The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 08, No. 46, August, 1861

The sketches of the campaign in Virginia, which Winthrop had commenced in this magazine, would have been continued, and have formed an invaluable memoir of the places, the men, and the operations of which he was a witness and a part. As a piece of vivid pictorial description, which gives the spirit as well as the spectacle, his "Washington as a Camp" is masterly. He knew not only what to see and to describe, but what to think; so that in his papers you are not at the mercy of a multitudinous mass of facts, but understand their value and relation. Immediately upon his arrival at Fort Monroe he had commenced a third article, which was to have occupied the place of this. It is inserted here just as he left it, with one brief addition only to make his known meaning more clear. The part called "Voices of the Contraband" was written previously, and is not paged in the manuscript. It was to have been introduced into the article; but it is placed first here, that the sequence of the paper, as far as the author had written it, may remain undisturbed.

VOICES OF THE CONTRABAND

Solvuntur risu tabulae. An epigram abolished slavery in the United States. Large wisdom, stated in fine wit, was the decision. "Negroes are contraband of war." "They are property," claim the owners. Very well! As General Butler takes contraband horses used in transport of munitions of war, so he takes contraband black creatures who tote the powder to the carts and flagellate the steeds. As he takes a spade used in hostile earthworks, so he goes a little farther off and takes the black muscle that wields the spade. As he takes the rations of the foe, so he takes the sable Soyer whose skilful hand makes those rations savory to the palates and digestible by the stomachs of the foe and so puts blood and nerve into them. As he took the steam-gun, so he now takes what might become the stoker of the steam part of that machine and the aimer of its gun part. As he takes the musket, so he seizes the object who in the Virginia army carries that musket on its shoulder until its master is ready to reach out a lazy hand, nonchalantly lift the piece, and carelessly pop a Yankee.

The third number of Winthrop's Sketches of the Campaign in Virginia begins here.

PHYSIOGNOMY OF FORTRESS MONROE

The "Adelaide" is a steamer plying between Baltimore and Norfolk. But as Norfolk has ceased to be a part of the United States, and is nowhere, the "Adelaide" goes no farther than Fortress Monroe, Old Point Comfort, the chief somewhere of this region. A lady, no doubt Adelaide herself, appears in alto rilievo on the paddle-box. She has a short waist, long skirt sans crinoline, leg-of-mutton sleeves, lofty bearing, and stands like Ariadne on an island of pedestal size, surrounded by two or more pre-Raphaelite trees. In the offing comes or goes a steamboat, also pre-Raphaelite; and if Ariadne Adelaide's Bacchus is on board, he is out of sight at the bar.

Such an Adelaide brought me in sight of Fortress Monroe at sunrise, May 29, 1861. The fort, though old enough to be full-grown, has not grown very tall upon the low sands of Old Point Comfort. It is a big house with a basement story and a garret. The roof is left off, and the stories between basement and garret have never been inserted.

But why not be technical? For basement read a tier of casemates, each with a black Cyclops of a big gun peering out; while above in the open air, with not even a parasol over their backs, lie the barbette guns, staring without a wink over sea and shore.

In peace, with a hundred or so soldiers here and there, this vast inclosure might seem a solitude. Now it is a busy city,—a city of one idea. I seem to recollect that D'Israeli said somewhere that every great city was founded on one idea and existed to develop it. This city, into which we have improvised a population, has its idea,—a unit of an idea with two halves. The east half is the recovery of Norfolk,—the west half the occupation of Richmond; and the idea complete is the education of Virginia's unmannerly and disloyal sons.

Why Secession did not take this great place when its defenders numbered a squad of officers and three hundred men is mysterious. Floyd and his gang were treacherous enough. What was it? Were they imbecile? Were they timid? Was there, till too late, a doubt whether the traitors at home in Virginia would sustain them in an overt act of such big overture as an attempt here? But they lost the chance, and with it lost the key of Virginia, which General Butler now holds, this 30th day of May, and will presently begin to turn in the lock.

Three hundred men to guard a mile and a half of ramparts! Three hundred to protect some sixty-five broad acres within the walls! But the place was a Thermopylae, and there was a fine old Leonidas at the head of its three hundred. He was enough to make Spartans of them. Colonel Dimmick was the man,—a quiet, modest, shrewd, faithful, Christian gentleman; and he held all Virginia at bay. The traitors knew, that, so long as the Colonel was here, these black muzzles with their white tompions, like a black eye with a white pupil, meant mischief. To him and his guns, flanking the approaches and ready to pile the moat full of Seceders, the country owes the safety of Fortress Monroe.

Within the walls are sundry nice old brick houses for officers' barracks. The jolly bachelors live in the casemates and the men in long barracks, now not so new or so convenient as they might be. In fact, the physiognomy of Fortress Monroe is not so neat, well-shorn, and elegant as a grand military post should be. Perhaps our Floyds, and the like, thought, if they kept everything in perfect order here, they, as Virginians, accustomed to general seediness, would not find themselves at home. But the new régime must change all this, and make this the biggest, the best equipped, and the model garrison of the country. For, of course, this must be strongly held for many, many years to come. It is idle to suppose that the dull louts we find here, not enlightened even enough to know that loyalty is the best policy, can be allowed the highest privilege of the moral, the intelligent, and the progressive,—self-government. Mind is said to march fast in our time; but mind must put on steam hereabouts to think and act for itself, without stern schooling, in half a century.

But no digressing! I have looked far away from the physiognomy of the fortress. Let us turn to the

PHYSIOGNOMY OF THE COUNTRY

The face of this county, Elizabeth City by name, is as flat as a Chinaman's. I can hardly wonder that the people here have retrograded, or rather, not advanced. This dull flat would make anybody dull and flat. I am no longer surprised at John Tyler. He has had a bare blank brick house, entitled sweetly Margarita Cottage, or some such tender epithet, at Hampton, a mile and a half from the fort. A summer in this site would make any man a bore. And as something has done this favor for His Accidency, I am willing to attribute it to the influence of locality.

The country is flat; the soil is fine sifted loam running to dust, as the air of England runs to fog; the woods are dense and beautiful and full of trees unknown to the parallel of New York; the roads are miserable cart-paths; the cattle are scalawags; so are the horses, not run away; so are the people, black and white, not run away; the crops are tolerable, where the invaders have not trampled them.

Altogether the whole concern strikes me as a failure. Captain John Smith & Co. might as well have stayed at home, if this is the result of the two hundred and thirty years' occupation. Apparently the colonists picked out a poor spot; and the longer they stayed, the worse fist they made of it. Powhattan, Pocahontas, and the others without pantaloons and petticoats, were really more serviceable colonists.

The farm-houses are mostly miserably mean habitations. I don't wonder the tenants were glad to make our arrival the excuse for running off. Here are men claiming to have been worth forty thousand dollars, half in biped property, half in all other kinds, and they lived in dens such as a drayman would have disdained and a hod-carrier only accepted on compulsion.

PHYSIOGNOMY OF WATER

Always beautiful! the sea cannot be spoilt. Our fleet enlivens it greatly. Here is the flag-ship "Cumberland" vis-à-vis the fort. Off to the left are the prizes, unlucky schooners, which ought to be carrying pine wood to the kitchens of New York, and new potatoes and green peas for the wood to operate upon. This region, by the way, is New York's watermelon patch for early melons; and if we do not conquer a peace here pretty soon, the Jersey fruit will have the market to itself.

Besides stately flag-ships and poor little bumboat schooners, transports are coming and going with regiments or provisions for the same. Here, too, are old acquaintances from the bay of New York,—the "Yankee," a lively tug,—the "Harriet Lane," coquettish and plucky,—the "Catiline," ready to reverse her name and put down conspiracy.

On the dock are munitions of war in heaps. Volunteer armies load themselves with things they do not need, and forget the essentials. The unlucky army-quartermaster's people, accustomed to the slow and systematic methods of the by-gone days at Fortress Monroe, fume terribly over these cargoes. The new men and the new manners of the new army do not altogether suit the actual men and manners of the obsolete army. The old men and the new must recombine. What we want now is the vigor of fresh people to utilize the experience of the experts. The Silver-Gray Army needs a frisky element interfused. On the other hand, the new army needs to be taught a lesson in method by the old; and the two combined will make the grand army of civilization.

THE FORCES

When I arrived, Fort Monroe and the neighborhood were occupied by two armies.

1. General Butler.

2. About six thousand men, here and at Newport's News.

Making together more than twelve thousand men.

Of the first army, consisting of the General, I will not speak. Let his past supreme services speak for him, as I doubt not the future will.

Next to the array of a man comes the army of men. Regulars a few, with many post officers, among them some very fine and efficient fellows. These are within the post. Also within is the Third Regiment of Massachusetts, under Colonel Wardrop, the right kind of man to have, and commanding a capital regiment of three-months men, neatly uniformed in gray, with cocked felt hats.

Without the fort, across the moat, and across the bridge connecting this peninsula of sand with the nearest side of the mainland, are encamped three New York regiments. Each is in a wheat field, up to its eyes in dust. In order of precedence they come One, Two, and Five; in order of personal splendor of uniform they come Five, One, Two; in order of exploits they are all in the same negative position at present; and the Second has done rather the most robbing of hen-roosts.

The Fifth, Duryea's Zouaves, lighten up the woods brilliantly with their scarlet legs and scarlet head-pieces.

* * * * *

These last words were written upon the day that the attack in which Winthrop fell was arranged.

The disastrous day of the 10th of June, at Great Bethel, need not be described here. It is already written with tears and vain regrets in our history. It is useless to prolong the debate as to where the blame of the defeat, if blame there were, should rest. But there is an impression somewhat prevalent that Winthrop planned the expedition, which is incorrect. As military secretary of the commanding general, he made a memorandum of the outline of the plan as it had been finally settled. Precisely what that memorandum (which has been published) was he explains in the last letter he wrote, a few hours before leaving the fort. He says,—"If I come back safe, I will send you my notes of the plan of attack, part made up from the General's hints, part my own fancies." This defines exactly his responsibility. His position as aid and military secretary, his admirable qualities as adviser under the circumstances, and his personal friendship for the General, brought him intimately into the council of war. He embarked in the plan all the interest of a brave soldier contemplating his first battle. He probably made suggestions some of which were adopted. The expedition was the first move from Fort Monroe, to which the country had been long looking in expectation. These were the reasons why he felt so peculiar a responsibility for its success; and after the melancholy events of the earlier part of the day, he saw that its fortunes could be retrieved only by a dash of heroic enthusiasm. Fired himself, he sought to kindle others. For one moment that brave, inspiring form is plainly visible to his whole country, rapt and calm, standing upon the log nearest the enemy's battery, the mark of their sharpshooters, the admiration of their leaders, waving his sword, cheering his fellow-soldiers with his bugle voice of victory,—young, brave, beautiful, for one moment erect and glowing in the wild whirl of battle, the next falling forward toward the foe, dead, but triumphant.

On the 19th of April he left the armory-door of the Seventh, with his hand upon a howitzer; on the 21st of June his body lay upon the same howitzer at the same door, wrapped in the flag for which he gladly died, as the symbol of human freedom. And so, drawn by the hands of young men lately strangers to him, but of whose bravery and loyalty he had been the laureate, and who fitly mourned him who had honored them, with long, pealing dirges and muffled drums, he moved forward.

Yet such was the electric vitality of this friend of ours, that those of us who followed him could only think of him as approving the funeral pageant, not the object of it, but still the spectator and critic of every scene in which he was a part. We did not think of him as dead. We never shall. In the moist, warm midsummer morning, he was alert, alive, immortal.

DIRGE

FOR ONE WHO FELL IN BATTLERoom for a Soldier! lay him in the clover;He loved the fields, and they shall be his cover;Make his mound with hers who called him once her lover:Where the rain may rain upon it,Where the sun may shine upon it,Where the lamb hath lain upon it,And the bee will dine upon it.Bear him to no dismal tomb under city churches;Take him to the fragrant fields, by the silver birches,Where the whippoorwill shall mourn, where the oriole perches:Make his mound with sunshine on it,Where the bee will dine upon it,Where the lamb hath lain upon it,And the rain will rain upon it.Busy as the busy bee, his rest should be the clover;Gentle as the lamb was he, and the fern should be his cover;Fern and rosemary shall grow my soldier's pillow over:Where the rain may rain upon it,Where the sun may shine upon it,Where the lamb hath lain upon it,And the bee will dine upon it.Sunshine in his heart, the rain would come full oftenOut of those tender eyes which evermore did soften;He never could look cold, till we saw him in his coffin.Make his mound with sunshine on it,Where the wind may sigh upon it,Where the moon may stream upon it,And Memory shall dream upon it."Captain or Colonel,"—whatever invocationSuit our hymn the best, no matter for thy station,—On thy grave the rain shall fall from the eyes of a mighty nation!Long as the sun doth shine upon itShall grow the goodly pine upon it,Long as the stars do gleam upon itShall Memory come to dream upon it.

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES

Currents and Counter-Currents in Medical Science. With other Addresses and Essays. By OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. Boston; Ticknor & Fields. 12mo.

This volume contains seven occasional addresses and essays, written at various periods between 1812 and 1860. The subjects of which it treats are "Homoeopathy, and its Kindred Delusions," "Puerperal Fever, as a Private Pestilence," "The Position and Prospects of the Medical Student," "The Duties of the Physician,"—a Valedictory Address to the Medical Graduates of Harvard University,—"The Mechanism of Vital Actions," "Some more Recent Views of Homoeopathy," and "Currents and Counter-Currents in Medical Science." They are characterized by extensive information, fertile thought, strong convictions, keen wit, sound sense, and unflinching intellectual courage and self-trust. They are valuable contributions to the literature of the medical profession, and at the same time have that peculiar fascination which distinguishes all the productions of Dr. Holmes's ingenious and opulent mind. The style is clear, crisp, sparkling, abounding in originalities of verbal combination and felicities of descriptive phrase. In its movement, it bears the marks of a kind of mental impatience of the processes of slower, more dogged, and more cautious intellects, natural to a keen, bright, and swift intelligence, desirous of flashing the results of its operation in the briefest and most brilliant expression. The argument, though founded on premises which have been gathered by careful observation and study, often disregards the forms of the logic whose spirit it obeys, and, by its frequent use of analogy and illustration, may sometimes dazzle and confuse the minds it seeks to convince. In regard to opponents, it is not content with mere dialectic victory, but insinuates the subtle sting of wit to vex and irritate the sore places of defeat and humiliation.

The reputation which Dr. Holmes enjoys, as one of the most popular poets and prose-writers of the day, has made the public overlook the fact that literature has been the recreation of a life of which medical science has been the business. By far the larger portion of his time, for the last thirty years, has been devoted to his profession. Perhaps the value and validity of the conclusions he records in this volume may be questioned from the very circumstance that he expresses them in the lucid and vigorous style of an accomplished man of letters. "People," says Macaulay, "are loath to admit that the same man can unite very different kinds of excellence. It is soothing to envy to believe that what is splendid cannot be solid, that what is clear cannot be profound. Very slowly was the public brought to acknowledge that Mansfield was a great jurist, and that Burke was a great master of political science. Montagu was a brilliant rhetorician, and therefore, though he had ten times Harley's capacity for the driest parts of business, was represented by detractors as a superficial, prating pretender." Indeed, that peculiar vital energy which is the characteristic of genius carries the man of genius cheerfully through masses of drudgery which would dismay and paralyze the vigor of industrious mediocrity. The present volume, bright as it is in expression, is full of evidences that the author has submitted to the austerest requirements of his laborious profession; and if his opinions generally coincide with those which have been somewhat reluctantly adopted by the most eminent physicians of the age, it is certain that he has not jumped to his conclusions, but has reached them by patient and independent thought, study, and observation.

The courage which Dr. Holmes displays throughout this volume is of a refreshing kind. His frank, bold utterance of his convictions not only subjects him to the adverse criticism of a numerous and powerful body of able men in his own profession, but brings him into direct hostility with many persons who, outside of his profession, are among the warmest lovers of his literary genius. Some of the most intelligent admirers and appreciators of "The Autocrat" and "The Professor" are adherents of Homoeopathy; and of Homoeopathy Dr. Holmes is not only a scientific, but a sarcastic opponent. He both acknowledges and satirizes the fact, that intellectual men, eminent in all professions but that of medicine, are champions of the system he derides; but he does not the less spare one bitter word or cutting fleer against the system itself. By thus daring, provoking, and defying opposition both to his professional and literary reputation, he seems to us to indicate a real, if somewhat impatient love of truth. He valorously invites and courts the malicious sharpness of the most unfriendly criticism. Some people may call by the name of conceit this honest and unwithholding devotion of his whole powers to what he deems the cause of truth; but, we must be allowed to object, conceit is commonly anxious for the safety of the individual, while Dr. Holmes intrepidly exposes his individuality to the fire of hostile cannon, which are prevented from being discharged against each other only by the lucky thought that they can do more execution by being converged upon him. Had he appeared as an intelligent, knowing, and efficient controversialist on the side of the traditions of his profession, his wholesale denunciation of quackery, vulgar or genteel, might be referred to conceit; had he turned state's evidence against the accredited deceptions of his own profession, and gone over entirely to the enthusiasts who think that medicine is not an experimental science, but a series of hap-hazard hits at the occult laws of disease, he might be accused of conceit; but we think the charge is ridiculously false as directed against a man who boldly puts his professional and literary fame at risk in order to advance the cause of reason, learning, and common sense. Nobody can justly appreciate Holmes who does not perceive an impersonal earnestness and insight beneath the play of his provoking personal wit. We admit that he makes enemies needlessly; but all fair minds must still concede that even his petulances of sarcasm are but eccentric utterances of a love of truth which has its source in the deepest and gravest sentiments of his nature.

The object of Dr. Holmes's volume is to bring physicians and the people over whom they hold dominion into sensible relations with each other. A beautiful scorn of deception and humbug shines through his clear exposition of the facts and laws of disease. A high sense of the duties and dignity of the medical profession animates every precept he enforces on the attention of those who are to deal with disease. Like all the advanced thinkers of his profession, he relies, in the art of curing, more on Nature than on drugs; but in thus assisting to dispel the notion that the prescriptions either of the regular doctor or the irregular empiric possess the power to heal, he injures the quack only to aid the good physician. The strength of the quack consists in the two-fold ignorance of the sick,—in their ignorance of the superficial character of their common ailments, and in their ignorance of the deadly nature of their exceptional diseases. Panaceas, seeming to cure the former, are eagerly taken for the latter; but it is well known that they do not cure in either case. Physicians are tempted into quackery by the desire to dislodge ignorant pretenders from bedsides which it is their proper function to attend, and in ministering to sick imaginations they are too apt to pour a needless amount of nauseous medicine into sick bodies. If people, while in health, would heed the honest advice which Dr. Holmes gives in this volume, they would force physicians to be less hypocritical in their management of them when they are ill, and they would destroy the wide-spread evil of quackery under which the world now groans.

History of Civilization in England. By HENRY THOMAS BUCKLE. Vol. II. From the Second London Edition. To which is added an Alphabetical Index. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 8vo.

The present volume of Mr. Buckle's history consists of a deductive application to the history of Spain and Scotland of certain leading propositions, which, in his previous volume, he claims to have inductively established. These are four; "1st, That the progress of mankind depends on the success with which the laws of phenomena are investigated, and on the extent to which a knowledge of those laws is diffused; 2d, That, before investigation can begin, a spirit of skepticism must arise, which, at first aiding the investigation, is afterwards aided by it; 3d, That the discoveries thus made increase the influence of intellectual truths, and diminish, relatively, not absolutely, the influence of moral truths,—moral truths being more stationary than intellectual truths, and receiving fewer additions; 4th, That the great enemy of this movement, and therefore the great enemy of civilization, is the protective spirit, or the notion that the good of society depends on its concerns being watched over and protected by a State that teaches men what to do, and a Church which teaches them what to believe."