The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 1, July, 1863

If the continuance of the struggle thus far has done so much toward a final settlement of the most troublesome of all questions growing out of the contest between the North and the South; if it has probably prepared the way for disposing of slavery in all the States where it now exists, and even given the African a status as a soldier of the republic; it has also had an equal effect in other important aspects. It has tended to develop and settle definitely the political objects and purposes of the contending parties. With the South, these, to some degree, have necessarily been changed. The original designs of the rebels, whatever they may have been in the beginning, have been modified according to the stringent exigencies of their condition. Their daring and ambitious plans have been restrained by the public opinion of the civilized world, and still more by the limitation of their own resources. So long as their strength was untried, imagination ran riot, and there was no bound to the magnificence of their bad schemes. But the experience of two years has taught them that, in their realization, all such wild dreams are destined to be curtailed within the inexorable limits of possibility. They have only begun to discover how narrow these limits are to them. Unexpected obstacles have arisen on every side, and the soaring purposes of the rebellion have vainly beaten their bruised and wearied wings against the solid walls which circumscribe them within the humble limits of their present uncertain hopes and expectations. The Federal Government, on the other hand, has not changed its purpose, as avowed in the beginning, to restore the national authority, in its unity and integrity, over the whole country. The prospect of accomplishing this end has grown brighter from the beginning. We have passed through almost all phases of party excitement; faction has tried its perilous experiments upon the national temper; divisions have been industriously fomented; and for a time discord has threatened seriously to weaken us. But the patriotism of the people has finally prevailed, and the question may now be considered settled. The people not less than the Government are fully committed to the grand purpose of putting down the rebellion and restoring the Union. Nor does this work, immense as it is, seem to be disproportioned to the national means and energies. The people believe themselves competent to the mighty task, and with this patriotic confidence, the undertaking is already more than half accomplished. The enemy has not the power to defeat our purpose. By our own unhappy divisions, we might possibly defeat ourselves; but with a united and determined people, there is not the slightest room for doubt.

The war continues to be carried on solely in the disaffected region. Threats of transferring the seat of the contest to the loyal States have constantly been made, and are now renewed with an energy of assertion equal to the longing desires with which the straitened rebels look upon the fat fields and the groaning storehouses of the Northern States. Their futile threats do indeed express their wishes or their disordered imaginations, rather than their actual intentions or their possible achievements. If they could transfer the war to Pennsylvania and Ohio, or even to Kentucky and Maryland, a new aspect would be given to the controversy, and different results might well be anticipated. But the time for such enterprises on the part of the rebels, if it ever existed, has evidently passed by, and is not likely to return. One of the strongest indications of the ultimate result of the war has been the rigid uniformity with which the military operations have been continually pushed back upon the soil of the seceded States, and maintained there in spite of all their efforts to the contrary. In all instances, their incursions into the States mentioned, though projected upon the grandest scale and with the most hopeful results, have eventually proved to be miserable failures; and if they have not always, or even in any instance, met with the severe punishment that ought to have followed them, it was only because the attempts were too preposterous to have been anticipated by a vigilant foe, and we were too confident in our strength to make the preparation necessary properly to repel them. With such experience on our part, after two years of constant efforts to invade our territories successfully met and more than merely repelled, it would be evidence of gross inefficiency and weakness in us, to permit the enemy to gain even a temporary foothold in any one of the loyal States, or even to attempt it, without the complete overthrow and destruction of the invading force. Our manifest policy is to attack them in their own country, and to hold them there, until we can annihilate their military power. We have successfully accomplished one half this programme; but so far we have failed in the other. However humiliating may be the admission, we are nevertheless compelled to make it. We have not yet overthrown their main armies in any decisive engagements; although we have achieved many important successes and made some fatal encroachments on the territory of the enemy, crippling his power and cutting off his resources. From the very inception of the rebellion, its field of operations has been gradually contracting. One after another the strongholds of the enemy have fallen into our hands, and whole regions of his territory have been over run and occupied by our forces, with every appearance of having been finally and forever lost to them. Our standards, advancing steadily, though slowly, have not receded anywhere, except temporarily, and then only, it would seem, to make still further advance into the very heart of the confederacy. With some few exceptions, such as the withdrawal of the army from the Peninsula, this has been the history of the last two years; and there is nothing in the present condition of affairs which would appear to forebode a departure from this uniform progress of our arms. We may complain, perhaps justly, of the slowness of this process. In the ardor and impatience of our patriotism, we may demand more rapid and energetic action, claiming that our immense resources shall be used with greater vigor and concentration, and our vast armies hurled like a thunderbolt upon the enemy, to crush him with one sudden and overwhelming blow. Truly this would be a grand result—a consummation most devoutly to be wished—making short work of the bloody war which has so terribly afflicted our country. This done, there could not be any serious difficulty in resuscitating the love of Union among the masses in the South, and of reëstablishing the Union on its old foundations.

It may or may not be reasonable to demand such energy and speedy success at the hands of the Government. At all events, it is natural that the country, having confided unlimited means to the constituted authorities, should become impatient under the delays and difficulties of the contest, and that inexperienced men should expect the unequal forces of the two sections to be brought into quick and decisive conflict, with a result accordant to the relative strength of the opposing parties. A true Napoleonic genius might well have accomplished this grand result within the two years that have already passed. But such a mighty spirit has not yet come forth at the call of our agonized country; or if, perchance, he has made his appearance, he has certainly not been recognized and received by the powers that be. We must, therefore, needs be contented with the slow and gradual approach we are evidently making toward a final solution of the bloody problem. And as, even in the greatest misfortunes, there is often some hidden compensation for the unhappiness they produce, so in this case, perhaps we may find, in the great changes destined to be wrought in the condition of the Southern people by their stubborn perseverance in the war, ground for consolation in the midst of the calamities and bereavements which every day continues to bring upon us. The Southern rulers and masters pride themselves on their inveterate animosity. They glory in their own shame, and imagine themselves successful, so long as they can protract the struggle and renew the slaughter of great battles in which they are not utterly overthrown, though thousands of innocent victims are sacrificed to their mad and wicked ambition. But in truth, with every day of continued war they are only the more effectually destroying themselves, especially in that particular in which they are most anxious and determined to succeed. For the security of their slave property and the peaceful continuance of the institutions which sustain it, it would have been far better for them had they been thoroughly beaten and effectually put down at the very beginning of the war. There might then have been a chance for slavery to escape, at least for a while. Now it must be admitted there is hardly the vestige of such a chance. It is almost alike certain that slavery has been shaken to its very foundations in every State, whether the rebellion shall now either succeed or fail. The rebels have been wrong in all their calculations. Exactly the reverse of their aims and expectations will be the reward of their treason. They sought to overthrow the Government in order to perpetuate slavery; they have only succeeded in overthrowing slavery, to the certain strengthening and probable perpetuation of the Government they hate.

The leading rebels, occupying the seats of usurped power in their ephemeral confederacy, have succeeded in arousing and sustaining a considerable feeling of nationality and independence among the masses of their population. Grasping the sceptre of ill-gotten authority with great boldness, they have wielded it with a corresponding energy. Their early successes and their protracted resistance, sustained for more than two years by means of large and formidable armies, organized, disciplined, and led with great skill, have sufficed to give them credit and support at home, and much consideration abroad. In the midst of stirring events, carried away by the first impulse of excitement, the Southern people have not been in a mood to calculate the consequences of a long struggle. They have been elated and blinded by their apparent triumphs; and they, whose crafty purpose all the time has been to make use of them for the furtherance of their own ambitious projects, have been careful to preoccupy the minds of the people, and to conceal from them, by the plausible pretences and superficial successes of the hour, the certainty of ultimate discomfiture which has awaited them from the beginning. Occasionally, it is true, there have been indications that light was beginning to dawn on the popular mind; and in spite of the complete system of terror and compression which the leaders have inaugurated and sustained with the utmost determination, and with the most relentless rigor, we have seen every now and then, in different parts of the confederacy, the vivid flashes of a still living sentiment of love for the Union. As the hopes of the conspiracy become gradually less bright, this sentiment of affection for the old and honored Government of our fathers will grow stronger and more outspoken, and will not be confined to mere individual expressions. When the people begin to open their eyes and see the strength of the rebellion rapidly wasting away, with the repetition of its fruitless endeavors; when victories no longer compensate for the privations and horrible disasters which follow in their track; when, finally, they understand, as they soon must, that the whole movement is destined to end in utter failure, and that this failure is to be only the more overwhelming the longer the unhappy contest shall be continued, a complete revulsion of feeling may well be expected to take place. Many things in the course of the struggle have combined to delay the advent of this inevitable change. The progress of our arms has been extremely slow, with many checks and defeats in those campaigns and at those points which seemed to be the most important. If we have been successful in the West, it has not been without protracted efforts and immense expenditure of life and means—a long and bloody struggle, the uncertainty of which has not tended to strengthen us during its pendency. On the other hand, the brilliant successes of the rebels on the Rappahannock and at Charleston have not been fully counteracted by their actual and definitive discomfiture in other quarters. When Vicksburg and Port Hudson fall, as fall they must, the emptiness of all their triumphs will be felt and appreciated. Bull Run, twice famous, Fredericksburg, Charleston, Chancellorsville—all will then appear in their true light as magnificent phantoms of delusive success, alluring the proud victors to further fruitless efforts and barren victories, only to overwhelm them with more tremendous ruin, in the end which is slowly but certainly approaching.

Thus the continuance of the war, with its exhausting expenditures and its bloody sacrifices of life, is destined to be not altogether without its advantages in other respects besides its influence on the great question of slavery. It is preparing the public mind of the South for a most vehement reaction against all the false ideas which have been the animating spirit of the rebellion. In proportion to the greatness of the conflict, the immensity of its disasters, its delusive promises and barren victories, will be the thoroughness of the discomfiture, the completeness of the overthrow, the utter disgrace of the confederate cause, and of the men who have been its authors and leading representatives. It will be impossible for the Southern people to say, 'We have been engaged in a noble cause; we have failed for the time being; but there is a future for us in which we shall surely triumph.' On the contrary, every Southern man will feel that there is no resurrection for the bad designs which will thus have been forever prostrated. They have in them none of the elements of resuscitation. Failure in the present contest is annihilation forever. The very foundation and active power of the fatal movement will have been swept away, while at the same time the authors and the cause alike will be stamped with eternal infamy, as having aimed at the subversion of human liberty, and only succeeded in producing ruin and devastation to the beautiful region which they have misled and betrayed into a wicked war. The events of the mighty conflict will live in history, but only as an example of just punishment for a great crime, and as a solemn warning against the indulgence of selfish and unprincipled ambition in all future ages.

WAS HE SUCCESSFUL?

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

—Goethe.

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

—Webster's Dictionary.

CHAPTER VI

Before evening Hiram had informed himself fully (through Hill) of the current rumors about the failure of Allwise, Tenant & Co. He was glad to find a universal sympathy prevailing in all business circles for this old and respectable house.

'That's well, at any rate,' quoth Hiram to himself. 'No one will think of attacking the old gentleman, if he does secure a portion of his property, or, rather, nobody will suspect him of attempting it. He is bound in honor to me [oh, Hiram! honor!] to protect his daughter. Such was really the agreement, that is, by implication, when we became engaged. It won't be honest if he leaves me in the lurch. He need not think that he can do that, though. Twelve thousand dollars! Why, it will scarcely board the old folks in any decent place; and who does he think is going to marry his daughter at that rate?' * * *

Hiram was at the house at his usual hour. It was a lovely evening, about the first of June, and as he walked slowly along, he caught a glimpse of Emma through the blinds. She was seated at a window, evidently watching for his coming. He could perceive, before she knew it was he, that her countenance was troubled. Hiram turned away his head. Evidently something attracted him in another direction.

Mr. Tenant resided in a handsome house in one of the finest squares of the city. As Hiram mounted the steps, he paused a moment to survey the scene. The trees were in full leaf, and the odor of flowers filled with their fragrance the evening air.

'No, he must not give this up,' he muttered.

He turned and rang the bell sharply. It was a habit of Emma to open the door herself when she saw him coming, but this time the servant responded to the summons.

Hiram passed into the front parlor without speaking. As he approached Emma, she rose and threw herself into his arms, and burst into tears. She did not attempt to speak, but kept sobbing as if heart-broken.

Hiram stood still, and, in consequence of his undecided state of mind, a good deal embarrassed.

'Why, what is the matter, Emma?' he said at length. 'Has anything happened to your father or mother?'

'You know what has happened,' she finally articulated.

'Well, my dear child, is that anything to be so distressed about?'

'Don't you care?' she exclaimed, looking up joyfully.

'To be sure I care, but only on your account, and'—

'Oh, never think of me. I shall be the most light-hearted creature in the world. I was only afraid—afraid'—

'Of what, pray?'

'I cannot tell. That—that—perhaps—perhaps—you would not—that—papa's losing everything might make a difference in your feelings. Now don't be angry. (Hiram was looking grave.) I did not really think it would; but—but the bare possibility has made me so very unhappy—so very, very unhappy!' and she began to cry again.

'Come, Emma, you must not be so foolish. Sit down now with me, and let me say a few words to you; for your father will want me in a few minutes, and I shall have to be with him all the evening.'

'Oh, I am so glad; you will be such a comfort to him. I know you will.'

Hiram made no reply; both took their seats, and then he spoke.

'Emma,' he said, in a tone so solemn and important that it struck terror to her soul, she knew not wherefore—'Emma, this is a momentous period of your life, and everything depends on the steps you take'—

'Why, Hiram, what do you mean—what can you mean?'

'Nothing to alarm you, but everything to impress you with the fact that no time is to be lost. Your father has made the foolish resolution to give up all his private property to his creditors'—

'So he told mamma and me. Is that not right?'

'No, it is not right. It is wrong,' replied Hiram, in a harsh tone. 'More than wrong—sinful—wicked, very wicked. Do you know who it is the Scripture says is worse than an infidel?'

'I do not,' she replied faintly.

Hiram intended to frighten her, and he had succeeded.

'You do not! Well, it is the man who fails to provide for his own household. Why, we had the text in our Sunday-school lesson only three weeks ago.'

Emma sat paralyzed.

'Now, Emma,' continued Hiram, 'I want you to see your mother, and tell her what I say. Tell her your father is determined to ruin the whole of you—going to give up this very house—just think of that.'

'Papa has already told us so,' said Emma in a low, timid tone; 'but he says it is the only honorable course.'

'Honorable!' exclaimed Hiram, pettishly. 'Stuff—nonsense. I tell you that you are all crazy. You don't think what you are about. Wait till you are turned out of doors, bag and baggage, then see how you will feel—but then it will be too late. Do you understand?'

Emma Tenant was not a brilliant girl, but she had good sense and an honest nature. By degrees she recovered from the stupor into which Hiram's onslaught threw her; she began to feel something of her lover's purpose, and appreciate something of the position he might soon assume. Loving and trustful, these faint glimmerings of the truth appalled her. She did not cry any more. She became pale. She breathed short and quick.

'Hiram,' she gasped, 'you mean something—I fear you mean something. Papa knows best what is honest, better than you—a young man. To lose our property would make me unhappy. And I thought—yes, I conceived—oh, Hiram—tell me—am I going to lose you?' she cried, interrupting herself. 'If it be so, say it—say it now. Do not keep me in suspense.'

'Why, Emma, how nervous you are! Ah, here comes your father. I see you are waiting for me. I am quite ready, sir.'

'Good. Emma, can you spare him for one evening? You will soon have him all to yourself—eh?' and, with a pleasant tap on her cheek, Mr. Tenant turned and left the room.

Hiram followed without saying a word.

Emma sat by herself an hour—at least an hour. The servant came in to light the gas, but she would not permit it. I won't attempt to describe her thoughts.

At length she rose, and took her way to her mother's room. She told her just what had passed. Mrs. Tenant was a superior woman. Her experience taught her, despite her good opinion of Hiram, for he had spared no pains to present himself favorably, that he might prove to be merely mercenary. Yet, after all, she did not think it probable. She said all she consistently could say to soothe her child, without absolutely declaring that she believed her fears to be groundless. That she dared not utter. She finished by a very common and rational argument, which, by the way, has very little comfort in it:

'I know, my darling, that you love him, but you cannot love a mean, low-spirited creature; and if he prove to be such, let us be thankful for your escape.'

She kissed and caressed her child—her only child. But her words were poor consolation to Emma, whose heart was devoted to this man—very meagre consolation. Mrs. Tenant knew it; but what could she say or do more, just then? She could only watch and stand ready to protect her daughter's happiness, when events should decide what course she was to take.

Hiram spent the entire evening looking over accounts and papers with Mr. Tenant. His manner was quiet but assiduous. Very useful he made himself. Frequently in the course of the evening he drew from that gentleman well-merited encomiums on his clear head and methodical ideas.

As he was about leaving—it was fully twelve o'clock, and Mr. Tenant had just thanked him for the twentieth time—Hiram ventured to speak again about his property.

'Dear sir, I feel impelled to speak once more to you. Do listen to me. Do not beggar yourself, and then turn yourself out of doors. Permit me to tell you that you can save this house very easily.'

'I know it, Hiram. I know it. Don't think I have forgotten Emma and you. I have thought it all over. Recollect, I don't blame you. I know it is Emma you are thinking about. But, my dear boy, I can't do it—it would not be honest. I can't do it. Never mind, we shall be all the happier for doing right—all the happier, all the happier. I will see you to-morrow. Good night. God bless you.'

They had gradually got to the door, and Hiram, echoing the good night, stepped into the street.

''God bless you,' indeed,' he muttered. 'Soft words butter no parsnips. 'God bless you!' What idle profanity!'

He walked slowly down the street, unconscious that a young face from a window of the second story watched his retreating steps—that a young heart beat painfully as he passed out of sight.

A few moments later Emma's mother entered her room, and found her still at the window.

'Not yet in bed?' she said tenderly. 'I thought you left me because you were too much fatigued to sit up.' She came and put her arms about her daughter's neck and kissed her.

'My dear, I have joyful news for you. Your papa says Hiram takes just the right view of everything—that nothing can be more satisfactory than his whole conversation. He explained all to Hiram, and he declares he never passed a happier evening in his life. Is not that worth coming to tell you of?'

'Indeed, it is, dear mamma.'

'Now you can sleep?'

'Oh yes.'

But she did not sleep, though. It is not so easy to recover from a heart shock such as she had just experienced. No, she did not sleep a moment during the night. Hiram's harsh, repulsive tone and manner haunted her. Oh, how they haunted her! Never before had he exhibited such traits. Whatever the future had in store for her, here was a revelation, sudden, unexpected, true.