E 463 .5 .C97 Copy 1 A GLANCE AT CURRENT AMERICAN HISTORY BY AN EX-CONFEDERATE. Glen Allen, Va. CussoNS, May & Company, 1S97. A GLANCE AT T BY AN EX-CONFEDERATE. (-^^4^^^^,!^?>^■ Glen Allen, Va. CussoNS, May & Company, 1897. 4fc s 5 A GLANCE AT CURRENT mimiX fflSTORY A^-V On the general merits, or rather demerits, of The South it is quite evident that the outside world has made up its mind. The " accepted fable " or " distillation of rumors " which we call History, has fully crystallized, and there is not the least ground for supposing that there will be any revision of the judgment already pronounced. For two-and-thirty years our Northern friends have deprecated any allusion on our part to the causes or character of the war, assuring us that every impulse of manhood and every throb of patriotism demanded that we should bury the past, with all its illusive hopes and unavailing griefs, and bend our undivided energies to the upbuilding of a common country. And that is precisely the thing which we have been doing. Meantime, during those same two-and-thirty years, those Northern friends of ours have been diligent in a systematic distortion of the leading facts of American history — inventing, suppressing, perverting, without scruple or shame — until our Southland stands to-day pilloried to the scorn of all the world and bearing on her front the brand of every infamy. This has been accomplished not alone nor chiefly by historic narrative or formal record but rather by the 4 A Glance at Current persistent use, at all times and on all occasions, of every form and mode of unfriendly expression — in pul- pit and on platform, at lyceum and on the hustings, by picture and story, by essay and song, by sedate disquisi- tion and airy romance, and in a general way by the unwearied false coloring of all past and current events. And thus it has come to pass that in the popular mind her very name has become an embodiment of folly, a symbol of meanness, a proverb of utter and incurable inefficiency. The economist with a principle to illus- trate, the moralist full of his Nemesian philosophy, the dramatist in quest of poetic justice — in short every craftsman of tongue or pen with a moral to point or a tale to adorn turns instinctively to this mythical, this fiction-created South, and finds the thing he seeks. The world has decided against us, and there remains to us now but a single hope — the hope of winning and holding something better than a dishonored place in the hearts of our own children. And even this hope, modest yet none the less precious, is fading away as the days go by. A wise and philosophical historian has justly said that " a people which takes no pride in the noble achievements of a remote ancestry will never achieve anything worthy to be remembered by remote descendants." Truer words were never spoken. And yet our grandchildren, trained in the public schools, often mingle with their affection an indefinable pity, a pathetic sorrow — solacing us with their caresses while vainly striving to forget " our crimes." A bright little girl climbs into the old veteran's lap, and hug- ging him hard and kissing his gray hairs, exclaims : " I don't care, grandpa, if you were an old rebel ! I love you ! I love you ! " But there is to be an end of this. The Grand Army of the Republic has spoken. And ever since the war ended that army has been a potential force. Nothing American History. 5 more is to be said in palliation of the rebels or the re- bellion — no word of comfort, no plea of sympathy. Confederates are always to be described as " insurrec- tionists " who sought to destroy the Government. The existing histories are to be expurgated. Every tribute to Southern heroism is to be blotted out, and the sum total of martial glory is to be transferred to the Grand Army of the Republic by virtue of its own decree. This plan has doubtless many advantages. It seems to settle hard questions so easily. Military fame is illusive, and if it comes not by gage of battle there is really nothing more natural than to invoke it by other means. And our Northern friends have chosen wisely. If the three tailors of Tooley street could achieve un- dying renown by putting forth a mere preamble, what may not the Grand Army of the Republic accomplish by writing down a solid column of resolutions? They have labored long and arduously, but have at last hit the mark. We admire their perseverance, their ver- satility, and most of all we felicitate them on their success in giving a new meaning to the old aphorism that " the pen is mightier than the sword." The United States History which to-day enjoys the widest circulation and the highest fame is the recent work of GoLDWiN Smith, Doctor of Canon Law and Professor of the Humanities, Toronto, Canada. The learned author has gathered his inspiration, and what he calls his facts, from many sources, enu- merating by title no less than twenty-two authorities, and adding that a complete list would be out of pro- portion to the size of the book itself. And yet there is absolutely nothing to indicate that he has troubled himself with more than one side of his subject. He makes no allusion of any kind to any writer who has extended his investigations in the faintest degree be- 6 A Glance at Current yond the beaten paths of Northern historical ortho- doxy. There is not a fragment of reference to Sage's colossal work, or the scholarly monograph of Curry, or the vivid picturings of Maury, or the comprehensive exposition of Stephens, or the philosophical review of Ropes, or indeed any citation whatever which can in- spire a reasonable hope of the slightest tendency to- ward impartial treatment. Mr. Goldwin Smith however is something more than a mere Doctor of Canon Law and Professor of the Hu- manities. He takes high rank among the masters of political economy, and surely not without abundant reason, for the skill with which he has adapted his wares to his market is beyond all praise. His book is published both at New York and Lon- don and is intended, he informs us, " for English rath- er than American readers;" nevertheless it has become amazingly popular with our brethren throughout the North. The general plan of his work is an unsparing vil- lification of the South. This wins for him Northern plaudits, and amid the gleeful tumult he weaves in his sneers and gibes on America at large, and thus opens a second market for his books among his own class of delighted Britishers. South Carolina, he says, made her start by combin- ing " buccaneering with slave owning " and utilized her ports by making them a shelter for pirates and corsairs " such as Captain Kidd and Blackbeard." Georgia he deals with more leniently. Her people were not distinctly criminal but just languidly and lazily vicious — shiftless, drunken and beggarly. She became " the refuge of the pauper and the bankrupt." Her first settlers were " good-for-nothings who had failed in trade" — a •' shiftless and lazy set " who " called for rum;" but later on "better elements came in, High- American History. 7 landers, Moravians, and some of the persecuted protes- tants of Salzburg." But Virginia seems to be his especial aversion. From the very beginning it has been her misfortune to awaken within him the most distressing emotions. He says she was not started right ; that her first set- tlers were an unpromising lot — lackeys, beggars, bro- ken-down gentlemen, tapsters out of a job. And things went from bad to worse. " To the crew of vagabonds were afterwards added jail-birds." * * << Convicts were offered their choice between the gallows and Vir- ginia, and some were wise enough to choose the gal- lows." They were not nice. Their aims were low, their motives sordid, their very place of settlement has long been a desolation, and only fragments of ruin mark its site.' Such is the forbidding background of Mr. Goldwin Smith's historical picture when he begins to light it up with the luminous glories of the Plymouth settle- ment. The Pilgrims, he assures us, were an altogether different kind of people. There was nothing sordid about them, nothing grovelling, nothing base. Their pure hearts were too full of simple faith and holy zeal to afford room for corrupting influences or worldly desires. " Some sustaining motive higher than gain was necessary to give them victory in their death- struggle with nature, to enable them to make a new home for themselves in the wilderness, and to found a nation." It was not only during the early period of coloniza- tion that the New Englanders were superior to the Virginians. The distinction seems to have widened as time went on. " Though no longer gold seekers, the men of Virginia were not such colonists as the Puri- tans. They were more akin in character to the Span- iard on the south of them, who made the Indian work 8 A Glance at Current for him, than to the New Englander, who worked for himself." * * "To work for them they had from the first a number of indentured servants, or bonds- men, jail-birds, many of them ; some kidnapped by press gangs in the streets of London, all of depraved character." * * * « Afterwards came in ever- increasing volume African slavery, the destined bane of Virginia and her ultimate ruin. Thus were formed the three main orders of Virginia society : The planter oligarchy, the ' mean white trash,' and the negro slaves." And so for two hundred years she plodded on, unredeemed, her " poor whites " being hopelessly given over to "a barbarous and debased existence." As were the people so were their leaders. " A chief fomenter of the quarrel" [with England] "was Patrick Henry, a man who had tried many ways of earning a livelihood, and had failed in all." * * * "A bankrupt at twenty-three, he lounged in thriftless idle- ness, till he found that tho he could not live by industry he could live by his eloquent tongue." This is the Goldwin Smith idea incarnate. It is the Boston idea, the Puritan idea. The logical New Eng- land brain would formulate and demonstrate the propo- sition thus : 1. Patrick Henry, furnished with a good stock of groceries, failed at twenty-three. 2. A Puritan, even of the tenth magnitude, under like circumstances, would not fail at twenty-three. Ergo : A tenth-rate Puritan is the superior of Pat- rick Henry. Such are tho limitations of the New England mind. Under the law of its very being it is fettered by its single standard of worth, and is therefore qualified to pass judgment only on those subjects which by it are measurable or deemed worthy of measurement. Its su- American History. 9 preme test of merit is accumulation ; the capacity to amass. As a student of natural history our author has been taught that the eagle is without a rival in range of vision and strength of wing. And yet the busy mag- pie in half an hour will spy out and store away more bits of glass and shining beads and glittering trumpery of every sort than the Bird of Jove will be likely to get together in a score of years. Mr. Goldwin Smith does not seem to make proper allowance for diflfer- ences in instinct. A generous foe, a member of the aristocratic order which Henry so fiercely assailed, sees in the young Virginian something other than " a shiftless idler " and " a lounging bankrupt." The poet-peer felicitously presents him to all nations and to all ages as " the forest-born Demosthenes " — the standard-bearer of a brave people, outraged by unendurable wrongs, yet resolute to transmit to their posterity the liberties which were their birthright. With that prescience which is the heaven-bestowed gift of genius the young patriot clearly discerned the signs of the times. He foresaw the real nature of that tempest which was fast gathering throughout the civi- lized globe. He knew that tho the world for two cen- turies had been awakening from its lethargy of a thou- sand years, yet that the time was only then ripening for mankind's deliverance. Instead of minding his shop, as Mr. Goldwin Smith would have done ; instead of consecrating himself heart and soul to movements in the tallow trade or fluctuations in the calico market, he gave his brilliant intellect free range through the whole cycle of human knowledge, and summed up the situation of the hour with a precision and comprehen- siveness which is still the marvel of statists and histo- rians and political philosophers. 10 A Glance at Current He saw the forces of tyranny marshalling themselves on every hand against the spirit of liberty, and he saw that the spirit of liberty was everywhere the spirit of the age. He foretold the nature of the coming struggle, with its burden of grief for every home in Western Europe. He heard the tread of mighty ar- mies and the sorrowing cry of oppressed multitudes ; a cry which was soon to change its accent and pre- cipitate that frightful conflict which shook the earth. The hour was approaching when monarchs and priests and conquerers must unite to try conclusions in a death grapple with the awakened peoples — an hour when the new world might sever the ligatures which bound it to the old — an hour when America by one bold stroke might fling off" the ancient traditions which else would forever entrammel her with the abuses and superstitions bf a despotic and benighted past. It was for the work of that hour that Patrick Henry was born. The informed historian discerns in him, not the " storm petrel of revolution " but the defender of in- herited liberties. He came at a moment when free institutions were trembling in the balance. The old theory of kingly right to govern wrong was being again asserted. The illimitable and unchecked right to tax was declared in the very terms which had demanded benevolences and ship-money. Lord North and the Earl of Bute and George the Third had formed a triune of despotism which bore every mark of the despotism of Straff"ord and Laud and Charles the First. And it was the lot of Patrick Henry at that crucial moment to lead the forlorn hope of constitutional liberty just as John Hampden had led it, under the same conditions, a hundred years before. It is nothing to the purpose that the colonies won their independence, their Statehood, a few years before American History. n the coming of the grand catastrophe. Their action was simply the first episode of the mighty drama. The prize battled for was the boon of civil liberty ; the people interested were the civilized nations; and it was needful that the first blow should come from the western hemisphere. And it is the glory of the man that his genius discerned the end from the beginning. That he saw in the approaching downfall of crown and scepter and mitre and crozier and all the infinite par- aphernalia of old world oppression, mankind's best hope for the new world's deliverance. And so amidst the first mutterings of the storm which was to culmi- nate in universal wreckage -amidst the portents which prefigured the vision of tottering thrones and shattered dynasties and crumbling empires, he upheld the brave faith that then and there might be laid, broad and deep, the enduring foundations of the temple of Ameri- can liberty. It is safe to say that throughout his entire work Mr. Goldwin Smith never calls the name of a Vir- ginian without bestowing upon him the tribute of his scorn. If sometimes he seems to praise Washington it is only that he may be the better able to mark, by force of contrast, the worth) essness of his followers and the badness of his cause. " Without him," says the author, that cause " would have been ten times lost," and " the names of those who had drawn the country into the conflict would have gone down to posterity linked with defeat and shame." Still, continues the author, " we can hardly number among great captains a general who acted on so small a scale," one who " never won a battle," and whose final success after all "was due not to native valor but to foreign aid." The chief merit which he grants to Washington was "his calmness and self- 12 A Glance at Current trol in contending with the folly and dishonesty of Congress and the fractioiisness of the State militia." As a commentary on the times he quotes a casual remark of Governeur Morris: "'Jay,' ejaculated Gov- erneur Morris thirty years afterwards, ' what a lot of d d scoundrels we had in that second Congress ! ' 'Yes,' said Jay, 'we had,' and he knocked the ashes from his pipe." In a nation where all are blind, a one-eyed man will be king. And such is substantially the distinction which Mr. Goldwin Smith accords to George Washington. James Madison, one of the most eminent and blame- less statesmen of any age or nation, is curtly dismissed as " a well-meaning man, but morally weak." Henry Clay, orator, patriot, pacificator — passionately beloved by his friends and honored even by his politi- cal opponents — devoted beyond all else to the welfare of his country, and ever ready to make any sacrifice at the shrine of an unbroken Union — who Curtius-like flung himself time and again into the abysses of sec- tional discord, and whose whole life was a concordance of the placid words he spoke when informed of his political defeat, "it is better to be right than presi- dent ;" — this man, able, pure, magnanimous, generous in his ambitions, avowed in his convictions, steadfast in his aims, true to his friends, charitable to his oppo- nents, flexible in expedients yet firm as the primal rocks where principle was involved ; — this man, the latchet of whose shoes his accuser is not worthy to unloose, is flippantly denounced as a mere " political acrobat," a " dazzling but artful politician who owed his fall to a false step in the practice of his own art." John Randolph had " natural ability " but lacked "good sense" and had "no power of self-control." * * * " With the arrogance of his class he would American History. 13 enter the Senate with his hunting whip in his hand, and behave as if he were in his kennel." The "behavior" of Virginians seems indeed to be a subject of ever-recurring solicitude with Mr. Goldwin Smith. As an instructor of youth he doubtless made a specialty of "deportment" and now gives to the world the benefit of his training. He makes the cus- tomary fling at " plantation manners," but is mildly surprised that "Franklin and Samuel Adams" should have been "lacking in the ordinary traits of gentle- men." As for Patrick Henry nothing better was to be expected, since " the character of an English gentle- man " is not to be formed " on a plantation or in the backwoods," — an opinion by the way which is any- thing but English if we exclude such authorities as the distinguished author, the 'Arrys and 'Arriotts of Bow Bells, and the eminently resj^ectable contingent of Servants' Hall. The only American that Mr. Goldwin Smith seems to hold in real regard is General Benedict Arnold. "Arnold," he says, "was one of the best of the Amer- ican commanders and perhaps the most daring of them all." * * * << jjg .^g^g slighted and wronged by the politicians," and " seems to have despaired of the cause." As a patriot "he shrank from the idea of the French alliance." He believed " that France had designs on Canada." Under those circumstances he resolved to enact the role of General Monk, and to that end opened negotiations with the British com- mander. In his treatment of incident the author is no less buoyant and free-handed than in his judgment of char- acter. He has no prejudices; no bias. All kinds of knowledge are equally welcome ; all sources of infor- 14 A Glance at Current mation equally meritorious. Any rumor of the camp, any scrap of idle gossip, any stray vagary of the news- paper correspondent, so it meets his needs, is accounted proper pabulum for the Muse of History. Here are a few of his utterances, taken almost at random : " Jefferson Davis when captured " was " farcically disguised in woman's clothes." " The slaveholders escaped military service while they thrust the poor under fire." " Confederate prisoners were well fed, and suffered no hardships." * * * "If many of them died it was because the caged eagle dies." " Guards pressed men in the streets " of Southern cities, and " conscripts were seen going to Lee's army in chains." The Southern clergy were " not only ignorant but cringing and degraded." " Jackson was nicknamed ' Stonewall ' " because of his steadfastness " on a field of general panic." Wilkes Booth was " a ranting Virginia actor " who drew his inspiration from " the tyrannicide motto of his State." " At the taking of Fort Pillow the negroes were nailed to logs and burned alive." " Copperheads were so called from a reptile which waits on the rattlesnake, the rattlesnake being em- blamatic of the South." " The Northern press, unlike the slave press of the South, never misled the people by publishing false news of military successes." "The Southern lady was but the head of a harem." She " might be soft, elegant, and charming, tho there was an element in her character of a different kind, which civil war disclosed." Slanders and perversions such as these seem unwor- American History. 15 thy of serious refutation. They arouse loathing rather than resentment. And so amid our unutterable and unuttered contempt they generally escape rebuke. Yet the world believes them. It is nothing that many of these fables are foolish and incredible in themselves. It is nothing that they are false to nature, false to fact, false to the canons of fiction. It is nothing that they confute each other. It is nothing that they would be mutually destructive if they met, for they are scattered throughout many pages and are digested singly. Frightful stories are told of horrible torture inflicted by Southerners on their hapless prisoners. And charm- ing pastorals are written on the lovingkindness of the Northern people as manifested by their beneficent treat- ment of the captives in their hands. And yet when Mr. Goldwin Smith is confronted by the oflicial prison records on each side — when it is conclusively shown that the death rate in Northern prisons exceeded the death rate in Southern prisons by nearly eight per cent. — the versatile author has his ready reason : "If many of them died it was because the caged eagle dies." This in a sense is true, and is a just tho unconscious tribute to the soldiery of the South. Many of them did die as the caged eagle dies. They did beat out their hearts against the prison bars. Their spirits at last did sink — their eyes, dauntless in battle, did grow dim — and so, still unsubdued, their pulses ceased at last to beat, and only their mortal clay remained to those who could destroy their bodies but could not quell their souls. The fidelity of the Confederate captive is without a parallel in human history. At any hour of any day freedom was his on the simple condition of swearing allegiance to the "Government of the United States." But what was the mood of this Southern soldier — 16 A Glance at Current this scion of a race of freemen — this bold spirit who under duress " dies as the caged eagle dies.;" what was his mood of mind while he was being dragged " to Lee's army in chains ? " Where then were beak and claw and strength of wing ? And with what sort of thrusting instrument did the " shirking slaveowners " " thrust him under fire ? " And how many chained eagles could one thruster thrust forward at a time?" Or rather, perhaps, how many "shirking slaveholders" would be required to "thrust under fire" a single eagle, chained or unchained ? And is not the South entitled to some set-oflf" against the North on the score of this special cause of death ? Was it only on one side that the vital spark was quenched by loss of liberty ? Did no imprisoned Northern soldier "die as the caged eagle dies?" Would each and all have been happy and contented if " well fed" and sheltered from "hardship?" Was it the Southern soldier alone who had none but moral griefs, while the Northern soldier had only material ones ? And must indeed these mixed and incongruous state- ments be blindly accepted as articles of faith lest the "sacred interests of a broad and generous patriotism" be impaired ? The author's argument is that the Southern captive, amid boundless abundance, pined and died, yearning for liberty, while the imprisoned Northerner had no thought or care beyond his need of food and shelter, thus proving the former to have been of the earth earthy, and the latter to have been spiritual in a super-sublimated degree. It seems a little hard on the unilluminated that they should be expected to digest this sort of reasoning. Yet perhaps they ought to take such logic as they can get, and be thankful for it, inasmuch as the sacred right of might is hard to vindicate unless facts can be American History. 17 moulded into harmony with the general hypothesis that the South is a region of savagery and the North a centre of civilization. Here are a few more extracts from this " latest and best" of American histories: It was a contest between " an iron despotism " on the one hand and " spontaneous zeal " on the other. " The South, almost from the first, resorted to con- scription, ruthlessly enforced by the severest penalties," a course " from which Northern democracy shrank." " The South had the superiority of force which autocracy lends to war," while " the North had the advantage of the unforced efforts and sacrifices which free patriotism makes." And as conclusive proof of the invincible strength which " spontaneous zeal " and the " unforced efforts " of " free patriotism " confer upon " a popular govern- ment " the author might aptly have called attention to the memorable interview between the British Min- ister and the Hon. William H. Seward : " I can touch a bell at my right hand," said the Secretary of State, " and order the arrest of a citizen of Ohio ; I can touch the bell again, and order the arrest of a citizen of New York. Can Queen Victoria do as much?" Lord Lyons, with closed eyes, slowly and silently shook his head. Yet he might have replied : " It is true, Mr. Secretary, that my sovereign, in this our modern age, has not the authority which you so justly claim; nor indeed had his puissant majesty, George the Third ; yet I doubt not that some such proof of power might possibly have been given in the good old days of Henry the Eighth." The liberty of the press is also a subject on which 18 A Glance at Current our author grows eloquent — holding that in the North it was absolutely free, while in the South it was but " a sounding board " to register the decrees of tyi'anny. On topics of this class it is really difficult to judge whether or not Mr. Goldwin Smith is writing in good faith. The feeling constantly arises that there is a sly sarcasm, a lurking irony in his praises of the North. In the blandest manner he lays down broad proposi- tions which are not only destitute of truth but which are specifically and in detail the exact reverse of truth. Every Northern man who lived through the war knows that under the Lincoln government there was no such thing as freedom of the press. It is tiue that before mobbing or destroying that palladium of liberty the "truly loyal" would lash themselves into a state of moral exaltation by denouncing as " rebel sympa- thisers" all who dared to remind them of their cov- enanted obligations — all who dared to appeal to the Constitution of the United States. And so, from the great cities on the Atlantic coast to the little villages on the Western frontier, every opponent of radicalism, every supporter of Statehood, every democratic editor who failed to raise the abject squeak that he was " a war-democrat " was forthwith denounced as an " enemy to free institutions, " and patriotically raided, robbed, muzzled and terrorized until crushed out of existence or brought into a loyal frame of mind. Now turn to the South. During the whole life of the Confederacy her press was absolutely free. Even when confronted by the united hosts of Europe, Asia, and Africa — even when beset by tenfold numbers and by resources mounting up to ten times ten — from the beginning to the end — through all mutations of victory or defeat — no matter what her ^^ower or what her needs, the Confederate government, by special enact- ment, gave absolute exemption from military service American History. 19 to every individual who was in any way connected with her newspaper press. " A sounding board," indeed ! Read the editorials of the chief newspaper published at her capital — the editorials of the Richmond Examiner. They have been republished in book form since the war and may be easily obtained. The editor was John M. Daniel — a man of note — able, haughty, resolute ; a recluse bit- ter with the bitterness of misanthropy yet devoured by an insatiable ambition. Crossed by some one in authority, he assailed the sanctities of bureaucracy and then drifted into antagonism with Mr. Davis' entire administration. The breach was never healed, and from the beginning to the end of the war he searched out and gave to open day every blot and every error of every department of the Confederate government. Never since the days of Sir Philip Francis had mortal hand grasped a more trenchant pen, and never was the work of a single pen fraught with more momen- tous consequences. Under the Lincoln despotism a writer such as Daniel could not have held his liberty a single day. So much for the "autocracy" which lent the South her " superiority " in " war." So much for the " iron despotism " which, notwithstanding autocracy, was over- thrown by the " spontaneous zeal " of the North. Does not Mr. Goldwin Smith know that he is giving his readers either pointless sarcasm or utter rubbish? Does he not know that the facts are notoriously and demonstrably the exact reverse of what he states them to be? Again, the author says that " the South, almost from the first, resorted to conscription, ruthlessly enforced by the severest penalties, " a course " from which Northern democracy shrank." Does he not know that the Northern conscription 20 A Glance at Current was as savage and remorseless as that of the invaded country was orderly and mild ? Does he not know that what the "spontaneous" patriots really "shrank" from was the decoys and trepanners who filled the union-saving ranks at so much per union-saver ? Does he not know that on a single occasion, and in the streets of a single Northern city, more than a thousand recusant patriots were shot down like mad dogs while flying in terror before the crimps and kidnappers and press-gangs of the Lincoln government ? But we bid adieu to Mr. Goldwin Smith. He, in turn, is to be set aside. He is altogether too mild a spoken man to meet present demands. His vitupera- tion of the " rebels " falls short in acrimony, while his adulation of the yankees lacks the required unction. ("Rebel" and "Yankee" — how pat as echo the one term calls forth the other.") The history committee of the Grand Army of the Republic has finally settled on a definite plan. And the plan in some respects is so full of promise that it will doubtless be adopted. The aim is two-fold — to render the rebel more odious than history has thus far depicted him, and at the same time to put the yankee in such a position that the world will be compelled to admire him ! For the attainment of so patriotic an end surely nothing more should be needed than the Grand Army's simple requisition. The needful appropriation might be graced by a paean or two to the old flag, and all should go smoothly. Else, what is the good of victory and victory's lawful fruits ? — fame, wealth, honor, rep- utation, and full control of "history's purchased page?" The proposed plan is official, governmental, authori- tative. The required history is to be written by a duly appointed and truly loyal personage who is to gather his war material solely from the " dispatches " American History. 21 on file at Washington. But right there, we apprehend, will be found the fly in the ointment. Think of it. History by the transcription of yankee dispatches ! Unhappy historian ! — the wings of his imagination close clipped, and himself bound by both literary and patriotic obligation to harmonize with the actual situation, and with each other, the varied dis- patches of commanders who " never misled the people by publishing false news of military successes." Take a handful of the most important dispatches of the war. Or, still better, take the chief dispatches of the Grand Army's chosen heroes — the radical republi- can generals, the men of immaculate loyalty, the gleam- ing meteors of war — Benjamin Butler, Banks, Hooker, -i Pope, 0. 0. Howard. Turn to Hooker's dispatch when he had Lee " at his mercy : " " The enemy must attack us in our chosen position, or ingloriously fly!" The enemy did not fly, but it attacked ; whereupon the gallant corps of 0. 0. Howard marched out of history with unexampled celerity, while the exultant dispatch-bearer spurred hard for Washington with Stonewall's troopers at his heels. Butler's dispatches are a vibrating note of triumph from Big Bethel in '61 to Bermuda Hundred in '64. The former aff"air was really a drawn battle, the two wings of his army having fired into each other until mutually satisfied, when they simultaneously retired. Butler claimed it as a double victory, but history has not allowed the claim. In his Bermuda campaign he announced his position as being " impregnable against any numbers which the rebels might bring against him." A narrow space between the rivers was the only point of entrance or exit. So Beauregard with a handful of troops turned the position against him, or " bottled him up," as Grant expressed it, and But- ler, as a warrior, was heard from no more. 22 A Glance at Current General Banks was pre-eminently distinguished as a dispatch writer, whether waging war amid the cotton bales of the Red River or " chasing the rebels " in the Valley of Virginia. But his campaigns were peculiar, being modeled on the maritime principle of fighting in a circle, so that whenever he overtook the rebels he was pretty sure to find them busy among his wagon trains. The hungry Confederates held him in affec- tionate regard and generally spoke of him as " Old Stonewall's Commissary," altho in his dispatches he modestly forbore to mention the rank they gave him. General Pope was also famous for his dispatches, and never were those dispatches more aglow with vic- .-tory than whilst he was being spanked and booted from the Rappahannock to the walls of Washington. At the very moment that he was declaring the rebels to be in headlong flight, the General-in-Chief, Halleck, frantic with terror, was imploring McClellan to force his marches and save the Capital ! Truly, this official history will be worth the waiting for. Particularly as the historian is to be put under orders to arrange the dispatches " patriotically ;" that is, in such shape as to debase the rebel and exalt the yankee ! And yet this subject lias its sad side too. The " History " will have its vogue, everybody will want to read it, but during that lively jicriod what will the poor comic papers do ? Those friends of the Grand Army wlio have a sense of humor are apprehensive tliat that patriotic body is in danger of being laughed out of existence. And in this emergency it is proposed to enlarge the powers of Government so that a new code of laws may be en- acted — laws which shall make it a penal offence to speak with levity of patriotic persons, or to utter re- proachful or contemptuous or irreverent words when American History. 23 speaking of any project whicli enjoys the support of "loyal" men. A "truthful history" is to be ordert^d "by act of Congress," and " ji^ublishers are to be fined and imprisoned" if they "issue works" wliich are cal- culated " to wrongly impress the minds of the growing generation regarding the Rebellion." Considered as an emanation of the Puritan spirit, all this is perfectly logical. He cares not who fights his battles so that he alone is left to record them. That has always been a Puritan j^i'erogative, and he does not propose to abandon it. He has laid aside his steeple hat and his sour visage and his sad-colored raiment, but at bottom he is the same old Puritan. He has dropped his sanctimonious snutHe and the up- ward turning of his eyes because he began to perceive that those outward signs of inward grace were putting the unregenerate on their guard against him. But he is still the genuine article. A Pharisee always, he is not to be judged by any common standard; for a being of his lofty pretentions, if not incomparably better than other men, is bound to be immeasurably worse. Mov- ing ci-aftily to his ends, now with a flash of simulated zeal and anon with a placid saintliness, but always disguising his tyranny and greed by special claims to holiness, he is, in all essentials, the same being to-day that he was when England vomited him forth to the Continent and when the Continent in turn spewed him to the shores of the New World. Self-styled as the apostle of liberty and peace, he has never neglected an opportunity to strangle the one and subvert the other. Self-appointed as the champion of unity and harmony, he has carried discord into every land that his foot has smitten. Exalting himself as the defender of freedom of thought, his favorite practice has been to muzzle the press and to adjourn legislatures with the sword. Vaunting himself as the 24 A Glance at Current only true disciple of the living God, lie has done more to bring sacred things into disrepute than has been accomplished by all the apostates and infidels of all the ages, from Judas Iscariot to Robert G. Ingersoll. Born in revolt against law and order — breeding schism in the Church and faction in the State — seceding from every organization to which he had pledged fidelity — nullifying all law, human and divine, which lacked the seal of his approval — evermore setting up what he calls his conscience against the most august of consti- tuted authorities and the most sacred of covenanted obligations, he yet has the impregnable conceit to pose himself in the world's eye as the only surviving speci- men of political or moral perfection. On two occasions he has been clothed, for a brief period, with absolute power, and in each instance he taught his victims what " persecution " really meant. In the tide of time, men have been governed in many ways — by councils and oligarchies — by prophets, priests and kings — by the despotism of tyrants and the des- potism of mobs — by fools and philosophers, by learned sages and by savage chieftains — but they knew not the meaning of tyranny until they fell under the Puritan dominion, and learned what it was to be gov- erned by a brood of liberty-seeking saints and vanity- inspired busybodies. "Be you a witch?" roared the embodied majesty of Massachusetts to a trembling paralytic. " No, your honor," was the reply. " Ofiicer," said the Court, " take her away and pull out her toe-nails with a pair of hot pincers, and then see what she says ; for verily it is declared that ' thou shalt not suflfer a witch to live !' " Thus with the act of cruelty or rapine goes ever the perverted text. " We were an hungered, and the salvages had much American History. 25 store of corn, and many garments made of the skins of beasts, and it came to pass that we went forth and fell upon them, smiting them hip and thigh, even with the knife of Ehud and the hammer of Jael, crying aloud and sparing not, and their spoil became an heri- tage unto us, even unto us and our children." This precious screed, which serves its turn in sancti- fying robbery and murder, is in fair accord with that practical and profitable tenet which has so often been to him a rule of action : " Thou hast said in Thy Word that ' unto the saints should be given the earth and the fulness thereof,' and verily we are the saints." That the press should be silenced at his bidding, that courts should be reconstructed and constitutions tossed aside, is simply a necessity of the situation. The men of Belial must be put down. Under ordinary circumstances there should seem to be no particular harm in men speaking of facts which they had witnessed, or in describing events in which they had participated, or in recording the history which they had made. But the Puritan has always been a law unto himself, and by virtue of his superior toleration he has now become a law unto others. Moreover being guided by that inner light which shines for him alone, there must be no appeal from the justice of his judgments or the righteousness of his decrees. The Puritan heretofore has made some little amends by furnishing to mankind an enduring target for scorn and mirth and derision. But now we are to be de- prived of even that slight compensation — the poor privilege of laughing at him. It is too bad. We read that the Roman tyrant, Aurelius Commo- dus, " entered the arena, sword in hand, against a wretched gladiator who was armed only with a foil of lead, and that after shedding the blood of his helpless 26 A Glance at Current victim, he struck medals to commemorate the inglori- ous victory." That fame at any price was precious in the sight of Aurelius is sufficiently evident, yet we nowhere read that he forbade his people to laugh or weep or jibe at his novel way of attaining it, and it is quite certain that he left them at liberty to stamp on their own account as many medals as they might have occasion for. On the general subject of State Sovereignty, and its relation to secession and nullification, it is well enough to set down a few facts which the coming history will doubtless fail to remember. And if the facts seem " calculated to wrongly impress the minds of the grow- ing generation" why "so much the worse for the facts." That sterling patriot and life-long Unionist, John Janney of Loudoun county, was chosen President of the Peace Convention of 1861. On being twitted by a youthful delegate for his State Sovereignty tendencies, the old patriarch said : " Disunion would be the great- est calamity that could befall our State. But, sir, secession is her lawful right, and she alone must de- termine the expediency of exercising it." * * " Virginia, sir, is to-day a free and sovereign State ; American History. 27 and she was a nation one hundred and eighty years before the Union was born." This principle of Statehood had been everywhere recognized by Americans up to the time of the war, and nowhere more persistently than by the people of Massachusetts and the New England States. In her convention of 1780 Massachusetts declared that her people had the sole and exclusive right of governing themselves as a free, sovereign, and inde- pendent State, and that they, and they alone, had the indefeasible right to institute, reform, alter or totally change that government whenever their happiness or welfare might seem to require it. Thirteen years later, when war with Great Britain seemed almost unavoidable, the New Englanders put forth Hon. Timothy Dwight as their spokesman, and through him declared that they would have no part or lot in such a war, and sooner than have it forced upon them they would go out of the Union. So, too, when the Louisiana purchase was under dis- cussion. Massachusetts bitterly opposed it and threat- ened to exercise what she called her " unquestioned right of secession " if the measure should be persisted in. Senator George Cabot was the leader on that oc- casion. Indeed, from the very beginning, the New England States left nothing untried to prevent the territorial growth of our country. In the words of Bancroft, "An ineradicable dread of the coming power of the South- west lurked in New England, especially in Massachu- setts." And if they could have had their way, the Mississippi river would now be our western frontier. Another distinguished secessionist was Senator Pick- ering, also of Massachusetts. He did not like Mr. Jefferson's administration at all. There was something about it which he said was "not congenial" to his 28 A Glance at Current feelings or the feelings of New England. So he pro- posed a general dissolution of the Union with a view to the formation of a Northern Confederacy. The scheme was favored by New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Connecticut and Vermont, yet it was deemed imprudent to act without the alli- ance of New York, who was promised a dominant in- fluence in the new league. But New York declined with thanks and the project fell through. In 1804 the Legislature of Massachusetts asserted and defined the principle of secession by the following en- actment : " That the annexation of Louisiana to the Union transcends the constitutional power of the Gov- ernment of the United States. It forms a new Con- federacy, to which the States united by the former compact are not bound to adhere." In the debate on the bill for the admission of Louisiana, the representative of Massachusetts, Hon. Josiah Quincy, said : "If the bill passes, it is my de- liberate judgment that it is virtually a dissolution of the Union ; that it will free the States from their moral obligation ; and, as it will be the right of all, so it will be the duty of some definitely to prepare for a separation — amicably if they can, violently if they must." At this conjuncture a Southern member raised the point that " the suggestion of a dissolution of the Union was out of order ; but, on appeal, the House sustained Mr. Quincy, who, in an elaborate argument, vindicated the rightfulness of secession, saying, among other things: "Is there a principle of public law better settled or more conformable to the plainest suggestions of reason than that the violation of a con- tract by one of the parties may be considered as ex- empting the other from its obligations? Suppose in private life thirteen form a partnership, and ten of them undertake to admit a new partner without the American History. 29 concurrence of the other three — would it not be at their option to abandon the partnership, after so pal- pable an infringement of their rights? This reasoning goes to the heart of the matter. It asserts that the States are independent political organ- isms — or rather that they were so in those anti-bellum days — and that all the massed power of majorities could not drag down the principle of sovereignty, altho that principle might be enthroned in but a single State. In short, on all occasions of domestic disquiet or foreign war the history of New England has been a history of revolt, and threatened separation, and nulli- fication, and secession, and persistent defiance of the authority of Congress and the Federal Courts. In 1812 Massachusetts and Connecticut refused to allow their militia to be sent beyond their State lines, and on being left to their own devises they quarrelled with the Administration for refusing to pay them for making a local defense on their own account. Mean- time the Governor of Massachusetts occupied himself in calling a public fast day for deploring the war against a nation which had long been " the bulwark of the religion we profess." The good old town of Plymouth, having risen from its knees, presently got into a muscular mood, and having captured one of the Congressman who voted for the war, forthwith gave a free exhibition of their untrammelled liberty by "kick- ing him through the town." Finally the Supreme Court of Massachusetts poured oil on the troubled waters by deciding that neither Congress nor the President had anything to do with the State forces, but that the Governor was the man. So the Governor settled the matter by refusing the request of the President for her quota of troops, and the Massachusetts House of Kepresentatives clinched 30 A Glance at Current the whole subject by declaring- the war to be unholy, and begging the people to do what they could to thwart it. Jefferson's Embargo was never really tried, because the New England States threatened to secede if its provisions should be carried out, and it was accord- ingly repealed in the vain hope of appeasing them. But it was on the actual breaking out of hostilities that New England showed the real quality of her " devotion to the Union." She not only did her best to nullify every law passed by Congress for raising men and money, but some of " her best citizens " intrigued with British agents for an alliance with Canada, while others hung out signal lights to enable the enemy's fleet to capture our disabled cruisers — deeds which would have richly deserved the halter if committed by ordinary mortals, but which won for them the enthusiastic plaudits of their kind. That the Hartford Convention of 1814 was not simp- ly a secession but a treasonable body admits of no rational doubt. The object was not merely to destroy the Union, but to enleague the revolted States with Grreat Britain, so that the new Confederacy and its ally might be in a position to subjugate the adhering States. The present race of New England apologists pretend that the Convention was " merely an assem- blage of some of the Federal leaders," but the plain facts of history discredit their claim. The delegates from Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts were regularly elected by the Legislatures of those States, and were in every respect an official body acting in a representative capacity. Their deliberations were held in secret, and no full account of their proceedings has ever been published, but they publicly announced their adherence to the doctrine of State Sovereignty, full and absolute, declaring that : " When emergencies occur American History. 31 which are either beyond the reach of judicial tribunals or too pressing to admit of delay incident to their forms, States which have no common umpire must be their own judges and execute their own decisions." In 1861 the Southern people, weary of discord, ex- ercised this sovereign right. They withdrew from their restless and contentious neighbors, and formed a more harmonious Union among themselves, asking only to be let alone. The " emergency " which confronted them was the enthronement of a hostile and revolutionary faction — a faction which at a fatal moment had come into power through a triple division among the law- abiding citizens. These new rulers had chiefly distinguished themselves as the enemies of existing institutions — their political and social creed being, in effect, " Whatever is, is wrong." They were fond of execrating the Union as " a league with hell," and denouncing the Constitution as "a covenant with death." They derided the highest courts of the land as " crimping houses of iniquity," and villified the old flag as " a flaunting lie ! " But on coming into power they shamelessly shifted their ground, and started a war of conquest in pre- tended defense of the very principles and symbols which they had so bitterly reviled. And then, with bewildering logic, they began to mutilate the States on the plea that they were " in- destructible ;" they debarred them from the Union while declaring the Union to be " indissoluble," and they patched up and distorted the Constitution on the pretence that they were the only class who reverenced its "inviolability." Having thus approved themselves the only true champions of " the sacred principle of 32 A Glance at Current American History. government by consent," they wound up their work by converting the States into satrapies, and holding them under bayonet rule until the conquered peoples consented to ratify the whole of their rump perform- ances. No wonder they are yearning for a historian of their own ! — no wonder they are drafting laws to give that historian sole control of the facts ! As for the South, she accepted war when no other recourse was left her. And she has borne its results, bitter tho they have been, with the serenity of forti- tude and the dignity of silence. Conscious of her rectitude in aim and deed, she has been willing to leave her cause to the tribunal of posterity. Like the princess in the Eastern story, she has held her course, unshaken by clamor, unmoved by taunts and sneers, and without a backward glance has swept on toward the Golden Fountain of the future. She has been con- tent to leave her name and memory "to men's chari- table speeches, to foreign nations and the next age." She frankly concedes that under the new Union, and the revised Constitution, and the improved laws, and the generally amended polity, there may have been innovations with which she has not kept pace, and which she does not fully comprehend. But when she is threatened with pains and penalties for presuming to relate to her own children the simple annals of her life, she believes that it is fairly within her right to enter a mild and respectful yet earnest protest. ^ LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 013 700 651 0|