Chapter V (2)

It is a fact of the greatest importance, that King Cotton turns out to be a thorough citizen-king, and adapts himself very readily to changed events. The great Southern staple can be raised by small cultivators as easily as corn or potatoes; and difficulty begins only when sugar and rice are to be produced. Yet it will not be long before these also will come within reach of the freedmen, if they continue their present tendency towards joint-stock operations. In the colored regiments of South Carolina there are organizations owning plantations, saw-mills, town-lots, and a grocery or two: they even meditate a steamboat. A few of these associations no doubt will go to pieces, through fraud or inexperience. Indeed, I knew of one which was nearly broken asunder by the president's taking a fancy to send in his resignation: no other member knew the meaning of that hard word, and they were disposed to think it a declaration of hostilities from the presiding officer. But even if such associations all fail, for the present, the training which they give will be no failure; and when we consider that there are already individuals among the freedmen who have by profitable ventures laid up twenty or thirty thousand dollars within three years, it seems no extravagant ambition for a joint-stock company to aim at a rice-mill.

The Sea Islands of South Carolina and Georgia, where, from the very beginning, under the limited authority of General Saxton, the most favorable results of emancipation have been attained, are now to be the scene of a larger experiment, still under the same wise care. The objections urged by General Butler, with his usual acuteness, against some details of the project of General Sherman, must not blind us to its real importance. Its implied exclusions can easily be modified; but the rights which it vests in the freedmen are a substantial fact, which, when once established, it will require a revolution to overthrow. The locality fixed for the experiment is singularly favorable. There is no region of the country where a staple crop can be grown so profitably by small landholders. There is no agricultural region so defensible, in a military aspect. So difficult is the navigation of the muddy tide-streams which endlessly intersect these islands,--so narrow are the connecting causeways,--so completely is every plantation surrounded and subdivided by hedges, ditches, and earthworks, long since made for agricultural purposes, and now most available for defence,--that nothing this side of the famous military region of La Vendee (which this district much resembles) can be more easily held by peasant proprietors.

The mere accidents of the war have often led to the experiment of leaving small bodies of colored settlers, in such favorable localities, to support and defend themselves. This was successfully done, for instance, on Barnwell Island, a tract two or three miles square, which lies between Port Royal Island and the main, in the direction of Pocotaligo, and is the site of the Rhett Plantation, described in Mr. W. H. Russell's letters. This region was entirely beyond our picket lines, and was separated from them by a navigable stream, while from the Rebel lines it was divided only by a narrow creek that would have been fordable at low water, but for the depth of mud beneath and around it. On this island a colony of a hundred or thereabouts dwelt, in peace, with no resident white man, and only an occasional visit from their superintendent. There were some twenty able-bodied settlers who did picket duty every night, by a system of their own, and for many months there was no alarm whatever,--the people raising their cotton and supporting themselves. This went on, until, by a fatal error of judgment, the men were all conscripted into the army. This was soon discovered by the Rebels, who presently began to make raids upon the island, so that ultimately the whole population had to be withdrawn.

Extend such settlements indefinitely, and we have the system adopted by General Sherman. It is a system which, like every other practicable method, must depend on military authority at last, and for which the army should therefore be directly responsible. The main argument for intrusting the care of the freedmen to a bureau of the War Department is, that it must come to be controlled by that Department, at any rate, and that it is best to have the responsibility rest where the power lies. On conquered territory there can be but one authority, and no conceivable ingenuity can construct any other system. If authority is apparently divided, then either the military commander does not understand his business, or he is hampered by impracticable orders and should ask to be relieved. This is what has paralyzed the action of every military governor, a title which implies a perfectly anomalous function, certain to lead to trouble. Almost all the great good effected by General Saxton has been achieved in spite of that function, not by means of it; and it was not until he was placed in military command of the post of Beaufort that he was able, even in that limited region, to establish any satisfactory authority. All else that he did was by sufferance, and often he could not even obtain sufferance.

While the war lasts, martial law must last. After martial law ceases, civil institutions, whatever they may then be, must resume control. It is therefore essential that all the rights of the freedmen should be put upon a sure basis during the contest; but, whatever method be adopted, the real control must inevitably rest with the War Department. It cannot be transferred to civilians; nor is there reason to suppose it desirable for the freedmen that it should. Whatever be the disorder resulting from military command, it has the advantage of being more definite and intelligible than civil mismanagement; there is always some one who can be held responsible, and the offender is far more easily brought to account. On this point I speak from personal experience. In South Carolina I have seen outrages persistently practised among the freedmen by civilians, for which a military officer could have been cashiered in a month. I have oftener been appealed to for redress against civilians than against officers or soldiers. I have been compelled to post sentinels to keep superintendents away from their own plantations, to prevent disturbance. I have been a member of a military commission which sentenced to the pillory an eminent Sunday-school teacher who had been convicted of the unlawful sale of whiskey,--and this in a community into which the majority of the civilians had come with professedly benevolent intent.

The truth is, that abuses, acts of oppression towards the freedmen, do not proceed from mere antecedent prejudice in the army or anywhere else. They proceed from the temptations of power, and from that impatience which one is apt to restrain among his equals and to indulge among his inferiors. The irritability of an Abolitionist may lead him to outrages as great as those which spring from the selfishness of a mere soldier. It is becoming almost proverbial, in colored regiments, that radical anti-slavery men make the best and the worst officers: the best, because of their higher motives and more elevated standard; the worst, because they are often ungoverned, insubordinate, impatient, and will sometimes venture on high-handed acts, under the fervor of their zeal, such as a mere soldier would not venture to commit. Yet in an army such aberrations, like all others, yield to discipline. But on a solitary plantation the temptations and immunities of the slave-driver recur; and I have seen men yield to these, who had safely passed the ordeal of persecution and mobs at home.

It was thus, perhaps, that General Sherman and his advisers felt justified in adopting the theory of absolute separation, on the Sea Islands,--seeing that the companionship of Southern white men would be an evil, and that of Northern men by no means an unmixed good. Yet it seems altogether likely that the system is so far wrong, and will be modified. Separation is better than "preparation," and is a good antidote to it. It is better to assume the freedmen too self-reliant than too feeble,--better to exclude white men than to give them the monopoly of power. Nevertheless, the principle of exclusion is wrong, though it is happily a wrong not fundamental to the system, and hence easily corrected. If the people of any village desire to introduce a white teacher, the prohibition would become an obvious outrage, which hardly any administration would risk the odium of maintaining. The injury, in a business point of view, done by separation would perhaps strike deeper, and be harder to correct. Here, for instance, is the flourishing negro village of Mitchellville, just outside of the fortifications of Hilton Head. All that is produced in the numerous garden-patches of the suburb is to be sold in the town; all the clothing that is to be worn in the suburb must be obtained in exchange for the garden-products. Yet, if newspaper correspondents tell truth, the temporary commander of that post has taken it on himself to forbid white men from trading in Mitchellville, or black men at Hilton Head. How, then, is business to be transacted? Are the inhabitants of the town to be allowed to come to the sally-port of the fortifications, hand out a yard of ribbon and receive two eggs in return? If the entire exchanges are to be intrusted to a few privileged favorites, black or white, then another source of fraud is added to those which lately, in connection with the recruiting bounties, have been brought to bear upon the freedmen of that Department, and, if the truth be told, under the same auspices from which this order proceeds. Be this as it may, it seems a pity that these poor people, who are just learning what competition means, and will walk five miles farther to a shop where dry goods are retailed a little cheaper, should be checked and hampered in their little commerce by an attempt to abolish all the laws of political economy in their favor.

If the freedmen were a race like the Indians, wasting away by unseen laws through the mere contact of the white man, the case would be very different. Or if they were a timid and dependent race, needing to be thrust roughly from the nest, like young birds, and made self-dependent, the difference would be greater still. But it is not so. The negro race fits into the white race, and thrives by its side; and the farther South, the greater the thriving. The emancipated slave is also self-relying, and, if fair play be once given, can hold his own against his former master, whether in trade or in war. He is improvident while in slavery, as is the Irishman in Ireland, because he has no opportunity to be anything else. Shift the position, and the man changes with it,--becoming, whether Irishman or negro, a shrewd economist, and rather formidable at a bargain. Almost every freedman is cheated by a white man once after his emancipation, and many twice; but when it comes to the third bargain, it is observed that mere Anglo-Saxon blood is not sufficient to secure a victory.

It is claimed that this principle of separation was adopted after consultation with the leading colored men of Savannah, and that the only dissenter was the Rev. James Lynch, a Northern colored man. But it also turns out that Mr. Lynch was the only man among them who had ever seen the experiment tried of the mingling of the races in a condition of liberty. He is a man of marked energy and ability, and has been for two years one of the most useful missionaries in the neighborhood of Port Royal. Some weight is, no doubt, to be attached to the opinions of those who had known white men only as masters; but we should not wholly ignore the judgment of the only delegate who had met them on equal terms. In restoring men from the trance of slavery, the instincts of the patient, though doubtless an important fact, are not the only point to be considered. It may be true, as Hippocrates said, that the second-best remedy will succeed better than the best, if the patient likes it best. But it is not safe to forget that those who have never known their brother-men except in the light of oppressors may have some crude notions on political economy which a milder experience might change. At any rate, the more exclusive features of General Sherman's project may be changed by a stroke of the pen; and so far as it tends to secure the freedmen in permanent possession of the Sea Islands, it is almost an unmingled good.

The truth is, that, in these changing days, none of these specific "systems" are very important. "Separation" is interesting chiefly because it is the last project reported; "preparation," because it was the last but one. What is needed is not so much a "system" as the settled resolution to do daily justice. Let any military commander merely determine to treat the emancipated black population precisely as he would treat a white population under the same circumstances,--to encourage industry, schools, savings-banks, and all the rest, but not interfere with any of them too much,--and he will have General Saxton's method and his success. The question what to do with the soil is far more embarrassing than what to do with the freedmen; and happily the soil also can be let alone, and the freedmen will take care of that and of themselves too. We must say to the cotton lords, as Horne Tooke said to Lord Somebody in England,--"If, as you claim, power should follow property, then we will take from you the property, and the power shall follow." And fortunately for us, the same logic of events points to the political enfranchisement of the black loyalists, as the only way to prevent Congress from being replenished with plotting and disloyal men. Fair play to them is thus fair play to all of us; and, like Tony Lumpkin, in Goldsmith's comedy, if we are indifferent as to disappointing those who depend upon us, we may at least be trusted not to disappoint ourselves.

The lingering caste-institutions in the Free States,--as the exclusive street-cars of Philadelphia, the separate schools of New York, the special gallery reserved for colored people in Boston theatres,--must inevitably pass away with the institution which they merely reflect. The perfect acquiescence with which abolition of these things is regarded, so soon as it takes effect, shows how little they are really sustained by public opinion. These are local matters, mere corollaries, and will settle themselves. They are not upheld by any conviction, and scarcely even by prejudice, but by an impression in each citizen's mind that there is some other citizen who is not prepared for the change. When it comes to the point, it is found that everybody is perfectly prepared, and that the objections were merely traditional. Who has ever heard of so much as a petition to restore any of the unjust distinctions which have thus been successively outgrown?

But in our vast national dealings with the freedmen, we still drift from experiment to experiment, and adopt no settled purpose. Did this proceed from the difficulty of wise solution, in so vast a problem, one could blame it the less. But thus far the greatest want has been, not of wisdom, but of fidelity,--not of constructive statesmanship, but rather of pains to discern and of honesty to observe the humbler path of daily justice. When we consider that the order which laid the basis for the whole colored army--the "Instructions" of the Secretary of War to Brigadier-General Saxton, dated August 25, 1862--was so carelessly regarded by the War Department that it was not even placed on file, but a copy had to be supplied, the year following, by the officer to whom it was issued, it is obvious in what a hap-hazard way we have stumbled, into the most momentous acts. A government that still repudiates a duty so simple as the payment of arrears due under its own written pledges to the South Carolina soldiers can hardly shelter itself behind the plea of any complicated difficulties in its problem. Let us hope that the freedmen, on their part, will be led by some guidance better than our example: that they will not neglect their duties as their rights have been neglected, and not wrong others as they have been wronged.

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.

_Autobiography, Correspondence, etc., of Lyman Beecher, D. D._
Edited by CHARLES BEECHER. With Illustrations. In Two Volumes.
New York. Harper & Brothers.

Reading this life of Dr. Beecher is like walking over an ancient battle-field, silent and grass-grown, but ridged with graves, and showing still by its conformation the disposition of the troops which once struggled there in deadly contest,--and while we linger, lo! the graves are graves no more. The dry bones come together,--sinew and flesh form upon them,--the skin covers them about,--the breath enters into them,--they live and stand upon their feet, an exceeding great and mighty army. Drums beat, swords flash, and the war of the Titans rages again around us.

The life of Dr. Beecher is closely inwoven with the ecclesiastical history of New England. Ecclesiastical, like civil history, is chiefly a military record; and through both these volumes a sound of battle is in the land, and of great destruction. We who have fallen on comparatively quiet days can hardly conceive the intensity and violence of the excitement that glowed at our theological centres, and flamed out even to their circumferences, when the great Unitarian controversy was at its height,--when Park-Street Church alone of the Boston churches stood firm in the ancient faith, and her site was popularly christened "Hell-Fire Corner,"--when, later, the Hanover-Street Church was known as "Beecher's Stone Jug" and the firemen refused to play upon the flames that were destroying it. There were giants on the earth in those days, and they wrestled in giant fashion.

All this conflict Dr. Beecher saw, and a large part of it he was. In Connecticut he had drawn his sword against intemperance, "Toleration," and other forms of what he considered evil, and had been recognized as a mighty man of valor in his generation; but it was in this Unitarian controversy that he leaped to the battlements of Zion, sounded the alarm through the land, and took his place henceforth as leader of the hosts of the elect. "I had watched the whole progress," he says, "and read with eagerness everything that came out on the subject. My mind had been heating, heating, heating. Now I had a chance to strike." And strike he did, blows rapid and vigorous, whose echoes ring even through these silent pages. It was to him a real warfare. His speech ran naturally to military phrase. He saw the foe coming in like a flood. "The enemy, driven from the field by the immortal Edwards, have returned to the charge, and now the battle is to be fought over again." "The time has at length fully come to take hold of the Unitarian controversy by the horns." "The enemies ... are collecting their energies and meditating a comprehensive system of attack, which demands on our part a corresponding concert of action." "Let the stand taken be had in universal and everlasting remembrance, and we shall soon get the enemy out of the camp." "Wake up, ministers, form conspiracies against error, and scatter firebrands in the enemy's camp." "A schism in our ranks, with the enemy before and behind us, would indeed be confusion in the camp." "It is the moment to charge as Wellington did at Waterloo." "Will Walker and his friends feel as if my gun was loaded deep enough for the first shot, and will the Orthodox think I have done so far sufficient execution?... As the game is out of sight, I must depend on those who are near to tell me what are the effects of the first fire." "My sermons on Depravity ... are point-blank shot."

Nor was the fight between Unitarian and Orthodox alone. Even within the ranks of the faithful dissensions arose, and many a time and oft had Dr. Beecher to defend himself against the charges, the insinuations, and the suspicions of his brethren. To the eyes of the more cautious or the more inert his adventurous feet seemed ever approaching the verge of heresy. Just where original sin ceases to be original and becomes acquired,--just where innate ill-desert meets voluntary transgression,--just where moral government raises the standard of rebellion against Absolutism,--just where New Haven theology branches off from ultra Orthodoxy on the debatable ground, the border-land of metaphysics and religion, Dr. Beecher and his brethren were engaged in perpetual skirmishing.

It is not our province to decide or even to discuss the points at issue. Uninitiated laymen may perhaps be pardoned for hearing in all this din of battle but the echo of the Schoolmen's guns. Whether the two-year-old baby who dashes his bread-and-butter on the floor, in wrath at the lack of marmalade, does it because of a prevailing effectual tendency in his nature, or in consequence of his federal alliance with Adam, or from a previous surfeit of plum-cake, is a question which seems to bear a general family likeness to the inquiry, whether there is such a thing as generic bread-and-butter, or only such specific slices as arouse infant ire and nourish infant tissue. But around both classes of questions strife has waxed hot. Both have called out the utmost strength of the ablest minds, and both, however finespun they may seem to the uninstructed eye, have contributed in no small measure to the mental and moral health of the world. But while we would not make so great a mistake as to look with a supercilious smile either upon the conflict between Nominalism and Realism or on that between the Old and the New School theology, (notwithstanding we might find countenance in Dr. Pond of Bangor, who writes to Dr. Beecher, "In Maine we do not sympathize very deeply in your Presbyterian squabbles, except to look on and laugh at you all!") it may be permitted us as laymen to confess a greater interest in the phenomena than in the event of the struggle. We leave it, therefore, to our ecclesiastical contemporaries to descend into the arena and fight their battles o'er again, content ourselves to stand without and give thanks for the Divine voice that rises above the clash of contending creeds, saying alike to wise and foolish, "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."

Spite of all the truculence of his language, and through all his strenuous thrust and parry, Dr. Beecher's sincerity, integrity, and piety shine forth unclouded. Looking at this memorial in one aspect, he seems to have assumed a charge which Mr. Lincoln has professed himself unable to undertake, namely, to "run the churches." He evidently believed that the Lord had committed to the clergy, of whom he was chief, the building up of a great ecclesiastical edifice, whose foundation should be laid in New England, but whose wings should presently cover the whole land. Individual churches were the pillars of this edifice. Now in Boston, now in New Haven, now at Cincinnati, he watched its progress, noting a fault, praising an excellence, repairing mistakes, strengthening weaknesses. It was the business and the delight of his life. He had his agents throughout the country. The churches might be many, but the cause was one. Ever watchful, ever active, he spoke of his measures and his plans in just such terse, homely phrase as any house-carpenter would use. Doubtless the fragile reverence of many a clerical cumberer of the ground was shocked by his familiar use of their sacred edge-tools. One can imagine the thrill of horror with which the Reverend Cream Cheese, of the Church of the Holy (Self-) Assumption, would hear the assertion, that "it was as finely organized a church as ever trod shoe-leather." Our elegant Unitarian friends have probably quite forgotten, and will hardly thank us for reminding them, that there ever was a time when they "put mouth to ear, and hand to pocket, and said, _St-boy!_" Our decorous Calvinistic D.D.s would scarcely recognize their own dogmas at the inquiry-meeting, where "language of simplicity came along, and they'd see me talking 'way down in language fit for children.... And then the language of free agency and ability came along ... and they'd stick up their ears.... But next minute came along the plea of morality and self-dependence, and I took them by the nape of the neck and twisted their head off." There must have been great inertness in New England at the time of his first visit to Boston, when "nobody seemed to have an idea that there was anything but what God had locked up and frozen from all eternity. The bottom of accountability had fallen out. My first business was to put it in again." The coldness and indifference of the Church, which ministers usually employ the vivid language of the Bible regarding the ways of Zion to portray, he described in the equally vivid, but less dignified New England vernacular. "What did I do at Litchfield but to 'boost'? They all lay on me, and moved very little, except as myself and God moved them. I spent sixteen of the best years of my life at a dead lift in boosting." And we greatly fear that the reverend seigniors in Synod and Presbytery, notwithstanding their firm faith in Total Depravity, will be sadly scandalized at hearing it announced, "That was a scampy concern, that Old School General Assembly, and is still."

But he would make a great mistake who should infer, that, in thus busily and energetically building up the temple, Dr. Beecher forgot the glory of the Lord which was to dwell in it. He treated it, indeed, as a business matter, but it was the business of immortal souls and of the Most High God. No merely professional attachment bound him to it; there was no contemplating it from a public and a private point of view; but his whole inner and outer life was enlisted. Not only the religious public, but, what is even more rare, his own family, were vitalized with his spirit and drawn into his train. The doctrines that he preached from the pulpit had been discussed over the woodpile in the cellar. His public teachings had first been household words. The Epistles, death, a preexistent state, were talked over by the fireside. Theology took precedence even of the baby in the family letters. One breath announces that he could not find any trout at Guilford, and the next that he has preached his sermon on Depravity. Catharine writes, that the house needs paper and paint very much, father's afternoon sermon perfectly electrified her, and his last article will make all smoke again. Harriet records, with great inward exultation, that, on their Western journey, father preached, and gave them the Taylorite heresy on Sin and Decrees to the highest notch, and what was amusing, he established it from the "Confession of Faith," and so it went high and dry above all objections, and delighted his audience, who had never heard it christened heresy. He sets forth to attend the Synod, accompanied by his son Henry, with one rein in the right hand, and one in the left, and an apple in each, biting them alternately, and alternately telling Tom how to get the harness mended, and showing Henry the true doctrine of Original Sin. His fatherly heart yearned over his children; with voice and pen and a constant watchful tenderness, he knew no rest till the whole eleven had adopted the faith for which he so earnestly contended. The genius of Napoleon elicited almost a personal affection, and he read every memoir from St. Helena with the earnest desire of shaping out of those last conversations some hope for his future. He mourned for Byron as for a friend, lamenting sorely that wasted life, and was sure, that, if Byron "could only have talked with Taylor and me, it might have got him out of his troubles." Indeed, he evidently considered "Taylor and me," not to say me and Taylor, the two pillars of Orthodoxy,--in no wise from vanity, but in the simplicity of truth. He spoke of his own feats with an openness that could proceed only from a guileless heart. The work of the Lord was the one thing that absorbed him, to the oblivion of all lesser interests. He was as absolutely free from vanity on the one side as from envy on the other. Lyman Beecher as Lyman Beecher had no existence. Lyman Beecher as God's servant was the verity. He rejoiced in the prosperity of the sacred cause: if it was Beecher's hand that furthered it, he exulted; if another than Beecher's, it was all the same. There was no room in his mind for any petty personal jealousy. He stood in nobody's way. He enjoyed every man's success. So the building rose, it was of small moment who wielded the hammer. Ever on the watch for indications of the mind and will of God, it was from zeal, not ambition, that he waited for no precedence, but pushed through the opened door, opened it never so narrowly. In doubt as to what is the true meaning of some "providence," he advises "to take hold of the end of the rope that is put into your hand, and pull it till we see what is on the other end."

Yet, with all his electric enthusiasm, he was wise in his generation and beyond his generation, and in some respects beyond our own. He watched for souls as one that must give account. He adapted means to ends. He was careful not by fierce opposition to push doubt into error. When a drunkard died, he remembered that "his mother was an habitual drinker, and he was nursed on milk-punch, and the thirst was in his constitution"; so he hoped "that God saw it was a constitutional infirmity, like any other disease." He reduced the dogma of Total Depravity to the simple proposition, "that men by nature do not love God supremely, and their neighbor as themselves." He stoutly resisted the attempt to overawe belief, either his own or another's. He refused to expend his strength in contending with the friends of Christ, when there was so much to be done against his foes. Yet he was as far as possible from that narrow sectarianism, which sees no evil in its own ranks and no good in those of its adversaries. He denounced the faults of the Orthodox as heartily as those of the Unitarians. Standing in the forefront of Calvinism, he did not hesitate to say, "It is my deliberate opinion that the false philosophy which has been employed for the exposition of the Calvinistic system has done more to obstruct the march of Christianity, and to paralyze the saving power of the Gospel, and to raise up and organize around the Church the unnumbered multitude to behold and wonder and despise and perish, than all other causes beside.... Who of us are to suffer the loss of the most wood and hay by the process [of purging out this false philosophy] I cannot tell; but all mine is at the Lord's service at any time; and if all which is in New England should be brought out and laid in one pile, I think it would make a great bonfire."

Unfortunately, there was something worse in the Church than false philosophy, unless this book very grievously falsifies facts. Her bitterest foe would hardly dare charge upon Zion such iniquity as the friendly unbosoming in these pages reveals. Wily intrigue, reckless perversion of language, rule or ruin, such things as we regret to see even in a political caucus, are to be found in abundance in the counsels of men who profess to be working only for the glory of God and the good of souls. Insinuations of craft and cowardice are set on foot, where direct charges fail for want of evidence. Rumor is made to do the work which reason cannot accomplish. Private letters are surreptitiously published, the publication defended as done with the permission of the writer, and testimony to the contrary refused a hearing. Extracts are taken out of their connection and made to carry a different meaning from that which they originally bore. What cannot be put down by evidence is to be put down by odium. There is a "cool and deliberate determination on the part of one half the Presbyterian Church to inflict upon the other half all the injury possible." Dr. Beecher's son, himself a prominent clergyman, is forced to confess, that, "for a combination of meanness and guilt and demoralising power in equal degrees of intensity, I have never known anything to exceed the conspiracy in New England and in the Presbyterian Church to crush by open falsehood and secret whisperings my father and others, whom they have in vain tried to silence by argument or to condemn in the courts of the Church." And yet, as Dr. Beecher stands forth in this biography, in native honor clad, so, undoubtedly, does Brother Nettleton stand forth in his biography, and Brother Woods in his, and Brother Wilson in his, and all the brethren in theirs,--all honorable men. We venture to say that not one of these reverend traducers and mischief-makers was "dealt with" by his church for his evil-doing. We make no doubt he went through life without loss of prestige or diminution of sanctity, and was bewailed at his death by the sons of the prophets in tenderest phrase, "My father! my father! the chariot of Israel, and the horsemen thereof."

We do not attribute these shameful proceedings to Orthodoxy, still less to Christianity. "Perhaps it is a fact of our fallen nature, as Dr. Beecher asserted, that "Adam and grace will do twice as much as grace alone." But surely all these things happened unto them for ensamples, and they are written for our admonition. Seeing how unlovely is the spectacle of bickering and bitterness, let Christians of every name look well to their steps, saying often one to another, and especially repeating in concert, at the opening of every council, conference, synod, and assembly,--

"Let dogs delight to bark and bite,
For God hath made them so;
Let bears and lions growl and fight,
For 't is their nature, too.

"But bretheren, we will never let
Our angry passions rise:
Our little hands were never made
To tear each other's eyes."

This biography, as the title-page asserts, is edited rather than written. By familiar talk and private letters, the subject is made, as far as possible, to tell his own story. What remains is supplied by the pens of different members of the family and of old friends. The result is a composite, the connections of whose parts we do not always readily discern. But what the book lacks in coherence is more than made up in accuracy and vividness. We obtain, by glimpses of the man, a far more exact knowledge of his character and work than we should by ever so steady a contemplation of some other man's symmetrical rendering of his life. We feel the beating of his great, fiery heart. We delight in his large, loving nature. We partake in his honest indignation. We smile, sometimes not without tears, at his childlike simplicity. We sit around the household hearth, join in the theological disputation, and share the naive satisfaction of the whole Beecher family with themselves and each other. We see how it was that the father set them all a-spinning each in his own groove, but all bearing the unmistakable Beecher stamp. We feel his irresistible energy, his burning zeal, his magnetic force yet thrilling through the land and arousing every sluggish power to come to the help of the Lord-against the mighty. For such a life there is indeed no death.

_Engineer and Artillery Operations against the Defences of
Charleston Harbor in 1863._ Comprising the Descent upon Morris
Island, the Demolition of Fort Sumter, the Reduction of Forts
Wagner and Gregg. With Observations on Heavy Ordnance,
Fortifications, etc. By L. A. GILLMORE, Major of Engineers,
Major-General of Volunteers, and Commanding General of the Land
Forces engaged. Published by Authority. New York: D. Van
Nostrand.

Just after Major-General Hunter was removed--or, as the delicate military phrase went, "temporarily relieved"--from the command of the Department of the South, there was a report current in those parts of a conversation, perhaps imaginary, between President Lincoln and the relieved General, on his arrival at Washington. The gossip ran, that on General Hunter's inquiring the cause of his removal, the good-natured President could only say that "Horace Greeley said he had found a man who could _do the job_." The job was the taking of Charleston, and the "coming man" was Brigadier-General (now Major-General) Gillmore. The so-called "siege of Charleston," after being the nine-days'-wonder of two continents, dwindled to a mere daily item in the dingy newspapers of that defiant city,--an item contemptuously sandwiched between the meteorological record and the deaths and marriages. The "coming man" came and went, being in his turn "temporarily relieved," and consigned to that obscurity which is the Nemesis of major-generals. He is more fortunate, however, than some of his compeers, in experiencing almost at once the double resurrection of autobiography and reappointment. Whether his new career be more or less successful than the old one, the autobiography is at least worth printing, so far as it goes. Had an instalment of it appeared when the siege of Charleston was at its height, it would have been translated into a dozen European languages, and would have been read more eagerly in London and Paris than even in Washington. Even now it will be read with interest, and with respect to rifled ordnance will be a permanent authority.

The total impression left behind by General Gillmore, in his former career in the Department of the South, was that of an unwearied worker and an admirable engineer officer. Military gifts are apt to be specific, and a specialist seldom gains reputation in the end by being raised to those elevated posts which require a combination of faculties. If the object of General Gillmore's original appointment was to silence Fort Sumter and to throw shell into Charleston, he was undoubtedly the man who could "do the job." If the aim was to take Charleston with a small military force, or even a large one, the wisdom of the choice was less clear. If the intent was to govern an important Department, without reference to further conquests,--to regulate trade, organize industry, free the slaves, educate the freedmen,--then the selection was still more doubtful. For this sphere of action, which had seemed so important to Mitchell and to Hunter, was foreign to Gillmore's whole habits and temperament, and he never could galvanize himself into caring for it. His strong point, after all, was in dealing with metal rather than with men, white or black. And as (since the disaster at Olustee) he can hardly be charged with any squeamish unwillingness to throw upon others the chief responsibility of any seeming failures of his own, it is perhaps fortunate that in this book he is able to keep chiefly upon the ground where he is strongest.

Yet, after all, the work is historical as well as scientific. And there is in it such a mingling of great questions of philanthropy with mere questions of grooving, and black soldiers jostle so inextricably with black guns, that the common reader and the mere student of human nature will find an interest in the book, as well as that intelligent lady of our acquaintance, who, having heard of the brilliant ornithology of the tropics, was eager to read about the hundred-pound "Parrotts" of South Carolina.

As to the guns, the contributions of this superbly illustrated volume are of the very greatest value. Nothing in print equals it, except Mr. Holley's recent great treatise, some of whose tables are here also employed by permission. Here we find the most authentic statements, both as to the work done by the large rifled guns, and as to that trick of bursting which is their gravest weakness. But for this, the heavy ordnance of Parrott would be a magnificent success. And when we consider that six two-hundred pounders and seventeen one-hundred pounders were burst during the siege of Charleston, as recorded in this volume,--that five one-hundred pounders are said to have been burst in a single week on Morris Island at a later period, and that Admiral Porter reports six similar instances during the first attack on Fort Fisher,--it was certainly worth while in the publisher of this work, with his usual liberality, to devote a long series of admirable plates, prepared under the direction of Captain Mordecai, to the details of these dangerous fractures.

It is generally admitted that the smaller "Parrott" guns, including the thirty pounders, approach very near perfection. The large calibres have precisely the same merits, as respects range, accuracy, and simplicity of construction and manipulation. This their work against Fort Sumter shows. But the deficiency of endurance belongs to the large guns alone; since the smaller, after an immense amount of service, have shown no sort of weakness. Yet, if the principle be correct, on which the latter are strengthened, there seems no reason why the same degree of endurance may not yet be secured for the larger. It is simply a mechanical problem, whose solution cannot be far off.

The guns have burst both longitudinally and laterally, and in quite a variety of position and service. General Turner's suggestion, that an important secondary cause of bursting is the presence of sand within the bore, among the ever-blowing sand-hills of the Sea Islands, seems justified by the fact that in the naval service the accidents have been far less frequent,--a thing in all respects fortunate, by the way, as such explosions on board ship involve far greater sacrifice of life than on land. Another secondary cause is the premature explosion of shell within the bore, a defect which should be also remediable. Indeed, the "Parrott" shell were at first notoriously defective, often bursting too soon or not at all, and thus losing much of their usefulness; though this defect has now been, in a great degree, remedied. The discussion of the whole subject in this book seems reasonable and unprejudiced, and a letter from the maker of the guns, at the end, gives with equal candor his side of the question.

General Gillmore's narrative of his military operations is exceedingly interesting, and generally clear and simple. The descent upon Morris Island from Folly Island was undoubtedly one of the most skilful achievements of the war. Under the superintendence of Brigadier-General Vogdes, forty-seven pieces of artillery, with two hundred rounds of ammunition for each gun, and provided with suitable parapets, splinter-proof shelters, and magazines, were placed in position, by night, within speaking distance of the enemy's pickets, and within view of their observatories. And yet all this immense piece of work was done with such profound secrecy, that, when the first shot from these batteries fell among the enemy, it astounded them as if it had come from the planet Jupiter. At the time, this brilliant success was merged in the greater prospective brilliancy of the expected results. Now that the results have failed to follow, we can perhaps do more justice to the remarkable skill displayed in the preliminary movements.

So far as this report is concerned, General Gillmore shows no disposition to do injustice to other officers. In reprinting the daily correspondence with Admiral Dahlgren it might have been better to omit or explain some hasty expressions of censure,--as where a young naval lieutenant is charged (on page 333) with defeating an important measure by acting without orders, though the fact was, that the officer was not under General Gillmore's orders at all, and simply followed the instructions of his immediate commander. But in dealing with officers of higher rank he is more discreet, and his implied criticisms on Admiral Dahlgren are not so severe as might have been expected. They are not nearly so sharp as those which were constantly heard, during the siege, from the officers of the navy; and the Admiral's telegraphic note on page 327, "My chief pilot informs me a gale is coming on, and I am coming into the creek," was the source of very unpardonable levity on board some of the gun-boats.

In the few passages relating to the colored troops, in the main report, the author shows evident pains in the statement, with rather unsatisfactory results. The style suggests rather the adroitness of the politician than the frankness of the soldier. This is the case, for instance, in his narrative of the unsuccessful assault upon Fort Wagner, where he uses language which would convey the impression, to nine readers out of ten, that it was somehow a reproach to the Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts that it was thrown into disorder, and that this disorder checked the progress of the rest. Of course this was so,--because it led the charge. It is not usual to say, in preparing a very brief narrative of some railway collision, that the leading car "was thrown into a state of great disorder, which reacted unfavorably upon, and delayed the progress of, those which followed." Yet it is hardly less absurd to say it of the leading battalion in a night attack on a fortress almost impregnable. The leading car takes the brunt of the shock precisely because it is in that position, and so does the leading regiment. How well the Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts bore the test is recognized by its being apparently included in the final admission, that "the behavior of the troops, under the circumstances, was unexceptionable." But a fractional share in a line and a half of rather chilly praise is hardly an equivalent for three lines of implied individual censure. Had Brigadier-General Strong lived to tell the story of that night, it would have been stated less diplomatically than by Major-General Gillmore.

The report of Major Brooks on the working qualities of the colored troops is far more discriminating and more valuable, as are the appended statements of Captain Walker and Lieutenant Farrand. Major Brooks, as chief of engineering, sent circulars to six different officers who had superintended fatigue parties in the trenches, covering inquiries on five points relating to efficiency and courage. The report may be found at page 259 of the book, constituting Appendix XIX. (misprinted XIV.) to the Journal of Major Brooks.

The statement is probably as fair as the facts in the compiler's possession could make it; yet it is seriously vitiated by the scantiness of those facts. In answer to one question, for example, we are told that "all agree that the colored troops recruited from Free States are superior to those recruited from Slave States." But only two regiments of the latter class appear to have come under Major Brooks's observation at all. One of these was a perfectly raw regiment, which had never had a day's drill when it was placed in the trenches, but which was kept constantly at work there, although an order had been issued forbidding white recruits from being so employed. The other was a regiment composed chiefly of South Carolina _conscripts_, enlisted in utter disregard of pledges previously given, and of course unwilling soldiers. It was absurd to institute a comparison between these troops and a regiment so well trained and officered as the Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts. Longer experience has shown that there is no great choice between the Northern and Southern negro, as military material; and the preferences of an officer will usually depend upon which he has been accustomed to command. Many, certainly, are firm in the conviction that the freed slave makes the best soldier.

In other points the report carries with it some of the needful corrections, at least for a careful reader. For instance, Major Brooks's general summary is, that "the black is more timorous than the white, but is in a corresponding degree more docile and obedient, hence more completely under the control of his commander, and much more influenced by his example." But when we read on the previous page that the white soldiers were allowed to take their arms into the trenches, and that the black soldiers were not, it makes the whole comparison nearly worthless. It is notorious that the presence or absence of manhood in the bravest soldier often seems to be determined by the mere fact that he has a gun in his hand; and had the object been to annihilate all vestige of military pride in the colored troops, it could not have been better planned than by this and other distinctions maintained during a large part of the siege of Charleston. That, while smarting under the double deprivation both of a soldier's duty and of a soldier's pay, they should have so behaved as to merit a report so favorable as that of Major Brooks, is one of the greatest triumphs they have yet achieved. This volume contains the record of what they did. The story of what they underwent is yet to be told; for even of his two famous "orders" General Gillmore judiciously makes no mention here.

Thus mingled, in this superb work, are the points of strength and weakness. It remains only to add that the typographical and artistic execution is an honor to our literature, and adds to the laurels previously won in the same department by the publisher. Where all else is so admirable, it seems a pity to have to lament the absence of an index. The division of the work among several different authors makes this defect peculiarly inconvenient.

_General Todleben's History of the Defence of Sebastopol,
1854-5._ A Review. By WILLIAM HOWARD RUSSELL. New York: D. Van
Nostrand.

It does not yet appear whether our great civil war will leave behind it materials for debate as acrimonious as that which has gathered round the affair in the Crimea. If General Butler and Admiral Porter live and thrive, there seems a fair chance that it may. In that case it will be interesting to read how General Todleben, in a parallel case, substitutes the Russian bear for the monkey in the fable, pats each combatant on the shoulder, and presents each with a shell, while extracting for himself the oyster.

Mr. Russell's "Review" is rather a paraphrase and a condensation,--the original work of the Russian General being too costly even for the English market. The task of the English editor is done with his usual spirit, and with all the more zest from an evident enjoyment of finding Mr. Kinglake in the wrong. Between his sympathies as a Briton and his sympathies as a literary man there is sometimes a struggle. But we Americans can do more justice to Mr. Russell than in those days of national innocence when we knew not Mackay and Gallenga and Sala; and it must be admitted that the tone of the present book is manly and impartial.

Kinglake's description of the Battle of the Alma will always remain as one of the masterpieces of literature in its way; but it is noticeable that Todleben entirely ignores some of the historian's most dramatic effects, and also knocks away much of his underpinning by demolishing the reputation of General Kiriakoff, his favorite Russian witness. Kinglake says that Eupatoria was occupied by a small body of English troops, and tells a good story about it: Todleben declares that the Allies occupied it with more than three thousand men and eight field-guns. Kinglake represents Lord Raglan as forcing the French officers, with great difficulty, to disembark the troops at a spot of his own selection: Todleben gives to Canrobert and Martinprey the whole credit of the final choice and of all the arrangements. And so on.

On the side of the Russians, the most interesting points brought out by Todleben are their fearful disadvantage as regarded the armament of the infantry, (these being decimated by the rifles of the Allies long before the Russians were near enough to use their smooth-bores,) and the popular enthusiasm inspired by the war in Russia. "The Czar was aided by the spontaneous contributions of his people. Great supplies were forwarded by private individuals of all that an army could need." "From all parts of the empire persons sent lint, bandages, etc., by post to the army." These are phrases which bring us back to the daily experience of our own vaster struggle.