At this time we present a humiliating spectacle to other nations: nearly half of our national temple in ruins,—the work of blind folly and mad ambition. The people of the North claimed no right to tear it down, or even to repair it. But since the people of the South have risen in rebellion, let us believe that there is now an opportunity, nay, an imperative necessity, to remove from its foundations the rock of Oppression, that was sure to crumble in the refining fires of a Christian civilization, and establish in its place the stone of LIBERTY,—unchanging and eternal as its Author. Let us rejoice in the hope, already brightening into fruition, that out of these ruins our temple shall rise again, in a fresher beauty, a firmer strength, a brighter glory,—and above it again shall float the old flag, every star restored, henceforth to all, of every color and every race, the flag of the free.

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REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.



Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838-39. By FRANCES ANNE KEMBLE. New York: Harper & Brothers.

Those who remember the "Journal of a Residence in America," of Frances Anne Kemble, or, as she was universally and kindly called, Fanny Kemble,—a book long since out of print, and entirely out of the knowledge of our younger readers,—will not cease to wonder, as they close these thoughtful, tranquil, and tragical pages. The earlier journal was the dashing, fragmentary diary of a brilliant girl, half impatient of her own success in an art for which she was peculiarly gifted, yet the details of which were sincerely repugnant to her. It crackled and sparkled with naive arrogance. It criticized a new world and fresh forms of civilization with the amusing petulance of a spoiled daughter of John Bull. It was flimsy, flippant, laughable, rollicking, vivid. It described scenes and persons, often with airy grace, often with profound and pensive feeling. It was the slightest of diaries, written in public for the public; but it was universally read, as its author had been universally sought and admired in the sphere of her art; and no one who knew anything of her truly, but knew what an incisive eye, what a large heart, what a candid and vigorous mind, what real humanity, generosity, and sympathy, characterized Miss Kemble.

The dazzling phantasmagoria which life had been to the young actress was suddenly exchanged for the most practical acquaintance with its realities. She was married, left the stage, and as a wife and mother resided for a winter on the plantations of her husband upon the coast of Georgia. And now, after twenty-five years, the journal of her residence there is published. It has been wisely kept. For never could such a book speak with such power as at this moment. The tumult of the war will be forgotten, as you read, in the profound and appalled attention enforced by this remarkable revelation of the interior life of Slavery. The spirit, the character, and the purpose of the Rebellion are here laid bare. Its inevitability is equally apparent. The book is a permanent and most valuable chapter in our history; for it is the first ample, lucid, faithful, detailed account, from the actual head-quarters of a slave-plantation in this country, of the workings of the system,—its persistent, hopeless, helpless crushing of humanity in the slave, and the more fearful moral and mental dry-rot it generates in the master.

We have had plenty of literature upon the subject. First of all, in spirit and comprehension, the masterly, careful, copious, and patient works of Mr. Olmsted. But he, like Arthur Young in France, was only an observer. He could be no more. "Uncle Tom," as its "Key" shows, and as Mrs. Kemble declares, was no less a faithful than the most famous witness against the system. But it was a novel. Then there was "American Slavery as it is," a work of authenticated facts, issued by the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1839, and the fearful mass of testimony incessantly published by the distinctively Abolition papers, periodicals, books, and orators, during the last quarter of a century. But the world was deaf. "They have made it a business. They select all the horrors. They accumulate exceptions." Such were the objections that limited the power of this tremendous battery. Meanwhile, also, it was answered. Foreign tourists were taken to "model plantations." They shed tears over the patriarchal benignity of this venerable and beautiful provision of Divine Providence for the spiritual training of our African fellow-creatures. The affection of "Mammy" for "Massa and Missis" was something unknown where hired labor prevailed. Graver voices took up the burden of the song. There was no pauperism in a slave-country. There were no prostitutes. It had its disadvantages, certainly; but what form of society, what system of labor has not? Besides, here it was. It was the interest of slaveholders to be kind. And what a blessing to bring the poor heathen from benighted Africa and pagan servitude to the ennobling influences of Slavery, as practised among Southwestern Christians in America, and "professors" in South Carolina and Georgia! See the Reverend Mr. Adams and Miss Murray passim. This was the answer made to the statements of the actual facts of the system, when it was found that the question had gone before public opinion, and would be decided upon its merits by that tribunal, all the panders, bullies, assassins, apologists, and chaplains of Slavery to the contrary notwithstanding. In fact, when that was once clearly perceived, the issue was no less visible; only whether it were to be reached by war or peace was not so plain.

Yet in all this tremendous debate which resounds through the last thirty years of our history, rising and swelling until every other sound was lost in its imperious roar, one decisive voice was silent. It was precisely that which is heard in this book. General statements, harrowing details from those who had been slaveholders, and who had renounced Slavery, were sometimes made public. Indeed, the most cruel and necessary incidents, the hunting with blood-hounds, the branding, the maiming, the roasting, the whipping of pregnant women, could not be kept from knowledge. They blazed into print. But the public, hundreds of miles away, while it sighed and shuddered a little, resolved that such atrocities were exceptional. 'Twas a shocking pity, to be sure! Poor things! Women, too! Tut, tut!

Now, at last, we have no general statement, no single, sickening incident, but the diary of the mistress of plantations of seven hundred slaves, living under the most favorable circumstances, upon the islands at the mouth of the Altamaha River, in Georgia. It is a journal, kept from day to day, of the actual ordinary life of the plantation, where the slaves belonged to educated, intelligent, and what are called the most respectable people,—not persons imbruted by exile among slaves upon solitary islands, but who had lived in large Northern cities and the most accomplished society, subject to all the influences of the highest civilization. It is the journal of a hearty, generous, clear-sighted woman, who went to the plantation, loving the master, and believing, that, though Slavery might be sad, it might also be mitigated, and the slave might be content. It is the record of ghastly undeceiving,—of the details of a system so wantonly, brutally, damnably unjust, inhuman, and degrading, that it blights the country, paralyzes civilization, and vitiates human nature itself. The brilliant girl of the earlier journal is the sobered and solemnized matron of this. The very magnitude of the misery that surrounds her, the traces of which everywhere sadden her eye and wring her heart, compel her to the simplest narration. There is no writing for effect. There is not a single "sensational" passage. The story is monotonous; for the wrong it describes is perpetual and unrelieved. "There is not a single natural right," she says, after some weeks' residence, "that is not taken away from these unfortunate people; and the worst of all is, that their condition does not appear to me, upon further observation of it, to be susceptible of even partial alleviation, as long as the fundamental evil, the Slavery itself, remains."

As the mistress of the plantation, she was brought into constant intercourse with the slave-women; and no other account of this class is so thorough and plainly stated. So pitiful a tale was seldom told. It was a "model plantation"; but every day was darkened to the mistress by the appeals of these women and her observation of their condition. The heart of the reader sickens as hers despaired. To produce "little niggers" for Massa and Missis was the enforced ambition of these poor women. After the third week of confinement they were sent into the fields to work. If they lingered or complained, they were whipped. For beseeching the mistress to pray for some relief in their sad straits, they were also whipped. If their tasks were unperformed, or the driver lost his temper, they were whipped again. If they would not yield to the embrace of the overseer, they were whipped once more. How are they whipped? They are tied by the wrists to a beam or the branch of a tree, their feet barely touching the ground, so that they are utterly powerless to resist; their clothes are turned over their heads, and their backs scarred with a leathern thong, either by the driver himself, or by father, brother, husband, or lover, if the driver choose to order it. What a blessing for these poor heathen that they are brought to a Christian land! When a band of pregnant women came to their master to implore relief from overwork, he seemed "positively degraded" to his wife, as he stood urging them to do their allotted tasks. She began to fear lest she should cease to respect the man she loved; "for the details of slaveholding are so unmanly, letting alone every other consideration, that I know not how any one with the spirit of a man can condescend to them." The master gives a slave as a present to an overseer whose administration of the estate was agreeable to him. The slave is intelligent and capable, the husband of a wife and the father of children, and they are all fondly attached to each other. He passionately declares that he will kill himself rather than follow his new master and leave wife and children behind. Roused by the storm of grief, the wife opens the door of her room, and beholds her husband, with his arms folded, advising his slave "not to make a fuss about what there is no help for." The same master insists that there is no hardship or injustice in whipping a woman who asks his wife to intercede for her, but confesses that it is "disagreeable." At last he tells her that she must no longer fatigue him with the "stuff" and "trash" which "the niggers," who are "all d——d liars," make her believe, and henceforward closes his ears to all complaint.

Yet this was a model plantation, and this was probably not a hard master, as masters go. "These are the conditions which can only be known to one who lives among them. Flagrant acts of cruelty may be rare, but this ineffable state of utter degradation, this really beastly existence, is the normal condition of these men and women; and of that no one seems to take heed, nor had I ever heard it described so as to form any adequate conception of it, till I found myself plunged into it.... Industry, man's crown of honor elsewhere, is here his badge of utter degradation; and so comes all by which I am here surrounded,—pride, profligacy, idleness, cruelty, cowardice, ignorance, squalor, dirt, and ineffable abasement."

And yet this is the system which we have been in the habit of calling patriarchal, because the model masters said it was so, and trade was too prosperous to allow any difference with them! And these are the model masters, supported in luxury by all this unpaid labor and untold woe, these women-whippers and breeders of babies for sale, who have figured in our talk and imaginations as "the chivalry" and "gentlemen"! These are they to whom American society has koo-too'd, and in whose presence it has been ill-bred and uncourteous to say that every man has rights, that every laborer is worthy of his hire, that injustice is unjust, and uncleanness foul. No wonder that Russell, coming to New York, and finding the rich men and the political confederates of the conspirators declaring that the Government of the United States could not help itself, and that they would allow no interference with their Southern friends, sincerely believed what he wished to, and wrote to John Bull, whose round face was red with eager desire to hear it, that the Revolution was virtually accomplished. No wonder that the haughty slaveholders, smeared with sycophantic slime, at Newport, at Saratoga, in the "polite" and "conservative" Northern circles, believed what Mr. Hunter of Virginia told a Massachusetts delegate to the Peace Congress,—that there would be no serious trouble, and that the Montgomery Constitution would be readily adopted by the "conservative" sentiment of the North.

Mrs. Kemble's book shows what the miserable magic is that enchants these Southern American citizens into people whose philosophy of society would disgrace the Dark Ages, and whose social system is that of Dahomey.

The life that she describes upon the model plantation is the necessary life of Slavery everywhere,—injustice, ignorance, superstition, terror, degradation, brutality; and this is the system to which a great political party—counting upon the enervation of prosperity, the timidity of trade, the distance of the suffering, the legal quibbles, the moral sophisms, the hatred of ignorance, the jealousy of race, and the possession of power—has conspired to keep the nation blind and deaf, trusting that its mind was utterly obscured and its conscience wholly destroyed.

But the nation is young, and of course the effort has ended in civil war. Slavery, industrially and politically, inevitably resists Christian civilization. The natural progress and development of men into a constantly higher manhood must cease, or this system, which strives to convert men into things, must give way. Its haughty instinct knows it, and therefore Slavery rebels. This Rebellion is simply the insurrection of Barbarism against Civilization. It would overthrow the Government, not for any wrong the Government has done, for that is not alleged. It knows that the people are the Government,—that the spirit of the people is progressive and intelligent,—and that there is no hope for permanent and expansive injustice, so long as the people freely discuss and decide. It would therefore establish a new Government, of which this meanest and most beastly despotism shall be the chief corner-stone. In a letter to C.G., in the appendix of her book, Mrs. Kemble sets this truth in the clearest light. But whoever would comprehend the real social scope of the Rebellion should ponder every page of the journal itself. It will show him that Slavery and rebellion to this Government are identical, not only in fact, but of necessity. It will teach him that the fierce battle between Slavery and the Government, once engaged, can end only in the destruction of one or the other.

This is not a book which a woman like Mrs. Kemble publishes without a solemn sense of responsibility. A sadder book the human hand never wrote, nor one more likely to arrest the thoughts of all those in the world who watch our war and are yet not steeled to persuasion and conviction. An Englishwoman, she publishes it in England, which hates us, that a testimony which will not be doubted may be useful to the country in which she has lived so long, and with which her sweetest and saddest memories are forever associated. It is a noble service nobly done. The enthusiasm, the admiration, the affection, which in our day of seemingly cloudless prosperity greeted the brilliant girl, have been bountifully repaid by the true and timely words now spoken in our seeming adversity by the grave and thoughtful woman.

* * * * *

An Historical Research respecting the Opinions of the Founders of the Republic on Negroes as Slaves, as Citizens, and as Soldiers. Read before the Massachusetts Historical Society, August 14, 1862. By GEORGE LIVERMORE. Third Edition. Boston: A. Williams & Co.

This Historical Research is one of the most valuable works that have been called out by the existing Rebellion. It is a thorough and candid exposition of the opinions of the founders of the Republic on negroes as slaves, as citizens, and as soldiers, and has done more, perhaps, than any other single essay to form the public opinion of the present time in respect to the position that the negro should rightfully hold in our State and our army. It has, therefore, and will retain, a double interest, as exhibiting and illustrating the opinions prevalent during the two most important periods of our history. It was first printed, several months since, for private distribution only. More than a thousand copies were thus distributed by its public-spirited author. By this means the attention of persons in positions of influence was more readily secured than it could have been, had the essay been published in the ordinary way. The manner in which the research was conducted, the evidence afforded by every page of the author's conscientious labor, impartial selection, and exhaustive investigation, won immediate confidence in his statements, while his obvious candor, fairness of judgment, and love of truth secured respect for his conclusions. The interest excited by the work extended to a wider circle than could be satisfied by any private issue, while its value became more and more evident, so that, after its publication in the Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, the permission of the author was obtained by the New-England Loyal Publication Society to issue the work in a form for general circulation.

We are glad to assist, by our hearty commendation, the extension of the influence of this essay. It forms, as now issued, a handsome pamphlet of two hundred pages, with a full Table of Contents and a copious Index, and is for sale at a price which brings it within the means of every one who may wish to obtain it. It is a book which should be in the reading-room of every Loyal League throughout the country, and of every military hospital. Editors of the loyal press should be provided with it, as containing an arsenal of incontrovertible arguments with which to meet the false assertions by which the maligners of the negro race and the supporters of Slavery too often undertake to maintain their bad cause.

Exhibiting, as Mr. Livermore's book does, the contrast between the opinions of the founders of the Republic and those professed by the would-be destroyers of the Republic, and showing, as it does, how far a large portion even of the people of the North have fallen away from the just and generous doctrine of the earlier time, it must lead every thoughtful reader to a deep sense of the need of a regeneration of the spirit of the nation, and to a confirmed conviction of the incompatibility of Slavery with national greatness and virtue. The Rebellion has taught us that the Republic is not safe while Slavery is permitted to exercise any political power. It ought to teach us also, that, as long as Slavery exists in any of the States, it will not cease to exercise political power, and that the only means to make the nation safe is utterly to abolish and destroy Slavery, wherever it is found within its limits. Nor is this all; the lesson of the Rebellion is but half learned, unless we resolve that henceforth there shall be no fatal division between our consciences, our principles, our theories, and our treatment of the black race, and unless we acknowledge their inalienable right to that justice by which alone the most ancient heavens and the most sacred institutions are fresh and strong.

There is no better textbook for enforcing these lessons than Mr. Livermore's Research.

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THE END