The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863

The entire constitutionality of such a proceeding by compact with a State, was demonstrated by me in the November number of the Continental Monthly, p. 575. Referring to the case of Texas, I there said: 'The principle, however, was adopted of State action by irrevocable compact with the Federal Government, by which provision therein was made for abolishing slavery in all such States, north of a certain parallel of latitude (embracing a territory larger than New England), as might be thereafter admitted by the subdivision of the State of Texas. The power of action on this subject, by compact of a State with the General Government, was then clearly established, in perfect accordance with repeated previous acts of Congress then cited by me. The doctrine rests upon the elemental principle of the combined authority of the nation, and a State, acting by compact within its limits.' When Missouri, with her consent, shall have become a Free State, the leaders of the Southern rebellion will feel that they have received a mortal blow. Especially will this be the case in Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Alabama. We shall have cut the gordian knot of slavery, and the death agonies of the hydra would soon be visible. The importance of the result would be felt in the North also, and the wretched traitors there, far more guilty even than those of the South, will shrink from their atrocious conspiracy to dissolve this Union. The dark plot of severing New England from the Republic and of reuniting the rest of the States with the Southern confederacy, will be abandoned. That such a scheme is contemplated by Northern traitors, and that it is tolerated in the South, on condition that all shall become Slave States, is beyond controversy. New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and the Northwest are to abandon their free institutions, become slaveholding States, and be admitted as such into the Southern confederacy. I had supposed that crime had achieved its climax when the Southern rebellion was inaugurated; but something more base, more vile, more cowardly, debasing, and pusillanimous, it seems, is now contemplated. It is that New England shall be expelled, and that the rest of the Free States shall come under the dominion of the Southern confederacy. But the leaders of this scheme seem to have forgotten the fact, that New England, to a vast extent, has peopled the Northwest, and carried there their love of free institutions. The descendants of the pilgrims are scattered throughout the Northwest, and churches, and free schools, and love of liberty have gone with them. The scheme is as base and cowardly as it is impracticable. No! New England can never be expelled from this Union. There the grand idea of the American Union was first conceived; there the cradle of liberty was first rocked, before as well as amid the storms of the Revolution; there the first blood was shed, the first battles fought, the first flag of Union and Liberty unfurled, and there it shall float forever. There are Lexington, and Concord, and Bunker Hill, and no traitor hand shall ever sever them from the American Union. Not an acre of the soil of New England or a drop of all its waters shall ever be surrendered by this great Republic; and from Lake Champlain and the Housatonick to the St. Croix and St. Johns, the flag of the Union shall ever float in undiminished glory. Lake Champlain unites Vermont and New England with the Hudson, the lakes, and St. Lawrence; and Long Island Sound, commanding the deepest approaches to New York, completes the connection, which is a geographical and political necessity. I am not a New Englander by parentage, birth, or education, but if the other Free States of the North and Northwest should submit to the disgrace of uniting themselves with a Southern confederacy, I should remove to New England, and breathe an air uncontaminated by slavery or treason. And there are hundreds of thousands who would pursue the same course. When, in 1798, the great Washington feared that the South might be separated by traitors from the Union, he declared that, in such an event, he would remove to the North; and, in such a contingency, there are thousands, even in the South, who would remove to New England.[7]

Those of the North and Northwest, who should remain and carry their States into the Southern confederacy, would be regarded in the South with loathing and contempt; the whole civilized world would consider their degradation as complete and eternal. They would soon loathe themselves, and feel that it was not only the negroes who were enslaved, but that they had put fetters upon their own limbs, and rendered themselves worthy to be worked as slaves on the plantations of Southern masters. I do not believe any of the Free States of the North and Northwest can thus be disgraced and humiliated. There is one of these States, I am sure, that will never submit to such degradation. It is the State of Pennsylvania. There the Declaration of American Independence was first proclaimed. There the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution were framed. There are Germantown, Paoli, and Brandywine: there Washington crossed the Delaware at midnight, and fought the two great battles of the war of independence. There Franklin sleeps within her soil, the great patriot, philosopher, and statesman whom New England gave to Pennsylvania, the Union, and the world. No! No! from the Delaware and Susquehanna to the Ohio and Lake Erie, the people of a mighty State would consign to the scaffold and the block the wretched traitors who would attempt to sever Pennsylvania from New England. Ice and granite are called the principal products of New England, but our Revolution and this rebellion prove that her great staples are intellect, education, liberty, courage, and patriotism. She is said to have Puritan angularities and to love money; but she pours out now, as in 1776, lavish expenditures of her treasure in defence of the Union; and the blood of her sons empurples the ocean and the lakes in every naval conflict, and moistens all the battle fields of the nation. No! all the traitors of the South, and all the Burrs, Arnolds, and Catalines of the North can never sever New England from the Republic. And now, in this hour of our country's peril, Missouri stretches her hands to New England, and to all the free and loyal States, and proposes, with their assistance, to abolish slavery, and link her destiny with theirs in the bonds of a perpetual Union. And shall we hesitate for a moment, on such a question? The money consideration is far less than a month's cost of the war, and sinks into insignificance compared with the momentous results and consequences. Emancipation in Missouri, with her consent and the aid of Congress, is the first grand decisive victory of the Union in this contest, insures eventual success, and must now be placed beyond all hazard or contingency.

THE SOLDIER'S BURIAL

Where shall we lay our comrade down?Where shall the brave one sleep?The battle's past, the victory won,Now we have time to weep!Bury him on the mountain's brow,Where he fought so well;Bury him where the laurels grow—There he bravely fell!There lay him in his generous blood,For there first comes the lightWhen morning earliest breaks the cloud,And lingers last at night!What though no flow'ret there may bloomTo scent the chilly air,The sky shall stoop to wrap his tomb,The stars will watch him there!What though no stone may mark his grave,Yet Fame shall tell his raceWhere sleeps the one so kind, so brave,And God will find the place!Bury him on the mountain's brow,Where he fought so well;Bury him where the laurels grow—There he bravely fell!

LITERARY NOTICES

The Results of Emancipation, by Augustin Cochin, Ex-Mayor and Municipal Councillor of Paris. Work crowned by the Institute of France. Translated by Mary L. Booth, translator of Count de Gasparin's works on America, &c. Boston: Walker, Wise & Co. 1863.

Augustin Cochin, author of the work before us, is a man of a class in France from which we are specially well pleased to see vindications of Emancipation and of the policy of the Federal Union arise. His position is well and briefly stated in the preface as that of a Legitimist, a fast friend and ally of Count de Montalembert in his effort to raise up a Catholic Liberal party for the development of republican sentiments and institutions, and the ardent coadjutor of Pére Lacordaire, Monseigneur d'Orleans, Viscount de Melun, and a host of other moderate reformers in behalf of freedom. He has some little reputation as a writer on public and political topics; is highly connected, and, what is perhaps more to the purpose than aught else, is a very practical man, and son-in-law to Benoist d'Azy, who, possessed of an immense fortune, an extensive landowner and proprietor of iron forges, has done perhaps more than any other man to advance the material interests of his country by railway building, mining, and agricultural improvements. We say that this is more to the purpose, since it is of importance that the men who actively employ capital should understand the falsehood of slavery as a productive force in any system of labor, anywhere, at the present day. And it is highly significant when we find such men so far enlightened in France at this time, where, although, as we learn, very advanced views in political economy are set forth, we have still apprehended that a deeply based attachment to slavery, common to all the Latin races, prevails. That the Radicals should oppose slavery is but natural, but such views among the highly cultivated aristocracy are indeed encouraging.

We cannot agree with M. Villemain, who, in his report from the Academy, decreeing a prize of three thousand francs to M. Cochin for this work, speaks of it as inspired with 'eloquent zeal' and 'ardor.' It is very far from what it might have been as a literary production; and to one not interested in the facts and subject, is even—with the exception of its excellent Introduction—dry. The author is decidedly an economist, but he is not 'an apostle,' as his eulogist claims, unless it be in the sense in which any great collector and publisher of truths may be termed such. But on its true basis the work is indeed a great one, fully deserving the publisher's advertisement words, 'opportune and important.' The volume before us is a complete history, in a minor degree, of Slavery, and to a very full degree of Emancipation in the English and French colonies, with some account of the same in those belonging to Holland, Denmark, and Sweden. Having made for many years a specialty of the subject, and having had placed at his disposal the published and unpublished papers and records of every ministry of Europe, as, for instance, of the English Board of Trade, M. Cochin has accumulated a mass of extremely valuable material—all of which is presented in a very clear, perfectly well arranged form—and which we need not say should be read by every one in public, since there is certainly no intelligent American at the present day on whom the necessity of acquiring full information on this subject is not almost a solemn duty. Next after crushing rebellion, the great task of the Federal Government should be to organize labor and adopt a vigorous central and industrial policy. To do this, the relations of free and of slave labor to circumstances should be extensively studied. As in the case of all wars involving an institution, the question between the North and the South at the present day is simply one between ignorance and knowledge—knowledge such as books like this are eminently adapted to disseminate.

Passing by religious and philosophic argument, neither of which has been of much practical avail in this country, since we see the Church of the South quite as zealous in upholding slavery on Biblical grounds as that of the North is in opposing it, we come to Cochin's first real argument—that political economy affirms the superiority of free over forced labor. Policy and charity unite in this—'charity detests slavery because it oppresses; policy, more elevated, condemns it because it corrupts the inferior race.'

We call attention to this sentence because it accurately expresses the difference between mere 'Abolition,' which regarded only the sufferings of the blacks, and that higher and more comprehensive policy of 'Emancipation for the sake of the White Man,' which declares that slavery always in time inevitably makes of the slaveholder an intolerable neighbor to the free white laborer. From this point our author sets forth the gradual growth of the aversion to slavery all over the Continent, with the reactionary tendency in its favor in the Cotton United States and in England. It is needless to say that, before the overwhelming light of facts presented, especially when these facts are drawn from the past as well as the present, and from every country instead of one, slavery is shown to be more than deadly-conservative; more than cruel; more than a mere dead wall in the way of the onward march of the century. The time will come when such a curse will be rooted out of a country by the strong hand of all civilized nations. Had England and France been truly enlightened to their own interests, this war would never have taken place.

The history of the African slave trade and the efforts to destroy it, the Emancipation of the French Convention and the reëstablishment of slavery by the Consulate, from 1794 to 1802, form the first chapter of this work. Hence we have its history, its abolition in 1848, and, after this, that most important part, a careful examination of the results of Emancipation, showing—as Sewall and others have done—the grossness of the current falsehood to the effect that it has led to evil results. For those who can see only a part instead of the whole, who regard the amount of good done to themselves as the test of everything, who make no allowance for a social transition, or for a future (like our own 'treason-Democrats'), and who see in the black, whether slave or free, simply a creature whose whole mission is to benefit the white, it is true that Emancipation in certain isolated cases may not appear to have fully succeeded. The truth is, that freed labor has nowhere diminished—it has simply assumed new forms, more advantageous, for the time, to the laborer, while in most cases it has increased its profits. If slaves were overworked, there was no real gain;—if schools and marriage, cleanly independence and good clothing have increased tenfold among those who were once naked, starved, and ignorant, there has been a gain, although here and there less sugar is exported. And so the reader may trace the arguments and facts to the end.

Yet, after all, we feel almost ashamed that such a book should be really needed! What true scholar and honest man requires arguments of this kind? A thousand or two years ago, any king's daughter, any young lady, anybody walking in a lonely spot, was in danger of being kidnapped and sold to prostitution or slavery. Philosophers, poets, and artists were owned by brutal wretches; pious priests purchased gentlemen of noble birth for slaves. The pirate's galley swept every coast to steal any human being. Time rolled on, and slavery was modified. White slaves became serfs, serfs became free. The cause of emancipation is clear as that of any progressive reform—and yet, right in the face of history and God's truth, we see the Southern Confederacy and the British people daring to put themselves forward as the advocates of a crime so rapidly becoming obsolete. Yes—that is what the land of Wilberforce is now practically doing, while several of her writers, turning on their tracks, are beginning to 'reconsider' the subject in their writings!

War Songs for Freemen. Dedicated to the Army of the United States. Third Edition. Printed for the New York Volunteers. Boston: Ticknor & Fields.

Have you a friend in the army, especially one who sings occasionally, or if he be not canorous, say a friend who likes to read songs and hear them sung by others? In other words, would you, young lady reader (or any other reader), like to give some soldier at least half an hour's amusement for a very trivial outlay? In such case we recommend you to purchase this little pamphlet, and investing in a postage stamp, send it off without delay to the Army of the –, whatever that may be.

The work in question contains thirty songs of the war, mostly written expressly for the book, and each accompanied by the music, in nearly all cases with the bass. Among the contributors are Dr. O. W. Holmes, who has given two capital lyrics, 'Union' and 'Liberty,' and a superb trumpet song, well adapted to Was blasen die Trompeten? or 'What are the trumpets blowing?' a spirited German air. Mrs. Julia Ward Howe contributes a 'Harvard Student's Song', which is of course brilliant, earnest, and beautiful. It is set to the glorious old Slavonian—subsequently German air:

'Denkst du duran mein tapf'rer Lagienka?'

which no one ever heard without loving. C. T. Brooks, has given to the grand and swelling Landesvater words in every way worthy of it:

'Comrades plighted,Fast united,Firm to death for Freedom stand!See your country torn and bleeding,Hear a mother's solemn pleading!Rescue Freedom's promised land.'

The same author also gives the well known 'Korner's Prayer,' and 'The Vow.' From Mrs. T. Sedgwick we find a fine bold song, 'For a' that and a' that,' of course to the good old air of that name—a lyric of such decided merit in most respects that we regret to notice in it the venerable bull of 'polar stars,' quizzed long ago in another writer. Our contributor, Henry Perry Leland, has in this collection two songs, both strongly marked with the camp, neither setting forth the slightest earthly claim to be regarded as 'elevated poesie,' yet both remarkably sing-able, and probably destined to become broadly popular. Of these, 'Bully Boy Billy,' is set to a lilting 'devil may care' Low-Dutch camp tune—one of the kind which 'sings itself,' and is well adapted to a roaring chorus. From the same we find a lyric detailing the loss of a briarwood pipe stolen in a raid, which the grieving 'sojer' trusts (as we most sincerely do with him) may be found when Richmond's taken. Among the remaining lyrics are five by Charles Godfrey Leland, including 'We're at War,' to the bold French air of the Chœur des Girondins, 'Northmen Come Out,' to the Burschen heraus, and 'Shall Freedom Droop and Die?' to the fine old air of 'Trelawney.' 'The Cavalry Song' has a brave air, composed for it by John K. Paine. Very spirited and merry is 'Overtures from Richmond,' set to the quaint air of 'Lilliburlero, bullen a la,' which is said to have 'sung a deluded prince out of three kingdoms.' We trust that some of the old charm still sticks to the magic words, and that it may do as much for King Jeff. as it once did for King James. Among the remaining lyrics are the following: 'Put it Through,' and 'Old Faneuil Hall,' by E. E. Hale; 'Our Country is Calling,' to 'Wohlauf Kameraden!' by Rev. F. H. Hedge, and a translation of Luther's Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott by the same; Hauff's 'Night Guard,' an exquisite German air, and 'I'll be a Sergeant,' and 'Would you be a Soldier, Laddy?' both of them capital spirited soldier-songs. Last, not least, we have the 'Lass of the Pamunkey,' by F. J. Child. We know not whether the incident detailed be strictly autobiographic or borrowed; it is at any rate well told and merrily music-ed.

The reader will do well to observe that this collection, which has already become immensely popular, and has furnished material for more than one excellent patriotic concert, is prepared solely for the benefit of the solders, and that the proceeds of the sale of the book are all devoted to distributing it in the army. All who wish to make a most acceptable little gift at a trifling price; all who are 'sending things' to the army; all who would secure an interesting specimen of the songs of the war, and, finally, all who would own a really excellent musical work, should send an order for the above mentioned to Messrs. Ticknor & Fields.

The National Almanac and Annual Record for 1863. 12mo, pp. 704. Philadelphia: George W. Childs. New York: Charles T. Evans.

If Dickens's illustrious statistician, Mr. Gradgrind, were in the flesh to-day, how he would gloat over this book! The 'facts' presented in its seven hundred double-columned pages would satisfy, even to repletion, his voracious cravings; and once crammed with them, he would go forth into society a walking cyclopedia of all that appertained to the civil, military, agricultural, industrial, financial, educational, charitable, and religious condition of these United States.

But though we make no claim to belong to the Gradgrind family, we acknowledge with pleasure our gratification with this book. It has long been matter of reproach against us on the part of foreign writers on commerce and statistical science, that we produced no statistical works worthy the name. The publication of this work will forever put that reproach to silence. We have examined the book with care, and have been at a loss which most to admire, the patient and extraordinary labor which had brought together so vast a collection of important facts, or the complete and exhaustive treatment of every subject.

It is a marked characteristic of the work that, while omitting nothing necessary to a full elucidation of the past condition of the country, it brings all its statistics up to the latest dates. The United States debt is given to December 1, 1862; the Government receipts and expenditures for the financial year 1862; the issues of the mint to the autumn of 1862; the contributions of each State to the volunteer army to December, 1862; the finances of most of the States to the same date; even the Pacific States being brought up to last autumn; and the condition of the Rebel army and finances to January 1, 1863. Such enterprise deserves, and must achieve success.

Noticeable, too, for its completeness and thoroughness, is the 'Record of Events' of the war, occupying nearly eighty pages, and forming a continuous and admirable journal of the war up to the close of last year. In the States, also, the fulness and variety of detail of the finances, debts, banks, railroads (a new feature), educational institutions, charitable and correctional organizations, agriculture, manufactures, and military organization of each State, possess a deep interest to any man who desires to know the actual condition and resources of his country. We were particularly pleased with a series of diagrams, prepared by Prof. Gillespie of Union College, illustrating at a glance the changes which have taken place in the relative population of the different States, the relative proportion of increase of white and of slave population, and the effect produced by this upon different sections. We have not, at the late hour at which we write, time or room to indicate a tithe of the valuable features of this remarkable book; we can only say, that whoever expends the small sum necessary for its purchase, will most assuredly obtain an ample equivalent for his money.

The Orpheus C. Kerr Papers. Second Series. New York: Carleton, 413 Broadway. 1863.

During the present decade the American public has welcomed almost annually a new humorist. Thus we have seen in rapid succession John Phœnix, Doesticks, Fanny Fern, and Artemus Ward enjoying extraordinary popularity, and then new 'lords of misrule' 'reigning in their stead.' The last popular favorite is 'Orpheus C. Kerr'—a name thinly disguising that of Office Seeker, and which is not indeed too well chosen, since in the volume before us little or nothing relative to the very suggestive subject of office-seeking, on the part of the author at least, is to be found. The book itself is, however, marvellously laugh provoking, abounding in the oddest conceits, strangest stories, and drollest extravaganzas in the most ultra American vein. If the men who best ridicule great failures in war and in politics, are the ones most to be dreaded, it must be admitted that 'Orpheus C. Kerr' is the sharpest thorn which has been as yet planted in the side of the 'Young Napoleons' of our army, whose ability seems to consist in building up the strength of the enemy by delay and in canvassing indirectly for the Presidency. There is no cause so good as to be without abuses, and the abuses which have crept into our management of the war are touched off in these papers as merrily as unmercifully. They have done 'yeoman's service' in the press, hitting all sides, but bearing most heavily on 'Young Napoleon' and the status quo Democracy. It cannot be denied that the humor of these sketches is often merely extravagant, sometimes harshly strained, and occasionally bare and thin enough in all conscience, while the stories of the Cosmopolite Club seem like mere 'filling up' to 'make pages;' yet with all this there is more real wit, humor, and life-knowledge in this volume than would give tone and strength to half a dozen ordinary popular essayists of the Country Parson school. Extravagance is however to American narrative what it is to Arab conversation, something much less outré to those who are born to it than to strangers, who are unable to discount like the natives as fast as the sums total are set down. Making every allowance for every defect, there remains in 'Orpheus C. Kerr' a residuum of irresistible humor, provoking scores of hearty laughs, and many indications of a basis of thought and of literary ability which place him far in advance of the later writers of his school. He takes a wider range, too wide indeed at times, since he occasionally becomes 'Cockneyfied.' We wish that 'Villiam' and the Willis-y 'my boy' were less frequently mentioned. Yet as all this is atoned for by abundance of true American fun, we readily pardon such echoes, trusting that in his future writings our humorist will endeavor to be in all things truly original. He can be so by the very simple process of pruning.