Chapter XIII (2)

I have thrown out these general preliminary thoughts concerning the nature of woman, and her relations to man and to society, chiefly with reference to a phase of the subject which has not seemed to engage the attention either of women themselves or of those who assume to advocate their cause. It is the important consideration whether, in a free and republican land, woman holds any certain and special relation toward the Government. In other words, have American women any vital share or interest in this grand, free Government of ours? With all the emphasis of a profound conviction, I, answer, _Yes_. Such a touching and intimate interest as no women ever had before in any Government under the sun. And why?

_Because the principles embodied in and represented by it have made her what she is, and they alone can make her what she hopes to be._

If it be true that the position of woman in society is a sure test of its civilization, then is our American society already in the van of progress. Nowhere else in the world is woman so free, so respected, so obeyed, so beloved; nowhere else is the ideal of womanhood so chivalrously worshipped and protected. In the spirit of our political theory, that no class of society is to be regarded as permanently and necessarily disabled from progress and elevation--to which, in our practice, we have hitherto made but _one_ wicked and shameful exception--and under the influence of the powerful tendency of our system to _individualism_, woman has been allowed a freedom heretofore unparalleled, and _onward and upward_ is still the word.

I do not claim perfection for our system. But I say we have the germs of the healthiest national development. All that remains is to carry forward those germs to maturity, and let them show their legitimate results unhampered. That is what we want, what we claim. Society here is unformed, in the rough. We lack the outward grace and polish belonging only to old societies. We shall yet attain these, as well as some other desirable things; but I believe that in no other country in the world is there so much genuine, delicate, universal devotion manifested for woman as among the Americans. Have you seen a boy of fourteen, shy, awkward, uncouth in manner, rough in speech, but with a great, tender heart thumping in his bosom? And did you know of the idolatrous worship he could not wholly conceal for some fair, sweet, good girl older than himself, a woman, even--a worship, which was not love, if love be other than a high and tender sentiment, but which was capable of filling his being to overflow with its glory and richness? I liken our American chivalry to this. And it is this instinctive natural politeness of our men toward women that, as much as anything else, keeps us from being rude and unrefined while yet in our first adolescence.

I am aware that, hitherto, the South has laid claim to the lion's share of this gallant spirit, as it has of many other polite and social qualities. But we do not so readily now, as a few years ago, yield to these Southern assumptions. We know now for just how much they stand. And we know, too, in the better light of this hour, that it is not possible for a very high and pure ideal of womanhood to be conceived in the atmosphere of a system which, as slavery does, persistently, on principle, and on a large scale, degrades a portion of the sex, no matter how weak, poor, defenceless. Rather, the more defenceless the greater is the wrong, the shame. I am not lauding that gallantry which stands in polite posture in the presence of a lady, hat in hand, and with its selectest bow and smile, and in the same breath turns to commit the direst offences against the peace and purity of womanhood; but that true and hearty, though simple and unostentatious, reverence for the sex, that teaches men to regard all women as worthy of freedom, respect, and protection, simply by virtue of their womanhood. I say not that this chivalry is a Southern, but that it is an _American_ trait. As such I am proud of it.

But does this high and honored place they hold in the hearts of their countrymen devolve no corresponding responsibility upon American women? Is it not a momentous inquiry how far they fall short of the high and commanding standard of thought and action demanded of them in order to meet this heavy obligation? It seems to me that the time is fully ripe for the clearer perception of the fact, that because women are not men, it does not follow that they are not in an important sense citizens. And this, without any reference to the question whether they should be permitted to vote and to legislate; though, as to the former, I do not know of a single valid objection to the exercise of the privilege, while there are several weighing in its favor; and as to the latter, it seems to me that one single consideration would forever, under the present constitution of things, debar her from a share in direct and positive legislation. It is as follows: The central idea of all properly constituted society, without which society would be an incoherent chaos, and governments themselves but the impotent lords of anarchy and misrule, is _the home_. Of the home, woman, from the very nature of the case, is the inspiriting genius, the ever-present and ever-watchful guardian. And the home, with its purities, its sanctities, its retiracies, its reticences, is far removed from the noise and wranglings of popular assemblies, the loud ambitions and selfish chicaneries of political arenas. The very foundation, pivotal ideas of human nature would be undermined by such publicity. The value of the home, as the nursery of whatever is pure, lovely, holy in the human soul, rests absolutely on the preservation of the modest purity and grace of woman.

How, then, is woman's influence as a citizen in a republican land to be exercised, if she be excluded from positive legislation? I answer, by the moral effect of her personal influence in the formation of mind and character; by her work as the great educator in the home and in society. If hers be not a moral and spiritual influence, it is none at all for good. And of all the powers for good in a republic, this is the strongest, most beneficent, did woman rightly comprehend the issue.

The purity, safety, and perpetuity of a free government rest, ultimately, not so much on forms of law, on precedents, on the ascendency of this or that party or administration, but on the intelligence, morality, and devotion to freedom of the people. What should woman care to legislate, when she may wield such an engine of power as education puts into her hands; when she may mould the minds and inspire the souls of those who are to be the future legislators; when she may, even now, put forth a direct and immediate influence upon those who are the legislators of the present time? For her influence on society is twofold, direct and reflex, present and prospective; it is the most powerful known, the most subtile and secret and determining, viz., _personal_ influence.

To this end, therefore, that she may influence in the right direction, women need to inform themselves, to acquire a knowledge of the principles on which our system rests, and to become thoroughly imbued with their spirit. This will necessitate an acquaintance with the nature and details of our political creed, of which our women, especially, are lamentably ignorant. How many out of every hundred, do you suppose, have even read the Constitution, for instance? You may say that the majority of men have never studied it either, even of the voters. I admit the fact. There is a terrible lack of information among even men on public subjects. But I think this: if women were to educate themselves and their children, all whom they influence, indeed, to make these subjects a matter of _personal interest_, instead of regarding them as foreign matters, well enough for lawyers and politicians, perhaps, to understand, or for those who expect to fill office, but of no manner of importance to a person in strictly private life, this ignorance would come to an end. This shifting of personal responsibility by the great majority is the bane of our system. The truth is, no one, in a republican government, can lead an absolutely private career. As one who exercises the elective franchise, or one who influences the same, be it man or woman, there is no dodging the responsibility of citizenship. A better State of information on public affairs, also, will induce a correct conception of a certain class of ideas which, more than any others, perhaps, tend to strengthen, deepen, broaden, solidify the mental powers--ideas of absolute law and justice. As I have before said, the female mind is deficient in this particular.

To understand their government and institutions, then, is the first step in the attainment of the standard demanded of American women; or, in other words, an increase of political knowledge--a more thorough political education.

Another step is, the enlargement and strengthening of their patriotism. The former step, too, will conduce to this, and be its natural consequence. I do not mean alone that loose and vagrant sentiment which commonly passes for patriotism, which is aroused at some particular occasion and slumbers the rest of the time; which is spasmodic, temporary, impulsive, and devoid of principle; but that love of country founded on knowledge and conviction; a living faith of the heart based upon duty and principle; and which is, therefore, all-pervading, abiding, intelligent, governing thought and action, and conforming the life to the inner spirit. That sort of patriotism that lives as well in peace time as in war time; that makes the heart throb as sympathetically in behalf of country every day in the year as on the Fourth of July; that leads us to conform our habits of life and thought to the spirit of our institution and policy; that makes us as jealous of the honor, the consistent greatness of our country when all men speak well of her, as when her foes are bent upon her destruction. This _habit of mind_ is what I mean, rather than any transient emotion of heart; an enlightened and habitual spirit of patriotism.

I give American women all credit due them for the patriotic temper they have evinced since this war began. I say that never have women showed more loyalty and zeal for country than the women of the North. Let sanitary fairs and commissions, let soldiers' aid societies from one end of the land to the other, and in every nook and corner of it, let our hospitals everywhere attest this heartfelt love and devotion on the part of our women. It is a noble spectacle, and my heart thrills at the thought of it. We have many noble ones who will stand in history along with England's Florence Nightingale and the 'Mother of the Gracchi,' those eternally fair and tender women, fit for the love and worship of the race. The want is not in the feeling of patriotism, but in the habitual principle and duty of the same. Since the war began, the fire has not slackened. But how was it before the war, and how will it be after it?

To prove what I say, let me dwell a moment on two or three of the most prominent faults of our women, pronounced such by all the world. Of these, the most mischievous and glaring, the most ruinous in thousands of cases, is _extravagance_. Wastefulness is almost become a trait of our society. American women, especially, are profuse and lavish of money in dress, in equipage, in furniture, in houses, in entertainments, in every particular of life. Everywhere this foolish and wasteful use of money challenges the surprise and sarcasm of the observant foreign tourist through our country. Perhaps the largeness and immensity of our land, its resources and material, as well as the wonderful national advance we have already made, tends to cultivate in our people a feeling of profusion and a habit of extravagant display; but it is not in sympathy either with our creed or our profession.

Were the money thus heedlessly expended made for them by slaves whom they had from infancy been taught to regard as created solely to make money for them to use and enjoy, this extravagant waste of money, while none the less selfish and inexcusable, would appear to grow spontaneously out of the arbitrary rule of slavery; or, if it had descended to them by legal or ancestral inheritance, there might be some show of reason for using it carelessly, though very small sense in so doing. But in a land where labor is the universal law; where, if a man makes money, he must work and sweat for its possession; when fortunes do not arise by magic, but must be built up slowly, painfully, at the expense of the nerve and sinew, the brain and heart of the builders, and these builders, not slaves, but our fathers, husbands, brothers; when a close attention to money-making is rapidly becoming a national badge, and is in danger of eating out entirely what is of infinitely more value than wealth--a high national integrity and conscience--and of sinking the immaterial and intellectual in the material and sensual; in such circumstances as these, I say, and under such temptations and dangers, it is a sin, an unnatural crime, to squander what costs so dear.

Volumes might be written upon the frightful consequences of this extravagance in money matters, this living too fast and beyond their means, of which American women, especially, are guilty. Great financial crises, in which colossal schemes burst like bubbles, and vast estates are swallowed up like pebbles in the sea; commercial bankruptcies, in which honorable names are bandied on the lips of common rumor, and white reputations blackened by public suspicion; minds, that started in life with pure and honest principles, determined to win fortune by the straight path of rectitude, gradually growing distorted, gradually letting go of truth, honor, uprightness, and ending by enthroning gold in the place made vacant by the departed virtues; hearts, that were once responsive to the fair and beautiful in life and in the universe, that throbbed in unison with love, pity, kindness, and were wont to thrill through and through at a noble deed or a fine thought, now pulseless and hard as the nether millstone; souls, that once believed in God, heaven, good, and had faith and hope in immortality, now worshipping commercial success and its exponent, money, and living and dying with their eager but fading eyes fixed earthward, dustward!

Oh, it is a fearful thought that woman's extravagant desires and demands may thus kill all that is best and highest in those who should be her nearest and dearest. Yet, if this wide-spread evil of wastefulness is to be checked, it must be begun in the home, and by its guardian, woman. There is a movement lately inaugurated, looking to retrenchment in the matter of unnecessary expenditure, which, if it is to be regarded other than as a temporary expedient, is worthy of the patriotic enthusiasm which called it forth. I allude to the dress-reform movement made by the loyal women of the great Northern cities. The _spirit_ of this movement I could wish to see illustrated both during the continuance of and after the war. It is this economical habit of mind for the sake of patriotic principle, that I regard as a great step in the attainment of the desired standard for American women.

Another plain fault of our women, and one which in a measure is the cause of the fault above noticed, is the wild chase after and copying of European fashions. We are accused of being a nation of copyists. This is more than half true. And why we should be, I cannot understand. Are we _never_ to have anything original, American? Are we always to be content to be servile imitators of Europe in our art, literature, social life, everything, except mere mechanical invention? I am thankful that we are beginning to have an art, a literature, of our very own. Let us also have a _fashion_, that shall be, distinctively, if not entirely, American. There is surely enough of us, of our splendid country, our institutions, our theories, our brave, free people, to build for ourselves, from our own foundation, and with our own material. But American Women have yet to inspire society with this patriotic ambition.

Not what is becoming or suitable to her, but what is _the fashion_, does the American woman buy; not what she can afford to purchase, but what her neighbors have, is too commonly the criterion. This constant pursuit of Fashion, with her incessant changes, this emulation of their neighbors in the manifold ways in which money and time can be alike wasted, and not the necessary and sacred duties of home, the personal attention and effort which the majority of American women have to give to their household affairs, produce that _lack of time_ that is offered as an excuse for the neglect of the duty of self-culture. This it is which fritters away thought and the taste for higher things, leaving the mind blank and nerveless except when thus superficially excited.

This duty of _self-culture_ I would notice as one of the demands of the times upon American women in the attainment of the proposed standard. A wide, liberal, generous self-culture, of intellect, of taste, of conscience, for the sake of the better fulfilment of the mission to which, as an American citizen, every woman in the land is called. We do not begin to realize this. It is a great defect in our social system, that, when a woman has left school and settled down in life, she considers it the signal for her to quit all mental acquisition except what she may gather from her desultory reading, and, henceforth, her family and her immediate neighborhood absorb her whole soul under ordinary circumstances. The great majority of our countrywomen thus grow careworn, narrow-minded, self-absorbed. Now this is not right--it is not necessary. A woman's first, most important duty is in her home; but this need not clip the wings of her spirit, so that thought and affection cannot go out into the great world, and feel themselves a part of its restless, throbbing, many-sided life; brain and heart need not stagnate, even if busy, work-a-day life does claim her first endeavors. Indeed, the great danger to our women is not so much that they will become trifling and frivolous, as that they will become narrow-minded and selfish.

But these vices of extravagance and excessive devotion to fashion, of which I have spoken, are due, largely, to a still more radical defect in our social education. I mean its _anti-republican spirit_. This is our crowning absurdity. We are good democrats--in theory. It is a pity that our practice does not bear out our theory, for the sake of the homely virtue of consistency. To a great many otherwise sensible people our simple republican ways are distasteful, and they are apt to look with, admiring, envious eyes on the conventional life of foreign lords, not considering how burdened with forms it is, and full of the selfishness, the pride and arrogance of the privileged and titled few, at the bitter expense of the suffering, untitled many. The aping of aristocratic pretensions has been a much-ridiculed foible of American women. It is certain that American society needs republicanizing in all its grades. We have widely departed from the simplicity of the early days and of the founders of the republic, in social life, just as in our political course we had suffered the vital essence of our organic law to become a dead thing, and the whole machinery of the Government to work reversely to its intention. And the cause has been the same in each case. The spirit of a government and the theories embodying it are the reflection of the social condition of a given age and people, so that the one will never be of a higher order than the other; while it is, also, equally true, that the best and most advanced political theories may be suffered to languish in operation, or become wholly dormant, from the influence of social causes. Thus it was that the demoralising effect of human slavery did, up to the time of the great shock which the nation received in the spring of 1861--a shock which galvanized it into life, and sent the before vitiated blood coursing hotly, and, at last, healthfully through all the veins and arteries of the national body--persistently encroach alike upon Government and society. The slime of that serpent was over everything in the North as well as the South, and if it did not kill out the popular virtue and patriotism as completely here as there, where it is intimately interwoven with the life of the people, the difference is due to that very cause, as well as to the inextinguishable vitality that God has conferred on the genius of human liberty, so that when betrayed, hunted, starved, outlawed, she yet seeks some impregnable fastness, and subsists on manna from the Divine Hand. This, then, is the fourth step in the attainment of the true ideal of character for American women--_the effort to renew society in the actual simplicity of our republican institutions_. Women, American women, should hold dear as anything in life the preservation and purity of those blessed institutions, guaranteeing to them as they do all their eminent privileges, and founded as they are on that emancipating genius of Christianity, which, through every age, has pointed a finger of hope, love, encouragement to woman as a chief instrument in the world's promised elevation and enfranchisement.

While dwelling upon the faults of American women, I would at the same time do full credit to their virtues. I believe that they occupy as high a place as any women in the world, even a higher. But I trust that they will rise to the height of the demands which the changed times and the exigencies of the situation are pressing upon them, and will continue to press. This war has clearly and forcibly eliminated truths and principles which the long rule of the slave power had wellnigh eclipsed; it has been a very spear of Ithuriel, at whose keen touch men and principles start up in their real, not their simulated character. During its three years of progress, the national education has been advanced beyond computation. When it is over, things, ideas, will not go back to the old standpoint. Then will arise the new conditions, demands, possibilities. If there is one truth that has been unmistakably developed by the war, it is the controlling moral power and sanction which a free government derives from woman. And this has been shown not only in the influence for good which the loyal women of the North have contributed for the aid of the Government, but with equal power in the influence for evil which the Southern women have exerted for its destruction. I suppose it is true that this war for slavery has received its strongest, fiercest continuing impulses from the women of the South. Nothing could exceed the enthusiasm, the persistency, the heroic endurance, the self-sacrifice they have manifested. Only had it been in a good cause!

Just here let me say a word in behalf of these Southern women. There is a disposition on the part of the Northern public, forming their opinion from the instances of fierce spite and vindictiveness, of furious scorn and hatred, which have been chronicled in the reports of army correspondents and in the sensation items of the newspapers, to regard them as little short of demons in female shape. All this is naturally working a corresponding dislike and ill-feeling among the masses North. To such I would say: These Southern sisters are not demons, but made of the same flesh and blood, and passions and affections as yourselves. The difference between you is purely one of circumstances and training, of locality--above all, of education and institutions. It is as true that _institutions are second nature_ as that _habit_ is.

The peculiar faults of Southern women they share with their Northern sisters, only in a vastly enhanced degree; and besides these, they have others, born of and nurtured by that terrible slavery system under whose black shadow they live and die. Their idleness, their lack of neatness and order, their dependence, their quick and sometimes cruel passions, their unreason, their contempt of inferiors, their vanity and arrogance, their ignorance, their lightness and superficiality, are all the outgrowth of its diabolical influences. They are, in fact, no more idle, thriftless, passionate, or supercilious, than Northern women would be in similar circumstances. It is too much the habit among the unreflecting, in judging of the Southern masses in their hostile attitude toward their lawful Government, to give less weight than it deserves to the necessary and inevitable tendency upon the mind and character of such an institution as African slavery; and to let the blame be of a personal and revengeful nature, which should fall most heavily on the sin itself, the dire crime against God and society, against himself and his fellow man, which the individual is all his life taught is no crime but a positive good. This slavery is woman's peculiar curse, bearing almost equally with its deadly, hideous weight on the white woman of the dominant class as upon the black slave woman. And yet how deluded they are! If that curse does come to an utter end in the South, as it surely will, I shall hail, as one of the grandest results of its extinction, next to the justice due the oppressed people of color, the emancipation of the white women of that fair land, all of them, slaveholders and non-slaveholders, from an influence too withering and deadly for language to depict. Oh, when shall that scapegoat, slavery, with its failures and losses and shortcomings, its frauds and sins and woes, be sent off into the wilderness of non-existence, to be heard from nevermore? God speed the hour!

But with all their faults, they have many and shining virtues. Though the ideal of a Southern woman commonly received at the North and abroad, is not true to the life, being neither so perfect nor so imperfect as their eulogists, on the one hand, and their detractors, on the other, would fain make it to be, there is yet much, very much, to elicit both love and admiration in her character.

The Southern female mind is precocious, brilliant, impressible, ardent, impulsive, fanciful. The quickness of parts of many girls of fifteen is astonishing. I used often to think, what splendid women they would make, with the training and facilities of our Northern home and school education. But, as it was, they went under a cloud at seventeen, marrying early, and either sinking into the inanition of plantation life, or having their minds dissipated in a vain and frivolous round of idle and selfish gayeties. I compare their intellects to a rich tropical plant, which blossoms gorgeously and early, but rarely fruitens. The Southern women are, for the most part, a capable but undeveloped race of beings. With their precocity, like the exuberance of their vegetation, and with their quick, impassioned feelings, like their storm-freighted air, always bearing latent lightning in its bosom, they might become a something rich, rare, and admirable; but, never bringing thought up to the point of reflection; never learning self-control, nor the necessity of holding passion in abeyance; never getting beyond the degrading influence of intercourse with a race whose stolidity and servility, the inevitable result of their condition, on the one hand, are both the cause and effect of the habit of irresponsible power and selfish disregard of right fostered in the ruling class, on the other--what could be expected of them but to become splendid abortions?

There is another consideration in connection with the excessive war spirit they have evinced, which may help to account for it. I have often had occasion to notice the habit the educated class of Southern women have of conversing familiarly with their male friends and relatives on political subjects, and to contrast it with the almost total reticence of Northern women on subjects of public interest. This, of course, induces a more immediate and personal interest in them, and the more intimate one's interest in a subject, the more easily enthusiasm is aroused toward it.

Now, the very head and front, the bone and marrow of Southern politics for more than three decades, has been--slavery, and plans for its aggrandizement and perpetuation. _That_ has been the ulterior object of all the past vociferations about _State rights_ and _Southern rights_. Slavery is country, practically, with them, and as it lay at the root of their society, and its check or its extinction would, in their false view, overturn society itself, it was easy for the scheming, cunning leaders of the slave faction to adroitly transfer this enthusiasm, and to raise the watchword, which never yet among any people has been raised in vain, _Your homes and firesides_! When ever did women hear that cry unmoved?

When _country_, that grand idea and object of human hope, pride, and affection, had degenerated into a section; and when a false and miserable _institution_, from its very nature terribly intimate with the life of society, became the most substantial feature of that section; what wonder if the war has at last, whatever it might have been at first, come to the complexion of a contest for home and fireside with the masses of the people, with the majority of the Southern women?

The magnificent dreams and projects, too, of a great slave empire, that should swallow up territory after territory, and astonish the world with its wealth, power, and splendor, which were fused into life in the brains of the great apostles of slavery and secession, had their influence on minds which, like the minds of the Southern women, have a natural, innate love for the gorgeous, the splendid, the profuse, and showy; minds ambitious of, and accustomed to, rule, and impatient of control; minds already glazed over with the influence of the lying assertion, proved to their uncritical, passionate judgment by all the sophistical arguments of which their religious and political guides were capable, that slavery is the very best possible condition for the black man, and the relation of master the only true and natural one for the white. I say, I do not wonder at the Southern women so much. I pity them infinitely. Just think what they have been educated to believe, and then say if there is not something sadly splendid in the very spirit of endurance, of defiance, of sacrifice, however wrong and mistaken, they have shown. I pity them profoundly, for they are drinking to the lees the cup of suffering, of deprivation, of humiliation, of bitter loss, and stern retribution. And the end is not yet. Deeper chagrin and humiliation must be theirs; more loss, more devastation, more death, and ruin, before their proud hopes and visions are utterly crushed out of life. Oh, are _they_ not being educated, too, as well as we of the North?

When I think of all the grace, loveliness, and generosity of the many Southern women I have known and loved; when I recall the admirable qualities which distinguished them, the grace of manner, the social tact and address, the intellectual sprightliness, the openness and hospitality of soul, the kindliness and sympathy of heart, the Christian gentleness and charity; I can but say to my Northern sisters, These deluded women of the South would, in themselves, be worthy of your esteem and love, could the demon of secession and slavery once be exorcised. And I believe that when it is, and the poor, rent South sits clothed and in her right mind, subdued through sheer exhaustion of strength, and so made fit for the healthy recuperation that is one day to begin, the cause of our beloved country, and of humanity through this country, will have no more generous or loving supporters, ay, none so enthusiastic and devoted as they. I glory in the anticipation of the time when the ardent, impulsive, demonstrative South shall even lead the colder North in the manifestation of a genuine patriotism, worthy of the land and nation that calls it forth. We shall then have gained _a country_, indeed, instead of being, as heretofore, several sections of a country.

The consistent moulding of society in the spirit of our political ideas is essential to securing us the respect of the world, and to vindicating the principles, themselves, on which having built, they are our sole claim to such honor and respect. As long as we fail so to do, we may be the wonder, and we are likely to be the jest of the onlooking world, but we never can be what we ought to be, its admired and beloved model. It seems to me there is less danger now than formerly of our failure in this important respect. The dangers, the expenses, the burdens, and losses of this fearful civil war will surely create in the hearts of the people everywhere, North and South, a revivified if not a new-born love for, and appreciation of, republican principles, and will teach them where the most insidious danger to them lies; not from open foes, foreign or domestic; not from anything inherent in those free principles; but from a cause exceedingly paradoxical: a democratic people leaving to a party, to a section, the Government which should be their very own; the virtue and intelligence of the nation absenting themselves from the national councils, thus making way for corruption and fraud to enter in an overwhelming flood; one half of the nation rocking its conscience to sleep with the false lullaby of commercial greatness and material prosperity, and the other, left to do the governing, with seemingly no conscience at all, going to work with satanic directness and acuteness, to undermine the principles thus left without a guardian, and to inject the black blood of slavery into the veins of the body politic, till the name _democracy_ became a misnomer the most wretched, a sarcasm the most touching. I do not imagine we shall ever again go back to that. It must be that, in future, the American people will grow into the habit of demanding that an enlightened, patriotic statesmanship shall rule, instead of an unprincipled demagoguism. Also, that they will attend to it that better men are sent to Washington; men chosen because they represent most nearly the great national ideas and interests, which the people will require shall absorb legislation rather than any sectional institution whatever; and not because, primarily, they are the subservient idols of this or that party. It must be that, hereafter, party will be less and the nation more. Of course, parties will exist, necessarily; but if this great American people, having carried on to perfect success this war against a stupendous rebellion, and having gone through the school of knowledge and experience it has been to them, can again settle down into the mere political jobbery into which governmental affairs had deteriorated before the earthquake of war stirred up the dregs of things, it would be an instance of fruitless expenditure of means and life, and of self-stultification, too pitiful for words--such an instance as the world has not yet seen, thanks to the ordained progression of the world.

When peace returns to the land once more; when the fierce fever of blood and strife is quelled; when the vague fears and uncertainties of this period of transition are over, and the keen pangs and bloody sweat of the nation's new birth are all past--what will be the position of this American people? I tremble to contemplate it. It will be much like what I imagine the condition of a freed, redeemed soul to be, just escaped the thraldom, perplexity, and sin of this lower life, and entered on a purer, higher, freer plane of existence. Then comes reconstruction, reorganization, a getting acquainted with the new order of things, and the new duties and experiences to which it will give rise; then will be discoveries of new truths, and new applications of old; old errors and superstitions have been renounced, and facts and principles which have long lain in abeyance, smothered under a weight of neglect and unappreciation, will start into fresh magnitude. And, withal, will come a sense of the reality and security there is in this great change, and of infinite relief and blessedness therein, such as I suppose attends every change from a lower to a higher condition, from darkness to light, from cloud, mystery, and trouble, to the white air of peace and the clear shining of the sun of knowledge.

_Then_, think of the career that lies ahead of this regenerated nation. This war, fearful and costly as it is, was needed, to rouse men and women to the conviction that there is something more in a people's life than can be counted in dollars and cents; and that their strength consists not alone in commercial superiority or material development, but, principally, in virtue, justice, righteousness. It was needed, to give the lie to that impious and infidel assumption of the South that _Cotton is king_, and to prove that the God of this heaven-protected land is a true and jealous God, who will not give his glory to Baal. It was needed, to arrest the nation in the fearful mechanical tendency it was assuming, whereby it was near denying the most holy and vital principles of its being; and it was needed, to warm and quicken the almost dead patriotism of the masses, and to educate them anew in the high and pure sentiments they had suffered to be forgotten, and, in forgetting which, many another ration has gone to irretrievable decay and ruin.

I trust in God that this people have not suffered many things in vain, and that the time is dawning when we shall be a _nation_ indeed, a Christian nation, built upon those eternal ideas of truth, justice, right, charity, holiness, which would make us the ideal nation of the earth, dwelling securely under the very smile and benediction of Jehovah.

In this time of which I speak, the people will see that to be a _nation_ we must not be merely servile imitators of Old World ideas, but must develop our own _American ideas_ in every department of government and society; thus, eventually, building up a national structure which shall, which need, yield to none, but may take precedence of all.

We are too young, as yet, to have become such a nation, with its distinctive and separate features, each clearly marked and self-illustrating; but _not_ too young to understand the necessity of working out our own special plan of civilization. As the American nation did not follow the course of all others, by mounting from almost impalpable beginnings up through successive stages to an assured position of national influence and greatness; so need we not imitate them in waiting for gray hairs to see ourselves possessed of a distinct national character. As we did not have to go through the slow, age-long process of originating, of developing ideas, principles, but took them ready made, a legacy from the experience of all the foregoing ages; and as our business is to apply these ideas to the problem we are set to solve, not for ourselves alone, but for the world's peoples, for aggregate humanity, so should we be neither laggard nor lukewarm in fulfilling this high trust, this 'manifest destiny.' In the developing of our special American ideas we have a great work before us--a work but begun, as yet. There is an American art--an American literature--an American society, as well as an American Government, to be shaped out of the abundant material we possess, and compacted into the enduring edifice of national renown. For what is national character, but ideas crystallized in institutions? Until we have done this--given permanency to our special ideas in our institutions--we are a nation in embryo; our manhood exists only in prophecy.

To assist in this mighty work is the duty and privilege of American women. What higher ambition could actuate their endeavors--what nobler meed of glory win their aspirations?

O ye women, dear American sisters, whoever you are, who have offered up your husbands, sons, brothers, lovers, on the red altar of your country, that so that country may be rescued from the foes that seek her honor and life; who have labored and toiled and spent your efforts in supplying the needs of her brave defenders; whose hearts and prayers are all for the success of our holy cause; who are glad with an infinite joy at her successes, and who are sorry with profoundest grief at her defeats; complete, I implore you, the sacrifice already begun, and give to your regenerated country, in the very dawn of the new day which is to see her start afresh upon the shining track of national glory, yourselves, your best energies, and affections. Love liberty--love justice--love simplicity--love truth and consistency. See to it that the cause of republican freedom suffer not its greatest drawback from your failure to lead society up to the point to which you have the power to educate it. By your office as the natural leaders and educators of society; by your mission as the friends and helpers of all who suffer; by your high privilege as the ordained helpmate of man in the work, under God and His truth, of evangelizing the world, and lifting it out of its sin and sorrow; by your obligations to the glorious principles of Christian republicanism; and by your hopes of complete ultimate enfranchisement, I adjure you. The world has need of you, the erring, sin-struck world. Your country, even now struggling in the throes of its later birth, has desperate need of you. Man has need of you; already are being woven between the long-estranged sexes new and indissoluble bonds of union,--sympathies, beautiful, infinite, deathless; and, with a pleased and tender smile of recognition across the continent, he hails you _helper_! Your era dawns in sad and sombre seeming, indeed, in a land deluged with fraternal blood; but yours are all who need, all who sin, all who suffer. Shall the progress of humanity wait upon your supineness, or neglect, or refusal? Or shall the era now beginning, through you speedily culminate into the bright, perfect day of your country's redemption, and thus lead progress and salvation throughout the nations of the earth? Never were women so near the attainment of woman's possibilities as we American women; never so near the realization of that beautiful ideal which has ever shaped the dreams and colored the visions of mankind, making Woman the brightest star of man's love and worship.

Will she realize the dream--will she justify the worship? That is the question that concerns her now.

A WREN'S SONG.

It is not often in these dark days that I can sleep as I used to do before the flood came and swept away all that my soul held dear; but last night, I was so weary in body with a long journey, that I fell asleep as soon as my head touched the pillow, and slept on until the early morning sun came in through the open window, and woke me with its gentle touch. The air was sweet with spring fragrance, and the first sound that came to my awakened ears was the song of a little wren, a little wren who sang even as to-day in the days of my youth and joy, whose nest is built over the window that was so often a frame for that dearest-loved face. The song brought with it the recollection of all the little songster had outlived--the love, hope, and fear that had sprung up and grown and died, since I had first heard his warbling. And I broke into those quiet tears that are now my only expression of a grief too familiar to be passionate.

To-day is the first of June--a year to-day since all was over!

Three years ago, this very day, was to have been my wedding day. June and its roses were made for lovers, as surely as May, with its May flowers and little lilies, is the month of Mary the Blessed. I had always wished to be married in June, and circumstances combined to render that time more convenient than any other. My love affair had been a long one, and had met with no obstacles. Our families had always been intimate, and I remember _him_ a boy of fourteen, when he first came to live in the house opposite. At sixteen he went to West Point, and when he came home in his furlough year, I was fifteen. We were both in Washington until August; it was a long session; his father was in Congress, and so was mine. Edward Mayne had nothing to do that summer, and I never had much to occupy me; we saw each other every day, and so we fell in love. The heads of both families saw all, smiled a little, and teased a good deal; but no one interfered. My mother said it gave me occupation and amusement, and helped me to pass the long summer evenings, which I thought charming, and every one else thought a bore. It was called a childish flirtation, and when he went back to the Academy, and I to school, the thing dropped out of notice, and was soon forgotten.

But not by us. We remembered each other, and, each in our different lives, we were constant to our early love. And so it came to pass that, when he came back again, after graduating, we were very glad to see each other; the old intercourse was renewed, and the old feeling showed itself stronger for the lapse of years. No one interfered with us; the intimacy between our families had continued, and when we went to the seaside for the hot months, the Maynes went to the same place; and in August Edward had a leave, and came down to join them. I think he would have come if they had not been there, but that makes no difference now. One moonlit night, at the end of August, with the waves at our feet sounding their infinite secret, I promised to marry him; and as we parted that night at the door of our cottage, I looked at the silver-streaked waters, and said to him that neither the broad sea of death nor the stormy sea of life should ever part my soul from his. I have kept my word.

So we were engaged to be married, and were as happy as two young lovers ought to be. Both families were delighted, my father only stipulating that the marriage should not take place immediately. But that we felt no hardship, as Edward was stationed in Washington; and everything in the future looked as bright as everything in the past had ever been. We were sure of a happy winter, and hoped for a gay one, and we had both, though the cloud that had first appeared when the little wren began his summer song, had grown larger and darker day by day, until the signs of storm were no longer to be overlooked, and the fearful prophesied that the day of peace was over. Still I never dreamed of the difference it would make to me.

New Tear's Eve it was decided that we should be married on the first of June. As the clock struck twelve, and the last footfall of the old year died away, Edward put out his hand to take mine, and said:

'A happy New Tear it will surely be to us, my Laura, for we shall spend more than half of it together;' and I echoed his 'happy New Year' without a dread. I knew the storm was coming; I feared its fury; but I thought myself too secure, too near a haven to be lost; how could I know that the brave ship was destined to go down in sight of land?

And yet I might have known it. For I came from the North, which was, and is my home; and he was a Southern man. His family owned property and slaves in Georgia; and, though Mr. Mayne's political career had prevented their living there much, they considered it their home. One of the sons, who was married, lived on the plantation, and managed it well; the slaves were comparatively happy, and there were strong ties between them, their master and his family. My sister, who was delicate, had spent a winter in Florida, and I had accompanied her there. On our way home we paid a visit to the Mayne plantation; my sister enjoyed herself very much there, and was pro-slavery from that time; I was then sixteen, and had always hated it, and what with my fears of snakes, and my dislike of the black servants, whom I thought either inefficient or impertinent, and my unconquerable liking for freedom, I was not so fascinated. Edward Mayne himself did not like a planter's life, and he thought slavery an evil, but an evil inherited and past curing. He argued that the disease was not mortal and endurable, and that it would kill the country to use the knife. His youngest sister and I were the only two who ever discussed the subject; she talked a great deal of nonsense, and probably I did, too; and as she always lost her temper, I thought it wiser to let the subject drop, especially as I did not think about it a great deal, and it annoyed Edward to have any coolness between Georgy and me, and he himself never discussed the topic. We were both very young and very happy, too young and thoughtless to care much for any great question, so we sang our little song of happiness, and its music filled our ears until it was no longer possible not to hear the tumult of the world without.

The first day of January was our last day of perfect peace. Those who had not thought of the question before had now to answer what part they meant to take. People discussed less what States would secede, and more what they would themselves do, and many who are now most firm on one side or the other were then agitated by doubt and indecision. Events did not tarry for individual minds. We all know the story now; I need not repeat it. Still my future seemed unchanged, and I went to New York the third of January to order my wedding clothes, but I stayed only three or four days; I was restless for the continued excitement of Washington. The day I came back Mississippi seceded, and with it went Mr. Davis. I heard him make that farewell speech which so few listened to unmoved, and at which I cried bitterly. I went to say good by to him, though I could not say God speed, for already I was beginning to know that I had principles, and which side they were on. As we parted, he said, in that courteous way that has made so many bow at his shrine:

'We shall have you in the South very soon, Miss Laura,' and I did not say no; but the mist lifted suddenly before my eyes, and I saw the rock on which my life was to split, and that no striving against the stream would avail me aught. Still I said nothing, and the days flew swiftly by on restless wings; days so full of excitement that they seemed to take years with them in their flight.