Read Ebook: The Continental Monthly Vol III Issue VI June 1863 Devoted to Literature and National Policy by Various

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pendent communities; in other words, it tends to lapse into barbarism.

Such a movement is, however, against the order of Providence, and thus is an evil that corrects itself. Men are happier in large communities than in small; and when selfishness and ambition have broken up a large state into many small and independent ones, the same principle of selfishness, still operating, keeps them in perpetual mutual jealousy and collision, until, whether they will or not, they are forced into a mass again by some strong military despot, or conquered by a superior foreign power, and quiet is for a time again restored.

From these considerations we conclude that civilization, as it advances, is but the index of the capacity of human beings to form themselves into larger and larger nationalities , each consisting of numerous parts, performing distinct functions; yet so organized harmoniously that each part shall preserve all the freedom that it requires for its utmost development and happiness, and yet depend for its own life upon the life of the entire national body.

It may also be concluded that this capacity of men so to organize is just in proportion to the development of the higher elements and faculties of the mind, the religious, moral, social, and intellectual, and the diminished influence of the lower, animal, and selfish nature.

Consequently, when in such a large and harmoniously organized nationality as the American Union, there arises a movement which, without the slightest rational or high moral cause, aims to break away from this advanced, this free and humanizing political organization; and not only to break away from the main body, but also maintains the right of the seceding portion itself to break up into independent sovereignties; then, the conclusion is forced upon every impartial mind that the spirit which animates such a disruptive movement is a spirit opposed to civilization, since it runs in precisely the opposite direction; as, instead of tending to unity, to accord, to a large organization with individual freedom, it tends to disunity, separation, the splitting up of society into many independent sovereign states, or fractions of states, certain, absolutely certain to clash and war with each other, especially with slavery as their woof and warp; and thus bring back the reign of barbarism, and the ultimate subjection of these warring little sovereignties to one or more iron despotisms.

What is the cause of this wicked, heaven-defying, insane movement on the part of the South? The answer is written in flames of light along the sky, and in letters of blood upon the breadth of the land. Slavery first, slavery middle, and slavery last. Accursed slavery! firstborn of the evil one--the lust of dominion over others for one's own selfish purposes, in its naked, most shameless, and undisguised form. Dominion of man over man in other modes, such as absolute monarchy, aristocracy, feudalism, ecclesiastical rule--all these justify their exactions under the plea of the welfare of the subject, or the salvation of souls. Slavery has nothing of the kind behind which to hide its monstrosity; nor does it care to do so, except when hard pushed, and then it feebly pleads the christianization of the negro! A plea at which the common sense of mankind and of Christendom simply laughs.

Now slavery, we know, is just the reverse of freedom, and hence it is only natural to expect that the fruits, the results of slavery, wherever its influence extends, would closely partake of the nature of their parent and cause. Slavery, then, as the antipodes of freedom, must engender in the community that harbors and fosters it, habits, sentiments, and modes of life continually diverging from, and ever more and more antagonistic to, whatever proceeds from free institutions.

Let us look at some of these. There are four points of antagonism between free and slave institutions that seem to stand out more prominently than others; at any rate, we shall not now extend our inquiry beyond them.

Slavery, then, begets in the ruling class:

It is at once seen how slavery develops to the utmost, in the master and dominant race, a habit of command, of self-will, of determination to have one's own way at all hazards, of intolerance of any contradiction or opposition; of quickness to take offence, and to avenge and right one's self. The possession and exercise of almost irresponsible power over others tend to destroy in the master all power of self-control; foster intolerance of any legal restraint, of any law but one's own will, that must either rule or ruin. It is a spirit that is cultivated assiduously from childhood to youth, and from youth to full age, by constant and ubiquitous subjection of the negro, young and old, to the petty tyranny, the whims and caprices of little master and miss, and by the exercise of authority at all times and in all places by the white over the black race. It is a spirit that is essential to the slave driver; and when the habit of dictation and command to inferiors has grown into every fibre of his nature, he cannot dismiss it when he deals with his equals, whenever his wishes are opposed. Hence the violence, the lawlessness, the carrying and free use of deadly weapons, the duels and murders that are so rife in the South, and the haughty manners of so many Southern Congressmen. The rebellion is simply the culmination and breaking forth of this arrogant, domineering, slavery-fostered spirit on a vast scale. Failing to hold the reins of the National Government, it must needs destroy it.

Such a temper and disposition is evidently incompatible with human equality and equal rights; and in it we have one of the roots of Southern ill-concealed antagonism to free republican government.

The truth however is this: Where labor is despised no community can flourish as it is capable of doing; much less one with free institutions. We might just as well talk of a body without flesh and bones; of a house without walls or timbers; of a country without land and water, as of free institutions without skilled and honorable labor. It is the very ground on which they stand.

This then is another source of antagonism between slave and free institutions.

We have said that labor, skilled, honored, educated labor, is the material foundation, the solid ground upon which free institutions rest. We now further add this undeniable and important truth, viz., that as branches of labor are multiplied; as each branch itself is subdivided and diversified; as new branches and new details are established by the aid of the ever-increasing light of scientific discovery, and the exhaustless fertility of human inventive genius; as all these numerous industries are more or less connected and interlocked; as this great network of ever-multiplying and diversified human labors expands its circumference, while also filling up its interior meshes, in the degree that all this takes place, the broader and firmer becomes this industrial foundation for free institutions.

We have yet to learn the elevating, refining power of labor, when organized as it can, and assuredly will be. At present we have no adequate conception of this influence. It is solely for the sake of labor, for the sake of human activity, that it may fill as many and as wide and deep channels as possible, and thus permit man's varied life and capacities to flow freely forth, and expand to the utmost; it is solely for this end that all government is instituted; and under a free, popular government, under the guidance of religion and science, labor is destined to reach a degree of development and a perfection of organization, and to exert a reactive influence in ennobling human character that shall surpass the farthest stretch of our present imaginings. Our rare political organization is but the coarse, bold outlines--the rugged trunk and branches of the great tree of liberty. Out of this will grow the delicate and luxuriant foliage of a varied, beautiful, scientific, and dignified industry and social life.

This is the glorious, towering, expanding structure, which the insane rebellion, the dark slave power, is raging to destroy! to tear it, branch by branch, to pieces, and scatter the ruins to the four winds, in order to set up, what? in its place. A foul, decaying object--a slave oligarchy, which, do what it will, is, at each decennial census, seen to fall steadily farther and farther into the rear even of the most laggard of the Free States, in all that goes to make up our American civilization. And all this because it sees that the life of the republic is the death of slavery, and free labor the eternal enemy of slave.

This difference in the conditions of labor, then, forms the third point of antagonism between free and slave institutions.

It is an antagonism that is ever on the increase--ever intensifying, and utterly irremediable in any conceivable way or mode. Much as the nation longs for peace, this is utterly hopeless, let it do what it will--compromise, try arbitration, mediation--nothing can bring lasting peace but the death of slavery. Freedom may be crushed for a season, but as it is the breath of God himself, it will live and struggle on from year to year, and from age to age, and give the world no rest until it has vanquished all opposition, and asserted its divine right to be supreme.

If slave society, therefore, thus necessarily diverges ever farther and farther from the conditions which characterize, and those which result from the operations of free institutions, such society must of course be fast on its way to a monarchical, or even an absolute and despotic government. The whites of the South even now may be considered as separated into two distinct classes--the governing and the governed. The slaveholders are virtually the governing class, through their superior wealth, education, and influence; and the non-slaveholders are as virtually the subject class, since slavery, being the great, paramount, leading interest, overtopping and overshadowing all things else, tinging every other social element with its own sombre hue, is fatal to any movement adverse to it on the part of the non-slaveholder. Everything must drift in the whirl of its powerful eddy, a terrible maelstrom, into which the North was fast floating, when the thunder of the Fort Sumter bombardment awoke it just in time to see its awful peril and strike out, with God's help, into the free waters once more.

From these considerations, can we be surprised at the rumors that now and then come from the South, of incipient movements toward a monarchical government? Not at all. Should the rebellion succeed--a supposition which is, of course, not to be harbored for a moment--but in such an improbable contingency there can be hardly a reasonable doubt that a monarchy would be the result. Not probably at first. The individual States would like to amuse themselves awhile with the game of secession, and the joys of independent sovereignty, State rights, etc., as Georgia has already begun to do, in nullifying the conscription law on their bogus congress. But eventually their mutual jealousies, their 'quick sense of honor,' their contentious and intestine wars will bring them under an absolute monarchy, more or less arbitrary, or under the yoke of some foreign power.

The antagonism between free and slave institutions, which we have inferred, from a glance at the peculiar workings of each, finds its complete confirmation in certain statements made by Mr. Calhoun, some twenty years ago, which were to this effect, viz.:

'Democracy in the North is engendering social anarchy; it is tending to the loosening of the bonds of society. Society is not governed by the will of a mob, but by education and talent. Therefore the South, resting on slavery as a stable foundation, is a principle of authority: it must restrain the North; must resist the anarchical influence of the North; must counterbalance the dissolving influence of the North. He upheld slavery because it was a bulwark to counterbalance the dissolving democracy of the North; that the dissolving doctrines of democracy took their rise in England, passed into France, and caused the French Revolution; that they have been carried out in the democracy of the North, and will there ultimate in revolution, anarchy, and dissolution.'

These are Mr. Calhoun's own words, and he will probably be allowed to be a fair exponent of Southern sentiment: we may gather from these utterances how the free republicanism of the North is regarded by the slave oligarchy.

We cannot forbear adding another statement of Mr. Calhoun, made to Commodore Stuart, as far back as 1812, in a private conversation at Washington, which was in substance as follows, viz.: That the South, on account of slavery, found it necessary to ally herself with one of the political parties; but that if ever events should so turn out as to break this alliance, or cause that the South could not control the Government, that then it would break it up.

Comment upon this is unnecessary. Let no loyal man forget these expressions; they reveal the egg from whence, after fifty years' incubation, this rebellion has been hatched.

But our theme, 'The Value of the Union,' continually expands before us; nevertheless we must bring our article to a close. We do so with the following remarks:

An individual is truly free, not in the degree only in which he governs himself, but in the degree that he governs himself according to the central truth and right of things, or according to the loftiness of the standard by which he regulates his conduct.

It is by the possession of truth, and by obedience to what that truth teaches, that a man rises out of evil and error, and out of bondage thereto.

The possession of truth constitutes intelligence.

But intelligence is worse than useless without obedience to its highest requirements, which is virtue.

Virtue, or morality, in its turn , is nothing without that which constitutes the soul's topmost and central faculty, viz., the religious sentiment, or that which links the soul to God, the centre of all things. As the parts of any organism, as we have seen, fall into confusion and discord when the central bond is wanting; so do the powers of the soul, when it closes itself by evil doing against the entrance of the beams of life and light that unceasingly flow upon it from God, the spiritual sun and centre of the universe.

Now, as individuals make up the nation, this will be free, and the Union valued and preserved, in the degree that each individual is intelligent, virtuous, and religious.

Upon those, then, who educate the individual, those to whom the infant, the child, the youth, is entrusted, to mould and imbue at the most pliant and receptive period of life--on those, whose office it is to form the young mind into the love and practice of all things good and true, and an abhorrence of their opposites; upon these, the parents, the teachers, and the pastors of the land; upon these, when this hurricane of civil war shall have passed away, do the preservation of this Union and the hopes of mankind more than ever depend. Upon home education and influence; on the schools and on the churches on these three forces centred upon, interwoven, and vitalized by true Christian doctrine, as revealed in the Sacred Scriptures or inspired Word of God, rest the destinies of the American republic. May those who wield them live and act with an ever more vivid and growing consciousness of their great responsibility.

A MERCHANT'S STORY.

'All of which I saw, and part of which I was.'

Joe led Slema away, and, springing from the block, I pressed through the crowd to where Larkin was standing.

'Larkin,' I said, placing my hand on his arm, 'come with me.'

'My name is Kirke. You ought to know me.'

'Kirke! Why ye ar! I'm right down glad ter see ye, Mr. Kirke,' he exclaimed, seizing me warmly by the hand.

'Come with me; I want to talk with you.'

He sprang from the bench, and followed me into the mansion.

Entering the library, I locked the door. When he was seated, I said:

'Now, Larkin, who do you want this girl for?'

'Wall, I swar! Mr. Kirke, ye fire right at th' bull's eye!' Then, hesitating a moment, he added:

'Fur myself.'

'No, you don't; you know that isn't true.'

'Ha!--ha! This ar th' second time ye've told me I lied. Nary other man ever done it twice, Mr. Kirke; but I karn't take no 'fence with ye, nohow--ha! ha!'

'Wall, Mr. Kirke, I can't answer thet--not in honor.'

'Yas, ef ye kin!'

'John Hallet.'

'For himself!'

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