The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862

I have stated that the South must know what course we intend to pursue in regard to slavery. But not only the South, but our friends and enemies, and all the world must also know, that the American Union shall never be dismembered. It is the great citadel of self-government, intrusted to our charge by Providence, and we will defend it against all assailants until our last man has fallen. The lakes can never be separated from the Gulf, nor the Eastern from the Western Ocean. As the sun high advanced in the heavens illumes our flag on the Atlantic, its first morning beams shall salute our kindred banner-stars on the shores of the Pacific, the present western limit of this great republic. Already the telegraphic lightning flashes intelligence from ocean to ocean, and soon the iron horse, starting from the Atlantic on his continental tour, shall announce his own advent on the shores of the Pacific, The lakes of the North are united by railroads and canals with the Atlantic, the Gulf, the Ohio, and Mississippi, and our iron gunboats, bearing aloft in war and in peace the emblems of our country's glory, are soon to perform their great circuit from the Albemarle, the Potomac, the Chesapeake, the Susquehanna, the Delaware, and the Hudson, to the Lakes and the Mississippi. Above all, the valley of the Mississippi was ordained by God as the residence of a united people. Over every acre of its soil must forever float the banner of the Union, and all its waters, as they roll on together to the Gulf, proclaim that what 'God has joined together, man shall never put asunder.' The nation's life-blood courses this vast arterial system, and to sever it is death. No line of latitude or longitude shall ever separate the mouth from the centre or sources of the Mississippi. All the waters of the imperial river, from their mountain springs and crystal fountains, shall ever flow in commingling currents to the Gulf, uniting evermore in one undivided whole, the blessed homes of a free and happy people. The Ohio and Missouri, the Red River and the Arkansas, shall never be dissevered from the Mississippi. Pittsburgh and Louisville, Cincinnati and St. Louis, shall never be separated from New-Orleans, or mark the capitals of disunited and discordant States. That glorious free-trade between all the States (the great cause of our marvelous progress) shall in time, notwithstanding the present suicidal folly of England, go on in its circuit among accordant peoples throughout the globe, the precursor of that era of universal and unrestricted commerce, whose sceptre is peace, and whose reign the fusion and fraternity of nations, as foretold by the holy prophets in the Scriptures of truth.

This great valley, one mighty plain, without an intervening mountain, contains, west of the Mississippi, seven States and Territories of an area sufficient for thirteen more of the size of New-York. East of the Mississippi, it embraces all the remaining States except New-England, New-Jersey, Delaware, South-Carolina, and Florida. New-York is connected with the great valley by the Alleghany River; and Maryland by the Castleman's River and the Youghiogany, and Alabama, North-Carolina, and Georgia, by the Tennessee and its tributaries. Nearly one half the area of Pennsylvania and Virginia is within its limits. Michigan is united with it by the Wisconsin River, and Texas by the Red River; whilst Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky, Wisconsin, Illinois, Tennessee, and Mississippi, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Louisiana, and Arkansas own almost exclusively its sway.

And who will dare erect the feeble barriers designed to seclude the great valley and its products from either ocean, the Lakes, or the Gulf, or persuade her to hold these essential rights and interests by the wretched tenure of the will of any seceding State? No line but one of blood, of military despotisms, and perpetual war, can ever separate this great valley. The idea is sacrilege. It is the raving of a maniac. Separation is death. Disunion is suicide. If the South presents the issue that the Union or slavery must perish, the result is not doubtful. Slavery will die. It will meet a traitor's doom, wherever it selects a traitor's position. The Union will still live. It is written on the scroll of destiny, by the finger of God, that 'neither principalities nor powers' shall effect its overthrow, nor shall 'the gates of hell prevail against it.'

Nor will we ever surrender the grave of Washington. There, upon the Potomac, on whose banks he was born and died, the flag of the Union must float over his sacred sepulchre, until the dead shall be summoned from their graves by the trump of the resurrection.

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

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

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

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

OUR WOUNDED

As loftier rise the ocean's heaving crests,Ere they sink, tempest-driven, on the strand;So do these hearts and freedom-beating breasts,Sublimed by suffering, fall upon our land.Wounded! O sweet-lipped word! for on the pageOf this strange history, all these scars shall beThe hieroglyphics of a valiant age,Deep writ in freedom's blood-red mystery.What though your fate sharp agony reveals!What though the mark of brother's blows you bear!The breath of your oppression upward steals,Like incense from crushed spices into air.Freedom lies listening, nor as yet avertsThe battle horrors of these months' slow length;But as she listens, silently she girtsMore close, more firm, the armor of her strength.Then deem them not as lost, these bitter days,Nor those which yet in anguish must be spentFar from loved skies and home's peace-moving ways,For these are not the losses you lament.It is the glory that your country bore,Which you would rescue from a living grave;It is the unity that once she wore,Which your true hearts are yearning still to save.Despair not: it is written, though the eye,Red with its watching, can no future scan:The glow of triumph yet shall flush the sky,And God redeem the ruin made by man.

A SOUTHERN REVIEW

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

——'for profoundAnd solid lying much renowned.'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What is further hoped for is shown in remarks on the

EXTENT OF THE CONFEDERACY

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

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

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

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

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

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

EAST AND WEST

In the far East the imperial ruleIs aided by the British rod;While in the West the rebel schoolReceives full many a friendly nod.Can no new Mithra ever beTo slay this Bull of tyranny?

WAS HE SUCCESSFUL?

'Do but grasp into the thick of human life! Everyone lives it—to not many is it known; and seize it where you will, it is interesting.'—Goethe.

'Successful.—Terminating in accomplishing what is wished or intended.'—Webster's Dictionary.