The Continental Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, April, 1862

The news of the capture of Fort Donelson had barely reached us, the roar of the guns celebrating our rapid successes had not died away, ere that fragment of the Northern ultra pro-slavery party which had done so much towards deluding the South into secession, impudently raised its head and began most inopportunely and impertinently to talk of amnesty and the rights of the South. There are things which, under certain limitations, may be right in themselves, but which, when urged at the wrong time, become wrongs and insults; and these premature cries to restore the enemy to his old social and political standing are of that nature. They are insufferable, and would be ridiculous, were it not that in the present critical aspect of our politics they may become dangerous. Since this war began, we have heard much of the want of true loyalty in the ultra abolitionists, who would make the object of the struggle simply emancipation, without regard to consequences; and we have not been sparing in our own condemnations of such a limited and narrow view,—holding, as we do, that emancipation, if adopted, should be for the sake of the white man and the Union, and not of the negro. But 'Abolition' of the most one-sided and suicidal description is less insulting to those who are lavishing blood and treasure on the great cause of freedom, than is the conduct, at this time, of those men who are now, through their traitorous organs, urging the cry that the hour is at hand when we must place slavery firmly on a constitutional basis; this being, as they assert, the only means whereby the Union can ever be harmoniously restored.

In view of the facts, it is preposterous to admit that this assumption is even plausible. He must be ignorant indeed of our political history during the past twenty years, or strangely blind to its results, who has not learned that a belief that the North is ever anxious to concede for the sake of its 'interests' has been the great stimulus to the arrogance of the South. While the principles of the abolitionists have been the shallow pretence, the craven cowardice of such men as BUCHANAN and CUSHING has been the real incitement to the South to pour insult and wrong on the North. Concession has been our bane. It was paltering and concession that palsied the strong will and ready act which should have prevented this war; for had it not been for such men as the traitors who are now crying out for Southern rights, the rebellion would have been far more limited in its area, and long since crushed out. No cruelties on our part, no threats to carry all to the bitter end, would so encourage the South at present, as this offer to shake hands ere the fight be half over.

When the time comes for amnesty and 'Southern Rights,' we trust that they will be considered in a spirit of justice and mercy. Till it comes let there be no word spoken of them. The South has, to its own detriment and to ours, firmly and faithfully believed that Northern men are cowards, misers, men sneaking through life in all dishonor and baseness. When millions believe such intolerable falsehoods of other millions of their fellow-citizens, they must be taught the truth, no matter what the lesson costs. Even now the Southern press asserts that our victories were merely the results of overwhelming majorities, and that the Yankees are becoming frightened at their own successes. There is not one of these traitorous, dough-face meetings of which the details are not promptly sent—probably by the men who organize them—all over the South to inspire faith in a falling cause. When the rebels shall have learned that these traitors have positively no influence here,—and the sooner they learn it the better,—when they realize that the people of the North are as determined as themselves, and their equals in all noble qualities, then, and not till then, will it be time to talk of those concessions which now strike every one as smacking of meanness and cowardice.

The day has come for a new order of things. The South must learn—and show by its acts that it has been convinced—that the North is its equal in those virtues which it claims to monopolize. But this it will only learn from the young and vigorous minds of the new school,—from its enemies,—and not from the trembling old-fashioned traitors, who have been so long at its feet that they shiver and are bewildered, now that they are fairly isolated, by the tide of war, from their former ruler. Politicians of this stamp, who have grown old while prating of Southern rights, can not, do not, and never will realize but that, some day or other, all will be restored in statu quo ante bellum. They expect Union victories, but somehow believe that their old king will enjoy his own again—that there will be a morning when the South will rule as before. It is this which inspires their craven timidity. They cry out against emancipation in every form,—blind to the onward and inevitable changes which are going on,—so that when the South comes in again they may point to their record and say, 'We were ever true to you. We, indeed, urged the war, for we were compelled by you to fight, but we were always true to your main principles.' They have wasted time and trouble sadly—it will all be of no avail. Be it by the war, be it by what means it may, the social system and political rule of the South are irrevocably doomed. It may, from time to time, have its convulsive recoveries, but it is doomed. The demands of free labor for a wider area will make themselves felt, and the black will give way to the white, as in the West the buffalo vanishes before the bee.

We are willing that the question of emancipation should have the widest scope, and, if expediency shall so dictate, that it should be realized in the most gradual manner. We believe that, owing to the experiences of the past year, more than one slave State will, ere long, contain a majority of clear-headed, patriotic men, who will be willing to legalize the freedom of all blacks born within their limits, after a certain time; and if this time be placed ten years or even fifteen hence, it will make no material difference. By that time the pressure of free labor, and the increase of manufacturing, will have rendered some such step a necessity. Should the payment of all loyal slave-holders, in the border States, for their chattels, prove a better plan,—and it could hardly fail to promptly reduce the rebellious circle to a narrow and uninfluential body,—let it be tried. If any of the arguments thus far adduced in favor of assuming slavery to be an institution which is never to be changed, and which must be immutably fixed in the North American Union, can be proved to be true, we would say, then let emancipation be forever forgotten—for the stability of the Union must take precedence of everything. But we can not see it in this light. We can not see that peace and Union can exist while the slave-holder continues to increase in arrogance in the South, and while the abolitionists every day gather strength in the North. Every day of this war has seen the enemies of slavery increase in number and in power, until to expect them to lose power and influence is as preposterous as to hope to see the course of nature change. Should a peace be now patched up on the basis of immutable slavery, we should, to judge from every appearance, simply prolong the war to an infinitely more disastrous end than it now threatens to assume. We should incur debts which would crush our prosperity; we should bequeath a heritage of woe to our children, which would prove their ruin. While the great cause of all this dissension lies legalized and untouched, there will continue to be a party which will never cease to strive to destroy it. The question simply is, whether we will be wounded now, or utterly slain by and by.

Meanwhile let us, before all things, push on with the war! It is by our victories that slavery will be in the beginning most thoroughly attacked. If the South, as it professes, means to fight to the last ditch, and to the black flag, all discussion of emancipation is needless; for in the track of our armies the contraband assumes freedom without further formula. But we are by no means convinced that such will be the case. The first ditches have, as yet, been by no means filled with martyrs to secession,—armistices are already subjects of rumor,—and it should not be forgotten that the Union men of the South are powerful enough to afford efficient aid in placing the question of ultimate emancipation on a basis suitable to all interests.

All that the rational emancipationist requires is a legal beginning. We have no desire to see it advance more rapidly than the development of the country requires—in short, what is really needed is simply the assurance that by war or by peace some basis shall be found for ultimately carrying out the views of the fathers of the American Union, and rendering this great nation harmonious and happy. Every day brings us nearer the great issue,—not of slavery and anti-slavery,—but whether slavery is to be assumed as an immutable element in America, or whether government will bring such influences to bear as will lead the way to peace and the rights of free labor. Every step is leading us to

THE IRREPRESSIBLE CONFLICTO Lord, look kindly on this work for thee!Yes, smile upon the side that's for the right!To them O grant the glorious arm of might,And in the end give them the victory!Free principles are rushing like the seaWhich opened for the fleeing Israelite,—Free principles, to test their worth in fight,—And woe to them that 'twixt the surges be!And as, O Lord, thou then did'st show thy care,And mad'st a grave to drink thy enemy,So now, O Father, sink him in despair—The only blight we own—cursed Slavery.O then will end the conflict! Yes, God, thenWe'll be indeed a nation of FREE MEN!

The N.O. Delta is full of indignation at the Southern men who are alarmed for their property, and betrays, in its anger, the fact that these disaffected persons are not few in the Pelican State. But, plucking up courage, it declares that—

Our people will retire into the interior, and in their mountains and swamps they will maintain a warfare which must ultimately prove successful.

Doubtful—very. In the first place, 'our people' can not very well swamp it like runaway negroes, and, secondly, they will encounter, in the mountains, the Union men of the South. Give us the cities and the level country for a short time, and we shall very soon find the Pelicandidates for comfortable quarters rolling back, by thousands, into Unionism.

As we write, there is a panic in Richmond, caused by the discovery that there is a large body of Union men in the city itself, headed by JOHN MINOR BOTTS, who seems to have determined to 'head off' the secession party in its stronghold, 'or die'—he having, since the decease of JOHN TYLER, turned his 'heading off' abilities against JEFF DAVIS. The Examiner mentions, in terror, the confession of the Union prisoners, that there are in Richmond 'thousands of arms concealed, and men enrolled, who would use them on the first approach of the Yankee army.' One of the arrested, a Mr. STEARNS, when led to the prison, surveyed it in a most contemptuous manner, remarking 'If you are going to imprison all the Union men in Richmond, you will have to provide a much larger jail than this.'

It is the German residents of Richmond who are said to constitute the majority of these Union men. All honor to our German friends of the South! They have received, thus far, too little credit for their staunch adherence to the principles of freedom. Let them take courage; a day is coming when we shall all be free—free from every form of slavery! Noch ist die Freiheit nicht verloren!—'Freedom is not lost as yet.' Some of them remember that song of old.

A paragraph has recently gone the rounds, which impudently assures the friends of Emancipation that, unless they promptly desist from further interference or agitation, they will speedily build up a Southern party in the North, which will seriously interfere with the prosecution of the war!

That is to say, that the majority of the people of the North fully acquiesce in the justice of the main principles held by the South—the only difference of opinion being whether these slavery and slavery-extension doctrines can be practically developed under our federal Union! Yet we, knowing, seeing, feeling, in this war, the enormously evil effects of the slave system on the free men among whom it exists, are expected to endure and legalize the cause which stirred it up! Either the South is right or wrong—there is no escaping the dilemma. Either it was or was not justly goaded by 'abolition' into secession. If the South is quite right in wishing to preserve slavery intact forever, surely those are in the wrong who would make war on it for wishing to secede from a government which tolerates attacks on legalized institutions! What a precious paradox have we here? Yet these virtual justifiers of the South in the great cause of the war, claim to be zealous and forward in punishing that secession which, according to their own views, is constitutional and right!

If slavery be right, then the South is right. No impartial foreigner could fail to draw this conclusion under the circumstances of this war. But is it right; we do not say as a thing of the past, and of a rapidly vanishing serf-system, but as an institution of the progressive present? Witness the words of G. BATELLE, a member of the Western Virginia Constitutional Convention,—as we write, in session at Wheeling,—and who has published an address to that body on the question of Emancipation, from which we extract the following:—

The injuries which slavery inflicts upon our own people are manifold and obvious. It practically aims to enslave not merely another race, but our own race. It inserts in its bill of rights some very high-sounding phrases securing freedom of speech; and then practically and in detail puts a lock on every man's mouth, and a seal on every man's lips, who will not shout for and swear by the divinity of the system. It amuses the popular fancy with a few glittering generalities in the fundamental law about the liberty of the press, and forthwith usurps authority, even in times of peace, to send out its edict to every postmaster, whether in the village or at the cross-roads, clothing him with a despotic and absolute censorship over one of the dearest rights of the citizen. It degrades labor by giving it the badge of servility, and it impedes enterprise by withholding its proper rewards. It alone has claimed exemption from the rule of uniform taxation, and then demanded and received the largest share of the proceeds of that taxation. Is it any wonder, in such a state of facts, that there are this day, of those who have been driven from Virginia mainly by this system, men enough, with their descendents, and means and energy, scattered through the West, of themselves to make no mean State?…

It has been as a fellow-observer, and I will add as a fellow-sufferer, with the members of the Convention, that my judgment of the system of slavery among us has been formed. We have seen it seeking to inaugurate, in many instances all too successfully, a reign of terror in times of profound peace, of which Austria might be ashamed. We have seen it year by year driving out from our genial climate, and fruitful soil, and exhaustless natural resources, some of the men of the very best energy, talent and skill among our population. We have seen also, in times of peace, the liberty of speech taken away, the freedom of the press abolished, and the willing minions of this system, in hunting down their victims, spare from degradation and insult neither the young, nor the gray-haired veteran of seventy winters, whose every thought was as free from offense against society as is that of the infant of days.

When an evil attains this extent, he is a poor citizen, a poor cowardly dallier with opinions, whatever his fighting mark may be, who can make up his mind to calmly acquiesce in establishing its permanence, or to stiffly oppose every movement and every suggestion tending in the least towards its abrogation.

In the present number of the CONTINENTAL will be found an article on General LYON, in which reference is made to the generally credited assertion, that the deceased hero was not reinforced as he desired during the campaign in Missouri. This is one of the questions which time alone will properly answer. In accordance with the principles involved in audi alteram partem, we give on this subject the following abridgment of a portion of General FREMONT'S defense, published in the New York Tribune of March 6:—

Lyon's and Prentiss's troops were nearly all three months men, whose term of enlistment was about expiring. Arms and money were wanted, but men offered in abundance. The three months men had not been paid. The Home Guards were willing to remain in the service, but their families were destitute. Gen. Fremont wrote to the President, stating his difficulties, and informing him that he should peremptorily order the United States Treasurer there to pay over to his paymaster-general the money in his possession, sending a force at the same time to take the money. He received no reply, and assumed that his purpose was approved.

Five days after he arrived at St. Louis he went to Cairo, taking three thousand eight hundred men for its reinforcement. He says that Springfield was a week's march, and before he could have reached it, Cairo would have been taken by the rebels, and perhaps St. Louis. He returned to St. Louis on the 4th of August, having in the meantime ordered two regiments to the relief of Gen. Lyon, and set himself to work at St. Louis to provide further reinforcements for him; but he claims that Lyon's defeat can not be charged to his administration, and quotes from a letter from General Lyon, dated on the 9th of August, expressing the belief that he would be compelled to retire; also, from a letter written by Lyon's adjutant general, in which he says 'General Fremont was not inattentive to the situation of General Lyon's column.'

A daily cotemporary, in an onslaught on Emancipation, contains the following:—

Delaware has recently had a proposition before the legislature to abolish the scarcely more than nominal slavery still existing in it; but the legislature adjourned without even listening to it, though it contemplated full pecuniary compensation.

Yes; and the legislature of Delaware, a few years ago, legalized lotteries,—one of the greatest social curses of the country,—and made itself a hissing and a by-word to all decent men by sanctioning the most widely-destructive method of gambling known. The Delaware legislature indeed!

We are indebted to a friend for the following paragraph:—

It is deeply significant that since the late Federal victories, the Southern press, even in Richmond itself, speaks nervously and angrily of the Union men among them, and of their increasing boldness in openly manifesting their sentiments. A few months since, this belief in Union men in the South was abundantly ridiculed by those who believed that all the slave-holding States were unanimous in rebellion, and that therefore it would be preposterous to hope to reconcile them to emancipation. Now that the Union strength in that region is beginning to manifest itself, we are informed that we shall lose it if we do aught contrary to Southern rights. And this too, although the Southern Union men have never been spoken of by their rebel neighbors as aught save 'the abolitionists in our midst!'

The following communication from a well-known financier and writer on currency can not fail to be read with interest by all:—

THE SINEWS OF WAR.

These are, men and money, but especially MONEY, for on the money depends the men. In a good cause, with an educated, intelligent people, every man able to discern for himself the right side of the question presented, there is no difficulty about men; the state has only to say how many are needed, and the want will be promptly supplied. The experience of the last six months gives us evidence sufficient on this point: an army of six hundred thousand men drawn together without an effort, every man a volunteer,—a spectacle never before exhibited to the world,—puts at rest all doubt upon it; and not only that, it settles beyond all cavil the superiority of self-government, based on the broadest principles of freedom and the broadest system of education, over any other form which has ever been adopted. Passing from this, however, as a fact which needs no argument or illustration, we come to the more difficult question of how to raise the other sinew—money.

In calling for men the state relies upon the intelligence and patriotism of its citizens; upon their intelligence to understand the cause, on their patriotism to respond to its call. It offers them no inducements in the shape of pay, nothing more than to feed and clothe them, to aid them hereafter if wounded, to keep their families from starvation if they are killed. This is all; and this is enough. But these assumed obligations of the state must be sacredly and promptly kept. Our noble volunteers must be fed, and clothed, and cared for, and to this end the state must have the requisite means. And to obtain the needed supply without oppressive taxation on the one hand, or placing a load on posterity too heavy to be borne on the other hand, is a question of difficult solution; and yet we shall see that there is in the present administration the ability and the will to solve it.

It is said that our expenditures in this great struggle will, by the first of June, amount to the enormous sum of $600,000,000. It is said by the arch traitor at the head of the rebels that under this load of debt we shall sink. It is said by the leading papers of England that we have no money, have exhausted our credit, must disband our armies, and make the best terms we can with rebellion. Doubtless, our credit in Europe is at a low ebb just now, and we are thrown upon our own resources, and on these we must swim or sink. There is nothing to reject in this. We have shown the world how a free state can raise troops and create a navy out of its own materials; and now we will show the world how a free state can maintain its army and navy out of its own resources; and if the result proves—as it will prove—that our free institutions are the safest, strongest, and best for the people in war as well as in peace, then the great struggle we are now going through with will be worth more to the true interests of humanity everywhere than all the battles which have been fought since the dawn of the present century. For a hundred years, openly or covertly, but without intermission, has war been going on between despotism and freedom, with varied success, but on the whole with a steady gain for freedom; and now here, on the same field where it originated, is the long strife to be finally settled. On these same fields the same freedom is to culminate in unquenchable splendor, or to set forever, leaving mankind to grope in darkness and ignorance under the misrule of despotic tyranny. We are in arms not only to suppress an odious uprising of despotism against freedom within our own borders, but to show by our example, to all the nations of the earth, what freedom is and what freedom means.

In seeking aid of the money power, we go beyond the line where patriotism gives us all we need, promptly and liberally, into the cold region of selfishness, whose people are too much absorbed in adding to and counting up their gains to be able to spare much time or thought on country or freedom. No voluntary sacrifices to be expected here. What we want we must buy, and pay for; it is only to see that we do not pay too much for it. Selfish, timid, grasping, these people are a skittish set to deal with. Nobody understands better the game of 'the spider and the fly,' and they are as ready to play it with the state as with smaller opponents, if the state will but let them. From his first visit to this region, to the present time, our able Secretary of the Treasury was, and continues to be, 'master of the position.'

When the Secretary held his first sociable with the representatives of the money power, neither he nor they had a very keen perception of what they wanted of each other; the rebellion was not then developed in the gigantic proportions it has since assumed; and it was hoped and expected, with some show of reason, that two or three hundred millions would be enough to put it down. This amount the power could and would willingly furnish for a 'consideration,' the half presently, on condition that it should be allowed the refusal of the other half when it should be wanted; and so a bargain was quickly struck, to the mutual content of both parties. But, as the thunder grew louder and the storm fiercer, it became evident that our wants would soon be doubled, at least. The money power hung back; the 7-3/10 remained in the banks. The representatives said they were only agents, the agents stopped payment, and the whole circulation of gold fell to the ground at once, not only putting a sudden check upon all business operations, but leaving the Treasury without any sort of currency to pay out: a sad state of things enough. The money power drew in its head, pretending not to see anything, waiting for propositions, expecting to reap a rich harvest out of the state's necessities, by making its own terms. How could it be otherwise? must not the state have several hundred millions? must not the astute Secretary sell the state's promises to pay, secured by a first mortgage on all Uncle Sam's vast possessions, on their own terms?