Among the strangest and most beautiful after-echoes of this old Norse faith in the magic Ash as the great tree of life, is to my mind, one which has been preserved by Grimm in his 'Mythology' (2d edition, 2d book, page 912), and which the German poet Hoffmann has happily turned in a poem full of spirit and grace. The legend is as follows:

In the churchyard at Nortorf will one day be an Ash, No human eye hath seen it, yet silently it grows Among the graves, and every year it bears a single sprout. Each New Year's night a rider white upon a snow-white steed, Comes silently among the graves to hew the sprout away; But there comes a coal-black rider upon a coal-black horse, And he strives to save the new-born tree and drive the foe afar: Long they fight till the New Year's dawn—until black knight yields, And the foeman hews away the twig, and rides into the dawn, But there will come a time,'tis said, when the white knight must yield, And the twig will grow and its leaves will blow until the trunk is great: So great that a proud war horse 'neath its lower branch may go. And when the branch is grown and blown will come the world's great fight; The fiercest of her battles, the last great strife of dread; And the war horse of the mighty king will stand beneath the tree, And the king will win, and all the world will be his heritage.

'The White Knight,' saith a commentator, 'is Freyr, one of the most glorious among Norse Asen, or children of the gods—he who rules over rain, sunshine, and earth's fruitfulness. His adversary is Surtur, the Black Demon—a pitiless foe of the Asen, who in the great battle will fight with the evil Loki—'the curse and shame of gods and men'—and set heaven and earth afire. But then there will come a new heaven and a new earth, in which eternal justice shall reign, and the 'GREAT KING'—he whose steed shall wait beneath the Ash of Life—'will rule forever in peace and holiness.'

Dear reader, the battle between Freyr and Surtur is ever raging—in your heart as in all the world. But whenever a great strife for freedom and truth and man's rights is battled out, then the branch has grown, and the horse of the Great King is saddled beneath the Ash, and his rule draws nearer than ever. Even as I write the battle rages, as it never raged before on earth, between the infernal Loki and Surtur and the glorious Asen—the great children of light and of truth. You, soldier of the Lord, who read these lines—you, whose musket is borne in defence of the Union, are as true a child of the great race of light as was ever Odin or Balder, and you are in this great fight fulfilling the prophecies of a thousand years aforetime, which foretold the final battle of freedom. You too are of the Northmen, the children of Odin and of Freyr, the inexhaustible race of warriors and of workmen—the free laborers who forged the swords they wielded against the dark and wily fiend who stole his weapons from the foe ere the war began. And the Horse so easily ruled—the all-powerful WILL—stands bridled beneath the eternal Ash Tree of Life; and while he lives and the tree grows, hope need not perish, and freedom cannot die.

In a Floral Lexicon I find it stated that the Ash tree signifies 'grandeur.' E ben trovato—it is not badly imagined—but its real meaning is life, and that not mere existence, but fresh, vigorous, exuberant life, the life of action and of enjoyment. The shaft of the Greek spear, which healed the wound given by the point, was, I doubt not, made of Ash, even as was that which slew Achilles. Thus the Ash, it will be seen, was an important letter in the ancient alphabet of the mysteries. May I hope that when you next sit beneath its graceful boughs, you will recall some of the lore which hallows it, and makes it a strange, living antique, not less curious than coin, weapon, or gem. Read it in all the significance, all the strange spirit of the old mythology, and then think what Nature must have been—or what it may yet be—to men finding as deep a symbol as even the Ash in every high place above the valleys, in every stream, cave, and rivulet, and in every green tree.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: 'On an island of the river Nerbudda, twelve miles beyond Broach, in the presidency of Bombay, stands the Banyan-tree, long since mentioned by MILTON, and more recently described by HEBER. It is called KUREOR BUR, after the Hindu saint who planted it.'

Dierbach, Flora Mythologica, page 22.]



THE DRUM.

[RUeCKERT.]

'On, the drum—it rattles so loud! There's no such stirring sound Is heard the wide world round, As the drum——.'



AN ENGLISHMAN IN SOUTH CAROLINA.

DECEMBER, 1860, AND JULY, 1862.

CHAPTER FIRST.

'The happiest people on the face of the earth, sir!'

I had heard the assertion in almost all of the slave States, and knew something of the institution on which it was based: I was now listening to the familiar sentence at an epoch that has become historical. I sat in Charleston, South Carolina, during Secession time, December, 1860.

'They are better fed and better treated than any peasantry in the civilized world. I've travelled in Europe and seen for myself, sir. What do you think of women—white women—working in the fields and living on nothing better than thin soup and vegetables, as they do in France, all the year round? And a man, with a family of nine children to support, breaking stones on the high road, in winter, for eight English shillings a week? Such a thing couldn't happen in South Carolina—in all the South, sir!'

'Perhaps not!' I didn't add that worse social wrongs might and did occur daily, in the eulogized region; knowing the utter unprofitableness of any such discussion, not to mention its danger at a period rife with excitement.

'You are an Englishman,' continued my interlocutor—a portly, middle-aged, handsome man, to whom I had been introduced just before the hotel dinner, toward the close of which our colloquy occurred—'and therefore a born abolitionist—as a matter of sentiment, that is. You know nothing at all about the workings of our institution, excepting what the d—d Yankees please to write about us, and the word slavery shocks you. Call it servitude, vassalage, anything else, it might be endurable enough. One of the advantages, by the way, that Secession is going to bring with it is, that the world will be brought into direct contact with us, and thus see us as we are, not through the eyes of the North.'

'You are in earnest about Secession, then?'

'In earnest! by —— I should think we were! Don't you know we are, from what you have seen here?'

I did, and a moment's reflection might have checked my thoughtless inquiry. I said so.

'Yes, South Carolina's going out of the Union, with or without backers, and she intends to stay out, too; never were people more unanimous. The North has got so far toward being abolitionized as to elect a man avowedly hostile to our institutions, and we are only providing for our safety by seceding. It's quite time. Essentially we are a different people: we shall be the best friends in the world separate. It's all a question of difference of opinion about labor; the North prefers a system regulated by the mercenary dictates of traffic, ruled by capital, and subject to the chronic difficulties of strikes and starvation; the South, a simpler relation, binding master and slave together for their mutual benefit, abolishing pauperism, and dividing society into two unmistakable, harmonious classes—the well-fed, well-cared for, happy negro, and the wealthy, intelligent slaveowner.'

I thought I had read something very like the speaker's sentiments in that morning's Mercury, but didn't say so. I thought also of the existence of another class at the South besides the two so favorably characterized, of which I had seen a good representative in a coarse, half-inebriated, shabbily dressed individual, who, just after breakfast, had reeled through the crowd always assembled in the large hall of the hotel to exchange and discuss the news, boasting that a son of his had 'cut a man's throat the other day, down on the island,' and admiringly wondering whether it was the paternal or maternal side that he got his bravery from. I deemed it, however, advisable to be reticent on this head. And my reward followed.

'Come, Mr.——, you have been in most of the Mississippi States, I believe, but were never in the Carolinas before, so you don't know how we old-fashioned folks live on our plantations. Suppose you pay me a visit at my place on —— Island, and see? I come of English blood, myself; my grandfather was a Tory in the Revolution'—with a laugh—'and you'll find us a good deal more British than you think possible here in America. England and South Carolina are mother and daughter, you know; and under the influence of free trade, we're bound to be very intimate. All we of the South ask is that our institutions shall speak for themselves, and I can trust a Britisher's proverbial love of fair play to report us as he finds us. What do you say? I'm going down to the island for a week on Wednesday; will you spend your Christmas with me?'

The invitation was given with an offhand cordiality decidedly prepossessing. Expressing my thanks, I at once accepted it in the spirit it was offered.

'That's right! you're my guest, then;' and the Colonel—he had been presented to me by that military designation—shook me by the hand. 'Will you walk?' And we strolled out together into the hall before mentioned.

If I were writing an article on Charleston in Secession time, now, here was an opportunity for description. What a strange, what a memorable period it was! involuntarily reminding one of an historic parallel in the roseate aspect presented by the early days of the first French revolution, when everybody had hailed as the dawning of a celestial morrow the putrescent glow of old corruption blending into the lurid fire of the coming sans-culottic hell. In this case also an infernal ignis fatuus had arisen to tempt its deluded followers toward a selfish fool's paradise, only to be obtained by wading through seas of fratricidal blood. And how they believed in this impossible future in 'the cradle of the rebellion!' Only a minority of darker conspirators apprehended—hoped for—war, thinking it necessary to precipitate the remainder of the Southern States into revolution, and the establishment of a separate nationality; the great majority of South Carolinians accepting Secession with an enthusiasm (or rather self-exaltation) and confidence astounding to witness. There would be no collision; the North could not and dared not push it to the extreme issue; she must endure the punishment due to her 'fanaticism' in inevitable bankruptcy and beggary, while the South, the seat of 'a great, free, and prosperous people, whose renown must spread throughout the civilized world, and pass down to the remotest ages' (I quote from the ordinance of Secession), had infinite possibilities before it. Jack Cade's commonwealth, Panurge's 'world, in which all men shall be debtors and borrowers,' Gonzalo's imaginary kingdom in the Tempest, were not a whit more extravagant than what was hourly talked of and expected from this longed-for slaveholding confederacy at this time in Charleston. But enough of digression on a subject merely incidental to this narrative.

Three days after my conversation with the Colonel, when the city was jubilant with the passage of the act of Secession, I accompanied him to the plantation spoken of. It involved a little steamboat journey, sundry rides in chaise or buggy, and the crossing of more than one of the many creeks or rivers intersecting the low, sandy, swampy coast. I purposely abstain from particularizing the locality. It was toward the close of a mild, humid day when we reached the Colonel's residence.

Suppose an old-fashioned two-story house, one of a very common pattern in this region, built of wood, and standing on an open foundation of brick, with a tall, formal chimney projecting at either end, a broad piazza, and a great flight of wooden steps in front and rear, the latter looking seaward. Like the house of Chaucer's Reeve, in summer it must have been all 'yshadowed with greene trees,' the cedar, the cottonwood, the liveoak, fig, mulberry, and magnolia, growing in the sand or light soil accruing from vegetable decomposition; and as the evergreens predominated, its winter aspect was yet pleasant and rural, notwithstanding a certain air of dilapidation and decay, so common in Southern dwellings that the inhabitants seem to be unconscious of it. Adjacent, beyond the short avenue of orange trees by which we had approached, was a double row of negro huts, with little gardens between them, forming a rustic lane; farther on, corn and cotton fields. The geography of the island might be stated as follows: interior woods, girdled by plantations, with houses on the seaboard or shores of the river or inlets; a road circumscribing it, and one running across it.

We were welcomed by the appearance of two or three decently clad house-servants, mulattoes, and an athletic negro, of average nigritude,[2] every tooth in whose head glistened, as his black face rippled into a laugh, when his master favored him with some familiar and approving jocularity. Officiously taking charge of the horse and buggy, he conveyed them to a spacious but dilapidated stable (the door of which, I remarked, hung only by its lower hinge), while the servants were equally zealous in transporting what little baggage we had into the house. There the Colonel presented me to his daughters, two tall and rather handsome girls of the ages of eighteen and twenty, dressed in deep mourning (their mother had died but recently), their aunt, a staid, elderly matron, who seemed installed as housekeeper, and a fat, careless gentleman in shirt sleeves, with a cigar in his mouth, who impressed me as an indolent and improvident poor relation of my host, as, indeed, he proved. There was present, also, the child of a neighbor, a little fair-haired girl, called Nelly, who, hearing my nationality mentioned, would not approach me, which the Colonel accounted for by surmising that she had received 'Tory' impressions of Britisher's from her parent's negroes.

A sincere, if a quiet welcome, and an excellent dinner, comprising fish, game, chickens, bacon, hominy, corn and wheaten bread, and sweet potatoes of a succulence and flavor only attainable in Dixie, all served by decorous and attentive negroes, made me feel very contented with my position. Nor were the surroundings inharmonious. We sat by a wood fire, burning in a fireplace which contained, instead of a grate, old-fashioned iron dogs: most of the furniture, with the exception of a handsome piano, was ancient, and the room ornamented with books, pictures, and mineral curiosities. Among the former I noticed a row of volumes of British parliamentary debates in old print, contemporary with the age succeeding Johnson. Really, as my host had boasted, his household gods were decidedly English—colonial English; and I began to understand the peculiar, ante-revolutionary, patrician characteristics on which he and his class evidently prided themselves. He showed me a portrait of an ancestor who had held high office in the days of Governor Oglethorpe, an old-fashioned miniature on ivory, charmingly painted, in the style of Malbone, and one could easily recognize in it the features of his descendant. In conversing, too, on the early history of the State, of which he had much to say that I found interesting, he always assumed that a popular, democratic form of government was rather a mistake than otherwise,[3] and, without absolutely condemning the Revolution, implied that South Carolina had been moved to her limited share in it against her direct interests, by a high-spirited patriotism and sympathy with the at present ungrateful and venal North. I do not think that the fact of my nationality influenced him in this; he evidently spoke his convictions.

The ladies were at first reserved, acting, I believe, under the impression that their father's brief knowledge of me hardly warranted my introduction to his family; indeed, I am sure it was exceptional, from all I have since learned of South Carolinian society. The casual mention, however, of the names of a few mutual acquaintances, of unexceptional 'blue blood,' and the fact that both ladies had visited Europe, establishing topics of conversation, they presently warmed into cordiality. I found them well informed and agreeable, less demonstrative in their self-assertion than their Northern sisterhood, but latently wilful, and assumptive of a superior elevation hardly justified by their general air of languid refinement. It reminded me, on the whole, of what I had heard complacently eulogized in Charleston as a tendency toward 'Orientalism' on the part of the women, of which the characteristics were repose, fastidiousness, and exclusiveness—one of the many admirable results of the fundamental institution.

The ladies were, of course, ardent secessionists, expressing themselves with a bitterness, an acrimony, an unreasonableness, which might have astonished me, had I been capable of such a feeling on the subject. Inevitably we slid on to it, when I learnt that their only brother was away doing military duty on Sullivan's Island, and so zealous in the discharge of his assumed obligations that he intended to spend his Christmas in camp, not, as usual, upon the plantation.

'You'll be sorry to hear that, Pomp,' said the Colonel to an evidently favorite servant, who had waited upon us most assiduously, and who was then kneeling before the fat gentleman, and putting a pair of slippers on his feet. He, by the way, had contributed very little to the conversation, only assenting, smiling, and looking the picture of ease and good humor, as he sat lazily beaming behind a tumbler full of Bourbon whiskey and water.

'Yes, sar!' the negro answered, 'too bad, mass' Philip not come home for de holidays. All de people 'spect him.'

'That's a first-rate boy,' said his master, as the negro left the room to fetch something; 'I wouldn't take two thousand dollars for him.' (Every one familiar with the South, must have heard similar encomiums hundreds of times: each household appears to pride itself on the possession of some singularly admirable negro, whose capacity, honesty, and fidelity are vaunted with an air of conscious magnanimity edifying to witness. The desired inference is that the institution, productive of so much mutual appreciation, must be excellent. It never seems to occur to the eulogists that the good is exceptional, or that the praised characteristics might be alleged as an argument for emancipation.)

'That boy has been North with me,' the Colonel continued, 'to Washington, Philadelphia, and as far as New York. The abolitionists got hold of him at the last place, and wanted to run him off to Canada, but Pomp preferred old Carolina. You don't want to be free, do you, Pomp?'

This was a leading question. The slave hesitated a moment, grinned, and evaded it,

''Pears like de colored people at de Norf was mostly a mis'able set,' he answered: 'can't shum!'

'You can't see it!' said his master, delighted, and translating a very popular negro phrase for my benefit. And incontinently he launched into a defence and eulogium of slavery, which I shall not oblige my readers to skip by recording. The topic is one on which Southerners are never wearied; and a more uneasy people on the subject than South Carolinians it would be impossible to imagine: long before Secession, they existed in a state of chronic distrust and suspicion about it amounting to monomania.

* * * * *

Next day I accompanied the Colonel over his plantation. It was a large one, somewhat over seven hundred acres, inclusive of forest land, about two thirds being reclaimed upland swamp soil growing seaisland cotton. An old family estate, most of the negroes belonging to it had been born there or in the immediate vicinity; there were about two hundred of them, some living near their master's house, as has been mentioned, the rest in a sort of colony at the other end of the plantation, under the eye of the overseer. These negro settlements merit a paragraph of description.

Their huts were of wood, separate, and standing in little gardens, in which each family enjoyed the privilege of cultivating patches of corn, sweet potatoes, and such vegetables as they chose, a street of about a hundred feet wide dividing the houses. Midway, under the shade of a magnificent liveoak, whose branches were mournful with the funereal moss (always suggestive to my fancy of the 'little old woman,' whose employment in the nursery legend is 'to sweep the cobwebs out of the sky,' having executed her task in a slovenly manner), was a simple apparatus for grinding corn, consisting of two heavy circular stones, placed horizontally in a rude frame under a shed, to be worked by manual power, by upright wooden handles. This served as a mill for the entire negro population.

Entering their huts, you were first conscious of a large brick fireplace, in which a fire was almost constantly burning, though it scarcely lit up the generally dark interior, always much, more picturesque than comfortable, for negroes have little if any notion of ventilation, and can hardly be too warm: they will kindle great blazing fires to lie down by or to heat their food, in the open fields in summer. A few roughly fashioned seats and tables, and a ladder staircase, leading upward to an attic or cockloft, completes the inventory of the interior.

We had passed the inhabitants of these huts, at work in the fields, under the direction of the overseer, a strong, spare man, in a suit of homespun, who rode about among them on horseback, carrying in his hand a cowhide whip, which he had exhibited to me with a smile, and the remark that 'that was the thing the Yankees made so much noise about.' It was a sufficient instrument of punishment, I thought and said, adding that I trusted he found infrequent occasion for the exercise of it.

'Well, they're a pretty well behaved lot generally,' he answered, with that peculiar accent derived from almost exclusive association with negroes common throughout the South; 'but sometimes it 'pears as if the devil had got in among 'em, and I has to lay on all round. A nigger will be a nigger, you know.'

The subjects of this ethical remark were rather raggedly dressed, the men in coarse jackets and trousers, the women in soiled and burnt gowns of indefinite color, generally reefed up about the hips for convenience in working. (Their dilapidation, it may be remarked, was due to the close of the year; they would get new clothes, the Colonel remarked, at Christmas.) They seemed, however, well fed, not too hardly tasked, and, from a sensual point of view, happy and contented. The Colonel spoke to those nearest him patronizingly, asked after absent or sick members of their families, joked about the coming Christmas, and the 'high time' impending, and inquired how many marriages were to come off on the occasion—the negroes generally deferring their nuptials till the great holiday of the year. He was answered by a perfect shout of negro laughter, hearty, infectious, irresistible.

'Come, how many is there to be?' he repeated, joining in their mirth.

'Six!' the overseer responded, seeing that the negroes did not reply except by continued guffaws.

'Yes, sa! ya! ya bound to have a high old Secesshum time dis Christmas! ya! ya!' added a gray-headed old darky, quite overcome with merriment.

'Why, you'll ruin the young ladies in finding frocks for the girls!' said the Colonel; 'who are these future happy couples, eh?'

'Sal's Joe, sa!' 'Polly's Sue!' 'Big Sam!' 'Pinckney!' 'Cal!' 'Peter!' 'Jule!' and a variety of names were shouted out, not by the owners of them. With a great deal of shyness and simpering and half-suppressed grinning, and real or affected modesty on the part of the women, and equal mirth and awkward self-consciousness on that of the aspirant bridegrooms, the candidates for matrimony—or at least such of them as were present, one couple and a 'boy' being away—were got together and ranged in a row before us, hoes in hand, where they stood, to their own and the boisterous delight of their colaborers. They appeared generally young, healthy, and well-looking negroes, some of them handsome in an African sense. The Colonel surveyed them with much good nature and satisfaction; he was evidently gratified at the prospect of so many marriages among his own negroes; unions 'off the plantation' being looked on with disfavor by proprietors, for obvious reasons.

'Well,' he said, after addressing a few remarks to them, individually; 'I must talk with the young ladies, and see what we can do for you. If Bones (the sobriquet of a negro-preacher, belonging to the estate) won't be jealous, I think I'll try and get Mr. —— over, to marry the whole batch of you in high style, eh?'

The prospect of a white clergyman, an honor generally reserved only for the marriages of favorite house-servants, seemed to afford unmitigated satisfaction to the field hands. They laughed again, thanked their master, assured him of the perfect willingness of their colored pastor to resign his functions for the time being, in view of the superior dignity accruing to the occasion from the presence of Mr.——, and we rode off amid a chorus of jubilations.

'What would an abolitionist say to that scene, do you think?' asked the Colonel, as we galloped homeward to dinner.

'Probably he'd admit that slavery has its pleasant side, but insist on looking at both,' I answered.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 2: An inquiry instituted by Gen. Hunter, at Hilton Head, S. C., during the past summer, for eight negroes of unmixed African descent, resulted in the total failure of the discovery of even one. So much for practical Southern amalgamation.]

[Footnote 3: It was generally credited in Charleston, that, subsequent to Secession, the convention had debated the advisability of attempting some monarchical experiment.]



WHO BEAT?

But warlike casuists can't discuss, If we beat them, or they beat us; We swear we beat, they swear we lie— We'll tell you more on't by and by!



THE CAUSES OF THE REBELLION.

When Jefferson Davis and his coadjutors so defiantly and with so much apparent confidence entered on the path of rebellion, they probably did not foresee the abyss into which they were about to plunge. They rushed eagerly forward at the first call to battle; but they hardly paused to consider how fearful a thing it is to light the flames of civil war among a people long accustomed to peace and security; to marshal opposing armies drawn from the late happy dwellings of the same community, arraying in deadly conflict father against son, and brother against brother; to add fiery devastation and reckless destruction of property horrid carnage and the saddest bereavements of all kinds; and to replace brotherhood of a common country, a common ancestry, and a glorious history, with the relentless enmities engendered by rebellion and revolution. What wrongs and sufferings, endured by our brethren of the South, or likely to imposed on them by the National Government, would have been sufficient to steel their hearts against the heavy calamities they have encountered and inflicted, or to justify the immense waste desolation already suffered in both sections, in consequence of this most unnatural and fratricidal war? The most ordinary charity would lead to the belief, that if the mighty woes which have followed in the bloody path of the rebellion could have been anticipated, even the bold, bad leaders, and still more the infatuated people, would have suffered much and hesitated long before assuming the dread responsibility. Hate itself, though reenforced and supported by all other passions of a fiendish nature, would have stood aghast at the overwhelming avalanche of horrors which hung ready to be precipitated on our unhappy country. It is hardly within the limits of human depravity, that evils of such magnitude, attended by such world-wide results, should be attributable to the deliberate will and arbitrary action of even the worst members of the human family. For the credit of our common humanity, let it be admitted that the authors of the fatal movement did really believe In their avowed doctrine of peaceable secession, and that they could not have had the least idea of the immense proportions the civil war was destined to assume, nor of the extent of ruin and misery it would necessarily drag in its horrid train. And if the prominent leaders did not intend all the sad consequences of their wicked act of treason, still less can they be considered personally responsible for the fatal popular enthusiasm which has so thoroughly sustained them in their section. Though full of hate and animated by a spirit of infernal mischief, they had not the capacity to stir a nation so profoundly, except from the fact that they were dealing with minds already well prepared for their impassioned appeal, and with elements which had been wrought into discord by causes long preexisting.

In the midst of this stupendous conflict, individuals seem to be as insignificant and powerless to control it, as if they stood, awed and subdued by the warring elements of nature, and compelled to wait until these should expend their fury and of themselves subside. Thirty millions of people have been suddenly and unexpectedly divided, and the sundered parts have been thrown into fierce and deadly antagonism. Belligerent passions rage and boil among them with all the ungovernable power of the angry waves when the sea is lashed by the destructive tempest. The throes of the suffering nation are as terrible as those of the trembling earth, when, by some internal convulsion, its very foundations seem to be rocked on the fiery waves of the central abyss, and every living creature on its surface becomes agitated with profound dismay. States have been temporarily but rudely torn from their long and peaceful connections with sister States, and great rents in the political soil, filled with the bodies of slaughtered citizens, mark the lines of separation. Vast armies have been assembled and organized, and have met each other in the shock of battle, on fields made slippery with fraternal blood, where tens of thousands have fallen to rise no more—swept down by the relentless storm of iron hail with which brother has greeted brother in this most unholy war. The measured tramp of the armed hosts has shaken the continent; and the vengeful cries of the unnatural strife have disturbed the inmost peaceful recesses of its great central plains and mountains. From California to Texas; from Colorado to New Mexico; from Maine to New Orleans; from the great lakes to the coasts of the Carolinas; and along the measureless length of 'the father of waters' and his great tributaries, the gathering armies have marched or sailed, and swarmed to the beat of the drum and the sound of the trumpet. More than a million of men, on both sides, have been engaged in these tremendous movements, which unhappily correspond too well in their unexampled magnitude with the physical character of our magnificent country. Civil war has sacrilegiously usurped the mighty instrumentalities of modern peaceful life; and the bloody and destructive work of these vast armies is not less gigantic in scale than have been the ordinary operations of our wonderful industry and our ever-increasing commerce. The sacrifice of life, the destruction of property, the desolation of extensive regions of beautiful and fertile country, the vast expenditure of public means, all concur to characterize this as the grandest and most terrible phenomenon of the kind that has ever occurred in the history of man. To us, who are in the midst of it, and destined to be involved in its results, whatever they may be, it is a subject of deep and awful interest; and while the scenes of the momentous drama are continually shifting around us and presenting new spectacles of slaughter and disaster every day, it is hardly possible to maintain the calmness necessary for an impartial appreciation of the causes which have been sufficiently powerful to turn the destructive energies of so great a nation upon itself, causing it to rend and destroy its own body politic, so recently rejoicing in unexampled prosperity and happiness. Some gigantic power, wielding strength enough to produce the tremendous results already visible, must be somewhere hidden at the source of these grand phenomena. In the physical world, a small quantity of water or a few kegs of powder, flashing into steam or gas by the application of heat, may be used to overthrow the most stupendous material fabrics which the labor and genius of men have ever been able to erect. What fatal means of destruction, and what traitorous hand have been employed to drill and charge the solid columns, or to mine the deep foundations of that beautiful and majestic structure of liberty, which our fathers reared for us with so much labor and sacrifice?

There is only one force adequate to the destructive work—the force of false and mischievous ideas. Ideas have in them the elements of all power. They alone move the moral and social world. Penetrating every crevice of the social structure, they have the force of attraction and repulsion; they consolidate and strengthen, or, like frost and heat, they rend and crumble the hardest material, either slowly or suddenly, as circumstances and conditions may permit or require. They have in them all the terrible might, with all the explosive and dangerous quickness, which belong to the most destructive of physical forces. When, in any community, ideas are harmonious, they have an organizing power wholly independent of their soundness or of their ultimate stability; but when discordant and conflicting, they produce disorganization, ruin, and chaos.

Unfortunately for our country, opposite and hostile ideas have been growing up among us from the beginning of our national existence—nay, from the very hour when the first cargo of slaves was landed on our shores in the earliest days of our colonial history. Conflicting systems have naturally grown out of these hostile ideas, which have thus embodied themselves in the visible forms appropriate to their respective natures. The colonial authorities protested against the policy of importing slaves, which the mother country persisted in maintaining, until powerful interests were gathered around it, and opinions were thus nurtured to support and defend the fatal error. Slaveholding communities arose out of this sinister beginning; they flourished and became powerful States; and they finally presented the anomaly of maintaining a noble struggle for national independence, avowedly based upon the broadest principle of human right. They aggregated themselves, eventually, into a federal union—a political nationality founded on 'the corner stone' of liberty, and not of slavery. In view of all the circumstances, this was a wonderful result; but the old original opposition, which had been incapable of resisting slavery in the days of colonial infancy and weakness, had not yet been subdued on the day when the nation arrived at its majority and assumed the rights of manhood. The venerable patriots of the revolution were men of the most enlightened and liberal views on the subject; so much so, indeed, as to shame the degeneracy of their unworthy successors in those States which still retain the slave institution. With the general consent, in the Constitution of 1787, the germs of freedom were planted, while at the same time, apparently as a matter of course, the flourishing tree of slavery was effectually girdled, and the axe was already laid at its root. Three very simple provisions effectually secured this momentous result. The provision for stopping the slave trade in 1808, and the antagonist clause for opening wide the gates of our country to the immigration of free white men, together with that which restricted the representation of slave populations in the proportion of three to five—these cardinal provisions marked the certain doom of slavery. In the lapse of time, and with the operation of ordinary social causes, the result was as certain and inevitable as any other effect of natural laws. In spite of the universal prevalence of slavery at first, free labor pushed itself forward and won its way, until, in more than half the original States, slave labor had receded before it and disappeared forever. The wisdom of those great fundamental provisions of our Constitution has been fully vindicated by the results of eighty years' experience. They have worked smoothly and progressively, in perfect conformity with that universal social law which, has made slavery a temporary and transitional institution wherever it has existed among civilized nations.

That such a law exists can hardly be questioned. Its operation is apparent, not only in the partial experience of our own country, but in that of all others where the natural social tendencies have had unimpeded sway. No one has ever denied its existence among the white races; for there it has operated invariably to bring certain emancipation, whenever any nation has reached the proper position in the scale of progress. The rule is universal; history presents no exception. But it has been supposed that slavery of the African to the white man is not subject to this great historical law, on account of the difference of race, whether that difference be fundamental and ineradicable, or whether it be only the consequence of material conditions operating through successive centuries. Neither reason nor experience, however, can be invoked to sustain this supposed exception to the general law. Except in Spanish America, African slavery has disappeared from the dependencies of European powers; and even there, every one knows, the conditions of slavery are far more favorable to emancipation than in the United States. Yet here, a majority of the original thirteen colonies have wholly discarded slavery, and given themselves up to the dominion of free white men; while others among those known as border States, notwithstanding their apparent immobility, have long been unconsciously preparing to follow in the same path of safety. Even without the rebellion, it is demonstrable, we believe, that the border States could not long have resisted the necessity for gradual, but complete emancipation. The civil war makes it more speedy, not more certain.

In order to establish the principle that slavery, in any part of the United States, is destined to be an exception to that general law which decrees universal emancipation as a certain result, it would be necessary to show the negro to be incapable of improvement; for if he be destined to progressive existence at all, it follows that, sooner or later, he will reach a condition in which he no longer can or ought to be held in subjection or subordination of any kind; and this, too, without the supposition of any moral change or improvement on the part of the slave owner. Indeed, the most usual and plausible, if not also the most truly substantial of all excuses or justifications for enslaving the African, in any form, has, from the beginning, been predicated on the fact that his subordination to the superior intelligence of the white man is calculated to improve him physically, morally, and intellectually. The capacity of improvement thus admitted, the logical result must be eventual liberation. This result is bound up in the very nature of things, and must inevitably be developed at some time or other, as proved by all history, as well as by any rational analysis of human character and intellect. But, only one half the argument has been employed to bring the mind to this irresistible conclusion. We have omitted all examination of the subject in that other aspect which has reference to industrial, economical, and moral considerations affecting the vital interests of the superior race. We need not say how much the discussion of these would serve to strengthen the argument and confirm the conclusion already stated.

Now, it is apparent, this reasoning being admitted, that the attempt to perpetuate slavery, which in its nature is temporary and transitional, is contrary to the palpable laws of social existence and progress, and, if persisted in beyond a certain point, must inevitably lead to violence and disorder. Nature, the supreme authority, by her unalterable laws, wills and decrees one thing; man, in his ignorance and audacity, attempts the opposite. Conflict must necessarily follow; but the decrees of the higher power will be inexorably enforced; they will sweep away every structure, great or small, which man, in all the pride of his puny strength and glimmering wisdom, may vainly seek to place as an obstruction in their path. But, when the Southern people adopted this false idea, that slavery could be perpetuated and made the foundation of stable institutions, they not only placed themselves in conflict with the decrees of natural law, which was the most important and fatal error, but they also indicated hostility to those vital provisions of the Constitution to which reference has already been made. No thoughtful observer of events in this country will require evidence to sustain this assertion. The constant evasion of the law prohibiting the slave trade, and the impunity with which it was frequently and sometimes openly violated, as well as the known public opinion throughout the South on this subject and on that of European immigration, are quite sufficient to establish it. The violent resistance, by fraud and even bloodshed, to the settlement of the Territories by free white men, and the determined effort to establish the law of slavery in every region, against even the vote of the majority, and without any actual interest or necessity for so doing, evince too plainly that the Southern people were not prepared to accept the results of the proper workings of the Constitution, which gave preponderance, in the number of States and in Federal representation, to the ever-increasing free white men, against the relatively diminishing numbers of the slaves and their owners. This inequality of power was continually becoming greater, and evidently could not be avoided or remedied under the Constitution, without a complete reversal of the policy of its framers, and of the contemporaneous construction which they placed on it.

Thus it is plain that by the legitimate and intended operation of the Constitution, slavery had come to that stage of its existence, when it must either prepare for its own gradual decline and ultimate disappearance, or it must provide means for invigorating and prolonging its life. There was only one way in which its power could be increased and for some time yet firmly established, viz.: by the reopening of the infamous and almost universally condemned African slave trade. This would have accomplished a double purpose. It would have increased the numbers of the South, and enabled them measurably to balance the representation of the North, as well as to extend their dominion over the Territories, and lay the foundations of new States; or, in case of their success in destroying the Union, it would enable them to carry out their cherished schemes of empire, as an independent power. But, what was, perhaps, more important, it would tend to prolong, if not to perpetuate slavery, by infusing new supplies of barbarism among the African race, lowering their present grade of civilization, retarding their improvement on the whole, and thus postponing the inevitable day of their liberation.

There are strong indications, in the early proceedings of the conspirators, that they seriously entertained the design of replenishing their gangs of laborers from the shores of Africa. It was only after the contest had assumed a serious aspect, and the immense difficulties of their position began to dawn upon them, that they were compelled ostensibly to abandon that design. They were compelled to conciliate the border States, which were all opposed to the foreign slave trade. Virginia, whose chief annual income was derived from the sale of her slave population, rather than from the productions of their labor, was an indispensable ally to the rebellion, and she would hardly assent to the importation of Africans, in competition with her own supply. Moreover, it began to be obvious that the aid of foreign powers would be desirable; and their intervention, if to be obtained at all, could not be solicited or hoped for, without the most explicit disavowal of an intention to reestablish a traffic which had already been denounced as infamous and piratical by the leading powers of the world. The rebels, therefore, were compelled by the exigencies of their condition to prohibit the slave trade in their permanent constitution. Doubtless they would never have done this, had they not been vigorously assailed by the Federal Government, and forced to modify their purposes with a view to conciliate support at home and abroad.

Thus it is apparent that, at the outset of their treason, the objects of the conspirators, however since modified, were utterly hostile to the letter and spirit of our Constitution, and could never be successfully carried out without the overthrow of the Government. The conflict, therefore, of opposite ideas, involved not only the laws of nature, which cannot be altered or arrested, but, also, established institutions of the most sacred character, which could hardly be expected to succumb to the hostile doctrine without a fearful struggle.

In what manner this conflict of opinions and purposes becomes transformed into physical combat and culminates in bloody war, is to be easily understood when the relations of human intellect and passion are duly considered. All philosophy teaches that the intellect is the weaker and less active part of human nature. Passion generally predominates in action, and men are usually more disposed to resist with violence all unwelcome ideas, than to study and estimate them fairly by the laborious exercise of reason. Hence, from the early historical ages, when nations were but imperfectly enlightened, wars have been the principal means of propagating ideas; and most of the great social truths gradually unfolded to man, have been written in blood for his instruction and improvement. Doubtless, if human nature had been different, if passion and intellect in his constitution had been mingled in other proportions, it would have been easier, if not better, to have disseminated great truths by the more peaceful means of argument and friendly communication of thought; and it is to be hoped that the time is not far distant when reason will everywhere take the place of passion, and brutal force no longer be necessary for the work of intellectual conviction and moral enlightenment. But, evidently, this time has not yet arrived for the people of our Southern States, whatever may be the condition in this respect of the more civilized and enlightened portions of mankind. Nor, indeed, could any different disposition of the Southern people he expected in their present social condition. One third of their population is composed of African slaves, semicivilized, systematically deprived of knowledge, and subjected to physical coercion, instead of being incited to usefulness by the higher motives of self-interest and laudable ambition. To say that this is a degraded class, is only to recognize their supreme misfortune, and not to reproach or insult them on account of their unhappy condition. But this degradation does not affect them alone. It reaches their oppressors also, and involves them in its unavoidable consequences. By that inevitable law of action and reaction which prevails alike in moral and social as in physical phenomena, the community which has so large a portion of its members in a condition of ignorance and brutality, must, throughout its whole body, partake of the degradation which exists within it, and must be affected, by the very contact, in all its feelings, sentiments, and purposes, through the gross and ignorant passions which such an association cannot fail to arouse. The moral level of the whole society is lowered to the average condition of its constituent parts. To expect the controlling power of such a community to be accessible to reason and conciliation, would indeed argue an utter ignorance of the whole slave system and of its influence upon the minds and hearts of those who sustain it. War is the normal condition of those communities which cherish slavery; and although such an institution, misplaced in connection with the civilization of the nineteenth century, may seem to have changed its original nature in accordance with existing circumstances, yet, when its purposes are thwarted, it is ever ready for military violence. It is like a native barbarian, schooled and trained to apparent civilization, but ever inclined, at the first temptation, to fall into his natural habits of wild and savage life. The Southern organization has already proved itself to be peculiarly fitted for warlike operations; it has been correspondingly unsuited to modern industrial pursuits, except for the simplest and most primitive of all labors, those of agriculture. Indeed, these were always the principal occupations of slaves, even in those early stages of human progress when these classes were left at home to till the soil, while the masters followed their ordinary occupation of war. The same constitution of society at the present day leaves the masters free, it is true, to engage in more humane and elevated occupations, but not without an evident inclination or easy adaptation for those bold and bad pursuits from which slavery originally arose, and which it afterwards contributed so much to sustain and prolong.

But, notwithstanding this natural inclination of slaveholders toward commotion and war, it is not to be denied, on the other hand, that in civil conflicts like ours, in which discordant opinions and important local interests are involved, the issue of peace or war may to a great extent be controlled by that party which has the right of the controversy. Its conduct may be forbearing and conciliatory, or it may be insulting and calculated to invite resistance. A magazine may be dangerous in itself, for an accidental spark or an unintended friction of apparently harmless substances may cause it to explode; but, at the same time, the catastrophe may be brought on by the wilful folly of those whose duty it is to provide the necessary precautions against danger. The North has unquestionably been right in the contest on slavery, as to all the moral and economical aspects of the question; and generally, too, us to all the political principles involved. But has she not been violent and abusive—so offensively obtruding into the local affairs of the opposite section, as unnecessarily to arouse the angry passions of the South, rather than to encourage the calm exercise of reason? The answer to this question is by no means so obvious and easy as may at first be supposed. The whole subject has been so complicated with party movements, that it becomes impossible to follow the ramifications of influence, and to determine what share individuals or parties, on one side or the other, may have had in the responsibility for the angry controversy, its aggravating incidents, and its general results. This, however, is certain: the slaveholders have for many years controlled the Democratic party, and that organization has held the power of government in its hands during far the greater part of our national existence. Important concessions have been made to their interests, from time to time, during the whole period; and no single instance of actual wrong to the South, by the violation, of any acknowledged constitutional right, can be designated, in the whole action of the Federal Government from the time of its establishment down to the commencement of this rebellion.

Nor can it be denied, that while in power with the Democratic party and ascendant in its counsels, the South has been exacting in the extreme, and has often made demands wholly incompatible with the true interests of liberty and humanity. Witness the offensive form in which the fugitive slave law was passed, and its execution enforced in the North, wholly regardless of the natural and irrepressible sympathies of a humane people; and, on the other hand, the unnecessary and sinister excitement deliberately aroused and kept up, in the extreme Southern States, on this subject of fugitives, although it is well known that no considerable losses of that kind have ever been suffered in that quarter. So likewise as to slavery in the Territories. It has often been admitted by Southern statesmen of the extreme school, that the Territories recently organized, over which so much bitter controversy has occurred, are altogether unsuited in climate and productions for the employment of slave labor; and few will deny, whether those Territories be physically adapted or not adapted to the labor of Africans, that the South had not the means of populating them without an increase of slaves from their native continent, or by a resort to some other source of ample supply. Here, then, was a most violent and persistent effort to secure the acknowledgment of a right to do what they had not the means to accomplish, and what they could not obtain the means of doing without the actual overthrow of the Government, as well as a flagrant violation of the moral sentiments of mankind.

On this score, therefore, the account seems to be tolerably well balanced; for if Northern men have sometimes wantonly started hostile and injurious agitation, calculated to arouse fierce passions and to close the ears of the Southern people to the voice of reason; these, on the other hand, are liable to equal or greater censure for having made impossible demands, as unnecessary as they were inadmissible, and liable from their very extravagance to be considered as mere pretexts, deliberately adopted with a view to aggravate the quarrel and prevent a reconciliation. It is difficult to admit any other explanation of the extraordinary policy of the Southern leaders. It is not improbable that they will henceforward acknowledge such to have been the motive of their principal political acts for many years past. The terrible events now passing before our saddened eyes, are too solemn and weighty, not to be understood in all their past relations and in all their present import. They stand forth in stern and awful reality, glaring in the lurid light of the past and casting dark shadows over the future, while they sweep away all false pretences, and lay bare the real motives which, from the beginning, have actuated the men who are prominent in performing the great drama.

But these questions of transient passions and objurgatory provocation are trivial and unimportant. They do not touch the real causes of the difficulty; they are but the froth on the surface of the deep and mighty current of events, which was rushing on to the gulf of rebellion. The time had come, in the history of our country, when, by the necessary working of its institutions, the most solemn question of the age was to be determined. Slavery must either accept its inevitable doom and prepare for ultimate extinction, or it must provide new means for prolonging its existence and reestablishing its waning power. In three quarters of a century, the Constitution of 1787 had done its work. It had suppressed the immigration of Africans; it had established that of Europeans. Free white labor had demonstrated its superiority and achieved a complete victory over slavery; and the political power, long wielded by the Southern men, had passed forever out of their hands, as the representatives and supporters of the slave policy. In the Senate, in the House of Representatives, in the great majority of States, in all the Territories, and, finally, in the very citadel of their former power, the presidential mansion, their almost immemorial superiority had been utterly overthrown. The Government was about to assume its true character, as the home of liberty and the veritable asylum of humanity. Slavery, fallen into the minority, was about to experience an accelerated decline and eventually to disappear. To resist this doom, was to fight against the Constitution and against destiny.

The people of the Southern States were wholly unwilling to accept the condition to which the legitimate workings of the Constitution had fairly brought them. Being a minority in numbers and in representative weight, they rose up in rebellion against this unalterable fact. They foresaw it, and, by every possible device, resisted it before it came. When it arrived, they resisted still more madly, even to the extent of self-destruction. The minority was arrayed not merely against the majority, but also against the necessary results of our institutions and against the decrees of nature: that is to say, against the law of man, and against the law of God. The majority was expected to give way, and to permit the engine of national progress to be reversed, our eighty years of glorious history to be undone, and humanity itself to be turned back upon the dreary path of its earliest and saddest struggles. This refused, the alternative was the destruction of the Government.

It was wholly impossible for the majority to make any satisfactory concessions to a minority infatuated with such ideas. Compromise was impracticable, so long as the rebellious States made the perpetuity of slavery and the predominance of its power an indispensable condition of any arrangement. Their demands were forever inadmissible so long as they remained in the Union; and to permit them to effect their purposes as an independent confederacy, was equally out of the question. There is no longer any division of sentiment on this point, whatever doubts may have been expressed in the beginning. Separation of the States would be disastrous and fatal to all the fragmentary governments which would take the place of this majestic Union. The nation instinctively feels that its unity is its salvation—that disunion will be destructive of all its long-cherished and glorious hopes. Its permanent peace, its prosperity and progress, its greatness, its honor, and its influence among civilized nations—all depend on its unity. These, which are the glory of our country to every patriotic heart, were the stumbling blocks to the conspirators. Slavery was ambitious and discontented with its appointed lot; it was determined; it rushed headlong to its fatal purpose. The nation stood in its path, and would not, could not get out of the way. This is the central fact of the whole controversy. National unity is on the one side—the disintegration and anarchy which slavery demands, are on the other. These are the contending forces; they are engaged in mortal combat, and one or the other must be utterly overthrown and destroyed. Slavery must succumb and consent to disappear, or the Union of our fathers must go down in the dust, never again to rise.

Can the enemies of the United States, at home or abroad, suppose that these vital questions can ever he yielded? That the nation can voluntarily abdicate its authority, confess the failure of its work for three quarters of a century; permit all the purposes of its creation to be utterly thwarted, and tamely and basely surrender all those hopes of a glorious destiny, which we have ever been taught to cherish as the goal of our unexampled freedom? The Southern people have been the sport of many delusions and infatuations; but the belief of these incredible and impossible suppositions, is the crowning folly of them all. These restless and daring men occupied the fairest region of the globe, with a virtual monopoly of the cotton culture. The unexampled increase of the cotton trade and manufacture, if it had not filled their coffers with unbounded wealth, had at least given them lavish returns for the labor of their slaves and enabled them to live in unlimited profusion. That under such a system they should have little provident care, but should indulge unbounded confidence in the future, was natural enough, for they conceived their prosperity, which cost them so little labor or anxiety, to be in its nature permanent. When, therefore, they saw gradually approaching the certain downfall of their power, they could not understand that this was the result of natural causes, but attributed it to the malignant enmity of the Government. A social organization, so agreeable, so full of pleasures and advantages, conferring not only ease and luxury, but also station and authority, must necessarily be right in itself, and worthy of every effort and every sacrifice to perpetuate it. What was the Government of the United States, that it should presume to erect itself as an obstacle to the progress of this rich and powerful organization? Was not the whole fabric of human industry dependent on it, and would not foreign nations be compelled by the very helplessness of their starving people to sustain and defend it? Why should there be anything sacred in the institutions of the country, when they evidently tended, by their spirit and operation, to overthrow the power of slavery? Washington was weak, with all his goodness; Jefferson was a demagogue; Madison had not forecast enough to see the necessary results of his political combinations. We have grown wiser; then let us sweep away the obstacles which were placed in our path by the weakness and folly of our deluded forefathers. Let us prostrate the clumsy fabric which they constructed, since the Yankees have taken possession of it, and are working it for the benefit of Irish and German immigrants and their descendants, and not for that of African traders and negro masters. By some terrible fatality, it was the misfortune of the Southern leaders to believe these delusions. They have gone so far as to act upon them, and have seduced their people into fatal cooeperation; and these are now reaping the bloody fruits of an error so profound and awful.

The rebellious States not only thought it practicable to overthrow the National Government; they, doubtless, also held that result necessary to their safety and success. This followed as a logical conclusion from their established dogma that the slavery of the laboring class is the only firm foundation of social order. They convinced themselves that white men could not perform the labor necessary on cotton and sugar plantations. The negro alone was capable of standing the fierce rays of the Southern sun, and of successfully resisting the deadly malaria which prevails in that region. The Southern people firmly believed this doctrine, although their very eyes, in all parts of their territory, except perhaps in the rice fields of South Carolina and Georgia, thousands of white men were and are daily occupied in this very work. So remarkable a delusion, contradicted by their own daily experience, is by no means uncommon under similar circumstances. When the passions of men are aroused and their interests, real or imaginary, involved, they seldom comprehend the true significance, nor do they stop to estimate deliberately the actual conditions, of what is going on around them. Much less do they understand the character and tendency of great social movements, in which they themselves are actively engaged. The strongest intellects, in such circumstances, do not often escape the prevailing prejudices and delusions. A sort of common moral atmosphere pervades the whole society; opinions become homogeneous; and even the worst abuses, sanctioned by time and by universal custom, lose all their enormity, and command the support and approval even of good men. Palpable errors of fact, and, indeed, every available sophistry in argument, have been adopted by the Southern men to sustain the system of slavery.

The deluded victims of these false ideas could not conceive a different organization of labor as possible for them. It was perhaps even natural for them to consider the opposite system in the Northern States, as hostile to their interests and dangerous to their peculiar property in labor. Nor were they in fact mistaken: not that the Northern social system need have interfered violently to overthrow their institutions; but there was an instinctive feeling that the two could not exist together and flourish in the same community. It was obscurely felt that one must give way before the other, whether peacefully or violently, and it was impossible to doubt which of the two was destined to succumb, under the gradual but inevitable operation of our established political forms and principles. Under the dominion of excited and unreasoning prejudices, the Southern mind could see no distinction between the necessary and irresistible operation of principles and the intentional hostility of their hated rivals. Thus, with a fixed conviction of the inevitable end of their system under the Constitution, it was vainly expected to avoid that unwelcome fate, by destroying the Government of the United States, which had been deliberately created by its founders with a view to the ultimate extinction of slavery.

But, alas! this expedient has proved to be a fatal error—none more fatal has ever misled and ruined a prosperous and gallant people. Instead of overthrowing the Government—a consummation never to be admitted or even thought of, with any toleration, for a single moment—they will only bring the cherished object of their bloody sacrifices to a sudden and disastrous end. Slavery never could have had—never ought to have had any better security than was afforded by the Constitution of this country, administered fairly, as it always has been, if not with evident partiality, toward this exacting interest. Take away from it the support of the Constitution, and, under any circumstances, it would most assuredly fall. But the Government assaulted, in the interest of slavery, for the increase and perpetuity of slavery—that presents an emergency which admits of no hesitation, and in which those who have been most tolerant toward the system, and most ready to yield its unreasonable exactions to save the Government, will be the first to strike it down for the same end. The nation must survive; its enemies must succumb or perish.

Can any one deny that the Federal Government was compelled to take up the gage of battle which the rebels had so vauntingly thrown down? Not merely the interests of civil authority and order, but the preponderance of freedom, and the claims of humanity on this continent, required the most determined resistance to be made, and forbade the possibility of quietly surrendering the destinies of the nation into the hands of the traitors who sought to destroy it, What a spectacle of imbecility and miserable failure in the hour of great peril would have been presented to the indignant world, if, in this great crisis, the national authorities had been so far beneath the occasion as to have declined the proffered contest and basely betrayed their trust, at the first demand of the seceding States! The everlasting scorn of mankind would have overwhelmed and blasted the dastard and degenerate race, who would thus have sacrificed the highest and most sacred interests of humanity. Rather than this, welcome the civil war, with all its sacrifices! Welcome privations, labors, taxes, wounds, death, and all the nameless horrors that swarm along the red path of civil strife! Thousands of precious lives and billions of treasure have already been expended, and yet no patriotic heart thinks of turning back from the battle field, until the Union established by our fathers shall be restored to its integrity.

Compelled to admit the conclusions already stated, let us not do injustice even to the men who are prominent in this iniquitous rebellion. The most difficult of all moral problems is to determine how far individual agency can control social or political events, and what degree of responsibility attaches to those who have been apparently influential in producing disastrous results. An impartial study of history will serve to establish the truth that prominent men who, in any age, may seem to have produced great changes by their individual will, were merely the instruments of society by which irresistible tendencies were carried out to their necessary ends. The very conceptions of such men are the offspring of their times, and in order that they should have power to accomplish their designs, the great social forces of the community must be at their disposal, ready and inclined to perform the work. A great rock or a mighty glacier may be so balanced at the mountain top, that a small force—the sound of a trumpet, a mere breath of air—may dislodge it, and cause it to descend, carrying destruction into the valley. But the force of gravitation is necessary to bring it down and give it the impetus of ruin. So the might of a great people may be poised on some lofty pinnacle of human destiny; but unless there he involved in the existing sentiments and convictions, the situation and surroundings of that people, the elements of force and action, for good or evil, no individual agency and no combination of men can impart the power which they lack. All that was required among the Southern people, for the initiation of this gigantic rebellion, was some universal animating idea, capable of binding them together in unanimous accord, imparting the necessary force and velocity in the direction of treason, when started and impelled by the efforts of their leading men. Slavery was just such a principle; it was the gravitating power which hurled them down the precipice, and gave the tremendous impetus of ruin which they have exerted in their awful descent. But, in truth, this mischievous power has been accumulating ever since the Government was founded. It grew out of the antecedents of existing society; and the present generation is not wholly responsible for it. The misfortunes of our fathers, their omissions and errors as well as ours, have left this fatal legacy to descend into our hands. We may not have dealt with it wisely, but assuredly the framers of the Constitution did not intend slavery to be perpetual, nor did they provide for it the power to overthrow the Government.



ON GUARD.

In the black terror-night, On yon mist-shrouded hill, Slowly, with footstep light, Stealthy, and grim, and still, Like ghost in winding sheet Risen at midnight bell, Over his lonely beat Marches the sentinel!

In storm-defying cloak— Hand on his trusty gun— Heart, like a heart of oak— Eye, never-setting sun; Speaks but the challenge-shout, All foes without the line, Heeds but, to solve the doubt, Watchword and countersign.

Camp-ward, the watchfires gleam Beacon-like in the gloom; Round them his comrades dream Pictures of youth and home. While in his heart the bright Hope-fires shine everywhere, In love's enchanting light Memory lies dreaming there.

Faint, through the silence come From the foes' grim array, Growl of impatient dram Eager for morrow's fray; Echo of song and shout, Curse and carousal glee, As in a fiendish rout Demons at revelry.

Close, in the gloomy shade— Danger lurks ever nigh— Grasping his dagger-blade Crouches th' assassin spy; Shrinks at the guardman's tread, Quails 'fore his gleaming eyes, Creeps back with baffled hate, Cursing his cowardice.

Naught can beguile his bold Unsleeping vigilance; E'en in the fireflame, old Visions unheeded dance. Fearless of lurking spy, Scornful of wassail-swell, With an undaunted eye Marches the sentinel.

Low, to his trusty gun Eagerly whispers he, 'Wait, with the morning sun March we to victory. Fools, into Satan's clutch Leaping ere dawn of day: He who would fight must watch, He who would win must pray.'

Pray! for the night hath wings; Watch! for the foe is near; March! till the morning brings Fame-wreath or soldier's bier. So shall the poet write, When all hath ended well, 'Thus through the nation's night Marched Freedom's sentinel.'



RAILWAY PHOTOGRAPHS.

On a fair, sunny morning in July, 1862, I started from—no matter where; and taking my seat in a comfortable rail car, turned my face toward the borders of Vermont.

As the road, for the greater part of the way was an up-grade, and as there is on that particular route a way station about every two miles, at each of which the cars unduly stop, our progress was rather slow, and I had ample time to observe alike the wild and rugged scenery through which we were passing, and the countenances and actions of my fellow passengers.

For a time the picturesque character of country engaged my attention; but getting tired, at last, of the endless succession of green mountains, clothed to their summits with dark pine and hemlock; of rocky, tortuous streams, their channels run almost dry by the excessive drought; of stony fields, dotted with sheep or sprinkled with diminutive hay cocks, or coaxed by patient cultivation into bearing a few hills of stunted Indian corn, I began to find the interior of the car a much more interesting field of observation. And it is wonderful how many different aspects of human nature one can see in the course of a day's journey in a railroad car.

The first person who attracted my notice, was a young man sitting opposite to me. His appearance was prepossessing, not so much from beauty of form or feature, as from the pleasant expression of his fair, open face, adorned with side whiskers of a reddish hue, of the mutton-chop genus and pendent species. He looked like an Englishman or Anglicized Scotchman; but from some words he let drop, I am inclined to believe he was a Western man. Be that as it may, he was evidently a tourist, travelling for pleasure through a country that was new to him, and desirous of gaining all the information he could concerning it.

On the hooks above him, hung a heavy blanket shawl, an umbrella, and a little basket. In his hand he held one of Appleton's Railway Guides,' to which he made constant reference, reading from it the names of the places through which we passed, in tones so loud and distinct, that most of his fellow passengers participated in the information. On the seat beside him lay a large book in red binding, which proved to be another guide book, and to which he referred when the smaller one failed him. Immediately behind him sat a saturnine-looking gentleman (also provided with a railway guide), with whom he frequently conversed, addressing him as 'John,' and who seemed to be his travelling companion.

It was impossible not to feel interested in the movements of the tourist. To gentlemanly manners and an air of refinement, there was added a certain boyish simplicity that was quite refreshing to contemplate. He seemed to fraternize with everybody, conversing freely, first with one passenger, then with another; and apparently imparting to all a portion of the genial good humor with which his nature was flooded.

I was amused with a colloquy that took place, in regard to a field of ripening grain, near which the train had stopped.

'Is that a field of wheat?' asked 'John' of his friend.

'Well, really,' said the tourist, ingenuously, 'I don't know the difference between wheat and rye.' Then bending toward the person who sat in front of him, he said, in an earnest manner, 'Pray, sir, can you tell me whether that field is wheat or rye?'

The other glanced at the field rather dubiously, I thought; but answered promptly:

'That's wheat, sir.'

It was rye, nevertheless.

I observed that the tourist had, by affability, completely won the heart of the conductor. Whenever that official was at liberty—which, by the way, was only for a few minutes at a time, in of the numerous stopping places—he would sit down until the scream of the whistle summoned him again to his duty, when he would hurry through his task, again to his favorite seat.

The gentleman was much struck with the large quantities of wild raspberries, that clothed the fences on either side of the track. 'There were no raspberries,' he said, 'where he came from. At the very next station I saw the conductor go out (although it was now raining), break off a branch, loaded with ripe fruit, from a raspberry bush, and returning to the car, smilingly present it to his friend. The gentleman thanked him warmly; but instead of selfishly devouring the fruit himself, generously shared it with all within reach of his arm, with a diffusive benevolence that put me in mind of the free-hearted Irishman, who, as he gave his friend the half of his potato, said: 'You're welcome to it, if 'twere twice as little.'

At another place the tourist himself got out, and returned with a handful of wayside flowers. Selecting from them a fine, blooming clover head, and a little weed of the bulrush family, he placed them between the leaves of his guide book, saying to his neighbor, as he did so:

'I like to preserve such little mementoes of the places I visit. Once, when travelling at the South, I gathered a cotton bud; and would you believe it, in the course of three months it expanded to a perfect flower, and actually ripened its seeds?'

'Why, then,' said the other, laughingly, 'we need be at no loss for cotton, if it can be cultivated as easily as that.'

In striking contrast to this passenger, was another, who sat a few seats in front of him. His appearance was not prepossessing, on the contrary, 'quite the reverse.' He was a coarse, heavy-looking, thick-set, dirty, Irish soldier, redolent of whiskey and tobacco. His looks inspired me with profound disgust and dislike, which were not at all lessened when I saw him take from the hands of a comrade a black bottle, and applying it to his lips, solace himself with a 'dhrop of the cratur.'

But I found, ere long, that there was a heart beneath that dirty uniform, a soft kernel inside of the rude, unpromising husk. His family were on the car; and as he sat in a lounging attitude, conversing with his comrade (they had both been discharged, I heard them say, from the '6th New York'), a little girl came staggering along the passage way, holding herself up by the seats on either side. As she neared him, she sprang to him, and placed herself between his knees; and the coarse, weather-beaten face beamed down upon her with such a smile—so full of warm, tender, earnest affection, that I felt rebuked for my previous poor opinion of that man.

Nor was this all. At C——, the little girl, accompanied by her mother and several brothers and sisters, got out; while the soldier himself, having seen them all safely deposited on the station platform, and treated them to a hearty smack all round, returned to the car, and resumed his seat. As the train began to move, he started up, thrust his head out of the window, and greeted the group on the platform with another of those bright, loving smiles, that made my heart warm to the rough, sun-burnt soldier, in spite of tobacco, and whiskey, and dirt.

About noon we reached the pretty village of Rutland, Vt.; and there the stentorian voice of the conductor rang out:

'Passengers for Boston, change cars!'

I hastened to obey the mandate; and the last I saw of the genial-hearted tourist (who was going to Montreal), he was shaking hands with his friend the conductor, whose 'beat' extended no further; and bidding him a warm and hearty 'good-by.'

In the car in which I now found myself, no talkative tourist or companionable conductor enlivened the way; a much more 'still-life' order of things prevailed. But here, too, I soon found objects of interest.

Near me sat a young officer in undress uniform, with a cicatrized bullet wound in his cheek. He had doubtless been home on 'sick leave,' and, though now quite restored to health, was apparently in no hurry to go back. Far from it. Very different thoughts, I fancy, occupied his mind than cutting rebel throats, or acquiring distinction in the 'imminent deadly breach.' There was a lady by his side, with whom, judging by appearances, his relations were of an extremely tender character. They were either newly married, or about soon to 'undergo the operation.' I incline to the latter belief; for in reply to a remark from the lady that they would be late in arriving at their destination, I overheard the gentleman smilingly say:

'Well, at all events, nothing can be done until we get there.'

And here, in passing, I would respectfully suggest to all couples in the peculiarly interesting position of my young fellow travellers, that a railroad car is not the most suitable place in the world, in which to lavish endearments on each other. However delightful the 'exercise' may be to them, truth compels me to say that it is, to cool, uninterested, dispassionate lookers-on, decidedly nauseating.

At the time of which I am writing, the War order, recalling all stragglers, had not been promulgated; and no one, in travelling, could fail to be struck with the predominance of the military element among the population. It was unpleasant to observe, at every railroad station, at every wayside grocery store, groups of idle, lounging soldiers, smoking and gossiping, and having, apparently, no earthly object except to kill time; and to know that these men, wearing their country's uniform, and drawing their pay from her exhausted exchequer, were lingering at home on various pretexts, and basely and deliberately shirking their duty, while rebellion still reared its horrid front, and the Government required every arm that could be raised in its defence. That energetic document put a stop to all this; but the question here arises, Can the men be in earnest? Can that patriotism be genuine which needs to be driven to the battle field?

Ah! here is one brave fellow, who, though still lame from a recent wound, is hastening back to the scenes where duty calls him. He comes into the cars with his sword in one hand, and his overcoat, neatly strapped, in the other. He looks grave and serious—doubtless he is thinking of home, and of the dear ones he has just left. Doubtless, from that cause springs a singular restlessness, that impels him to get out at every stopping place, and pace backward and forward with unequal steps, till the train starts again. As he passes and repasses me, I try to read his countenance. There is no flinching there—no shrinking from duty in that brave soul. In the expressive language of Scripture, he has 'put his life in his hand,' and is ready to offer it at the shrine of his country. As I mark his firm lip, his thoughtful eye, his look of steadfast determination, there come into my mind those grand soul-stirring lines of Percival:

'Oh! it is great for our country to die; when ranks are contending, Bright is the wreath of our fame; glory awaits us for aye: Glory, that never is dim, shining on with a light never ending, Glory, that never shall fade, never, O never, away.'

At the first station beyond Rutland, a woman with a baby—there is always a woman with a baby in the cars—got out. In addition to the baby, she had a carpet bag, a band box, a basket, and several paper parcels. How she managed to carry them all, I know not; but as she was stumbling along, thus overloaded, a lady, just entering the car with some others, with a sudden, generous impulse, took the baby in her arms, and, at the risk of losing her own passage, carried it to the door of the waiting-room. Then, without stopping to receive the thanks of the grateful mother, she rejoined her friends, smiling at her own exploit, and all unconscious of the admiration her beautiful action had excited in some of her fellow travellers. At the picturesque village of Bellow's Falls, on the Connecticut river, we entered the 'Old Granite State,' but too far south to see the 'native mountains' in their wildest grandeur and magnificence. One specimen, however, greets us as we leave the village—a huge, perpendicular mass of granite, rising sheer up from the railroad to the height of a thousand feet or more; while the river, a wild receptacle of tumbled rocks and broken falls, stretches along the other side of the track, far beneath us. The labor expended in the construction of this mountain road (the Cheshire Railroad) must have been enormous, and affords a striking proof of the indomitable energy and enterprise of the New England character. The high places have literally been brought low, and the valleys exalted. Not once, but many times, the train rushes through between two perpendicular walls of solid granite, so high that not a glimpse of the sky can be seen from the car windows; while beyond, some hollow chasm or rugged gulley has been bridged over, or filled up with the superabundant masses of stone excavated from the deep cuts.

It gives one a feeling of dizzy exaltation to be whirled, at the rate of thirty or forty miles an hour—for as there is for a good part of the way a descending grade, the velocity is tremendous—along the verge of a mountain, and to see other mountains, with valleys, rivers, villages, and church steeples, spread out beneath you, as if on a map. But gradually the face of the country changes; the mountains become less lofty, the granite formations disappear; here stretches a wide, dismal pond of stagnant water, yellow with water lilies (Nuphar), and there a field that has been burnt over, leaving the scorched and branchless trees standing like a host of hideous spectres, until at last the fertile and highly cultivated fields of Massachusetts smile upon us with a pleasant, cheerful aspect.

But, pleasing as it is to contemplate well-cultivated farms and thriving homesteads, it must be confessed that to the eye of the traveller wild mountain scenery has a far stronger attraction; and insensibly, as the train speeds on through the now level country, veiled in a thin, drizzling, mist-like rain, I find my gaze and my thoughts coming back from the outside world, and resting once more on my co-inmates of the car.

Not far from me sits a beautiful young girl, fair haired and blue eyed, and of a peculiarly interesting and lady-like appearance. She has a look of bright intelligence; and on her lap lies a book, the title of which I can read from here: 'English Literature.' But she is deaf and dumb, as is plainly betokened by the rapid, chirological conversation going on between her and a young man, evidently her brother, who sits beside her. Behind them is seated an elderly lady, who seems to have charge of her, and with whom she occasionally converses in writing.

The young man is not, like her, deprived of the organs of speech; but his proficiency in the finger-language is perfectly marvellous. It surpasses even her own in rapidity of movement and graceful ease. It is most interesting to watch them, as, their eyes glancing from hand to face, they carry on their silent conversation; the dumb girl occasionally bursting into a hearty laugh, at some remark of her companion. Nothing could exceed the devoted and tender attention of the brother. Whenever any object worthy of notice in the scenery presented itself, he would touch her lightly on the shoulder to attract attention, and then with a few rapid movements of his fingers, direct her eyes to it, and give an explanation of it. If she required refreshment, he would hurry from the car, and hurry back again, with art anxious, eager look, as if he feared something might have befallen her in his absence. She seemed to repose implicit confidence in him; and well was he worthy of it. Heaven's blessing rest upon you, noble young man! for your earnest devotion to that afflicted one.