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PARTIES IN THE SOUTH.

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difficulties in which the American people have had so much experience of exaggerated dangers and foolish alarms that they are likely to give them attention no longer, but as ephemeral sensations. It is something vastly more than the usual vapours of the political cauldron. When a Congress, representing not much more than a moiety of the American States, and, therefore, in the condition of an unconstitutional authority and factious party, undertakes to absorb the power of the government; to determine Executive questions by its close "Committee of Reconstruction; to put down the judiciary of the Southern States and by a Freedmen's Bureau, and other devices, erect an imperium in imperio in one part of the Union, it is obvious that the controversy is no narrow one of party, that it involves the traditions and spirit of the government, and goes to the ultimate contest of constitutional liberty in America. Regarding these issues, the question comes fearfully to the mind: Has the past war merely laid the foundation of another? The pregnant lesson of human experience is that few nations have had their first civil war without having their second; and that the only guaranty against the repetition is to be found in the policy of wise and liberal concessions gracefully made by the successful party. And such reconciliations have been rarest in the republican form of government; for, while generosity often resides in the breast of individual rulers, the history of mankind unhappily shows that it is a rare quality of political parties, where men act in feverish masses and under the domin ion of peculiar passions.

To the division of parties in the North-Radicals and Conservatives— there has grown up to some extent a correspondent difference of opinions among the Southern people as to the consequences of the war. But only to a certain extent; for the party in the South that, corresponding to the theory of the Northern Radicals, account themselves entirely at the mercy of a conquering power and taking everything ex gratia, is only the detestable faction of time-servers and the servile coterie that attends all great changes in history, and courts the new authority whatever it may be.

There is a better judgment already read by the Southern people of what the war has decided as against themselves. The last memorable remark of Ex-President Davis, when a fugitive, and before the doors of a prison closed upon him, was: "The principle for which we contended is bound to reassert itself, though it may be at another time and in another form." It was a wise and noble utterance, to be placed to the credit of an unfortunate ruler. And so, too, the man, marked above all others as the orator of the South-Henry A. Wise, of Virginia, standing before his countrymen, with his gray hairs and luminous eyes, has recently proclaimed with trumpet-voice that all is not lost, that a great struggle of constitutional liberty yet remains, and that there are still missions of duty and glory for the South.

The people of the South have surrendered in the war what the war has conquered; but they cannot be expected to give up what was not involved in the war, and voluntarily abandon their political schools for the dogma of Consolidation. That dogma, the result has not properly imposed upon them; it has not "conquered ideas." The issues of the war were practical: the restoration of the Union and the abolition of slavery; and only so far as political formulas were necessarily involved in these have they been affected by the conclusion. The doctrine of secession was extinguished ; and yet there is something left more than the shadow of State Rights, if we may believe President Johnson, who has recently and officially used these terms, and affirmed in them at least some substantial significance. Even if the States are to be firmly held in the Union; even if the authority of the Union is to be held supreme in that respect, it does not follow that it is to be supreme in all other respects; it does not follow that it is to legislate for the States; it does not follow that it is "a national Government over the States and people alike." It is for the South to preserve every remnant of her rights, and even, though parting with the doctrine of secession, to beware of the extremity of surrendering State Rights in gross, and consenting to a "National Government," with an unlimited power of legisla tion that will consider the States as divided only by imaginary lines of geography, and see in its subjects only "the one people of all the States."

But it is urged that the South should come to this understanding, so as to consolidate the peace of the country, and provide against a “war of ideas." Now a "war of ideas" is what the South wants and insists upon perpetrating. It may be a formidable phrase "the war of ideas"-but after all, it is a harmless figure of rhetoric, and means only that we shall have parties in the country. We would not live in a country unless there were parties in it; for where there is no such combat, there is no liberty, no animation, no topics, no interest of the twenty-four hours, no theatres of intellectual activity, no objects of ambition. We do not desire the vacant unanimity of despotism. All that is left the South is "the war of ideas." She has thrown down the sword to take up the weapons of argument, not indeed under any banner of fanaticism, or to enforce a dogma, but simply to make the honourable conquest of reason and justice. In such a war there are noble victories to be won, memorable services to be performed, and grand results to be achieved. The Southern people stand by their principles. There is no occasion for dogmatic assertion, or fanatical declamation, or inflammatory discourse as long as they have a text on which they can make a sober exposition of their rights, and claim the verdict of the intelligent.

Outside the domain of party politics, the war has left another consideration for the people of the South. It is a remarkable fact that States reduced by war are apt to experience the extinction of their literature, the

DUTY AND HOPE OF THE SOUTH.

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decay of mind, and the loss of their distinctive forms of thought. Nor is such a condition inconsistent with a gross material prosperity that often grows upon the bloody crust of war. When Greece fell under the Roman yoke, she experienced a prosperity she had never known before. It was an era rank with wealth and material improvement. But her literature became extinct or emasculated; the distinctive forms of her art disappeared; and her mind, once the peerless light of the world, waned into an obscurity from which it never emerged.

It is to be feared that in the present condition of the Southern States, losses will be experienced greater than the immediate inflictions of fire and sword. The danger is that they will lose their literature, their former habits of thought, their intellectual self-asssertion, while they are too intent upon recovering the mere material prosperity, ravaged and impaired by the war. There are certain coarse advisers who tell the Southern people that the great ends of their lives now are to repair their stock of national wealth; to bring in Northern capital and labour; to build mills and factories and hotels and gilded caravansaries; and to make themselves rivals in the clattering and garish enterprise of the North. This advice has its proper place. But there are higher objects than the Yankee magna bona of money and display, and loftier aspirations than the civilization of material things. In the life of nations, as in that of the individual, there is something better than pelf, and the coarse prosperity of dollars and cents. The lacerated, but proud and ambitious heart of the South will scarcely respond to the mean aspiration of the recusant Governor of South Carolina-Mr. Orr: "I am tired of South Carolina as she was. I court for her the material prosperity of New England. I would have her acres teem with life and vigour and intelligence, as do those of Massachusetts."

There are time-servers in every cause; there are men who fill their bellies with husks, and turn on their faces and die; but there are others who, in the midst of public calamities, and in their own scanty personal fortune, leave behind them the memory of noble deeds, and a deathless heritage of glory.

Defeat has not made "all our sacred things profane." The war has left the South its own memories, its own heroes, its own tears, its own dead. Under these traditions, sons will grow to manhood, and lessons sink deep that are learned from the lips of widowed mothers.

It would be immeasurably the worst consequence of defeat in this war that the South should lose its moral and intellectual distinctiveness as a people, and cease to assert its well-known superiourity in civilization, in political scholarship, and in all the standards of individual character over the people of the North. That superiourity has been recognized by every foreign observer, and by the intelligent everywhere; for it is the South that in the past produced four-fifths of the political literature of America,

and presented in its public men that list of American names best known in the Christian world. That superiourity the war has not conquered or lowered; and the South will do right to claim and to cherish it.

The war has not swallowed up everything. There are great interests which stand out of the pale of the contest, which it is for the South still to cultivate and maintain. She must submit fairly and truthfully to what the war has properly decided. But the war properly decided only what was put in issue: the restoration of the Union and the excision of slavery; and to these two conditions the South submits. But the war did not decide negro equality; it did not decide negro suffrage; it did not decide State Rights, although it might have exploded their abuse; it did not decide the orthodoxy of the Democratic party; it did not decide the right of a people to show dignity in misfortune, and to maintain self-respect in the face of adversity. And these things which the war did not decide, the Southern people will still cling to, still claim, and still assert in them their rights and views.

This is not the language of insolence and faction. It is the stark letter of right, and the plain syllogism of common sense. It is not untimely or unreasonable to tell the South to cultivate her superiourity as a people; to maintain her old schools of literature and scholarship; to assert, in the forms of her thought, and in the style of her manners, her peculiar civilization, and to convince the North that, instead of subjugating an inferiour country, she has obtained the alliance of a noble and cultivated people, and secured a bond of association with those she may be proud to call brethren!

In such a condition there may possibly be a solid and honourable peace; and one in which the South may still preserve many things dear to her in the past. There may not be a political South. Yet there may be a social and intellectual South. But if, on the other hand, the South, mistaking the consequences of the war, accepts the position of the inferiour, and gives up what was never claimed or conquered in the war; surrenders her schools of intellect and thought, and is left only with the brutal desire of the conquered for "bread and games;" then indeed to her people may be applied what Tacitus wrote of those who existed under the Roman Empire: "We cannot be said to have lived, but rather to have crawled in silence, the young towards the decrepitude of age and the old to dishonourable graves."

THE END.

The only Official and Authorized Southern History of the War.

By E. A. POLLARD.

THE LOST CAUSE,

BY

EDWARD A. POLLARD,

OF VIRGINIA,

EDITOR OF THE "RICHMOND EXAMINER," DURING THE WAR.

Comprising a full and authentic account of the rise and progress of the late Southern Confederacy--The Campaigns, Battles, Incidents and Adventures of the most gigantic struggle

of the world's history.

COMPLETE IN ONE LARGE ROYAL OCTAVO VOLUME OF NEARLY 800 PAGES.

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The Publishers take pleasure in announcing that they have secured the talents of this distinguished Author and Historian, in preparing a work worthy of the theme and the occasion.

The history of the vanquished has too often fallen to the pen of the victor, and to insure justice to the Southern cause, the pen must be taken by some Southern man who is willing to devote his time and talents to the vindication of his countrymen, in a history which shall challenge the criticism of the intelligent, and invite the attention of all honest inquirers.

Such a work will be of peculiar interest to the candid and intelligent public of the North, and is of the utmost importance to the People of the Southern States.

Mr. POLLARD, of all writers in the South, is doubtless the best qualified to prepare a complete and Standard History of the War, and to commit to the present and future generations a faithful and worthy record of their great struggle, and of a cause lost, save in honor-having been employed during the entire period of the war as editor of a Richmond newspaper, and thus trained to the best sources of information, and by especial research has collected a quantity of historical material pertaining to the secret history of the war which no one else in the country has or can now obtain.

He comes to the work with the encouragement and authority of Generals R. E. LEE, J. E. JOHNSTON, BEAUREGARD, "DICK" TAYLOR, FITZHUGH LEE, EX-Gov. WISE, and other distinguished Confederate Leaders. This Work is sold only by subscription, and cannot be obtained except through our authorized Traveling Agents.

AGENTS WANTE

In every Township and County in the United States and Canada to introduce this GREAT AND IMPORTANT WORK.

To Energetic Men and Women a Rare Chance is offered to make Money. Address, E. B. TREAT & CO., Publishers,

654 BROADWAY, NEW YORK,

or Branch Offices.

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