The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863

'I was in hopes, Hiram, you had quit talking cant,' said Dr. Frank, in a tone of disgust. 'Take my advice, and stop it, that is, if it is not too late.'

He did not wait for a response, but, much to Hiram's satisfaction, rose, and saying to Mrs. Bennett that he had overstayed his time, bade a rapid 'good evening' to all, and left the room.

'It is dreadful to feel so toward a brother. It is of no use. I won't attempt to resist it. The least we see of each other the better—but, good God, what's to become of him!' Such was the Doctor's soliloquy as he walked rapidly on. Other thoughts soon occupied his mind, and Hiram was forgotten. The latter, however, did not forget. The Doctor's rebuke filled his heart with rage; still he consoled himself with the thought that his brother was an infidel, and would unquestionably be damned. Meantime he was forced to hear various encomiums on him from Mrs. Bennett and her daughters—[Doctor Frank, as we have intimated, was a brilliant fellow, and in the very prime of life]—and was still further annoyed by a remark of Mr. Bennett, that 'the Doctor was doing very well; gaining ground fast; getting some of our best families.' Hiram departed from the house in an uncomfortable state of mind. All the way home he indulged in the bitterest feelings: so strong were these that they found expression in ominous mutterings to himself, among which were, 'Conceited fool,' 'I hate him,' and the like.

Suddenly Hiram's thoughts appeared to take a new direction. He stopped short, and exclaimed aloud: 'What have I done? O God, have mercy on me. God forgive me!'

When he reached his room he hastily struck a light and seized his Bible. Turning the leaves rapidly in search of something, his eyes were at length fastened on a verse, and he trembled from head to foot, and his breath nearly failed him, while he read as follows:

'But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause, shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.'

'The very word; oh, the very, very word!' he exclaimed. 'I have said it—said that word—said 'fool,' and I am in danger of hell fire, if I do belong to the church. Yes, hell fire—oh-oh—oh, hell fire. I wish mother was here. I know what I will do. I will write a confession, and send it to my brother to-morrow. I will abase myself before him. Yes, I will. Oh, oh, hell fire! What will become of me!' Hiram prayed, a good portion of the night, for a remission of the awful sentence; the bare possibility of its being carried out filled him with terror.

At last, overcome by weariness and exhaustion, he fell asleep.

He awoke early. He lay several minutes, revolving the last night's scene. Presently his countenance brightened. He sprang from the bed, and again turned to the dreaded text, but not with his previous alarm. On the contrary, he was hopeful. He read the verse over carefully, and said to him self: 'I am all right, after all. It means whosoever shall say the word to his brother. I did not make any reply to Frank, much as he irritated me. I restrained my anger, and suffered humiliation before him. I may have been too violent in giving utterance to these expressions, but it is doubtful if I have even incurred any penalty, for I surely was not angry without a cause. God has heard my prayers, and has relieved my mind in answer thereto. I shan't have to make a confession either. Glad of that. How he would have triumphed over me!'

So Hiram went forth to his usual 'duties,' his complacency fully restored, and his faith confirmed that he was one of the 'elect.'

CHAPTER V

'Already she guessed who it was!'

And who could he be—the intelligent, handsome, but, as it would seem, over-bold young man, who had presumed to place himself so confidently in her path and interrupt her walk till he had said his say, and then disappear as abruptly as he came?

She guessed who.

The arrival of her father with the guest he was to bring proved she had divined right. For coming up the avenue, she saw that it was the same handsome young man she had a little before encountered. And she could perceive in her father's countenance a glowing look of satisfaction as the two mounted the steps (Sarah was peeping through the blinds) and proceeded to enter the house. Before they had accomplished this, however, the room was vacant. Sarah was nowhere to be found—that is, for the moment; but in due time she presented herself, and thereupon Dr. James Egerton—that was his name—was formally introduced to her.

'I recollect you now,' said Sarah, seriously. 'Your features have not at all changed, except they seem larger and—'

'Older, doubtless,' interrupted the young man. 'You, too, have changed, even more than I; but I knew you the moment my eyes fell on you.' * * *

Seven years had passed since grievous afflictions befell Joel Burns—when his wife died and his daughter was stricken low, and he himself was brought to the very gates of death. The reader has already been made acquainted with these circumstances, and will scarcely forget that, when the famous medical man returned to New Haven after visiting Sarah, he despatched his favorite student, with directions to devote himself to the case. It is known, too, with what earnestness and skill the youth—for he was little more than a youth—performed his responsible duties.

Here I had thought to take leave of him, but as he has abruptly come on the stage as a visitor at Burnsville, and as Sarah Burns already exhibits an incipient interest in the young doctor, I must let the reader into the secret of his sudden appearance.

THE UNION

VII.

RHODE ISLAND AND DELAWARE COMPARED

In 1790 the population of Rhode Island was 69,110, and that of Delaware 59,096. In 1860 the former numbered 174,620, the latter 112,216. Thus, from 1790 to 1860, the ratio of increase of population of Rhode Island was 152.67 per cent., and of Delaware, 89.88. At the same relative rate of increase, for the next, as for the last seventy years, the population of Rhode Island in 1930, would be 441,212, and of Delaware, 213,074. Thus in 1790, Rhode Island numbered but 10,014 more than Delaware, 62,404 more in 1860, and, at the same ratio of increase, 228,138 more in 1930. Such has been and would be the effect of slavery in retarding the increase of Delaware, as compared with Rhode Island. (Census Table, 1860, No. 1.)

The population of Rhode Island per square mile in 1790, was 52.15, and in 1860, 133.71; that of Delaware, 27.87 in 1790, and 59.93 in 1860. The absolute increase of population of Rhode Island, per square mile, from 1790 to 1860, was 80.79, and from 1850 to 1860, 20.74; that of Delaware, from 1790 to 1860 was 25.05, and from 1850 to 1860, 9.76. (Ib.)

Area.-The area of Rhode Island is 1,306 square miles, and of Delaware, 2,120, being 38 per cent., or much more than one third larger than Rhode Island. Retaining their respective ratios of increase, per square mile, from 1790 to 1860, and reversing their areas, the population of Rhode Island in 1860, would have been 283,465, and of Delaware, 78,268.

In natural fertility of soil Delaware is far superior to Rhode Island, the seasons much more favorable for crops and stock, and with more than double the number of acres of arable land.

Progress of Wealth.—By Census Tables 33 and 36 (omitting commerce), it appears that the products of industry as given, viz., of agriculture, manufactures, mines, and fisheries, were that year, in Rhode Island, of the value of $52,400,000, or $300 per capita, and in Delaware, $16,100,000, or $143 per capita. That is, the average annual value of the product of the labor of each person in Rhode Island is greatly more than double that of the labor of each person in Delaware, including slaves. This, we have seen, would make the value of the products of labor in Rhode Island in 1930, $132,363,600, and in Delaware, only $30,469,582, notwithstanding the far greater area and superior natural advantages of Delaware as compared with Rhode Island.

As to the rate of increase: the value of the products of Delaware in 1850 was $7,804,992, in 1860, $16,100,000; and in Rhode Island, in 1850, $24,288,088, and in 1860, $52,400,000 (Table 9, Treas. Rep., 1856), exhibiting a large difference in the ratio in favor of Rhode Island.

By Table 36, p. 196, Census of 1860, the cash value of the farm lands of Rhode Island in 1860 was $19,385,573, or $37.30 per acre (519,698 acres), and of Delaware, $31,426,357, or $31.39 per acre. (1,004,295 acres). Thus, if the farm lands of Delaware were of the cash value of those of Rhode Island per acre, it would increase the value of those of Delaware $5,935,385, whereas the whole value of her slaves is but $539,400.

But by Table 35, Census of 1860, the total value of the real and personal property of Rhode Island in 1860, was $135,337,588, and of Delaware, $46,242,181, making a difference in favor of Rhode Island, $89,095,407, whereas, we have seen, in the absence of slavery, Delaware must have far exceeded Rhode Island in wealth and population.

The earnings of commerce are not given by the census, but, to how vast an extent this would swell the difference in favor of Rhode Island, we may learn from the Census, Bank Table No. 34. The number of the banks of Rhode Island in 1860, was 91; capital, $20,865,569; loans, $26,719,877; circulation, $3,558,295; deposits, $3,553,104. In Delaware, number of banks, 12; capital, $1,640,775; loans, $3,150,215; circulation, $1,135,772; deposits, $976,223.

Having shown how much slavery has retarded the material progress of Delaware, let us now consider its effect upon her moral and intellectual development.

Newspapers and Periodicals.—The number of newspapers and periodicals in Rhode Island in 1860, was 26, of which 18 were political, 6 literary, and 2 miscellaneous. (Census, Table No. 37.) The number in Delaware was 14, of which 13 were political, and 1 literary. Of periodicals, Delaware had none; Rhode Island, 1. The number of copies of newspapers and periodicals issued in Rhode Island in 1860 was 5,289,280, and in Delaware only 1,010,776, or largely more than five to one in favor of Rhode Island.

As regards schools, colleges, academies, libraries, and churches, I must take the census of 1850, those tables for 1860 not being yet arranged or published. The number of public schools in Rhode Island in 1850 was 426, teachers 518, pupils 23,130; attending school during the year, as returned by families, whites, 28,359; native adults of the State who cannot read or write, 1,248; public libraries, 96; volumes, 104,342; value of churches, $1,293,600; percentage of native free adults who cannot read or write, 149. Colleges and academies, pupils, 3,664. (Comp. Census of 1850.) The number of public schools in Delaware in 1850, was 194, teachers 214, pupils 8,970; attending school during the year, whites, as returned by families, 14,216; native free adults of the State who cannot read or write, 9,777; public libraries, 17; volumes, 17,950; value of churches, $340,345; percentage of native free adults who cannot read or write, 23.03; colleges and academies, pupils, 764. (Comp. Census, 1850.)

These official statistics enable me then again to say, that slavery is hostile to the progress of population, wealth, and education, to science and literature, to schools and colleges, to books and libraries, to churches and religion, to the press, and therefore to FREE GOVERNMENT; hostile to the poor, keeping them in want and ignorance; hostile to labor, reducing it to servitude, and decreasing two thirds the value of its products; hostile to MORALS, repudiating among slaves the marital and parental condition, classifying them by law as CHATTELS, darkening the immortal soul, and making it a crime to teach millions of human beings to read or write.

THE CAUSES AND RESULTS OF THE WAR

There are certain theories in regard to the causes of the present war, which are so generally accepted as to have fortified themselves strongly in the principle of 'magna est veritas et prevalebit.' Theories based, however, upon facts which have taken their rise long since the true causes of the war had begun to work, and which, consequently, mistaking the effect for the cause, are from their nature ephemeral, and farther from the truth than they were at their origin. Few thinkers have looked below the surface of the matter, and the majority of Christendom, ignoring any other past than the few brief years that have rolled over our national existence, forgetting that great causes oft-times smoulder unseen for centuries ere they burst forth in effects the more powerful from their long suppression, shaking the earth with the pent-up fury of ages—forgetting these things and arguing in the present instance from the few palpable facts found floating upon the surface of our society, by a tacit consent lay the burden of the war upon the present generation and its immediate predecessors. Herein lies the error which blinds the world as well to the warning of the past as to the momentous issue involved.

Where then shall we look for the cause of that antagonism in which North and South are arrayed—that bitter hostility setting brother against brother, and father against child, dividing into two separate portions a nation descended from the same stock, whose archives are one, all whose associations of a glorious past are the same, and which has hitherto swept swiftly on to unparalleled wealth and power, seemingly indissolubly united, and looking forward to the same glorious and ever-expanding future? Not to the errors in our political system, for no faults of government could, in a brief century, have produced such an upheaving of the foundations of society as we now behold—could have awakened such a thunder peal as is now causing the uttermost corners of the earth to tremble with dismay. Not to the institution of slavery, for however great a curse it maybe to our people and soil, however brutalizing in its tendencies, however unjust to the negro race, and opposed to all the principles of enlightenment and human progress—of whatever crimes it may have been guilty, this last and greatest of crimes cannot be laid at its door: for the bitterness of feeling between North and South existed long before the agitation of slavery was dreamed of, and the latter has only been seized upon as the ready means of accomplishing a greater design. Finally, not to any supposed desire in the Southern mind of establishing an independent empire of the South, whose people should be homogeneous, whose individual interests identical, and whose climate, productions, and institutions should move on in undisturbed harmony forever. For to this last a motive is wanting. Under no government that the world has ever known could the South have enjoyed so much freedom, such unexampled prosperity, such a rapid growth in wealth and power, in a word, so much real happiness—which is the sum of all earthly gifts—as under this which they are so earnestly endeavoring to tear down and blot from the face of the earth. Men's minds do not eagerly grasp and sternly pursue an abstract idea divorced from every consideration of self-interest, such as this would be. Even the greatest of moral principles are indebted to self-interest for their success, and without it the sublimest of creeds, the loftiest of principles would soon wither and die for lack of support. With every blessing that heart could wish in the present, and with no hope through change of bettering their condition in a practical point of view in the future, the idea of a great Southern empire, based upon such uncertain possibilities, would soon have disappeared from the Southern mind, even if it had ever existed.

Nay; the true cause is beneath and behind all these, taking its rise from the very foundations of English society in the dark ages, from the establishment of classes and distinctions of rank. In English history this principle reached its culmination in the wars of the Parliament, that great political tempest which changed the whole destiny and guided the future of that powerful nation, making it, as it is to-day, the dominant race of the old world. Its greatest development, however, was reserved for our day and our land. The England of the subsequent era was a new government, a new people. She reaped her harvest of good from her gigantic struggles, and so must we reap our harvest from ours. From the moment when the first settlers set foot upon our shores our inevitable destiny was foreshadowed; the seeds of the 'Great Rebellion' were even then deeply implanted, and all causes have since that day worked together for its fulfilment. We too must be purified by fire and sword; and may we not hope that our beloved country may emerge from the slaughter, the ruin, and the conflagration, more prosperous, more powerful than ever before, and casting off the slough of impurity that has for long years been hardening upon her, renovated and redeemed by the struggle, sweep majestically on to a purer and nobler destiny than even our past has given promise of, and attain a loftier position than any nation on earth has yet acquired?

The intimate relation of the feudal ages, between baron and retainer, established at first upon principles of individual safety and the public weal, soon degenerated into that of noble and serf. That which at first was but an honorable distinction between knight service on the one hand, and protection and patronage on the other, became, in the course of time, the baser relation of haughty assumption and oppression on the one hand, and the most abject servitude on the other. Descended from the same stern Saxon stock, separated only by purely artificial barriers, by the fortuitous circumstance of birth, the sturdy peasant could ill brook the tyranny of the privileged class—those 'lords rich in some dozen paltry villages.' That stern independence which has ever been the prominent characteristic of the Saxon mind, revolted at the palpable injustice of the relation of lord and serf. The aristocracy, on the contrary, fortified in their arrogance, at a later day, by the irruption of the Norman nobility, with their French ideas and customs, so far from yielding to the signs of the times and the light of dawning civilization, refused to give up one tittle of their assumed prerogatives, and became even more exacting in their demands, more lofty in their supposed superiority. Thus was engendered between the two classes a bitterness of feeling, a spirit of antagonism, that has never yet disappeared. Patiently did the peasant bide his time, and only when the tyranny became utterly unendurable did the movement commence which has swept downward to our time, reiving away one by one the miscalled privileges of the favored class, bringing, year by year, the condition of the laborer nearer to the true balance of society.

This antagonism reached its height in the Cromwellian era, and the men of those times stand forth upon the page of history as the exponents of the great principles of civil freedom. The strength of the Cromwellian party lay in the fact that it was composed almost entirely of the laboring and the middle classes, the bone and sinew of the land. Then for the first time in English history the world saw the plebeian pitted against the aristocrat, and the strife which ensued involved not so much the question of kingly prerogative and the 'divine right' of monarchs, as the pent-up feuds of ages—feuds arising from the most flagrant injustice and wrong on the one hand and forced submission on the other. This of itself was enough to lend to the contest a character of ferocity which well might make civilization turn pale. But even this bitterness was slight compared with that engendered by the religious element of the war. The history of the world has shown no wars so cruel and bloody, no crimes so heinous, no hatred so deep seated and abiding as those produced by religious differences. Strange that it should be so! Strange that the sacred cause whose province is to develop the purest and holiest emotions of the soul, should call forth and develop the fiercest, the darkest, and most unrelenting passions of the human heart! Yet so it proved in this instance. Their fierce, fanatical enthusiasm was a powerful element of strength to the Roundheads, which was lacking to the effeminate, corrupt, and godless Cavaliers. With such an auxiliary the struggle could not be doubtful; religious fanaticism carried the day.

In the years succeeding the Restoration, the evil effects of this religious antagonism were modified by mutual concessions, and in time almost disappeared under the impartial administration of a government founded upon a firmer basis than ever before, and more consonant to Saxon ideas of justice and social equality. But with us of America there was no such modification, for from the midst of this time of war and tumult, of savage hatred and unrelenting persecution, American society sprang. Our country was settled by representatives of these two extremes of English society, and in their choice of abode the hand of Providence is distinctly seen laying the foundations of our struggle of to-day, which is to prove the refining fire, the purification and regeneration of our race. Had the Cavaliers landed upon the shores of New England, the bracing winds of that northern clime, the rugged and intractable nature of the soil, the constant presence of dangers from the fiercer Indian tribes of the north, and the absolute necessity of severe and incessant toil to support existence, would have awakened and developed in them those manly qualities which for centuries had lain dormant in their souls—would have imparted new strength to their frames, new vigor and energy to their modes of thought; their indolence and effeminacy would soon have passed away, and they would have constantly approached, instead of departing from the true Puritan type. While, on the other hand, the stern, rough, almost savage peculiarities of the Puritan would in like manner have been modified by the genial influences of a southern sun and a teeming soil, and while the severe training and rough experiences of centuries, as well as their peculiar mental constitution, would have prevented their entirely lapsing into the indolence and effeminacy of the Cavalier, the whole race would nevertheless have undergone a softening change, bringing them in their turn nearer the type of their old antagonists; and thus each succeeding year would have seen these two extremes of social life drawing nearer and nearer together, and at last blending in dull, contented, plodding harmony. And the result would doubtless have been the degeneration of the entire race, and our fate that of the Spanish American colonies.

But this did not suit the designs of Providence. It was His purpose that there should be here those manifold social and political conflicts which are the life of a great nation—which are, indeed, the motive power to the wheels of human progress. A great problem in human destiny was here to be wrought out; a powerful nation was to arise, bearing within itself the elements of its own continual purification. The Cavalier landed upon the shores of Virginia, and spread his settlements southward. The influence of climate upon both the physical and mental constitution of man is well known. The enervating climate of the 'sunny South,' the soil fruitful beyond a parallel, pouring forth its products almost spontaneously, and, above all, the 'peculiar institution,' which released the planter from the necessity of toil, all tended to aggravate the peculiarities of mind and body which the settlers inherited from their ancestors; and the result has been a race which, while it presents here and there an example of brilliant, meteoric genius, is, in the main, both intellectually and physically inferior to the hardy denizens of the North and West. The same influences have fostered the aristocratic notions of the early settlers of the Southern States. With every element of a monarchy in their midst, the Gulf States have long been anything but a republic. De Bow, when, a few years since, he broached in his Review the idea, and prophesied the establishment of a monarch in our midst, was but giving expression to a feeling which had long been dominant in the Southern heart. All their institutions, associations, and reminiscences have tended steadily to this result, and in the event of the success of the rebellion, it needs but some bold apostle to take upon himself the propagation and execution of the plan, to make the idea a startling reality. And herein lies the secret of the sympathy of the English aristocracy with the confederates in their struggle for independent existence.