Chapter IV (2)

The Fourth of July, 1776, when our name was first inscribed upon the roll of nations, shall be forever commemorated under one flag, and as the birthday of one undivided Union. The memorable declaration of American Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the Constitution of the United States, all subscribed upon that consecrated ground at Independence Hall, Philadelphia, shall ever mark the noble commonwealth of Pennsylvania as the keystone of the arch of a perpetual and unbroken Union.

Nor shall any but the same banner be unfolded over the graves of the patriots and statesmen of the Revolution, or the battle-fields of the mighty conflict.

And around the graves of Washington and Jackson, and in memory of their solemn farewell appeals in favor of the Union, how could Virginia or Tennessee ever have been disloyal? No, they were not disloyal, but were torn, by rebel fraud and violence, from that banner round which they will again rejoice to rally.

We must not despair of the Republic. All is not lost. The Union yet lives. Its restoration approaches. The calm will soon follow the storm. The golden sunlight and the silver edging of the azure clouds will be seen again in the horizon. The bow of promise will appear in the heavens, to mark the retiring of the bitter waters, proclaiming from on high, that now, henceforth, and forever, no second secession deluge shall ever disturb the onward, united, and peaceful march of the Republic.

OUR WOUNDED.

As loftier rise the ocean's heaving crests,
Ere they sink, tempest-driven, on the strand;
So do these hearts and freedom-beating breasts,
Sublimed by suffering, fall upon our land.

Wounded! O sweet-lipped word! for on the page
Of this strange history, all these scars shall be
The hieroglyphics of a valiant age,
Deep writ in freedom's blood-red mystery.

What though your fate sharp agony reveals!
What though the mark of brother's blows you bear!
The breath of your oppression upward steals,
Like incense from crushed spices into air.

Freedom lies listening, nor as yet averts
The battle horrors of these months' slow length;
But as she listens, silently she girts
More close, more firm, the armor of her strength.

Then deem them not as lost, these bitter days,
Nor those which yet in anguish must be spent
Far from loved skies and home's peace-moving ways,
For these are not the losses you lament.

It is the glory that your country bore,
Which you would rescue from a living grave;
It is the unity that once she wore,
Which your true hearts are yearning still to save.

Despair not: _it is written_, though the eye,
Red with its watching, can no future scan:
The glow of triumph yet shall flush the sky,
And God redeem the ruin made by man.

A SOUTHERN REVIEW.

A friend 'down South' has kindly sent us a number of '_De Bow's Review, Industrial Resources_, etc.,' as its elegantly worded title-page proclaims. It is true that the number in question is none of the freshest, it having appeared at Charleston, in December last. Yet, as a Southern magazine published during the war, and full of war matter, it is replete with interest.

Its first article on Privateers and Privateersmen, by George Fitzhugh of Virginia--as arrogant, weak, and Sophomorical as Southern would-be 'literary' articles usually are--is written in a vein of reasoning so oddly illogical as to almost induce suspicion as to the sanity of the author. Let the reader take, for instance, the following extracts:

'To show how untenable and absurd are the doctrines of the writers
on the laws of war, we will cite the instance of pickets. According
to their leading principle that in war 'only such acts of hostility
are permissible as weaken the enemy and advance and promote the
ends and purposes of the war,' pickets are the very men to be
killed, for the death of one of them may effect a surprise and
victory, and do more injury to the enemy than the killing of a
thousand men in battle. According to their doctrine, it is
peculiarly proper and merciful to shoot pickets; yet they propose
to interpolate on the laws of war a provision that pickets shall
not be shot. This provision is, in accordance with our philosophy,
founded on Christian principles and the dictates of healthy
humanity, for pickets are not active belligerents, and can oppose
no force to the stealthy attacks made on them by unseen enemies. To
kill a picket is like fighting an unarmed man, a child or a woman.
It is eminently right according to the selfish and silly philosophy
of writers on national law, but inhuman, and therefore wrong,
according to our philosophy, which is founded on Christian
injunctions and natural feelings.

'Yet, as a matter of necessity, we would encourage the shooting of
pickets. We of the South are accustomed to the use of arms, are
individually brave and self-reliant, can creep upon their pickets
and shoot them in the night, and thus carry out our defensive
policy of exhausting in detail the superior numbers of the invading
North. We must be conquered and subjugated unless we take advantage
of all our peculiarities of habits, customs, localities, and
institutions. We have to make a choice of evils; either shoot
pickets, or by neglecting to do so, cut off one of our most
available arms of defense. We must fight the 'devil with fire.' Our
enemy professes no allegiance to the laws of morality nor to the
laws of God. We must deal with them as Moses dealt with the people
of Canaan, so long as they invade our territory. But we are not
God's chosen people, not his instruments to punish Canaanites, and
we will not follow them when they retreat to their barren Northern
homes. There a just and avenging God is already punishing them for
their crimes. Left to themselves, and our real enemies--those of
the North-east--will perish, for they have little means of support
at home, and have not learned to avail themselves of those means,
trusting that a generous and confiding South would continue to feed
and clothe them.

'In old countries, where there are few trees, forests, or other
hiding-places, and where the country people are unused to firearms,
an invaded country gains little by shooting pickets; but in a new,
rough country like ours, where pickets can be approached furtively,
and where all the country people are first-rate marksmen, there is
no better means of harassing and exhausting an invading army than
by cutting off its outposts in detail.

'It is the obvious interest of the North to make the persons of
pickets sacred; and equally _our_ obvious policy to shoot them down
at every opportunity.'

In the midst of these slightly confused arguments on war, the writer suddenly introduces a very out of place eulogy of '_De Bow's Review, Industrial Resources_, etc.,' as a periodical 'which occupies a much wider range than any English periodical, and which, _as an Encyclopedia_, would be more valuable than any other Review, were equal pains and labor bestowed upon its articles.' We suspect this bit to be office-made--it has the heavy, clumsy ring of the great cracked bell of De Bow. For instance:

'I know, Mr. Editor, you intend, so soon as the war is over, to
enlarge the _Review_, without increasing the subscription-price
... and then if Southern patronage ceases to be bestowed chiefly
on the flimsy and immoral literature of the North, and Southern
pens cease to prostitute themselves for pay by ministering to the
vile and sensual literary appetites of the Yankees, then, we say,
this _Review_ will rank with the ablest for ability, and far above
them for usefulness. But this result can be attained only when we
cease to be Yankee-worshipers, and when the semi-traitorous
imbeciles of the Virginia Convention and of Kentucky are remembered
only to be detested and despised. Already hundreds of scientific
and philosophic minds who have thrown off the debasing influence of
Yankee authority have contributed learned and valuable articles to
your pages.'

Unfortunately the character of De Bow as a deliberate and accomplished liar, and the exposure of his infamous falsification of statistics, have somewhat sunk the character of his '_Review, Industrial Resources_, etc.,' out of Dixie, where, only, due honor is paid to those who are like him

----'for profound
And solid lying much renowned.'

'Art. II.' or Article the Second, in this magazine, 'which only needs equal pains and labor' [we might add paper, ink, and a Yankee Grammar and Dictionary] to be made equal to 'any other Review'--treats of 'The Bastile--Tyranny, Past and Present.' All the doleful stories of prisoners of earlier or later ages, in the Bastile, including much sentimental balderdash, are drawled out by a very stupid and would-be effective writer, for the purpose of proving that the imprisonment of political offenders and captives by the North is precisely on a par with that of 'Bastiling' them, and that Abraham Lincoln is only a revival of the worst kings of France in an American form. We of the North have, according to this writer, 'reached the goal of despotism at a single leap. In a few months the government has achieved ETERNAL INFAMY.' We commend to the reader the following superbly Southern conclusion:

'With all these evils comes the inevitable Bastile. It is an
inseparable part of the system. A philosophical Cuvier, from one
act or condition of tyranny, will supply the rest of the organism.
Wherever despotism exists, we look for the Bastile as naturally as
we do for the character of a robber in an Italian story. Like the
ponderous step of the statue of the commander in the _Don Juan_ of
Molière, its approach is audible above civil commotion, above the
shrieks of frenzied orators, the howlings of a demoralized clergy,
and the sound of battle. It brings with it the destruction of civil
liberty, and darkens all the perspective.'

To us, to whom the approach of despotism with all its horrors is not quite so apparent as the heavy footfall 'in the _Don Juan_ of Molière,' this all sounds as if Dixie would very much like to have the little privilege of keeping all the prisoners to itself. Nothing is said, by the way, of Southern Bastiles--of tobacco-factories, in which mere boys are allowed to die of wounds in utter solitude, to which officers come for the purpose of spitting upon and kicking the 'Yanks,' and where sentinels in wanton fiendishness were allowed to daily shoot through the windows at those within. No word is spoken of officers thrown into a common dungeon with negroes and thieves, nor is there any allusion to the ingenious system of keeping Northern prisoners as long as possible, so that they may die and thereby diminish the numbers of the enemy, in accordance with the Southern plan of Fitzhugh, already cited, as 'our defensive policy of exhausting _in detail_ the superior numbers of the invading North.'

'Article III.' gives us a rehash of the views of Dr. Cartwright on 'The Serpent, the Ape, and the Negro.'

'Article IV.' by E. Delony, of Louisiana, is the great political gun of the magazine, and inquires: 'What of the the Confederacy--the Present and the Future?' It is of course full of hope, bluster, and self-praise. 'Our armies,' says Delony, 'are not like the miserable hirelings of Lincoln--the scum of infamy and degradation--hunted up from the dens, sewers, and filthy prisons of the North, with the low vandalism of foreign importations, picked up wherever they can be found. Yet such are the creatures our brave soldiers have to meet. _Our_ armies are composed of men who have not volunteered for pay, nor for food or clothing!'

Since copying this paragraph, it was recalled to us--within a few hours--by meeting some half-dozen of the 'scum of sewers' in question, in the persons of half-a-dozen young gentlemen, privates in a Massachusetts regiment, several of them college graduates--all of them sons of wealthy citizens and gentlemen. It would be interesting to ascertain, taking man for man, what proportion of the Southern and Northern armies are respectively able to read, or are otherwise personally familiar with the decencies and proprieties of civilized life. From this assumption of superiority Mr. Delony argues victory, asks, 'What about the peace?' and inquires if the Federal Government will offer to negotiate for it?

'We can _propose_ no terms, but we must _demand_ them. We desire
nothing that is not right and just, and we will submit to nothing
that is wrong. But no peace will be acceptable to the people that
permits the Lincoln Government to hold its Abolition orgies and
fulminate its vile edicts upon slave territory. Much valuable
property of our citizens has been destroyed, or stolen and carried
off by the invaders; this should be accounted for, and paid. The
Yankees were shrewd enough to cheat us out of the navy, but we must
have half of the war-vessels and naval armament in possession of
the North at the commencement of this war. We should enter into no
commercial alliances or complications with them, but assume the
entire control of our commercial policy and regulations with them,
to be modified at our own discretion and pleasure. They have closed
against us all navigation and trade on the Mississippi, Missouri,
and other rivers; it is our right and duty hereafter so to regulate
the navigation of these streams as may best conform to our own
interests. It can not be expected that we should permit the free
navigation of the Lower Mississippi to the West after they have
closed it against us above, without the most stringent regulations.
There is no palliation in the pretense that the blockade above was
a war measure; they can not so claim it unless we had been
acknowledged as belligerents, and hence they have forfeited all
right to free navigation as a peace measure. If, then, permission
be given to the Free States of the West to navigate the Lower
Mississippi, it should be under such restrictions as to afford a
commensurate revenue to the confederacy, and the strictest rules
regulating the ingress and egress of passengers, officers, and
hands. The West is learning us how to do without her, and we thank
her for it; we shall have but little need of her produce, as we
shall soon have a plentiful supply among our own people. An
absolute separation from all the North, with the sole and
independent control of all regulations with its people, are our
best and safest terms of peace.'

What is further hoped for is shown in remarks on the

EXTENT OF THE CONFEDERACY.

'We have conquered an outlet to the Pacific which must be
maintained, though we can desire no dominion on the Pacific coast,
but such as may be sufficient to secure the terminus of our great
Pacific railroad through Texas and Arizona. Toward the north and
east, the Maryland and Pennsylvania line, including Delaware, is
our true landmark. Kansas, on the other side, must be conquered and
confiscated to pay for the negroes stolen from us, abolitionism
expelled from its borders, and transformed into a Slave State of
the confederacy. Perhaps, after we have done with Lincoln, this
arrangement may be very acceptable to a majority in Kansas, without
force. We will have no desire to disturb Mexico so long as she
conducts herself peaceably toward us, and, as a neighbor, maintains
good faith in her dealings with us. Central America must remain as
a future consideration; and, instead of the acquisition of Cuba,
she has become our _friendly ally_, identified with us in interests
and institutions, and, so long as she continues to hold slaves,
connected with us by the closest ties.'

But the strong point of the article consists in a fierce onslaught on foreigners, all of whom, save those now resident in the South, are to be excluded from citizenship and office. 'With the exception of these, and after that time, no more votes should be allowed, and no' more offices be held, except by _native-born_ citizens of the confederacy.'

'The naturalization law of the old Government has proved of little
benefit to the Southern States. Whilst our Southern adopted
citizens have proven themselves reliable, faithful, and true to
our institutions of the South, those of the North, who outnumber
them twenty to one, have universally arrayed themselves foremost
and in front of Lincoln's hordes in the work of rapine, murder, and
destruction against the South. _Hereafter then, we can make no
distinction between the Yankee and the foreigner, and both must
necessarily be debarred of the privilege of citizenship in this
confederacy._'

Delony, it seems, has 'viewed this question in all its bearings,' 'foremost and in front' of course included, and deems its adoption eminently essential to the future stability and welfare of the confederacy. The abolition of _all_ impost duties and a system of direct taxation, are of course warmly advocated--meaning thereby the ruin of Northern manufactures by smuggling European goods over our border. In short, he sets forth plainly what is as yet far from being felt or generally understood, that the independence of the Southern confederacy must inevitably bring with it the total ruin of the North, and the entire exclusion from its citizenship and offices of all persons other than native-born Southerners.

'Article V.' is one of those intensely snobbish, sickening, self-conscious essays on 'Gentility,' which none but a Southerner is capable of writing. The innate vulgarity of its author, 'J. T. Wiswall, of Alabama,' is shown in such expressions as 'a pretty Romeo of seventeen, that looks as charming as sweet sixteen, _gallused up_ in tight unmentionables,' and in artless confessions that he--J. T. Wiswall--belongs to a class above the snob, but still to one 'whose conversation stalks as on stilts,' and which is foppish, effeminate, and ostentatious. The conclusion is, of course, the worship of 'aristocracy,' a worship of which, as J.T. Wiswall infers from his own shallow reading and flimsy experience, exists 'in every heart.' The wants of the rich, their 'toys and gauds,' 'were made to relieve the sufferings of the poor,' and the 'ceaseless abuse of aristocracy is _therefore_ absurd.' Without the great truths, based on these relations of rich and poor, J. T. W., the apostle of 'Gentility,' thinks that 'society is a murderous anarchy; without these, revolution follows revolution, and barbarism closes the hideous drama of national existence. On these alone hang all the law and prophets.'

The remaining articles of '_De Bow's Review, Industrial Resources_, etc.,' are devoted to Free Trade, the Progress of the War, and the Coal-Fields of Arkansas, none of them, with the exception of the latter, presenting aught like an approach to a useful truth. The magazine is, however, as a whole both curious and characteristic. It shows, as in a mirror, the enormous ambition, the uneasy vanity, the varnished vulgarity of the Southerner, his claims to scrupulous honor, outflanked and contradicted at every turn by an innate tendency to exaggerate and misrepresent, and his imperfect knowledge employed as a basis for the most weighty conclusions. And it is such writers and thinkers who accurately set forth the ideas and principles on which the great experiment of the Southern aristocratic confederacy is to be based--in case of its success. A tremendous Ism, fringed with bayonets! There is strength in bayonets, but what stability is there in the Ism which supports them?

EAST AND WEST.

In the far East the imperial rule
Is aided by the British rod;
While in the West the rebel school
Receives full many a friendly nod.
Can no new Mithra ever be
To slay this Bull of tyranny?

WAS HE SUCCESSFUL?

'Do but grasp into the thick of human life! Everyone _lives_ it--to
not many is it _known_; and seize it where you will, it is
interesting.'--_Goethe._

'SUCCESSFUL.--Terminating in accomplishing what is wished or
intended.'--_Webster's Dictionary._