to select from the _practices_ of many people such as are not what they ought to be,--still the theory, the foundation of the government may be opposed to them, but may be unable to put them down. They may exist in spite of it, and in entire opposition to its _main_ object. Indeed, it appears to be much like reasoning in a circle. We come to no end,--no conclusion. To come to any satisfactory end,--any useful conclusion,--we must take something permanent,--something believed by both to be unchangeably right and moral, and compare our governments with it. Whichever comes nearest to the standard agreed on by both, must of course be nearest right. But what shall this be? Now as it is utterly in vain for one to be happy unless he conform to the laws of his being, so it is in vain that governments are instituted unless they aim to secure the happiness and safety of the governed,--the people. The peculiar benefit or enrichment of those that administer the laws, has nothing to do with good government. Then it ought, by all means, to resemble the Divine government. We do not mean a _theocracy_ as it has been administered, the worst, perhaps, of all governments,--but it should be remarkable for its sacred regard to justice and right.

But it is objected, this deals with persons as individuals and not as members of the body politic, and that all Christ’s exhortations were of this kind. Well, be it so,--what of it? There is not the least danger, if one will acquit himself well in his various relations as an individual,--a MAN,--but what he will make a good citizen.

Taking this as our standard, and recurring for a moment to the assertion of our superior happiness as a people--an assertion sometimes regarded as the boastful grandiloquence of our people--is it not true that our government, _our constitution of government we mean_, more nearly resembles the Divine government than any other does, and _therefore_, that those under it _are_ more happy? Some, while they are inclined to admit the fact of our superior happiness, yet seem rather to attribute it to our great abundance of land than to the nature of the government. We do not wish, in any way, to deny or even to neutralize this statement about the abundance of our land, but still it is one of the _facts_ of the government,--the government was made with this in view,--it constitutes a subject for its action, and it makes of it a strong auxiliary. This, though undeniably a _great_ cause, is not, in our judgment, the _chief_ one. It is intellect,--mind united to such feelings and desires that most advance others to be like God in intelligence and worth,--that makes the chief cause. Where this _is_ not,--or is not called forth and put into activity, nothing to purpose can be done. Indeed, it is the most powerful agent for good anywhere to be found,--for it is behind all others, and sets all others to work.

We have among us here no form of religion, as they have in other countries, to which one must conform before he can have any share in the government,--no religion that is made part of the government, and which is, therefore, _national_. Religion--how we shall serve or worship a Being or beings superior to ourselves, and who are thought to influence our destiny forever--is, certainly, the highest concern of man. As no church or nation can answer for him at the judgment-seat, he ought to be left free on this matter. On this point he is free in this country, he is under no necessity to think in a particular channel. In his inquiries after truth, he has nothing to fear from the government about the changes through which his mind may pass, or the conclusions to which it maybe led; although he may draw on him the prejudice and hatred of the sects from whom he feels compelled to differ.[R] We may truly say, that in this country, however far we may go in imitating foreign forms, we have nothing higher than the preacher of the truth.

We have no monarch _born_ to rule over us, whether we will or not; nor are we obliged to support this costly leech according to _his_ dignity by money wrung from the labor of the country, nor a host of relatives according to _their_ dignity, as connected with the monarch.

Nor have we a class _born_ to be our legislators. We have no legislative castes, nor social castes, but we may truly say, that any native-born citizen of the United States may aspire to any position, be it governmental or social.

Nor have we fought so long--though it must be confessed we are ready pupils here--as most of the countries of the old world have; still we begin to make fighting almost a part of the government, and a part of the religion of the land. But all this does not answer the question that many have asked, and that our intelligence and exemption from bias in many things make more remarkable,--why did we suffer slavery to find a place in a constitution in which there are so many good things,--why did we make a garden of healthful fruits and enchanting flowers, and place this serpent in it?

The answer to this question may be easily given by one that well knows the condition of the country that soon followed on the treaty of 1783. Till we were governed by the present constitution we were governed by the Articles of Confederation. The United States, though nominally a nation, had no power to enforce any stipulation she might make. For instance,--if she should promise by a treaty to pay interest on the debt that we had contracted to secure our national independence, each State by its _own_ power and authority were to raise its quota of the whole amount. If a State failed to raise it, the _United States_ had no redress. It had no authority to coerce any State, no matter what was the cause of failure. This is given as only an instance, and did we not think it made our position very plain, others might be given in manifold abundance,--all tending to show the unfaithfulness of the States to the engagements of the United States, and the utter powerlessness of the latter to keep her word. It was owing to this that the _main_ object of the Convention was the more perfect union of the States, and that in this way there might be conferred on the United States the same plenary power to carry out her engagements that a State had to carry out hers.

The Convention did not meet to do away with slavery, but chiefly to form such a union as would obviate the difficulty already mentioned, and so keenly felt by some of the most earnest friends of the country. Although slavery was pretty well understood then, and seen to be opposed to all the principles of freedom asserted, yet as it had been embraced by so many, that if they should be united against the constitution its adoption would be endangered, it was thought best not to insist on its instant abolition. Men as yet had too much selfishness in them, and although reasonable beings, they have too much of the animal in them to see that, in the long run, honesty is the best policy. Many of the opponents of slavery, even from the slave States themselves, took this opportunity of showing the baseness and turpitude of the whole system,--its advocates from the far South defending it as well as they could. These advocates gave it as their opinion, that owing to the Declaration of 1776, one which had already done wonders at the North,--owing to the influence of the principles of liberty inserted into the constitution, and to the feeling of justice pervading all classes of persons, and to the progress of refinement and true civilization, slavery would ultimately disappear.[S]

At the time this opinion was expressed by the conventionists from the South, although we cultivated cotton to a small extent, it could not be regarded as a staple. Soon after making the constitution, it began to be important. It could be produced only at the South. As it grew in value, the notion of abolishing slavery began to wane, till now some of the leading men of that part of the country say it is not only a good thing, but an indispensable one to the highest perfection of the social system.

James G. Birney.

THE TWO ALTARS;

OR,

TWO PICTURES IN ONE.

BY MRS. HARRIET BEECHER STOWE.

I.--THE ALTAR OF LIBERTY, OR 1776.

The well-sweep of the old house on the hill was relieved, dark and clear, against the reddening sky, as the early winter sun was going down in the west. It was a brisk, clear, metallic evening; the long drifts of snow blushed crimson red on their tops, and lay in shades of purple and lilac in the hollows; and the old wintry wind brushed shrewdly along the plain, tingling people’s noses, blowing open their cloaks, puffing in the back of their necks, and showing other unmistakable indications that he was getting up steam for a real roystering night.

“Hurra! how it blows!” said little Dick Ward, from the top of the mossy wood-pile.

Now Dick had been sent to said wood-pile, in company with his little sister Grace, to pick up chips, which, every-body knows, was in the olden time considered a wholesome and gracious employment, and the peculiar duty of the rising generation. But said Dick, being a boy, had mounted the wood-pile, and erected there a flag-staff, on which he was busily tying a little red pocket-handkerchief, occasionally exhorting Gracie “to be sure and pick up fast.” “O, yes, I will,” said Grace; “but you see the chips have got ice on ’em, and make my hands so cold!”

“O! don’t stop to suck your thumbs!--who cares for ice? Pick away, I say, while I set up the flag of Liberty.”

So Grace picked away as fast as she could, nothing doubting but that her cold thumbs were in some mysterious sense an offering on the shrine of Liberty; while soon the red handkerchief, duly secured, fluttered and snapped in the brisk evening wind.

“Now you must hurra, Gracie, and throw up your bonnet,” said Dicky, as he descended from the pile.

“But won’t it lodge down in some place in the wood-pile?” suggested Gracie, thoughtfully.

“O, never fear; give it to me, and just holler now, Gracie, ‘Hurra for Liberty;’ and we’ll throw up your bonnet and my cap; and we’ll play, you know, that we were a whole army, and I’m General Washington.”

So Gracie gave up her little red hood, and Dick swung his cap, and up they both went into the air; and the children shouted, and the flag snapped and fluttered, and altogether they had a merry time of it. But then the wind--good-for-nothing, roguish fellow!--made an ungenerous plunge at poor Gracie’s little hood, and snipped it up in a twinkling, and whisked it off, off, off,--fluttering and bobbing up and down, quite across a wide, waste, snowy field, and finally lodged it on the top of a tall strutting rail, that was leaning very independently, quite another way from all the other rails of the fence.

“Now see, do see!” said Gracie; “there goes my bonnet! What will Aunt Hitty say?” and Gracie began to cry.

“Don’t you cry, Gracie; you offered it up to Liberty, you know,--it’s glorious to give up everything for Liberty.”

“O! but Aunt Hitty won’t think so.”

“Well, don’t cry, Gracie, you foolish girl! Do you think I can’t get it? Now, only play that that great rail was a fort, and your bonnet was a prisoner in it, and see how quick I’ll take the fort, and get it!” and Dick shouldered a stick, and started off.

* * * * *

“What upon ’arth keeps those children so long? I should think they were making chips!” said Aunt Mehetabel; “the fire’s just a-going out under the tea-kettle.”

By this time Gracie had lugged her heavy basket to the door, and was stamping the snow off her little feet, which were so numb that she needed to stamp, to be quite sure they were yet there. Aunt Mehetabel’s shrewd face was the first that greeted her, as the door opened.

“Gracie--what upon ’airth!--wipe your nose, child; your hands are frozen. Where alive is Dick, and what’s kept you out all this time,--and where’s your bonnet?”

Poor Gracie, stunned by this cataract of questions, neither wiped her nose nor gave any answer; but sidled up into the warm corner, where grandmamma was knitting, and began quietly rubbing and blowing her fingers, while the tears silently rolled down her cheeks, as the fire made their former ache intolerable.

“Poor little dear!” said grandmamma, taking her hands in hers; “Hitty shan’t scold you. Grandma knows you’ve been a good girl,--the wind blew poor Gracie’s bonnet away;” and grandmamma wiped both eyes and nose, and gave her, moreover, a stalk of dried fennel out of her pocket, whereat Gracie took heart once more.

“Mother always makes fools of Roxy’s children,” said Mehetabel, puffing zealously under the tea-kettle. “There’s a little maple sugar in that saucer up there, mother, if you will keep giving it to her,” she said, still vigorously puffing. “And now, Gracie,” she said, when, after a while, the fire seemed in tolerable order, “will you answer my question?--Where is Dick?”

“Gone over in the lot, to get my bonnet.”

“How came your bonnet off?” said Aunt Mehetabel. “I tied it on firm enough.”

“Dick wanted me to take it off for him, to throw up for Liberty,” said Grace.

“Throw up for fiddlestick! just one of Dick’s cut-ups, and you was silly enough to mind him!”

“Why, he put up a flag-staff on the wood-pile, and a flag to Liberty, you know, that papa’s fighting for,” said Grace, more confidently, as she saw her quiet, blue-eyed mother, who had silently walked into the room during the conversation.

Grace’s mother smiled, and said, encouragingly, “And what then?”

“Why, he wanted me to throw up my bonnet and he his cap, and shout for Liberty; and then the wind took it and carried it off, and he said I ought not to be sorry if I did lose it,--it was an offering to Liberty.”

“And so I did,” said Dick, who was standing as straight as a poplar behind the group; “and I heard it in one of father’s letters to mother, that we ought to offer up everything on the altar of Liberty! And so I made an altar of the wood-pile.”

“Good boy!” said his mother, “always remember everything your father writes. He has offered up everything on the altar of Liberty, true enough; and I hope you, son, will live to do the same.”

“Only, if I have the hoods and caps to make,” said Aunt Hitty, “I hope he won’t offer them up every week--that’s all!”

“O! well, Aunt Hitty, I’ve got the hood,--let me alone for that. It blew clear over into the Daddy Ward pasture-lot, and there stuck on the top of the great rail; and I played that the rail was a fort, and besieged it, and took it.”

“O! yes, you’re always up to taking forts, and anything else that nobody wants done. I’ll warrant, now, you left Gracie to pick up every blessed one of them chips!”

“Picking up chips is girl’s work,” said Dick; “and taking forts and defending the country is men’s work.”

“And pray, Mister Pomp, how long have you been a man?” said Aunt Hitty.

“If I a’nt a man, I soon shall be; my head is ’most up to my mother’s shoulder, and I can fire off a gun too. I tried, the other day, when I was up to the store. Mother, I wish you’d let me clean and load the old gun; so that, if the British should come!”

“Well, if you are so big and grand, just lift me out that table, sir,” said Aunt Hitty, “for its past supper-time.”

Dick sprung, and had the table out in a trice, with an abundant clatter, and put up the leaves with quite an air. His mother, with the silent and gliding motion characteristic of her, quietly took out the table-cloth and spread it, and began to set the cups and saucers in order, and to put on the plates and knives, while Aunt Hitty bustled about the tea.

“I’ll be glad when the war’s over, for one reason,” said she. “I’m pretty much tired of drinking sage-tea, for one, I know.”

“Well, Aunt Hitty, how you scolded that pedler, last week, that brought along that real tea.”

“To be sure I did. S’pose I’d be taking any of his old tea, bought of the British?--fling every tea-cup in his face, first!”

“Well, mother,” said Dick, “I never exactly understood what it was about the tea, and why the Boston folks threw it all overboard.”

“Because there was an unlawful tax laid upon it, that the government had no right to lay. It wasn’t much in itself; but it was a part of a whole system of oppressive meanness, designed to take away our rights, and make us slaves of a foreign power!”

“Slaves!” said Dicky, straightening himself proudly. “Father a slave!”

“But they would not be slaves! They saw clearly where it would all end, and they would not begin to submit to it in ever so little,” said the mother.

“I wouldn’t, if I was they,” said Dicky.

“Besides,” said his mother, drawing him towards her, “it wasn’t for themselves alone they did it. This is a great country, and it will be greater and greater: and it’s very important that it should have free and equal laws, because it will by and by be so great. This country, if it is a free one, will be a light of the world,--a city set on a hill, that cannot be hid; and all the oppressed and distressed from other countries shall come here to enjoy equal rights and freedom. This, dear boy, is why your father and uncles have gone to fight, and why they do stay and fight, though God knows what they suffer, and--” and the large blue eyes of the mother were full of tears; yet a strong, bright beam of pride and exultation shone through those tears.

“Well, well, Roxy, you can always talk, every-body knows,” said Aunt Hitty, who had been not the least attentive listener of this little patriotic harangue; “but, you see, the tea is getting cold, and yonder I see the sleigh is at the door, and John’s come,--so let’s set up our chairs for supper.”

The chairs were soon set up, when John, the eldest son, a lad of about fifteen, entered with a letter. There was one general exclamation, and stretching out of hands towards it. John threw it into his mother’s lap;--the tea-table was forgotten, and the tea-kettle sang unnoticed by the fire, as all hands piled themselves up by mother’s chair to hear the news. It was from Captain Ward, then in the American army, at Valley Forge. Mrs. Ward ran it over hastily, and then read it aloud. A few words we may extract: “There is still,” it said, “much suffering. I have given away every pair of stockings you sent me, reserving to myself only one; for I will not be one whit better off than the poorest soldier that fights for his country. Poor fellows! it makes my heart ache sometimes to go round among them, and see them with their worn clothes and torn shoes, and often bleeding feet, yet cheerful and hopeful, and every one willing to do his very best. Often the spirit of discouragement comes over them, particularly at night, when, weary, cold, and hungry, they turn into their comfortless huts, on the snowy ground. Then sometimes there is a thought of home, and warm fires, and some speak of giving up; but next morning out comes Washington’s general orders,--little short note, but it’s wonderful the good it does! and then they all resolve to hold on, come what may. There are commissioners going all through the country to pick up supplies. If they come to you, I need not tell you what to do. I know all that will be in your hearts.”

“There, children, see what your father suffers,” said the mother, “and what it costs these poor soldiers to gain our liberty.”

“Ephraim Scranton told me that the commissioners had come as far as the Three-mile Tavern, and that he rather ’spected they’d be along here to-night,” said John, as he was helping round the baked beans to the silent company at the tea-table.

“To-night?--Do tell, now!” said Aunt Hitty. “Then it’s time we were awake and stirring. Let’s see what can be got.”

“I’ll send my new over-coat, for one,” said John. “That old one an’t cut up yet, is it, Aunt Hitty?”

“No,” said Aunt Hitty; “I was laying out to cut it over, next Wednesday, when Desire Smith could be here to do the tailoring.”

“There’s the south room,” said Aunt Hitty, musing; “that bed has the two old Aunt Ward blankets on it, and the great blue quilt, and two comforters. Then mother’s and my room, two pair--four comforters--two quilts--the best chamber has got----”

“O! Aunt Hitty, send all that’s in the best chamber. If any company comes, we can make it up off from our beds!” said John. “I can send a blanket or two off from my bed, I know;--can’t but just turn over in it, so many clothes on, now.”

“Aunt Hitty, take a blanket off from our bed,” said Grace and Dicky, at once.

“Well, well, we’ll see,” said Aunt Hitty, bustling up.

Up rose grandmamma, with great earnestness, now, and going into the next room, and opening a large cedar-wood chest, returned, bearing in her arms two large snow-white blankets, which she deposited flat on the table, just as Aunt Hitty was whisking off the table-cloth.

“Mortal! mother, what are you going to do?” said Aunt Hitty.

“There,” she said, “I spun those, every thread of ’em, when my name was Mary Evans. Those were my wedding blankets, made of real nice wool, and worked with roses in all the corners. I’ve got _them_ to give!” and grandmamma stroked and smoothed the blankets, and patted them down, with great pride and tenderness. It was evident she was giving something that lay very near her heart; but she never faltered.

“La! mother, there’s no need of that,” said Aunt Hitty. “Use them on your own bed, and send the blankets off from that;--they are just as good for the soldiers.”

“No, I shan’t!” said the old lady, waxing warm; “’t an’t a bit too good for ’em. I’ll send the very best I’ve got, before they shall suffer. Send ’em the _best_!” and the old lady gestured oratorically!

They were interrupted by a rap at the door, and two men entered, and announced themselves as commissioned by Congress to search out supplies for the army. Now the plot thickens. Aunt Hitty flew in every direction,--through entry-passage, meal-room, milk-room, down cellar, up chamber,--her cap-border on end with patriotic zeal; and followed by John, Dick, and Gracie, who eagerly bore to the kitchen the supplies that she turned out, while Mrs. Ward busied herself in quietly sorting, bundling, and arranging in the best possible travelling order, the various contributions that were precipitately launched on the kitchen floor.

Aunt Hitty soon appeared in the kitchen with an armful of stockings, which, kneeling on the floor, she began counting and laying out.

“There,” she said, laying down a large bundle on some blankets, “that leaves just two pair apiece all round.”

“La!” said John, “what’s the use of saving two pair for me? I can do with one pair, as well as father.”

“Sure enough,” said his mother; “besides, I can knit you another pair in a day.”

“And I can do with one pair,” said Dicky.

“Yours will be too small,” young master, I guess, said one of the commissioners.

“No,” said Dicky; “I’ve got a pretty good foot of my own, and Aunt Hitty will always knit my stockings an inch too long, ’cause she says I grow so. See here,--these will do;” and the boy shook his, triumphantly.

“And mine, too,” said Gracie, nothing doubting, having been busy all the time in pulling off her little stockings.

“Here,” she said to the man who was packing the things into a wide-mouthed sack; “here’s mine,” and her large blue eyes looked earnestly through her tears.

Aunt Hitty flew at her.--“Good land! the child’s crazy! Don’t think the men could wear your stockings,--take ’em away!”