The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862

It being clearly our interest and duty to adopt this system of gradual emancipation in the loyal States, with colonization abroad, aided by Congress, the constitutional power being unquestionable, and the expense comparatively small (less than a few months' cost of the war,) it is a signal mark of that special Providence, which has so often shielded our beloved country from imminent peril, that the President of the United States should have recommended, and Congress should have adopted, by so large a majority, this very system, by which slavery might soon disappear, at least from the border States. In making an appropriation for gradual emancipation and colonization, so much of the overture as embraced colonization might and should be extended to the North, as well as the South, so as, with their consent, to colonize beyond our limits the free blacks of every State.

In a former letter, published over my signature, of the 30th September, 1856, called 'An Appeal for the Union,' I said: 'I have never believed in a peaceable dissolution of the Union. * * No; it will be war, civil war, of all others the most sanguinary and ferocious. * * It will be marked * * by frowning fortresses, by opposing batteries, by gleaming sabres, by bristling bayonets, by the tramp of contending armies, by towns and cities sacked and pillaged, by dwellings given to the flames, and fields laid waste and desolate. It will be a second fall of mankind; and while we shall be performing here the bloody drama of a nations suicide, from the thrones of Europe will arise the exulting shouts of despots, and upon their gloomy banners shall be inscribed, as, they believe, never to be effaced, their motto, Man is incapable of self-government.' Alluding to the subject of the present discussion, I then also said: 'I see, too, what, in this probable crisis of my country's destiny, it is my duty again to repeat from my Texas letter: * * The African race, gradually disappearing from our borders, passing, in part, out of our limits to Mexico, and Central and Southern America, and in part returning to the shores of their ancestors, there, it is hoped, to carry Christianity, civilization, and freedom throughout the benighted regions of the sons of Ham.' My views, then, of 1844, were thus distinctly reiterated in 1856, in favor of the gradual extinction of slavery, accompanied by colonization.

The President of the United States, in view of the limited appropriation by Congress, and the economy of short voyages, has recommended one of the great interoceanic routes through the American isthmus for a new negro colony. It is a great object to secure the control of this isthmus by a friendly race, born on our soil, and the selection corresponds with the views expressed in my Texas letter of 1844. As, however, the negroes can only be colonized by their own consent, we should therefore, and as an act of humanity and justice, open all suitable homes abroad for their free choice. After much reflection, I think it is their interest and ours (when the nation shall make large and adequate appropriations), mainly to seek Liberia as a permanent home, establishing there, among their own race, and in the land of their ancestors, a great republic. Liberia has already largely contributed to the decline of the African slave trade. She has reclaimed from barbarism, for civilization, Christianity, liberty, and the English language, 700 miles of the coast, running far into the interior, reaching a high, healthy, well watered, rich, and beautiful country. She has already civilized and Christianized 300,000 native Africans, and brought them into willing obedience to her government. As her power extends along the coast and into the interior, she may soon extinguish the slave trade. This would relieve our squadron, stationed by treaty on the African coast to suppress that traffic, and leave the large sums, annually expended by Congress for that purpose, to be applied in further aid of the cause of colonization.

Providence, for several centuries, has mysteriously connected our destiny with that of the African race. This rebellion developes that purpose; the civilization of that race here, and their transfer to the land of their fathers, carrying with them our language, laws, religion, and free institutions, redeemed from the curse of slavery. Now, indeed, we see the approaching fulfilment of prophecy, when 'Ethiopia shall stretch forth her hands unto God.' We have just established commercial and diplomatic relations with Liberia, and, in separating from the race here, let us do them ample justice. Let us purchase for Liberia (which can be done for a small sum), the great adjacent coast and interior of Africa, and thus eventually evangelize and civilize that whole region. Liberia would thus expand and become the great Afric-American republic, and the dominant nation of that immense continent. Commerce, the first great missionary—like St. John in the wilderness, preceding the advent of the Redeemer—would penetrate that dark region, and the execrable trade in human beings, give way to the interchange of products and manufactures.

The Westminster Review has said, 'The Americans are planting free negroes on the coast of Africa; a greater event, probably, in its consequences, than any that has occurred since Columbus set sail for the New World.' Let us now adopt gradual emancipation, and the colonization of Africa, and the voyage of the great discoverer will have given civilization and Christianity to two continents, and eventually, we trust, the blessings of liberty to all mankind.

The divers products and fabrics of Africa and of our Union invite reciprocal commerce. We want her gold, coffee, ivory, dyestuffs, and numerous raw materials of manufactures; and she wishes our fabrics, engines, agricultural implements, breadstuffs, and provisions. The trade will give immense and profitable employment to our shipping. From the Cape of Good Hope to the Mediterranean, from the Atlantic to the Red sea and the Indian ocean, Africa is tropical or semi-tropical. She has most of the products of the East and West Indies. She can produce cheaper and better cotton than any other region, except our Southern States, to which, from their fertile soil, and climate favored by the Gulf Stream, free white labor will eventually give us, substantially, a monopoly of that great staple. She equals any country in the production of sugar, coffee, and cocoa. In palm oil and ivory she has almost a monopoly. Of spices, she has the clove, nutmeg, pepper, and cinnamon. Of dyes and dyewoods, she has indigo, camwood, harwood, and the materials for the best blue, brown, red, and yellow colors. In nuts, she has the palm, the ground, the cocoa, and the castor. In gums, she has the copal, senegal, mastic, India rubber, and gutta percha. In fruits, she has the orange, lime, lemon, citron, tamarind, papaw, banana, fig, grape, date, pineapple, guava, and plantain. In vegetables, she has the yam, cassado, tan yan, and sweet potato. She has beeswax and honey, and most valuable skins and furs. In woods, she has the ebony, mangrove, silver tree, teak, unevah, lignumvitæ, rosewood, and mahogany. She has birds with the sweetest notes and brightest plumage, and fish and animals in the greatest variety. There are the giant elephant, rhinoceros, and hippopotamus. There the lordly lion roams, the monarch of his native forest, as if conscious of furnishing robes for royalty and symbolizing the flag of a great nation. Where animals of such sagacity, courage, power, and majesty are found, why should not man be great also? Our ancestors, the Britons, were once savages; so were our Celtic and Saxon forefathers, and most of them were slaves. What are their descendants now? Let Shakespeare, Newton, Fox, Burke, Pitt, Peel, Washington, Wellington, Franklin and Hamilton, Madison and Jefferson, the Adamses, Webster, Clay, and Jackson answer the question. I am hopeful of complete success; but whatever the result may be, we owe to ourselves, to our moral and material progress, but, above all, to the down-trodden race so long enslaved among us, to make the great experiment. If we succeed, it will be a monument to our glory, that will endure when time shall have crumbled the pyramids. If we fail, it will have been a noble effort in the cause of justice and humanity. Here, with the sentiment almost universal against the negro race, indicated by the votes and acts of all sections, and their exclusion everywhere, North and South, practically, from all social or political equality with the whites, they can never have among us any of those hopes, aspirations, energy, or opportunities, enabling them to test their capacity for great improvement. It is only where they shall be equals among equals, that they can ever attain high elevation. I take the facts as they are, and know that this prejudice of race here is ineradicable. In making the vain and hopeless effort to change it, we sacrifice to an impracticable idea our own good, and that of the race whose welfare we seek to promote. Colonization has heretofore been opposed by many, because they believed it hostile to manumission; but now, when emancipation is proposed, with appropriations to enable the manumitted to choose freely between remaining here and homes elsewhere, why should such a system encounter any hostility? Especially, when millions will vote for emancipation, if connected with voluntary colonization, why continue to oppose it? What objection is there to furnishing the means to enable the free or freed blacks to remain or to emigrate, and why should any of their friends wish to deprive them of such a privilege? Opposition springs also from confounding the border with the seceded States—the slaves of the loyal with those of the disloyal, and the conduct of the war; but the questions are different and independent.

On this subject of what is called abroad the prejudice of color, the North has been censured, even by many of our best friends. But it is impossible for Europe, where the African race are not, and never have been, either as slaves or freemen, to solve for us this most difficult problem of the social equality of the white and black races. Where marriage between them is unknown, such social equality cannot exist. Europe has an idea and a theory, but no practical knowledge of the subject. We have the facts and experience. Efforts have been made here for a century to establish this social equality, but the failure is complete. New England has devoted years of toil and thousands of dollars to accomplish this object, and the Quakers, and Franklin's Pennsylvania society, spared neither time nor money. Statesmen, philanthropists, and Christians have labored for years in the cause, but the case grows worse with each succeeding census. State after State, including now a large majority, forbid their introduction. The repugnance is invincible, and the census of 1840 (as shown by the tables annexed to my Texas letter of January, 1844) proved that one sixth of the negroes of the North are supported by taxation of the whites—a sum which would soon colonize them all. The free negroes, regarded here as an inferior caste, have no adequate motive for industry or exertion. Each year, as their numbers augment, intensifies the prejudice, invites collision in various pursuits, with competition for wages, and renders colonization more necessary. We must not any longer keep the free negro here in an exhausted receiver, or mix the races, as chemical ingredients in a laboratory, for the edification of experimental philosophers. Such empiricism as regards the negro race, after our repeated failures, is cruel and unjust. We have made the trial here for nearly a century, and the race continues to retrograde. Compare their progress and condition in America and Liberia, and what friend of the race or of humanity can desire to retain them among us? The voice of nature and of experience proclaims, that America is our home and Africa is theirs; and let us, in a spirit of true kindness and sympathy for them, obey the mandate.

There will soon be a great change among the free blacks on this subject. When Liberia shall expand and become a considerable power—when she shall have great marts of commerce, and her flag shall float in our harbors—when the Messages of her President, the reports of her Cabinet, the debates in her Congress shall be read here, her ministers and consuls be found among us, and the ambition of her race shall thus be aroused, we shall probably have as great a negro exodus from our country to Africa, as there ever was from Europe to America.

When the gold so profusely scattered through Africa shall reach our shores, as also her rich and varied products, when our reciprocal commerce shall be counted by millions of dollars, the home of their ancestors will present irresistible attractions to the negro race. Ceasing to be menials and inferiors, they will then go where they will be welcomed as citizens and rulers of a great republic. They will go where they govern themselves, and not where they are governed or enslaved by others. They will go where they give all the votes, and hold all the offices, and not where their exclusion is complete. They will go where the flag, the army, and navy, and government are theirs—and theirs also the social position—equals among equals, peers among peers. This they can never attain here: indeed, they will continue to retrograde, and become a mere element of social and political agitation. The complete success of Liberia must extinguish African slavery, here, and throughout the world. Emigration there, is the true interest and destiny of the negro race. Let us aid them to fulfil it. This is alike our interest and our duty. If they have been wronged here, let us pave their way with kindness and with gold on their return to the land of their forefathers. Let us aid them in building up there a great nation, which will call us blessed. Let the curse of slavery be forgotten, in the prosperous career of a great and free Afric-American republic. Born on our soil, let them transfer our language and institutions to Africa. Our material progress has been marvellous; but such an act, on our part, would indicate a moral advance, that would greatly exalt us among nations. Every dollar thus expended, would come back to us with compound interest, giving us also that which money cannot purchase, the consolation of good deeds, the favor of Heaven, and the blessing of mankind.

I have stated that so much of the overture made by Congress to the States, as regards appropriations for colonizing abroad their free blacks, should be extended to the free, as well as the slave States. Among the alleged evils of emancipation apprehended at the North, is the belief that this policy would fill the free States with manumitted slaves. But, by extending the proposed compacts, so far as regards colonization, to the free as well as the slave States, this result would not only be arrested, but the number of free blacks in the North, as well as the South, would soon be greatly diminished. The brutal assaults lately made by mobs on unoffending blacks in some of the free States is truly disgraceful. It is, however, a warning of the fatal consequences of retaining the free blacks in the North, especially when, from increasing density of population, or other causes, the struggle for subsistence, and competition for work and wages, between whites and negroes, should become general. In view of these facts, surely no friend of the negro race would persuade them to remain here.

NOTE.—This was printed before the President's emancipation proclamation, but is not hostile to it, when accompanied by capture or conquest.

THE WOLF HUNT

Air—'Una niña bonita y hermosa.'

We will ride to the wolf hunt together,Where thousands must yield up their breath,By the night, by the light—in all weather!Then hurrah, for the wild hunt of death!Where the deep cannon bays for our beagle,Over mountain and valley we come,While the death-fife now screams like an eagleTo the rolland the rolland the rolland the roll of the drum.Fatherland!—how the wild beasts are yelling!Blood drips from each ravenous mouth;Blood of brothers, each torn from his dwellingBy the wild, hungry wolves of the South.Chorus—Where the deep cannon bays for our beagle, &c.Let them rave! for our rifles are ready;Let them howl! for our sabres are keen;And the nerve of the hunter is steadyWhen the track of the wére-wolf is seen.Chorus—Where the deep cannon bays for our beagle, &c.Yes, the foul wolves have been o'er the border,But the fields were piled high with their slain,Till we drove them, in frantic disorder,To their dark home of hunger again.Chorus—Where the deep cannon bays for our beagle, &c.So we'll ride to the wolf hunt together,Where the bullet stops many a breath,By the night, by the light—in all weather,To the wild Northern wolf hunt of death.Where the deep cannon bays for our beagle,Over mountain and valley we come;While the death-fife now screams like an eagleTo the rolland the rolland the rolland the roll of the drum.

THE POETRY OF NATURE

Among the many marvellous myths of antiquity, I know of none more directly applicable to Man and Art than that of the great struggle between Antæus the Earth-born and Hercules.

Lifted on high by brute force, Antæus is stifled; but falling and touching Earth, he revives. Man, borne by the irresistible force of circumstance, may become false, frivolous, and weak: his Art may dwindle to mere imitation, his Poetry turn to wailing and convulsions: but let him once fall back to Nature—to the all-cherishing Earth, the Mother of Beauty—and all his Works and Songs become as seas, rivers, green leaves, and the music of birds.

We have too long needed the touch of fresh and holy Earth. Too long has our love of picture and poem, and of all that the glorious impulse to create in beauty achieves, been fickle as the wind; based on discordant fancies and distorted tradition. Symbolism in art, at present means only an arbitrary and puerile substitution of one object or caprice for another. The most successful poetic simile is often as thoroughly conventional, and consequently as perishable, as possible. In short, we are not in an age when there is one poetry alike for all men; when the artist and bard are truly great and honored, and their works regarded as the Best that man can do. The few who comprehend this in all its sad significance look from their towers tearfully forth into the dark night, and wail, 'Great Pan is dead!'

But he is not dead, nor sleepeth. He will yet return in that awful dawn of the day which will know no end. Already faint gleams of its glory gild the steep hills, the high places, and the groves sacred of old to the Starry Queen, and a reviving breath sweeps from the blue sea, calling up in ruined fane, and on the green turf where once stood temples in the olden time, fresh ideals of those forms of ineffable beauty, faun and fay, born of the primeval myth. There is already a quivering in the ancient graves, and strange lights flicker over the mighty stones consecrated by tradition to incantations, not of morbid fears, but of the strong and beautiful in nature. For in the Utilitarianism, in the steam and machinery of 'this age without faith,' I see the first necessary step of a return to real needs, solid facts, and natural laws. It is the first part of the doing away with rococo sentimentalisms, mediæval tatters, and all wretched and ragged remainders and reminders of states of society which have nothing in common with our present needs. And it will be a revival, not of the ancient adoration of Nature as a mythology and a superstition, but as a heartfelt love of all that is beautiful, and joyous, and healthy in itself. Then the gods will indeed return and live again among us; not as literal beings, however, but as blessings in all that is best for man. Nor will 'Romance' be wanting—that influence which the age, without defining, still declares is essential to poetry. In Science, in Humanity, and in perfecting human ties and interests by the influence of love, there exists a romance which is exquisitely fascinating, and which lends itself to tenderer and more graceful dreams than Trouveur or Minnesinger of any age ever knew—dreams the more delightful because they will not fade away with the mists of morning, but be fulfilled in clear sunlight, line by line, before man.

It is not difficult to prove what I have here asserted of this tendency toward the Real in modern literature and art. Within twenty, nay, within ten years, men of genius have abandoned the Supernatural and the Gothic as affording fit themes for creative efforts. That unfortunate creature the Ghost—especially the Ghost in Armor—as well as the Historical or Sensational personages who live only in the superlative—are at present in general demand only by that harmless class who read 'for entertainment,' and even they are beginning to ungratefully mock their old friends. It is not difficult to foresee that the Romance so dear to the last generation will soon become the exclusive heritage of the vulgar. Meanwhile, genial sketches of fresh, unaffected Nature, draughts from real life, are beginning to be loved with keen zest. What novels are so successful as those in which the writer has truthfully mirrored the heart or the home? What pictures are so loved as those which set before us the Real, or, rather, the Ideal in its true meaning—that of the perfected essence of the Real?

When this tendency shall have fairly placed man on the right road—when we shall have learned to follow and set forth Nature as she is, in spirit and in truth, the great cherishing mother, ever young, ever joyous, of all beauty and all pleasure, then we may anticipate the last and greatest era of human culture. Then we may hope for a more than Greek art—an art freed from every strain of oppression and injustice. To effect this we must, however, do what the earliest founders of poetry find mythology did: search Nature closely, bear constantly in mind her one great principle of potent Being, continually displaying itself in all things as life and death, mutually creating each other, and acting in all organic life by the mystery of Love, Then, while establishing those affinities and correspondences between natural objects which constitute Poetry, let it be ever present to the mind that each is, so to speak, always polarized with its positive end of activity, creation or birth, and its negative of cessation, decay and death. It is by the constant realization of this solemn and beautiful truth in all things that Nature eventually appears so strengthening and cheerful. The flower and the fruit, the delight of anticipation and the luxury of realization, are the delightful culmination of every natural existence; and it is to perfect these that all action tends. Decay, disease, pain, and death, are only kindly agencies acting more effectually and rapidly, to sweep away that which is fading, and hasten it into new forms of beauty and pleasure.

'Nature within her placid breast receivesAll her creation; and the body paysItself the due of nature, and its endIs self-consummated.'1

Birth is thus an essential part of death, and death of birth—both forming, by their inseparable action, the highest and first intelligible stage of the inscrutable mystery of the active power of Nature. 'This,' the reader may say, 'is, however, only the old theme, worn threadbare by poet and moralist.' Let him look more earnestly into it—let him master it, and he will find it the germ of a deeper, a bolder, and a more genial Art than the world has known for ages. It is no slander on the intellect or sensibility of this day to say that its admiration for Nature is really at a low ebb, and that, with thousands even of the educated, nothing gives so little solid satisfaction as lovely scenery or other inartificially beautiful phenomena. The reason is that Poetry—the hymn which should elevate the soul in Nature-worship—instead of reflecting in every simile, every image, directly or indirectly, the deep mystery of life which intuitively associates with itself that of love and all loveliness, is satisfied with mere comparisons based on casual and petty resemblance. The reader or critic of modern times, when the poet speaks of 'rosy-fingered dawn,' or of 'cheeks like damask roses,' is quite satisfied with the accuracy of the simile as to delicate color, and with the refined, vague association of perfume and of individual memories attached to the flower. But if we could realize by even the dimmest hint that the mind of the poet was penetrated and filled by the knowledge that the rose was a flower-favorite of man in all lands in primeval ages, and, as Geology asserts, literally coeval with him; that its points of resemblance to woman properly gave it place in the oldest mythology as the floral type of the female godhead; that it was the earth-born reflection of the morning star, and rose from the foam with it when the Aphrodite-Astarte-Venus-Anadyomeno came to life; that, as the nearest symbol of beautiful virginity expanding into womanhood and maternity, it was appropriately allied to dawning life and light, and consequently to the rosy Aurora and to blushing youth; and that finally, in withered age, set around by sharp thorns, it is a striking likeness of wounding death, yet from which new roses may spring—we should find that in a knowledge of all these interchangable symbolisms lies a music and a color, a perfume and a feeling, as of a perfectly satisfactory Thought. Let it be observed that each of these rose-correspondences is directly based on Nature, and that, to a mind familiar with the antithetic identity of life and death, all are promptly soluble and mutually convertible, as by mental-magic alchemy. There is a truth and earnestness in them which, while stimulating the joyous sentiment, gives to every allusion to the rose the value of genius, and not of accident or the chic of a 'happy idea.'