Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No IV, April 1863

Alas! that the contemplation of so worthy a theme is marred by the 'ifs' and 'buts' of controversial strife. Alas! that we cannot depress the sectional opposing interests which are but secondary to a condition of political consolidation, and elevate above these distracting and isolated evils, the great and eternal principle, Strength as it alone exists in Unity. Alas! that with the beam of suicidal measures we blind the eye political, because, forsooth, the motes of individual or local injuries afflict, as they afflict all human forms of government.

The great evil, North and South, before the war, during the war, and now, is the want of political charity – that charity which, like its moral prototype, 'suffereth long and is kind.' We the people, North and South, have been and are unwilling to grant to the other people and States the right to think, speak, and urge their own opinions – the very right which each insists upon claiming for itself. It has been held 'dangerous' to discuss questions which, though in one sense pertaining only to particular States, nevertheless bear upon the whole country. It has been considered 'heresy' to urge with rhetoric and declamation, even in our halls of Congress, certain principles for and against Slavery, for example, lest mischief result from the agitation of those topics. But in such remonstrance we have forgotten that the very principle of democratic institutions involves the right of all men to think and act, under the law, as each pleases. We have also forgotten that any subject which will not bear discussion and political consideration must be dangerous in itself, and pregnant with weakness, if not evil. There is no harm in discussing questions upon which hang vital principles; for if there exists on the one side strength and justice, all arguments on the other side can do it no injury. With regard to Slavery, one of the 'causes' or 'occasions' of this unhappy war, it may be said that the North owes much to the South which it has never paid, in a true and kindly appreciation of the difficulties which have ever surrounded the institutions of the latter. But let us not forget that one reason why this debt has not been paid is because the South owes the North its value received, by not being willing to admit in the other's behalf the motives which underlay the efforts which have been made by the earnest, or so-called 'radical' men, who have opposed the institution of slavery. Pure misunderstanding of motive, pure lack of political as well as moral charity, has been wanting between the men of the North who opposed, and the men of the South who maintained the extension of slavery. Had each understood the other better, it is probable that the character of each would have assumed the following proportions: The slaveholder of the South, inheriting from generations back a system of servitude which even ancient history supported and defended, and which he in his inmost heart believes to be beneficial to the slave not less than the master, regards himself as violating no law of God or man in receiving from this inferior race or grade of men the labor of their hands, and the right to their control, while they draw from him the necessary physical support and protection which it is in his belief his bounden duty to give. The planter, a gentleman educated and a Christian, with the fear of God before his eyes, believes this – the belief was born in him and dies in him, and he is conscientiously faithful in carrying out the principles of his faith. I speak now of no exceptional, but of general cases, instancing only the representative of the highest class of Southern men. Is it to be wondered at that such a man, looking from his point of vision, should regard with suspicion and distrust the efforts of those who sought to abolish even by gradual means the apparent sources of his prosperity? Is it remarkable that he should regard as his enemy the man who preaches against and denounces as criminal the very system in which he trusts his social and political safety? He will not regard that apparent enemy what at heart and soul he really is, namely, a man as pure and devout, as well meaning and conscientious as himself. The man whom he scoffs at as a 'radical,' an 'abolitionist,' and a 'fanatic,' by education and intuition believes in his very soul that the holding of men in bondage, forcing from them involuntary labor, and the consequences thereof, are pregnant with moral and political ruin and decay. The system, not the men, is offensive to his eyes. Is he to blame for this opinion, provided it be well founded in his mind? Admit it eroneous in logic, still, if he believes it, is he to be condemned for holding the belief, and would he not be contemptible in his own eyes if he feared to express the moral convictions of his soul? The error of both has been that both are uncharitable – both unwilling to allow the right of opinion and freedom of debate on what both, as American citizens, hold to be vital principles, dependent upon constitutional provisions; the one claiming Slavery as the 'corner stone of political freedom,' the other as the stumbling block in the way of its advancement. This unwillingness to appreciate the motives of opposing minds led at last one section of our beloved country to an unwillingness to recognize the right of election, and, worse than all, an unwillingness to abide by the results of that election. When that principle – submission to the will of the majority – was overthrown, then, indeed, did the pillars of our national temple tremble, and the seat of our national power rock in its foundation.

And now a word in connection with this same principle of submission, as applicable to the people of the North in our present emergency. In accordance with the plan adopted by the founders of our Government, and practically illustrated in the election of George Washington and his successors, the people by a plurality of votes elected to office and placed at the head of our political system as its highest authority and ruler, the present Chief Magistrate. From the day of his acknowledged election, party politics settled into the calm of acquiescence, and all loyal and true States and men bowed to the arbitrament of the ballot box. That man, Abraham Lincoln, instantly became invested with the potential right of rule under the Constitution, and the great principle of constitutional liberty in his election and elevation stood justified. It mattered not then, nor matters it now, to us, what may be individual opinion of his merits or demerits, his ability or his disability. There he is, not as a private citizen, but as the head of our Government: his individuality is lost in his official embodiment. This principle being acknowledged, and party opinion being buried, in theory at least, at the foot of the altar of the Government de facto, whence is it that at this time creeps into our council chambers, our political cliques, our social haunts, our market places, ay, our most sacred tabernacles – a spirit adverse to the principles for which we are fighting, laboring for, and dying for? Let us – a people anxious for peace on honorable grounds, anxious for a Union which no rash hand shall ever again attempt to destroy – look, with a moment's calm reflection, at this alarming evil.

It is very evident to most men that, in spite of temporary defeats and an unexpected prolongation of the war, the loyal States hold unquestionably the preponderance of power. Nothing but armed intervention from abroad can now affect even temporarily this preponderance. As events and purposes are seen more clearly through the smoke of the battle fields by the ever-watchful eyes of Europe, armed intervention becomes less and less a matter of probability. The hopes of an honorable peace, therefore, hang upon the increase and continuance of this military preponderance. With the spirit of determination evinced by both combatants, the unflinching valor of both armies, and with the unquestioned resources and ability to hold out of the North, it appears evident that the strife for mastery will in time terminate in favor of the loyal States. There is but one undermining influence which can defeat this end, and still further prolong the war, or, what is worse, plunge the North into the irretrievable disaster of internal conflict – and that undermining influence is dissension among ourselves. Such a consummation would bring joy to the hearts of our enemies and lend them the first ray of real hope that ultimate separation will be their purchased peace. We will not here draw a picture of that fallacious peace, that suicidal gap, whose festering political sore would breed misery and ruin, not only for ourselves, but for our posterity, for ages to come. But let us be warned in time. Even now the insidious movement of dissension is hailed with satisfaction and delight in the council meetings at Richmond, and no effort will be spared to aid its devastating progress. False rumors will be raised on the slightest and most insignificant grounds. Trivial mistakes and blunders in the cabinet and the field will be magnified; facts distorted, and the flame be blown by corrupting influences abroad and at home, in the hopes – let them be vain hopes – that we the people will be diverted from the great cause we have most at heart into side issues and sectional distrust. And why? Because more powerful than serried hosts and open warfare is the poison of sedition and conspiracy that is thrown into the cup of domestic peace and confidence – more fatal than the ravages of the battle field is that of the worm that creeps slowly and surely – weakening, as it works, the foundations of the edifice in which we dwell unsuspicious of evil. Is it astonishing that they, the enemies of our common weal, should rejoice in these signs of incipient weakness, or fail to resort to any expedient whereby our strength as a united and loyal people can be made less? Have they not shown themselves capable and ready to avail themselves of every weakness in our counsels and in the field? Would not we do the same did we perceive distrust and dissatisfaction presenting through the mailed armor of our opponents a vulnerable point for attack? Then blame them not with muttered imprecations, but look – ay, look to ourselves. The shape of this undermining influence is political dissension at a period when the name of 'party' ought to be obliterated from the people's creed. Let opinion on measures and men have full and unrestricted sway, so far as these opinions may silently work under the banner of the one great cause of self-preservation; but let them not interfere with the prosecution of the efforts of the Government, whether State or national, to prosecute this holy and patriotic war in defence of the principles which created and are to keep us a united nation. Let us not tempt the strength of the ice that covers the waters of political and partisan problems, while we have enough to do to protect and cover the solid ground already in our possession. The President of the United States, be he who or what he may – think he how or what he will, enact he what he chooses – is, let us remember, the corner stone of our political liberty. The Constitution is a piece of parchment – sacred and to be revered – but it is, in its outward presentment, material and inactive. The spirit of the Constitution is intangible and ideal, its interpretation alone is its vitality. We the people – through equally material morsels of paper entitled votes – raise the spirit of the Constitution by placing in the halls of Congress the interpreters of that Constitution, over whom and above all sits the Chief Magistrate, who, once endowed by us with power, retains and sways it until another, by the same process, carries out at our will the same eventualities. Our part as electors and adjudicators is done, and it ill becomes us to weaken or hold up to the ridicule of the world the power therein invested, by questions as to the President's 'right' or 'power' or 'ability' to enact this measure or that.

Away then with the unseemly cry of 'the Constitution as it is,' 'the Union at it was,' the 'expediency' or 'non-expediency' of employing the war power, the interference or the non-interference of the man and the men established by us to represent us with the military leaders, the finances, or the thousand and one implements of administration, which they are bound to employ, not as we, but as they, holding our powers of attorney for a specified and legalized period, in their human wisdom deem best for the common good of the land. Let us have faith in the motives and intentions of our political administration, or if we have lost our faith, let us submit – patiently and with accord. Above all, at a period like this, when the minds of the best men and the truest are oppressed with a sense of the injustice with which a portion of our countrymen regard us, it most behooves us to keep our social and political ranks closed and in order, subject to the will of that commander, disobedience to which is infamy and ruin. No matter with what diversity of tongues and opinions we pursue our individual avocations and aims, we are all pilgrims pressing forward like the followers of Mohammed to the Kêbla stone of our faith – Peace founded on Union.

What if a party clique utters sentiments adverse to our own on the never ceasing topic of political policy? Is it not the expression of a mind or a hundred minds forming a portion of the great body politic, of which we ourselves are a part, and are they not entitled to their opinion and modes of expressing it, providing it be done with decorum and with a proper respect for the opinions of their adversaries? Why then do we or they employ, through the press and in rhetorical bombast, opprobrious epithets, fit only for the pot-house or the shambles? Shall we men and citizens, each of us a pillar upholding the crowning dome of our nationality, be taught, like vexed and querulous children, the impotence of personal abuse? Why seek to lay upon the head of this Cabinet officer or that, this Senator or that, the responsibility of temporary military defeats, when we are no more able to command and prevent reverses than are they? Or if in our superior wisdom we deem ourselves to be the better able to direct and administer, why do we forget that others among us, inspired by the same love of country, and equally ardent for its safety and advancement, hold exactly contrary opinions? It is not a matter of opinion – it is not a matter for interference, it is simply and only a matter for untiring unflinching confidence and support. We have done our duty as a people, and elected our Administration – let us, in the name of all that is sublime and fundamental in republican principles, support and not perplex them in the hard and complex problem which they are appointed to solve. These are principles, which, however trite, need to be kept before us and practically sustained at a period when, as is often the case in long and tedious wars, the dispiriting influence of delays and occasional defeats work erroneous conclusions in the minds of the people, leading to unjust accusations against the men in power, and an unwillingness to frankly acknowledge that the evil too often originated where the result most immediately occurred. In other words, our armies have often suffered simply and for no other reason than that they were outgeneralled on the field of battle, or overpowered by military causes for which no one is to blame – least of all, the President or his advisers.

And here let one word be said against the arguments of those well-meaning and patriotic men who attempt to prove that certain acts of the Government have been injudicious and unwise – such, for example, as the suspension of the habeas corpus, the alleged illegal arrests, and the emancipation policy. It is not the purpose of this paper to enter into additional argument to sustain this opinion or to disprove it. But in justice to the Government – simply because it is a Government – let it not be forgotten that when events heretofore unforeseen and unprepared for are throwing our vast nation into incalculable confusion, and when it becomes absolutely imperative that the head of the Government must act decisively and according to the promptness of his honest judgment, and when we know equally well that that judgment, be it what it may, cannot accord with the various and diverse opinions of all men, then it behooves his countrymen, if not to acquiesce in, to support whatever that honest judgment may decide to be best for the emergency. No doubt, errors have been made, but they are errors inconceivably less in their results than would be the unpardonable sin of the people, should they, because differing in opinion, weaken the hands and confuse the purposes of the powers that be. With secret and treacherous foes in our very midst, hidden behind the masks of a painted loyalty, the President, after deep and earnest consultation and reflection, deemed it his duty to authorize arrests under circumstances which he solemnly believed were the best adapted to arrest the evil, though, by so doing, many good and innocent men might temporarily suffer with the bad. So too with regard to the proclamation of freedom – be the step wise or unwise, and there is by no means a unity of sentiment on this head – the President conceived it to be the duty of his office – a duty which never entered into his plans or intentions until the war had increased to gigantic and threatening proportions – to level a blow at what he and millions of his countrymen believe to be the stronghold of the enemy, viz., that system of human servitude which nourished the body politic and social now standing in armed and fearful resistance to the Constitution and the laws. It matters not, so far as opinion goes, whether the step was wise or foolish, if the executive head deemed it wise. Nor was it a hasty or spasmodic movement on his part. Months were devoted to its consideration, and every argument was patiently and candidly listened to from all the representatives of political theory for and against. Even then no hasty step was taken; but, on the contrary, our deluded countrymen in arms against us were forewarned, and earnestly, respectfully advised and entreated to take that step in behalf of Union and peace, which would leave their institution as it had existed. Nay, more: terms whereby no personal inconvenience or pecuniary loss to them would be involved if they would but be simply loyal to the Government, were liberally offered them, with three months for their consideration. Let those of us who, notwithstanding these ameliorating circumstances, doubt the good policy of the act, remember that they of the South, our open foes, invited the measures. Their leaders acknowledged and their press boasted that the Southern army never could be overcome – if for no other reason, for this reason, that while the army of the North was composed of the bone and muscle of the great working classes, drawn away from the fields of labor and enterprise, which must necessarily, in their opinion, languish from this absence, the Confederate army was composed of 'citizens' and property owners (to wit, slaveholders), whose absence from their plantations in no way interfered with the growth of their cotton, sugar, corn, and rice, from which sources of wealth and nourishment they could continue to draw the sinews of war. They went farther than this, and acted upon their declaration by employing their surplus slave labor in the work of intrenching their fortifications, serving their army, and finally fighting in their army.

Upon this basis of slave labor they asserted their omnipotence in war and ability to continue the struggle without limit of time. The subsidized press of England supported this theory, and declared that with such advantages it was idle for the Federal Government to maintain a struggle in the face of such belligerent advantages! Then, and not till then, were the eyes of the President open to a fact which none but the political blind man could fail to observe, and then it was that not only the President, but a very large proportion of our countrymen, heretofore strictly conservative men, felt that the time had come when further forbearance would be suicidal. Although many doubted and still doubt if slavery was the cause of the rebellion, very many were forced to the conclusion that what our enemies themselves admitted to be the strength of the rebellion was indeed such, and that the time had arrived to avail themselves of that military necessity which authorizes the Government to adopt such measures as may be deemed the most fitting for crushing rebellion and restoring our constitutional liberty. Let us think, then, as we please upon the judiciousness of the proclamation – that it was uttered with forethought, calmness, and with a full sense of the responsibility of the President to his God and his country, none of us can deny. With this we should be satisfied. We have but one duty before us, then, as a government and a people – and that is, an earnest, devoted prosecution of this war for the integrity of our common country. In the untrammelled hands of that Government let us leave its prosecution. We have but one duty before us as individuals, and that is to support the existing Government with our individual might. Let the cry be loud and long, as, thank Heaven, it still is, 'On with the war,' not for war's sake, but for the sake of that peace, which only war, humanely and vigorously conducted, can achieve.

Fling personal ambition and individual aggrandizement to the winds. Let political preferment and partisan proclivities bide their time, and as a united and one-minded people, devote heart and mind, strength and money, to the prosecution of the campaign, without considering what may be its duration, and without fear of circumstance or expenditure. If it be necessary, let the public debt be increased until it reaches and exceeds the public liabilities of the most indebted Government of Europe. We and our descendants will cheerfully pay the interest on that expenditure which purchased so great a blessing as national endurability. Meanwhile, with unity, forbearance, perseverance, and the silent administration of the ballot box, we will, as a people, maintain, notwithstanding that a portion of the land we hold dear stands severed from us by hatred and prejudice, the prosperity which we still claim, and the renown which was once accorded to us. By so doing, and by so doing only, shall our former grandeur come back to us – though its garments be stained with blood. A grandeur which, without hyperbole, it may be said, will outstrip the glory which, as a young and sanguine people, we have ever claimed for our country. The reason for so believing is the simple and undeniable fact that out of the saddening humiliation and devastation of this civil war has arisen the better knowledge of the wonderful resources, abilities, and determined spirit of the American people. We see – both combatants – that we are giants fighting, and not quarrelling pigmies, as the foreign enemies of us both have vainly attempted to prove. We see, both combatants, how vast and important to each is the territory we are struggling for, how inseparable to our united interests are the sources of wealth imbedded in our rocks, underlying our soil, and growing in its beneficent bosom. We see, both combatants, how strong is the commerce of the East to supply, like a diligent handmaiden, the wants of every section; how bountiful are the plantations of the South and the granaries of the West to keep the world united to us in the strong bonds of commercial and friendly intercourse; how absolutely necessary to the prosperity of both are the deep and wide-flowing rivers which run, like silver bands of peace, through the length and breadth of a land whose vast privileges we have been too blind to appreciate, and in that blindness would destroy. Above all, we are beginning to see that like two mighty champions fighting for the belt of superiority, we can neither of us achieve that individual advantage which can utterly and forever place the other beyond the ability of again accepting the gauntlet of defiance, and that our true and lasting glory can alone proceed from a determination to shake hands in peace, and, as united champions, defying no longer each other, defy the world. Nor would the South in consenting to a reunion now find humiliation or dishonor. She has proved herself a noble foe – quick in expedient, firm in determination, valorous in war. We know each other the better for the contest; we shall, when peace returns, respect each other the more; and although the cost of that peace, whenever it comes, will be the sacrifice of many local prejudices and sectional privileges, what, oh, what are such sacrifices to the inestimable blessings of national salvation?