Kitabı oku: «The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 01, No. 06, April, 1858», sayfa 14

SANDALPHON

 
  Have you read in the Talmud of old,
  In the legends the Rabbins have told
    Of the limitless realms of the air,
  Have you read it,—the marvellous story
    Of Sandalphon, the Angel of Glory,
    Sandalphon, the Angel of Prayer?
 
 
  How, erect, at the outermost gate
  Of the City Celestial he waits,
    With his feet on the ladder of light,
  That, crowded with angels unnumbered,
  By Jacob was seen, as he slumbered
    Alone in the desert at night?
 
 
  The Angels of Wind and of Fire
  Chant only one hymn, and expire
    With the song's irresistible stress,—
  Expire in their rapture and wonder,
  As harp-strings are broken asunder
    By the music they throb to express.
 
 
  But serene in the rapturous throng,
  Unmoved by the rush of the song,
    With eyes unimpassioned and slow,
  Among the dead angels, the deathless
  Sandalphon stands listening, breathless,
    To sounds that ascend from below,—
 
 
  From the spirits on earth that adore,
  From the souls that entreat and implore
    In the frenzy and passion of prayer,—
  From the hearts that are broken with losses,
  And weary with dragging the crosses
    Too heavy for mortals to bear.
 
 
  And he gathers the prayers as he stands,
  And they change into flowers in his hands,
    Into garlands of purple and red;
  And beneath the great arch of the portal,
  Through the streets of the City Immortal,
    Is wafted the fragrance they shed.
 
 
  It is but a legend, I know,—
  A fable, a phantom, a show
    Of the ancient Rabbinical lore;
  Yet the old mediaeval tradition,
  The beautiful, strange superstition,
    But haunts me and holds me the more.
 
 
  When I look from my window at night,
  And the welkin above is all white,
    All throbbing and panting with stars,
  Among them majestic is standing
  Sandalphon the angel, expanding
    His pinions in nebulous bars.
 
 
  And the legend, I feel, is a part
  Of the hunger and thirst of the heart,
    The frenzy and fire of the brain,
  That grasps at the fruitage forbidden,
  The golden pomegranates of Eden,
    To quiet its fever and pain.
 

* * * * *

MR. BUCHANAN'S ADMINISTRATION

Mr. Buchanan came into power with the prestige of experience; he was known to have been long in public life; he had been a senator, a secretary, a diplomatist, and almost everything else which is supposed to fit a man for the practical conduct of affairs.

This presumed fitness for office greatly assisted his chances in the Presidential campaign; and it assisted him especially with those timid and conservative minds, of which there are many, apt to conceive that a familiarity with the business and details of government is the same as statesmanship, and to confound the skill and facility acquired by mere routine with a genuine ability in execution. Had these men, however, looked more closely into Mr. Buchanan's official career, they would have found causes for suspecting the validity of their judgment, in the very length and variety of his services. They would have discovered, that, long as these had been and various as they had been, they were quite undistinguished by any peculiar evidences of capacity or aptitude.

He had been, senator, secretary, and diplomatist, it is true; but in no one of these positions had he achieved any remarkable successes. The occasion could not be indicated on which he had risen above the average level of respectability as a public man. There were no salient points in his course,—no splendid developments of mastery,—no great reports, or speeches, or measures, to cause him to be remembered,—and no leading thoughts or acts, to awaken a high and general feeling of admiration on the part of his countrymen. He was never such a senator as Webster was, nor such a secretary as Clay, nor such a diplomatist as Marey. Throughout his protracted official existence, he followed in the wake of his party submissively, doing its appointed work with patience, and vindicating its declared policy with skill, but never emerging as a distinct and prominent figure. He never exhibited any peculiar largeness of mind or loftiness of character; and though he spoke well and wrote well, and played the part of a cool and wary manager, he was scarcely considered a commanding spirit among his fellows. Amid that array of luminaries, indeed, which adorned the Senate, where his chief reputation was made,—among such men as Calhoun, Clay, Webster, Benton, and Wright,—he shone with a diminished lustre.

Now, forty years of action, in the most conspicuous spheres, unillustrated by a single incident which mankind has, or will have, reason to cite and applaud, were not astonishing evidence of fitness for the chief magistracy; and the event has shown, that Mr. Buchanan was to be regarded as an old politician rather than a practised statesman, that the most serviceable soldier in the ranks may prove to be an indifferent general in command,—and that the experience, for which he was vaunted and trusted, was not that ripening discipline of the mind and heart,

 
  –"which doth attain
  To something of prophetic strain,"—
 

but that other unlearning use and wont, which

 
  –"chews on wisdom past,
  And totters on in blunders to the last."
 

His administration has been a series of blunders, and worse; it has evinced no mastery; on the other hand, it may be arraigned for inconsistencies the most palpable, for proceedings the most awkward, for a general impotence which places it on a level with that of Tyler or Pierce, and for signal offences against the national sense of decorum and duty.

It is scarcely a year since Mr. Buchanan assumed the reins at Washington. He assumed them under circumstances by which he and his party and the whole country had been taught a great lesson of political duty. The infamous mismanagement of Kansas, by his immediate predecessor, had just shattered the most powerful of our party organizations, and caused a mighty uprising of the masses of the North in defence of menaced freedom. His election was carried amid the extremest hazards, and with the utmost difficulty. Two months more of such ardent debate and such popular enlightenment as were then going forward would have resulted in his defeat. As it was, nearly every Northern State—no matter how firm its previous adherence to the Democratic party—was aroused to a strenuous opposition. Nearly every Northern State pronounced by a stupendous majority against him and against his cause. Nothing but a systematic disguise of the true questions at issue by his own party, and a gratuitous complication of the canvass by means of a foolish third party, saved his followers from the most complete and shameful rout that had been given for many years to any political array. Men of every class, of every shade of faith, joined in that hearty protest against the spirit which animated the Democratic administration, and joined in it, that they might utter the severest rebuke in their power, of its meanness and perfidy.

Mr. Buchanan ought to have read the warning which was thus blazed across the political skies, like the hand-writing upon the wall. He ought to have discerned in this general movement the signs of a deep, earnest, and irrepressible conviction on the part of the North. It is no slight cause which can start such general and enthusiastic expressions of popular feeling; they cannot be manufactured; they are not the work of mere party excitement; there is nothing spurious and nothing hollow in them; but they well up from the deep heart of nations, showing that a chord of sympathy has been touched, with which it is fatal to tamper or to sport. Call it fanaticism, if you will; call it delusion; call it anything; but recollect also that it is out of such feelings that revolutions are born, and by them that awful national crises are determined.

But Mr. Buchanan has not profited, as we shall see, by the monition. His initial act, the choice of a cabinet, in which the only man of national reputation was superannuated, and the others were of little note, gave small hope that he would do so; and his subsequent mistakes might have been augured from the calibre of the counsellors by whom he chose to be surrounded.—But let the men pass, since our object is to discuss measures.

The questions with which the President and his cabinet have had to deal, without following them in the order either of time or importance, may be classified as the Mormon question, the Financial question, the Filibuster question, and the Kansas question. All these required, for a proper adjustment of them, firmness rather than ability,—a clear perception of the principles of right, rather than abstruse policy,—and vigor of execution, rather than profound diplomatic skill. Yet we do not perceive that our government has displayed, in regard to the treatment of any of these questions, either firmness or ability. It has employed policy enough and diplomacy enough, but the policy has been incoherent and the diplomacy shallow. At the end of the first year of its rule, the most striking result of its general management is the open defection of many of its most powerful friends, and the increased earnestness and energy of all its foes.

The difficulty with the Mormons originated, before the accession of the present administration, in a hasty and improper extension of the Federal authority over a people whose customs and religious opinions were utterly incompatible with those of our own people. The inhabitants of Utah were averse from the outset to the kind of government provided for them at Washington. Having adopted a form of society more like that of Congo and Dahomey than of the United States, and having accepted too literally the prevalent dogma, that every community has the right to form its own institutions for itself,—they preferred the polygamy of barbarism to the monogamy of civilization, and the rod of the priest-prophet Brigham or the seal of Elder Pratt to the sceptre of Governor Steptoe or the sword of Colonel Johnston. Under these circumstances, the duty of the government of the United States was to relinquish its pretensions to supremacy over a nation opposed to its rule, or to maintain that supremacy, if it were necessary, with a strong and unflinching hand. Mr. Buchanan, on his own principles of popular sovereignty, as far as we can understand them, ought, logically, to have adopted the former course, but (as the interests of Slavery were not involved) he elected to pursue the latter; and he has pursued it with an impotence which has cost the nation already many millions of dollars, and which has involved the "army of Utah" in inextricable embarrassments, allowing them to be shut up in the snows of the mountains before they could strike a blow or reach the first object of their expedition. Not very well appointed in the beginning, this little force was despatched to the Plains when it was too late in the season; a part of it was needlessly delayed in assisting to choke down freedom in Kansas; and when it attained the hills which guard the passages to the valley of the Salt Lake, it found the canons obstructed by snow, and the roads impassable. The supplies required for its subsistence were scattered in useless profusion from Leavenworth to Fort Laramie, and assistance and action were alike hopeless until the arrival of the spring.²⁰

The same feebleness, which left the poor soldier to perish in the desert, has brought an overflowing treasury nearly to default. Mr. Buchanan, in his Message, discussed the existing financial crisis with much sounding phrase and very decided emphasis. He rebuked the action of the banks, which had presumed to issue notes to the amount of more than three times that of their specie, in a tone of lofty and indignant virtue. He commended them to the strictest vigilance and to the exemplary discipline of the State legislatures, while descanting at large upon the safety, the economy, the beauty, and the glory of a sound hard-money currency. When he entered upon his office, he found the Treasury replete with eagles and dimes; it was so flush, that, in the joy of his heart, he ordered the debts of the United States to be redeemed at a premium of sixteen per cent.; and he and his followers were disposed to jubilate over the singular spectacle, that, while all other institutions were failing, the Treasury of the United States was firm and resplendent in its large possession of gold. It was deemed a rare wisdom and success, indeed, which could utter a note of triumph in the midst of so universal a cry of despair; it was deemed a rare piece of liberality, that the government should come to the aid of society in an hour of such dark distress. The stocks of the United States, which had been originally sold at a small advance, were bought back on a very large advance; the usurers and the stock-jobbers received sixteen per cent. for what they had bought at a premium of but two or three per cent.; and an unparalleled glory shone around the easy vomitories of the Treasury. The foresight and the sagacity of the proceeding were marvellous! In less than a quarter by the moon, the coffers of the government were empty,—the very clerks in its employ went about the streets borrowing money to pay their board-bills,—and the grand-master of the vaults, Mr. Cobb, counting his fingers in despair over the vacant prospect, was compelled, in the extremity of his distress, to fill his limp sacks with paper. Of the nineteen millions of gold which in September distended the public purse, little or nothing remained in December, while in its place were paper bills,—founded, not upon a basis of one-third specie, but upon a basis of—We promise to pay! It was a sad application of the high-sounding doctrines of the Message,—a dreadful descent for a pure hard-money government,—and a lamentable conversion of the pompous swagger of October into the shivering collapse of January!

It may be said, that, by this pre-purchase of its own stocks, running at an interest of six per cent., the government has saved the amount of interest which would else have accrued between the time of the purchase and the time of ultimate redemption. And this is true to some extent,—and it would show an admirable economy, if the Treasury had had no other use for its money. A government, like an individual, having a large balance of superfluous cash on hand, can do no better with it than to pay off its debts; but to do this, when there was every prospect of a Mormon war to raise the expenditure, little prospect of retrenchment in any branch of service, and a daily diminishing revenue at all points,—it was purely a piece of folly, a want of ordinary forecast, to get rid of the cash in hand. Mr. Buchanan and Mr. Cobb were guilty of this folly, and, for the sake of the poor éclat of coming to the relief of the money-market, (which was no great relief, after all,) they sacrificed the hard-money pretensions of the government, and sunk its character to the level of that of the needy "kiteflier" in Wall Street. Their true course, in the existing condition and aspect of affairs, was to retain their capital, and to institute a most rigid economy, a most searching reduction, in every branch of the public service. We have, however, yet to learn whether any such economy and reduction have been effected.

All this was simply weakness; but in turning from the conduct of the Finances by the administration, to consider its management of Filibusterism, we pass from the consideration of acts of mere debility to the consideration of acts which have a color of duplicity in them. On the Filibusters, as on the Finances, the First Annual Message of the President was outspoken and forcible. It characterized the past and proposed doings of William Walker and his crew, as the common sense and common conscience of the world had already characterised them, as nothing short of piracy and murder. Recognizing the obligations of fraternity and peace as the rule of right in international relations, it pledged the utmost vigilance and energy of the Federal powers against every semblance of freebootery. In pursuance of this promise, orders were issued to the various civil and naval authorities, (orders not very clear, it is true, but clear enough to bear but one meaning in honest and simple minds,) to the effect that they should maintain a sharp watch, and execute a summary arrest of every person suspected of or discovered in unlawful enterprises. The authorities on land, to whom it was easy to hold secret communication with Washington, were found to have very blind eyes and very slippery hands. General Walker and his confederates were taken at New Orleans, but they passed through the courts far more rapidly than goods are apt to pass through the custom-houses. Under a merely nominal recognizance, he sailed away with flying colors, and amid the plaudits of an admiring crowd, among whom, it is to be presumed, the authorities took care to be only not too conspicuous.

But the authorities on the sea, who could not so readily get a cue from Wellington, with the directness, in construing orders, which is the habit of the military mind, took their instructions at the word. Commanded to intercept all marauders and pirates, they kept a look-out for Walker. He eluded the guns of Captain Chatard, but Commodore Paulding seized him in the very act of invading a friendly soil. Hoisting him on board of a war-ship, he returned him in pressing haste to the President. Commodore Paulding, who had read the Message, and read the instructions of Secretary Cass, doubtless supposed that black meant black, and white, white. Perhaps, also, in the unsophisticated pride with which he contemplated the promptitude and decision of his action, in saving an innocent people from a sanguinary ruffian, and in maintaining the honor of his country unsullied, dim visions crossed his mind of a letter of thanks from the President, and of the vote of a sword by Congress. Alas for such hopes! Commodore Paulding was clearly not a politician; he did not know that black meant white and white meant black,—nor that the present of a filibuster, which he sent to the President, was the present of something worse than an elephant. It was the present of a herd of elephants,—of a sea of troubles. Mr. Buchanan's fine denunciations of freebooters had only been fine words for the public ear; secretly he cherished a penchant for freebooters, or rather for the friends of freebooters; and, under those circumstances, to be presented, by his own agent, with the very chief of the freebooters, as a criminal and a scamp, was the most unheard-of simplicity of understanding, and the most astounding literalness of obedience, in any subordinate. What to do was the question. He had menaced Chatard with a cashiering for allowing Walker to escape; and here was Paulding, who did not allow him to escape,—so he menaced Paulding likewise; and by way of capping the climax of absurdities, he set Walker himself at large, to go about the country clamoring to be sent back, at the expense of the government, to the scenes of his late innocent occupations and virtuous designs, whence he had been ruthlessly torn by an over-officious sailor.

The history of the farce is both argument and comment. Walker was either a citizen of the United States, levying war upon a friendly foreign state, and as such amenable to the penalties of our neutrality laws,—or he was a citizen of Nicaragua, as he pretended to be, abusing our protection to organize warlike enterprises against his fellow-citizens, and as such also amenable to our neutrality laws. In either capacity, and however taken, he should have been severely dealt with by the President. But, unfortunately, Mr. Buchanan, not left to his own instincts of right, is surrounded by assistants who have other than great public motives for their conduct. Walker's schemes were not individual schemes, were not simple projects of piracy and plunder, got up on his own responsibility and for his own ends. Connected with important collateral issues, they received the sympathy and support of others more potent than himself. He was, in a word, the instrument of the propagandist slave-holders, the fear of whom is ever before a President's eyes. As the old barbarian Arbogastes used to say to the later Roman emperors, whom he helped to elevate, "The power which made you is the power which can break you," so these modern masters of the throne dictate and guide its policy. Mr. Buchanan was their man as much as Walker was, and, however grand his speeches before the public, he must do their bidding when things came to the trial.

But this allusion brings us, by an obvious transition, to the last and most important question submitted to the administration,—the question of Kansas,—in the management of which, we think, it will be found that all the before-noted deficiencies of the government have been combined with a criminal disregard of settled principles and almost universal convictions. In reference to Kansas, as in reference to the other topics, the President began with fair and seductive promises. He did not, it is true, either in his Message or anywhere else, that we know of, narrate the actual history of the long contest which has divided that Territory, but he did hold up for the future the brightest hopes of an honest and equitable adjustment of all the past difficulties. He selected and commissioned Robert J. Walker, as Governor, for the express purpose of "pacifying Kansas." Pretending to overlook the past causes of trouble, he announced that everything would now be set right by new elections, in which the whole people should have full opportunity of declaring their will. Mr. Walker went to Kansas with a full determination to carry out this amiable promise of the President. Both he and his secretary, Mr. Stanton, labored strenuously to convince the people of the Territory of his honest purposes, and, by dint of persuasions, pledges, assurances, and oaths, at length succeeded in procuring a pretty general exercise of the franchise. The result was a signal overthrow of the minority which had so long ruled by fraud and violence; and the sincerity of the President is tested by the fact, avouched by both Walker and Stanton, that, from the moment of the success of the Free-State party, he was wroth towards his servants. Stanton was removed and Walker compelled to resign, though their only offence was a laborious prosecution of the President's own policy. Ever since then, he has strained every nerve, and at this moment is straining every nerve, to defeat the well-known legally demonstrated wish of the majority. In the face of his own plighted word, and of the emphatic assurances of his agents, sanctioned by himself, he insists upon imposing on them officers whom they detest and an instrument of government which they spurn. These people of Kansas,—who were to be "pacified,"—to be conciliated,—to be guarantied a just administration,—are denounced in the most virulent and abusive terms as refractory, and are threatened with the coercion of a military force, because they are unwilling to submit to outrage!

The excuse offered by the President for this perfidious course is the Lecompton Constitution, which he professes to consider a legal instrument, framed by a legal Convention, and approved by a legal election of the people,—and which is therefore not to be set aside except by the same sovereign power by which it was created. It would be a good excuse, if it were not a transparent and monstrous quibble from beginning to end. The Lecompton Constitution has no one element of legality in it; from the Whereas, to the signatures, it is an imposture;—for neither had the Legislature, that called the Convention in which it was made, lawful authority to do so,—nor was that Convention lawfully constituted,—nor was the alleged adoption of it by the people more than a trick.

A Territory is an inchoate and dependent community, which can be erected into a State only in two ways: first, formally, by an enabling act of Congress, giving permission to the inhabitants to set up for themselves; and second, informally, by a spontaneous and general movement of the people, which Congress must afterwards legitimate. In either case, the consent of Congress, first or last, is necessary to the validity of the proceeding. But a Territorial Legislature, which is the mere creature of Congress, having no powers but what are strictly conveyed to it in the Organic Act instituting the Territorial government, cannot originate a movement to supersede itself, and also to abrogate the authority of Congress. The attempt to do so, as declared by General Jackson's cabinet, in the case of Arkansas, would be, not simply null and void, but unlawful, rebellious; and the President would be obliged to suppress it, if called upon, by force of arms. The Organic Act is the supreme law of the Territory, which can be altered or revoked only by the authority from which it emanated; and every measure commenced or prosecuted with a design to annul that law, to subvert the Territorial government, or to put in force in its place a new government, without the consent of Congress, is a flagrant usurpation.

Now the Lecompton Convention was called not merely without the consent of Congress, but against its consent; it was called by and under the arrangements of the Territorial Legislature; it was not the spontaneous act of the people, a large majority of whom condemned the movement and refused to participate in it; and thus, in its inception, it was unlawful. It was neither regularly nor irregularly proper;—the supreme legislature had not acknowledged it; the masses of society had not acknowledged it; and the entire project possessed no other character than that of a factious scheme for perpetuating the power of a few pro-slavery demagogues.

But, if we grant the right of the Territorial Legislature to originate such a movement, the manner in which it was carried into effect would still brand it with the marks of illegality. A census and registry of voters had been provided for in the law authorizing the Convention, as the basis of an apportionment of the delegates, and that provision was not complied with. In nineteen out of the thirty-eight counties no registry was made, and in the others it was imperfectly made. "In some of the counties," according to the evidence of Mr. Stanton, then acting Governor, "the officers were probably deterred and discouraged by the people from their duty of taking the census," (although he adds that he does not know that such was the fact,) "while in others the officers utterly refused to do their duty." "I know," he says, "that the people of some of those counties ardently desired to be represented in the Convention, for they afterwards, under the statements of Governor Walker and myself, that they would probably be admitted, elected delegates and sent them up to the Convention; but they were not admitted to seats." In consequence of this failure or refusal to do their duty, only the geographical half or the numerical fourth of the Territory was represented in the Convention. Nor is it any excuse for the defaulting officers, even if it had been true, that some of the people opposed the execution of their duty. They professed to be acting under law; their functions were plainly prescribed to them; and they were bound to make the census and registry, whatever the disposition of the people. In a land of laws, it is the law, and not any mere prevailing sentiment, which prescribes and limits official duty. There is, however, no evidence that the discharge of their task was rendered impossible by the popular opposition, while there is evidence that they were very willing to neglect it, and very willing to allow any obstacle, no matter how trivial, to obstruct their performance of it. They were, in truth, as everybody knows, the simple tools of the faction which started this Convention movement, and not at all desirous to secure a fair and adequate representation of the inhabitants.

That many of the people should be careless of the registration, and even unfriendly to it, is natural, because they disapproved the plan, and were hostile to the ends of the Convention. They doubted the authority by which it had been summoned; they doubted both the validity and the probable fairness of an election under such authority; and, moreover, they were indifferent as to its proceedings, because they had been assured that they would be called upon to pronounce pro or con upon its results. The Convention, as actually constituted when assembled, consisted of sixty delegates, representing about 1,800 voters, in an electoral body of 12,000 in all,—or one delegate to thirty voters! A convention so composed ought to have been ashamed of the very pretence of acting in the name of the whole people. It would have been ashamed of it, if it had contained men sincerely anxious to reflect the will of the great body of the citizens. It would have been as much ashamed of it, as any honest man would be to pass himself off as the agent of a person whom he had never known, or who openly derided and despised him. But this precious body—each man of whom represented thirty men besides himself, in a voting population of 12,000—was not sensible to such considerations. By a miserable chicane, it had got into a position to do mischief, and it proceeded to do it, with as much alacrity and headlong zeal as rogues are apt to exhibit when the prize is great and the opportunity short. An election for the Legislature, held subsequently to that for the Convention, showing a public opinion decidedly adverse to it, the sole study of its members thenceforth seemed to be, how they could most adroitly and effectively nullify the ascendency of the majority. For this end alone they consulted, and caballed, and calculated, and junketed; and the Lecompton Constitution, with the Schedule annexed, was the worthy fruit of their labors.

It is monstrous in Mr. Buchanan to assume that a body so contrived and so acting expressed in any sense the sovereign will of the people. But, not to dwell upon this point, let us suppose that the Convention had been summoned by a competent authority, that it had been fairly chosen by its small constituency, and that its proceedings had been managed with ordinary decorum,—would the Constitution it framed be valid, in the face of a clear popular condemnation? We hold that it would not, because, in our estimation, and in the estimation of every intelligent American, the very essence of republicanism is "the consent of the governed." It is the highest function of political sovereignty to devise and ordain the organic law of society, the vital form of its being; and the characteristic difference between the despotic or oligarchical and the republican government is, that in the one case the function is exercised by a monarch or a class, and in the other by the body of the citizens. This distinctive feature of our politics, as opposed to all others, regards the will of the people, directly or indirectly expressed, as alone giving validity to law; our National Constitution, and every one of our thirty-one State Constitutions, proceeds upon that principle; every act of legislation in the Congress and the State Assemblies supposes it; and every decision of every Court has that for its basis. Constitutions have been adopted, undoubtedly, without a distinct submission of them to the ratification of the people; but in such cases there has been no serious agitation of the public mind, no important conflict or division of opinion, rendering such ratification necessary,—and, in the absence of dispute, the general assent of the community to the action of its delegates might fairly be presumed. But in no case, in which great and debatable questions were involved, has any Convention dared to close its labors without providing for their reference to the popular sanction; much less has there been any instance in which a Convention has dared to make its own work final, in the face of a known or apprehended repugnance of the constituency. The politicians who should have proposed such a thing would have been overwhelmed with unmeasured indignation and scorn. No sentiment more livingly pervades our national mind, no sentiment is juster in itself, than that they who are to live under the laws ought to decide on the character of the laws,—that they whose persons, property, welfare, happiness, life, are to be controlled by a Constitution of Government, ought to participate in the formation of that government.