The Continental Monthly, Vol 6, No 5, November 1864

The Union navy won the earliest laurels in the war. The navy has been the right arm of the people in all ages. The Athenian navy repelled the invasion of Greece by the Persian empire. Antony, Pompey, Cæsar, the people's leaders in Rome, built up their youthful power upon the sea. The Dutch and English navies saved religious and civil liberty in the sixteenth century; and all the constitutional Governments that now exist in Europe came out of the hold of a British man-of-war. The United States, in 1812, extemporized a navy that gained us the freedom of the seas. And now the navy has led the way in the war for the freedom of the continent. The aristocracy felt, intuitively, the danger of this arm of defence, and discouraged, scattered, and almost annihilated our naval power before they entered upon the war. When we learn that our active navy, in April, 1861, consisted of one frigate, too large to sail over the bar of Charleston harbor, and one two-gun supply ship; and that in the three successive years it has shot up into a force of five hundred vessels; that our new ironclads and guns have revolutionized the art of naval warfare; that we have established the most effective blockade ever known along two thousand miles of dangerous coast; have captured Port Royal and New Orleans, aided in the opening of the Mississippi and all its dependencies which we now patrol, penetrated to the cotton fields of Alabama, occupied the inland waters of North Carolina and Virginia, seized every important rebel port and navy yard save four, and destroyed every war ship of the enemy that has ventured in range of our cannon, we are pronouncing a eulogy of which any people may be proud. One year more will swell this maritime power to a force amply sufficient to protect the coast of the whole republic from all assault of traitors at home or their friends abroad.

But the army of the Union has not been content to remain permanently behind the navy. Even in the first year of the conflict, when it was only a crowd of seventy-five thousand undisciplined militia, contending against a solid body of well-disciplined and commanded forces, it wrested two States from the foe, and baffled his intentions for the capture of all our great border cities. But since the opening of the campaign of 1802, the real beginning of war by the North, we have conquered from the aristocracy and now hold fast in Slave States an area of two hundred thousand square miles, inhabited by four millions of people—a district larger than France. Three years ago, every Slave State was virtually in the grasp of the rebels, and the Union was really put upon the defensive to protect freedom in the Free States and the national capital. Now, by a masterly series of campaigns in the West and Southwest, ranging from the Alleghanies to the Gulf, in which we have never lost a decisive battle, we have saved all the Territories of the United States, cut the 'Confederacy' in two equal parts, holding the western division at our mercy, opened the Mississippi and all its tributaries, and crowded the rebellion into the five States nearest the Atlantic coast. In the east we have fought a score of battles with the most formidable army ever marshalled on this continent, composed of the flower of the rebel soldiery led by their best generalship, and, spite of frequent repulses, have forced it from the Potomac and below the Rappahannock to the James, away from the smell of salt water, holding firmly every seaport from Washington to Wilmington, North Carolina, and a belt of land and water commanding the approach to the interior of every Atlantic State. The military force of the rebellion is rapidly being crowded into one army, not exceeding two hundred and fifty thousand men, against which the mighty power of the Union can be marshalled in overwhelming array. I know well enough that the decisive moment will really come when we confront that desperate and veteran host, on which the fate of aristocratic government upon this continent depends. But we shall then have a great army of veterans, marshalled under commanders fit to lead them in the name of liberty and the people.

It is not strange it has taken us three years to find who can fight among us. The Germans fought fifty years against religious despotism before they found Gustavus Adolphus to lead them to victory. The English fought ten years before Cromwell took command of his Ironsides. The French blundered ten years before the 'little corporal' led the army of the republic over the Alps to dethrone half the monarchs of Europe. The people had but one great general in the Revolutionary War. Until 1860 the aristocracy had furnished the only great American commander. But great generals have now appeared among the people; and if we fight stoutly and treat men fairly, our commander will appear when his army of veterans is ready.

The aristocracy at first moved armies faster than the people, for the same reason that the Tartars, the Cossacks, the Arabs, the Indians, and all semi-barbarians move more rapidly in war than a civilized people. A semi-barbarous oligarchy fights because it loves war; a civilized people fights to establish civilization and peace. The Southern army carries little along, lives on the food and wears the dress of the semi-savage, and overruns vast spaces, leaving a smoking desolation and a ruined society. The Northern army moves slowly, because it carries American civilization in its knapsack and baggage wagons, organizes republican society as it goes, and prepares to hold for liberty all it has gained. The people's army has paved the way for liberty and a democratic order of society over two hundred thousand square miles, among four millions of people, in three years. New Orleans, Nashville, Memphis, Beaufort, Alexandria, every slave city in our possession, is being made over into a free city.

The army goes slow because it is only the people's pioneer to level the mountains and fill up the valleys, and construct the highway of liberty from the Potomac to the Rio Grande. The Secretary of State has well said: 'The war means the dissolution of slave society.' It was entered into with the distinct understanding that it was the last expedient to save the negro oligarchy from ruin, and every day it goes on its thundering course it more emphatically pronounces its doom. The war for the Union is the people's final contest for liberty, a contest in which they will be victorious, as in the strife of industry, morals, and politics. The people, like John Brown's soul, are 'marching on' to dissolve the slave oligarchy and establish democracy. The people now possess three fourths the territory, population, and wealth of the republic. There are yet some six million black and white people in the South to rescue from their masters, who now use them against us. They are being prepared for Union with us by this war. The poor white man will be made better, more intelligent, more ambitious even, by service in the rebel army, and on the return of peace will become the small farmer of a free soil. The black men will be raised, in due time made freemen, and start as a free peasantry on a new career. A hundred thousand slaveholders, with their families, not more than one million of people in all, will hate the Union permanently. They will be defeated, we hope and believe, and disorganized as a social and political power, and the people rule in every State they have cursed by their ambition for the last fifty years.

We do not prophesy just when or how the people will triumph. The victory, we believe, will come; but whether all at once, or through temporary revulsions of purpose and alternate truce and war, whether finished by arms or yet cast again into the arena of polities, whether by occupying all this three millions of square miles of territory or gaining on despotism year by year, nobody knows. The Slave Power has not yet played its trump card. It has a hundred devilish resources yet to foil us. It may yet try to use the negroes it still holds against us by emancipation. It may yet drag us into a war with Europe, and Saratoga and Lake Erie and Plattsburg, and Long Island and Trenton and Bunker Hill, and Detroit and New Orleans may yet be fought over again. But we have seen how, for the last forty years, the people of the United States have strode on toward supremacy, led by a Power they did not always recognize, and sometimes scorned, but led to victory spite of themselves.

There has indeed been a Divine Intelligence guiding the destiny of our republic by the 'higher law' of the progress of free society toward a Christian democracy. We do not think the Peace Party will be able to abolish that 'higher law,' as certain of our politicians expect. We believe God Almighty is shaping a free and exalted civilized nation out of this republic, by a law of progress which we did not make and cannot repeal. We may postpone that nation by our folly and sins, but it must be made. Through labor and education, and religion and arts, and politics and war, 'it marches' on to supremacy—the people's nation. And when it is established it will be the controlling nation of this continent, one of the firmest powers on the earth, the terror of every aristocracy, and the joy and hope of every people on the round globe.

THE UNDIVINE COMEDY-A POLISH DRAMA

Dedicated to Mary

PART III

'Il fut administé, parceque le niais demandait un prètre, puis pende à la satisfaction generale,' etc, etc.—Rapport du citoyen Gaillot, commissaire de la sixième chambre, an III., 5 prairial.

'The sacraments were administered to him, because the fool demanded a priest; he was hung to the general satisfaction.'—Report of citizen Gaillot, commissary of the sixth session, 3d year, 5th prairial.

A song! a new song!

Who will begin it? Who will end it?

Give me the Past, clad in steel, barbed with iron, floating in knightly plumes! With magic power I would invoke before you gothic towers and castellated turrets, bristling barbacans and mighty arches, baronial halls and clustered shafts; I would throw around you the giant shadows of vaulted domes and of revered cathedrals: but it may not be; all that is with the Past: the Past is never to return!

Speak, whosoever thou mayst be, and tell me in what thou believest! It is easier to lose thy life than to invent a faith; to awaken any belief in it!

Shame upon you all, great and small, for all things pursue their own course in defiance of your schemes! You may be mean and wretched, without hearts and without brains, yet the world hastens to its allotted destiny; it hurries you on whether you will or no, throws you in the dust, tosses you into wild confusion, or whirls you in resistless circles, which cease not until they grow into dances of Death! But the world rolls on—on; clouds and storms arise and vanish; then it grows slippery—new couples join the dance of Death—they totter—fall—lost in an abyss of blood—for it is slippery-blood-human blood is gushing everywhere, as if the path to peace led through a charnel house!

Behold the crowds of people thronging the gates of the cities, the hills, the valleys, and resting beneath the shadows of the trees! Tents are spread about, long boards are placed on the trunks of fallen trees or on pikes and sticks to serve as tables; they are covered with meat and drink, the full cups pass from hand to hand, and, as they touch the eager mouth, threats, oaths, and curses press forth from the hot lips. Faster and faster fly the cups from hand to hand, beaded, bubbling, glittering, always filling, striking, tinkling, ringing, as they circle among the millions: Hurrah! hurrah! Long live the cup of drunkenness and joy!

How fiercely they are agitated; how impatiently they wait! They murmur, they break into riotous noise!

Poor wretches! scarcely covered with their miserable rags, the seal of weary labors deeply stamped upon their sunburnt faces set with uncombed, bristling hair, the sweat starting from their rugged brows, their strong and horny hands armed with scythes, axes, hammers, hatchets, spades!

Look at that broad youth with the pickaxe; at the slight one with the sword. Here is one who holds aloft a glittering pike; another who brandishes a massive club with his brawny arm! There under the willows a boy crams cherries into his mouth with the one hand, and with the other punches the tree with a long, sharp awl. Women are also there, wives, mothers, daughters, poor and hungry as the men, Not a single trace of womanly beauty, of healthful freshness upon them; their hair is disordered and sprinkled with the dust of the highways, their tawny bodies scarcely covered with unsightly rags, their gloomy eyes seem fading into their sockets, only half open as if gluing together in very weariness: but they will soon be quickened, for the full cup flies from lip to lip, they quaff long draughts: Hurrah! hurrah! Long live the cup of drunkenness and joy!

Hark! a noise and rustling among the masses! Is it joy, or is it grief? Who can read the meaning of a thing so monstrously multiform!

A man arrives, mounts a table, harangues and sways the multitude. His voice drags and grates upon the ear, but hacks itself into sharp, strong words, clearly heard and easily understood; his gestures are slow and light, accompanying his words as music, song. His brow is high and strong, his head is entirely bald; thought has uprooted its last hair. His skin is dull and tawny, the blood never tinges its dingy pallor, no emotion ever paints its secrets there, yellow wrinkles form and cross between the bones and muscles of his face, and a dark beard, like a black wreath, encircles it from temple to temple. He fastens a steady gaze upon his hearers, no doubt or hesitation ever clouds his clear, cold eye. When he raises his arm and stretches it out toward the people, they bow before him, as if to receive, prostrate, the blessing of a great intellect, not that of a great heart! Down, down with the great hearts! Away, away with old prejudices! Hurrah! hurrah! for the words of consolation! Hurrah for the license to murder!

This man is the idol of the people, their passion, the ruler of their souls, the stimulator of their enthusiasm. He promises them bread and money, and their cries rise like the rushing of a storm, widening and deepening in every direction: 'Long live Pancratius! Hurrah! Bread and money! Bread for us, our wives, our children! Hurrah! hurrah!'

At the feet of the speaker, leaning against the table on which he stands, rests his friend, companion, and disciple. His eye is dark and oriental, shadowed by long and gloomy lashes, his arms hang down, his limbs bend under him, his body is badly formed and distorted, his mouth is sensual and voluptuous, his expression is sharp and malicious, his fingers are laden with rings of gold—he joins the tumult, crying with a rough, hoarse voice: 'Long live Pancratius!' The speaker looks at him carelessly for a moment, and says: 'Citizen, Baptized, hand me a handkerchief!'

Meantime the uproar continues; the cries become more and more tumultuous: 'Bread for us! Bread! bread! Long live Pancratius! Death to the nobles! to the merchants! to the rich! Bread! bread! Bread and blood! Hurrah! hurrah!'

A tabernacle. Lamps. An open book lies on a table. Baptized Jews.

The Baptized. My wretched brethren; my revenge-seeking, beloved brethren! let us suck nourishment from the pages of the Talmud, as from the breast of our mother; it is the breast of life from which strength and honey flow for us, bitterness and poison for our enemies.

Chorus of Baptized Jews. Jehovah is our God, and ours alone; therefore has He scattered us in every land!

Like the coiled folds of an enormous serpent, He has wreathed us everywhere round and through the adorers of the cross; our lithe and subtile rings pass round and through our foolish, proud, unclean rulers.

Let us thrice spew them forth to destruction! Threefold curses light upon them!

The Baptized. Rejoice, my brethren! the Cross of our Great Enemy is already more than half hewn down; it is rotting to its fall; it is only standing on a root of blood: if it once plunge into the abyss it will never rise again. Hitherto the nobles have been its sole defence, but they are ours! ours!

Chorus of Baptized Jews. Our work, our long, long work of centuries, our sad, ardent, painful work is almost done!

Death to the nobles—let us thrice spew them forth to destruction! Threefold curses light upon them!

The Baptized. The might of Israel shall be built upon a liberty without law or order, upon a slaughter without end, upon the pride of the nobility, the folly of the masses. The nobles are almost destroyed; we must drive the few still left into the abyss of death, and scatter over their livid corpses the ruins of the shattered cross in which they trusted!

Chorus of Baptized Jews. The cross is now our holy symbol; the water of baptism has reunited us with men; the scorning repose upon the love of the scorned!

The freedom of men is our cry; the welfare of the people our aim; ha! ha! the eons of Christ trust the sons of Caiaphas!

Centuries ago our fathers tortured our Great Enemy to death; we will again torture him to death this very day—but He will never rise more from the grave which we prepare for Him!

The Baptized. Yet a little space, a little time, a few drops of poison, and the whole world will be our own, my brethren!

Chorus of Baptized Jews. Jehovah is the God of Israel, and of it alone.

Let us thrice spew forth the nations to destruction! Threefold curses light upon them!

Knocking is heard at the door.

The Baptized. Take up your work, brethren! And thou, Holy Book, away from sight—no unclean look shall soil thy spotless leaves! Who is there?

Hides the Talmud.

Voice (without). A friend. Open in the name of freedom.

The Baptized. Quick to your hammers and looms, my brethren!

He opens the door.

Enter Leonard.

Leonard. Well done, citizens. You watch, I see, and whet your swords for to-morrow.—(Approaching one of the men:) What are you making here in this corner?

One of the Baptized. Ropes.

Leonard. You are right, citizen, for he who falls not by iron must hang!

The Baptized. Citizen Leonard, is the thing really to come off to-morrow?

Leonard. He who thinks, feels, and acts with the most force among us, has sent me to you to appoint an interview. He will himself answer your question.

The Baptized. I go to meet him. Brethren, remain at work. Look well to them, citizen Yankel.

Exit with Leonard.

Chorus of Baptized Jews. Ye ropes and daggers, ye clubs and bills, the works of our hands, ye wilt go forth to destroy them!

The people will kill the nobles upon the plains, will hang them in the forests, and then, having none to defend them, we will kill and hang the people! The Despised will arise in their anger, will array themselves in the might of Jehovah: His Word is Redemption and Love for His people Israel, but scorn and fury for their enemies!

Let us thrice spew them forth to destruction: threefold curses fall upon them!

A tent. A profusion of flasks, cups, and flagons. Pancratius alone.

Pancratius. The mob howled in applause but a moment ago, shouted in loud hurrahs at every word I uttered. But is there a single man among them all who really understands my ideas, or who comprehends the end and aim of that path upon which we have entered, or where the reforms will terminate which have been so loudly inaugurated within the last hour? 'Ah! fervidum imitatorum pecus!'

Enter Leonard and the Baptized Jew.

Do you know Count Henry?

The Baptized. I know him well by sight, great citizen, but I am not personally acquainted with him. I remember once when I was approaching the Lord's Supper, he cried to me, 'Out of the way!' and looked down upon me with the arrogant look peculiar to the nobles—for which I vowed him a rope in my soul.

Pancratius. Prepare to visit him early to-morrow morning, and announce to him that it is my wish to confer with him alone.

The Baptized. How many men will you send with me on this embassy? I do not think it would be safe to undertake it without a guard.

Pancratius. You must go alone, my name will be sufficient guard, and the gallows on which you hung the baron yesterday, your shield.

The Baptized. Woe is me!

Pancratius. Tell him I will visit him to-morrow night.

The Baptized. And if he should put me in chains or order me to be hung?

Pancratius. You would die a martyr for the freedom of the people!

The Baptized. I will sacrifice all for the freedom of the people.—(Aside.) Woe is me!—(Aloud.) Good night, citizen.

Exit the Baptized.

Leonard. Pancratius, why this delay, these half measures, these contracts, this strange interview? When I swore to honor and obey you, it was because I believed you to be a hero of extremes, an eagle flying even in the face of the sun directly to its aim; a brave man ready to venture all upon the cast of a die.

Pancratius. Silence, child!

Leonard. Everything is ready; the baptized Jews have forged arms and woven ropes; the masses clamor for immediate orders. Speak but the word now, and the electric sparks will fly, the millions flash into forked lightnings, kindle into flame, and consume our enemies!

Pancratius. You are young, and the blood mounts rapidly into your brain; but will the hour of combat find you more resolute than myself?

Leonard. Think well what you are doing. The nobles, weak and exhausted, have fled for refuge to the famous fortress of the Holy Trinity,1 and await our arrival, as men wait the knife of the guillotine.

Forward, citizen, attack them without delay, and it is over with them forever!

Pancratius. It can make no difference; they have lost the old energy of their caste in luxury and idleness. To-morrow or the next day they must fall, what matter which?

Leonard. What and whom do you fear, and why do you delay?

Pancratius. I fear nothing. I act but in accordance with my own will.

Leonard. And am I to trust it blindly?

Pancratius. Yes. Blindly.

Leonard. You may betray us, citizen!

Pancratius. Betrayal rings forever from your lips like the refrain of an old song.

But hush! not so loud—if any one should hear us …

Leonard. There are no spies here; and what if some one should hear us?

Pancratius. Nothing; only five balls in your heart for having ventured to raise your voice a tone too high in my presence. (Approaching close to him.) Leonard, trust me, and be tranquil!

Leonard. I confess I have been too hasty, but I fear no punishment. If my death could help the cause of the down-trodden masses, I would cheerfully die.

Pancratius. You are full of life, hope, faith. Happiest of men, I will not rob you of the bliss of existence.

Leonard. What do you say, citizen?

Pancratius. Think more; speak less; the time will come when you will fully understand me!

Have you collected the provisions for the carousal of the millions?

Leonard. They have all been sent to the arsenal under guard.

Pancratius. Has the contribution from the shoemakers been received?

Leonard. It has. Every one gave with the greatest eagerness; it amounts to a hundred thousand.

Pancratius. They must all be invited to a general festival to-morrow.

Have you heard nothing of Count Henry?

Leonard. I despise the nobles too deeply to credit what I hear of him. The dying race have no energy left; it is impossible they should dare or venture aught.

Pancratius. And yet it is true that he is collecting and training his serfs and peasants, and, confiding in their devotion and attachment to himself, intends leading them to the relief of the fortress of the Holy Trinity.

Leonard. Who can oppose us? The ideas of our century stand incorporated in us!

Pancratius. I am determined to see Count Henry, to gaze into his eyes, to read the very depths of his brave spirit, to win him over to the glorious cause of the people.

Leonard. An aristocrat, body and soul!

Pancratius. True: but also a Poet!

Good night, Leonard, I would be alone.

Leonard. Have you forgiven me, citizen?

Pancratius. Sleep in peace: if I had not forgiven you, you would ere this have slept the eternal sleep.

Leonard. And will nothing take place to-morrow?

Pancratius. Good night, and pleasant dreams!