The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864

The political incidents of 1863 are as encouraging as the incidents of war. The discontent that existed toward the close of 1862—a discontent by no means groundless—led to the apparent defeat of the war-party in many States, and to the decrease of its strength in others. But it was an illogical conclusion that the people were dissatisfied with the war, when they only meant to express their dissatisfaction with the manner in which it was conducted. Their votes in 1863 truly expressed their feeling. In every State but New Jersey the war-party was successful, its majority in Ohio being 100,000, in New York 30,000, in Pennsylvania 15,000, in Massachusetts, 40,000, in Iowa 32,000, in Maine 22,000, in California 20,000. And so on throughout the country. The popular voice is still for war, but for war boldly, and therefore wisely, waged.

The improvement that has taken place in our foreign relations is even greater than that which has come over our domestic affairs; and for the first time since the opening of the civil war, it is possible for Americans to say that there is every reason for believing that they are to be left to settle their own affairs according to their own ideas as to the fitness of things. This change, like all important changes in human affairs, is due to a variety of causes. In part it is owing to what we considered to be among our greatest misfortunes, and in part to those successes which changed the condition of affairs. Our failure at Fredericksburg, at the close of 1862, strengthened the general European impression that the Rebels were to succeed; and as their defeat at Murfreesboro was not followed by an advance of our forces, that impression was not weakened by General Bragg's failure, though that was more signal than was the failure of General Burnside. If the Rebels were to succeed, why should European governments do anything in aid of their cause, at the hazard of war with us? Our defeat at Chancellorsville, last May, tended still further to strengthen foreign belief that the Secessionists were to be the winning party, and that they were competent to do all their own work; but if it had not soon been followed by signal reverses to the Rebel arms, it is certain that the Confederacy would have been acknowledged by most European nations, on the plausible ground that its existence had been established on the battle-field, and that we could not object to the admission of a self-evident fact by foreign sovereigns and statesmen, who were bound to look after the welfare of their own subjects and countrymen, whose interests were greatly concerned with the trade of our Southern country. Fortunately for all parties but the Rebels, those reverses came suddenly and with such emphasis as to create serious doubts in the European mind as to the superiority of the South as a fighting community. In an evil hour for his cause, General Lee abandoned that wise defensive system to which he had so long and so successfully adhered, and made a movement into the Free States. What was the immediate cause of his change of proceeding will probably never be accurately known to the existing generation. On the face of things no good political reason appears for that change being made; and on military grounds it was sure to lead to disaster, unless the North had become the most craven of countries. So bad was Lee's advance into the North, militarily speaking, that it would have been the part of good policy to allow him to march without resistance to a point at least a hundred miles beyond that field on which he was to find his fate. A Gettysburg that should have been fought that distance from the base of Southern operations could have had no other result than the destruction of the main Southern army; and that occurring at about the same time that Port Hudson and Vicksburg surrendered, the war could have been ended by a series of thunder-strokes. Not a man of Lee's army could have escaped. But the pride of the country prevented the adoption of a course that promised the most splendid of successes, and compelled our Government and our commander to forego the noblest opportunity that had presented itself to effect the enemy's annihilation. Gettysburg was made immortal, and Lee escaped, not without tremendous losses, yet with the larger part of his army, and with much booty, that perhaps compensated his own loss in matériel. He was beaten, on a field of his own choosing, and with numbers in his favor; and his previous victories, the almost uniform success that had attended his earlier movements, made his Pennsylvania reverses all the more grave in the estimation of foreigners. Immediately after news was sent abroad of his defeat and retreat, tidings came to us, and soon were spread over the world, that the Rebels had experienced the most terrible disasters in the Southwest, whereby the so-called Confederacy had been cut in two. These facts gave pause to those intentions of acknowledgment which had undoubtedly been entertained in European courts and cabinets; and nothing afterward occurred, down to the day of Chickamauga, which was calculated to effect a change in the minds of the rulers of the Old World. But when intelligence of Chickamauga reached Europe, England had taken a position so determinedly hostile to intervention in any of its many forms and stages that even a much greater disaster than that could have produced no evil to our cause abroad. For it is to be remembered that the whole business of intervention has lain from the beginning in the bosom of England, and that, if she had chosen to act against us in force, she could have done so with the strongest hope of success, if merely our humiliation, or even our destruction, had been her object, and without any immediate danger threatening herself as the consequence of her hostile action. The French Government, not France, or any considerable portion of the French people, has been ready to interfere in behalf of the Rebels for more than two years, and would have entered upon the process of intervention long since, if it had not been held back by the obstinate refusal of England to unite with her in that pro-slavery crusade which, it is with regret we say it, the French Emperor has so much at heart; and without the aid and assistance of England, the ruler of France could not and durst not move an inch against us. Not the least, nor least strange, of the changes of this mutable world is to be seen in the circumstance that France should be restrained from undoing the work of the Bourbons and of Napoleon I. by England's firm opposition to the wishes and purposes of Napoleon III. The Bourbon policy, as well in Spain as in France, brought about the early overthrow of England's rule over the territory of the old United States; and the first Napoleon sold Louisiana to us for a song, because he was convinced, that, by so doing, he should aid to build up a formidable naval rival of England. The man who seeks to undo all this, to destroy what Bourbon and Bonaparte sacrificed so much to effect, is the heir of Bonaparte, and the expounder and illustrator of Napoleon's ideas; and the power that places herself resolutely across his path, and will not join in his plot to erase us from the list of nations is—England! In a romance such a state of things would be pronounced too absurd for invention; but in this every-day world it is nothing but a commonplace incident, extraordinary as it may seem at the first thought that is bestowed upon it.

That England governs France in this matter of intervention in our quarrel is clear enough, as also are the reasons why Paris will not move to the aid of the Rebels unless London shall keep even step with her. France asked England to unite with her in an offer of mediation, which would have been an armed mediation, had England fallen into the Gallic trap, but which amounted to nothing when it proceeded from France alone. England withdrew from the Mexican business as soon as she saw that France was bent upon a course that might lead to trouble with the United States, and left her to create a throne in that country. As soon as England put the broad arrow upon the rams of that eminent pastoral character, Laird of Birkenhead, France withdrew the permission which she had formally bestowed upon MM. Arman and Vorney to build four powerful steamships for the Rebels at Nantes and Bordeaux. France would acknowledge the Confederacy to-day, and send a minister to Richmond, and consuls to Mobile and Galveston and Wilmington, if England would but agree to be to her against us what Spain was to her for us in the days of our Revolution. But England will not join with her ancient enemy to effect the ruin of a country of the existence of which she should be proud, seeing that it is her own creation.

Why, then, is it that there is so much ill-feeling in America toward England, while none is felt toward France,—England being, as it were, our shield against that French sword which is raised over our head, upon which its holder would bring it down with imperial force? Principally the difference is due to that peculiarity in the human character which leads men to think much of insults and but little of injuries. We doubt if any strong enmity was ever created in the minds of men or nations through the infliction of injuries, though injuring parties have an undoubted right to hate their victims; and we are sure that an insult was never yet forgiven by any nation, or by any individual, whose resentment was of any account. Now, England has poured insults upon us, or rather Englishmen have done so, until we have become as sore as bears who have been assailed by bees. English statesmen and politicians have told us that we were wrong in fighting for the restoration of the Union, violating our own principles, and literally committing the grossest, of crimes,—taking care to add, that our sins would provide their own punishment, for we could not put down the Rebels. Even moderate-minded men in England have not hesitated to condemn our course, while admitting that our conduct was natural, on the ground that we had no hope of success, and that useless wars are simply horrible. Our English enemies have been fierce and vindictive blackguards,—as witness Roebuck, Lyndsay, and Lord R. Cecil,—while most of our friends there have deemed it the best policy to make use of very moderate language, when speaking of our cause, or of the conduct of our public men. Englishmen of distinction, some of whom have long been held in high esteem here, have not hesitated to express a desire for our overthrow, because we were becoming too strong, though our free population is not materially different, as regards numbers, from that of the British Islands, and is as nothing when compared with the number of Queen Victoria's subjects. They were not ashamed to be so thoroughly un-English as to admit the existence of fear in their minds of a people living three thousand miles from their country: a circumstance to be noted; for your Englishman is apt to err on the side of contempt for others, and as a rule he fears nobody. Others have so wantonly misrepresented the character of our cause,—Mr. Carlyle is a notable member of this class,—that it is impossible not to be offended, when listening to their astounding falsehoods. But it is the British press that has done most to array Americans against England. That press is very ably conducted, and the most noted of its members have displayed a degree of hostility toward us that could not have been predicted without the prophet being suspected of madness, or of diabolical inspiration. All its articles attacking us are reproduced here, and are read by everybody, and the effect thereof can be imagined. Toward us British journalists are playing the same part that was played by their predecessors toward France sixty years since, and which converted what was meant to be a permanent peace into the mere truce of Amiens. Insolent and egotistical as a class, though there are highly honorable exceptions, those journalists have done more to make their country the object of dislike than has been accomplished by all other Englishmen. Their deeds show that the pen is mightier than the sword, and that its conquests are permanent. It has been said that France has been as unfriendly to us as England, and that, therefore, we ought to feel for her the same dislike as that of which England is the object. But, admitting the assertion to be true, we know little of what the French have said or written concerning us. The difference of language prevents us from taking much offence at Gallic criticism. Not one American in a hundred reads French; and of those who do read it, not one in a thousand, journalists apart, ever sees a French quarterly, monthly, weekly, or daily publication. Occasionally, an article from a French journal is translated for some one of our newspapers, but it is oftener of a friendly character than otherwise. The best French publications support the Union cause, at their head standing the "Débats," which is not the inferior of the "Times" in respect to ability, and is far its superior in all other respects. Besides, judging from such articles from the French presses devoted to Secession interests as have come under our observation, they are neither so able nor so venomous as those which appear in British Secession journals and magazines. Most of them might be translated for the purpose of showing that the French have no wish for our destruction, while the language of the British articles indicates the existence of an intense personal hostility, and an eager desire to see the United States partitioned like Poland. We should be something much above, or as much below, the standard of humanity, if we were not moved deeply by such evidences of fierce hatred, expressed in the fiercest of language.

In assuming a strictly impartial position, England follows a sense of interest, which is proper and praiseworthy. She cannot, supposing her to be wise, be desirous of our destruction; for, that accomplished, she would be more open than ever to a French attack. Let Napoleon III. accomplish those European purposes to which his mind is now directed, and he would be impelled to quarrel with England by a variety of considerations, should this Republic be broken up into half a dozen feeble and quarrelsome confederacies. But with the United States in existence, and powerful enough to command respect, he would not dare to seek the overthrow of the British Empire. We could not permit him to head a crusade for England's annihilation, no matter what might be our feeling toward the mother-land. A just regard for our own interests would impel us to side with her, should she be placed in serious danger. Such was, substantially, President Jefferson's opinion, sixty years ago, when the first Napoleon was so bent upon the conquest of England; and we think that his views are applicable to the existing circumstances of the world. Where should we have been now, if England had quarrelled with and been conquered by Napoleon III.? We must distinguish between the English nation and Englishmen,—between the English Government, which has, perhaps, borne itself as favorably toward us as it could, and that English aristocracy which has, as a rule, exhibited so strong a desire to have us extinguished, even while it has repeatedly refused to take steps preparatory to war; and the two countries should be persuaded to understand that neither can perish without the life of the other being placed in great danger. The best answer to be made to the wordy attacks of Englishmen is to be found in success. That answer would be complete; and if it cannot be made, what will it signify to us what shall be said of us by foreigners? The bitterest attacks can never disturb the dead.

One cause of the change of England's course toward us is to be found in our own change of moral position. The President's Emancipation Proclamation went into effect on the first of January, 1863; and from that time the anti-slavery people of England have been on our side; and their influence is great, and bears upon the supporters of the Palmerston Ministry with peculiar force. Had our Government persisted in the pro-slavery policy which it favored down to the autumn of 1862, it is not at all unlikely that the English intervention party would have been strong enough to compel their country to go with France in her mediation scheme,—and the step from mediation to intervention would have been but a short one; but the committal of the North to anti-slavery views, and the union of their cause with that of emancipation, threw the English Abolitionists, men who largely represent England's moral worth, on our side. The Proclamation, therefore, even if it could be proved that it had not led to the liberation of one slave, has been of immense service to us, and the President deserves the thanks of every loyal American for having issued it. He threw a shell into the foreign Secession camp, the explosion of which was fatal to that "cordial understanding" that was to have operated for our annihilation.

Such was the year of the Proclamation, and its history is marvellous in our eyes. It stands in striking contrast to the other years of the war, both of which closed badly for us, and left the impression that the enemy's case was a good one, speaking militarily. Our improved condition should be attributed to the true cause. When, in the Parliament of 1601, Mr. Speaker Croke said that the kingdom of England "had been defended by the mighty arm of the Queen," Elizabeth exclaimed from the throne, "No, Mr. Speaker, but rather by the mighty hand of God!" So with us. We have been saved "by the mighty hand of God." Neither "malice domestic" nor "foreign levy" has prevailed at our expense. Whether we had the right to expect Heaven's aid, we cannot undertake to say; but we know that we should not have deserved it, had we continued to link the nation's cause to that of oppression, and had we shed blood and expended gold in order to restore the system of slavery and the sway of slaveholders.

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES

Life and Correspondence of Theodore Parker, Minister of the Twenty-Eighth Congregational Society, Boston. By John Weiss. In Two Volumes. 8vo. London.

Such a life of Theodore Parker as Mr. Parton has written of Andrew Jackson would be accepted as an American classic. For such a life, however, it is manifestly unreasonable to look. Not until the present generation has passed away, not until the perilous questions which vex men's souls to-day shall rest forever, could any competent biographer regard the "iconoclast of the Music Hall" as a subject for complacent literary speculation or calm judicial discourse. For us, this life of Parker must be interpreted by one of the family. He shall best use these precious letters and journals who is spiritually related to their writer, if not bound to him by the feebler tie of blood. And assuming the necessity of a partisan, or, as it might more gently be expressed, wholly sympathetic biographer, there is little but commendation for Mr. Weiss. With admirable clearness and strength he rings out the full tone of thought and belief among that earnest school of thinkers and doers of which Theodore Parker was the representative. Full as are these goodly octavos with the best legacies of him whose life is written, we have returned no less frequently to the deeply reflective arguments and acute criticisms of Mr. Weiss. Let the keen discrimination of a passage taken almost at random justify us, if it may.

"Some people say that they are not indebted to Mr. Parker for a single thought. The word 'thought' is so loosely used that a definition of terms must precede our estimate of Mr. Parker's suggestiveness and originality. Men who are kept by a commonplace-book go about raking everywhere for glittering scraps, which they carry home to be sorted in their æsthetic junk-shop. Any portable bit that strikes the fancy is a thought. There are literary rag-pickers of every degree of ability; and a great deal of judgment can be shown in finding the scrap or nail you want in a heap of rubbish. Quotable matter is generally considered to be strongly veined with thought. Some people estimate a writer according to the number of apt sentences imbedded in his work. But who is judge of aptness itself? What is apt for an epigram is not apt for a revolution: the shock of a witty antithesis is related to the healthy stimulus of creative thinking, as a small electrical battery to the terrestrial currents. Well-built rhetorical climaxes, sharp and sudden contrasts, Poor Richard's common-sense, a page boiled down to a sentence, a fresh simile from Nature, a subtle mood projected upon Nature, a swift controversial retort, all these things are called thoughts. The pleasure in them is so great, that one fancies they leave him in their debt. That depends upon one's standard of indebtedness. Now a penny-a-liner is indebted to a single phrase which furnishes his column; a clergyman near Saturday night seizes with rapture the clue of a fine simile which spins into a 'beautiful sermon'; for the material of his verses a rhymester is 'indebted' to an anecdote or incident. In a higher degree all kinds of literary work are indebted to that commerce of ideas between the minds of all nations, which fit up interiors more comfortably, and upholster them better than before. And everything that gets into circulation is called a thought, be it a discovery in science, a mechanical invention, the statement of a natural law, comparative statistics, rules of economy, diplomatic circulars, and fine magazine-writing. It is the manœuvring of the different arms in the great service of humanity, solid or dashing, on a field already gained. But the thought which organizes the fresh advance goes with the pioneer-train that bridges streams, that mines the hill, that feels the country. The controlling plan puts itself forth with that swarthy set of leather-aproned men shouldering picks and axes. How brilliantly the uniforms defile afterward, with flashing points and rhythmic swing, over the fresh causeway, to hold and maintain a position whose value was ideally conceived! So that the brightest facings do not cover the boldest thought."

By omissions here and there,—in all not amounting to ten pages of printed matter,—these literary remains of Theodore Parker might have been made less offensive to believers in the Christian Revelation, as well as to the not small class of gentlemanly skeptics who go through whatever motions the best society esteems correct. In these days, many worthy people, who are not quite sound upon Noah's ark, or even the destruction of the swine, will wince perceptibly at hearing the Lord's Supper called "a heathenish rite." And it would be unfair to the memories of most noted men to stereotype for ten thousand eyes the rough estimates of familiar letters, or the fragmentary ejaculations of a private journal. But Mr. Parker never scrupled to exhibit before the world all that was worst in him. There are few chapters that will not recall defects publicly shown by the preacher and author. The reader can scarcely miss a corroboration of a shrewd observation of Macaulay, that there is no proposition so monstrously untrue in politics or morals as to be incapable of proof by what shall sound like a logical demonstration from admitted principles. Theodore Parker was a strong and honest man. Yet few strong men have so lain at the mercy of some narrow bit of logic; few honest ones have so warped facts to match opinions. We speak of exceptional instances, not of ordinary habits. He seemed unable to persuade himself that a scheme of faith which was false to him could be true to others of equal intelligence and virtue. He fell too easily into the spasmodic vice of the day, and said striking things rather than true ones. He assumed a basis of faith every whit as dogmatic as special revelation, and sometimes grievously misrepresented the creeds which he assailed. Strangers might go to the Music Hall to breathe the free air of a catholic liberality, and find nothing but the old fierceness of sectarianism broken loose against the sects. Let us make every deduction which a candid criticism is compelled to claim, and Theodore Parker stands a noble representative of Republican America. His place is still among the immortals who are not the creatures of an age, but its regenerators. For it is not the life of a great skeptic, but the work of a great believer, which is brought before us in these volumes. This uncompromising enemy of the creeds was the ally of their highest uses. His soul never lacked that dear and personal object of worship which is offered by the Christian Revelation in its common acceptance. He could have lived in no more jubilant confidence of immortality, had he enjoyed the tactual satisfactions of Thomas himself. No Catholic nun feels more delicious assurance of the protection of the Virgin, no Protestant maiden knows a more blissful consciousness of the Saviour's marital affection towards her particular church, than felt this Theodore Parker in the fatherly and motherly tenderness of the Great Cause of All. Certainly, few doubters have ever doubted to so much purpose as he. Men who are skeptical through the intellect in the Christian creeds seldom live so sturdily the Christian life. Yet we cannot think that the fervent faith with which he wrought came from what was exceptional in his belief; it was rather a good gift of native and special sort. For it is a true insight which leads Tennyson to warn him whose faith does not trust itself to form, that his sister is "quicker unto good" from the hallowed symbol through which she receives a divine truth. Many who flatter themselves that they have outgrown the need of a human embodiment of the Father's love have only induced a plasticity of mind which prevents the life from taking shape in any positive affirmation. "It is a strong help to me," writes a Congregational minister, "to find a man, standing on the extreme verge of liberal theology, holding so firmly, so tenaciously, to the one true religion, love to God and man." But may all men stand there, and cling to it as resolutely as he did?