The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864

Our very origin teaches us union. We have sprung from so many races that it is throbbing in our very life-pulse, and is written on the red tablets of our hearts. It runs and dances in our blood, tingles along our nerves, colors our thoughts, tones our emotions, and determines our affections. All the old and bitter European animosities die in us, for its Peoples are fused in our one life pulse. A little child of our own household now unites in the sacred oneness of American life, English, Scotch, Irish, Welsh, Dutch, German, French, Saxon, Bohemian, and Polish nationalities. What lessons we have in our multiform descent, if we will but heed them; what inner teachings of sympathy and love, if we will but learn them! Distinctive nationalities, giving such beautiful variety to the earth, here join in the individual, imparting the greatest complexity and variety to internal character. Such nationalities, still existing unimpaired abroad, are here formed into one of unequalled breadth and grandeur; their scattered rays of light are here concentrated into one great focus; the blood of the various Peoples pours through one great heart, and the common gifts, hopes, creeds of the separated and warring nations meet in the holy mystery of one grand national life. Here, indeed, is the widest variety in the closest unity, the life of the warring Past melting into that of the myriad-pulsed Present, the certain hope of a harmonious Future.

The maturity and highest powers of other nations being necessary as its germs, what wonder that our nationality should be the latest born on earth, or that in view of the broad love stirring in its soul, because of its manifold descent, its first articulate accents should be ALL MEN ARE BORN FREE AND EQUAL! This is a union in the laboratory of assimilative nature, such as has never before been dreamed of, vital and all embracing, weaving into one palpitating mesh the very fibres of being itself. The union of long-jarring nations is consummated, perfected in us, and shall not we, the children of all climes, be one in our own marvellous nationality? 'Divide and conquer' is old strategy, but despots and tyrants strike in vain at this wondrous mingling of all Peoples in one great PEOPLE, where the People are the Sovereigns; for this UNION is spun in the loom of Eternal Destiny, throbs in each linking life-pulse, is knit into our very nature, and kindles in the close unity and sanctity of our national life under the creative breath of God himself. Palsied be the hand armed to strike the multitudinously mingled life of Humanity as it circles through our glorious Union!

'Peace on earth, good will to men,' chime out the Christmas bells from old Trinity!

It is this struggle to preserve our nationality intact which has sanctified our war, from the red heart of which has grown a patriotism which, glowing like a central sun, burns away all the dross of our earlier materialism, gives as self-reliance, and frees us at last from our long tutelage to the Old World. And never had patriotism a more solid ground than ours, since the power, growth, and safety of our nationality are the progress, happiness, and prosperity of humanity itself. Everything that breathes the breath of human life, however opposed to it now, is really benefited by our growth. As a Government we stand first upon the earth; the first utterance of our brave lips being—all men are born free and equal. Sublime, bold, and living words; blessed be the lips which uttered them! And we are beginning to fulfil the inspired ideal. Alas! we have suffered too much from permitting an evil germ to grow up side by side with this great annunciation, to fall speedily again into a like error. It has taken down into the dust our best and dearest, saddened almost every hearthstone in the land, and, saddest of all, wrought ruin on the Southern soul, maddening our brethren there into modern Cains, armed against the sacred life of their and our nationality. For what cause did Cain kill his brother? 'Because,' says St. John, 'his own works were evil, and his brother's just.' We will surely save it, but that done, we have an arduous task before us. Christianity and love must take the place of expediency, machiavelism, and cunning diplomacy in the sphere of politics. We see the smile of scorn upon the lips of the doubter; he deems the thing impossible. So he would have pronounced our noble record of the last three years, three years ago. Nay, it is already half accomplished, since we now know it must be done. The black man free, the red man must at last receive attention. The protection of our laws must be thrown around him; justice must guide our future dealings with him, and sorrow for all the fearful ills we have wrought upon him must awaken larger sympathy, and elicit tender mercy. The race are dying out among us: let us at least soothe their parting hours. And let the Government look well to its avaricious agents. Our people are generous, and mean to be just; that is not enough: they must take the proper means, and see that their beneficent intentions are carried out with regard to this wretched remnant. It is not possible that a race so full of wild natural eloquence, of graceful imagery, of tender metaphor, of stern endurance, can be utterly lost and depraved. Be it our noble task to try to save these wild children of the forest, while throwing the most complete protection around our brave frontier population. Our nationality is now fully born—on our banner is inscribed the equal rights of humanity. Our mission is revealed to us—it is that labor shall be elevated, and that equal justice be the law of actual life. 'That the human race is in a real sense one—that its efforts are common, and tend to a joint result, that its several members may stand in the eye of their Maker, not only as individual agents, but as contributors to this joint result—is a doctrine which our reason, perhaps, finds something to support, and which our heart readily accepts.' This Christmas peal rings to us as it has never rung before: let it awaken our consciousness of what God means us to be upon this planet, and touch our heart. It has at last reached the ear of the emancipated African, after pealing nearly nineteen hundred years for the more favored part of humanity; and, thanks to the mercy of God and our own manhood, the most oppressed of the brethren of Christ may now feel themselves men. The dark wife, in her new right to be faithful, is at last a woman; her dusky children are now her own, and cannot be torn from her arms at the dictates of one who has bought at the human auction block the right to torture the body and soul. Is not humanity newborn among us? Is the negro of the accursed race of Ham? It is we who curse, not God, whose very name is Love! Well may our Christmas bells ring on so merrily, for our age is great and glorious. It is a pupil of the entire Past, the heir of all its knowledge, the inheritor of all its wisdom. The Future is its own. The sphere of politics must be redeemed from the demons of expediency and interest which have so long ruled there; it is to be vitalized and purified from all iniquity. It is an Augean stable we have to clean, but Hercules was one, and we are many. The People are at last sovereign. Every man who works for humanity has God upon his side; he cannot fail, for the might of Omnipotence is with his puny arm. This is the task now set before us: it lies directly in our onward path—we cannot take a step really in advance until it is achieved. If we fail now, all is lost. Our dead heroes will not rest in their graves until the task is done, and their young lives will have been a vain sacrifice. This crimson year is dying fast; bury with it all past wickedness! May our long civil war die out with its knell, the corpse of Slavery be laid in its bloody grave, and the vain attempts of assembled despots to destroy our glorious nationality perish forever! Bury with this blood-red year all malice and uncharitableness, all sectarian suspicion and distrust, all partisan political violence and hatred, and let the new year ring in one faith, one hope, one country undivided and indivisible. Our Union means all this, and a great many things more which it has not yet entered into the heart of man to conceive. We can effect wonders if we will, for the individual effort makes the universal all. Who would prove recreant in such a cause? Come! it is pleasant to work for humanity; fatigue itself seems sweet, the strength of the race nerves the individual arm, labor grows into prayer, human sympathy and communion become godlike and open heaven. We are none of us so little that we can do nothing; we are all necessary to the good of the whole. The highest individuality and freedom should generate the widest social love and charity. No labor is really irksome that helps the masses of our fellow men. If we have the Promethean fire, let it burn to light and warm them. The race is one, nor can we be happy while its members suffer. The moment we have done one duty faithfully, another and a higher awaits us. To be condemned to work only for ourselves were the true hell, the self-kindled fire of everlasting torture! We are the children of the nineteenth century, have been nourished upon the humane laws of this noble country, we are sons of God, brothers of Christ, heirs of glory, immortals. Let us assume the majesty of our being, drape ourselves in our heaven-woven robes of love, open our hearts to the poor and wretched, instruct the ignorant, reclaim the vicious, bear each other's burdens, frown on vice, give up our petty vanities, cease our frivolous excuses that, we have no influence, when every one of us has an immortal in charge, use our strength to forbid oppression, whether of individuals or nationalities. Then might the day seen by the prophets, sung by poets, and believed in by devout hearts, dawn upon this planet before the blessed '65 were tolled to rest.

"A man shall be more precious than gold, ay, than the finest of gold."

"The fool shall no more be called prince, nor the deceitful great."

"And He shall judge among many people, and rebuke strong nations afar off; and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into spades; nation shall not take sword against nation; neither shall they learn war any more.

"And every man shall sit under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make them afraid."

"I will give my laws into their mind, and I will write them in their heart; and I will be their God; and they shall be my people."

Peace on earth, good will toward men, still peal the Christmas bells, until the frosty air seems quivering with the new joy of humanity.

Fair voyage through the realms of Space, the universe of stars, the passionate throbs of Time, with thy precious human freight, O lovely Planet, cradling our dead in thy green bosom, and uniting the living in one great nation; and may the brightest sunshine fall upon thy flowers until thy young Immortals are all landed in the Port of Heaven!

'COR UNUM, VIA UNA.'

GOD BLESS OUR NATIVE LAND!

From every clime, and name, and race,The thronging myriads came,A mighty Empire's bounds to trace,A wilderness to tame!Chorus—From mountain peak to sear-girt shore,Let Freedom's noble bandUplift the song thrills each heart's core:God bless our native land!Columbia's plains are broad and fair,Each coast an ocean laves,Vast lakes and streams fleet navies bearUpon their sun-lit waves.Chorus.Her mountains towering meet the skies,Her vales are clad in green,Her leafy forests proudly rise,Pure gold her grain's bright sheen.Chorus.United flows our mingled blood,And Freedom guards the land,While linked in closest brotherhood,Invincible we stand!Chorus.Unfurl our banner! Let it waveFrom every plain and crag!Its beacon light our fathers gave,—All hail! our glorious flag!Chorus—From mountain peak to sea-girt shore,Let Freedom's noble bandUplift the song thrills each heart's core:God bless our native land!

1

Sir Frederick Bruce, in a recent report to the Foreign Office, says:

'The growth of Shanghai is wonderful; its population is estimated at 1,500,000, and it bids fair to become soon the most important city of the East. The Chinese flock to it on account of the security it enjoys; and the silk manufacture, which was destroyed by the Taiping occupation of Soochow and Hangchow, is taking root at Shanghai.'—Pekin, 30th April, 1863.

2

Civilized nations profess to look with abhorrence on the Chinese crime of infanticide, and to believe that the statements of travellers and missionaries are incredible; but a careful examination of the mortuary tables of London, Paris, New York, Dublin, Moscow, and other cities, will show that infanticide is far more common than supposed. It is a crime easily hidden and hard to trace. Take the foundling hospitals as a guide to some approximate estimate of the amount of infanticide in France. We find that she has upwards of 360 hospitals; that in Paris alone, in five years, from 1819 to 1823, 25,277 children were received, of whom eleven thirteenths died, and that the annual number of enfans trouvés ranges from 3,800 to 4,500. These children, but for the hospital, would have been murdered. Who can tell how many are thrown into the sewers of Paris? A recent writer states the number at 10,000, but we deem this an exaggeration. It is significant that the percentage of births and deaths in all France is less far the births and greater for the deaths than in England. These tables we annex.

It is still more significant that the returns of foundling hospitals, from widely different countries, show that these institutions, however charitable and humane their object, are to be viewed as conveniences for murdering an infant without the actual violence at which humanity revolts. The proportion of abandoned children who live is so exceedingly small, that abandonment of a child to a foundling hospital is scarcely less than murder. If the child live, it may be viewed, almost, as a direct act of Providence.

Of 62,000 children brought into the Paris foundling hospitals, 52,500 died.

In Dublin, 19,420 children were received in ten years, of whom 17,440 died.

In Moscow, 37,000 children were received in twenty years, of whom 35,000 died.