Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 by Various

V >> Various >> Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19

It is not to be presumed that Congress will do anything unnecessarily to
add to the misfortunes of loyal men in the South. On the contrary, all
that is being done is more directly for their benefit than for that of
any other class of men. The vast expenditure of treasure and blood in
this war is for the purpose of protecting them first of all, and
restoring to them the blessings of a good government. And if it shall be
found practicable to indemnify them for all losses, whether by
emancipation or otherwise, no one will object.

* * * * *

The object of this article is to prove that the Government possesses
ample power, according to the law of nations, to suppress the Rebellion,
and secure the country against the danger of another, by Emancipation,
through the military power; that, though Emancipation is a _policy_, and
not a _law_, the war may be prosecuted until this end is accomplished,
and Slavery in future forever prohibited; that, by secession and
rebellion, the revolted States have forfeited all right to the
allegiance of their citizens, who are thereby remitted to the condition
and rights of citizens solely of the United States; and that the Federal
Government, as well _under the Constitution_ as _by right of conquest_,
may impose such terms upon the reorganization and restoration of those
States as may be necessary to secure present safety, and avert danger in
time to come. These views are presented in as brief and simple terms as
possible, with the hope that they may be adopted by the people and by
the Government. It is confidently believed, that, if the President and
Congress will act in accordance with them, their acts will be fully
sustained by the Supreme Court,--and that, the element and source of
discord being at last entirely removed from the country, a career of
peace and prosperity will then begin which shall be the admiration of
the world.

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

* * * * *

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

RECENT AMERICAN PUBLICATIONS

RECEIVED BY THE EDITORS OF THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

"Christopher North." A Memoir of John Wilson, late Professor of Moral
Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh. Compiled from Family-Papers
and other Sources. By his Daughter, Mrs. Gordon. With an Introduction by
R. Shelton Mackenzie, D.C.L., Editor of the "Noctes Ambrosianae," etc.
Complete in One Volume. New York. W.J. Widdleton. 8vo. pp. xii., 484.
$2.00.

Alphabetical Army-Register; giving the Names, Date of Present and
Original Commissions, Rank, Place of Nativity, and from whence
Appointed, of all the Officers of the United States Army, as shown by
the Official Army-Register, May, 1863. New York. D. Van Nostrand. 8vo.
paper, pp. 64. 50 cts.

The Works of Francis Bacon, Baron of Verulam, Viscount St. Albans, and
Lord High Chancellor of England. Collected and edited by James Spedding,
M.A., of Trinity College, Cambridge; Robert Leslie Ellis, M.A., late
Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge; and Douglas Denon Heath,
Barrister-at-Law, late Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. Vol. VI.
Boston. Taggard & Thompson. 12mo. pp. 450. $1.50.

Money. By Charles Moran. New York. D. Appleton & Co. 12mo. pp. 228.
$1.00.

The Crisis. New York. D. Appleton & Co. 8vo. paper, pp. 95. 50 cts.

Chemistry. By William Thomas Brande, D.C.L., F.R.S.L. and E., of Her
Majesty's Mint, Member of the Senate of the University of London, and
Honorary Professor of Chemistry in the Royal Institution of Great
Britain; and Alfred Swaine Taylor, M.D., F.R.S., Fellow of the Royal
College of Physicians of London, and Professor of Chemistry and Medical
Jurisprudence in Guy's Hospital. Philadelphia. Blanchard & Lea. 8vo. pp.
696. $3.50.

The Life and Letters of Washington Irving. By his Nephew, Pierre M.
Irving. New York. G.P. Putnam. 12mo. pp. 403. $1.50.

Lectures on the Symbolic Character of the Sacred Scriptures. By Rev.
Abiel Silver, Minister of the New Jerusalem Church in New York. New
York. D. Appleton & Co. 12mo. pp. 286. $1.25.

Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature. By Thomas H. Huxley, F.R.S.,
F.L.S., Professor of Natural History in the Jermyn-Street School of
Mines. New York. D. Appleton & Co. 12mo. pp. 184. $1.25.

United States Infantry Tactics, for the Instruction, Exercise, and
Manoeuvres of the Soldier, a Company, Line of Skirmishers, and
Battalion; for the Use of the Colored Troops of the United States
Infantry. Prepared under Direction of the War Department. New York. D.
Van Nostrand. 18mo. pp. 445. $1.50.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19