Chapter IV: Geographical Sketch of the Island

I had intended writing some of my first impressions about Jamaica, particularly its negro population. But I find, on reviewing my residence of five years and a half in the tranquil island, that first impressions melt so imperceptibly into final conclusions, that it appears best not to attempt a too formal separation of them. Before recounting the results of my own experience, however, in any form, it will not be amiss to attempt some general description of the island and of its population, and to give a slight sketch of its history.

The parallel of 18° N lat. passes through the island of Jamaica, which has thus a true tropical climate. It is 160 miles in length and 40 in average breadth, having thus a plane area of 6,400 square miles, being about equal to the united area of Connecticut and Rhode Island. Although the third in size of the Greater Antilles, it comes at a great remove after Hayti, the second, being not more than one-fourth as large. Nor does it compare in fertility with either Hayti or Cuba. The former island is the centre of geological upheaval, and the great rounded masses, sustaining a soil of inexhaustible depth, run off from thence splintering into sharp ridges, which in Jamaica become veritable knife edges, sustaining a soil comparatively thin. The character of the island is that of a mountain mass, which, as the ancient watermark on the northern coast shows, has at some remote period been tilted over, and has shot out an immense amount of detritus on its southern side, forming thus the plains which extend along a good part of that coast, varying in breadth from ten to twenty miles, besides the alluvial peninsula of Vere. In the interior, also, there is an upland basin of considerable extent, looking like the dry bed of a former lake, which now forms the chief part of the parish of St. Thomas-in-the-Vale. The mountain mass which makes the body of the island, running in various ranges through its whole length, culminates in the eastern part of it in the Blue Mountains, whose principal summit, the Blue Mountain Peak, is 7,500 feet high. It is said that Columbus, wishing to give Queen Isabella an impression of the appearance of these, took a sheet of tissue paper, and crumpling it up in his hand, threw it on a table, exclaiming, 'There! such is their appearance.' The device used by the great discoverer to convey to the mind of the royal Mother of America some image of her new-found realms, forcibly recurs to the mind of the traveller as he sails along the southeastern coast, and notices the strange contortions of the mountain surfaces. But seen from the northern shore, at a greater distance, through the purple haze which envelops them, their outlines leave a different impression. I shall always remember their aspect of graceful sublimity, as seen from Golden Vale, in Portland, and of massive sweetness, as seen from Hermitage House, in the parish of St. George. The gray buttresses of their farthest western peak, itself over 5,000 feet in height, rose in full view of a station where I long resided, and the region covered by their lower spurs, ranging in elevation from seven to ten and twelve hundred feet, is that which especially deserves the name of the 'well-watered land,' or, as it is poetically rendered, the 'isle of springs,' of which Jamaica, or perhaps more exactly Xaymaca, is the Indian equivalent. There you meet in most abundance with those crystal rivulets, every few hundred yards threading the road, and going to swell the wider streams which every mile or two cross the traveller's way, laving his horse's sides with refreshing coolness, as they hurry on in their tortuous course from the mountain heights to the sea. Farther west the mountains and hills assume gentler and more rounded forms, particularly in the parish of St. Anne, the Garden of Jamaica. I regret that I know only by report the scenes of Eden-like loveliness of this delightful parish. It is principally devoted to grazing, and its pastures are maintained in a park-like perfection. Grassy eminences, crowned with woods, and covered with herds of horses and the handsome Jamaica cattle, descend, in successive undulations, to the sea. Over these, from the deck of a vessel a few miles out, may be seen falling the silver threads of many cascades. Excellent roads traverse the parish, which is inhabited by a gentry in easy circumstances, and by a contented and thriving yeomanry. St. Anne appears to be truly a Christian Arcadia.

In respect of climate and vegetation, there are three Jamaicas--Jamaica of the plains, Jamaica of the uplands, and Jamaica of the high mountains. The highest summit of the mountain region, is below the line at which snow is ever formed in this latitude, and it is disputed whether an evanescent hoarfrost even is sometimes seen upon it. As high as four and five thousand feet there are residences, which, however, purchase freedom from the lowland heats at the expense of being a large part of the time enveloped in chilling fogs. Here the properly tropical productions cease to thrive, and melancholy caricatures of northern vegetables and fruits take their place. You see in the Kingston market diminutive and watery potatoes and apples, that have come down from the clouds, and on St. Catherine's Peak I once picked a few strawberries, which had about as much savor as so many chips. The noble forest trees of the lower mountains, as you go up, give way to an exuberant but spongy growth of tree-ferns and bushes. Great herds of wild swine, descended from those introduced by the Spaniards, roam these secluded thickets, and once furnished subsistence to the runaway negroes who, under the name of Maroons, for several generations annoyed and terrified the island.

In these high mountains the sense of deep solitude is at once heightened and softened by the flute-like notes of the solitaire. I shall never forget the impression produced by first hearing this. It was on the top of St. Catherine's Peak, fifty-two hundred feet above the sea, in the early morning, when the mountain solitude seemed most profound, that my companion and I heard from the adjacent woods its mysterious note. It was a soft and clear tone, somewhat prolonged, and ending in a modulation which imparted to it an indescribable effect, as if of supernal melancholy. It seemed almost as if some mild angel were lingering pensively upon the mountain tops, before pursuing his downward flight among the unhappy sons of men.

The uplands of the island, from 800 to 1,500 feet above the sea, are a cheerful, sunny region, in which the tropical heat is tempered by almost constant refreshing breezes, and, in the eastern part at least, by abundant showers. Some of the western parishes not unfrequently suffer terribly from drought. There are two or three which have not even a spring, depending wholly upon rain water collected in tanks. These sometimes become dry, causing unutterable distress both to man and beast. We hear even sometimes of poor people starving during these seasons of drought. But our more favored region in the east scarcely knows dearth. Our mighty mountain neighbors seldom permitted us even to fear it, and were more apt to send us a deluge than a drought.

In the uplands our winter temperature was commonly about 75° in the shade at noon, and the summer temperature about ten degrees higher. The nights are almost always agreeably cool, and frequent showers and breezes allay the sultriness of the days. I never saw the thermometer above 90° in the shade, and seldom below 65°. It once fell to 54°, to the lamentable discomfort of our feelings and fingers. Of course, where the sun for months is nearly vertical, and twice in the summer actually so, the heat of his direct beams is intense. But those careful precautions of avoiding travelling in the middle of the day, on which some lay such stress, we never concerned ourselves with in Jamaica, and I could not discover that we were ever the worse for it. An umbrella was enough to stand between us and mischief.

On the whole, it may safely be said that there is no climate more like that which we imagine of Eden than that of the highland region of Jamaica during a large part of the year. It is true that after a while northern constitutions begin to miss the stimulus of occasional cold. But for a few years nothing could be more delightful. The chief drawback is that at uncertain cycles there come incessant deluges of rain for months together, making it dreary and uncomfortable both in doors and out. Years will sometimes pass before there is any excessive amount of these, and then sometimes for years together they will prevail to a most disagreeable extent. They break up the mountain roads and swell the mountain streams to such a degree as to render travelling almost impossible, and in a country where your friends are few, you do not like to be kept back from seeing them by the imminent risk of finding no road at all on the side of a hill where at best there is barely room enough between the bank and the gully for one horse to pass another, or of finding yourself between two turns of a stream, with a sudden shower making it impossible for you to get either forward or back. But during my residence I had just enough of these adventures to give a pleasant zest to life. And after a tremendous rain of hours, when the sun reappeared, and the banks of fleecy cloud were once more seen floating tranquilly in heaven, and the streams ran again crystal clear, and the hills smiled again in all the glory of their brilliant green, and the air had again its wonted temper, at once balmy and elastic, it was enough to make amends for all previous discomfort.

Although no part of the island is peculiarly favorable to constitutions of the European race, yet with prudence and temperance foreigners find this midland region reasonably healthy. The missionaries, who have mostly resided in the uplands, have but seldom fallen victims to fevers. Foreigners must not expect to live here without occasional attacks of fever; but with care, there need be little apprehension of a fatal result, except to those of a sanguine temperament or of a corpulent habit. And the general exemption from the dreadful ravages of consumption may well be thought to compensate the somewhat greater risks from fever. Even on the plains, that immense mortality of whites from the mother country which once gave to Jamaica the ominous name of 'The Grave of Europeans,' was caused as much by their reckless intemperance as by any necessity of the climate. Or, rather, habits which in Great Britain might have been indulged in with comparative impunity, in Jamaica were rapidly fatal. It is said that another cause of the excessive mortality among the overseers was that they were often secretly poisoned by the blacks. On some plantations, I have heard it said, overseer after overseer was poisoned off, almost as soon as he arrived. In most cases, I dare say, it would be found that over-liberal potations of Jamaica rum were the poison that did the mischief. But the reports have probably some foundation in truth. An oppressed race, seldom daring to strike openly, would be very apt to devise subtle ways of vengeance. It will be remembered that one of the most frequent items in our own Southern newspapers used to be accounts of attempts made by slave girls to poison their masters' families. Arsenic, which they commonly used, is a clumsy means, almost sure to be detected; but in the West Indies, where the proportion of native Africans was always very large, the African sorcerers, the dreaded Obi-men, who exercise so baleful a power over the imaginations of the blacks, appear also to have availed themselves of other than imaginary charms to keep up their credit as the disposers of life and death, and to have often gained such a knowledge of slow vegetable poisons as made them formidable helpers of revenge, whether against their own race or against the race of their oppressors. In a recent Jamaica story of Captain Mayne Reid's, the plot centres in the hideous figure of an old Obi-man, who wreaks his revenge for former wrongs in this secret way, destroying victim after victim from among the lords of the soil. The piece is stocked with horrors enough for the most ravenous devourer of yellow-covered literature, but nevertheless it is so true to the conditions of life in the old days of Jamaica, that it is well worth reading for a lively sense of the time when the fearful influences of savage heathenism, slavery, and tropical passion were working together in that land of rarest beauty and of foulest sin. Evil enough remains, but, thank God, the hideous shadows of the past have fled away forever.

But these tragical remembrances and suspicions belong rather to the plains, into which we are about to descend. Here we feel distinctly that we are in the tropics. The sweltering heat, tempered, indeed, by the land and sea breezes, but still sufficiently oppressive, and almost the same day and night, leaves no doubt of this fact. Vegetation, too, appears more distinctly tropical. The character of the landscape in the two regions is quite different. In the uplands the wealth of glowing green swallows up peculiarities of form, and presents little difference of color except the endless diversity of its own shades. There are, however, some distinct features of the landscape. Conspicuous on every hillside are the groves 'where the mango apples grow,' their mass of dense rounded foliage looking not unlike our maples, and giving a pleasant sense of home to the northern sojourner. The feathery bamboo, most gigantic of grasses, runs in plumy lines across the country. Around the negro cottages, here and there, rise groups of the cocoanut palms, giving, more than anything else, a tropical character to the landscape. On a distant eminence may perhaps be seen a lofty ceiba or cotton tree, its white trunk rising sixty or seventy feet from the ground without a limb, and then putting out huge, scraggy arms, loaded with parasites. Every lesser feature is swamped in verdure, except that here and there the whitewashed walls of a negro cottage of the better sort gleam pleasantly forth from embowering hedges and fruit trees. I do not know how Wordsworth's advice to make country houses as much as possible of the color of the surrounding country may apply among the gray hills of Westmoreland; but among the green hills of Jamaica, the white which he deprecates forms a welcome relief to the splendid monotony of glowing emerald. It is not amiss to call it emerald, for there are so many plants here with glossy leaves, that under the brilliant sunlight the lustre of the green is almost more than the eye can bear. To the southward of Oberlin station, formerly belonging to our mission, rises a range of verdant hills, which in some lights has so much the pure, continuous color of a gem, as almost to realize Arabian fables to the eye. Indeed, I have gazed at it sometimes with such a feeling as Aladdin had when the magician had left him confined in the Hall of Jewels, and have almost wished for an earthquake to cleave its oppressive superbness and give a refreshing sight of the blue sea beyond.

But on descending to the plains, where there is less moisture, and where vegetation therefore is scantier, we find the unwonted forms of growth more distinct, and have the full sense of being in a southern land. Here the thorn palms, the cactus hedges, the penguin fences, resembling huge pineapple plants, and various trees and shrubs, being seen more isolated, make a stronger impression of the peculiarities of tropical forms. Here too we meet in greater abundance with the cocoanut tree, occasionally forming long avenues of lofty palms on the estates. And here we see more frequently the huge squares of many acres, heavy with the luxuriant wealth of the cane, and thronged by dusky laborers. The heat, which in the uplands is pleasant, though rather too steady in the plains, becomes oppressive and enervating. The distinction between the wet and dry seasons, also, is much more distinctly marked, and, in short, everything corresponds more fully with the usual idea of a tropical land.

The luxuriance and the glory of nature are the same now as ever; but everywhere over the island the traveller sees the melancholy evidences of the decay of former wealth. You may travel over miles and miles on the plains once rich with the cane, or ridge after ridge in the uplands once covered with the dark-green coffee plantations, which now are almost a wilderness. To quote the language of another, 'ridges, overgrown with guava bushes, mark the cornfields; rank vegetation fills the courtyard, and even bursts through the once hospitable roof. A curse seems to have fallen upon the land, as if this generation were atoning for the sins of the past. For while we lament the ruin of the present proprietors, we cannot forget the unrequited toil which in times gone by created the wealth they have lost; nor that hapless race, the original owners of the soil, whose fate darkens the saddest page in history.'

A passing traveller will see little to compensate the sadness occasioned by old magnificence thus in ruins, strewing the whole island with its melancholy wrecks. What there is to set off against it, we shall consider hereafter.

What survives of the agriculture and commerce of Jamaica is still, as formerly, mainly dependent on the two great staples, sugar and coffee; the former being raised chiefly in the plains and valleys, the latter in the uplands and mountains. There was, it is said, an indigenous sugar cane in the West Indies, when first discovered; but if so, it has long been supplanted by the Mauritius cane, which is now cultivated. The joints of the cane, being cut and laid horizontally in furrows, which are then covered over, spring up in a crop which comes to maturity in about a year; and when this is cut, the roots rattoon, or send up shoots for five or six years in succession. This is one reason why Jamaica sugar planters find it so hard to compete with Cuban production. On the deep soil of Cuba the cane rattoons, it is said, not five or six, but forty years in succession.

The coffee plant is a beautiful shrub. Left to itself, it would grow twenty or thirty feet high; but it is kept down to such a height as that the berries can easily be picked by the hand. Its glossy, dark-green leaves resemble a good deal the jessamine; and the resemblance is increased during the time of flowering, by the beautiful white blossoms, of a faint, delicate fragrance, which are scattered over the branches like a light powdering of snow. It thrives well in a moist air; and coffee plantations may be seen clothing the sides of mountains three, four, and even five thousand feet above the sea. The history of the way in which coffee was introduced to the West Indies is really quite a little romance, though an authentic one. It is well known that Holland used to practise the most odious commercial monopoly ever known among Christian nations. Her spice islands were guarded with a cruel jealousy rivalling the fables of the dragon that guarded the golden apples; and her great coffee island, Java, was equally locked up from the world. To give a spice plant or a coffee plant to a stranger, was an offence inexorably punished with death. A single coffee plant, however, was allowed to come to Europe as an ornament to the conservatory of a wealthy Amsterdam burgomaster. This was still more jealously watched than its fellows in the East Indies; but at length a French visitor managed to secrete a living berry, and, taking it with him to Paris, to raise a plant. From this again a young plant was taken to Martinique, one of the French West Indies. When the young stranger, freighted with such possibilities of wealth, arrived there, it was found that the exposure of the voyage had nearly extinguished its vitality. It was tended with the most anxious care; but for two or three years it continued to languish, and threatened by an untimely death to give Dutch selfishness a triumph after all. At last, however, it took a happy start, and from that plant the whole West Indies have derived their coffee. It was introduced into Jamaica in 1720, and Temple Hall, one of the two estates which I have mentioned as being in the beautiful valley between Kingston and the American Mission, has the honor of showing the oldest coffee walk in the island.

Jamaica coffee is of an excellent quality; the berries, it is said, if kept two years, being equal to the best Mocha. As some one laments that the cooks and grooms of the Romans spoke better Latin than even Milton among the moderns could write, so I can boast in behalf of the Jamaica negroes, that even Delmonico, unless he could secure the services of one of them who understands the true method of reducing the browned berry to an impalpable powder, by pulverizing it between a flat stone and a round one, must give up all hopes of presenting his guests with the ideal cup of coffee. I would give the whole process by which an amber-colored stream, of perfect flavor, might be poured out, without a trace of sediment, to the very last drop, did I not reflect with pity that probably in all the wide extent of my country there is neither the apparatus of grinding nor the sable domestic with skill to use it. Nay, even in Jamaica, where one would think they could afford to be slow _for_ a good thing, since they are so amazingly slow _to_ every good thing, I grieve to say that the barbarous mill, hacking and mangling the fragrant berry, has almost universally supplanted the more laborious ancient method by which it was gently reduced to its most perfect attrition, yielding up every particle of its aromatic strength. Thus the modern demon of expedition, to whom quickness is so much more than quality, has invaded even the slumberous repose of our fair island, bringing under his arm, not a locomotive, but a coffee mill. There are, to be sure, two or three locomotives on the twelve-mile railway between Kingston and Spanishtown, but it would be a cruel sarcasm to intimate that the genius of expedition ever brought them.

There are several other vegetable products of Jamaica, which it owes likewise to a happy accident. The mango, for instance, which now grows in such profusion on uplands and plains, that if the groves should be cut down, the face of the country would seem naked, was a spoil of war, being brought from a French ship destined for Martinique, somewhere about 1790. At first it is said the mangoes sold for a guinea a piece, with the express stipulation that the seed should be returned. Now, in a good bearing season, I have actually seen a narrow mountain road fetlock deep with decaying mangoes, besides the thousands consumed by man and beast. During the summer, in the good years, they furnish the main subsistence to the negro children, and a large part of the subsistence of the adults, and make a grateful and wholesome change from the yam and salt fish which constitute the staples of their diet the rest of the time. It is this, probably, which has given rise to the absurd report that the negroes live principally on fruits spontaneously growing.

The young leaves of the mango are of a brownish red; and amid the general profusion of green, they impart a not ungrateful relief to the eye. Even their russet blossoms have a pleasant look. But in a good season, when the fruit is ripe, the groves have a magnificently rich appearance. Rows upon rows of yellow fruit look like lines of golden apples. Most people are extravagantly fond of them; but for myself I must say that, excepting the superb 'No. 11'--so named from being thus numbered on the captured French ship--and one or two other rare kinds, I concur with the late Prof. Adams, of Amherst, in thinking that a very good mango might be made by steeping raw cotton in turpentine, and sprinkling a little sugar over it.

Another fortuitous gift to Jamaica, so far as human intention is concerned, was the invaluable donation of the Guinea grass. Toward a century ago some African birds were brought as a present to a gentleman in the west of the island. Some grass seeds had been brought along for their feed; and when they reached their journey's end, the seeds were thrown away. After a while it was noticed that the cattle were very eager to reach the grass growing on a certain spot, and on examination it was found that the seeds thrown away had come up as a grass of remarkable succulence and nutritiousness. It was soon distributed, and now it is spread over the island. You pass rich meadows of it on every lowland estate; and it clothes hundreds of hills to their tops with its yellowish green. I do not see what the island would do without it. The pens or grazing farms in particular have been almost wholly created by it.

Jamaica has, of course, the usual West Indian fruits, the orange, the shaddock, the lime, the pineapple, the guava, the nispero, the banana, the cocoanut, and many others not much known abroad. But the lusciousness of tropical fruits compares ill with the thousand delicate flavors which cultivation has extended through our temperate clime; while, at the same time, steam makes nearly all the best fruits of the West Indies familiar to our markets. The resident of New York or Philadelphia, and still more of Baltimore has small occasion to wish himself in the tropics for the sake of fruit.

The great staple of negro existence, and therefore the great staple of existence to the immense majority of the inhabitants, is the yam. There are some indigenous kinds; but the species most in use appear to have been brought in by the imported African slaves. This solid edible dwarfs our potatoes, a single root varying in weight from five to ten pounds, and sometimes even reaching the weight of fifty pounds. They are of all shapes, globular, finger shaped, and long; and the latter, with their thick, brown rinds, look more like billets of wood, crusted with earth, than anything else. People in this country are apt to imagine them to be a huge kind of sweet potato, with which they have no other connection than that both are edible roots. The white yams, boiled and mashed, are scarcely distinguishable from very superior white potatoes. Above ground the plant is a vine, requiring to be trained on a pole, and a yamfield looks precisely like a vineyard. But oh, the difference! while the vineyard calls up a thousand recollections of laughing girls treading the grape, and the sunny lands of story, a yamfield reminds you only that under the ground is a bulky esculent, which some months hence will be put into a negro pot, and boiled and eaten, with an utter absence of poetry, or of anything but appetite and salt. It is plain that in this case solid usefulness stands no chance with erratic and rather loose-mannered brilliancy. And yet some kinds of yam in flower diffuse a fragrance more exquisite, I am persuaded, than comes from any vineyard. So that, after all, their homely prose has some flavor of poetry, which, when African poets arise, will doubtless be duly canonized in song.

As yet the small freeholders have chiefly occupied themselves in raising these 'ground provisions,' as yams, plantains, bananas, and the various vegetables are called. But they are more and more largely planting cane and coffee, greatly to their own advantage and that of the island.

If in this favored zone the earth is pleasant underneath, nothing can be more glorious than the heavens above. Being under the parallel of 18° N. lat., of course we have a full view of all the northern heavens, and of all the southern heavens, except 18° about the South Pole. The rarefied atmosphere gives peculiar brilliancy to the stars; and on a clear night--and most nights are clear--the heavens are indeed flooded with white fire, while, according to the season of the year, Orion and his northern company appear with a lustre unwonted to us, or the Scorpion unfolds his sparkling length, or the Ship displays its glittering confusion of stars, or the Southern Cross rears aloft its sacred symbol. Meanwhile, well down toward the northern horizon, the pole star holds its fixed position, and the Great and the Little Bear, dipping toward the ocean wave, but not yet dipping in it, pursue their nightly revolutions. Long after sunset, and long before sunrise, night after night, the faint, nebulous gleam of the zodiacal lights stretches up toward the zenith. The shortness of the twilight frequently leaves the fugacious planet, Mercury, so seldom seen at the north, in distinct view. While Venus not merely casts a shadow in a clear night, as she does with us, but when she is brightest, actually shines through the clouds with an illumining power.

Alternating with these glories of the starry firmament, the moon at the full fills the lower air with a soft, yet bright light, in which you can read without difficulty the smallest print. Under this milder illumination, the overpowering luxuriance of the landscape loses its oppressiveness, the hills assume more rounded forms, and from the general obscurity, the palms, a tree made for moonlight, stand out in soft distinctness. At such a time we forget the foul crimes which disfigure the past, and the vices which degrade the present of this fair land, and can easily imagine ourselves in the garden where the yet unfallen progenitors of mankind walked under a firmament 'glowing with living sapphires,' and together hymned the praises of their Creator. Daylight chases away this illusion, but brings back the reality of Christian work, whose rugged but cheerful tasks replace the delicious but ineffectual dreams of Paradise Lost, by the hope of contributing, in some humble measure, toward restoring in a province of fallen earth the lineaments of Paradise Regained.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 8: This was during the Crimean war.]

THE RESTORATION OF THE UNION.

God is on the side of our country. Let us reverently thank him that he has favored the general march of our arms toward the sacred end of our exertions--the defeat of the daring attempt against the unity of our national power and the integrity of our free institutions. Not always in human affairs has the cause of right and freedom prevailed. In the gradual development of human society, as unfolded in the lapse of long ages, the oppressor has generally triumphed, and history has full often been compelled to record the failure of the noblest efforts, and the downfall of the most righteous designs conceived for the benefit of man. Such has been the experience of the race in those parts of the world which have longest been the theatre of human enterprise and of established government. But the American continent seems to present an exception to this uniformity of sinister events: it is destined to be the seat of civil liberty. The success of our institutions in withstanding the awful trial to which they have just been subjected, indicates the existence of providential designs toward our favored country, not to be thwarted by any mortal agency at home or abroad. Such a combination of hostile elements, so powerful and determined, has never before assailed any political structure without overthrowing it. The failure in the present instance shows that our great destiny will be accomplished in the face of all obstacles, however insurmountable they may appear to be.

Providence always accomplishes its ends by appropriate instrumentalities; and in our case there are natural causes adequate to the great result which seems to be inevitable. In North America the principle of equal rights and of unobstructed individual progress has become the fundamental law of society. It is needless to trace the origin and growth of this principle; but its operation has been so powerful and productive, so fully imbued with moral and intellectual power, so solid and safe as a basis of national organization, as shown in the marvellous history of the United States, that no uncongenial principle is capable of resisting it, or even of maintaining an existence by its side. This is true not only with regard to that antagonistic principle which is now desperately but hopelessly waging a suicidal war within the bosom of the great republic; but it is equally true with regard to that insidious germ of despotism, which threatens to push its way through the soil of a neighboring country, displacing the free institutions which have long and sadly languished amid the civil wars of a most unhappy people. The same vigorous vitality which will renew the growth of our national authority and maintain it in the Union, will, at the same time, establish its predominant influence on the continent. Having overborne and rooted out every opposing principle within the boundaries of our own imperial domain, its growth will be so majestic that every unfriendly influence which may possibly have secured a feeble foothold in its vicinity during its perilous struggle, will soon wither in the shadow of its greatness and disappear from around it. Foreign nations may exert their sinister authority in the Old World, and plant their peculiar institutions in that congenial soil, with their accustomed success; but no amount of skilful manipulation will preserve these exotics when transplanted in the American soil. The prevailing elements are not suited to their organization; they cannot be naturalized and acclimated. This continent, with its peculiar population and antecedents, has its own political _fauna_ and _flora_, fixed by nature and destiny, which cannot be utterly changed at the will of any human authority.

The most wicked and disastrous experiment of the age has been tried upon the grandest scale. It was a bold undertaking to break up the American Union, and to arrest the progress of its benign principles. To the great relief and joy of almost universal humanity, the monstrous attempt is about to result in disgraceful failure. Yet this prodigious enterprise of destruction was initiated under the most favorable circumstances, with the most auspicious promise for its fatal success. The malignant envy of all the instruments of despotism throughout the whole civilized world were brought to bear against us for the accomplishment of a work of stupendous ruin--the annihilation of American nationality, American power, and American freedom. All the bad, restless, retrogressive elements of our own population sought alliance with the foreign enemies of human liberty; and, for the most selfish and detestable of all social and political schemes, attempted to prostrate the paternal government of their country, before the expiration of the first century of its unexampled career. Vast armies of deluded citizens, led by degenerate sons of the republic--ingrates, educated at her own military schools--have impiously defied her lawful authority, and sometimes assailed her with unnatural triumph over her arms; while foreign capital, subsidized by prospective piratical plunder, has filled the ocean with daring cruisers to destroy her commerce, and thus to weaken the right hand of her power. Feathers from the wing of her own eagle have plumed the arrows directed at her heart; while the barb has been steeled and sharpened by the aid of mercenary enemies in distant lands--aid purchased by means of the robberies which have desolated one half the land. Deep and dangerous have been the wounds inflicted on our unhappy country through this shameless combination of traitors at home and enemies of humanity abroad; but she still stands erect, though bleeding, with her great strength yet comparatively undiminished, and with her foot uplifted ready to be planted on the breast of her prostrate foes. She holds aloft the glorious banner, its stars still undimmed, and with her mild but penetrating voice, she still proclaims the principles of universal freedom to all who may choose to claim it; and with the sublimity of the most exalted human charity, she invites even the fallen enemy--the misguided betrayers of their country--to return to her bosom and share the protection of her generous institutions. In the hour of her triumph she seeks no bloody vengeance, but tenders a magnanimous forgiveness to her repenting children, wooing them back to the shelter of re-established liberty and vindicated law. All hail to the republic in the splendor of her coming triumph and the renewal of her beneficent power!

It has not been within the ability of reckless treason and armed rebellion to break down the Constitution of the country and permanently destroy its institutions; so will it be as far beyond the capacity, as it ought to be distant from the thoughts of the men now wielding the Federal authority, to operate unauthorized changes in the fundamental law which they have solemnly sworn to support. The strength of the people has been put forth, through the Government--their blood has been profusely poured out, for the sole purpose of maintaining its legitimate ascendency, and of overthrowing and removing the obstacles opposed by the hand of treason to its constitutional action. To uphold the supremacy of the Constitution and laws, is the very object of the war; and it would be a gross perversion of the authority conferred and a palpable misuse of the means so amply provided by Congress, to use them for the purpose of defeating the very end intended to be accomplished. Neither the legislative nor the executive department of the Government could legitimately undertake to destroy or change the Constitution, from which both derive their existence and all their lawful power. It is true that pending a war, either foreign or civil, the Constitution itself confers extraordinary powers upon the Government--powers far transcending those which it may properly exercise in time of peace. These war powers, however, great as they are, and limited only by the laws of and usages civilized nations, are not extra-constitutional; they are expressly conferred, and are quite as legitimate as those more moderate ones which appropriately belong to the Government in ordinary times. But when there is no longer any war--when the Government shall have succeeded in completely suppressing the rebellion--what then will be the proper principle of action? Will not the Constitution of itself, by the simple force of its own terms, revert to its ordinary operation, and spread its benign protection over every part of the country? Will not all the States, returning to their allegiance, be entitled to hold their place in the Union, upon the same footing which they held prior to the fatal attempt at secession? These are indeed momentous questions, demanding a speedy solution.

If we say that the Federal Government may put the States upon any different footing than that established by the existing Constitution, then we virtually abrogate that instrument which accurately prescribes the means by which alone its provisions can be altered or amended. But, on the other hand, if we concede the right of each State, after making war on the Union until it is finally conquered, quietly to return and take its place again with all the rights and privileges it held before, just as if nothing had happened in the _interim_, then, indeed, do we make of the Federal Government a veritable temple of discord. We subject it to the danger of perpetual convulsions, without the power to protect itself except by the repetition of sanguinary wars, whenever the caprice or ambition of any State might lead her into the experiment of rebellion. Between these two unreasonable and contradictory alternatives--the right of the Government to change its forms, and the right of the rebellious State to assume its place in the union without conditions--there must be some middle ground upon which both parties may stand securely without doing violence to any constitutional principle. The Federal Government is clothed with power, and has imposed upon it the duty, to conquer the rebellion. This is an axiom in the political philosophy of every true Union man, and we therefore do not stop to argue a point disputed only by the enemies of our cause. But if the Government has power to conquer the domestic enemy in arms against it, then, as a necessary consequence, it must be the sole judge as to when the conquest has been accomplished; in other words, it must pronounce when and in what manner the state of internal war shall cease to exist. This implies nothing more than the right claimed by every belligerent power, and always exercised by the conqueror--that of deciding for itself how far the war shall be carried--what amount of restraint and punishment shall be inflicted--what terms of peace shall be imposed. The Constitution of the United States does not seem to contemplate the holding, by the Federal Government, of any State as a conquered and dependent province; but in authorizing it to suppress rebellion, it confers every power necessary to do the work effectually. It authorizes the use of the whole military means of the Government, to be applied in the most unrestricted manner, for the destruction of the rebellious power. If a State be in rebellion, then the State itself may be held and restrained by military power, so long as may be necessary, in order to secure its obedience to the Federal laws and the due performance of its constitutional obligations. It would be contradictory and wholly destructive of the right of suppressing rebellion by military power, to admit the irreconcilable right of the State unconditionally to assume its place in the Union, only to renew the war at its own pleasure. Acting in good faith, the Federal Government has the undoubted right to provide for its own security, and to follow its military measures with all those supplementary proceedings which are usual and appropriate to this end. This principle surely cannot be questioned; and if so, it involves everything, leaving the question one only of practical expediency and of good faith in the choice of means.

But it is said there is and indeed can be no war between the Government and any of the States; but only between the former, and certain rebellious individuals in the States. We are well aware that in the ordinary operation of the Federal Government, it acts directly on individuals and not on States. The cause of this arrangement and its purpose are well understood. But in case of war or insurrection, the power must be coextensive with the emergency which calls it forth. If States are actually in rebellion, then of necessity the Government must treat that fact according to its real nature. The fiction of supposing the State to be loyal when its citizens are all traitors, and of considering it incapable of insurrection when all its authorities are notoriously in open rebellion, would be not less pernicious in its folly and imbecility than it would be absurd to the common sense of mankind. Undoubtedly it may be true in some instances, that the rebellion has usurped authority in the States. The will of the people may have been utterly disregarded, and set aside by violence or fraud. The insurrectionary government of the State may be only the government _de facto_ and not _de jure_, using these terms with reference only to the State and its people, and not with reference to the paramount authority of the Union which, under all circumstances, deprives the insurrectionary State organization of any legal character whatever. In all cases of such usurped authority, the people of the States would have the unquestionable right to be restored to the Union upon the terms of their recent connection, without any conditions whatever. It would be the solemn duty of the United States to defend each one of its members from the violence which might thus have overthrown its legitimate government. But, on the other hand, when the people of the States themselves have inaugurated the insurrectionary movement and have voluntarily sustained it in its war upon the Government, then no such favor can reasonably be claimed for them. If excitement and delusion have suddenly hurried them into rebellion against their better judgments and their real inclinations, they are to be pitied for their misfortune, and ought to be treated with great leniency and favor; but they cannot claim exemption from those conditions which may be imperatively demanded for the future security and tranquillity of the country.

If by possibility there might be some technical legal difficulty in this view, there would be none whatever of a practical nature; for any mind gifted with the most ordinary endowment of reason would not fail to be impressed with the gross inconsistency and inequality of holding that rebels may not only set aside the Constitution at their will and make war for its destruction, but may set it up again and claim its protection; while its defenders and faithful asserters must be held to such strict and impracticable regard for its provisions that they may not take the precautions necessary to preserve it, even in the emergency of putting down a rebellion against it. Such an irrational predicament of constitutional difficulties and political contradictions would soon necessitate its own solution. The revolution on the one side would induce a similar revolutionary movement on the other; attempted destruction by violence would justify the measures necessary to the restoration of the Government and to its permanent security in the future. There would be little hesitation in adopting these measures in spite of any doubt as to their regularity. The public safety would be acknowledged as the supreme law, and they who had placed themselves in the attitude of public enemies could not complain of the rigid application of its requirements to them.

The most inveterate of the rebels certainly do not anticipate the relaxation of this principle. They are careful to make known to the Southern people the impossibility of returning to the Union, except upon such conditions as may be prescribed by the conquering power. It is true they do this to deter their followers from indulging the thought of any restoration of their former Federal relations; but this fact of itself shows their consciousness of the justice of the position. They have betrayed their people into a situation from which they cannot reasonably hope to escape without making important concessions to the Federal Government. Their effort now is to convince the misguided population of the South that the required concessions will be more intolerable than the indefinite continuance of a hopeless and destructive civil war.

There is no necessity, however, to go beyond the limits of the Constitution; nor is there any reason to believe that the Government, in any event, will be disposed to exact terms inconsistent with the true spirit of our institutions. A great danger, such as now threatens our country, might, in some circumstances, justify a revolution, altering even the fundamental laws, for the purpose of preserving our national unity. The justification would depend upon the nature of the circumstances--the extremity and urgency of the peril; and the change would be recognized and defended as the result of violence, irregular and revolutionary. At a more tranquil period, in the absence of danger and excitement, it would be practicable to return to the former principles of political action; or, in case of necessity, the sanction of the people might be obtained in the forms prescribed by the Constitution, and the change found necessary in the revolutionary period would either be approved and retained, modified, or altogether rejected.

But fortunately no constitutional obstacle whatever stands in the way of making such stipulations as may be appropriate between the Federal Government and the States; nor would they at all imply any admission of the right of secession, or of the actual efficacy of the attempted withdrawal from the Union. On the contrary, any agreement with the State would, _ex vi termini_, admit the integrity of its organization under the Constitution. Special agreements are usually made whenever a new State is admitted into the Union; and as all the States, old and new, stand upon an equal footing, there can be nothing in the ordinances usually adopted by the new States, conflicting with the principles on which the Government is organized. The States are prohibited from making 'any agreement or compact' with each other, without the consent of the Federal Government; but there is no prohibition against making such agreements with the Federal Government itself. What the new States may do upon entering the Union, the old States may do at any time upon the same conditions This principle was settled upon the admission of Texas into the Union; it has been sanctioned in many other instances; and we are not aware that there is or can be any question of its soundness. Surely, if there could ever be an occasion proper for a solemn compact between the General Government and any of the separate States, it will be found at the conclusion of this unhappy war, when it will be necessary to heal the wounds of the country, and provide for its permanent peace and security. To quell an insurrection so extensive, involving so many States in its daring treason, especially when it has assumed an organized form and been recognized not only by other nations but even by ourselves, as a belligerent entitled to the rights of war, implies the necessity, in addition to the annihilation of its armies and all its warlike resources, of removing the causes of its dissatisfaction, and destroying its means of exciting disturbance. The Government is by no means bound unconditionally to recognize the old relations of States which, as such, have taken part in the rebellion; which have themselves repudiated all their constitutional rights and obligations; and which may again, at any time, renew the war, from the same impulse and for the same cause. On the contrary, the close of the disastrous contest will be a most favorable opportunity for compelling the conquered insurrection to submit to terms such as will deprive it of all capacity for similar mischief in the future. The insurrection will not be effectually suppressed unless its active principle is destroyed. Nothing can be plainer than the right and the solemn duty of the Government in this great emergency.

Supposing these principles to be admitted, there still remains for determination the most important question as to the nature of the conditions which ought to be exacted of the returning States--a problem of the most difficult character, involving the most delicate of all considerations, and demanding for its solution the highest practical statesmanship and the most profound wisdom, based upon moderation, firmness, liberality, and justice. In this problem several elements exist in complicated combination, and each one of these must be fairly considered in the adjustment whenever it may be made. The measures of safety which the Government has been compelled to adopt in the progress of the war, and to which it may be committed without recall; the condition of the rebellious States, and their demands and propositions; and finally, the interests, rights, and just expectations of the African race, which has become so intimately involved in this terrible strife--all these must be weighed accurately in the scales of truth, and with the impartial hand of disinterested patriotism. No mere partisan considerations, no promptings of selfish ambition, and no miserable sectional enmities or fierce desires for revenge, ought to be allowed to mingle with our thoughts and feelings when we approach this great subject of restoring peace and harmony to the people and States of this mighty republic. Awful will be the responsibility of those men in authority, who shall fail to rise to the height of this momentous emergency in the history of our country--who shall be wanting in the courage, the purity, the magnanimity necessary to save the nation from disunion and anarchy.

What ought to be the conditions upon which the rebellious States are to be reëstablished in their old relations, it is perhaps premature now to attempt to determine. The war is not yet closed, although we are sufficiently sanguine to believe that we have already seen 'the beginning of the end.' But the still nearer approach of the final acts in the great drama will give a mighty impetus to events, and many great changes will be wrought in the condition of the Southern people, and in their feelings toward the Union, against which too many of them are still breathing hate and vengeance. They have scarcely yet been sufficiently chastened even by the fiery ordeal through which they have been compelled to pass. Every day, however, increases the bitterness of the scourge under which they suffer, and if it does not avail to humble them, it tends at least to convince them, in their hearts, of the terrible mistake into which they have been led. We may well hope and believe that the masses of the people will soon be brought to that rational frame of mind which will incline them to acknowledge the irresistible exigencies of their situation, and to make those concessions that may be found indispensable to peace and union. As we approach the moment of decisive action, experience will teach us the solemn duty devolving upon us. While we may not at present anticipate fully what will then be necessary, we can nevertheless determine some few principles of a general nature which must control the adjustment.

We will be compelled to consider not only the duty which the Government owes the people, in the matter of their own permanent security, but also the obligations it has assumed, the promises it has made, and the hopes it has excited in the bondsmen of the rebellious States. There must be good faith toward the black man. It would be infamous to have incited him to escape from slavery only to remand him again, upon the restoration of the Union, to the tender mercies of his master. What differences of opinion may have existed in the beginning as to the legality and policy of the Proclamation and of employing the liberated slaves as soldiers, the Government and people are too far committed in this line of action to be able now to withdraw without dishonour and foul injustice. Many of the consequences of the war may be remedied, and even the last vestiges of them obliterated. Cities may be rebuilt, desolated fields made to bloom again with prosperity, and commerce may return to its old channels with even increased activity and volume. Many wounds may be healed, and may separations may be brought to an end by the renewal of friendships broken by the war; but the separation of the slave from his mater, so far as it has been caused by any action of the Government, can never be remedied. That must be an eternal separation, resting for its security upon the humanity as well as the honor of the American people. What! Shall we restore the States unconditionally, and permit the fugitive slave law again to operate as it did before the rebellion? Shall we consent to see the men whom we have invited away from the South dragged back into slavery tenfold more severe by reason of our act inducing them to escape? This is plainly impossible. Argument is wholly out of place; felling and conscience revolt at the very idea. It may be admitted that this question, with its peculiar complications, presents the most difficult and dangerous of all problems; but there is no alternative: we must meet and solve it at the close of this rebellion. We have to combat the selfish interests of a class still powerful, aided by the great strength of a popular prejudice almost universal. The emergency will require the exertion of all our wisdom and all our energy.

The vast body of slaves in the South have not yet been incited to action, either by the movements of our armies or by the potency of the Proclamation. Whether they will be, and to what extent, depends upon the continuance of the war, and its future progress. The result in this particular remains to be seen, and cannot now be anticipated. What legal effect the measures of the Government may have upon the slaves remaining in the South would be a question for the decision of the courts; and doubtless most of them would be entitled to liberation as the penalty of the treason of their masters, who may have participated in the rebellion. But it is well worthy of consideration whether it would not be wise and better for all parties, including the slaves, to commute this penalty by a compact with the States for the gradual emancipation of the slaves remaining at the time of the negotiation. The sudden and utter overthrow of the existing organization of labor and capital in those States, coming in addition to the awful devastation which the war has produced, will deal a disastrous blow, not alone to those unfortunate States, but to the commerce and industry of the whole country.

But neither the Government of the United States alone, nor this together with the Africans, liberated and unliberated, can prescribe their own requirements, as the law of the emergency, without reference to other great interests involved. The question must necessarily be controlled by the sum of all the political elements which enter into it. It is desirable to restore the States to the Union with as little dissatisfaction as possible, and even with all the alleviation which can properly be afforded to the misfortunes of the people who have so sadly erred in their duty to themselves and to their country. After any settlement--the most favorable that can be made--heavy will be the punishment inflicted by the great contest upon the unhappy population of the rebellious region. In many things, it is true, they will suffer only in common with the people of all the States; but they will also have their own peculiar misfortunes in addition to the common burdens. A generous Government, in the hour of its triumph, will seek to lessen rather than to aggravate their misfortunes, even though resulting from their crimes. Having received them back into the bosom of the Union, it will do so heartily and magnanimously, yielding everything which does not involve a violation of principle, and endanger the future tranquillity of the country. The harmony of the States, their homogeneity, and their general progress in all that contributes to the greatness and happiness of communities, ought to be, and doubtless will be, the benign object of the Government in the settlement of the existing difficulty. If these high purposes necessarily require in their development a provision for the rapid disappearance of slavery, the requirement will not arise from any remaining hostility to the returning States; on the contrary, it will look to their own improvement and prosperity, quite as much as to the peace and security of the whole country. The day will yet arrive when these States themselves will gratefully acknowledge that all the sacrifices of the war will be fully compensated by the advantages of that great and fundamental change, which they will undoubtedly now accept only with the utmost reluctance and aversion.

WAS HE SUCCESSFUL?

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

'SUCCESSFUL.--Terminating in accomplishing what is wished or
intended.'--WEBSTER'S _Dictionary_.