Kitabı oku: «The Continental Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 2, February, 1862», sayfa 16

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SHE SITS ALONE

She sits alone, with folded hands,
  While from her full and lustrous eyes
Imperial light wakes love to life,—
  Love that, unheeded, quickly dies.

She sits alone, among them all
  So near, and yet so far,—they seem
But our coarse waking thoughts, while she
  Is the reflection of a dream.

She sits alone, so still, so calm,
  So queenly in her grand repose,
You wish that Love would slap her cheeks
  And make the white a blush-red rose!

LITERARY NOTICES

CHEAP COTTON BY FREE LABOR. By a Cotton Manufacturer. Second edition. Boston: A. Williams & Company, 100 Washington Street. 1861. Price 12 cents.

It seldom happens that we find so many weighty facts within so short a compass as are given in this pamphlet. For many years the assertion that only the negro, and the negro as a slave, could be profitably employed in raising cotton in America, has been accepted most implicitly by the whole country, and this has been the great basis of pro-slavery argument. But of late years, doubt has been thrown, from time to time, on this assumption, and in the little work before us there is given an array of concise statements, which, until their absolute falsehood is proved, must be regarded as conclusive of the fact, that the white man is better adapted than the negro to labor at the cultivation of cotton.

Our 'cotton manufacturer' begins properly by bursting the enormous bubble of the failure of free labor in the British West Indies; showing, what is too little known, that the decrease in the export of sugar from Jamaica began and rapidly continued for thirty years before the emancipation of slaves, but has since been well-nigh arrested. With this decrease of export the import of food has decreased, although the population, has increased; but, at the present day, the aggregate value of the exports of all the British West Indies is now nearly as great as it was in the palmiest days of slavery, while on an average the free blacks now earn far more for themselves than they formerly did for their masters, and are therefore 'better off.' Even those who regard the negro, whether a slave or free, as fulfilling his whole earthly mission in proportion to the profit which he yields Lancashire spinners, have no just grounds of complaint. But as regards the United States, there are certain facts to be considered. According to the census of 1850, there were in our slave States, 'where it is frequently asserted that white men can not labor in the fields,' eight hundred thousand free whites over fifteen years of age employed exclusively in agriculture, and over one million exclusively in out-door labor. Again, wherever the free-white labor and small-farm system of growing cotton has been tried, it has invariably proved more productive than that of employing slaves. It can not be denied that, deducting the expense of maintaining decrepit and infant slaves, every field hand costs $20 per month, and German labor could be hired for less than this, the success of such labor in Texas fully establishing its superiority,—and Texas contains cotton and sugar land enough to supply three times the entire crop now raised in this country. Such being the case, has not free labor a right to demand that these fields be thrown open to it, without being degraded by comparison to and competition with slaves? Our author consequently suggests that Texas, at least, shall be made free, and a limit thereby established to slavery in the older States. It would cost less than one hundred millions of dollars to purchase all the slaves now there, and the completion of the Galveston railroad would have the effect of giving to Texas well-nigh the monopoly of the cotton supply. Such are, in brief, the main points of this pamphlet, which we trust will be carefully read, and so far as possible tested by every one desirous of obtaining information on the greatest social and economical question of the day.

A DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. By Joseph E. Worcester, LL.D. Boston: Swan, Brewer & Tileston. 1862.

To boldly declare in favor of any one dictionary at the present day, would be as bold, and we may add as untimely and illogical a proceeding as to endorse any one grammar, when nothing can be clearer to the student of language than that our English tongue is more unfixed and undergoing changes more rapidly than any other which boasts a truly great literature. The scholar, consequently, generally pursues an eclectic system, if timid conforming as nearly as may be to 'general usage,' if bold and 'troubled with originality,' making up words for himself, after the manner of CARLYLE, which if 'apt,' after being more or less ridiculed, are tacitly and generally adopted. But, amid the 'war of words' and of rival systems, people must have dictionaries, and fortunately there is this of WORCESTER'S, which has of late risen immensely in public favor. We say fortunately, for whatever discords and inconvenience may arise at the time from the rivalry of different dictionaries, it can not be doubted that each effort contributes vastly to enrich our mother-tongue, and render easier the future task of the 'coming man' who is, years hence, to form from the whole one perfect work. Our own verdict in the matter would, accordingly, be, that we should most unwillingly dispense with either of the great candidates for popular orthographic favor.

RELIGIO MEDICI, A LETTER TO A FRIEND, CHRISTIAN MORALS, URN BURIAL, AND OTHER PAPERS. By Sir Thomas Browne, Kt., M.D. Boston: Ticknor and Fields. 1862.

Beautiful indeed is the degree of typographic art displayed in this edition of one of the raciest and most readable of our sterling English classics. The antique lettering of the title alone, in which words of carmine-red alternate with the 'letters blake,' the counterpart portrait, and the neat red-illumined capitals of every chapter, not to mention the type and binding, all render this volume one of the most appropriate of gift-books for a friend of true scholarly tastes. Few writers are so perfectly loved as Sir THOMAS BROWNE is by such 'friends;' as in BACON'S or MONTAIGNE'S essays, his every sentence has its weight of wisdom, and he who should read this volume until every sentence were cut deeply in memory, would never deem the time lost which was thus spent. Yet, while so deeply interesting to the most general reader, let it not be forgotten that it was with the greatest truth that Dr. JOHNSON testified of him that 'there is scarcely a writer to be found, whose profession was not divinity, that has so frequently testified his belief of the sacred writings, has appealed to them with such unlimited submission, or mentioned them with such unvaried reverence.'

TRAGEDY OF ERRORS. Aux plus déshérités le plus d'amour. Boston: Ticknor & Fields. 1862.

The extraordinary conception of a blank verse dramatic novel of Southern slave life. We can not agree with its very talented author in finding so much that is touching and beautiful in the negro, believing that the motto which prefaces this work is simply a sentimental mistake. The negro is degraded, vile if you please, and not admirable at all, and therefore we should work hard, and induce him too to work, rise, and purify himself. Apart from this little difference as to a fact, we have only praise for this work, which is most admirably written, abounding in noble passages of brave poetry, and bearing, like the 'Record of an Obscure Man,' genial evidence of scholarship and refined thoughts and instincts. It will, we sincerely hope, be very widely read, and we are confident that all who do read it will be impressed, as we have been, by the true genius of the author, even though they may dissent, as we do, from the idealization of the negro as is here done. The cause of the poor was never yet aided by false gilding.

EDITOR'S TABLE

During the past month our domestic difficulties have threatened to become doubly difficult, owing to the demand made upon this country by England, and to the circumstances attending it.

Very recently it became known that on board of an English mail steamer, 'The Trent,' were two men, Messrs. SLIDELL and MASON, accredited agents from a portion of the United States which is in open and flagrant rebellion against a constituted government which has been recognized as such by every nation in the world. Those men, calling themselves ambassadors, and just as much entitled to that dignity or to official recognition as two agents from NENA SAHIB would have been during the revolt stirred up by that Hindoo, were taken by an officer of the United States government from the Trent, under the full impression by him that the seizure was in every sense legal.

The British government regarded this arrest an outrage, and promptly responded by a demand for the restoration of Messrs. SLIDELL and MASON. Numerous 'indignation meetings' held in the great centres of English commerce and manufactures echoed this demand, which received a threatening form from the fact that great military and naval preparations, evidently aimed against the United States, were at once put under way.

Was the seizure illegal?

The vast amount of international law which has been brought to light on this subject, not merely in the press, but from the researches and pens of eminent jurists, led us to no severely definite conclusion. That an emissary is not a contraband of war as much as a musket or a soldier, appears preposterous, and offers a distinction which, as Mr. SEWARD observes, disappears before the spirit of the law, M. THOUVENEL to the contrary, notwithstanding. It was therefore in the mode of procedure in regard to the seizure of the emissaries that the trouble lay. According to law, the vessel, if carrying contraband of war, is liable to seizure. But if this assumed contraband be men, these may not be guilty, and are entitled to a trial. Still, as the law—or want of law—stands, the seizure of the vessel is the requisite step, the minor issue being practically regarded as the major; an anomaly not less striking than that which still prevails in certain courts, where, to recover damages for seduction, the defendant can only be mulcted in a penalty for the loss of time caused to his victim. It was not possible for Captain WILKES to seize the vessel, Great Britain declined to waive her claim to the execution of every jot and tittle of the letter of the law, and consequently the 'contrabands' were surrendered.

The absurdity of involving two great nations in a war, on account of a legal paradox of this nature, requires no comment. The dry comment of General SCOTT, that the 'wrong' would have been none had it only been greater, recalls the absurd line in the old play:—

'My wound is great because it is so small;'

and the supplement,—

'Then 'twould be greater were it none at all.'

But, absurd or not, the law must be followed. Great nations must settle their disputes by the law, even as individuals do, and there is no shame in submitting to it, for submission to the constituted authorities is the highest proof of honor and of civilization. And if England chooses to strain the law to its utmost tension, to thereby push her neutrality to the very verge of sympathy with our rebels, and manifest, by a peremptory and discourteous exercise of her rights, total want of sympathy with our efforts to suppress rebellion,—why, we must bear it.

And here, leaving the letter of the law, we may appropriately say a few words of the animus which has inspired the 'influential classes' in England as regards this country, during our struggle with the South. We are assured that the mass of the English people sympathize with us, and we are glad to hear it,—just as we are to know that Ireland is friendly in her disposition. But we can not refrain—and we do it with no view to words which may stir up ill-feeling—from commenting, in sorrow rather than anger, on the fact that such a majority of journalists, capitalists, yes, and the mass of inhabitants of English cities, have so unblushingly, for the mere sake of money, turned their backs on those principles of freedom of which they boasted for so many years, flouting us the while for being behind them in the race of philanthropy! It is pitiful and painful to see pride brought so low. We of the Federal Union are striving, heart and soul, to uphold our government—a government which has been a great blessing to England and to the world. Who shall say what revolutions, what tremendous disasters, would not have overtaken Great Britain had it not been for the escape-valve of emigration hither? If ever a situation appealed to the noblest sympathies of mankind, ours does. Struggling to maintain a government which has given to the poor man fuller rights and freer exercise of labor than he has ever before known on this earth; fighting heroically to uphold the best republic ever realized;—who would have dreamed that 'brave, free, honest Old England' would have regarded us coldly, sneered at our victories, grinned over our defeats? But more than this. Though not avowed as an aim, and though secondary to our first great object,—the reëstablishment of the Union and a constitutional government,—we all know, and so does every Englishman, that the emancipation of the slave, to a greater or less degree, must inevitably follow our success. Here comes the test of that English abolition of the blackest and fiercest stamp which has for years been avowed in Great Britain, and which has done as much as aught else towards stirring up this foul rebellion. Where be your gibes now, O Britannia? Where be your bitter jeers against the 'lying Constitution,' against the 'stars for the white man and the stripes for the negro,' against everything American, because America was the land of the slave? We are fighting—dying—to directly uphold ourselves, and indirectly to effect this very emancipation for which you clamored; we are losing cotton and suffering everything;—but you, when it comes to the pinch, will endure nothing for your boasted abolition, but slide off at once towards aiding the inception of the foulest, blackest, vilest slaveocracy ever instituted on earth!

Disguise, quibble, lie, let them that will—these are facts. Because we, in our need, have instituted a protective tariff, which was absolutely necessary to keep us from utter ruin, and on the flimsy pretext that we are not fighting directly for emancipation, proud, free, and honest Old England, as publicly represented, eats all her old words, and, worse than withholding all sympathy from us, shows in a thousand ill-disguised ways an itching impatience to aid the South! Men of England, we are suffering for a principle common to all humanity; can not you suffer somewhat with us? Can you not, out of the inexhaustible wealth of your islands, find wherewithal to stave off the bitter need, for a season, of your cotton-spinners? Feed them?—why we would, for a little aid in our dire need, have poured in millions of bushels of wheat to your poor,—one brave, decided act of sympathy on your part for us would ere this have trampled down secession, and sent cotton to your marts, even to superfluity. Or, were you so minded, and could 'worry through' a single year, you might raise in your own colonies cotton enough, and be forever free of America.

Or is it really true, as many think, that your statesmen would gladly dismember this Union? The suggestion reveals such a depth of infamy that we will not pause on it. Let it pass—if the hour of need should come we will revive it, and out of that need will arise a giant of Union such as was never before dreamed of. Let the country believe that, and from Maine to California there will be such a blending into one as time can never dissolve!

But be it borne in mind;—and we would urge it with greater earnestness than, aught which we have yet said,—there is in England a large, noble body of men who do not sympathize with the Southern rebels; who are not sold, soul and body, to cotton; who see this struggle of ours as it is, and who would not willingly see us divided. These men believe in industry, in free labor, in having every country developed as much as possible, in order that the industry of each may benefit by that of the other. Honor to whom honor is due,—and much is due to these men. Meanwhile we can wait,—and, waiting, we shall strive to do what is right. England has her choice between the cotton of the South and the market of the North. Let her choose the former, and she will grasp ruin. We should suffer for a time, bitterly. But out of that suffering we should come so strengthened, so united, and so perfectly able to dispense with all foreign labor, that where we were before as rough ore, then we should be pure gold in our prosperity.

The first statesmen of England have shown by their speeches, as the first British journals have indicated in their articles, that they earnestly believe what Stephens and hundreds of other Southerners have asserted, that all the wealth of the Northern States has come from the South, and that the South is the great ultimate market for the major portion of our imports. Glancing over our map,—as was done by The Times,-the Englishman may well believe this. He sees a vast extent of territory,—he has heard and witnessed the boasts and extravagance of Southerners abroad,—he knows that where so many million bales of cotton go out, just so much money must flow in; he is angry at our Northern tariff of emergency, and so believes that by opening to himself the South he will secure a vast market. Little does he reflect on the fact that, this step once taken, he will close up in the North and West his greatest market, one worth ten times that of the South, and constantly increasing, just in proportion as our population progresses more rapidly than that of the slave States. It is no exaggeration,—strange as it may seem,—but this extraordinary ignorance has been manifested time and again by high authority in England since the war began. But supposing the balance struck, and cotton found to be worth more to England than the market of the North. Does not our very independence of English manufactures imply such a stimulus to our own, as to threaten that we shall thereby be in a much shorter time in a condition to compete with her in every market of the world? Drive us to manufacturing for ourselves, and we shall manufacture for every one. Already every year witnesses American inventiveness achieving new triumphs over British rivalry. Has England forgotten the report of Messrs. Whitworth and Wallis on American manufactures, in which they were told that of late years they have been more indebted to American skill for useful inventions than to their own? War and non-intercourse will doubtless compel us to economy, and render labor cheaper in America, but they can not quench our innate Yankee-Saxon inventiveness and industry. But if labor is made cheaper in America, then our final triumph will only be hastened. If England seeks her own ruin, she could not advance it more rapidly than she would do by a war or a difference with us. And this many think that she will do for the sake of one season's supply of American cotton! The fable of him who killed the goose for the sake of the golden egg becomes terrible when acted out by a great nation. And if this be true, then the uplifted sword of Albion is, verily, nothing but a goose-killing knife.

'God is not dead yet.' If we are in the right, He will guide and guard us, and they who contend for right and justice and the liberty of the poor, first fully taught on earth by the Saviour Jesus Christ, will not suffer in the end. When we first entered on this struggle with the South, it was soon realized that we had undertaken the greatest struggle of history, the reformation of the modern age, the grandest battle for progress and against the old serpent of oppression ever known. Let them laugh who will, but such a trial of republicanism against the last of feudalism is this, and nothing less. God aid us! But it may be that, as the contest widens, grander accomplishments lie before us. Whether it be done by the sword, or by peaceful industry; whether as victors, or as the unrighteously borne-down in our sorest hour of need,—it is not impossible that, in one way or the other, it is yet in our destiny to refute the monstrous theory that whatever the most powerful nation on earth does is necessarily right, and that all considerations must yield to its enormous interests. Such has been till the present the morality of English and of all European diplomacy,—who will deny it? Can it be possible that this is to last forever, and that nations are in the onward march of progress privileged to adopt a different course from that enjoined by God on individuals? 'Was Israel punished for this?' No, it can not be. We stand at the portal of a new age; step by step Truth must yet find her way even into the selfish camarilla councils of 'diplomacy.' Storms, sorrows, trials, and troubles may be before us,—but we are working through a mighty time. 'Nothing without labor.' Our task for the present is the restoration of the sacred Union. From this let nothing turn us aside, neither the threats of England or of the world. If we must be humiliated by the law, then let us bear the humiliation. Our Great Master bore aforetime the most cruel disgrace in the same holy cause of vindicating the rights of man. If new struggles are forced upon us, let us battle like men. We are living now in the serious and the great,—let us bear ourselves accordingly, and the end shall crown the work.

There is no use in disguising the fact—the people of the North, notwithstanding their sufferings and sacrifices, are not yet aroused. While immediate apprehensions—were entertained of war with England, it was promptly said, that if this state of irritation continued, we should be able to sweep the South away like chaff.

Meanwhile, the North is full of secession sympathizers and traitors, and they are most amiably borne with. There are journals which, in their extreme 'democracy,' defend the South as openly as they dare in all petty matters, and ridicule or discredit to their utmost every statement reflecting on our enemies. They are, it is true, almost beneath contempt and punishment; but their existence is a proof of an amiable, impassive state of feeling, which will never proceed to very vigorous measures. Were the whole people fairly aflame, such paltry treason would vanish like straw in a fiery furnace.

Yet all the time we hold the great weapon idly in our hands, and fear to use it! By and by it will be too late. By and by emancipation-time will have gone by, and when it is too late, we shall possibly see it adopted, and hear its possible failure attributed to those who urged the prompt, efficient application of it betimes.

The article in this number of the Continental entitled The Huguenot Families in America, is the first of a series which will embrace a great amount of interesting details relative to the ancestry of the early French Protestant settlers in this country. Those who are familiar with the English version of WEISS'S History of the Huguenots, and who may recall the merits of that concluding portion which is devoted to the fortunes of the exiles in this country, will be pleased to learn that its writer and our contributor are the same person—a gentleman whose descent from the stock which he commemorates, and whose life-long studies relative to his ancestral faith and its followers, have peculiarly fitted him for the task. Descendants of any of the Huguenot families, in any part of this country, would confer a special favor by transmitting to the author, through the care of the editor, any details, family anecdotes, short biographic sketches, or other material suitable for his history. It is especially desirable that some account should be given of all those descendants of Huguenots who have in any way whatever distinguished themselves in this country.

According to the report of the N.Y. Central Railroad it appears that the average reduction of wages of the employes of that company, since the beginning of the war, has been from $1.12 1/2 per diem to 75 cents. Taking increased taxation and the rise in prices into consideration, we may assume that the working men of the North have lost fifty per cent. of their usual gains.

So far as this is an honorable sacrifice for the war, it is good. But how long is it to last? It will last until the whole country shall have lost a sneaking sympathy for the enemy and their institutions, and until every man and woman shall cease to openly approve of those principles which, as the secessionists truly maintain, constitute us 'two peoples.' With what consistency can any one avow fidelity to the Union and yet profess views according in the main with the platform of Messrs. DAVIS and STEPHENS?

Divested of all other issues, the great complaint of Europe against our conduct of the war is our 'inefficient blockade.' If we are to attach faith to those arch-factors of falsehood, the New Orleans newspaper editors, a vessel leaves their port daily and securely for the Havana. It was the same journals which some months since announced in each succeeding issue that 'the fifteen millions loan is all taken;' 'the loan is very nearly taken;' 'it gives us pleasure to announce that the loan is now completed,' and so on, backing up their assertion's by a series of truly amusing details of 'proof.'

That sundry vessels have broken the blockade is as palpable as that it was for some time most inefficiently conducted. Yet, at the same time, let the enormous difficulties of the task be remembered, and our great want of means at the beginning of the war, when, stripped by the machinations of traitors for years, we had indeed to begin from almost nothing. The coast from Maryland to Mexico is a different affair from that of France or England. The great Napoleon himself, with all his efforts, could never keep his coast-line unbroken by smugglers. Had foreign critics of our war made the slightest friendly or kindly allowance, they would never have spoken as they do of our 'inefficient blockade.' But the great majority of their comments have been neither kindly nor friendly.

Meanwhile, the work goes bravely on. 'The Stone Fleet' will soon have effectually stopped that 'rat-hole,' Charleston, and it is evident that, unless distracted by foreign intervention, the whole coast will be well walled in and guarded. It must, will, and shall be done in time. 'It is more difficult to move a mountain than a marble.'

It would be interesting to trace the probable European results of a war between America and England. Russia, threatened with a servile war, would find in a war with England the most effectual means of settling home difficulties. Louis NAPOLEON, it is said, tacitly encourages England to get to war. How long would he remain her ally when an opportunity would present itself of avenging Waterloo? Or if Hungary and the Sclavonian provinces blazed up in insurrection, what price less than the long-coveted Rhine, and perhaps Belgium, would Louis NAPOLEON accept for his services in aiding Austria? Or would he not take it without rendering such problematic service? Let England beware his friendship. He is a great man, and for his subjects a good one,—but woe to those who trust him for their own ends or believe in his lore! There was one VICTOR EMMANUEL who trusted him once—with the result set forth in the following merry lay:—

A TRUE FABLE, WITHOUT A MORAL

'This LOUIS is a rascal, friend;
From all his arts may Heaven defend!
And be thou ever on thy guard,
Lest thy faith meet a sad reward.
And if he swear he loves thee, laugh!
For give him thy little finger half,
And the iron chains of his stern control
Will sink like fire on thy poor soul!'

Now VICTOR heard all this, one day,
And smiled—'It's queer how men can say
  Such things to injure their neighbors!
For do but look at this wonderful man,
So rich in thought, so fertile in plan,
Who, to place all tyranny under ban,
  Never remits his labors,—
This dear, good soul, who, with magical art,
Brings freedom and peace to my trembling heart.'

Soon after, Sir LOUIS rode over the moor:
'My VICTOR, how comes it you're still so poor,
  When I have paid all your debts, sir?
I've made you so rich, I've made you so great;
I've brought you gifts of money and plate;
Is there anything more to complete your state,
  That you'd like to have, I can get, sir?
Come, VICTOR, confess to your faithful friend,
Who to make you happy his honor would lend.'

'Oh, worthy man,—my tower and strength!
How sweet it is that I may, at length,
  Confide in you as a brother!'
'Yes, take what you will, my statesman hold,
Only ask not whence comes the shining gold.
Just see what a beauty here I hold;
  If you're good I may bring you another!—
A crown so rich in costly gems
It will match the Eastern diadems!'

Little VICTOR gazed at the sparkling crown,
Then fell at the feet of his LOUIS down,
  Overcome by deep emotion.
'Oh! oh! is it true? is it all for me?
This beautiful crown, with its diamonds three?
And he clapped his hands in boundless glee,
  And vowed eternal devotion;
While LOUIS looked on with a happy heart,
And blessed himself for his consummate art.

'Yes, VICTOR,' he said, 'it gives me joy
To present you, to-day, with this pretty toy,
  With such freedom from envy or rancor!
But get up from your knees; 'tisn't quite orthodox
To kneel to a man; you might get on the rocks
  Of his HOLINESS' anger.
Now lay the crown in your jewel-box,
And, lest some wandering, cunning fox
Should steal it, be sure to secure the locks.'

'Oh, a friend in need is a friend indeed!'
Quoth VICTOR; 'but this is beyond my meed.
  And what gift of mine can repay you?'
'The key of the casket, friend, if you please,
I will take to my safe beyond the seas.
Your grateful heart will thus rest at ease;
  So give it to me, I pray you.'
But VICTOR'S eyes grew large with fright,
And he cried, 'Oh, LOUIS! this can't be right;
For how can I get of my jewels a sight?
  You might as well take them away too.'
'Give me the key!' screamed his guardian angel,
'Or receive the curse of the LORD'S evangel!'

Poor VICTOR trembled with fear and pain,
When he found his entreaties were all in vain,
  And the key was lost forever.
Alas, alas for the counsel scorned;
For the jewels hid and the freedom mourned.
  And the faith returning never!
For link after link of the adamant chain
Mounted endless guard over heart and brain.